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_ Highlighted for Posterity _ Abortion and why, since my boy fiddled my Wikipedia entry, I've ... - Mail on Sunday

Posted by: Newsfeed


<img alt="" height="1" width="1">http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/0-0&fd=R&url=http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html%3Fin_article_id%3D558786%26in_page_id%3D1770&cid=1150132896&ei=S73-R-WHF430yAT8wIiLBA&usg=AFrqEzf2x73VhtWf3ImkL2XXud2pjh0LOA
Mail on Sunday, UK -47 minutes ago
Who put me there or why, I have no idea. But if you look me up on Wikipedia, the world's most frequently consulted reference work on the internet, ...


http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/0-0&fd=R&url=http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html%3Fin_article_id%3D558786%26in_page_id%3D1770&cid=1150132896&ei=S73-R-WHF430yAT8wIiLBA&usg=AFrqEzf2x73VhtWf3ImkL2XXud2pjh0LOA

Posted by: Moulton

This is a well-written column that is both funny and serious. One of the serious parts touches on the impossibility of NPOV.

Posted by: guy

It's wonderful. I'm flagging it for posterity.

And the most wonderful thing is that this article was referenced in his Wikipedia entry and - guess what - the link was removed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tom_Utley&diff=next&oldid=204880229

Posted by: Moulton

I don't know whether to laugh or to hold my head in my hands in utter despair.

Posted by: thekohser

The http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tom_Utley&diff=next&oldid=143953179 lasted for 12 days.

I thought Wikipedia vandalisms were "almost always" reverted "very quickly"?

In January, the Henrik-o-Meter says that the Tom Utley article was getting 5 or 6 page views per day. Maybe it was only 3 or 4 per day, back when Wikipedia was less popular in July 2007.

Still, that's easily 30 or more visitors who saw the nonsense, versus the one reader who actually did something to correct it.

This seems to be a trend that I'm establishing with these stories about vandalism. We frequently see 20 to 50 people walk idly past a vandalism without "sofixit"ing it. Why?

IT'S NOT THEIR PROBLEM. IT'S NOT THEIR ARTICLE. IT'S NOT THEIR ENCYCLOPEDIA.

Wikipedia: The World's Most Irresponsible Encyclopedia.

Seriously, do Wikipediots think this is a "good" ratio of damaged views-to-corrective actions? To me, 40 to 1, or even 20 to 1, are not statistics to be proud of, considering it's purported to be a self-correcting reference.

Greg

Posted by: wikiwhistle

QUOTE(thekohser @ Fri 11th April 2008, 8:35pm) *

The http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tom_Utley&diff=next&oldid=143953179 lasted for 12 days.

I thought Wikipedia vandalisms were "almost always" reverted "very quickly"?

In January, the Henrik-o-Meter says that the Tom Utley article was getting 5 or 6 page views per day. Maybe it was only 3 or 4 per day, back when Wikipedia was less popular in July 2007.

Still, that's easily 30 or more visitors who saw the nonsense, versus the one reader who actually did something to correct it.



Maybe it was mainly the young vandal checking up on the page smile.gif

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(thekohser @ Fri 11th April 2008, 7:35pm) *

This seems to be a trend that I'm establishing with these stories about vandalism. We frequently see 20 to 50 people walk idly past a vandalism without "sofixit"ing it. Why?

IT'S NOT THEIR PROBLEM. IT'S NOT THEIR ARTICLE. IT'S NOT THEIR ENCYCLOPEDIA.

That's one of the reasons. Ironically, people are much more likely to fix vandalisms on articles they "WP:OWN".

For the rest, good editors get tired of endlessly reverting overindulged childish tagging. It would be so easy to remove most vandalism by sprotecting all articles, or having articles promoted to "viewable by general public" only be nameusers with a vetted history. But if you argue this, you'll get shouted down by people who really believe that most of WP's good content comes from IP users who are so committed that they write like angels and know vast amounts about one thing, which they are dying to dump on the WP, but would not be committed enough to register with a username and password if you required them to. But has this experiment been performed? No. But that's okay. Wikipedia believes it, and that's enough. They believe on faith, and most of them don't have to deal with the consequences, because they don't clean up poop in the trenches.

Posted by: Moulton

As a science educator, I was astonished to discover how much antagonism I encountered among Wikipedians to the principles of scientific methods of inquiry and verification.

Then again, my sample of Wikipedians is largely limited to those who were signatories to the Wikipedia Project on Intelligent Design.