luckycharms said:
You must be a theorist.
Obviously, whatever it is that you used to make that conclusion, it is extremely faulty. And this is the proof.
Consider it in practice, not in theory. The person writing or editing a wikipedia article is more than likely to have some degree of expertise in the subject matter. Perhaps a pastry chef will suddenly be inspired to write an article on nuclear fission, but I'll bet he'll stick to cannolis. Just because anyone can doesn't mean that anyone will.
Really? And what made you say that? I can pull out the Superconductivity section of Wikipedia and come up with (i) inacurate description (ii) misleading description, and (iii) confusing description. Forget about getting the facts right. There is ZERO attempt to make every part of it coherent. This is something textbook writers are faced with with producing a book, how to present an idea systematically so that one connects with the other, and better still, they don't appear to contradict each other. And when they do, point those out and why it is a special case.
Science isn't just a series of "facts". They are interconnected. And when you have different parts even within the SAME topic being written and edited by different people ALL THE TIME, you get an incoherent concept being presented by not one, but SEVERAL "pastry chefs", all wanting to present it in their own way. And people "trust" these stuff?
And this is the fundamental faith you put into Wikipedia: that complete idiots aren't writing everything. And this faith, naive as it may seem, results in a remarkably high quality of general knowledge reference. How else can you explain that wikipedia gets so many things right? By the skeptic's model, we should expect nothing more than monkeys typing.
It has nothing to do with how many things it got it right. When you have such a large phase space to work with, even a monkey can pick things right at random. It is how often it gets it wrong, and to what extent it gets it wrong, and to what guarantee does it stand by its content. You don't go to an annonymous person for medical advice without knowing if he/she is a legitimate doctor and has the degree and knowledge to back it up. Yet, you trust knowledge coming from annonymous people whose credentials you haven't checked, and whose track records are unknown.
Call me crazy, but you trust that kind of a source?
Perhaps I shouldn't have said "exactly," but the trust inherent in the peer review process is the same whether the experts are policed centrally or by the community at large. And the results aren't all that different. I think what the Wikipedia model shows is that a disorganized collection of people online will segregate, coalesce, organize and police itself nearly as efficiently as the familiar and formal offline counterparts.
I trust the peer-review process because I know what goes on in it. I am a journal referee myself. I do NOT, however, trust the VALIDITY of the paper appearing in a peer-review journal BECAUSE it is simply the beginning of the verification process. It appears in print, it doesn't mean it is true. So who "peer-reviewed" the photoemission spectroscopy description in Wikipedia?
Furthermore, you incorrectly stated previously that there is no record of change. In fact, there is a detailed log of each and every change and addition including discussion and dispute. There is obviously a difference of degree, but there is no reason to assume that people don't value and protect their online reputation just as any scientist would protect his academic one.
Unless you have no faith in market dynamics or statistics, the sheer number of Wikipedia users is reason enough to "trust" the veracity of an article. Its popularity is testament to its accuracy. As with any source, you have to take information with a grain of salt commensurate with the reputation of the source, but you seem to be saying that there is no grain of salt big enough for you to swallow Wiki.
I think even you know that "popularity" has nothing to do with "quality". McDonalds is "popular", so its food must be better than a 3 star restaurant that has less number of customers in a year? First of all, how is someone who is LOOKING for an answer to something, would KNOW that the thing he/she is reading on Wikipedia is CORRECT? One only needs to look on here at all the absurd references people have made using Wikipedia to back up with faulty idea. So of course they think the info they're looking for is correct!
And I could play this game too. If Wikipedia is THAT great, how come less than 10% of practicing scientists actually actively use it? After all, from the last Nature survey, I believe more than 30% (or was it 50%) of scientists surveyed have heard of it. If it is that great, how come it plays an insignificant role in active research work? I can point out to you many texts that I had, even as an undergrad, that I often still refer too even in my capacity as a physicist. So this is already another difference between Wikipedia and textbooks.
One could argue, as has been mentioned already in this thread, that it isn't MEANT as an indepth source, or a primary source. And I'd say EXACTLY! Not only is the source of the info dubious, it also means that it doesn't attempt to be rigorous. It is meant to be dumbed down and superficial, and often, this is where it gets into trouble at being "simple" and "accurate". Having helped someone wrote a book before, there were many nights where we struggled at getting JUST the right word, or passage, or even phrases so that our simplified idea does not convey the the wrong impression or the wrong idea to someone just barely learning the subject matter. And this is even before the publisher or book editor even got their hands on the manuscript!
Now how many Wikipedia authors do you think put THAT much care and thought into such a thing. Want to give the people the wrong impression about wave-particle duality? Why not? They won't know any better if we tell them they're just cows! That's why they're looking it up!
Zz.
