So I'm supposed to be updating an article for the Encyclopedia of Life Sciences. The article is about a certain class of protein domain. After a look through PubMed I googled $PROTEIN_DOMAIN for literary inspiration and realized that $PROTEIN_DOMAIN has a Wikipedia article all to itself.
Oh dear.
I knew Wikipedia was a bit suspect, and laughed out loud at the spoof published in The Register. But now I'm in a position to actually know something about a Wikipedia entry, I'm shocked. The first two sentences, if not actually wrong, are viciously misleading. The first paragraph concludes with another howler. I gave up at that point, except to note how mercifully short the article is and that the author has written another crappy article and re-used the same figure.
The really disturbing thing is that many, many Google searches come up with a Wikipedia article in the first couple of hits. This has distressing implications. I am moved, therefore, to send a friendly warning to Cagéd readers: I am on the Honours Assessment panel this year. Students in the Cage thinking of using Wikipedia as a reference tool should familiarize themselves with the phrase excretus est ex altitudine. Always, always check your sources.
Mind you, in my quest for inspiration I find that some of the more 'learned' websites make similar errors, which is rather disturbing. I'm sure we've all got examples of textbook howlers: Please feel free to post some in the comments. I think I'm in need of a good laugh.
(I see that ACPatriot has been here before me. I wonder if I'm going to be called snooty and arrogant, too; just for wanting things to be correct? And how can http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_of_Life_Sciences get away without being flagged as a 'stub'?)
Comments
I remember that moment of shock, which I also had not long ago, when one's comfortable general 'knowledge' that Wikipedia is not to be trusted was supplanted by the horrible specific reality, in an item about which I knew a great deal more than the person who had written it, and in which I spotted three mistakes in the first sentence. I'm hoping this will keep happening often enough for me not to get careless.
Posted by: Pavlov's Cat | March 14, 2007 02:27 PM
To your point:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/15/tom_melly_wikipedia_comment/
Posted by: Nige | March 17, 2007 12:05 AM
Um, you know the whole point is for folks like yourself to login and correct it, right? I mean, I appreciate that you guys have got wages to earn, and the people who have the time to contribute to Wikipedia are probably students on grants, but... you see the bind we're in?
Posted by: Ms .45 | April 7, 2007 02:41 PM
It's not so much the inaccuracies that bug me, as the authority with which it has been endowed.
That, and the bloody google thing.
Posted by: BK | April 7, 2007 03:43 PM
Um, you know the whole point is for folks like yourself to login and correct it, right? I mean, I appreciate that you guys have got wages to earn, and the people who have the time to contribute to Wikipedia are probably students on grants, but... you see the bind we're in?
Yeah, I keep hearing that from the wikizombies. I corrected a few articles, and they got gnawed back to brainlessness within a few days. What's the point? The place is founded on an anti-expert philosophy, so why be surprised when the experts you rejected aren't interested in pulling your chestnuts out of the fire?
Wikipedia is little more than a MySpace for powears now, with the in-crowd circle-jerking each other and giving out wikipoints for quantity and maximum nit-pickiness and rigidity of rulesmongering.
Posted by: Ian | May 29, 2007 08:28 AM