"Fun" with wikipedia (and Jason Statham)

[tacticslion]

So, saw a brief preview of the upcoming move Safe with Jason Statham (Fifthfiend should be happy), and I decided to check it out.

As it turns out, it seems that someone had fun with the wikipedia article (third sentence under "plot"). Even provided a citation for it!* The "[3]." It goes to wikipedia's link on Prostitution.

Anyway, this, boys and girls, is why Wikipedia isn't a viable source for your research papers.

So... anyone here have some sort of editor status and wanna change that?

Alternatively: discuss - does wikipedia need more trolls/does it count as a viable source?

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Originally Posted by tacticslion

So... anyone here have some sort of editor status and wanna change that?

Why don't you do it? Unless you fucked with the 'pedia previously your IP will not be banned.

Wikipedia is mostly viable, as long as you aren't dumb enough to believe things that are obviously bullshit. Wikipedia linking to itself as a source isn't really something it should do, but I don't see why this is a big deal. It's most likely not a troll, but an editor that wasn't too bright. Not like it's outright wiki-vandalism or anything, so that's probably why it hasn't been "caught" yet.

[Loyal]

Wikipedia itself isn't a source. You use it as a source to find sources, and then you go out and find those sources and decide whether they're viable.

[Bells]

I'll be honest with ya, i've actually never found a serious, important, Wikipedia article with any real meaningful alterations or changes or just flat out wrong information that lasted more than a couple of hours... i've seem sourced nuances and a lot of material with no citations... but an actually broken article with bad data, it's not something i recall finding.

And, to be fair, is a lot easier to pull a prank on a wikipedia Article of a Jason Statham movie then it would be, perhaps, to do the same on the Main Warner Brothers Studio article or perhaps, even someone like Bruce Lee...

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by tacticslion

Anyway, this, boys and girls, is why Wikipedia isn't a viable source for your research papers.

I have a math book sitting in my lap right now.
If I turn to a page and write in the margins "2+2=5" does that make the book an invalid source of information?

[Aldurin]

Originally Posted by K-Resh

I have a math book sitting in my lap right now.
If I turn to a page and write in the margins "2+2=5" does that make the book an invalid source of information?

This. Also the fact that it's a overwrite of the summary of a movie that hasn't officially released yet makes it easier to get away with, though I doubt it will last til' Friday. For a lot of the more popular pages (generic science stuff and the like) will ooze with sources and is at worst a good way to orient yourself with the subject.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Overreaction much there Tactics? So somebody made an edit on a little known page about a little known movie that probably hasn't had much traffic and all of a sudden all of wikipedias reliability is thrown into doubt? Please.

[Bells]

well to be honest about it the "Wikipedia is not a reliable source" is as old as wikipedia itself...

Although, personally, i think it streams more from the "Copy the full text of the page" crowd than from the "Use the page as a basis to form an opinion on" crowd

[tacticslion]

My point is not that Wikipedia is worthless: far from it, though I can see how such a thing would be taken.

Rather: check the daggum sources. Don't rely on Wikipedia as the be-all end all. Many students I had were really keen on doing so (and merely referencing the sources Wikipedia had). Point in fact, the source itself doesn't claim to lead to Wikipedia. It claims to link elsewhere. It does not.

Wikipedia is a very useful tool, but only if you get the fact that it's imperfect and able to be abused. This one joke (relatively obscure as it is) doesn't ruin all Wikipedia forever, but it does highlight a fact that I've run into repeatedly: Wikipedia gets changed. Often. And not always for the better.

For the record, K-Resh: yes, your math book is no longer a valid source (presupposing it's a print error, not written in by a user) insomuch as it continues to claim 2+2=5*. However the only reason you know that the book is wrong is because you have a slew other sources - starting from gradeschool - telling you otherwise. My problem* with Wikipedia is that even now I get people telling me they "read it on Wikipedia" and don't do any further research beyond that. They stop at Wikipedia. And that's terrible.

Reference the article itself: I just found it slightly annoying (and such a thing is definitely a silly, but purposeful joke, complete with making up fake names for articles, and creating self-referential links). And, to date, every edit I've ever made at Wikipedia has been reverted (regardless of reliability) within minutes; so I usually just leave it to actual editors 'cause I'm not interested in doing nothing with my time repeatedly.

* Pointlessly long aside for clarification.To be clear, despite the opening nature of this thread, I don't actually have a problem with Wikipedia itself. At all. I use it and I think it's a great reference tool and a useful "skimming the topic" tool (similar in some ways to sparknotes or cliffsnotes). But, unlike a textbook, Wikipedia only introduces and lightly covers a topic. It has neither the time nor resources to, by itself, cover the depths of anything. It is not authoritative in and of itself and it can't be taken that way. Yet many do. This is pretty much the only problem I have with it, that it's taken as authoritative on any given topic when it doesn't claim that title for itself.

Pointlessly long example for the aside above.Had I not actually checked the linked "article" below, and taken Wikipedia at its (admittedly silly) word, I would have just presupposed that some strange article out there on the internet had claimed that the girl, protected by the officer, grew up to be a prostitute. The claim was so bizarre, I decided to look into it. Instead, it pointed me directly to Wikipedia itself, an article on prostitution. Ergo, it's a joke... but pretending to be legitimate. I've run into other things that are more subtle (thus less obvious) but are similar. It's simply a matter of not doing the double-checking necessary. Wikipedia itself encourages that behavior, but culturally we tend not to.

EDIT:
For those of you who want to know what I'm saying in fewer words and far more eloquently:

Originally Posted by Loyal

Wikipedia itself isn't a source. You use it as a source to find sources, and then you go out and find those sources and decide whether they're viable.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by tacticslion

For the record, K-Resh: yes, your math book is no longer a valid source (presupposing it's a print error, not written in by a user) insomuch as it continues to claim 2+2=5*. However the only reason you know that the book is wrong is because you have a slew other sources - starting from gradeschool - telling you otherwise. My problem* with Wikipedia is that even now I get people telling me they "read it on Wikipedia" and don't do any further research beyond that. They stop at Wikipedia. And that's terrible.

That's the thing though, if you go into my math book and look for anything else it's just as accurate as another source. The only problem with it is the edit I've made. Whether it be out of ignorance or purposefully. And like how you or I will look at 2+2=5, scoff and then cross it out. Any one of a myriad of editors will find an error on Wikipedia and fix it. So, yeah. The book and Wikipedia might be inaccurate in that instant for that specific topic, but that's true of any source ever. Books, websites, and newspapers are all written by somebody somewhere, and they are only ever as accurate as the person who made them. So why is Wikipedia specifically a worse source to get stuff from?

I'd argue Wikipedia is better than a lot of sources because it purposefully seeks to cite and reference everything on there. While a lot of books or newspapers just state what the author intended and expect you to take it at face value. If your friends are using Wikipedia as their only source is it really any worse or better than them using, say, Time as their only source? Or Fox News? Or any source on Earth as their one and only source?