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Yes.

41 (48.8%)

No.

43 (51.2%)

Total Members Voted: 84

[Jake]

It's been said a couple of times already, but it needs to be said again, and louder. Therefore:

The sources at the bottom of each page are not there for Armok-damned decoration! They are the most important part of the whole entry and if you aren't reading them, you're doing it wrong!

Sorry about that. It's just that people always forget this when the Wikipedia debate comes up, and it really makes my piss boil, because it applies just as much to a $1500 set of Britannicas as to Wikipedia.

[Alastar]

Since Wikipedia says whatever you want it to say, citing it defeats the purpose.

Any freely editable resource has this problem, any attempt to cite would require a timestamp and checking that particular version... but who's an authority on that? There are useful indicators (how long that version existed, reported issues, whether it contradicts earlier or later versions...) but there'd need to be prohibitive attention to version control for this to work on a project the size of wikipedia.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Since Wikipedia says whatever you want it to say, citing it defeats the purpose.

Go try to make Wikipedia say what you want it to say, and see what happens.

[Hubris Incalculable]

Yah: here's what happens:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cherenkov_radiation&diff=491103474&oldid=491103404

Within one minute.

[sneakey pete]

I don' think that was his point. Vandalism is one thing, but general agreement on a topic, a group pushing an agenda etc. isn't something that Wikipedia is free from. Particularly once you start getting away from the larger or popular articles.

[RedKing]

The problem is, there can be plenty of issues that aren't outright vandalism and go for months undetected until somebody who is already semi-knowledgeable on the topic shows up and spots it. Especially if it's an obscure topic.

I take the same stance my profs did in grad school: it's a fantastic starting point for research, to make yourself familiar with the topic and find primary sources. It is NOT an acceptable source for citation in a serious academic paper.

It's not even about some bias of "authority" towards print media or published work. I've had professors assign published works that were complete and utter garbage, and I took no small pains to let them know that. I had one PoliSci prof that regularly deliberately assigned poorly-written, biased articles mixed in with the rest, just so we would learn how to spot them. And we would take great glee in spending half a class ripping apart a "published" primary source.

Most articles on Wikipedia, especially when dealing with hard science, don't trigger that bullshit detector. History articles are a bit more problematic. And religion and political articles can vary from quite well-written and balanced to "FWEEP! FWEEP! FWEEP! Screed Alert!"


Now....if you're talking about a grade-school "book report" type thing (where in my day, you went and pulled out the World Book Encyclopedia, found the article on your topic, and then essentially copied it while changing a few words...and this was HOW the teacher told you to do it)...then yeah, it's totally legit.

[Muz]

Fun story I heard about Wikipedia a few years ago. Don't know how true it is.

A guy was supposed to give a presentation on Bruce Lee. So the day before the thing was due, his classmate edited the Bruce Lee wikipedia article. The next day, the kid presents "Bruce Lee is a famous chef from Arizona, where he currently resides..."

Unlikely, unless it was a really long time ago when Wikipedia was new. I had a few friends who tried to do stuff like that. One tried to put a castle under his name, another tried to say that Gwen Stefani was a transsexual, even putting up fake citations. All were corrected within 10 mins.

[ab9rf]

Unlikely, unless it was a really long time ago when Wikipedia was new. I had a few friends who tried to do stuff like that. One tried to put a castle under his name, another tried to say that Gwen Stefani was a transsexual, even putting up fake citations. All were corrected within 10 mins.

Actually the number of people doing vandalism management on Wikipedia has not kept up with the number of vandals or the number of articles.  While blatantly obvious vandalism still gets reverted quickly (mainly because they have written bots to detect and revert it), more subtle vandalism can easily last for days, months, or even years.  And with some vaguely clever social engineering (or just plain stupidity), it's even fairly easy to get the vandalism monitors to fight to keep vandalism in; I've seen this several times now. 

The situation is even more complicated when the vandalism consists of inserting believable but false information.  My favorite is when someone finds the article about themselves, tries to remove something untrue or defamatory from it, then when it becomes clear that they're trying to "edit their own article", Wikipedia's reflexive assholery kicks in and the article gets effectively locked into the state the person who is the subject of the article was objecting to (because, you know, breaking the rules by trying to edit your own article means you're not worth having defamatory claims about you removed).  This happens a lot, and the only way out is to be famous or influential enough that Jimmy Wales will actually take your call.  (And even that won't work if some other influential Wikipedian wants Wikipedia to say whatever it says about you.)  Everyone else has to just suck it up and let the "Internet's largest defamation engine" do its thing on their reputation.

[GlyphGryph]

Or you could NOT BREAK THE RULES, and simply point out the problems in the talk page.

Editing your own page is a pretty serious infraction, and getting the page locked in the previous state is pretty much the most appropriate response.

[ab9rf]

Or you could NOT BREAK THE RULES, and simply point out the problems in the talk page.

That almost never works; at best you get ignored, and at worst you get yelled at.  When Jimmy himself tried that the other day, even he was yelled at for it.  (Of course, he has Powerz; he had one of his flunkies at the Foundation force the content he wanted in regardless.  But most people aren't Jimmy Wales.)

[Bauglir]

I think we need a "sometimes" option. Most of the situations in which you actually need a citation are ones in which you shouldn't cite an encyclopedia, but there are cases where it's the most efficient option. Mostly informal or otherwise non-academic.

[Kogut]

Unlikely, unless it was a really long time ago when Wikipedia was new. I had a few friends who tried to do stuff like that. One tried to put a castle under his name, another tried to say that Gwen Stefani was a transsexual, even putting up fake citations. All were corrected within 10 mins.

Actually the number of people doing vandalism management on Wikipedia has not kept up with the number of vandals or the number of articles.  While blatantly obvious vandalism still gets reverted quickly (mainly because they have written bots to detect and revert it), more subtle vandalism can easily last for days, months, or even years.  And with some vaguely clever social engineering (or just plain stupidity), it's even fairly easy to get the vandalism monitors to fight to keep vandalism in; I've seen this several times now. 

The situation is even more complicated when the vandalism consists of inserting believable but false information.  My favorite is when someone finds the article about themselves, tries to remove something untrue or defamatory from it, then when it becomes clear that they're trying to "edit their own article", Wikipedia's reflexive assholery kicks in and the article gets effectively locked into the state the person who is the subject of the article was objecting to (because, you know, breaking the rules by trying to edit your own article means you're not worth having defamatory claims about you removed).  This happens a lot, and the only way out is to be famous or influential enough that Jimmy Wales will actually take your call.  (And even that won't work if some other influential Wikipedian wants Wikipedia to say whatever it says about you.)  Everyone else has to just suck it up and let the "Internet's largest defamation engine" do its thing on their reputation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia (my favourite "fictitious Nazi organization of trombonists created by Joseph Goebbels for propaganda purposes" - survived for more than 5 years)

[kaijyuu]

TBH that's an extremely small list considering the number of people who use Wikipedia and would vandalize it for kicks.


You have the world's largest, most used, freely editable bulletin board and the number of notable hoaxes is around 100? That's a damn good batting average.

[Leafsnail]

My favourite bit about reading the links is that in some cases their attempts to remove hoaxes are hampered by actual books and articles using Wikipedia as a source and thus lending legitimacy to completely made up things.

[ab9rf]

TBH that's an extremely small list considering the number of people who use Wikipedia and would vandalize it for kicks.


You have the world's largest, most used, freely editable bulletin board and the number of notable hoaxes is around 100? That's a damn good batting average.

That page only lists the hoaxes that Wikipedia's community (a) has discovered and (b) is willing to admit.  There's many many more that remain unfound, and of course other that they have found but don't mention, either because they are not that funny, or because they're too embarrassing to talk about.  Fictitious sources in support of untrue or dubious claims are rampant.