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At 12/11/07 06:49 PM, Christopherr wrote: Correct me if I am wrong, but I think some articles can only be edited with users who prove themselves to be credible in the subject (i.e. having a degree).

This is true and many articles had citing rules on them, you have to cite any information you put on these post and then its checked, only afterwards does it show up

At 12/13/07 12:53 AM, flashsurfer11 wrote:
This is true and many articles had citing rules on them, you have to cite any information you put on these post and then its checked, only afterwards does it show up

And sometimes what's "cited" is a bad source.

depends on the subject but overall I would say it is not. Little decent is permitted and over 25 posts by myself to shed critical light upon obviously biased and misinformed entries has resulted in ACTUAL threats and deletion of all 25 of my posts and additions.

I find it difficult to say that Wikipedia is not credible in any way. To be fair though, the proponents against the credibility of the source have the inherent advantage here. As a medium that's edited almost anonymously, the credibility of Wikipedia is inherently flawed. I don't want to completely tear down the site though; I use Wikipedia regularly when I need to get a general idea about a topic and I like the common vernacular used in the articles, which makes concepts easily understandable.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is the difference in credibility between subjects or categories within the site. I guess my question is, what are you people looking up in Wikipedia? Science articles? History articles? Pop culture? Has anyone else noticed that articles in some areas (such as pop culture) are often bogus when compared to articles in other areas (such as science)? In short, I'd feel more confident looking up information on computation quantum mechcanics than information on Rick Astley.

At 12/14/07 03:33 AM, Secretsauce wrote: One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is the difference in credibility between subjects or categories within the site. I guess my question is, what are you people looking up in Wikipedia? Science articles? History articles? Pop culture? \

Precisely! If you look up Jon Stewart's page, you'll find mucho bullshit.

I'm kind of a physics buff, so I checked out the page on some of Einstein's work, and it was completely kosher.

If Wikipedia required 'field membership' for various articles of important information.

For example... if i wanted to make an article on mitosis, i would have to be affiliated with the 'biology 'club'' of wikipedia. This would require me to prove to wikipedia that i have a strong education in the feild that i wish to be member shipped to, and that i am working for an organization that has that same or similar feild and has some 'merit' to it.

If someone wanted to make an article on economics, they wouldn't be permitted to do so if they were some random 13 year old from Kentucky.

Of course, articles addressing information on a topic for example... the movie battles wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_Battl es

is not a contraversial topic, nor is it a topic that should be completely rejected because it's ridiculous, articles such as these wouldn't require as extensive a background.

There's a rule of thumb I use with Wiki: if it happened 150+ years ago, it's accurate. If it happened in the past 50 years, material either hasn't been released yet, or people are chucking what they want on there - be it from a place of bias, immaturity, or they genuinely believe Britney Spears will commit suicide on March 23rd 2008.

The real joy of Wikipuedia, though, is how it exposes the lazines sof TV researchers: after TV composer Ronnie Hazelhurts died a couple of months ago, all the news reports said he wrote S Club 7's Reach - which was a lie somebody put on his Wiki page. That the BBC and ITV both ran with this fact was pretty amusing at first, before you realised how sloppy their journalism was in this case.

A decade ago I recall the BBC were better prepared for Diana's death as they had a dry run every year in case it happened and they wouldn't be caught out, which ITN were. However, it now appears they only have this option for Royals - also indicated by the lame package tossed out for former PM Ted Heath.

So, if somebody could kindly assassinate Tony Blair so we can see how prepared the BBC are/were for the event, now would be a good time.

The explanation for what makes wikipedia an uncredible POS source is longand contrived, but you can read all about it here:

http://www.wikitruth.info