I like reading gun articles on Wikipedia for entertainment and general knowledge purposes. I think for quick reference on gun models, and cartridges it's very useful. It's not authoritative by any means, and if I need a serious question answered, I look elsewhere.
Ever noticed anti-gun bias on Wikipedia?
- Thread starter iowajones
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We are way off topic, but a prof friend told me of a study in the last year where the error rate on Wikipedia was lower than in textbooks. I think the area studies was non-controversial and very factual - as I recall it, was organic chemistry, but I may be miss-remembering.
If an article has footnotes and citations, you can build a sort of "web of verification" - checking the citations and their footnotes. Not really a whole heck of a lot different from print that way.
Mike
If an article has footnotes and citations, you can build a sort of "web of verification" - checking the citations and their footnotes. Not really a whole heck of a lot different from print that way.
Mike
Respectfully, Mike, maybe you (and others) missed the original point. I hope I didn't come off as whining. I don't see how I could have looking back at the OP. I simply read an article showing examples of seemingly flagrant abuse by people with authority on Wikipedia. Knowing that there are people out there who would love nothing more than to suppress facts that support our view of the necessity and usefulness of guns, I asked whether some of the people here who are tech savvy and edit Wikipedia have had similar experiences to those of the people in the article I read. Maybe that will get us back on topic.
Have your tried disputing a Wikipedia, and followed their methodology? I don't know much about the process, but I see lots of pages that seem to be disputed, and you can click on a link and go to a talk page and read about the dispute. Have you done that with articles that you think are biased?
For example, look at the entries on John Lott and/or Arthur Kellerman. The neutrality of both has been disputed, and there are reams of arguments about them.
As another example, the article on the 2nd Amendment seems pretty balances and fair to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Mike
I haven't participated in Wikipedia editing either, and that's why I asked people about their experiences. Again, I read the article suggesting that people's contributions were summarily dismissed and I thought people here might have some insight as to whether this is or is not the norm. I never said I , personally, thought any articles were biased. You can scroll up and read my posts. I'm not interested in what you or anybody thinks is biased per se. What I wondered is if anyone had the information they contributed deleted by, at the risk of being criticized, wikipedia nazis, who delete anything they don't agree with - like the authors of the article claim happened.
I don't know where this "well, why don't you do something about the bias if you don't like it" stuff is coming from, because I just asked for peoples' thoughts on the subject, and I feel like it was an honest question and not a stupid or obvious one. Maybe I shouldn't have included the article text in the original post, since global warming seems to have clouded the issue, but bnkrazy provided one example of what I was asking about in his/her first post. That example looks like it was subsequently fixed, so maybe there is not a similar problem in our little corner of the world.
You are in fact correct, and I apologize. I read the whole thread quickly, and saw many other folks complaining. However, your original post was in fact seeking comment on John Lott's article. I read it as an endorsement of that article, and that reading was incorrect. I was wrong.
Mike
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