Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 09:03, 10 January 2006

Criticism of Misplaced Pages has increased with its prominence. Critics of Misplaced Pages include Misplaced Pages editors themselves, ex-editors, representatives of other encyclopedias, and even subjects of the articles. Notable criticisms include that its open nature makes Misplaced Pages unauthoritative and unreliable, that Misplaced Pages exhibits systemic bias and that the group dynamics of its community are hindering its goals. Overall, Misplaced Pages functions well as an encyclopedia so long as it is used for research concerning uncontroversial topics.

Criticism of the concept

Usefulness as a reference

Misplaced Pages's utility as a reference work has been questioned. The lack of authority, accountability, and peer review are considered disqualifying factors by some. For example, librarian Philip Bradley acknowledged in an interview with The Guardian that the concept behind the site was in theory a "lovely idea," but that he would not use it in practice and is

" not aware of a single librarian who would. The main problem is the lack of authority. With printed publications, the publishers have to ensure that their data is reliable, as their livelihood depends on it. But with something like this, all that goes out the window." (Waldman 2004).

Likewise, Robert McHenry, former editor-in-chief of Encyclopædia Britannica said:

"The user who visits Misplaced Pages to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him." (McHenry 2004).

Some critics have claimed that while Misplaced Pages may be a useful information resource, it errs when it bills itself as an encyclopedia — as this word properly implies a level of authority and accountability that an openly-editable reference work allegedly cannot possess. Frequent Misplaced Pages critic Andrew Orlowski writes

"If what we today know as 'Misplaced Pages' had started life as something called, let's say - 'Jimbo's Big Bag O'Trivia' - we doubt if it would be the problem it has become. Misplaced Pages is indeed, as its supporters claim, a phenomenal source of pop culture trivia. Maybe a 'Big Bag O'Trivia' is all Jimbo ever wanted. Maybe not.

For sure a libel is a libel, but the outrage would have been far more muted if the Misplaced Pages project didn't make such grand claims for itself. The problem with this vanity exercise is one that it's largely created for itself. The public has a firm idea of what an 'encyclopedia' is, and it's a place where information can generally be trusted, or at least slightly more trusted than what a labyrinthine, mysterious bureaucracy can agree upon, and surely more trustworthy than a piece of spontaneous graffiti - and Misplaced Pages is a king-sized cocktail of the two." (Orlowski 2005)

Robert McHenry also noted the use of "encyclopedia" in 2005:

To the ordinary user, the turmoil and uncertainty that may lurk beneath the surface of a Misplaced Pages article are invisible. He or she arrives at a Misplaced Pages article via Google, perhaps, and sees that it is part of what claims to be an "encyclopedia". This is a word that carries a powerful connotation of reliability. The typical user doesn't know how conventional encyclopedias achieve reliability, only that they do. (McHenry 2005).

Academic circles have not been exclusively dismissive of Misplaced Pages as a source of information. Misplaced Pages articles have been referenced in "enhanced perspectives" provided on-line in the journal Science. The first of these perspectives to provide a hyperlink to Misplaced Pages was "A White Collar Protein Senses Blue Light" (Linden 2002:297 (5582)), and dozens of enhanced perspectives have provided such links since then. However, these links are offered as background sources for the reader, not as sources used by the writer, and the "enhanced perspectives" are not intended to serve as reference material themselves.

Anti-elitism as a weakness

Former Chief Editor of Nupedia, Larry Sanger, stated in an opinion piece in kuro5hin that "anti-elitism", active contempt for expertise, was rampant in the Misplaced Pages community. He further stated: "Far too much credence and respect accorded to people who in other Internet contexts would be labelled 'trolls.'"

A common Misplaced Pages maxim is "Out of mediocrity, excellence." Jimmy Wales, the site founder, admits that wide variations in quality between different articles and topics is certainly not insignificant, but that he considers the average quality to be "pretty good", getting better by the day.

The "competing" Encyclopædia Britannica claims it does not feel threatened. "The premise of Misplaced Pages is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection; that premise is completely unproven," said the reference work's executive editor, Ted Pappas, to The Guardian.

Systemic bias in coverage

Misplaced Pages has been accused of systemic bias, a tendency to cover topics in a detail disproportionate to their importance. Even the site's proponents admit to this unavoidable flaw. In an interview with The Guardian, Dale Hoiberg, the editor-in-chief of Encyclopædia Britannica, a competing encyclopedia, noted that "people write of things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get covered; and news events get covered in great detail. The entry on Hurricane Frances is more than five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on Coronation Street is twice as long as the article on Tony Blair." (Waldman, 2004).

This statement was written on October 26, 2004. By March 28, 2005, without counting subarticles, the Chinese art article had become three times as large as the article on Hurricane Frances, while the article on Tony Blair was 50% larger than the article on Coronation Street. Proponents of Misplaced Pages point to such statistics in arguing that bias by editor favoritism will diminish over time. Opponents point out that these articles drew attention from the Misplaced Pages community because they were specifically mentioned by Hoiberg, and this increase in size was not universal - all other articles on Misplaced Pages did not see similar increases in size during this time period.

Below is a comparison between how many times Canada is mentioned in four encyclopedias and how many times Nigeria is mentioned. The second column is the ratio of mentions of Belgium to mentions of Rwanda.

While it has long been one of Jimbo Wales' goals to distribute Misplaced Pages in the poor nations of the world, the current Misplaced Pages would give them a product that does an inadequate job of covering their regions.

Rough evaluation of coverage:

Systemic bias in perspective

A more difficult problem to address is that even when topics are covered, they are covered only from what seems to be a neutral point of view 'to the current participants', which is not the same as:

• the current readership, especially not readers who encounter print or other uneditable versions
• the potential readership.

While some critics have raised this issue within the Misplaced Pages community, they seem to consider their criticisms to have been generally rejected. For example, a 2002 attempt to ask questions about what would be required to prepare Misplaced Pages for the one billionth user went nowhere. Since that time there have been numerous efforts to address the difference between neutral point of view and the perspective of new contributors with views typical of some large group of people, but not typical of the average Misplaced Pages contributor. In short, new contributors who do not conform to the prevailing Wikipedian consensus (where such a consensus exists) are generally viewed as trolls and their views are dismissed. New user's dissenting contributions are liable to be labelled as "POV" if there is sufficient administrative support to attack or delete it.

In response to this issue, a group of Wikipedians on the English Misplaced Pages have established a WikiProject, Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. They have a list of open tasks which detail various areas they have determined need to be resolved.

The concept of a neutral point of view itself has itself been criticised as being misleading, impossible, and sometimes even offensive in its results. Some critics and even some wikipedians claim that NPOV is an unattainable ideal, however this does not rule out the possibility of a close approximation being reached.

Difficulty of fact checking

Misplaced Pages contains no formal peer review process for fact-checking, and due to the lack of requiring qualifications to edit any article, the editors themselves may not be well-versed in the topics they write about. Since the bulk of Misplaced Pages's fact-checking involves an internet search, self-perpetuating errors are inevitable. The amount of fact-checking per page is directly related to the amount of frequent editors per page, thus errors on obscure topics may remain for some time. Even in pages with dozens of editors, a fact erroneously inserted along with dozens of other changes may "slip" into a page and stay. As well, since all edits of one user are displayed instantly to all readers, it is essentially impossible for any fact checking to occur until after the information (or misinformation) is already published.

This particular criticism is Misplaced Pages's most frequently encountered weakness in reality. Sometimes, the subject of a biographical article must fix blatant lies about his own life. A nihilartikel was once inserted into Misplaced Pages that lasted for five months.

Use of dubious sources

Misplaced Pages requests Wikipedians to verify the accuracy of information by checking the references cited, which generally come from external sources. Many of these articles often do not include references for statements made, nor do the articles differentiate between true, false, and opinion. Some critics contend that the references have come from dubious sources, such as blog entries. For example, a blog entry may contain several inaccuracies and stereotypes, because many bloggers may have their own self-interests. Critics contend that use of such unsound references give legitimacy to articles, which contain many falsehoods. An article about the soundness of a particular issue may find legitimacy by using references found on an organization's website supporting that particular stance.

Hiawatha Bray (2004) of the Boston Globe wrote: "So of course Misplaced Pages is popular. Maybe too popular. For it lacks one vital feature of the traditional encyclopedia: accountability. Old-school reference books hire expert scholars to write their articles, and employ skilled editors to check and double-check their work. Misplaced Pages's articles are written by anyone who fancies himself an expert.".

Exposure to vandals

In 2005, Misplaced Pages received a great deal of bad publicity as a result of the John Seigenthaler Sr. Misplaced Pages biography controversy, in which a then-unknown vandal created a biographical page on Seigenthaler containing numerous false and defamatory statements; this page went unnoticed for several months until discovered by Victor S. Johnson, Jr., a friend of Seigenthaler. Likewise, numerous other pages have been attacked and defaced by vandals; either with axes to grind against a particular subject (then defamed or unfairly and unencyclopedically criticized in a Misplaced Pages article); or against Misplaced Pages itself. There have even been instances of Misplaced Pages critics injecting false information into Misplaced Pages in order to "test" the system and demonstrate its alleged unreliability.

Misplaced Pages itself acknowledges these issues. "Misplaced Pages:Researching with Misplaced Pages", a "project page" (that is, part of the Misplaced Pages site, though not part of the encyclopedia as such), states, "Misplaced Pages's radical openness means that any given article may be, at any given moment, in a bad state: for example it could be in the middle of a large edit or it could have been recently vandalized. While blatant vandalism is usually easily spotted and rapidly corrected, Misplaced Pages is certainly more subject to subtle vandalism than a typical reference work."

Misplaced Pages has numerous tools available to editors (and several more available only to administrators) in order to combat vandalism; proponents of the encyclopedia argue that the vast majority of attacks on Misplaced Pages are detected and reverted within a short time frame (one study by IBM found that most vandalism on Misplaced Pages is reverted in about 5 minutes ). Notwithstanding such assurances, there have been several incidents where defamatory, unsubstantiated, or manifestly untrue claims have persisted in current versions of Misplaced Pages articles for significant amounts of time, the Seigenthaler incident being the most prominent such incident to date. Supporters of Misplaced Pages also frequently claim that undetected vandalism mainly is an issue with low-profile articles. Most undetected vandalizing edits are done by registered users, which are often reviewed less often than those by anonymous users.

It should be noted that such postings violate numerous Misplaced Pages policies, most importantly Misplaced Pages's policy on verifiability.

Privacy concerns

Most "privacy concerns" refer to cases of government or employer data gathering; or to computer or electronic monitoring; or to trading data between organizations. See LEGAL ISSUES IN EMPLOYEE PRIVACY for example. The concern in the case of Misplaced Pages is the right of a private citizen to remain private; to not move from being a "private citizen" to being a "public figure" in the eyes of the law (see for the legal distinction). It is somewhat of a battle between to right be anonymous in cyberspace and the right be anonymous in real life (meatspace).

"he Internet has created conflicts between personal privacy, commercial interests and the interests of society at large" warns James Donnelly and Jenifer Haeckl in PRIVACY AND SECURITY ON THE INTERNET: What Rights, What Remedies?.

Daniel Brandt's Misplaced Pages Watch states "Misplaced Pages is a potential menace to anyone who values privacy. A greater degree of accountability in the Misplaced Pages structure, as discussed above, would also be the very first step toward resolving the privacy problem." In trying to assert his own right to privacy he had attempted to end the privacy of Misplaced Pages editors. He says "the editors and administrators feel that they are untouchable" and that disclosing their identities would increase accountability of the information they write. In his ongoing effort to share his newfound lack of privacy with those Misplaced Pages editors who he feels are responsible he writes "If anyone can help us identify any of the above John Doe administrators or editors, please send an email to wikiwatch at earthlink.net. Even without a real name, an IP address or email address can be helpful. Thank you." here on a page where discloses the real life identity of those editors he has so far identified.

Balancing the rights of all concerned as technology alters the social landscape will not be easy. It "is not yet possible to anticipate the path of the common law or governmental regulation" regarding this problem. .

See Misplaced Pages policy on the privacy of contributors.

Quality concerns

Many critics of Misplaced Pages--as well as many within the Misplaced Pages community--have observed that the quality of articles varies widely, even when controversial topics are excluded from the discussion. Some articles are excellent by any reasonable measure--authored and edited by persons knowledgeable in the field, containing numerous useful and relevant references, and written in a proper encyclopedic style. However, there are many articles on Misplaced Pages which are amateurish, unauthoritative, and even incorrect; it may be difficult for a reader unfamiliar with the subject matter to know which articles are correct and which are not. In addition, Misplaced Pages contains many articles which are stubs--articles which provide a brief definition of a term, and little else.

Others have noted that in some areas, such as science, Misplaced Pages's quality is often excellent. A report by Nature, a highly-regarded scientific journal, finds that "Misplaced Pages comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries". The article detailed a study wherein 42 articles in both encyclopedias were reviewed by experts on the subject matter. Based on the review, the average Misplaced Pages article contained 4 errors or ommissions; the average Britannica article, 3.

Threat to traditional publishers

Some observers claim that Misplaced Pages is undesirable, because it is an economic threat to publishers of traditional encyclopedias, many of whom may be unable to compete with a product which is essentially free. Nicholas Carr writes in the essay The amorality of Web 2.0, speaking of the so-called Web 2.0 as a whole:

Misplaced Pages might be a pale shadow of the Britannica, but because it's created by amateurs rather than professionals, it's free. And free trumps quality all the time. So what happens to those poor saps who write encyclopedias for a living? They wither and die. The same thing happens when blogs and other free on-line content go up against old-fashioned newspapers and magazines. Of course the mainstream media sees the blogosphere as a competitor. It is a competitor. And, given the economics of the competition, it may well turn out to be a superior competitor. The layoffs we've recently seen at major newspapers may just be the beginning, and those layoffs should be cause not for self-satisfied snickering but for despair. Implicit in the ecstatic visions of Web 2.0 is the hegemony of the amateur. I for one can't imagine anything more frightening.

Others dispute the notion that Misplaced Pages, or similar efforts, will entirely displace traditional publications.

Anonymous editing

Misplaced Pages has been criticized by many for allowing users to edit anonymously, with only their IP address to identify them. This is said to allow the vandals anonymity and makes it difficult to track them, due to the long and hard to remember nature of IP addresses. However IP edits reveal their IP address which can be used by admins to complain to ISPs or put range blocks in place or not to block because of possible blocking of regular editors who share the same IP. Many have suggested making user registration required to edit articles, and as of December 6, 2005 only registered users can create pages (Wales 2005).

The vast majority of vandalism on Misplaced Pages is done by anonymous users. Of course many anonymous users make good edits. Vandalism is still relatively straightforward to deal with. Most vandalism is reverted quickly.

It is predicted that as the number of Internet users grows, the interest in Misplaced Pages will grow immensely. With this immense growth, critics of anonymous editing predict, will come a hard to cope with amount of vandalism as more and more people discover Misplaced Pages. However exponential growth will also increase the number of non vandal editors who are able to revert vandal edits.

Criticism of the community

Criticism is also targeted at the community of Misplaced Pages editors, whose group dynamics manifest themselves in how and by whom articles are edited. Critics of these processes argue that they are actively hindering the production of a quality encyclopedia.

Flame wars

Some people predict that Misplaced Pages is going to end up as "just as a bunch of flame wars". This concern has been acknowledged by Misplaced Pages's community, which has developed a concept of "Wikiquette" in response.

Fanatics and special interests

Several contributors have complained that editing Misplaced Pages is very tedious in the case of conflicts and that sufficiently dedicated contributors with idiosyncratic beliefs can push their point of view, because nobody has the time and energy to counteract the bias. Some contributors have alleged that informal Misplaced Pages coalitions work regularly to push and to suppress certain points of view. For example, they often allege that certain pages have been taken over by fanatics and special interest groups that consistently revert the contributions of new contributors. This problem tends to occur most around controversial subjects, and sometimes results in revert wars and pages being locked down. In response, an Arbitration Committee has been formed on the English Misplaced Pages that deals with the worst offenders — though a conflict resolution strategy is actively encouraged before going to this extent. Also, to stop the continuous reverting of pages, Jimbo Wales introduced a "three revert rule", whereby those users who revert an article more than three times in a 24 hour period are blocked for 24 hours.

Censorship

Some argue that criticisms and commentary on certain topics are systematically excluded, deleted or reverted by self-appointed censors, and that even attempts to make compromises or build up articles to include a variety of views are thwarted by uncompromising "vandal-editors" who simply delete or revert unwanted views that don't fit their agenda. Misplaced Pages's policy is to fairly represent all sides of a dispute by not making articles state, imply, or insinuate that only one side is correct; however it can be difficult for this policy to be enforced.

Abuse of power

A number of editors have quit after denouncing what they have described as abuses of power by Administrators and the Arbitration Committee. Such abuses include ignoring violations by Administrators and conducting Arbitration Committee actions which are in violation of the Misplaced Pages:Arbitration policy. One effort to reduce such interference with the process of building an encyclopedia is the Misplaced Pages:User Bill of Rights.

See also

• Andrew Orlowski
• Category:Misplaced Pages critics

References

• — (2005-12-14). "Misplaced Pages:Researching with Misplaced Pages". Misplaced Pages. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |publishyear= ignored (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Bray, Hiawatha (2005-12-30). "One great source — if you can trust it". The Boston Globe. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |publishyear= ignored (help)
• Linden, Hartmut (2005). "A White Collar Protein Senses Blue Light". Science. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |publishyear= ignored (help) (subscription access only)
• McHenry, Robert (2005-12-30). "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia". Tech Central Station. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |publishyear= ignored (help)
• McHenry, Robert (2005-12-30). "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia Blinks". TCS Daily. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |publishyear= ignored (help)
• Orlowski, Andrew (2005-12-30). "There's no Misplaced Pages entry for 'moral responsibility'". The Register. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |publishyear= ignored (help)
• Waldman, Simon (2005-12-30). "Who knows?". The Guardian. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |publishyear= ignored (help)
• Wales, Jimmy (2005-12-30). "WikiEN-l Experiment on new pages". {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |publishyear= ignored (help)

External links

• Wiki wars, an article on Red Herring about contentious articles on Misplaced Pages (registration required).
• Criticism of the Misplaced Pages - By Lir, a banned Misplaced Pages user.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet.
• Critical views of Misplaced Pages from Wikinfo
• Wikiwatch Examination of problems with some specific Misplaced Pages entries as examples of broader issues
• The Messiness of WikiDemocracy by M.R.M. Parrott. Over-all positive but discusses some problems.
• Misplaced Pages Watch by Daniel Brandt
• Misplaced Pages: A Techno-Cult of Ignorance Correa, Correa, and Askanas
• Anti-Misplaced Pages 2: The Rise of the Latrines Correa, Correa, and Askanas
• What Misplaced Pages doesn't want you to know......... Rex Curry, OpinionEditorials.com
• Misplaced Pages Review, Forum critical of Misplaced Pages

Dated links

• Why Misplaced Pages sucks. Big time. June 02, 2004
• Misplaced Pages Reputation and the Wemedia Project, quoting many people criticizing Misplaced Pages and others rebutting them. August 29, 2004.
• The Great Failure of Misplaced Pages - by Jason Scott, November 19, 2004.
• Why Misplaced Pages Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism - By Larry Sanger, co-founder of Misplaced Pages. December 30, 2004.
• A Criticism of Misplaced Pages Now Exceeding a Scream - by Jason Scott, January 3, 2005.
• Misplaced Pages is a real-life Hitchhiker's Guide: huge, nerdy, and imprecise, by Paul Boutin, Slate, May 3, 2005.
• Swastikipedia - by Jason Scott, May 4, 2005.
• "Misplaced Pages founder admits to serious quality problems". The Register, 2005-10-18
• Information quality discussions in Misplaced Pages by Besiki Stvilia, et al. Updated October 19, 2005.
• Can you trust Misplaced Pages? The Guardian, October 24, 2005.
• Misplaced Pages: magic, monkeys and typewriters, by Andrew Orlowski, The Register, October 24, 2005.
• Can you trust Misplaced Pages? Elvira van Noort, Mail & Guardian (South Africa), November 7, 2005.
• A false Misplaced Pages 'biography', by John Seigenthaler Sr. in USA Today, November 29, 2005.
• "The Danger of Misplaced Pages", Editor and Publisher, November 30, 2005.
• Snared in the Web of a Misplaced Pages Liar, by Katharine Q. Seelye in The New York Times, December 3, 2005.
• Unreliable (adj): log on and see, Rosemary Righter, The Times, December 9, 2005
• Online encyclopedias put to the test. December 14, 2005.
• Founded On Porn, Misplaced Pages Shapes The Way You Think By Jennifer Monroe, Decmber 15, 2005.
• Misplaced Pages science 31% more cronky than Britannica's, By Andrew Orlowski in The Register, December 16, 2005.
• Misplaced Pages, Porn and the Airbrushing of History By Jeremy Wagstaff, December 20, 2005.

This article incorporates text from the GFDL Misplaced Pages article Misplaced Pages:Replies to common objections.

• Criticisms
• Misplaced Pages as a media topic
• Misplaced Pages culture
• Misplaced Pages resources for researchers
• Misplaced Pages