{"id":180,"date":"2005-08-26T16:07:42","date_gmt":"2005-08-26T20:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2005\/08\/26\/statements-of-unreliability-and-ea"},"modified":"2005-08-26T16:07:42","modified_gmt":"2005-08-26T20:07:42","slug":"statements-of-unreliability-and-earning-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2005\/08\/26\/statements-of-unreliability-and-earning-trust\/","title":{"rendered":"Statements of unreliability, and earning trust"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

There are an increasing number of articles and works published whichrefer to Wikipedia as an implicitly reliable <\/span>source — often ininappropriate contexts.  As its quality improves, Wikipedia
\nseemsto be shirking a certain quiet
\nduty<\/span>
\nto be modest; something which wasnot a problem back when none would
\nhave mistaken it for a meticulouslyedited compilation.  <\/p>\n

Example:<\/span>  Ann Simmons<\/span>, writing in the
\nLA Times on a matter of British peerage earlier this summer, used the
\nclause “according to Burke’s
\nand Wikipedia,”<\/span>a snippet which should immediately give one pause.  For one
\nthing,the two references have nothing in common.  It seems that aneditor tacked on the clause, “,
\nan online encyclopedia,”<\/span> in a vain effort at
\nclarification.  The full quote:<\/p>\n

 
<\/span>According
\nto Burke’s and Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, Fredericksucceeded
\nhis father, Robert Capell, the 10th Earl, who died in June.(The late
\nearl was a distant cousin of the 9th Lord Essex.)<\/p>\n

The 11th Earl is a bachelor and has no children.
\nWith no otherapparent successor in sight, Capell is the new heir to the earldom.
\nHisaristocratic genealogy is documented in the 106th edition of “Burke’sPeerage & Baronetage.”<\/span>
<\/font><\/div>\n


Please understand me; I will be the first to tell you that you can
\nfind<\/a>
\narticles and collections<\/a>
\non Wikipedia – including many<\/a>
\non peerage<\/a> and
\nroyalty<\/a>
\n– which are among the
\nbest<\/span> overviews in the Englishlanguage; if only you know where to look, and how to check the latest
\nrevisions <\/span>in each
\narticle’s history<\/span>.   <\/p>\n

But
\nthe process for checking information added to Burke’s and that
\nforadding information to Wikipedia are vastly dissimilar. 
\nTheWikipedia overview article on the Earl of
\nEssex<\/a>,for
\ninstance, continues to list no references, two months after theabove
\n(widely syndicated) article drew new attention to the wiki
\narticles on Frederick andRobert Capell.  <\/p>\n

It is
\nembarrassing to imagine some newscasster, writer, lawyer,politician,
\nstudent, professor, or publicistciting a random article from Wikipedia,
\non peerage or anything else,without somehow verifying
\n<\/span>thatthe article had been carefullyresearched.  So what can be done?  Short of the
\nfull-fledgeddrive for moderated or static views of the project, that is. <\/p>\n

What I would like to see is an internal quality review group that
\nissues regular recommendations
\n<\/span>to the rest of the world.  At first these
\nrecommendations would look like a brief whitelist of the categories and
\nsubsubfields <\/span>thatare really
\ntop-notch and being monitored by a healthy community ofrespected
\nusers.  As content improves, it would add various
\nhard metrics<\/span>for each of
\nvarious top-level categories — spot-check accuracy;vandalism
\nfrequency\/longevity; proportion\/longevity of POV and otherdisputes;
\nrates of article creation, editing, and deletion; &c,
\n&c<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The recommendations could go out to educational, librarian, andresearch bodies <\/span>–including
\nsome of you reading this.   Theywould be prominently linked
\nto the sitewidedisclaimer[s].  The metrics would be available to
\nanyone asfeedback, including those working on relevant WikiProjects.
\nWhat do
\nyouthink? (… read the full
\nessay<\/a>)  A tip o’ the cursor to
\nlotsofissues<\/span><\/a><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

(Update<\/span>: quintupling of this post reverted.  Now how did that happen?  Rogue content editor alert…<\/span>)
\n<\/font><\/span><\/a><\/font><\/font>
\n
<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are an increasing number of articles and works published whichrefer to Wikipedia as an implicitly reliable source — often ininappropriate contexts.  As its quality improves, Wikipedia seemsto be shirking a certain quiet duty to be modest; something which wasnot a problem back when none would have mistaken it for a meticulouslyedited compilation.  Example:  Ann […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metrics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"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=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}