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Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years

#2

Post by leephillips »

This is a good reminder of the only safe way to use Wikipedia: as a pointer to references, rather than as an actual source of information. And you must check those references yourself, rather than assuming that they say what the article authors claim they say.

Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years

#3

Post by netrus »

leephillips wrote: post #2

This is a good reminder of the only safe way to use Wikipedia: as a pointer to references, rather than as an actual source of information. And you must check those references yourself, rather than assuming that they say what the article authors claim they say.

Is there really something like a "save way"? Every expressed knowledge can be wrong in the end. You can increase your level of certainty by checking the origin of the information, reputation of source and author, or by measuring against common sense.

What degree of certainty is needed for - looking up a subject you are generally interested in? A undergrad paper? A local newspaper journalist? A doctoral thesis?

90% of my Wikipedia usage falls in the category of self-education and general interest. Wikipedia is certainly a safe source for that.

Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years

#4

Post by jacquesm »

netrus wrote: post #3
leephillips wrote: post #2

This is a good reminder of the only safe way to use Wikipedia: as a pointer to references, rather than as an actual source of information. And you must check those references yourself, rather than assuming that they say what the article authors claim they say.

Is there really something like a "save way"? Every expressed knowledge can be wrong in the end. You can increase your level of certainty by checking the origin of the information, reputation of source and author, or by measuring against common sense. What degree of certainty is needed for - looking up a subject you are generally interested in? A undergrad paper? A local newspaper journalist? A doctoral thesis? 90% of…

> Wikipedia is certainly a safe source for that.

Until you want to know about India-Portugal relations.

Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years

#7

Post by swang »

A problem that prevents people from spotting things like this is that there are tons and tons of sites that just have copies of Wikipedia articles or the site just blindly copies things from Wikipedia.

For example... Alicia Keys birthday on Wikipedia is wrong, she was born in 1980, not 1981. If you read the Talk page about this there are several times where discussion of this takes place. But due to a Wiki Admin sitting on the page, he/she refuses to acknowledge this change and the articles he cites that she was born in 1981 most likely were using the Wikipedia article as reference. So how do you argue your position when the admin says, "Hey my source is Magazine X, it is reputable so therefore you are wrong"

Re: Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years

#10

Post by DanBC »

swang wrote: post #7

A problem that prevents people from spotting things like this is that there are tons and tons of sites that just have copies of Wikipedia articles or the site just blindly copies things from Wikipedia. For example... Alicia Keys birthday on Wikipedia is wrong, she was born in 1980, not 1981. If you read the Talk page about this there are several times where discussion of this takes place. But due to a Wiki Admin sitt…

Wikipedia is not about truth, it is about verifiability. That's fine, everyone[1] knows this. Anything that appears in WP should be traceable to multiple reliable printed sources.

For the article you mention there should be some way of getting multiple reliable sources of a birthdate.

When one person sits on a page there's verious conflict resolution measure to jump through that might help. I hate WP so I'm not going to get involved but I guess there are some admins here who might want to help you.

What's troubling about the OP is that this WP article was a good article, and so should have had some kind of thorough vetting. That's disconcerting.

Also, once an article reaches good or great (or whatever) status I'm not sure if there's any way for visitors to get that exact version of the article, rather than just what today's edit it.

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