patrick.net

I've been using Wikipedia daily since 2006 or so and have not run into any such inaccuracy that I could identify.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War is locked down to anonymous editing and there's a couple of things in there I think are overstatements or violate NPOV that I would qualify or reword.

One example is the article on FSB Ripcord.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Fire_Support_Base_Ripcord&action=historysubmit&diff=354701438&oldid=351177506

The original author made this unqualified assertion:

"NVA losses at Ripcord delayed the Easter Offensive by a full year."

but actually in reading the cite given I saw that the author was just repeating another author's POV, which is still POV.

And it turned out that this POV is from one of the commanding officers of the FSB Ripcord action, so not exactly a neutral POV to begin with. I edited the article to more fully qualify where the assertion was coming from.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700105517/Wiki-Wars-In-battle-to-define-beliefs-Mormons-and-foes-wage-battle-on-Wikipedia.html

A (very serious) story about a mormon battling for mormon truth on wikipedia. It should be noted that the Deseret News is owned by the mormon church and that just about every mormon I've ever met believes that their ever-changing religion is the right one - and that the rest of the world is full of sinners waiting to take them down.

I've found a few errors on minor topics I knew something about. But the beauty of Wikipedia is that I could address them myself.

Thats the one problem with Wiki, what you read often depends on the opinion of the last person who edited the article. :-)

There are editors who try to keep things on track, and apparently studies have shown that Wiki is as accurate on most subjects any any of the printed dictionaries, though I can't recall exactly where I read about the studies.

I write and edit articles on Wikipedia and have learned a lot seeing the process of articles started expanded and improved. Overall, I am more impressed with the quality of most articles on it than I was 2 years ago.

Wikipedia is a great starting place if you are looking for general information. If you want to do serious research, you still need to seek out the primary reference (source) material.

The thing I find funny about Wikipedia is how little personal advertisements are snippeted into articles. For example, a cogent summary article about the war of 1812 may suddenly be derailed by a off-topic statement about how Dr. JoeBlow from Bozo State University resolved a critical question on beaver pelt trading between 1813 and 1818. Clearly this kind of editing is a plug for JoeBlow's research program and not really an improvement to the article. Would be nice if this stuff was better contextualized or edited out.

@ terriDeaner

Are you talking about the article itself, or the discussion on the "non-visible" side of Wikipedia?

American in Japan says

@ terriDeaner
Are you talking about the article itself, or the discussion on the “non-visible” side of Wikipedia?

The articles themselves. I'm too lazy tonight to pull up examples, but I can post some in the near future if you'd like.

terriDeaner says

American in Japan says

@ terriDeaner
Are you talking about the article itself, or the discussion on the “non-visible” side of Wikipedia?

The articles themselves. I’m too lazy tonight to pull up examples, but I can post some in the near future if you’d like.

Sounds interesting - I'd like to see a sample.

Sorry... still being lazy... here's one example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraggle_Rock

Take a look at the article tab. Scroll down to the cast of characters where they describe "Red" and look at the statement that has a [citation needed] superscript. Looks to me like a plug for some tired old VJ from the 80's (edit - looks like I was wrong about the era... I clicked on his wiki and apparently he's some pseudo-celebrity clown who's currently looking for work). Does it really add to the record, or is it just a cheap advertisement?

The Featured Articles, Star Articles and even "Good Articles" are of high quality and are more accurate.

Also check out how well referenced the article is.

@ terriDeaner

>The articles themselves. I’m too lazy tonight to pull up examples, but I can post some in the near future if you’d like.

Thanks, I look forward to seeing them!

Thanks AiJ, good information. Didn't know that there was a stratification of the wiki articles according to quality. Could you fill me in on how quality is assessed for the categories you've listed?