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Could ``Bicholim Conflict'' have been a potential Mountweazel for Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry
What? How is 'wikipedia consulting firm' a thing?
>...William Beutler, president of Beutler Wiki Relations, a Wikipedia consulting firm, told Yahoo News. What? How is 'wikipedia consulting firm' a thing?
The article talks about an admittedly little-known clash between India and Portugal in the 1600's where there was little damage or historical consequence after. It's like an island in the ocean of wikipedia, rather than a new island inserted into a river that people pass by every day.
It'd be much harder to make up something about a little known clash between Germany and Canada during World War 2 because so many experts on WW2 exist.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Of course the message is that you can sometimes destroy the value of a large asset or strength with a small act. The trick is that if anyone ate the grain it was unlikely they would get sick, but if someone did get the tainted grains they would get very very sick and possibly die. Wikipedia lives and dies by who is willing to use it as a source of information, and once that source it tainted "enough" the bit flips and nobody uses it.
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…
It did fail featured article review because it was missing page numbers. I can hope that if the hoaxer had then provided fictitious page numbers, someone would have looked for the sources.
>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.
It'll be listed on the talk page, though obviously that doesn't help the average visitor. (Though, the average visitor probably wouldn't notice the good article badge in the first place.)
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…
Going through various commitee groups on Wikpedia to get this compromise did not seem like a good use of my time
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…
However, even "professional" journalists have become so sloppy these days that it's likely that the printed source used Wikipedia as the basis for its information.
Could ``Bicholim Conflict'' have been a potential Mountweazel for Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry
That, I think, is the greatest contribution that Wikipedia has made - it requires people to cite their sources, before they get any credibility; and even then, there is always some doubt.