UK tabloid wrongly blames Wikipedia for US national anthem gaffe at Super Bowl
Performing atthis year's Super Bowl (anAmerican Football game on February 6 that was the most-watched US television program in history), singerChristina Aguilera mixed up the lyrics of the US national anthem, causing boos from the audience and subsequent media outrage.An article by the UK'sDaily Mail claimed on the following day that she had been "singing botched lyrics found on Wikipedia". As proof, the tabloid presented a screenshot showing the wrong lyrics sung by Aguilera in the 23:52, 6 February 2011 (UTC) version of the articleThe Star-Spangled Banner (taken from the diff view of anedit correcting them at 23:59). It claimed "the mistake on the website, as seen hours before the Super Bowl and since fixed by a user, matches the mistake she sang". However, as wasquickly pointed out by Wikipedians,the article's revision history indicates that the wrong lyrics had in fact first beeninserted at 23:51 on February 6, i.e. after Aguilera's performance (in fact the immediately preceding edit at 23:50 consisted ofremoving a statement about the incident).
Several other news publications cited theDaily Mail's claim, includingThe Guardian[1] andThe Age[2]. Wikimedia UK has requested a correction from theDaily Mail.[3]Jimbo Walesremarked: "I wonder how often we link to the Daily Mail as if it is actually a source for anything at all? The number of times we should do so is really quite small – for most things they are just useless".
The New York Times also mentioned Wikipedia inits coverage of the incident, but more correctly, highlighting Wikipedia's timeliness instead of its alleged unreliability: "Aguilera’s flub was heard by tens of millions of viewers. Twitter was immediately abuzz with talk of her mistake, and by the third quarter her Wikipedia page was changed to include the incident."
Students largely unaware of talk pages, version histories, NPOV and verifiability
While 77% of the participants used Wikipedia at least once during the tasks, and most students appeared to know that Wikipedia content "comes from other regular Internet users like them", the study's authors (Ericka Menchen‐Trevino and Eszter Hargittai fromNorthwestern University) observed that
“
... many lacked more detailed information about how the site works. None of the students made any references to Wikipedia policies and editing principals [sic], such as the importance of neutral point of view or verifiability. The respondents also never mentioned discussion pages or an article’s history page as ways to investigate the credibility of content on the site. There was no mention of the concept of Wikipedia editors who are not anonymous but have a documented editing history. Given their lack of mention, there is a good chance that these concepts are not familiar to our respondents.
”
The CHE quoted Menchen-Trevino's "surprise" about these results for members of what is often called the "digital native" generation, and Hargittai as stating that "students learned what they did know about Wikipedia from professors and peers rather than from information available on the site itself", and that many of them increasingly "approach Wikipedia as a search engine."
Briefly
Deletion of programming languages sparks controversy: The deletion of a number of programming language related articles (Nemerle and Alice ML, both of which are currently going throughdeletion review) caused controversy on theprogramming section of Reddit andHacker News. It also prompted the widely read programmerZed Shaw to write a post titled "Wikipedia's Notability Requirements And The Slash", criticizing Wikipedia's deletion policy and calling on people to not donate to the Wikimedia Foundation and to try and fix what he sees as problems with the notability requirements. He also announced that he had registered the domain notnotable.com and suggested using it to host deleted articles (similar toDeletionpedia).
Against demonization of Wikipedia: A comment titled "Wikipedia – not the devil", by the editorial board ofThe Current (a student newspaper atGreen River Community College in the US) objected to "anti-Wikipedia policies" by teachers and lecturers: "It's time to end the rampant misconceptions surrounding the popular collaboratively created encyclopedia known as Wikipedia, and whether it's a citable source of information. It is a qualified source for generalized information – and can be cited as such – but, like any legitimate encyclopedia, it should never be used as a primary source."
Wikipedia compared to Asimov character: A comment inThe Hindu ("An empire without kings") praised Wikipedia as "today's de facto standard for fast and fairly reliable information on the Internet", and compared it to the fictional supercomputerMultivac that answers mankind's questions in Isaac Asimov's science fiction stories.
Wikipedia's deceptions exposed?: Christwire.org published what it describes as aninterview with aConservapedia editor, who accused Wikipedia of deceiving the public, e.g. by hiding the fact that it was "secretly supported by anti-US atheist Muslims" and bydescribing Christwire as a parody site.
Using Wikipedia to drive unflattering images away: In an article onSEO news siteSearch Engine Land, a marketing consultant described how he had successfully used Wikipedia in "updating Google image results for online reputation management" for a model who wanted to remove "unflattering and outdated" photos from the top Google image search results of her name. The process involved securing rights to an image that the client liked, so that it could be donated under a free license, and replacing the existing image in the Wikipedia article (after finding out that "merely taking down the offending image" didn't work).
Wikipedia acknowledged but not cited:Lorcan Dempsey from theOnline Computer Library Centermused that "we still don't appear to know what to make of Wikipedia", describing two cases: First, he noted the mention of Wikipedia in economistEdward Glaeser's new book "Triumph of the city" ("Following common practices, Wikipedia is not listed in the bibliography or citations, because any Wikipedia fact was verified with a more standard source. But I still have a great debt to the anonymous toilers of Wikipedia who made my research much easier at many points in time.") Secondly, he reported that his daughter had been given an assignment in high school to insert errors into Wikipedia (she "had her changes corrected almost straightaway, to the extent that it was not possible to complete the assignment as given. In fact, she ended up being barred from editing pages as her behavior was seen as unacceptable").
Quora and Wikipedia: In an article title "Why Quora Is Not Wikipedia",Sébastien Paquet (professor of Computer Science atUniversité du Québec à Montréal) explained the differences between Wikipedia andQuora, a question-and-answer site that has gained prominence in recent months, by noting Wikipedia's principles against original research and about citing reliable sources. "Wikipedia is past-bound: it offers knowledge of what has been known. ... By contrast to Wikipedia, Quora is not past-bound. It is future-oriented."
"Lorcan Dempsey from the Online Computer Library Center ... reported that his daughter had been given an assignment in high school to insert errors into Wikipedia"
Why the heck would a school give a student an assignment to vandalise Wikipedia? Can we find out the name of the school and chew them out? – ukexpat (talk)13:49, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Unbelievable! What were the students supposed to learn from this? Was the teacher only trying to prove a point? How irresponsible! --Ϫ07:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't the first time I've heard of this sort of thing. And I've seen edit summaries from people whoseriously trashed articles, claiming to be teachers illustrating to their students why Wikipedia Is Bad...aaaaaaugh! -The BushrangerOne ping only09:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Like any hack, this is a test of the robustness of our defense system. Teachers resent Wikipedia, not because it's unreliable (allegedly), but because it makes homework obsolete. Who would actually do their textbook reading when they can just search for the article?Ocaasi (talk)21:19, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't even the first time I have heard of a teacher doing this. It is absolutely unacceptable for a teacher to vandalize Wikipedia. It is deserving of a formal reprimand at the least for severe lack of judgment.Jason Quinn (talk)21:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Remember what you and your classmates were like in high school, then put yourself in the shoes of a teacher trying to help those teenager developcritical thinking skills. Why not have the class attempt to creatively vandalize articles: one would hope that with all of the automated, semi-automated, and manualcounter-vandalism tools at our disposal, a certain percentage of the students would find their changes reverted. Whatever vandalism remains afterward would slowly disappear, but in the meanwhile that class had a hands-on experience that actively demonstrated to them the need for healthy skepticism about what they read online. Sounds like ateachable moment to me.67.100.126.117 (talk)06:23, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Except that's not why they do it. They do it to demonstrate that Wikipedia is unreliable. (The example I mentioned used...rather more colorful language in the edit summary.) It's not anything close to educational, it's pure vandalism for the sake of vandalism - or for the sake of spite. And considering the way high schoolers are, odds are that even agood faith attempt to instill skepticism would only succeed in teaching most of them how to vandalise Wikipedia and that "vandalising Wikipedia is fun and cool". -The BushrangerOne ping only06:41, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I secondThe Bushranger's reply. And regarding, your comment,67.100.126.117, if a teacher cannot think of a better way of explaining how vandalism gets repaired thatactually introducing deliberate factual errors into the encyclopedia, they are a poor teacher.Jason Quinn (talk)23:06, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A "teachable moment"?? Instead wasting time vandalizing to demonstrate how supposedly unreliable Wikipedia is, why not do something more constructive like teaching them how to actually conduct proper research, using all available sources instead of relying on just Wikipedia. I really feel sorry for those kids, to have such a poor teacher as that. --Ϫ11:47, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The comment byThe Bushranger mentions counter-evidence regarding the reported motivation of the teacher. But the follow-on comments seem to demonstrate a lack of understanding about what ateachable moment (TM) is, which could have been avoided if either of them had clicked on the wikilink and read that "It implies "personal engagement" with issues and problems.<ref>Parker-Pope, Tara."It’s Not Discipline, It’s a Teachable Moment,"New York Times. September 15, 2008.</ref>" The engagement is the issue, and having them actually edits articles on topics that interest them fits the definition. If I were the teacher, I would have them do several edits: one with petty vandalism ("teachers sucks!"), another citing a blog entry the student created at the same time and using that blog post as a reference, and a third, legitimate contribution based a cite-worthy reference. I'd expect a bot to take care of the first (TM #1), a semi-automated or manualcounter-vandalism tool would--depending on how clever the student was--have a decent chance of taking care of the second item (TM #2 in either case), and the third would probably stand (barring thosepatrolled by an over-opinionated editor). So if presented in a suitable context by the teacher, I think it fits the definition of teachable moments, and any bogus contributions that survive therunning of the gauntlet provides the student with an engaging lesson about skepticism that is a lot more memorable than a teacher expressing his or her opinion about Wikipedia.72.244.206.125 (talk)01:05, 21 February 2011 (UTC) P.S. Websites like PBS provideclassroom resources online...I wonder ifWikimedia Foundation has classroom resources withinWikiversity or some other project that attempt to educate teachers about thequality assurance processes behind Wikipedia?[reply]
It is not only college students who are largely unaware of the revisions, discussions, and editorial considerations behind the articles. Negative perceptions of Wikipedia in the general public might be very different if there were greater awareness of this information, and awareness of how to use it. Teachers: even if you tell them it is unreliable, your studentsdo use Wikipedia, and theywill use Wikipedia as adults. Teach them how to use it intelligently: Wikipedia contains the tools for its own evaluation. Though one might not expect tabloids to so, one should be able to expect anyhigh school graduate to be able to use this information for critical evaluation. ~Ningauble (talk)16:02, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Epistemological ignorance in reader use of WP—how we can nudge to minimize it
The piece says that most people aren't aware of the history page (and the epistemological insight that it provides). One thing about the usability and UI upgrades that I don't like is that they made the name of the tab longer ("History" changed to "View history") (no need for the extra word as far as I can figure), and, much more annoyingly, they made it so that it's often, by default window-sizing behavior, hidden behind a tiny drop-down spinner arrow that "Mr/Ms Average Epistemologically Dull-witted User" isnever going to click on. At least if the "History" tab was always sitting there in plain sight, with a short label, asking to be clicked on, people would bother to mindlessly wander onto a history page more often, and maybe even learn something about where info comes from and how it's vetted (ie, epistemology). In the words of James Bridle, "Everything should have a history button."And the button should be big and shiny—not tiny and hidden. If we really care about de-idiot-izing Mr/Ms Average Reader about the epistemological guidelines of consuming content from Wikipedia, there's the place to start. And by the way, Wikipedia ismore trustworthy than at least half of the traditional-editorial-mode content out there. The idea that traditional-editorial-mode content, just by being produced by that mode, is likelier to represent Real Truth™ than is WP, is a popular misapprehension—a socially sanctioned fairy tale—in other words, an emperor's-clothes situation that hasn't been properly exposed (heh) yet. About as etically accurate as, say, the idea offan death. — ¾-1015:42, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
