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• A hoax article about a war that never happened stayed up on Wikipedia for five years.

3 Comments

1. Patrick Ritchie says:

   Posted January 8, 2013 at 1:43 PM

   Do you object to the idea of a crowdsourced encyclopedia?

   Or just using it as a discovery mechanism for new knowledge?

   Reply
   • Robert Zimmerman says:

     Posted January 8, 2013 at 2:23 PM

     It isn’t so much that object to a crowd-sourced encyclopedia as I treat it with a great amount of skepticism. I have found Wikipedia, the most well known, to be exceedingly unreliable, especially in areas where there is political controversy.

     I also find it better to go to original sources for my information, which is another reason I do not trust Wikipedia. The rare times I have used it I have found that it provides no direct links to anything outside of Wikipedia itself. I would trust it more if the articles there instead included direct links to their sources.

     Reply
     • Patrick Ritchie says:

       Posted January 8, 2013 at 9:43 PM

       Perhaps I am just not skeptical enough, but I have found it to be a useful entry point when researching a new topic. The wikipedia articles usually provide plenty of links to original sources.

       I will admit that I don’t use it for current events or particularly controversial topics, mostly being focused on some new area of science or technology I’m interested in.

       This page on SpaceX is a good example:

       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX

       As of today (1/8/2013) it has 94 external sources cited, including the original COTS contract between SpaceX and NASA:

       http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/189228main_setc_nnj06ta26a.pdf

       If you’re really interested in what the Wiki article writers thoughts were you can also read the talk page:

       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:SpaceX

       Reply