The Ladies Book of Useful Information Compiled From Many Sources

A review of the Wikipedia website reveals a pervasive and, for our purposes, disturbing series of disclaimers Among other reasons for these statements about Wikipedia's reliability are the stability of the articles which due to editing may cause new readers to find information that differs from the originally cited and, according to Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University Law School, "the most critical fact is public acceptance", therefore "a judge should not use Wikipedia when the public is not prepared to accept it as authority".

Wikipedia has also become a key source for some current news events such as the Virginia Tech massacre , when The New York Times cites Wikimedia to report , page views of the article in the two days after the event:. Even The Roanoke Times , which is published near Blacksburg, Virginia , where the university is located, noted on Thursday that Wikipedia "has emerged as the clearinghouse for detailed information on the event". The Washington Post commented, in the context of Presidential election candidate biographies, that despite occasional brief vandalism, "it's hard to find a more up-to-date, detailed, thorough article on Obama than Wikipedia's.

As of Friday 14 September , Obama's article—more than 22 pages long, with 15 sections covering his personal and professional life—had a reference list of sources. Several commentators have drawn a middle ground, asserting that the project contains much valuable knowledge and has some reliability, even if the degree is not yet assessed with certainty.

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Others taking this view include danah boyd , [sic] who in discussed Wikipedia as an academic source, concluding that "[i]t will never be an encyclopedia, but it will contain extensive knowledge that is quite valuable for different purposes", [] and Bill Thompson who stated "I use the Wikipedia a lot.

It is a good starting point for serious research, but I would never accept something that I read there without checking. Information Today ' s March article [65] concludes on a similar theme:. The inconvenient reality is that people and their products are messy, whether produced in a top-down or bottom-up manner.

Almost every source includes errors Many non-fiction books are produced via an appallingly sloppy process In this author's opinion, the flap over Wikipedia was significantly overblown, but contained a silver lining: People are becoming more aware of the perils of accepting information at face value. They have learned not to consult just one source.

Dan Gillmor , a Silicon Valley commentator and author commented in October that, "I don't think anyone is saying Wikipedia is an absolute replacement for a traditional encyclopedia. But in the topics I know something about, I've found Wikipedia to be as accurate as any other source I've found. Larry Sanger stated on Kuro5hin in that "Given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow", [] which is a paraphrase of Linus' Law of open-source development. Likewise, technology figure Joi Ito wrote on Wikipedia's authority, "[a]lthough it depends a bit on the field, the question is whether something is more likely to be true coming from a source whose resume sounds authoritative, or a source that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people with the ability to comment and has survived.

In a letter to the editor of Physics Today , Gregg Jaeger, an associate professor at Boston University , [] has characterized Wikipedia as a medium that is susceptible to fostering "anarchy and distortions" in relation to scientific information. An Overview , that had questioned "whether there is an audience for such encyclopedic texts, especially given the easy access to online sources of information such as the arXiv e-print server and Wikipedia.

People known to use or recommend Wikipedia as a reference source include film critic Roger Ebert , [] [] [] [] comedian Rosie O'Donnell , [] University of Maryland physicist Robert L. Park , [] Rutgers University sociology professor Ted Goertzel [] [] and scientific skepticism promoter and investigator James Randi. Jean Goodwin wrote on the reasons why Wikipedia may be trusted.

According to him, while readers may not assess the actual expertise of the authors of a given article, they may assess the passion of Wikipedians, and in so far provide a reason for trust. While experienced editors can view the article history and discussion page, for normal users it is not so easy to check whether information from Wikipedia is reliable.

University projects from California, Switzerland and Germany try to improve that by methods of formal analysis and data mining. Wiki-Watch from Germany, which was inspired by the WikiBu from Switzerland , shows an evaluation up to five-stars for every English or German article in Wikipedia. Part of this rating is the tool WikiTrust which shows the trustworthiness of single text parts of Wikipedia articles by white trustworthy or orange not trustworthy markings. Inaccurate information may persist in Wikipedia for a long time before it is challenged.

The most prominent cases reported by mainstream media involved biographies of living persons. The Seigenthaler incident demonstrated that the subject of a biographical article must sometimes fix blatant lies about his or her own life. In May , a user edited the biographical article on John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia content is often mirrored at sites such as Answers.

Such information can develop a misleading air of authority because of its presence at such sites: Then [Seigenthaler's] son discovered that his father's hoax biography also appeared on two other sites, Reference. It was out there for four months before Seigenthaler realized and got the Wikipedia entry replaced with a more reliable account. The lies remained for another three weeks on the mirror sites downstream. Seth Finkelstein reported in an article in The Guardian on his efforts to remove his own biography page from Wikipedia, simply because it was subjected to defamation: Wikipedia has a short biography of me, originally added in February , mostly concerned with my internet civil liberties achievements.

After discovering in May that it had been vandalised in March, possibly by a long-time opponent, and that the attack had been subsequently propagated to many other sites which legally repackage Wikipedia's content, the article's existence seemed to me overall to be harmful rather than helpful. For people who are not very prominent, Wikipedia biographies can be an " attractive nuisance ".

It says, to every troll, vandal, and score-settler: It won't be a marginal comment with the social status of an inconsequential rant, but rather will be made prominent about the person, and reputation-laundered with the institutional status of an encyclopedia. In the same article Finkelstein recounts how he voted his own biography as "not notable enough" in order to have it removed from Wikipedia. He goes on to recount a similar story involving Angela Beesley, previously a prominent member of the foundation which runs Wikipedia.

In November , the biography of Jens Stoltenberg , the Norwegian Prime Minister, was edited to contain libelous statements. While this mistake was resolved, he was again arrested in US for the same suspicion two days later. In another example, on March 2, , msnbc. Hillary Rodham was not the valedictorian, though she did speak at commencement.

Attempts to perpetrate hoaxes may not be confined to editing Wikipedia articles. In October Alan Mcilwraith , a former call center worker from Scotland created a Wikipedia article in which he claimed to be a highly decorated war hero. The article was quickly identified by other users as unreliable see Wikipedia Signpost article 17 April However, Mcilwraith had also succeeded in convincing a number of charities and media organizations that he was who he claimed to be: But last night, an Army spokesman said: He has never been an officer, soldier or Army cadet.

The newspaper Sud-Ouest revealed a month later that de l'Astran had never existed—except as the subject of an article in the French Wikipedia. The article, created by members of the Club in January , had thus remained online for three years—unsourced—before the hoax was uncovered.

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Upon Sud-Ouest' s revelation—repeated in other major French newspapers—French Wikipedia administrator DonCamillo immediately deleted the article. There have also been instances of users deliberately inserting false information into Wikipedia in order to test the system and demonstrate its alleged unreliability. For example, Gene Weingarten , a journalist, ran such a test in by anonymously inserting false information into his own biography. The fabrications were removed 27 hours later by a Wikipedia editor who was regularly watching changes to that article.

Wikipedia considers vandalism as "any addition, removal, or change of content in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia". The Wikipedia page " Researching with Wikipedia " states:. Wikipedia's radical openness means that any given article may be, at any given moment, in a bad state: While blatant vandalism is usually easily spotted and rapidly corrected, Wikipedia is certainly more subject to subtle vandalism than a typical reference work. In June , an anonymous Wikipedia contributor became involved in the Chris Benoit double murder and suicide because of an unverified piece of information he added to the Chris Benoit English Wikipedia article.

This information regarding Benoit's wife's death was added fourteen hours before police discovered the bodies of Benoit and his family. The IP address from which the edit was made was traced to earlier instances of Wikipedia vandalism. The contributor apologized on Wikinews , saying:. I will never vandalize anything on Wikipedia or post wrongful information. I will never post anything here again unless it is pure fact On 29 August , shortly after the first round draw was completed for UEFA Europa League football cup, an edit was made to the article for the football club AC Omonia , apparently by users of the website B3ta , [] which added the following erroneous information to the section titled "The fans".

A small but loyal group of fans are lovingly called "The Zany Ones"—they like to wear hats made from discarded shoes and have a song about a little potato. On 18 September , David Anderson, a British journalist writing for the Daily Mirror , quoted this in his match preview ahead of Omonia's game with Manchester City , which appeared in the web and print versions of the Mirror and the nickname was quoted in subsequent editions on 19 September. In a incident, University College Dublin sociology student Shane Fitzgerald added an incorrect quote to the article on the recently deceased composer Maurice Jarre.

Fitzgerald wanted to demonstrate the potential dangers of news reporters' reliance on the internet for information.

The citation, however, read: In October the Asian Football Confederation official website published an article about the United Arab Emirates national football team 's bid to qualify for the AFC Asian Cup, in which the team's nickname was stated to be the "Sand Monkeys". This was the indirect result of vandalism of the Wikipedia article on the team, and the AFC was forced to apologise for what was perceived as a racist slur. In December , an article titled "Bicholim conflict" was deleted after standing since False information had been planted in both sites as part of a viral promotion campaign for an upcoming film.

In May , The New Yorker reported that a year-old student had added an invented nickname to the Wikipedia article on the coati in , saying coatis were also known as "Brazilian aardvarks ". The taxonomically false information, inserted as a private joke, lasted for six years in Wikipedia and over this time came to be propagated by hundreds of websites, several newspapers one of which was later cited as a source in Wikipedia and even books published by university presses.

It was only removed from Wikipedia after publication of the New Yorker article, in which the student explained how the joke had come about. In March , it became known that an article on Wikipedia entitled " Jar'Edo Wens ", purportedly about an Australian aboriginal deity of that name, was a hoax. The article had survived for more than nine years before being deleted, making it one of the longest-lived documented hoax articles in Wikipedia's history. The article spawned mentions of the fake god on numerous other websites as well as in an academic book titled Atheism and the Case Against Christ.

While Wikipedia policy requires articles to have a neutral point of view, there have been attempts to place a spin on articles. In January several staffers of members of the U. House of Representatives attempted to cleanse their respective bosses' biographies on Wikipedia, and to insert negative remarks on political opponents. References to a campaign promise by Martin Meehan to surrender his seat in were deleted, and negative comments were inserted into the articles on U. Numerous other changes were made from an IP address which is assigned to the House of Representatives.

During the 24 hours before the McCain campaign announcement, 30 edits , many of them flattering details, were made to the article by Wikipedia single-purpose user identity Young Trigg. This person later acknowledged working on the McCain campaign, and having several Wikipedia user accounts. Larry Delay and Pablo Bachelet write that from their perspective, some articles dealing with Latin American history and groups such as the Sandinistas and Cuba lack political neutrality and are written from a sympathetic Marxist perspective which treats socialist dictatorships favorably at the expense of alternate positions.

Jean-Pierre Grand asked the president of the French National Assembly and the Prime Minister of France to reinforce the legislation on the penal responsibility of Internet sites and of authors who peddle false information in order to cause harm. In , Wikipedia banned the Church of Scientology from editing any articles on its site. The Wikipedia articles concerning Scientology were edited by members of the group to improve its portrayal. On August 25, , the Toronto Star reported that the Canadian "government is now conducting two investigations into federal employees who have taken to Wikipedia to express their opinion on federal policies and bitter political debates.

In , Al Jazeera 's Teymoor Nabili suggested that the article Cyrus Cylinder had been edited for political purposes by "an apparent tussle of opinions in the shadowy world of hard drives and 'independent' editors that comprise the Wikipedia industry. The edits following his analysis of the edits during and , represented "a complete dismissal of the suggestion that the cylinder, or Cyrus' actions, represent concern for human rights or any kind of enlightened intent," in stark contrast to Cyrus ' own reputation among the people of Babylon as written in the Old Testament.

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CAMERA argued the excerpts were unrepresentative and that it had explicitly campaigned merely "toward encouraging people to learn about and edit the online encyclopedia for accuracy". Five editors involved in the campaign were sanctioned by Wikipedia administrators. When confronted with the fact that the entry on Israel mentioned the word "occupation" nine times, whereas the entry on the Palestinian People mentioned "terror" only once, he replied.

Israelis should be more active on Wikipedia. Instead of blaming it, they should go on the site much more, and try and change it. Political commentator Haviv Rettig Gur, reviewing widespread perceptions in Israel of systemic bias in Wikipedia articles, has argued that there are deeper structural problems creating this bias: On 3 August , it was reported that the Yesha Council together with Israel Sheli My Israel , a network of online pro-Israel activists committed to spreading Zionism online, were organizing people at a workshop in Jerusalem to teach them how to edit Wikipedia articles in a pro-Israeli way.

The project organiser, Ayelet Shaked , who has since been elected to Israel's parliament, was interviewed on Arutz Sheva Radio. She emphasized that the information has to be reliable and meet Wikipedia rules. She cited some examples such as the use of the term "occupation" in Wikipedia entries, as well as in the editing of entries that link Israel with Judea and Samaria and Jewish history ". People think that Israelis are mean, evil people who only want to hurt Arabs all day.

A course participant explained that the course is not a "Zionist conspiracy to take over Wikipedia"; rather, it is an attempt to balance information about disputed issues presented in the online encyclopedia. Wikipedia is meant to be a fair and balanced source, and it is that way by having people from all across the spectrum contributing to the content. Following the course announcement, Abdul Nasser An-Najar, the head of Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said there were plans to set up a counter group to ensure the Palestinian view is presented online as the "next regional war will be [a] media war.

In , Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales stated in retrospect about the course organized by Israel Sheli, "we saw absolutely no impact from that effort whatsoever. I don't think it ever—it was in the press but we never saw any impact. In January, , members of the public relations industry created the Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement CREWE Facebook group with the stated goal of maintaining accurate articles about corporations.

In an October Salon story, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales stated that he was against the practice of paid editing of Wikipedia, as are a number long-time members of Wikipedia's community. According to Fiorio, her clients control the article's content in the same way that they control press releases, which function as part of publicity strategies.

A Microsoft spokesperson, quoted by CBS, commented that "Microsoft and the writer, Rick Jelliffe, had not determined a price and no money had changed hands, but they had agreed that the company would not be allowed to review his writing before submission". In a story covered by the BBC , Jeffrey Merkey claimed that in exchange for a donation his Wikipedia entry was edited in his favor. Jay Walsh, a spokesman for Wikipedia, flatly denied the allegations in an interview given to the Daily Telegraph. In a story covered by InformationWeek , Eric Goldman , assistant law professor at Santa Clara University in California argued that "eventually, marketers will build scripts to edit Wikipedia pages to insert links and conduct automated attacks on Wikipedia", [] thus putting the encyclopedia beyond the ability of its editors to provide countermeasures against the attackers, particularly because of a vicious circle where the strain of responding to these attacks drives core contributors away, increasing the strain on those who remain.

In February , British technology news and opinion website The Register stated that a prominent administrator of Wikipedia had edited a topic area where he had a conflict of interest to keep criticism to a bare minimum, as well as altering the Wikipedia policies regarding personal biography and conflict of interest to favour his editing. Some of the most scathing criticism of Wikipedia's claimed neutrality came in The Register , which in turn was allegedly criticized by founding members of the project.

According to The Register: In short, Wikipedia is a cult. Or at least, the inner circle is a cult. We aren't the first to make this observation. On the inside, they reinforce each other's beliefs. And if anyone on the outside questions those beliefs, they circle the wagons. They deny the facts. They attack the attacker. After our Jossi Fresco story, Fresco didn't refute our reporting.

He simply accused us of "yellow journalism". Charles Arthur in The Guardian said that "Wikipedia, and so many other online activities, show all the outward characteristics of a cult. In February , a longstanding Wikipedia administrator was site-banned after Wikipedia's arbitration committee found that he or she had, over a period of several years, manipulated the content of Wikipedia articles to add positive content and remove negative content about the controversial Indian Institute of Planning and Management and its dean, Arindam Chaudhuri.

An Indian journalist commented in Newsweek on the importance of the Wikipedia article to the institute's PR campaign and voiced the opinion that "by letting this go on for so long, Wikipedia has messed up perhaps 15, students' lives". The Nature study also gave two brief examples of challenges that Wikipedian science writers purportedly faced on Wikipedia. The first concerned the addition of a section on violence to the schizophrenia article, which exhibited the view of one of the article's regular editors, neuropsychologist Vaughan Bell , that it was little more than a "rant" about the need to lock people up, and that editing it stimulated him to look up the literature on the topic.

The second dispute reported by Nature involved the climatologist William Connolley related to protracted disputes between editors of climate change topics, in which Connolley was placed on parole and several opponents banned from editing climate related articles for six months; [4] a separate paper commented that this was more about etiquette than bias and that Connolley did "not suffer fools gladly ". From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For a list of hoaxes that have occurred on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia: List of hoaxes on Wikipedia. This section's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia.

See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions. April Learn how and when to remove this template message. Health information on Wikipedia. This section is transcluded from Criticism of Wikipedia. Ideological bias on Wikipedia. List of Wikipedia controversies. Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia. Peters , one of the earliest court opinions to cite and quote Wikipedia WikiTrust , a reputation system for Wikipedia authors and content The Truth According to Wikipedia Truth in Numbers?

Seelye 5 December Retrieved 4 June Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries". The study which was not in itself peer-reviewed was cited in many news articles such as this: Archived from the original on We have identified Wikipedia as an informative and accurate source for Pathology education and believe that Wikipedia is potentially an important learning tool for of the 'Net Generation'.

Are chemicals killing us? Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association: Retrieved September 25, Lay summary — Reuters A Comparison with Standard Textbooks of Pharmacology". Retrieved August 1, A comparison of Wikipedia with centrally controlled web and printed sources". Journal of Oncology Practice.

Jimbo Wales' sweet 16 Wikipedia fails. From aardvark to Bicholim, the encylopedia [ sic ] of things that never were". Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with history flow Visualizations. Retrieved June 17, From Breakdancing to Bilcholim". Good samaritans with less than edits made higher-quality contributions than those with registered accounts and equal amounts of content.

In fact, anonymous contributors with a single edit had the highest quality of any group. But quality steadily declined, and more-frequent anonymous contributors were anything but Samaritans; their contributions generally didn't survive editing The authors also recognize that contributions in the form of stubs on obscure topics might survive unaltered indefinitely, inflating the importance of single contributions Objective ratings of quality are difficult, and it's hard to fault the authors for attempting to find an easily-measured proxy for it.

In the absence of independent correlation, however, it's not clear that the measurement used actually works as a proxy. Combined with the concerns regarding anonymous contributor identity, there are enough problems with this study that the original question should probably be considered unanswered, regardless of how intuitively satisfying these results are. Archived from the original PDF on The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on September 28, Wikipedia and the Future of the Past". The Journal of American History.

California State University at Dominguez Hills. Knowledge for Everyone ]. Retrieved September 6, A question of trust? References and citations in a sample of history articles". Accuracy and Completeness of Coverage". The Case of Wikipedia". New England Journal of Medicine. Journal of the American Pharmacists Association. Retrieved 23 April Feliciter 52 , no. The kid's all right". Archived from the original on 13 April What do they know; when do they know it, and when can we trust it?

Archived from the original on 8 November Perhaps the most important thing to understand about Wikipedia—both its genius and its Achilles heel—is that anyone can create or modify an entry. Anyone means your year-old neighbor or a Nobel Prize winner—or an editor like me, who is itching to correct a grammar error in that Wikipedia entry that I just quoted.

Entries can be edited by numerous people and be in constant flux. What you read now might change in five minutes. Retrieved 24 October Retrieved on January 27, Archived from the original on June 13, NY Times News Service. Middlebury professor Thomas Beyer, of the Russian department, said: Perceptions in Secondary Schools".

Only five reported seeing mistakes and one of those five reported spelling mistakes rather than factual errors. This suggests that 13 percent of Wikipedia's articles have errors. Chesney, Thomas May 16, Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2 June American Association for the Advancement of Science. Journal of Medical Internet Research. A comparison of a Wiki with a professionally maintained database". Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Anonymous lady, The Ladies Book of Useful Information: Compiled from Many Sources

Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning. A comparison of three most referenced websites". International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology. Retrieved 27 May The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. Archived from the original on 18 November The Future of the Past in the Digital Age. The San Diego Union-Tribune. Retrieved January 16, The public has a firm idea of what an 'encyclopedia' is, and it's a place where information can generally be trusted, or at least slightly more trusted than what a labyrinthine, mysterious bureaucracy can agree upon, and surely more trustworthy than a piece of spontaneous graffiti—and Wikipedia is a king-sized cocktail of the two.

Appeal civil of Supreme Court of India. Archived from the original on November 2, Retrieved July 7, Early response to false claims in Wikipedia. First Monday , 13 9: Configuration integral Archived April 28, , at the Wayback Machine. The Times of London. Archived from the original on June 12, Why it's broke and how it can be fixed". Times Higher Education 28 August The Wall Street Journal June 16, London June 14, The Globe and Mail. Retrieved February 20, Replies to common objections ", Wikipedia, Archived from the original on August 9, Running for office is hard when you have a porn star's name.

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This makes it worse". Retrieved 20 November The New York Review of Books. Retrieved August 30, Retrieved March 31, The New York Times. Washington Post , Page A Why is it growing so fast? Why isn't it full of nonsense? Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook Review of Good Hair. She Said, He Said" , E! James Randi Educational Foundation. The citations in question are Citations 10, 14 and 16, as seen on page The authority of Wikipedia.

In Juho Ritola Ed. Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation. New tool used to evaluate Wikipedia. Retrieved April 9, Meet the Real Sir Walter Mitty". Archived from the original on 13 September Archived from the original on March 20, Wiki Confession an 'Unbelievable Hindrance ' ". Upesh Patel rated it liked it Dec 10, Jessica Anderson rated it liked it Oct 06, Sandra Winkle rated it liked it Aug 02, Anne Hallgren rated it did not like it Nov 27, Pia rated it liked it Jun 11, Lisa Naquin rated it it was amazing Jan 10, Becky Blount rated it liked it May 27, Oksana Fore rated it it was amazing Jun 26, Chloe Riordan rated it did not like it Jan 06, Larry a Ramsdell jr rated it it was amazing Aug 03, Elizabeth rated it liked it Mar 26, Ivelina rated it liked it Sep 01, Natalie rated it really liked it Jun 09, Kyly marked it as to-read Sep 08, Katy marked it as to-read Nov 30, Em added it Feb 09, Susan added it Oct 25, Kharisma Rhayne added it Dec 05, Mandy added it Sep 13, Marianne Stone marked it as to-read Nov 14, Ann McIntyre marked it as to-read Dec 25, Frank marked it as to-read Apr 04, Lacey Holley marked it as to-read Apr 23, Tina Bennett babineaux marked it as to-read Jun 28, Cindy marked it as to-read Jul 16, Chris Carrieri marked it as to-read Jul 26, Jacqui marked it as to-read Oct 15, Ingrid marked it as to-read Nov 15, Ashley Scarlett marked it as to-read Nov 27, Bc marked it as to-read May 27, Stefanie Creamer added it Jun 15, Dawn marked it as to-read Jul 20, Alicia marked it as to-read Jul 24,