61–70 of 96 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
is it an actual falsehood? it just says also called a Brazilian aardvark, which is true for at least one person in the world and became true for a lot more after reading it. it seems like the name stuck because people liked the name.
It's also more pronounceable and appetizing, like the chilean seabass.
So what. At least with The Internet, Google and Wikipedia, we can see this happening. I would bet money the same sort of thing happened in 1880, the Golden Age of Authority. Some intern at Encyclopedia Britainica slipped in a minor edit, The Time cited it, and then (10 years later) E.B. cites The Times to "prove" the "truth" of the minor edit. This has the stench of old line, mainstream media getting upset about The…
It isn't just the same. The differences as well as similarities seem interesting, not neccesarily in a 'sky is falling' way, just in an understanding our social world way.
While Britannica definitely included plenty of accidental errors, the fact that wikipedia can be edited by anyone probably makes it more often include intentional falsehoods -- although maybe not, we can only guess without some attempt at investigation.
The fact that wikipedia changes at a higher velocity than Brittanica ever did probably changes it's effect, and the nature of the social feedback loops we're talking about here (for good as well as ill).
And finally, wikipedia is more comprehensive than any Britannica, and more accessible than any Britannica (to anyone with an internet connection, for free), and it probably gets used a lot more than any Britannica ever did! Wikipedia probably has more of an ability to propagate inaccuracies by virtue of it generally being better in several ways!
There's more to say about it than this, it would require some actual investigation and research and thinking. I think there's plenty of interesting compare and contrast to be done along those lines beyond just saying "Yeah, but errors in Britannica probably ended up accepted as fact too", although that's probably true and a good start. (I would be interested to hear about an actual example of an inaccuracy or falsehood in Britannica that wound up accepted as true by virtue of inclusion in britannica).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
is it an actual falsehood? it just says also called a Brazilian aardvark, which is true for at least one person in the world and became true for a lot more after reading it. it seems like the name stuck because people liked the name.
It's also more pronounceable and appetizing, like the chilean seabass.
So what. At least with The Internet, Google and Wikipedia, we can see this happening. I would bet money the same sort of thing happened in 1880, the Golden Age of Authority. Some intern at Encyclopedia Britainica slipped in a minor edit, The Time cited it, and then (10 years later) E.B. cites The Times to "prove" the "truth" of the minor edit. This has the stench of old line, mainstream media getting upset about The…
Yep, I think it's important to recognize that, but probably still interesting to compare and contrast that to the age of wikipedia. It isn't just the same. The differences as well as similarities seem interesting, not neccesarily in a 'sky is falling' way, just in an understanding our social world way. While Britannica definitely included plenty of accidental errors, the fact that wikipedia can be edited by anyone pr…
I'm not familiar with the Wikipedia cite policy, but wouldn't this problem be relatively easy to solve by requiring citations from before the fact was added? Granted, there might be some edge cases (like when a Wikipedian was very fast in adding the fact after it became known) but that would seem to stop the feedback loop dead in its tracks.
1. On Day Zero, write a falsehood into a Wikipedia article.
2. Wait for the falsehood to become popular through the process described in this HN story.
3. Delete the falsehood while performing other edits.
4. Wait a few days, making other edits.
5. Add the falsehood. Citations will all precede the day that the fact is added.
To detect this, you'd have to scan all past history for the falsehood for the _first occurrence that precedes all citations_, not an easy task.
If you decide to add a falsehood into a related article, then that complicates matters further. For instance, I once removed a 'fact' that Indira Gandhi (once Prime Minister of India) was named Gandhi for PR reasons. This was in an article on her husband Feroze Gandhi.
> "Taxonomically speaking, this is unfortunate. The coati has no more relation to an aardvark than to any other vertebrate," Being mammals, surely they are more closely related to aardvarks than they are to sparrows, carp, asps and axolotls. Being placental mammals, they are more closely related to aardvarks than they are to kangaroos. Looking into it further, Wikipedia claims that they are both Epitherians, which ma…
The article claims this is an example of a falsehood starting on Wikipedia, percolating to external sources, then perpetuating on Wikipedia because it's in those external sources. That's interesting. But what's more interesting is that this may be an entirely different case: a falsehood starts on Wikipedia, percolates to external sources, and then becomes true because it is pervasive . Then it remains on Wikipedia be…
Actually, the final paragraph of the article directly addresses this point: "Taxonomically speaking, this is unfortunate. The coati has no more relation to an aardvark than to any other vertebrate, so the name is misleading. But language, unlike taxonomy, is particularly susceptible to Wikiality. The nickname began because Breves wanted to retroactively prove that he had seen some kind of aardvark at Iguazu Falls. He…
The article claims this is an example of a falsehood starting on Wikipedia, percolating to external sources, then perpetuating on Wikipedia because it's in those external sources. That's interesting. But what's more interesting is that this may be an entirely different case: a falsehood starts on Wikipedia, percolates to external sources, and then becomes true because it is pervasive . Then it remains on Wikipedia be…
is it an actual falsehood? it just says also called a Brazilian aardvark, which is true for at least one person in the world and became true for a lot more after reading it. it seems like the name stuck because people liked the name.
The "by whom" tag should be added to these unsupported claims. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:By_whom