Fact and Fiction and Wikipedia
Posted on | March 5, 2007 | 9 Comments
I was having fun at the expense of Conservapedia (the link does actually work now) in my post Fact, Fiction and Fun – but Joe Nutt, of RM, has come back to me with a salutary experience in relation to Wikipedia. Joe is an authority on John Donne and a highly experienced educator, and a man I came to respect immensely for his contribution to the shaping of SSDN/Glow in his role with RM.
So, read his own exposure to, and subsequent insight into, Wikipedia. I hope he does not mind me replaying his comment in full here:
“John, last summer, when I saw wikipedia was being praised as a powerful educational tool, and wikis were being requested as tools for children, I took the trouble to edit a complete entry in wikipedia myself so that I felt able to give the best advice to potential customers. The experience over the last few months has been extremely revealing and I hope it’s well worth sharing with you and others. I haven”t yet met anyone else (wiki fans included) who have edited anything substantial there. I discovered that Wikipedia’s entry on John Donne (the metaphysical poet) was cursory and openly requesting copy. So I drafted as thorough and accurate an entry as I could, based on my own book on Donne, and immediately received a number of very positive, grateful responses from members of wikipedia’s volunteer police, the administrators. Within a few days, serious inaccuracies had crept into the entry, which I and administrators dutifully edited out, but over the past few months I have kept a close eye on it and watched as, again and again, the entry is either vandalised (usually with adolescent obscenity) or simple drivel is put up there, mostly it seems by high school pupils in the States. I have watched what began as a concise account of what we definitely knew about Donne, morph into the confused muddle of fact, gibberish and guesswork you will find there now. Most hilariously of all, Donne is currently part of wikipedia’s Saints project! How anyone could seriously justify categorising Donne, possibly the most notorious apostate in history after St Paul, as a “saint”, God only knows…which of course, in one sense may be quite true! It was also really fascinating to discover that when I showed Helen and some other colleagues of mine how simple it was to edit any wikipedia entry, they were amazed and appalled in equal measure. There is no way I would ever use wikipedia as any kind of serious source for information, or advise anyone else to, because my experience has taught me it just has no stability or academic provenance at all.”
Technorati Tags: joe nutt, wikipedia, john donne, conservapedia
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9 Responses to “Fact and Fiction and Wikipedia”
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March 5th, 2007 @ 10:11 pm
Very interesting post John. I am currently working on my Grandfather’s acknowledgment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Swann
At present, to the utter dismay of my grandmother, it is very americaised.
The wonderful virtual world that is web 2.0!
March 6th, 2007 @ 7:39 am
It comes down to cross referencing. There are inaccuracies in many books, too, even if it is just because they are so out of date. Wikipedia does contain more inaccuracies, some pages being a lot better than others. But we do need to teach kids how to use it through cross-referencing because the site is so pervasive. And, at least when you find inaccuracies you can edit them away. It can’t be done in a book.
March 6th, 2007 @ 3:55 pm
Does this mean that knowledge is, after all, an island?!
March 6th, 2007 @ 4:11 pm
Historians have reinterpreted History for a lot of years now. As citizens we need to reference a number of sources. Remember Academia’s hands are not clean on this either – there are lots of academic scientific papers out there that on close inspection don’t stand up due to skews in sampling or other slights of hand.
Could it sometimes be related to who has sponsored the research – as a mere mortal I have no idea.
I like the tool in Wikipedia that allows you to compare versions. You should see the things that are said from time to time on SQA’s entry
March 7th, 2007 @ 11:42 am
Wikipedia as a concept and a tool of co-creation will always have irregularities and inconsistencies by virtue of the role it fulfils. There are experts and there are interested students and there are the vandals. C’est la vie!
March 7th, 2007 @ 1:06 pm
John, no objections at all to your replaying my experience. For anyone here who is interested, there was a fascinating discussion between a Wikpedia administrator and a Conservapedia guy on this morning’s Today on radio 4. Reminded me of what John Stuart Mill called, with typical brilliance, “collective mediocrity.”
March 8th, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
[...] John Connell, in Fact and Fiction and Wikipedia shared a ‘must read’, salutory experience with Wikipedia from Joe, an authority on John Donne. This is the real Wikipedia – valuable, and invaluable at the same time! Judgement needed at all times – the kind of ‘judgement‘ that is nurtured by information professionals. [...]
March 8th, 2007 @ 8:20 pm
If surgery was like Wikipedia: Surgipedia.
Several surgipedians have gathered in an operation theater. On the table lies an unconscious man whos left leg looks dark. Surgipedian #1 grabs a sheet prepared by the patient’s doctor that details the problem.
Surgipedian #1: “Whoa, he’s been lying here for 26 hours, we sure got a backlog again. It also says on this that he has a ‘claudication’ and a ‘chronic venous insufficiency’ in the left leg”, looks at right leg, “and we are asked to do a ‘leg segmental arterial doppler ultrasound exam’. Whatever that is. His leg looks pretty good to me”.
Surgipedian #2: “You looked at the wrong leg. It says the left one”.
Surgipedian #1: “I looked at the left and it’s looking totally normal!”
Surgipedian #2: “The left from his point of view! Do you know where your left leg is?”
Surgipedian #3: “No need for shouting, #2, please remember Surgipedia guideline ‘Assume Good Faith’. #1 was just trying to be constructive!”
Surgipedian #2: “I was only trying to be constructive, too!”
Surgipedian #3: “Well, let’s just get to back to this guy.”
Surgipedian #1, feeling securely at the helm again: “I remember something I read once on a website about heart diseases; when your arms or legs turn dark, you got a heart problem”.
Surgipedian #3: “Yup, you are right. It’s something about the veins in the heart being clogged up.”
Surgipedian #2, feeling outdone: “I think it’s something about having not enough oxygen in your blood!”
Surgipedian #1: “Can you cite a source for that?”
Surgipedian #2: “My aunt Thelma had something like that and I wrote a paper about it for my biology class at school!”
Surgipedian #3: “Please remember Surgipedia guideline: No Original Research! Let’s get back to the man’s heart problem! What should we do?”
Surgipedian #1: “I think you need to cut open his ribs and give him a heart massage or clean the veins or something”.
Surgipedian #3: “Sounds reasonable. After all, when you get a massage to your back, the blood there flows better as well. I just wrote an article about it”.
Surgipedian #2: “Heh, that is original research, too!”
Surgipedian #3: “Several surgipedians agreed on that article to be correct. Are you trying to be a nuisance or do you want to do that man some good?”
Surgipedian #2: “Of course!”
Surgipedian #3: “Then please stay constructive! How do we cut the man’s ribs?”
Surgipedian #1: “You need a saw or something.”
Surgipedian #3: “A saw? Surgeons use scalpels when they operate. I think you just need to cut a hole and poke your fingers through”.
Without further ado, he grabs a scalpel and cuts a hole approximately where the heart is and sticks two fingers through.
Surgipedian #3: “I can’t reach the heart, my fingers are not long enough!”
Surgipedian #2: “Then do that thing with the veins!”
Surgipedian #3: “How do you do that?”
Surgipedian #2 “Well, my aunt Thelma finally had something they call a bypass and they cut open the veins, I think”.
Surgipedian #3: “But that is orig…, well let’s try it. But I will have to push in the scalpel pretty deep to reach the heart. Shall we do it?”
Surgipedian #1, #2: “Support”.
Surgipedian #3 remembers Surgipedia guideline “Be Bold!”, grabs the scalpel in his fist and swings his arm in preparation of a deep push into the hole, but at that moment a surgeon comes by.
Surgeon: “Stop! What in the world are you doing?”
Surgipedian #3: The man has a problem in his leg and we are going to cut his heart veins open”.
Surgeon: “What? All I see is a man with vascular problem in his leg and another that wields a scalpel like a knife. Are you aware that pushing a scalpel into someone’s heart will kill that person?”
Surgipedian #1: “We have decided by majority that this is the proper thing to do. Besides, can you prove that pushing a scalpel into someones heart is deadly?”
Surgeon: “You decided by MAJORITY? Are you all nuts?”
Surgipedian #2 feels that there is finally someone besides him to put down: “Please, no personal attacks!”
Surgeon: “I will fucking personal attack you if you endanger someones life!”
Surgipedian #3: “We need to call an admin!”
Surgeon: “Alright, do that, but put that scalpel down!”
An admin comes by.
Admin: “I have heard that a guest is violating Surgipedia rules”.
Surgeon: “I am a surgeon and these people are about to kill this man by pushing a scalpel into his heart!”
Admin: “Reviewing the archived discussion, you are in violation of rules Surgipedia: Assume Good Faith, Surgipedia: Vandalism, Surgipedia: Neutral Point of View, Surgipedia: No Personal Attacks, Surgipedia: Avoid Weasel Words and Surgipedia: Do not disrupt Surgipedia to make a point. You will be blocked from accessing Surgipedia for one week. Please use the time to review Surgipedia guidelines and rules”.
Admin and desperate Surgeon leave.
Surgipedian #3: “Okay, where were we?”
s
Surgipedian #2: “You were about to cut his heart.”
Surgipedian #3: “Yup. I propose that so-called ’surgeon’ was just a troll and we should go ahead.”
Surgipedian #1 and #2: “Agree”.
Surgipedian #3 slams the scalpel into the man’s heart, who is dead within moments.
Surgipedian #3: “Why did he die?”
Surgipedian #1: “It’s his fault. There was nothing WE did wrong!”
[All guidelines and policies mentioned in this satire do exist in Wikipedia.]
April 18th, 2007 @ 6:50 am
[...] Vicki A. Davis wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptI was having fun at the expense of Conservapedia (the link does actually work now) in my post Fact, Fiction and Fun – but Joe Nutt, of RM, has come back to me with a salutary experience in relation to Wikipedia. … [...]