Wikipedia insight sought

TidBITS Talk
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(This isn’t strictly an Apple themed Topic, and I’ll understand if it gets axed.)

When Wikipedia came out my initial reaction was along the lines of ‘what rubbish’!’. So I haven’t used it much and even now treat its entries with skepticism.

But I grew up in a family with occasionally updated Encyclopedias (Colliers? black with volume titles on a red background), and studied Journalism in college, so I’ve come to think that ‘trustworthy information’ should be produced and reviewed and edited by trained/qualified people.

I read an interview with Wales recently, seems he wrote a book and is on a promotion tour for the 25th anniversary. He seems to have the right values and approach for making the entries as trustworthy as possible.

So my question for TB community is if anyone has first person experience with Wikipedia, say as a contributor or editor, and/or has met/worked with Wales, to know if his ideals, the publishing process, and the published pages are closer on the scale to ‘trustworthy’ than ‘rubbish’.

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It depends on what you want to look for.

Wikipedia requires all content to be sourced and cited. But there is also a strong editorial bias, especially for topics involving current events, politics or other hot-button issues.

I use it for things where the facts are not up for debate - like technical specifications. The articles are usually a good summary, and they cite the sources for further reading.

But I’d never consider it a reliable source for biographies or histories, which are as much editorial and commentary as they are factual.

Mind you, there are similar concerns with any other encyclopedia-like compilation of information. There is always going to be an editorial bias (and the biases all-around seem to be much stronger today than in the past), so you need to double-check anything you learn from them.

WRT your specific questions, I have contributed to Wikipedia articles, but always for things that are not controversial. Like the page on HDMI, or information about various music albums.

No, I’ve never worked with Wales. But I’ve read some of his recent comments about the current state of Wikipedia. From what I’ve read, I think I agree with him.

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I use it daily and make an annual donation. I’ve always found it useful and accurate for the things I was interested in, most of which have no other easily accessible source. One shortcoming is that when dedicated contributors get tired of updating a particular page for new events, the info can of course get stale.

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I should have linked to the interview in The Guardian :man_facepalming: .

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In terms of accuracy and objectivity, I find it to be about as good (for things I’m expert in) as more traditional sources like encyclopedias. I recommend my students use it as a starting point for their research. It gives them a good intro and then they can deepen and widen their research.

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Indeed. Among the things we learned about/discussed in jourmalism school (early 1980s, pre-computer, manual typewriters) was that there isn’t really any ‘unbiased’ anything. Every individual brings their own life experience to the topic at hand, it’s inescapable. So yes, I am talking about The Facts.

So when you contribute to or create a topic, it is reviewed by other contributors to Wikipedia with similar expertise etc before being published? and you provide your own references to sources?

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I donate. They have set up guidelines for errors, but on recent topics, there can be spam editing. I consider it a forefather to Asimov’s Encyclopedia Galactica. Their main concern now is trying to keep the AI bots from making nonsense contributions.

Between current AI and Wikipedia for knowledge, I would pick Wiki.

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Seems appropriate here:

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It’s usually much more of a free-for-all.

You can click “edit” on any page, change what you want, and then save the changes. You don’t even need to be logged in to a Wikipedia account to do this.

Others (including several bots) will see your changes and possibly take action, depending on what you changed. Vandalism is usually reverted pretty quickly and can result in your access being blocked.

If someone (including a bot) believes a citation is required, or if your citation is from a source the editors don’t consider reliable (and that list is itself sometimes controversial), the text may be flagged (the Citation needed markup), or even deleted.

Certain pages (generally those that are hot in the media) have additional restrictions, where editing may be restricted to only logged-in users, or those who have made substantial contributions to other pages. And those pages may have a more formal review process.

But the majority of pages let you change whatever you want on the honor system, expecting the bots and other users to make further edits to correct mistakes or inaccuracies.

In order to try and help resolve disputes, every page has an associated “Talk” page, where you can ask/answer/discuss questions regarding the associated page. This may or may not be useful.

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Like others, I had my doubts about whether Wikipedia’s model would work, and I wouldn’t have been totally surprised if its articles had ended up error-ridden. Unlike others, however, I didn’t assume the articles were garbage without evidence. Deciding that Wikipedia is rubbish without evidence is just as bad as claiming Wikipedia is great without evidence.

So I gave Wikipedia a chance, and I quickly found it was a good resource to refresh my memory on topics I had studied in the past, look up mathematical identities I haven’t used in years, and learn new ways of looking at subjects I’m already familiar with. I didn’t find it to be full of errors as its detractors claimed and instead found there were a lot of people who quickly fixed any mistakes they found.

Overall, I find Wikipedia useful. t’s just like any other source, though. You need to evaluate the information you find there critically.

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I look up things Wikipedia several times a week, often for information that other family members would use Google for.

Yes, it can be a bit awkward: what you get when you search Wikipedia are links to Wikipedia articles – then you have to look at and maybe even read the article to pick out the information you’re seeking (or find reference to a link for the information from the article).

But when looking anything up on Google (or other general search engine), most of the results seem to be advertisements, or links to promoted pages (which may not actually contain the information I’m seeking).

I don’t and wouldn’t use Wikipedia to look for news or information about current events. Nor about anything that’s likely to have different opinions involved.

Nor to search for a specific web site or page. Using any browser’s search bar works just fine. E.g., typing (or dictating) “Apple security releases” into any browser will show – usually not too far down in the results – the url for that page which you can click on.

But if, when you Google for something, you find yourself skipping over other results and click on a link leading to a Wikipedia article, next time you look for something like that, try starting by searching Wikipedia.

My most recent Wikipedia searches, yesterday, were:

US daylight savings time – to remind me when that gets turned off

Marburg – looking for the history of that city to document some family history

AI-augmented browsers like Perplexity, and more recently Google itself, will try to look up information directly for you, but so far, they often seem to just end up summarizing a piece of some Wikipedia article or other. I still like to do that for myself.

I mostly contribute to Wikipedia through edits. If I encounter an incomplete article about something that I know well – and know of an external reference to substantiate whatever I can add or change. Although I’ll usually add a comment about the content and possible changes to the article’s Talk page, first.

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Thanks for the thoughtful and helpful replies!

I will probably soon look up a few topics on there that I am familiar with and see what I find.

Til now I usually only have been there when internet search lists a page there as a result and I think it’s a neutral enough query to read what’s there.

Then I’ll reconsider whether or not to support them and visit more frequently.

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I’ve been a longtime user of Wikipedia and occasional contributor, mostly typo corrections. I’ve found it to be an excellent source for basic, non-controversial information (Are vultures classified as raptors? When did Intel release the first i-series chips? How many movies did Marvel release in MCU Phase 2?), especially in scientific and technical areas. Those pages tend to be overseen and managed by experts in their respective fields, and except for certain politically volatile topics, don’t really attract much vandalism, so they’re usually fairly reliable.

Yes, for any particular query, there is probably a better, more specific and more detailed resource available online. But Wikipedia allows you to get the basics without hunting for the more specific site. In many cases, the Wikipedia article will point you to good resources for more information.

As with Googling, there are times when Wikipedia isn’t a good first choice. (“The first principle of Google-fu is knowing when not to Google.”) If I’m looking for information on a prescription medication, I go directly to drugs.com, where I can find the clinical monograph. For recorded music questions, I go to discogs.com or allmusic.com, depending on what information I’m looking for. Wondering where I’ve seen that actor on my screen before? IMDb. For breaking news, I’ll hit a news outlet (which one depends on the level of the news).

But those are all cases where I already know the better source. If I want to learn about the notation used for describing the largest numbers, or find out the habitat range for European brown bears, or identify the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, I’m going to go to Wikipedia first.

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Another problem is that sometimes you want to know some basic information about a subject, but the Wikipedia page on the topic is written like a PhD level dissertation on the subject. It is all esoteric details that only other experts can understand.

But it’s cool to be able to edit and fix anything you find that’s wrong. For example, I spent 30 minutes correcting all the topics that linked to Salt, but meant Salt (chemistry).

I’m the guy that updates Wikipedia everytime the Smithsonian channel airs a new Air Disasters episode.

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I’ve grown quite comfortable using Wikipedia over the last decade or so but I do apply a “caution scale” to the articles.

In order from solid to large question marks:

Science/technical — What is an eigenvector?
Basic description. Geography etc. — Atlas mountains?
History/Biography. [The older, the more certain with exceptions] — Who was Eugene Delacroix?
Contemporary events — Who is the new Japanese Prime Minister?
Contentious topics of any kind.

It is a great resource not to be dismissed; just use it with prudence.

Dave

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I’ve contributed information to quite a few articles over the last twenty years or so. As others on this thread have said, Wikipedia can be very good for technical information, and it can be absolute rubbish for current events and politics. @Dafuki’s list of topics ordered by likelihood of reliability is pretty solid.

As articles increase in contentiousness, I often will read an article’s “Talk” section to see the behind-the-scenes discussion/debate about the content. It also can be worthwhile to look at the article’s “View history” section to see how the content has changed over time. Frankly, I think all news outlets should follow Wikipedia’s example and publish the editing history of every article and headline they publish.

Skepticism towards all sources is warranted. I recall how surprised I was in graduate school to see a paragraph in the brand new edition of the most popular textbook in my field incorrectly state a few findings from the lab I was in at the time. It was considered to be the authoritative text at the time, but at least for our work, it wasn’t even close. I can recommend Wikipedia’s article on the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, something we all should keep in mind as we consume even well-sourced content. In my personal experience, it applies far more often than not.

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Excellent, thanks very much @Quantumpanda !

Occasionally I have checked the footnotes/references cited to check that it appears to be valid.

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Fine tips, thank you @josehill !

I can think of at least 3 occasions when I’ve found errors and submitted corrections to official printed publications, some were fixed, some I didn’t find out:

  • an Army Helicopter manual
  • a helicopter weight and balance calculation in a spreadsheet at work
  • a misleading point in a camera manual that took me hours to troubleshoot and even sent in the camera for repair twice til I found the issue

So yes, almost any source can be in error, sometimes in big ways sometimes not, “use with prudence” as @Dafuki writes…

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Same as you. It’s one of three sites I contribute with money. The other two are Gutenberg and the Internet Archive

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Like others here, I use Wikipedia regularly, though probably a bit less now that I use ChatGPT for searching because it can do a similar job of giving me low-stakes information that I’m merely curious about. We also contribute regularly because I consider it a major public good.

I’ve never been perturbed by the occasional mistake or bad article or worry about bias because, as a professional writer and publisher, I’m fully aware that everything has bias and everyone makes the occasional mistake.

My main irritation with Wikipedia is its requirement that everything be cited, which makes articles about things where I am the world expert (like on me or TidBITS) difficult to complete or correct because I have to find someone who has published the necessary fact. I get it—particularly with controversial public figures, there’s no other way to prevent them from editing their bios to serve their agendas, but it’s still annoying.

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