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Wikipedia is a reliable source. – yrs, Easter Bunny

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From RealClearScience:

Wikipedia Wars: ‘Controversial’ Science Topics Are Edited More Often Than Uncontroversial Topics

Blow us away again, will you?

“Controversial,” we repeatedly find, means nothing more than that some powerful lobby doesn’t like the information presented. It often has nothing to do with whether the information was accurately or adequately sourced.

Adam Wilson and Gene Likens, both based out of the University of Connecticut, were curious just how often this happens. So they downloaded the complete revision histories (dating from 2003 to 2012) of three politically controversial scientific topics — acid rain, global warming, and evolution — and compared them to four politically uncontroversial topics — heliocentrism, general relativity, continental drift, and the standard model in physics. They found that significantly more edits were made to the controversial topics compared to the uncontroversial ones, and far more words were changed per day on average.

Responsible people give up on the nonsense and go to the source. If, for example, you want to know what Steve Meyer has to say in Darwin’s Doubt, you will have to read the book or an honest summary thereof, not the screed of some angry Darwinist who is a Wiki editor.

We should be glad if we live in a free country where that is legal. It has not always been so in the past, and may not be so again later.

Wikipedia is the sixth most visited website in the world. Hundreds of millions look to the encyclopedia for fact-based knowledge. Compromised pages can easily spread misinformation. More.

As for the advice offered to “educators,” no “educator” hould permit students to use Wikipedia information that is not also sourced to an outfit with a reputation to lose, not just a high readership base.

Sensible comment:

Wikipedia is well-suited to the sort of non-controversial archival material that, prior to the arrival of computer-to-computer communications (“the Internet”) was found in places like World Book Encyclopedia, the World Almanac and Book of Facts, and the Statistical Abstract of the United States.

When it comes to anything controversial, however, Wikipedia falls apart. The underlying reason for that is that Wikipedia’s charter denies the independent existence of fact. If a majority of “editors” and “administrators” decide that 2 + 2 equals 5, then that’s what the Wikipedia article will say.

In this sense, Wikipedia is profoundly anti-intellectual at the theoretical level. …

But one can’t expect everyone to realize this, which is why “educator” use of the medium should be actionable, if fact matters.

Here’s the abstract:

Wikipedia has quickly become one of the most frequently accessed encyclopedic references, despite the ease with which content can be changed and the potential for ‘edit wars’ surrounding controversial topics. Little is known about how this potential for controversy affects the accuracy and stability of information on scientific topics, especially those with associated political controversy. Here we present an analysis of the Wikipedia edit histories for seven scientific articles and show that topics we consider politically but not scientifically “controversial” (such as evolution and global warming) experience more frequent edits with more words changed per day than pages we consider “noncontroversial” (such as the standard model in physics or heliocentrism). For example, over the period we analyzed, the global warming page was edited on average (geometric mean ±SD) 1.9±2.7 times resulting in 110.9±10.3 words changed per day, while the standard model in physics was only edited 0.2±1.4 times resulting in 9.4±5.0 words changed per day. The high rate of change observed in these pages makes it difficult for experts to monitor accuracy and contribute time-consuming corrections, to the possible detriment of scientific accuracy. As our society turns to Wikipedia as a primary source of scientific information, it is vital we read it critically and with the understanding that the content is dynamic and vulnerable to vandalism and other shenanigans. (Public access) – Wilson AM, Likens GE (2015) Content Volatility of Scientific Topics in Wikipedia: A Cautionary Tale. PLoS ONE 10(8): e0134454. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0134454

See also: How Wikipedia can turn fiction into fact (Sourced enough times, the fiction becomes “troo”)

and

Wikipedia hacked by elite sources now (The main problem is that the people who use Wikipedia do not care whether it is false or true. “Wikipedia is my library” is the new diagnostic for irresponsible laziness.)

and

Mathematician complains Wikipedia is promoting “pseudo-science” of multiverse (Then there were the minor revelations that core articles “don’t earn even Wikipedia’s own middle-ranking quality scores” and that some “editors” are paid by outside sources.)

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