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Has anyone experienced what a pain in the ass it is to change something on Wikipedia that is innacurate? Many times I have attempted to but it is monitored and my corrections get rejected. Then I have to go through some process of posting on their "sandbox" or whatever to get feedback before having it accepted. Something I don't have time for. Screw the website.

What were the reasons given for the rejections? Do you mind specifying the article you're editing?

I exclusively post inaccuracies on wikipedia and I've never had a problem, most seem to stay for quite some time

I think it depends largely on the topic. Some subjects are very heavily monitored, like stuff related to science and technology, or entries about specific individuals where information is easily verified, etc. but when it comes to subjects like history and politics, Wikipedia is a fucking train wreck, which isn't surprising.

A couple years ago I found a history page on Wikipedia that was basically a list of great military disasters. At the time, that list had only a handful of entries so I did a little research on some of the more obvious ones I was aware of (the Battle of Adrianople, the Battle of Stirling Bridge, Agincourt, the Charge of the Light Brigade, etc.), and added them to the list. Several days later I checked back and they were still there, but my entry on the Battle of Little Bighorn had been edited by an anonymous writer to reflect a decidedly political view. Whoever did the editing had changed it to read something like, "General Custer entered into battle with actual Native American warriors and discovered they were a tougher opponent than the defenseless women and children he was used to slaughtering." Of course I edited it back to the way I'd originally written it. When I checked back again a couple weeks later, I found it had been changed again to reflect a similar political message. Somebody also kept adding an entry for the Iraq War, even though the final outcome of that conflict is still undecided.

So yeah that is another problem with Wikipedia.

The fact that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone is what makes it great and unique, but obviously that comes with a cost. I'm astonished that it's not a complete mess; most articles I've looked at seem very decent. You do have the problem that people can edit to try and make the article reflect their world view, although there is an active community there that strives to keep things neutral (NPOV).

But democracy's always messy.

Wikipedia is far from a democracy.

I like it, but I wouldn't take it seriously for anything more than a brief overview.

Wikipedia is far from a democracy.

It is in the sense that it's not edited by one person, or a few people, but by literally anyone. So there might be millions of editors. How is it not a democracy?

I like it, but I wouldn't take it seriously for anything more than a brief overview.

It can't be trusted as a definitive source, but I've found it to be a good starting point, if nothing else.

ETA: Maybe this is part of the problem (found at the Wikipedia article on democracy):

"The strongest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter."

-Sir Winston Churchill

there's supposedly something on wiki that allows you to see /track what was said by someone...i don't know how effective it is however...

newberry wrote:...democracy's always messy.

Like American "democracy", Wikipedia is not immune to meddling by the corporate oligarchy. Last year, a brilliant hacker from CalTech created a Web application called WikiScanner, which tracks changes to Wikipedia and records the domains from which the edits have been made.

This software brought to light the fact that many corporations, PR firms and political organizations are directly involved in editing Wikipedia pages to present a favorable impression of their organizations and to omit passages that are critical or derogatory, including public information like litigation histories,

http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/

Colonel Panic wrote:

newberry wrote:...democracy's always messy.

Like American "democracy", Wikipedia is not immune to meddling by the corporate oligarchy. Last year, a brilliant hacker from CalTech created a Web application called WikiScanner, which tracks changes to Wikipedia and records the domains from which the edits have been made.

This software brought to light the fact that many corporations, PR firms and political organizations are directly involved in editing Wikipedia pages to present a favorable impression of their organizations and to omit passages that are critical or derogatory, including public information like litigation histories,

Well, the nice thing about Wikipedia, is that you or I can edit the bogus corporate edits, which isn't true of a traditional encyclopedia that has been meddled with by questionable sources. I like the openness of Wikipedia and Wikiscanner.