{"id":183,"date":"2005-08-31T01:00:35","date_gmt":"2005-08-31T05:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/unreliability\/"},"modified":"2005-08-31T01:00:35","modified_gmt":"2005-08-31T05:00:35","slug":"unreliability","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/unreliability\/","title":{"rendered":"Unreliability"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Most statements <\/span>you find in the wilds of the media are about reliability<\/span><\/a> : “The best paper shredder on the market”… “the finest Earl in all of
\nChristendom”… “better and longer-lasting than ever!”… “<\/span>More Comprehensive than Any Other
\n\t\t\tEnglish-language Encyclopedia.<\/span>“<\/span>   Worse, they don’t try very hard to earn your trust; they demand it.  It is awfully hard to find statements about un<\/span>reliability
\n(or even adjective-free metrics) which are, funnily enough, more
\nreliable than the first sort.  You have to make it up to the
\nindustrial-strength copiers, scanners, and shredders before you find
\nmanufacturers telling you about the mean time<\/span>(copies, scans, page-shreds) to failure<\/span> for their products.  <\/p>\n

This arrogation of trust by media and advertisers finds a parallel in
\nindividual lives, with people saying whatever is necessary to claim
\nthe trust of others, not respectfully, but as though playing a
\nshort-term game<\/span>… mentioning only positive points, lying where they
\nthink it’s safe (after all, everyone is doing it!<\/span>), and
\navoiding discussion or measurement of unreliability.  This is, broadly
\nspeaking, a serious moral <\/span>and
\neconomic offense.  It contributes to inefficiency and ignorance in
\nthe community at large, and stalls the development of a profession of
\nmeasurers (what is the right word?) — people skilled in identifying
\nand evaluating metrics of every sort.<\/p>\n

To take a practical example (practical both in terms of familiar topics
\nand in terms of things people reading this essay can directly do
\nsomething about) : there are an increasing number of articles and works
\npublished which
\nrefer to Wikipedia as an implicitly reliable <\/span>source — often in
\ninappropriate contexts.  As its quality improves, Wikipedia seems
\nto be shirking a certain quiet duty<\/span> to be modest; something which was
\nnot a problem back when none would have mistaken it for a meticulously
\nedited compilation. <\/p>\n

Example:<\/span>  Ann Simmons<\/span>, writing in the LA Times on a matter of British peerage earlier this summer, used the clause “according to Burke’s and Wikipedia,”<\/span> something which should immediately give one pause.  It seems that an editor hastily added the following clause, “, an online encyclopedia,”<\/span>
\nrecognizing that many audience members would have no idea why this
\nunusual name had been placed at that particular point in the
\nparagraph.  The full quote:<\/p>\n


\n<\/span>
\nAccording to Burke’s and Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, Frederick
\nsucceeded his father, Robert Capell, the 10th Earl, who died in June.
\n(The late earl was a distant cousin of the 9th Lord Essex.)<\/p>\n

The 11th Earl is a bachelor and has no children. With no other
\napparent successor in sight, Capell is the new heir to the earldom. His
\naristocratic genealogy is documented in the 106th edition of “Burke’s
\nPeerage & Baronetage.”
\n<\/span><\/font><\/span>\n<\/div>\n

Please understand me; I will be the first to tell you that you can find<\/a>
\narticles and collections<\/a> on Wikipedia – including many<\/a> on peerage<\/a> and royalty<\/a> – which are among the best<\/span> overviews in the English
\nlanguage; if only you know where to look (and how to check the latest revisions <\/span>in each article’s history<\/span>).   <\/p>\n

But the process for checking information added to Burke’s and that for
\nadding information to Wikipedia are vastly dissimilar.  The
\nWikipedia article on the Earl of Essex<\/a>,
\nfor instance, continues to list no references, two months after the
\nabove bit of news drew new attention to the articles on Frederick and
\nRobert Capell.  <\/p>\n

It is embarrassing to imagine some newscasster, writer, lawyer,
\npolitician, student, professor, or publicist
\nciting a random article from Wikipedia, on peerage or anything else,
\nwithout somehow verifying that the source article had been carefully
\nresearched.  So what can be done?  Short of the full-fledged drive for moderated or static views <\/span>of the project, that is.  What I would like to see is an internal quality review group that issues regular recommendations <\/span>to the rest of the world.  At first these recommendations would look like a brief whitelist of the categories and subsubfields <\/span>that are really top-notch and being monitored by a healthy community of respected users.  Slowly it would add various hard metrics<\/span>
\nfor each of two score top-level categories — spot-check accuracy;
\nvandalism frequency\/longevity; proportion\/longevity of POV and other
\ndisputes; rates of new-article creation and editing, and article deletion; &c, &c<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The recommendations could go out to educational, librarian, and
\nresearch bodies <\/span>—
\nincluding some of you reading this.   They
\nwould be prominently linked to the sitewide
\ndisclaimer[s].  The metrics would be available to anyone as
\nfeedback, including those working on relevant WikiProjects. What do you
\nthink? (Original blog post | A boldfaced tip o’ the cursor to lotsofissues<\/span><\/a>)<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most statements you find in the wilds of the media are about reliability : “The best paper shredder on the market”… “the finest Earl in all of Christendom”… “better and longer-lasting than ever!”… “More Comprehensive than Any Other English-language Encyclopedia.“   Worse, they don’t try very hard to earn your trust; they demand it.  It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-183","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}