[ThoAppelsin]

The important difference here is that this platform claims to be an encyclopedia, and any random vandal may not simply make an edit on an article of the conventional encyclopedia.

It would only be natural for us to take this resource as not-so-reliable, for that it is as easy a man to spit on the floor to infiltrate Wikipedia with false information. Yet, we usually don't. We usually just go ahead and trust what we see on Wikipedia, and maybe that's because it looks so convincing and reliable.

If Wikipedia cannot handle vandalism, maybe it should then warn it's users to realize that there is some higher chance than they might expect that the article they are about to read might have been compromised in terms of correctness, or has never been correct to begin with. Instead of displaying full-page banners, perhaps they should spare a couple of lines to such disclaimer statistics.

[JdeBP]

The General Disclaimer saying that very thing is hyperlinked at the bottom of every single page on the WWW site.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer

[ThoAppelsin]

... which pretty much catches nobody's attention unfortunately. If Wikipedia does have the goodwill, then something has to be made to bring the average user's perception of trustworthiness down to the level of how much trustworthy they really are, and maybe even less. In the context of trust, false positives are worse than false negatives, since an individual may simply build up trust by referring to other resources and relieve their scepticism.

I'd say Wikipedia is really to blame for creating this false sense of trust on their platform. Not that they are completely unreliable, but they are less so than they seem to an average user.

[c22]

You are manufacturing an absurd allegation. Wikipedia put the wikiness of their model right in the name. If an "average user" doesn't bother to research their resources [0] or understand modern language then the problem lies somewhere in our educational system, not in the number of disclaimers on internet websites. It takes a special kind of curious person to want to find information on a subject but not wonder where it came from.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

[smsm42]

> It would only be natural for us to take this resource as not-so-reliable

But that is not what the author of the comment did. They regularly messed it up, and then complained that other people didn't clean it up fast enough. It's like throwing out trash every day out of the window, and then feel offended that there's lots of trash on the street. Of course it is, you made it! Stop doing it, and there would be less trash out. Start cleaning up, and there would be even less.

I'm ok if the person just has complaints, but if he has complaints about the thing he himself actively tried to break - no, you should not feel entitled to complain about that.

It is fascinating that some people talk about global topics like climate, evnvironment, etc. and then can't even resist messing up things that is under their nose, given to them completely free and extremely easy no to mess up - just use it as a normal person and enjoy! But no, he needs to vandalize it and then complain it wasn't cleaned up quickly!

[posterboy]

You are complaining about basically some graffiti and likening that to environmental polution and the cause for bigger polution happening and not being cleaned up. Is that right?

[smsm42]

No, I do not. You completely missed my point. My point is that people worry about global things, but not only do not contribute to more local - but no less important - things, but actually mess them up. Maybe if they did care more about local things, it would also be easier to make progress on more global things.

[posterboy]

I didn't miss your point by much, I just didn't mention it because I didn't know how to express any better that a lack of respect is often symptomatic for a lack of insight; because in this case, a juvenile gray hat hacker spirit was at work to gain insight, even if approaching from the wrong end because of some bias. And I don't see any assumption of that bias in your post either. I suppose it's the assumption that they can't do no harm and are being hilarious. I don't see how it's not. I'd argue the harm was local, but the fun was global, to put it in your terms. You seem to think the opposite.

[c22]

I would argue that anyone who takes wikipedia at face value and trusts everything they read there without further verification, research, or compatible pre-existing knowledge is not a very discerning individual. Wikipedia is not being coy about their identity, I'm pretty sure everyone knows it's edited by strangers on the internet. If you want an encyclopedic source you know you can trust then buy an encyclopedia.

[ThoAppelsin]

> I'm pretty sure everyone knows it's edited by strangers on the internet

I can assure you that there are at least some who are unaware that even they can edit a Wikipedia article. My housemate (a computer engineering student) didn't. My girlfriend seeking her doctorate degree didn't. My 2 roommates who managed to get to the first 100 at our national examination, also didn't.

[pessimizer]

Who did they think wrote Wikipedia? I'm not sure that much concern should be taken for people who don't care at all about the sources of the things that they reference; not that it's not bad that they'll be confused by bad information, just that if people aren't concerned at all about sources, they're going to be confused by a lot of things, not just Wikipedia vandals.

Printing something in a book doesn't make it true, and putting it on a website also doesn't make it true, no matter how professional and authoritative-looking the css is. You trust something because you trust the motivations and expertise of its sources.

[smsm42]

Can confirm, many do not know. Even more people never actually think about it and certainly do not think about it in a way that they may be part of the project and take part of the responsibility on themselves too. It is a pity, since there are many communities with awesome self-organizing cultures that achieve great things, and free open knowledge is one of those things that most of people, otherwise of different opinions and persuasions, can agree on.