In Soviet Russia, lies Wikipedia you
Shutting down Gould Street will protect pedestrians, plus it will “allow space for a helipad for Ryerson President Sheldon Levy.” At least it did according to Wikipedia for 15 minutes on Jan. 30.
This small inaccuracy — better known as vandalism by Wikipedia, and inserted by the Eyeopener — was swiftly corrected by Wikipedia user Bfootdav, also known as Dave Bellows, a 41-year-old IT professional from Atlanta, Georgia and Wikipedia user of four years.
“I know absolutely nothing about Ryerson University and your change was almost plausible and might have slid by other editors,” Bellows said. “I just happened to glance at the rest of the sentence about closing a street for pedestrian safety, which made the addition of a helipad seem odd.”
It’s people like Bellows, who don’t even attend Ryerson, who keep the page clean and accurate. With Wikipedia open to edits from anyone with Internet access, checking a page at the wrong time can lead to some pretty faulty facts. With Ryerson, that includes some Oct. 1, 2009 edits claiming the Ryerson fight song is “CCCP Communists everywhere!” and referring to the Ted Rogers School of Management as, “the Stalin School of Management ... Canada’s largest undergraduate Communist school.” The edits lasted 37 minutes.
With Ryerson’s Wikipedia page receiving over 10,000 views in January alone, someone is bound to see these pranks.
Bellows doesn’t find joke edits funny. “A lot of people work really hard on Wikipedia so vandalism is just a kind of weird insult,” Bellows said.
Vandalism is just one of many Wikipedia editing no-nos. Another rule is the first founding principal of the Wikimedia movement: maintaining a neutral point of view. Edits made by people from the Ryerson community, especially those in the administration, can carry bias.
Between November 2004 and September 2005, a Wikipedia account named “info@ryerson.ca” made a series of edits to the Ryerson page. The user profile page points to Ryerson’s Office of University Advancement.
Bruce Piercey, director of publications and web services, said bias isn’t an issue since the department isn’t currently active on the page. “It would be nice if we could devote more time to [the page].”
Although Bellows knows about the problems of open editing, he still has faith in Wikipedia. “Given my pessimistic views about vandalism above — it’s frequency, subtlety, and likelihood of not being discovered — one might expect me to be rather skeptical,” Bellows said. “The truth is that I do trust the accuracy of Wikipedia.”
“Vandalism that slips through tends to be insignificant in both content and as a percentage of text. But really it’s the process in place and the number of dedicated editors that makes me optimistic.” Despite the vigilance of Wikipedia’s editing army, things still slip by. At press time, according to Wikipedia, Ryerson’s 11-storey library building has a twelfth floor, courtesy of the Eyeopener.
Comments
Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
Wikipedia is crushing our culture's understanding of and respect for actual scholarship. Folks like Dave Bellows, crying about how his beloved Wikipedia doesn't deserve to be vandalized, ought to go ask Jimmy Wales why he put up that motto of "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" in the first place.
How sad.
And it's all just a big money-making scam for about 35 people:
http://www.tinyurl.com/WMF-myths
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
Wikipedia is a novelty site offering popular opinion, revisionist history, and a proven standard dose of political correctness. This is why it can't be cited in research papers. It shouldn't be taken so seriously and it is nothing to get emotional about.
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
The above statement about "money-making scam" was probably posted by Greg Kohs, a man who was booted out of editing Wikipedia because he was doing it to post advertisements.
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
Wikipedia is generally nice enough to people if they clean up their own messes. Would you care to correct any entries you have vandalized? Thank you!
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
Do you seriously have nothing better to do than vandalize Wikipedia? We're talking about a free store of information that many thousands of people volunteer great quantities of time to building and improving. You yourself most likely use it whenever you want to check a fact or look something up. The community of editors has created the encyclopedia for the world at large, free of charge. Respect their efforts, and enjoy what they have provided you. Congratulations, you've just demonstrated the average maturity of a /b/tard.
Grow up.
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
So you just keep vandalizing, then? I'd be embarrassed to admit that, if I were you.
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
Overlooking the usual static from the same people on whom the Alexa #6 ranking _really_ grates, and who've been predicting Wikipedia's downfall for years (just around the corner, any minute now, honestly), it's kinda sad that the Eyeopener felt it necessary to conduct a breaching experiment to prove its point. In reality all it proved is what we already knew: that Wikipedia is an easy target (under most circumstances 'anyone' really can edit) and that the site's anti-vandal measures work pretty well for the most part. Of course, if the Eyeopener was to help fix some vandalism in recompense...
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
Funny that the first commentator uses as proof that Wikipedia is a scam, an article on another website that anybody can edit.
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
Here's a fun thing to do. Use this tool to find biographies that need references:
http://toolserver.org/~magnus/save_a_blp.php
It brings up Google results for the same name beside the article. Pick a random fact (make sure it's not the same person) and add it to the article. Be sure to include your references! Watch how long it takes before this is discovered. Most times it never will be.
Think about this the next time you use Wikipedia. It really should not be trusted for more than the most basic research.
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
A word of caution to the previous poster advocating changing biographies: you personally are responsible for any information you add/change. Just so you know, when the lawsuits start to come in ;-)
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
In response to the previous poster: Just create an account so you're IP addresss isn't recorded. The Wikipedia software automatically will still store your IP information privately, but it gets erased from the database after three months.
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
Don't you have better things to do?
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
To the commentor who brought up lawsuits, did you hear about the one Ron Livingston launched against the person who kept changing his Wikipedia entry to say he was gay? Over and over again and it stayed that way for weeks at a time? What did Wikipedia do about it? Nothing, until a lawsuit was filed and it hit the media!
Wikipedia doesn't care about protecting people from adding libel to someone's biography. If it did, only qualified editors would be allowed to edit biographies. Perhaps a little push will help them see the problem...
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
It's true that Wikipedia needs to get serious about protecting people's biographies. The trouble is there's always a bunch of editors who resist any moves to do so, claiming it goes against the site policy quoted by Eyeopener that anyone can edit. The German Wikipedia uses an approval method before edits go live, which might work.
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
I just love the smell of Kool Aid in the morning.
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Anonymous, 5 months ago said:
Then take your sip and go watch some cartoons.
Its troubling how people believe what wiki reads tooth and nail. I'm waiting till the newspeak version of wiki launches to replace the English version.
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