As I’ve written before, I like wikipedia a lot. I link to it often.
And it’s getting very big:
Reuters.com: “The Wikipedia, which has surged this year to become the most popular reference site on the Web, is fast overtaking several major news sites as the place where people swarm for context on breaking events.” (Steve Rubel on a Reuters article)
But the free and open editing system can be ugly at times, and tonight I saw something very ugly.
I saw the movie Ray today and really enjoyed learning more about Ray Charles’ life. After the movie I sat down at my laptop and looked him up on Wikipedia (and fired up the iPod to listen to more of his music). The Wikipedia Ray Charles entry is quite good, informative and interesting. But as I read further, I saw the following:
Note the last word in the image above - possibly the most vile and hateful word in our language.
Since anyone, ANYONE, can edit wikipedia (I’ve written entries myself), there are no real-time controls on this kind of abuse. It’s the beauty of Wikipedia, and its most often heard criticism.
My first question is, how can someone smart enough to use a computer and edit a wiki be so ignorant as to write something so horrible?
My second question is, what, if anything, can Wikipedia do to stop these kinds of things from happening and yet retain the complete editorial openness that they have today? Wikipedia recently announced that they will be experimenting with new editorial rules to stop things like this. Maybe this will help.
I think one thing they should consider is a simple dictionary filter of questionable words…and freeze those edits until someone can review them. Character recognition technology is advanced enough now that this will work for words in images too.
Some good news - the entry was amended and the word removed in the time it took me to write this post (I just checked). Good. Maybe I just came accross it during the few minutes (I hope) that it was up on the site.
You know what I don’t get? you could have edited that entry yourself. instead you chose to write about it in your blog, and wait for someone else to actually act. would you call it typical “web 2.0″ behavior?
It’s a good point and I should have done that. The fact is that even though I know in the back of my mind that I could edit it out, it didn’t even occur to me.
I’m hoping that by writing about it and making a suggestion I can help prevent this in the future.
Thanks, Michael.
We all encounter hatred and malice far too often. There are real problems in America and around the world, but I’m confident things are getting better. We can see how drastically things have changed in only the last few decades. There will always be some who believe themselves to be superior, or others to be inferior. I hope, and believe, that things will get better.
Your post is a little naive, Michael. The sad fact is that there are a lot of otherwise intelligent people out there that believe in some very ignorant things. One can search Google/Yahoo, if so inclined, and find hate sites on just about every group of people. The people who run these sites, and the people who visit them, are smart enough to edit wikis.
I like your idea of filters, and I also like the idea of implementing some kind of trust system, but I think as long as Wikipedia is open they will have problems with vandalism. The good news is, as you provided an example of, that there are many dedicated people out there looking for and fixing these defacements. The defacements I have seen have been fixed within a couple of minutes of being posted.
Free and open editing was necessary to bring Wikipedia to where it is today. However, today and in the future it will mean more & more problems for Wikipedia as a source of facts. I think Wikipedia should allow creation of new articles and editing of stubs by anyone. But well written articles should only be edited by registered users. Anonymous users should be able to suggest changes to the article which administrators must approve.
Mike, Have you seen any movies or listened to any hip hop in the last 10 years?
Wikipedia vandalism really is pathetic. Your post makes me think twice about recommending Wikipedia to others as a great reference - at least people with kids!
Nivi, I’m not sure what your point is - language in movies and music is a whole other ball game! Are you saying that the word used above is not a big deal?
I’ve heard Jimmy Wales speak about Wikipedia several times. He’s said that at any given time, an entry on the site could be wrong / vandalized, but the average time to fix an entry is something silly–like under five minutes.
Kareem
Oh yeah, I meant to mention that I put a warning on the IP address that performed the vandalism. This is the action you should take - IP addresses can be blocked if there are repeat attempts to vandalize. See also Wikipedia:Vandalism.
Nivi, your comments are always insightful and intelligent. Thank you.
Yeah Michael could have fixied it himself - what he was doing was bringing attention to the fact that we might just be relying on Wikpedia too much.
Michael, Wikipedia should have a feature requiring that some other user approves changes before they are posted. In other words, someone could makes a proposed change and it would be posted to a “changes” area (the opposite of “change history,” sort of like a “proposed future change”). Then, when someone comes along to read the entry, they can be asked to approve the proposed change. There could be some technical rule that prevents the same IP address from making the change to prevent self-approval, etc.
Michael,
I run a couple of wikis and have to deal with spam and general absurdity from time-to-time. Two observations:
* You can subscribe to RSS feeds of changes, and I think most wikis support RSS feeds for specific pages. So people can protect their “pet articles” by keeping track of changes. I expect that’s why problems are fixed so quickly. Unfortunately, the display of diffs usually sucks.
* In the spirit of open-ness that propels wikis forward, I like the idea that anyone can freely edit because it also means fixes happen straightaway. What I’d really like is a display mechanism to highlight recent changes, which one would then treat with more caution. And, by highlighting those changes, would also encourage people to fix such errors faster.
Come to think of it, why base recency on time? Why not instead base it on eyeballs? e.g. Mark as “Under Review” any items that have been viewed by less than 1000 unique clients.
I wonder whether Wikipedia needs some sort of registration/reputation system, a la eBay. Idea would be that not only would you need to register, but that your reputation/credibility as someone who contributes to Wikipedia is rated by your peers.
Feels like a registration process by itself (like that of Yahoo! Mail) also raises the hurdle for someone to perhaps think twice before choosing to spam or vandalize a post.
Leverage this with Gary’s idea of a ‘peer review’ process, and maybe, just maybe, you get a community driven solution to the problem, while at the same time creating a reputation/credibility mechanism that helps readers better evaluate the integrity of what they are reading.
It seems like a piece of wiki-vandalism. Everyone uses a computer now days, it doesn’t take much intelligence to edit a post, so ofcourse, some idiot might come up and vandalise it. I guess maybe they could filter out some cuss words, but that borders on censorship. I thought for wikipaedia u had to create an account, and if you abuse the account your IP gets banned?
Compare the internet to a library and Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Britannica. It comes down to a lack of editorial control which means that you can have no confidence in what you read on a site like Wikipedia. I just updated a listing on Stephen Stills to say that he released a reasonably good album last year;, but what do I know - I could just have easily have slandered him. Relying on people’s good faith doth not a sustainable editorial policy make.
LOL yes, I think we can all agree wiki vandalism is very funny, when its done intelligently…saldy I don’t see enough of it, as its ofte corrected too quickly.
You are not very intelllagent. Is Wikipedia your god. you want everything for free? Go find a different source for news. The vandalism is the best thing about wikipedia