In my case, nothing got done until I threatened to sue. Not Wikipedia – the lowly “volunteer” who kept restoring the page. I tracked down his real name, his address, where he went to school.
That’s when I got their attention.
In my case, nothing got done until I threatened to sue. Not Wikipedia – the lowly “volunteer” who kept restoring the page. I tracked down his real name, his address, where he went to school.
That’s when I got their attention.
I can’t believe that a site that anyone can edit, can possibly be a reference source. The treatment you have received,Kate, as well as the treatment of non-believers in the hoax known as “climate change”. Well it’s on Wikipedia, it must be true! What a load of crap. And kids in school are encouraged to use Wikipedia as source material? Seems to me it just encourages laziness when used that way. As a quick, unimportant, source to check something, fine. As a source for important, citable information? That’s something else entirely.
Rick, my views of Wikipedia are a bit different. For older events and deceased people, not connected to any present controversy, I think Wikipedia is generally fine.
But when it comes to current events, like the Global Warming Hoax or live people, especially those on the right-side of the political spectrum, then watch out because there will be some hate-fueled ignoramus out there with way too much time on his hands, who will distort the facts gleefully … and feel he is carrying out a righteous crusade against evil. 🙁
Wiki’s fine for anything that isn’t political. (Of course, a lot of stuff is political.)
the schools in my area forbid students to use wikipedia for any research. It has been that way for years. I hope that other schools and districts are the same or will be soon.
As long as you use wiki for checking out bufo bufo,it’s OK.Anything else,not so much.
Susan:
Same with my daughters. If you list Wikipedia as source material, you get marks deducted.
That said, it’s an excellent starting point for basic research; you can use the links at the end of the article to get to better sources.
I use Wikipedia for research now the same way I used to use “general introduction” or “overview” texts or articles for research back in my University days in the 80s; it was a fast way to become broadly familiar with the basics of a subject area, so that further research didn’t constantly dead-end. It’s how I wrote most of my papers through bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and it proved to be very fruitful. It didn’t even matter if the introductory overview material was obsolete, it still helped “box in” further research efforts, cutting down on the work I needed to do to get an essay done.
Used this way, Wikipedia’s fine. I would never make the rookie mistake of assuming that Wikipedia was the last word (or even a truly authoritative word) on anything, though.
Wiki is great for general information about,for instance, a city you are curious about,they site will have more easily usable info than the City’s own website.
Biographies of long dead,therefore no longer political, are pretty good for general info,BUT anything on a Left-Wing hero, and you’re instantly on a fan site.
I had no idea KM had a Wiki page.Why would I care,I know enough about the lady through her excellent work on this blog. I do notice that Warren Kinsella has placed her on his “enemies” list, kind of an honor,imho.
Wikipedia is a great starting place for research, and a fantastic resource for things like band discographies. Any info found there needs to be taken with a grain of salt and anything remotely political ends up so left-skewed it seems it was written by Marx (Groucho or Karl take your pick).
raughkee
I’ll take U’r pick and raise U a shovel, cuz one needs a shovel to move some of the BS in Dikipedia
I have to imagine that having a wikipage set up by someone hostile to you would be like having someone using a sling to throw dog poo at your windows. It doesn’t matter if your windows are open or not, you still have to clean up (and deal with) the dog poo. The farther away they’re flinging from the less will get the windows but there’s a bigger mess scattered.
If you can see their face then there are a number of ways you can respond (including many that are within the law). If they wear a mask when they do it, so you can’t identify them to authorities, you have less options. Engaging in the process, in this case, means walking up to the poo-flinger and likely getting poo on you (either shaking hands after earnest discussion or by exchanging punches). If you don’t want to have anything to do with the poo, well, apparently that’s too bad. At the very least you have to clean it up or live with it. And you’d have to be in a very remote area to get away with the 3-S method of poor-flinger removal.
SDA is widely enjoyed by us. Trolls have expended a lot of energy to deride that which they cannot answer or explain. They’ve lined up the poo-trebuchet and fired it once or twice. Who cares whether they’ve hit or missed, they shouldn’t be allowed the anonymity that will allow them to move on to the next “target”. For the wikimedia editors who had commented on the previous string, that’s why not everyone is interested in joining your efforts. Enjoy your gardening, but I don’t want fresh manure all over me and disagree whether you should be able to plant whatever you want anywhere you want (ie any and all subject matter covered in whatever way the primary poster/editor wants).
Warren has an enemies list? Ha ha! What an amusing little fellow.
Wikipedia is useful as someone else mentioned as a starting point. What bothers me is in public schools it’s taken as an accredited source. That’s sure going to hurt kids when they hit the college and university level and have to write papers with actual references.
I tried to fight Wikipedia on their biased climate change posts and ran into a buzz saw of very organized activists. Not a pleasant experience. And it’s obvious Warren Kinsella writes his own page.
I just had a difficult day at work . That article has lifted my spirits. Thank you wiki-dickies or whatever they call themselves.
This line is priceless;
” Instead she displays what appears to be a willful(sic)disregard of Wikipedia guidelines”
How dare you Kate? You must be such a monster,but;
“To have a biographical article about Kate M, we would have to rely largely on her own statements”.
That would not work because,see above.
However, the author does leave us with this;
” For the record, I support the redirect of Kate McMillan to Small dead animals”… and the link doesn’t work.
I use Wiki as a starting point at times,and for that it is useful. But as dmorris noted above,it does have limits.
Thanks for everything Kate.
Using a big picture of him and two porn stars driving a big yacht as a reply to his assertion that “I didn’t distribute porn or make money from it” was about as good as it can get.
Kate, it absolutely ROCKS that you found that little behind-the-scenery wikiweasel editor creature and put the fear in him/her/it. Way to go.
One more rattle snake down.
Robert, “For older events and deceased people, not connected to any present controversy, I think Wikipedia is generally fine.” Exactly, and as Garth Wood says, it is good for basic information and fleshing out some material on older events. Some of the photos are also usable, although I am not sure what the reuse rules are.
Good for going after them Kate. The left and verbal or physical assassination go hand in hand.
Btw, who is Warren Kinsella?
Ken,
as you have said also,it is a good starting point.
On the Wiki page linked ,there is a short entry about Kate’s opinion on residential schools.They say absolutely nothing,except that she has an opinion.
FWIW,I posted a comment last night that supported the residential schools. Furthermore, I believe that they should be implemented again. It may have to be done on a voluntary basis. There will be parent(s)that acknowledge the current system is not working,and there will be parent(s)that want the babysitting service.
It must be discussed. Sean Atleo ran on a platform of education. Unfortunately,he has been compromised,abandoned that premise,and got re-elected on the ‘bad whitey’ platform.
Is that because of his residential school life? As well as CoonComes and Phil Fontaine’s.
Wiki insinuates that having different opinions is bad,immoral,and a sign of low intelligence.
They have facts,but they have a lot of ‘facts’ that are clouded by opinion,which disqualifies these ‘facts’ from bring facts.
Then again,that is just my opinion.
Personally I have found wikipidia a source of liberal bias. Why use them whem you can go to the source ,or a reputable biographer? Even Historian’s or reliable sources. Its a mishmash of data revisionism in my opinion. Useful in small none important information, but full of BS.
Frankly People Like Kate or Mark Steyn,Kathy Shadle, BCF or Pamela Geller. I don’t even know or care about their lives much. To close to stalking ,If not creepy. I think anyway. All I know about these folks that I admire, is the results of their work with what they themselves say to choose or, reveal about personnel matters. The one time someone said one Blogger I admired was a murder from a famious “Journalist”. I wrote the slandered not the slanderer.
If you actually know how to do fact finding you need nothing from wikiplebes. Deconstructing the feeble articles is childs play. And you may note that the most “serious” articles are copied verbatim from other sources.
Deconstructing Wikipedia ….An industrious person could make a career of it.
As the voice ad for the John Gormley show says, “they used to get away with it…”
Kate and Gormley, who both run with well-tuned BS detectors. Trite I know but, thanks for this blog Kate.
What did the recalcitrant Wikipedians do to attract your ire?
The only times I click on wikipedia links are if they are to do with mathematical subjects, particle physics or drug related. In the latter case, the only thing I use from the article is the chemical structure of the drug and I double check this against another source.
For mathematical topics, I’ve found wikipedia to be accurate and usually it’s a starting point for searches I’m doing. In the mathematical department, I’ll include computer science searches as there are a number of concise articles on wikipedia on computer science topics; again I always check the links which have more information.
For particle physics, and anything which is fairly technical, I find that wikipedia is relatively unbiased. One thing I don’t use wikipedia for is anything to do with climate science or significant theoretical underpinnings thereof. For example, the stochastic resonance article on wikipedia is balanced insofar as it provides a mechanism for amplification of tiny orbital changes to produce ice ages. That’s probably the only climate related article on wikipedia that’s unbiased.
For anything to do with current events, politics, recent history and climate science I deliberately avoid any wikipedia articles that I come across in a search engine. The heuristic that I’ve adopted is that if there’s any significant disagreement over a topic, then likely wikipedia has the extreme statist view. There isn’t much disagreement about how one computes Hurst exponents or fast fourier transforms and thus wikipedia can be relied upon for such subjects. The reason that the extreme statist view prevails is that the unemployed parasites pushing statist POV have lots of time on their hands unlike the employed anti-statists. The unemployed statist parasites wouldn’t know what a Hurst exponent was if it kicked them in the ass and thus they stay away from any topic that requires intellectual rigor.
I do like that wikipedia will have the chemical structure of any drug or molecule they discuss but often the “side effects” of a drug are the assumed “effects” of a drug on individuals with various psychiatric illnesses (again with lots of time on their hands to keep on editing and re-editing various entries).
Crowdsourcing as an investigative technique does work, but what I’d suggest as an improvement is that that completely anonymous editing be prohibited. Every entry made should be signed either by the persons real name or the pseudonym they’ve elected to adopt. There are valid reasons for individuals to publish under a pseudonym but there are ways to ensure that all such entries are actually the work of the same person.
Posted a rather long entry about what is and isn’t valid entry on wikipedia but for some unknown reason it got caught in the spam filter.
The only times I click on wikipedia links are if they are to do with mathematical subjects, particle physics or drug related. In the latter case, the only thing I use from the article is the chemical structure of the drug and I double check this against another source.
For mathematical topics, I’ve found wikipedia to be accurate and usually it’s a starting point for searches I’m doing. In the mathematical department, I’ll include computer science searches as there are a number of concise articles on wikipedia on computer science topics; again I always check the links which have more information.
For particle physics, and anything which is fairly technical, I find that wikipedia is relatively unbiased. One thing I don’t use wikipedia for is anything to do with climate science or significant theoretical underpinnings thereof. For example, the stochastic resonance article on wikipedia is balanced insofar as it provides a mechanism for amplification of tiny orbital changes to produce ice ages. That’s probably the only climate related article on wikipedia that’s unbiased.
For anything to do with current events, politics, recent history and climate science I deliberately avoid any wikipedia articles that I come across in a search engine. The heuristic that I’ve adopted is that if there’s any significant disagreement over a topic, then likely wikipedia has the extreme statist view. There isn’t much disagreement about how one computes Hurst exponents or fast fourier transforms and thus wikipedia can be relied upon for such subjects. The reason that the extreme statist view prevails is that the unemployed parasites pushing statist POV have lots of time on their hands unlike the employed anti-statists. The unemployed statist parasites wouldn’t know what a Hurst exponent was if it kicked them in the ass and thus they stay away from any topic that requires intellectual rigor.
I do like that wikipedia will have the chemical structure of any drug or molecule they discuss but often the “side effects” of a drug are the assumed “effects” of a drug on individuals with various psychiatric illnesses (again with lots of time on their hands to keep on editing and re-editing various entries).
Crowdsourcing as an investigative technique does work, but what I’d suggest as an improvement is that that completely anonymous editing be prohibited. Every entry made should be signed either by the persons real name or the pseudonym they’ve elected to adopt. There are valid reasons for individuals to publish under a pseudonym but there are ways to ensure that all such entries are actually the work of the same person.
With wikipedia came the wikidicks.
A lazy, incurious generation that couldn’t find their collective arseholes with a flashlight at high noon.