Yeah, this is a big problem with less rigorously covered subjects. If you think of Wikipedia as a summary of existing sources on a subject (which is what it aspires to be), and the existing sources suck, then the summary, by transitivity, also sucks. But there's not much that can be done about that within the scope of the mission, defined in that way. If you instead think of Wikipedia as a compendium of true information on all subjects, the problem gets much harder: then it would aspire not only to summarize all information ever produced, but also to vet all that information for accuracy, correct anything incorrect published in any academic field or in the popular press, and fill in gaps where the third-party sources are lacking entirely [1] ... plus convince people that these corrections, despite no citations, are true. I think that is better tackled in separate projects: one project (Wikipedia) to summarize the existing state of writing, and different projects to improve it in specific fields, e.g. a project to improve documentation of 20th-century punk rock, or to document the history of open-source software.
Wikipedia has, though, tried to cautiously make a few exceptions to what counts as a citation to address some of the more specific problems relating to individuals. Personal blogs are not generally considered published sources, but are acceptable sources for the specific case of summarizing what the person who writes the blog themselves thinks about a subject, in cases where that's relevant [2]. This is used most commonly to cover the "subject's side", e.g. if there is an article about someone that includes negative information, and that person has responded on their own blog, but hasn't managed to get a newspaper to publish their rebuttal, Wikipedia will still cite the rebuttal. I guess that's along the lines of asking your sisters to make an unambiguous statement somewhere about your existence.
The questionable reliability of news articles also means that they tend only to be treated as acceptable sources for newer things. If you're writing about WW1, it's frowned on to directly cite New York Times articles on the conflict, because some of them were wrong in hindsight, and we now have much better books and journal articles written about it, which have done all the legwork of reading through the newspaper archives and assessing their reliability. At this point, making a new argument about the conflict based solely on previously-unnoticed news articles is original research that ought to be submitted to a journal, and only to Wikipedia if it's accepted by the historical community first (this is not purely hypothetical with WW2, where people really do try to come up with novel interpretations of the Holocaust based on a new reading of old newspaper archives). Alas, for newer stuff there's often no such alternative, short of just not covering the subject at all, so newspaper articles are accepted on something like the Syrian civil war, because they haven't yet been superseded by anything better.
One thing that's interesting to me is that some of this source-evaluation difficulty would be simplified if they had applied some of the same rules as Wikipedia. Sometimes I will cite a New York Times obituary for an article, because it contains a bunch of facts about a person conveniently collated. But then I wonder: where did the NYT obituary author get this information? Is it based on solid first-hand research? Summarizing old NYT articles? Cribbing info from Encyclopedia Britannica? It would be nice to know!
A problem is that it's not necessarily more accurate. What Wikipedia wants to be, and which I think is valuable (though it's not the only valuable thing) is a summary of the best published information on any given subject, with references to that published information backing it up. So if I read a Wikipedia article on, say, Treblinka, I expect to get a summary of what historians think happened there, with references to where they say so. Where they don't agree or are unsure, I'd like a neutral explanation of any significant areas of uncertainty or historiographical dispute (with citations to the relevant sides), etc. I really don't expect to get a personal recollection by one Wikipedia editor's grandfather of what happened there... especially if that recollection contains information that isn't consistent with what's written in the mainstream histories.
It's possible that the recollection may sometimes actually be better than the mainstream histories, though in such a well-studied subject as WW2 concentration camps I think the odds are fairly low. But in either case I think that's a job for someone other than Wikipedia: Wikipedia's job is to summarize the current historical understanding. Revising the current historical understanding in light of new information or arguments is a different and very large job in itself.
I am increasingly critical of Wikipedia's project, and not just in terms of its observed gender balance. The standard of "objectivity by media citation" breaks down for many fields of study: For one example, there are many criticisms of Wiki history in /r/AskHistorians. [0] [1] [2]
My source is picking up a physical encyclopedia and realizing that it's far less biased and far more comprehensive than Wikipedia. And the experience of knowing much about a topic and reading a Wikipedia article that's obviously biased and written from a particular contemporary 21st century viewpoint.
Wikipedia's obsession with "respected sources" is a part of its problem. Instead of evaluating claims independently, it offloads that responsibility to organizations that are known to have made mistakes. This is basic epistemological problem and one that Wikipedia doesn't seem to care about solving. It's honestly laughable to me that people can look at this list and call some of these reliable sources:
Beyond that, I have never seen any of these studies explicitly analyze omission as the key differentiator. As I said above, this is really the fundamental problem with Wikipedia. It doesn't aim to be comprehensive and cover all potential aspects and opinions on an issue, it aims to push a certain worldview and dismiss or ignore other ones.
This is perhaps not surprising, as every source of information is going to be biased, but I have to push back on the frequent insistence that Wikipedia is somehow neutral or beyond these criticisms.
The Wikipedia project has been explaining for over a decade what the problems are here. Meanwhile, writing a "well-cited article" about ones "personal exploits" isn't actually a problem: if you have reliable sources, you can defend an article on Wikipedia easily.
That Wikipedia article reflects some of the worst problems of biased sourcing on Wikipedia. (I say this as a Wikipedian who tries to fix those problems.)
Part of the problem is that philosophically, Wikipedia wants to pretend that contributors are "thin" interfaces for pure knowledge. That there is a well-defined set of "reliable sources" and all contributors have to do is summarize and create hyperlinks to them.
Not surprising given the ~Objectivist philosophies of its creators.
Wikipedia avoids original research which in practice severely limits it’s accuracy. At best it’s an imperfect copy of whatever the original source was before adding its own slant and errors.
So when the sources contain inaccurate information then Wikipedia does so as well. I don't see how that is a good thing people view Wikipedia as the online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica which was curated by experts. Wikipedia should strive for the truth since finding truthful and factual information is becoming increasingly more difficult online.
My experience with Wikipedia has been hit or miss. Sometimes I'll find an older article and fix it up a bit and it will stay. Other times I get my edit reverted by an over zealous neck beard who can't handle being wrong on the internet. I don't have the time to battle these types of people. This is what sunk, "Wikipedia is not a creditable source" into my brain.
I like Wikipedia as a project, but feel they're done a really poor job of telling people:
> It looks like you're selecting something from Wikipedia! Remember, Wikipedia isn't a source - cite the source Wikipedia uses instead, and don't cite unsourced information at all!
This is hardly the only problem with Wikipedia, the assumed infallibility of sources is one I've run into several times before.
I've seen some pretty bad faith editors justify their edits by dumping piles of sources that were flat out wrong or using suspect sources to push some sort of political bias.
Not to mention editors adding crappy sources in good faith, or the classic xkcd citogenesis phenomenon.
I'm not sure that's a Wikipedia problem, as opposed to a general sources problem. Wikipedia at least often shows proponents and critics of a given idea, while the average source just presents its own position and doesn't provide any sort of context. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "legitimate source", I don't think I've ever seen one. Often an old book has more bias and inaccuracies in it than a blog post. I recall reading a discussion on how The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire is no longer perceived as accurate, and few people will call that an illegitimate source. Information is hard.
All Wikipedia does half the time is reference such sources, so it's about as biased as the sources are, except it tends to combine them, and there's nothing forcing it to do so in a way that represents the true balance. That's up to the content editors. The only thing I can suggest is, if you see a problem, try to correct it.
Also, pretty much every page these days has a warning on it.
Wikipedia is great for basic coverage of a fairly broad range of topics, such as physics, psychology, linguistics, religion, biology, computer science, etc. As long as you're sticking to information that's mostly perceived as fact, as opposed to opinion. I have yet to find a source that rivals Wikipedia in this regard. Wikipedia had a huge, huge influence on information transfer for many people, I think we forgot how big of a deal it is because it's been around for so long. It's absolutely invaluable to many people.
I don't believe it's Wikipedia's job to identify answers to opinionated stances, so don't expect it to be "accurate" on things like controversial history, politics, design, etc. Those things are usually not covered accurately by anyone.
> The standard of "objectivity by media citation" breaks down for many fields of study
To me, this isn't a problem with Wikipedia specifically, its a known feature of tertiary sources. (And its really not specific to any particular field of study, its true everywhere; its one reason that, when I was in secondary school, encyclopedias were considered a useful research tool in much the same like, say, a very heavily annotated general-purpose bibliography with a subject-matter organization, but not citable directly for information (except in the case where the information was the fact that something was presented in a certain way in the encyclopedia in question.)
> For one example, there are many criticisms of Wiki history in /r/AskHistorians.
I'd be surprised if there is any publication concerning history which would not have many criticism if you asked a wide and diverse group of historians about it.
Sure, but a reputable source actively tries to mitigate bias. Not to mention, Wikipedia is supposed to be a repository of factual information as opposed to news publications that often deliberately focus on their own opinions rather than facts - not that editorials are inherently bad, just that news publications are distinct from encyclopedias.
> Wikipedia is an excellent source about many topics, and a mediocre source about many other topics.
Wikipedia is a moving target, so it could be a terrible source on a topic for the hour you're looking at it, and much better at other times. Trouble is, those other times don't do you any good. That inconsistency means it can't ever really be an "excellent" source.
What hasn't been said is that Wikipedia has adopted an explicitly narcissistic goal, of being embarrassed by being the only wrong source the fewest possible number of times (namely never) - as opposed to doing the best job of accurately informing more people, more of the time; even if the data is new, or uncommon. I've had the New York Times rejected as a source because it just wasn't prestigious enough, and deleted. Which is charming if there's a better contrary source, but there wasn't. This goal is not compatible with that of being a very widely sourced, and very current encyclopedia. It is quite compatible with ossification.
I think you're providing a lot of examples of things that Wikipedia is also largely fine with.
Meanwhile, the author of this article did original research, generating knowledge that was not only new to the field but that actually contradicted the field's best known sources.
Wikipedia (justifiably, but not particularly gracefully) told him "go write a journal article and then come back and cite it". Which is what he did.
This makes sense for a variety of reasons, some of them having to do with the charter of an encyclopedia, others simply as a matter of pragmatism: 9 times out of 10, when someone contributes original research to Wikipedia, their work is crazy.
Wikipedia has, though, tried to cautiously make a few exceptions to what counts as a citation to address some of the more specific problems relating to individuals. Personal blogs are not generally considered published sources, but are acceptable sources for the specific case of summarizing what the person who writes the blog themselves thinks about a subject, in cases where that's relevant [2]. This is used most commonly to cover the "subject's side", e.g. if there is an article about someone that includes negative information, and that person has responded on their own blog, but hasn't managed to get a newspaper to publish their rebuttal, Wikipedia will still cite the rebuttal. I guess that's along the lines of asking your sisters to make an unambiguous statement somewhere about your existence.
The questionable reliability of news articles also means that they tend only to be treated as acceptable sources for newer things. If you're writing about WW1, it's frowned on to directly cite New York Times articles on the conflict, because some of them were wrong in hindsight, and we now have much better books and journal articles written about it, which have done all the legwork of reading through the newspaper archives and assessing their reliability. At this point, making a new argument about the conflict based solely on previously-unnoticed news articles is original research that ought to be submitted to a journal, and only to Wikipedia if it's accepted by the historical community first (this is not purely hypothetical with WW2, where people really do try to come up with novel interpretations of the Holocaust based on a new reading of old newspaper archives). Alas, for newer stuff there's often no such alternative, short of just not covering the subject at all, so newspaper articles are accepted on something like the Syrian civil war, because they haven't yet been superseded by anything better.
One thing that's interesting to me is that some of this source-evaluation difficulty would be simplified if they had applied some of the same rules as Wikipedia. Sometimes I will cite a New York Times obituary for an article, because it contains a bunch of facts about a person conveniently collated. But then I wonder: where did the NYT obituary author get this information? Is it based on solid first-hand research? Summarizing old NYT articles? Cribbing info from Encyclopedia Britannica? It would be nice to know!
[1] I wrote a bit about the gap problem elsewhere, http://www.kmjn.org/notes/wikipedia_notability_verifiability...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SELFPUB
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