What's the point of crapping on Wikipedia?

Post by **CronoTriggerfan** » Thu May 03, 2007 8:52 pm

This has been getting at me for a while, but now I just blew a fuse on it. My English teacher is no longer allowing any Wikipedia sources and any websites linked to Wikipedia as valid for our research paper because of the recent controversy. Even though the woman is a terrible teacher, impudent, and is only doing this because she heard a 30 second blurb about it on NPR, (she admits never to even being ON the website! How can she make that calll without giving it a shot?) it's just stupid that people have to go and purposely crap up the site and make the information not usable for the rest of us. Like this page:

Wikipedia page on the PSP wrote: The PlayStation Portable (プレイステーション・ポータブル, Pureisutēshon Pōtaburu?, officially abbreviated as PSP) is a handheld game console released and manufactured by Sony Inc.. Its development was first announced during E3 2003, and it was officially unveiled on January 1, 2015 at a Sony press conference before E3 2004. The system was released in Khasikstan on December 12, 2025, the United States and Canada on March 24, 2012 and in Europe and Australia on September 1, 2058.

Point being, Wikipedia is a place that all of us have gone to for information at least once, and it makes my blood boil when people abuse the resource. Anyone else as pissed as me, have a Wiki-related complaint, or want to come clean about crapping things up?

CTFan

Sir Games-A-Lot · Post by **Sir Games-A-Lot** » Thu May 03, 2007 9:05 pm

By and large the Wikipedia articles I read are not popular enough to merit that kind of tampering.

On the flip side, I have seen a few technical errors from time to time, but mostly they are their because they exist already in other "More Legitimate" resources and have been carried over unintentionally.

dman762000 · Post by **dman762000** » Thu May 03, 2007 9:14 pm

I believe wikipedia to be a brilliant idea the problem is people screw things up, if they would just check facts it could be the best source for info.

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Thu May 03, 2007 9:19 pm

My English teacher talked to us about it the other day, and she said thats its fine to use, just as long as we have other sources that support it (so that stuff like that PSP thing doesn't happen).

EDIT: Its like my sig says:

teraflop122 wrote:Wikipedia (your number one source for mostly-accurate information!)

nightwheel · Post by **nightwheel** » Thu May 03, 2007 9:35 pm

When I go edit a artical on wikipedia I make sure that I have the facts strait before I do anything. I have even made my own topic on wikipedia here. It's not much but it's all true. And people crap up wikipedia because they are pain in the rears. And because they can and no one can stop them from craping it up.

Post by **Skyone** » Thu May 03, 2007 9:42 pm

Ya, every time I search 4chan on Wikipedia, it brings me to a scree with "NO U" in large caps.

Post by **gannon** » Thu May 03, 2007 9:52 pm

That's why in wikis you only listen to the cited data

Post by **Skyone** » Thu May 03, 2007 11:48 pm

Righto - Wikipedia is the SparkNotes of the interwebs.

lifeisbetterwithketchup · Fri May 04, 2007 4:33 am

My teachers don't let us cite Wikipedia either. However, what I do is read about it on Wikipedia, then follow the citation links from wikipedia and cite those.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Fri May 04, 2007 7:42 am

Fair warning when you get to college level writing they will not let you use Wikipedia for the simple fact that anyone can change the information. However there is a loop-hole, all wikipedia articles have a number of resources so if you find something useful look to see which source it came from.

I frequent wikipedia often and have yet to see anyone make some stupid changes on it. Closest to that was I think that VG comic where Skeletor changed the info about He-man. But really what's the point? Because you don't like something you have to be a little prick and change it so everyone else suffers. People that do that need to be give a good 20 lashes from a leather whip. Wikipedia's for everyone not some immature little kid!

nightwheel · Post by **nightwheel** » Fri May 04, 2007 8:45 am

Skyone wrote:Ya, every time I search 4chan on Wikipedia, it brings me to a scree with "NO U" in large caps.

Here is the link to the 4chan artical Skyone.

Edutainment · Post by **Edutainment** » Fri May 04, 2007 8:46 am

I hate when people do this. My school's IP is blocked because of vandalism, you can't edit articles unless you have an account here (which I do). There's a whole page on us!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:199.43.172.254

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Fri May 04, 2007 8:48 am

I think everyone is forgetting the most obvious solution of "using as much wiki as you want and then just citing some books you didnt read"

worked all the time for me.

course Im in engineering now and I dont write any more papers

nightwheel · Post by **nightwheel** » Fri May 04, 2007 8:49 am

Edutainment wrote:I hate when people do this. My school's IP is blocked because of vandalism, you can't edit articles unless you have an account here (which I do). There's a whole page on us!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:199.43.172.254

well at lest we know where some of the crapers are coming from! And i did not even know that wikipedia did IP banning.

Reaperman@home · Post by **Reaperman@home** » Fri May 04, 2007 8:53 am

I like wikipedia--but I do forsee a couple problems with it.
what happens if it continues to grow, and becomes a major source of information even after its supporting links die?
what happens if a large, organized effort is made to 'erase' or change the information on something--or any number of small items? (say something becomes so wildly unpopular millions attempt to wipe it from history) It always only took one person to say something, but now it only takes one person or a small group to shut him up or twist the intended meaning. without going to deep into it, I really worry especially much about organized religion and politics using the wikipedia as a potential weapon.

it's almost like we're about to go back to oral history.

potential problems aside, it's a great resource--just not one that's at all fit for research. you have to look for it, but there is a bit of false information on it. and the sited resources are often wrong as well.

what I wonder is if there's a real effort to preserve information stored on the web for historical reasons. fewer books are published, and data is pretty delicate. the last 10 years or so of information is sitting in limbo counting down to destruction, and I don't think our caching services are as complete as, say, the library of congress is with published work.
what happens when these web pages die, and the wikipedia can no longer support its facts, will they be removed, or will there be a 'wikicache'? and how the heck would it overcome the copyright limitations even with fair use?