I was just looking through the Wikipedia article on tea and it says "Today,
tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world after coffee..."
er...I thought it was the second most consumed beverege after water? Anybody
have a good statistic (and source) I can use to send in to them? I've just
seen that stated at various tea stores online...

I really didn't think more people drank more coffee than tea, that doesn't
make much sense to me.

Melinda

Nevermind, I fixed it. Never done Wikipedia before...

--

Melinda


"I know. You know I know. I know you know I know. We know Henry knows,
and Henry knows we know it."
We're a knowledgeable family." ::smiles:: -Geoffrey, Lion in Winter


"Melinda" > wrote in message
...
>I was just looking through the Wikipedia article on tea and it says "Today,
>tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world after coffee..."
>er...I thought it was the second most consumed beverege after water?
>Anybody have a good statistic (and source) I can use to send in to them?
>I've just seen that stated at various tea stores online...
>
> I really didn't think more people drank more coffee than tea, that doesn't
> make much sense to me.
>
> Melinda
>
>
>

Melinda wrote:
> Nevermind, I fixed it. Never done Wikipedia before...

It's interesting how unusual it is to find a question mark after the
words "wikipedia error".

--Blair

wikipedia is a great tool for a casual overview of a topic or a place to
begin one's research, but beyond that it gets mighty sketchy.

On Sat, 20 May 2006 08:32:02 GMT, Barky Bark wrote:

> wikipedia is a great tool for a casual overview of a topic or a place to
> begin one's research, but beyond that it gets mighty sketchy.

Not necessarily (regarding "mighty sketchy"). A study by the journal
"Nature" found that, on average, Wikipedia was as reliable as the
Encyclopedia Britannica. Of course, Britannica disputes the findings.

However, my experience has been that on "factual" matters, Wikipedia is
pretty reliable. Items with more emotional investment, such as politics or
biography of controversial people, are a little less reliable, in my
opinion.

However, if my kid ever tried to use Wikipedia as a primary reference for a
school paper, we'd have to have words.

--
Derek

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make
mistakes." -- Mahatma Gandhi

Derek wrote:
> On Sat, 20 May 2006 08:32:02 GMT, Barky Bark wrote:
>
> > wikipedia is a great tool for a casual overview of a topic or a place to
> > begin one's research, but beyond that it gets mighty sketchy.
>
> Not necessarily (regarding "mighty sketchy"). A study by the journal
> "Nature" found that, on average, Wikipedia was as reliable as the
> Encyclopedia Britannica. Of course, Britannica disputes the findings.

No, at best, it found 4 wikipedia errors for every 3 brittanica errors.
And their protocol was whacked, targeting a section of the wikipedia
(science articles) that was likely to have more-adept people editing it
in the first place.

Wikipedia's structure and management style naturally create a system in
which errors will be created, and many will not be fixed for a very
long time. I.e., the signal-to-noise ratio does not approach infinity,
it approaches an asymptotic value in the short term.

I'm not sure what the long-term trend would be, because one of its
features is that it ****es people like me off so much that it's no
longer worth my time to (a) fight with the trolls, (b) fight with the
admins who think I'm a troll, or (c) fight with Jimbo Wales about how
his admin corps have gotten out of hand.

The "best" wikipedia articles are characterized by semi-professional
layout, lugubrious citation, and no fewer errors than the unformatted,
uncited articles that don't get featured.

Believing the wikipedia is a good source of information is a new form
of the fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam. Citing it as a source,
doubly so

--Blair

Barky Bark wrote:
> wikipedia is a great tool for a casual overview of a topic or a place to
> begin one's research, but beyond that it gets mighty sketchy.

Actually, Google is better. You'll still get the Wikipedia hits, but
you'll likely see real information in the links around it.

If you know absolutely nothing about a topic, Wikipedia will "inform"
you, but you will accept its word credulously, and then be just as
misinformed as it is.

--Blair

Blair P. Houghton wrote:

> Believing the wikipedia is a good source of information is a new form
> of the fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam. Citing it as a source,
> doubly so

I wouldn't cite it. It's great entertainment though. I look up dozens of
obscure things on Wikipedia every day just because I'm interested in them.
Now, I wouldn't rely on it for something important and I certainly would
hesitate to believe anything in controversial articles.

Read it like a newspaper. Look at a quality newspaper article about
something you know about and you'll likely see numerous errors. Now guess
how many errors you won't even notice in articles on other topics because
you're not an expert. Journalists very rarely are experts on stuff they
write about.

With Wikipedia there's a higher chance of an actual expert contributing IMO
(ignoring vandalism and deliberate misinformation for the moment).

Stefan

In article >, Derek > wrote:
>On Sat, 20 May 2006 08:32:02 GMT, Barky Bark wrote:
>> begin one's research, but beyond that it gets mighty sketchy.
>
>Not necessarily (regarding "mighty sketchy"). A study by the journal
>"Nature" found that, on average, Wikipedia was as reliable as the
>Encyclopedia Britannica. Of course, Britannica disputes the findings.

Sheesh. I know the Britannica isn't so hot, but it's not THAT bad.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

>(ignoring vandalism and deliberate misinformation for the moment)

1. You can't ignore them.

2. The system doesn't reduce them, it encourages them. And it
permanently ensconces their results, because it chases off the people
who could and would fix them.

--Blair

Blair P. Houghton wrote:
> Stefan Goetzinger wrote:

>>(ignoring vandalism and deliberate misinformation for the moment)
>
> 1. You can't ignore them.

I guess I wanted to say that that's mainly a problem with high-profile and
controversial articles (IMO). And even then vandalism is easily spotted and
reverted.

Yesterday I read a couple of Wikipedia articles on the history of breakfast
cereals. I feel pretty safe that very few people feel strongly enough about
this topic that they would inject misinformation. Or that reading something
on this topic that's untrue would harm me.

Honest mistakes are another problem, but I stand by it: your newspaper isn't
that accurate either. People read papers to get an overview, and that's how
I personally read Wikipedia.

> 2. The system doesn't reduce them, it encourages them.

It's a side-effect. It's the price you have to pay for something that anyone
can edit which is very, very useful for certain topics, less so for others.

> And it
> permanently ensconces their results, because it chases off the people
> who could and would fix them.

Agreed. I know of a couple of errors (real errors, I could cite valid
references and laws) that I tried to fix but met fierce resistance by the
main authors. I don't really bother anymore. That's a real problem.

One feature of Wikipedia that I like is multiple languages. That way you can
read articles on the same topic that are often written by seperate groups
of people. I read Wikipedia articles in German, English, French and
Japanese. Sometimes they are bad translations of each other but more often
than not there's different information in each of them.

Wikipedia certainly has its uses. And its fair share of problems.

Stefan

On 21 May 2006 12:03:23 -0700, Blair P. Houghton wrote:

> The "best" wikipedia articles are characterized by semi-professional
> layout, lugubrious citation, and no fewer errors than the unformatted,
> uncited articles that don't get featured.

Which is why I differentiated between "factual" and "emotional" topics. The
statement that the emotional topics are "a little less reliable" was
sarcastic. Unfortunately, you seem to have ignored that.

> Believing the wikipedia is a good source of information is a new form
> of the fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam. Citing it as a source,
> doubly so

It's not new. It's the same fallacy that comes when one assumes that ANY
encyclopedia is 100% accurate.

--
Derek

"You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating
jellybeans." -- Ronald Reagan (Quoted in "Observer", March 29 1981)

On Tue, 23 May 2006 20:14:29 -0400, Derek wrote:

> Which is why I differentiated between "factual" and "emotional" topics. The
> statement that the emotional topics are "a little less reliable" was
> sarcastic. Unfortunately, you seem to have ignored that.

Let me be clear - I mean ignored the statement since it was deleted from
the reply and not addressed in any way. I was not meaning that the sarcasm
was ignored. Sarcasm is a difficult thing to convey in text.

--
Derek

"Marriage is a great institution if you get it right." -- Donald Trump