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45 Comments
- vertinox, on 10/12/2007, -2/+103File this under the "NO ***** SHERLOCK!" category. Plagiarism happens on Wiki, but it isn't something that can't be corrected. When you find it and want to get rid of it. Change it yourself and cite copyright violation in your change logs.
Most Wiki admins will thank you for it. - Buddhist, on 10/12/2007, -3/+31Oh, oh my god.
ALL THIS TIME WIKIPEDIA HAS LIED TO ME, I'M SHOCKED AND APPALLED.
I never expected an online site anyone could edit would be the victim of plagiarism. Someone hold me. - nofxjunkee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20I'm glad that Brandt submitted the list to Wikipedia admins so the articles can be corrected. It's an important issue to bring up but it sounds like the Wikipedians have been down this road before and are taking the correct actions. "No *****, sherlock" indeed.
If Brandt was trying to discredit Wikipedia, it seems he actually just showed that plagarism is taken seriously on the wiki. If he was just trying to help then good for him, but I'm pretty skeptical of him having good intentions. - jtjdt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14As he finds them, he should edit them and rectify the situation.
- eean, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Does the article on the Rivers of Gondor need to be peer reviewed?
- Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Even then, how many different ways can you write the definition for "spoon"?
- TroubleInMind, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Agree but isn't there room in the world for both? The kids' teachers tell their students to never use Wikipedia as a source, and that's probably fine. But if you want to quickly learn about something, get an overview that is probably very current, put on your bias blinders and take it for what it's worth, I don't think you can beat it. Just the overview and the links to other resources are worth the visit.
- FuzzyCat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7
...All the stuff I contributed to Wikipedia I got from 'Big Al's Big Book Of The ***** Obvious'. You think they've noticed yet? - blonderengel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Because you'd deprive yourself of the pleasure of harrassing someone else. And you'd get to bitch about something! What's not to like?
- noodlez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7no encyclopedia or reference material is as good as that.
encyclopedias are for reference, not for technical depth. - gpw11, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@jtjdt:
"As he finds them, he should edit them and rectify the situation."
From the Wikipedia entry on Brandt: "Brandt himself has been blocked from editing Wikipedia."
Apparently, he's got a personal grudge with Wikipedia....and Google....and yahoo. With Wikipedia he's upset that someone posted posted a biographical entry of him. He claims that it's an invasion of his privacy (although it's easily arguable that he's a public figure). As for Google and yahoo, he doesn't like how his site was ranked so low in the search results (well, that's my take on it at least). I'm willing to bet he was banned from Wikipedia for constantly purging his information
Whatever, this is a non issue. Jack Thompson has his Take2 and Brandt has his Wikipedia/Google. One of those things we should probably just ignore. - Durrok, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"An equally big problem is people just lifting passages and articles right out of wikipedia - is there any proof that that's not what happened in this case?"
As far as I know anything you write on Wikipedia is public domain and can be used in anything. Your teacher will notice if you copy something straight from Wikipedia btw so make sure you have to ol "But I wrote that entry in wikipedia" defense ready. - Hegemony, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4He can bitch about Wikipedia not being perfect all he wants and I still won't care. Wikipedia has helped me more times than I can count. It's accurate while being free of adds and registration, what more can you ask for?
- espo111, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I tried that once, the word-for-word text was a cut'n'paste from EB online, I changed it, documented it in the discussion log, came back a week later and it was back. someone claimed >I< vandalized the site and put back the plagiarized material.
- ibukisteve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Treat Wikipedia for what it is. A launch pad from which to conduct further research
- adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Do we know it wasn't him that did it?
- brendanc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You pompous ass.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3what a shock :D
- dougmc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2To be fair, the process was very labor intensive, and so he only looked at a few wikipedia pages. The overall percentage is probably much higher than 0.01%.
(And lest anybody label me as anti-wikipedia, I'm not -- I love wikipedia!) - eean, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I used to contribute to Wiktionary daily. I stopped mostly from finding other interests, but one of the reasons I stopped was that there wasn't a real firm consensus that copying and pasting from a copyrighted dictionary was wrong. Every once in a while I would find a user just copying tons of passages from dictionary.com.
I proposed to change the statement on the edit page to be simplifed down and also make it explictly clear that copying and pasting from resources like dictionary.com is wrong. But a couple of years later, it still says "You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!". I don't even know what a "similar free resource" is. Dictionary.com is free isn't it? And some people just don't understand copyright. - mercurysquad, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It's a world-editable Wiki. Why harass the administrators to remove that content when you can do so yourself?
- scott1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3There actually a "long term abuse vandal" who purposely copy's and paste copyrighted content. It's so bad that they have a subpage on him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long_term_abuse/Primetime - D15C1PL3, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Isn't Ironic that by pointing out the duplicated content and notifying Wikipedia he is participating in the very thing that he is criticizing?
- Celeron, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Who the hell cares?
- thatrez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Step 1: Lift Pages From Wikipedia and put on personal Site
Step 2: have Critic Contact you by email notifying you that Wikipeida stole your content and put it on their site....
Step 3: tell critic he's right
Step 4: Wikepedia Removes it's own content
(you thought I was gonna say profit didn't you... what do you think this is....? slashdot!?) - tawker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well, take a look at most other websites..... that's pretty freaking good.
- MechaFenris, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Indeed. Criticism by people who don't have a stake in seeing its demise (for whatever reason, in this case, because the moron wouldn't edit a page... so he decided to sue, IIRC.)
Is Wikipedia the be-all-end-all source for information? No. It's just another one. But its a concept that is scaring the daylights out of people who make money selling public information (the date of the Revolutionary War is not copyrighted... but the packaging is...)
This is indeed another bit of sour grapes as we move from everyone making a dime off things that should be freely available. :) Progress is a bitch. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Can someone explain to me what the deal is with the "wikipedia critics"? Some really pile hate on wikipedia, and I truly don't get what that's about.
- mangi86, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Is anyone else incredibly impressed with Wikipedia that, out of 1,000,000 plus articles, only 142 were found to contain some sort of plagiarism? That is something like .01%, which I think is incredibly good for a source that can be edited by anyone.
- dougmc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2`Most of the studies that have been conducted surrounding Wikipedia have shown response time to inaccurate information to be exceedingly high'
Exceedingly higher than what?
In any event, if your study is done by taking specific articles with flaws and going back to find when the flaw was introduced, then of course this will be heavily skewed towards long-term flaws -- if a flaw only takes an hour to be corrected, the odds are that you won't be looking at that article during that specific hour to see the flaw. If the flaw was there for two years, then it's much more likely that you'll see it.
I've seen some of these studies, and they seem to only look at the current version of an article. If they wanted to really be fair, they'd need to look at the entire history of the article and check that for flaws, and then see how long they took to be corrected (if the were corrected, of course.) They'd probably find a much smaller average time period for flaws to be corrected.
Or if you want, take a specific page, and add something absurdly wrong, and see how long it takes to be corrected. My guess is that it'll usually be corrected within an hour -- probably often within minutes.
But as a general rule of thumb, if somebody finds a flaw, it's corrected. Of course, actually finding the flaw in the first place is the hard part. - ki85squared, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2So... You think the educated are stupid? >.>
- Wolfrider, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Most of the studies that have been conducted surrounding Wikipedia have shown response time to inaccurate information to be exceedingly high. Wikipedia is constantly evolving as an information source and there are always going to be problems with it, but those problems, thanks to a diligent and hard working community will be solved.
I find it interesting that people automatically assume that closed system information distribution isn't prone to errors. Remember that 9 year old who discovered over a dozen errors in Encyclopedia Britannica? Or how about that famous prank paper that was submitted to an academic journal (and published) that claimed that mathematics is inherently feminist.
There seems to be a tendency for Wikipedia to be criticized most heavily by those in the business of charging people to participate in the knowledge generated by their own culture. Has anyone seen the price of EB or of a subscription to an academic journal? Get real. Free, community generated information distribution is where it's at. Either get on board and better the process or become obsolete. Sour grapes much? - dattaway, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Its not about verbatim copying of so many possibilities. Everything evolves. Its not how many ways that can possibly define a "spoon" but to give the latest perceived value that a spoon has in our lives. Don't worry about what you are confident in contributing to be an exact match of an established authority that may be outdated. The definitions for everything around us changes each year as society evolves.
Last year a spoon might have been a small handheld cupped food delivery device. This year more attention to improved manufacturing techniques, including stronger metal alloys and new sleek comfort may be more known. Sure the chances of an exact definition may collide sometimes, but so does winning the lottery. - blacklint, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I wonder what would happen if Wikipedia was run through turnitin.com (aka the plagiarism detection service that high schoolers now have to give their papers to before getting them graded)...
- bryceman111, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Oh weird, nevermind, it is all ok.
"Is Yahoo! News down? I cannot access it!" - hhOwArdrOarKk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1My joke was clearly misunderstood. I meant only to make a self deprecating remark. Essentially saying that I am idiot and wish to learn nothing.
From my point of view, my being dugg down, seems to me as if you are upset with me for being so hard on myself. - Mejogid, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6An equally big problem is people just lifting passages and articles right out of wikipedia - is there any proof that that's not what happened in this case?
- IQ70, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Oh I completely agree about it being useful. I have used wikipedia so many times just to look up something. I also look at the Britannica World Book in the library and let out a chuckle cause as a kid I always wanted it and now I realize that Wikipedia has completely replaced it.
Yet I still know that there are a lot of articles that are vandalized, purposely misfed with disinformation. As Wikipedia grows, it will attract even more number of people who are professional history re-writers (think Bush admin and its many attempts at rewriting facts). Spreading FUD is very very easy with a medium like Wikipedia whereas a book once published can always be looked up even 100 years later. This non-permanent nature of Wikipedia is its main strength and main weakness. - dougmc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think he was considering that as part of his way of detecting plagerism, but there was some problem with it. I'd have to read the article again (or was it in another article, or a web log somewhere?) to be sure.
- Cymrubeats, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Wikiplagia
- Jammerdelray, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Wikipedia is great but the potential for abuse is even greater
- MartyMcFly713, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1wow who didn't see that coming?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Perhaps his surname is 'Bush'.
- hhOwArdrOarKk, on 10/12/2007, -12/+2Wikipedia can only harm those who either want, or need to learn something. Two classifications of society I thankfully bear no relation to.
- IQ70, on 10/12/2007, -22/+7Wikipedia is good but it will never be as good as a peer reviewed closed-ended monogram on a topic.
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