Copying Wikipedia's lies is not just for hacks, right Lord Leveson?

Re: Basic Facts

Should have linked to it I guess.

But if this makes his report wrong we can shut the press down right away for being a lot worse.

Well, I, as a taxpayer, am very pleased we're not being handed an extortionate bill for double-checking every bit of minutia in a several thousand page long report. If something important were wrong then I would care, but if this is the biggest flaw in the Leveson report then the quality control was plenty good enough.

Err...

I'm sure that a law Lord investigating a newspaper would not be criticised in any way for just calling up a newspaper to check a couple of facts.

Also: Do you think he wrote all of the, three thousand pages (IIRC) himself and personally fact checked it all?

I think the full on hatred is a good thing - it keeps in mind the fact that you shouldn't rely on it for serious use. Without being aware that people hate it so much (evidently Lord Leveson is ignorant of such) then people will attribute far too much trust in it as an indisputable source of fact. And the thought of society getting to that point is quite scary.

I second that.

For all its flaws, Wikipedia is often the quickest way to get a rough answer to a query and a list of links to more reputable sources. It's very valuable, provided that you don't trust it entirely.

If you're thinking of using Wikifacts(tm) anywhere important, check the edits and discussions associated with the page. If there's a flame war going on in there, take it with a pinch of salt.

@tkioz

"I really don't get the full on hate for Wikipedia, of course it's not something you should totally rely on without a second, more reputable source. but honestly it's a good general resource".

I agree. Moreover, the less recent, fashionable, and controversial a subject is the more reliable Wikipedia is likely to be. I would guess that its treatment of group theory, the history of ancient China, or astrophysics is much more reliable than that of the Indescribablyboring newspaper..

Moreover, as any educated person should understand, no source whatsoever is worthy of absolute trust. Just because someone is a well-respected professor, with prizes and endowments up the wazoo, doesn't mean his (or her) book doesn't contain serious errors or even highly slanted explanations. And just because almost everyone believes something, that doesn't make it true.

"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion". - Bertrand Russell (and yes, you will find that quotation on Wikipedia. Nevertheless, it is genuine).

One of the problems with wikipedia - and relevant to this issue - is that the inaccuracy is now verifiable - the article can cite the levenson report (citation is more important than truth).

It's a constant problem with wikipedia - an incorrect or unverified fact is lifted from wikipedia by a lazy journo, and the journo's article then becomes the verification.

See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/15/tom_melly_wikipedia_comment/ for an example (and for added irony, note that the reg article has become one of the citations).

"all from distinctly left-wing sources"

Left from David Irving covers a lot of ground.

Hmmm, are we really supposed to believe Irving over Wikipedia? It might be a dodgy source, but dodgyness is surely relative...

Err?

As it's David Irving, it's more than likely that there are no links to his web site and lots of links to sites which attack him because he is a Holocaust Denier.

It's David Irving thinks Wikipedia has defamed him

he should try suing for libel.

But also, books don't have an easily checkable history of changes. If you're going to use data from wikipedia in an official document, common sense suggests that you check if anyone has been mucking around with the bit you're copying, and if they have, you do a little extra research to verify the "facts"

Sabotage

“Plus books aren't usually prone to deliberate sabotage.”

True and there was shock when it was discovered that a Oxford English Dictionary editor secretly deleted words - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/26/former-oed-editor-deleted-words

It’s not just that Wikipedia is prone to deliberate sabotage, but just how easy it is to commit that sabotage and how depressingly readily people will take it at face value without any cross-referencing.

The Normal Wisdom example that Andrew gave is a good one – when it was first reported that he co-wrote (There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover, I thought it was unlikely as the song was written too early and it would be better known if he did. One would have thought that hacks writing obituaries would have twigged the song was written several years before when they were claiming Wisdom became an entertainer. Although I suppose it wasn’t impossible, a quick web search would bring up a huge number of sources crediting it to the actual writers and the only ones credited Wisdom were the Wikipedia entry and his obituaries.

There was another one about a European football team (Croatia, I think) where one paper used Wikipedia to report that the fans wear bizarre shaped hats fashioned from old football boots and quoted a supporters song with strange lyrics… all made good copy and all was completely made up by (IIRC) an experienced Wikipedia vandal.

Also, worth remembering there are cases where articles are tampered for other reasons – e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#Wikipedia_editing

Re: As Sir Isaac Newton once famously said...

You need to check your facts... the 'pinch of salt' thing was said by Abraham Lincoln; Sir Isaac Newton hadn't even heard of salt.

Re: As Sir Isaac Newton once famously said...

"...you should take with a pinch of salt any fact found on the internet".

... including the unreliability of Wikipedia, or the idea that "anyone can edit it".

Wow, someone who actually paid their taxes! Your surname isnt Vimes by any chance?

Re: Catholics for dummies?

And yet (assuming you have some level of scientific education) you have no problem believing in wave-particle duality (when in fact it's likely photons are neither), schrodinger's cat, heisenburg's uncertainty principle or the notion of chaos, dark matter, string theory and the list goes on.

Physics inside our Universe is pretty whacky, outside I'd bet a penny to a pound it's orders of magnitude strangers: so why not a being that is 3 in 1 and his own son?