You often mention the flaws of Wikipedia here on El Reg, but there's nothing like actually peering into specific instances in this world of Wiki-insanity to make the criticism really hit home.

That's all I have to say about that.

about Wikality?

The canine community honors your work, Cade!

But it's how I imagine a UNIX-style SecondLife would be

...'nuff said :-)

scared the shit out of me.

It is hardly forever if there are logs.... or someone who cached the information.

Forever is when there are no witnesses, logs, cached information, or anything left. This is hard to do on the iNet while the black helicopter boys are vacuuming up information and saving it for a rainy day. Anyone expecting oversight to be permanent is a wikignorant wikidiot.

How can you post a link to a photo like that without posting the usual NSFW?

Or Not Safe For Healthy-heart-function

or Not Safe if you don't want to immediately shit yourself upon seeing the image.

wooooah. I mean, if you're going to do Goth, you gotta do better than that with the hair man.

(you know the one I'm referring to...)

With more of The Register's unhealthy obsession with Wikipedia. What is this a tech site or wikipediasucks.com?

Wicked!

<coat/>

Why does the word wikiphilia keep popping into my mind? People get turned on by the darnest things.

You don't give nearly enough detail to allow an observer to sort out whether your report is fair or not (and the register does have a track record for being anti WP). For instance a link to Buckner's user page so we can try to followup the ostensible reasons for his being blocked (and see whether we think there is a conspiracy or not). If he's your only source, we may be getting a warped view, but we can't tell because you don't say enough.

Poor show.

groan!!!!!!

That was the main point I took away from this article. The dude likes to copulate with dogs, cats, sheep or whatever else happens to be nearby.

Paris 'cos she's a wild animal and is fond of showing us her growler.

purely for Wikipedia: Gibberish, but the rest of this is precisely the sort of theatre that makes Wikipedia so hilarious, aided here in no small measure by Slimvirgin diving in to take FT2 apart. Laugh? I nearly did. El Reg's coverage of the bureaucratic circlejerk is always appreciated.

I look forward to seeing this page now fill up with the usual comments from Wikifail-deniers....

... to remind us why we should care ? I mean that in all seriousness. I'm sure there is one, and I even try to read the continuing series of "Wikkifiddlers in the wild" exposes, but I can't get far in to them before mine eyes glaze over. Not due to the authors engaging style, I might add, but just because I stop caring.

I feel sure that I must be missing something, some vital piece of context that would elevate this story above a childish semantic dispute played out amongst a shadowy conspiracy of dog fuckers*.

A "Wiki watchers guide" or "Wikipedia, 10 reasons why you actually _should_ give a toss" would be most helpful in this regard, ta.

Paris, because I'm sure she "gets it".

*The one thing I did take away from this article, was a sense of wonderment that an academic would publicly put his name to a complaint about editing the wikipedia entry relating to sticking your love trombone into livestock. And for this I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Honestly.. what a strange, strange bunch this Wikipedia lot are.

Glancing through some of the chatter that goes on "behind the scenes" you have to wonder if these guys ever leave the house. Really, could you be bothered?

This is terrible, won't people please think of the poor puppies and piglets.

Listen I get the point about Wikipedia, it's far less democratic than it likes to pretend and the elite are weird backstabbing obsessives, but seriously, why so many articles about it? They can be vaguely entertaining, but no more so than an equivalent article about some flame war on alt.whofkingcares.

Is there axe being ground here or something? I really don't get the fixation.

the google cache? they're still there.

The reason we should care about this is that WikiPedia is what counts as an education for far too many of our children these days, and far too many teachers for that matter.

No problem as long as WikiPedia actually gets close to its goals, but clearly it is nowhere near at the moment.

I read this as "hoof king cares", which seems oddly appropriate to this case.

I was recently with the wife in hospital, (she was having some breathing problems, bit of a freak out), when I looked over to the doctors room to try to get their attention (had already waited for over 3 hours to see a doctor) - when I noticed they had left a PC unlocked and displaying a WikiPedia article on some treatment or other (I couldn't read it from that distance, all I could see were some images of molecular bindings or somesuch).

I mean, seriously? Are not these people supposed to be fully trained already?

OK, that's a good start, those are some things I hadn't contemplated. I am selfish enough not to have children, so I have no idea about contemporary <16 education. SWMBO works in FE and HE, and so I am au fait with that end of things only to the the extent to which she is involved, and she doesn't teach out of wikipedia.

As for the goals, what are they ? See I was right, I _am_ missing some vital context.

Just one question. If you couldn't read it and all you could see were some images how did you know it was an article on some treatment or other?

"this topic might be improved to the "top 1%" standard necessary for "Featured Article" status"

A featured article on shagging animals ? I thought they only just got of the IWF watch list.

No.

There is no possible way to provide any individual with the sum total of current human medical practice.

You ever had to fix a computer before? Ever had to look up the details of how to do it at castlecops or someplace?

The human body is just the tiniest bit more complex than that. Doctors have to look things up all the time, but those that I've worked with have used online resources as a reference on the details of something they were already passing familiar with, as opposed to new research. Besides, maybe he looked it up to get an idea what it was, then went to find Gray's or something.

Still, methinks you need more snopes in your diet.

Unrelatedly, I'd like to note that at whatever point I catch one of my kids reading about zoophilia on wikipedia, the moment after I get through "persuading" them not to do it again, I'm going to ... ah, you know, I think I'd rather not have that in e-print. But let's just say that the alien icon in this case might be taken as a clue, if you probe what I'm saying there, Jimbo.

Because citing other deluded websites/pulp fiction/magazines/discredited documents/uncorroborated research/quotes doesn't count as fact. I've yet to see a Wikipedia entry that could be used 100% as a research source.

If there's one thing worse than something which is broken, it's something that doesn't work 20% of the time.

(wikipedia, that is) are playing with themselves. OMG. I'll be oversighted, and will never have existed.

--Glenn

I strongly encourage everyone to google --> wikipedia criticism <---. Without pointing to direct sites, I'll say some of the first few results are very informative.

Even more than Orwellian, "ArbCom" sounds remarkably like Scientology jargon - they're suckers for dorky and impenetrable designations like "Sea Org" for Hubbard's yacht crew.

What does it matter if a few obscure Britons like animals in a very unusual way? If I did, I would try to hide that from others as well. Anyways, how is this relevant to Wikipedia? Does this issue actually affect the articles? The Register is seeming more petty each day.

Certainly the Wikifeud articles are. There must be a shortage of real IT news to fill those column inches and get those page impression counts up.

Incidentally, wrt the medics and Wikipedia: I'm not a medic but there are some subjects where I know what I'm talking about. I'll occasionally point folks at a specific Wikipedia article which I've checked, because once I know it's OK, it saves me the time+hassle of explaining something in depth. Then if more discussion is needed I can do that. Maybe the medics (and others) find Wikipedia useful for something similar?

Of course it's not, and anyone that thinks a collaborative work like Wikipedia can be used as a definitive reference is deluded, but that doesn't stop it being useful. In the topics I know about personally I've found Wikipedia to actually be very accurate.

It's a useful place for getting an overview of a topic, if you want peer reviewed research then buy the bloody peer reviewed research, if you want first hand sources then find them yourself, but the problem isn't with Wikipedia, it's with people who think it should be a *definitive* reference as opposed to a *useful* reference.

Yes all the shady committees and back-biting make it an easy target for ridicule, but the actual basic functionality is still very useful.