This issue of the Skeptical Adversaria features a critical article on Wikipedia by Ed Buckner (page 2) in which he ends by advising sceptics not to edit Wikipedia. There may be readers who contribute, or have contributed, to Wikipedia and who would like to present their own views on this important topic. If you are one such reader you are very welcome to have your views aired in the next issue of the newsletter.

What's a sceptic (skeptic?)?

What's a sceptic (skeptic?)?

Wikipedia by Ed Buckner
Wikipedia is an extraordinary idea: an internet encyclopedia that ‘anyone can edit’. It is based on a principle (‘crowdsourcing’) first articulated in 1906 when Francis Galton discovered that the crowd at a country fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their guesses were averaged. The average was closer to the true weight than the estimate of any member of the crowd, including expert estimates. According to the principle, a crowd of anonymous people editing Wikipedia will produce a reference work that is closer to the truth than the work of any individual editor; closer even than the work of any expert on the subject.

Unfortunately the principle of crowdsourcing has not really worked for Wikipedia, for a number of reasons that sceptics, and all those who care about the scientific method, should be concerned about. Everyone at the country fair had an interest in guessing the weight of the ox correctly. Not everyone who edits Wikipedia has an interest in getting the facts right. This leads to a systematic bias on Wikipedia against scientific neutrality.

I shall briefly talk about the kind of article which is vulnerable to this bias, and give some reasons why it exists at all.

[...] An article in Wikipedia is almost certain to be the first result in a search on an internet search engine such as ‘Google’. [...] Those who promote ‘alternative’ theories of reality on Wikipedia do this nearly always because they are the main proponents of the theory, or because they have a financial interest in promoting it. [...]there is an inherent conflict of interest in the principle of ‘anyone can edit’ and ‘anyone can make their point of view public to everyone on the Internet’. A fringe editor has a strong reward in seeing their biased advertising in full public view. The reward for the sceptic is for no one to see it, and so their contribution is entirely invisible. Since there is no reward system in Wikipedia for enforcing neutrality - editors are anonymous and unpaid and receive no official recognition for their efforts - there is a flaw in the whole ‘compensation system’.

[...] ... design flaw in Wikipedia itself. Accounts are anonymous, and although it is prohibited, there is nothing to stop an individual from creating as many different accounts as they want. The use of alternative accounts or ‘sockpuppets’ is widespread. Anyone caught playing dirty will be blocked by an administrator, unless they have influence in the Wikipedia administration itself. [...] Regular battles in the rank and file are mirrored by intense secret battles in the administration, including the powerful ‘arbitration committee’, who are the final court of appeal.

People used to talk about the ‘military-industrial complex’ in the 1960s. Now there is the ‘Google-Wikipedia complex’. Search for ‘Integral Theory’ in Google, and a number of sponsored links appear at the top and at the side, together with thousands of links in the body of the search. These are advertising cures for all kinds of ailments - mental, bodily and spiritual. How do I know whether these cures are reliable, and that their purveyors are reputable? Well, first among these stands the Wikipedia article on Integral Theory. It has some sort of reputation among the public as a reliable source. They do not realise that Wikipedia is just another advertisement.

What's a sceptic (skeptic?)?

I have just had an article about Wikipedia published in the Spring 2001 edition of Skeptical Adversaria.

A recognised (or 'recognized') alternative spelling of 'skeptic', Greg. There is little you will have not already heard from me on this forum.

there are also problems caused by "skeptics" on fringe and pseudoscience topics, because *some* of the most ardent skeptics are also ideologically driven hacks who worship members of the skeptical community as if they were cult leaders. What Wikipedia needs are more experts editing topics they have expertise in. If these experts are also "skeptics" great. The problem is that skeptics are often not experts, just editors who think they are doing the Lord's work by debunking fringe theorists. In some areas they may be doing a good job of keeping entries neutral and reliable by simply parroting the work of professional skeptics, and at other times that is not the case. For instance, the American skeptical community's POV on NRMs is completely out of wack from mainstream social science. It is important to recognize that the skeptical community has its own ideology, and that this ideology is not always the most scientific.

‘skeptical heroes’: prominent thinkers who have achieved such a high status in the skeptical community that many other skeptics (who may not be expert in the disciplines in question) hesitate to criticise their ideas and may indeed become offended when they are criticised. I noted that some of these thinkers are – interestingly – best known for their opposition not to obviously ‘fringe’ thought but to currently popular mainstream ideas – especially ideas such as ‘global warming’ which some believe have been embraced too readily for non-scholarly reasons.

How do you pronounce it? Like "sceptre", or like "sky"?

Wikipedia is an extraordinary idea: an internet encyclopedia that ‘anyone can edit’. It is based on a principle (‘crowdsourcing’) first articulated in 1906 when Francis Galton discovered that the crowd at a country fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their guesses were averaged.

Apologies, the article has already been placed on the web - I didn't know this. You can read it here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5532250/newsletter%202011-1.pdf.

Heh, looks like we've all been very well played. I should have caught it earlier, but it's not like I know Wikipedia Review inside and out. That article in the Skeptical Adversaria was written by Peter Damian. SilverserenC 19:13, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=424701363

More idiocy



(1) It's a Wikipedia offence to 'out' editors, even if they are banned. You could be banned yourself for doing that.

Iridescent reverted it anyways. I don't consider it outing when you explicitly state it here anyways, but whatever.

I think your personal opinion about Wikipedia makes you more biased than the next person. I never said you were wrong, it's just that your article should be taken with a grain of salt.

Because you've stated them before? Practically everyone here has?

Are you saying that you do not have a negative opinion of Wikipedia, which makes a review of Wikipedia by you more biased than a review by a random sociologist (for example)?

Do you have a neutral opinion of Wikipedia? No major feelings one way or the other?

Edit: People can arrive at any conclusion that they wish to. Yours is likely because of your own personal bad experiences with Wikipedia, which is perhaps not felt by the next person.

Again, I never said your specific comments about articles were incorrect. However, your major conclusions about Wikipedia have the possibility of being biased. And I really find it hard to believe that you don't have a negative view of Wikipedia.

Heh, looks like we've all been very well played. I should have caught it earlier, but it's not like I know Wikipedia Review inside and out. That article in the Skeptical Adversaria was written by Peter Damian. SilverserenC 19:13, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=424701363

Are you saying that you do not have a negative opinion of Wikipedia, which makes a review of Wikipedia by you more biased than a review by a random sociologist (for example)? Do you have a neutral opinion of Wikipedia? No major feelings one way or the other?

Edit: People can arrive at any conclusion that they wish to. Yours is likely because of your own personal bad experiences with Wikipedia, which is perhaps not felt by the next person.

Again, I never said your specific comments about articles were incorrect. However, your major conclusions about Wikipedia have the possibility of being biased. And I really find it hard to believe that you don't have a negative view of Wikipedia.

Having a negative opinion of something and then writing a critique about it would, yes, mean that you are biased or, at the very least, less credence should be given to the critique than to one by someone who is uninvolved with the subject doing a study.

Again, I never said your specific comments about articles were incorrect. However, your major conclusions about Wikipedia have the possibility of being biased. And I really find it hard to believe that you don't have a negative view of Wikipedia.

Having a negative opinion of something and then writing a critique about it would, yes, mean that you are biased or, at the very least, less credence should be given to the critique than to one by someone who is uninvolved with the subject doing a study.

I think your personal opinion about Wikipedia makes you more biased than the next person. I never said you were wrong, it's just that your article should be taken with a grain of salt.

The kitten, however, will always remember you shoved a cold glass thermometer up his ass.

Does that principle still work? What do you say that we all try to pitch in and guess Newyorkbrad's weight?

The kitten, however, will always remember you shoved a cold glass thermometer up his ass.

Those administrators who police for the use of sock accounts use sophisticated surveillance techniques that match IP addresses, behaviour, telltale signs such as edit commentary and so on.

So far as I know, the checkuser software itself is remarkably unsophisticated. As for the "surveillance techniques", there may be some shared knowledge of identifying sockpuppets through checkuser, but my suspicion is that, short of technical means, admins and checkusers are largely on their own when it comes to determining who is and who is not a sockpuppet. Having been on the receiving end of sockpuppet blocks, you may have reason to believe otherwise, but stories I've seen here about false positives lead me to believe that smelling out sockpuppets is much more of a black art than a science.

"You're lucky to have me at all, Captain Peacock. I had to thaw me pussy out before I came. It had been out all night."

Checkuser reports your IP and useragent, both of which are easy enough to change. It can't find more; if there were ways of doing so, it would. Beyond that, all is smoke, mirrors and "finely honed linguistic skills". Basically, if someone doesn't like you, you'll be branded a sock.

Dame Edna?

Mrs. Slocombe from "Are You Being Served?". Does no one watch PBS's Brit Com re-runs anymore?!Kids these days with their fancy Hulus!

It is a little more sophisticated than that! There is a fairly simple algorithm they use that indicates which side of the the keyboard is used more fluently when editing, thus indicating which side of the brain is more adept, which in turn indicates if the user is likely to be male or female - although left handed persons of either sex tend to bring up false positives (thus needing a quick review of whether they have "sinister" userboxes on their Userpage, for instance). It is to the chagrin of the CU community that they have not found a way to use this marker for uncovering sockpuppets, but they keep doing the checks anyway for the lulz.

It is a little more sophisticated than that!

I'm interested in this to put it mildly: on Saturday I became one of the seven Directors of Wikimedia UK. I'm concerned at the possibility that ASKE is spreading information which is the opposite of the facts. Who wrote the article and does it really tell people not to edit? That seems a bizarre. The implication, as Doug rightly says, is that we should leave the articles to people who will push a quite different view. How different from the view of, say, Cancer Research UK or the Association for Psychological Science.

I'm happy to do an interview for a correction piece.

It is a little more sophisticated than that! There is a fairly simple algorithm they use that indicates which side of the the keyboard is used more fluently when editing, thus indicating which side of the brain is more adept, which in turn indicates if the user is likely to be male or female - although left handed persons of either sex tend to bring up false positives (thus needing a quick review of whether they have "sinister" userboxes on their Userpage, for instance). It is to the chagrin of the CU community that they have not found a way to use this marker for uncovering sockpuppets, but they keep doing the checks anyway for the lulz.

It is possible for a website to identify you with much more than a user agent string, especially if you have javascript enabled. Visit the EFF to see what your browser fingerprint looks like. It may be unique compared to the 1.5 million recorded so far.

http://panopticlick.eff.org/

Antagonists to the Church of Scientology are declared by the church to be “antisocial personalities“, Potential Trouble Sources (PTS), or Suppressive Persons (SPs). The Church of Scientology teaches that association with such persons impedes one’s progress along the Bridge to Total Freedom.

In a Hubbard Communication Office Bulletin (the official policy of the Church of Scientology), L. Ron Hubbard sets out the doctrine that by being connected to Suppressive Persons, a Scientologist could become a Potential Trouble Source (PTS)1]

Poulter writes here http://biasandbelief.wordpress.com/2008/02...in-scientology/ about some text he added to Wikipedia saying



I wonder how is that different that is from saying things like this http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=424908987 (unfortunately now deleted), on the lines of 'this person is not in good standing with Wikipedia and therefore any of their views are to be ignored or discounted'? This happened twice. Admittedly Poulter was not responsible for either.

I'm not sure who I find more frightening, the Scientologists or people like Poulter who have made it their life's mission to obsess over the downfall of the organization. In the grand scheme of things, the harm caused by Scientology is pretty minuscule. There are much more important problems to fuss over.

Apologies, the article has already been placed on the web - I didn't know this. You can read it here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5532250/newsletter%202011-1.pdf.