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21 Aug 07 - 06:14 AM (#2130266) Subject: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Peter K (Fionn) There is a debate going on in another thread about the credibility of Wikipedia. By chance the "featured article" on Wikipedia today, the one that appears on the home page, is one that will be of real interest to many Mudcatters. The entry on Old Dan Tucker is supported by 70-odd footnotes, about 30 references, half-a-dozen audio clips of recordings and a jpg of one of the early broadsheets. I have rarely seen a song dealt with so thoroughly on Mudcat. For those like Q who will believe none but scholars, this article would be a waste of time. For me however it was extremely interesting and informative. Perhaps some Mudcatters better informed on the subject could take a look and give their reactions. For the benefit of anyone not familiar with the workings of Wikipedia, there are standard templates which any user can place at any point in any article, including this one, calling for better citation/references, questioning conformance with Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" policy etc. Clicking on the history tab will list every iteration through which the article has gone, and the discussion tab will take you to conversations/arguments that have gone on between editors along the way - in this case quite interesting stuff. Needless to say, if the article on Old Dan Tucker contains errors, feel free to correct them. The article is also open to "vandalism," but as I have argued on the other thread, that is a much exaggerated problem and is quickly cleaned up where it occurs. |
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21 Aug 07 - 06:23 AM (#2130270) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Mr Happy IMO Wikipedia is as much prey to spammers & other mischief makers as Mudcat or any other site. |
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21 Aug 07 - 07:06 AM (#2130300) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Dick The Box As a resource for finding out about obscure stuff it is invaluable. I agree that what is written is not necessarily the truth but that is true of all information. A lot of mischief is perpetrated on wikipedia but generally it is only popular/controversial/political stuff that gets attacked. For our little folkie pond, i think that the correct information far outweighs the incorrect - plus you can make corrections and add stuff, which is more than you can do for other internet and written sources! |
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21 Aug 07 - 07:15 AM (#2130303) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Mr Happy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth |
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21 Aug 07 - 07:41 AM (#2130315) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: TheSnail It's quite simple. If a Wikipedia article gives its external references (like the Truth article sited above), it is probably well researched and you can check the references yourself. If it just makes bold statements without external reference, ignore it. |
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21 Aug 07 - 09:16 AM (#2130365) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Brakn Wikipedia is of great use but I would warn that it's not the be all and end all. There was an article that I found was wrong; when I mentioned it in the discussion I was told that the article was referenced and that was the end of that. You can enter any old crap and as long as it's referenced to a book or a website, a website which anyone can write anything that they like. |
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21 Aug 07 - 09:32 AM (#2130369) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: TheSnail Brakn There was an article that I found was wrong; when I mentioned it in the discussion I was told that the article was referenced and that was the end of that. If you have references to demonstrate that you are right, edit the entry accordingly. You have just as much right to do so as the other chap but just saying "I know this is wrong" isn't enough. |
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21 Aug 07 - 09:40 AM (#2130372) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Rapparee It's one source of very many. Except for "fast facts" (and those view with a jaundiced eye) I wouldn't put my faith in it alone. As for references...check 'em out. You can create references as fast and as easily as you can create anything else. And for God's sake, use some good sense! |
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21 Aug 07 - 09:58 AM (#2130379) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: redsnapper From Wikipedia's entry about itself: Because Wikipedia is an ongoing work to which, in principle, anybody can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source in important ways. In particular, older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles may still contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation that has been recently added and not yet removed So Wikipedia is honest about its own limitations even if some others don't regard and use it as they should. In my own field of work, Wikipedia seems quite accurate and up-to-date (I keep an eye on it and may contribute towards in myself in the future). RS |
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21 Aug 07 - 10:12 AM (#2130389) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Roger the Skiffler As I used to tell students when I was still working: treat all internet information as you would printed sources- who is writing it, where is it from, what is the credentials of the source? Don't believe something because an unedited,un-moderated poster says it (especially if it is a certain unfrocked wahsboard played barking up the wrong tree on the Mudcat!). RtS (woof woof) |
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21 Aug 07 - 10:40 AM (#2130403) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Mr Happy 'wahsboard'? Is that like a 'has bin' ? |
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21 Aug 07 - 11:54 AM (#2130434) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Rapparee I have one of those at home. I put the has in it. |
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21 Aug 07 - 01:11 PM (#2130477) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: wysiwyg Wikipedia is, I predict, one of those great "free resources" to arrive oin the scene and attract a lot of attention, only to become a fee-based program once it proves its potential value in the marketplace. Mudcat has said over and over again that it plans to outlast other folk resources. That's why we use it and that's why we cite and copy material from other sites to here but keep them here. ~Susan |
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21 Aug 07 - 01:33 PM (#2130491) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Bill D naawwww, Susan...I'd have to bet against that prediction. Wikipedia has too much invested in its 'image' as free & open....it would sink out of sight if it ever tried to go fee-based.....besides, someone would just copy the data and put it for free somehwere else...like they do with Mudcat's Digitrad. (storage and server space is just too cheap now.) |
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21 Aug 07 - 01:46 PM (#2130502) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: wysiwyg You'll see....... ~S~ |
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21 Aug 07 - 03:49 PM (#2130582) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: catspaw49 Value? Okay, I bid a buck two ninety eight. Like Rap said basically.......Its just another source and how you use it and the credibility it has is very much up to you. Spaw |
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21 Aug 07 - 07:55 PM (#2130737) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: M.Ted I have said, for a number of years, that Mudcat ought to have a Wiki which consists of entries edited from our many discussions. t It would allow folks to put all that research that's been posted, as well as the first person accounts, and the instructional/explantory stuff in an easily accessible form. It would also allow those of us who long ago said what we had to say, to continue to contribute, without repeating ourselves. |
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21 Aug 07 - 09:17 PM (#2130782) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: wysiwyg Come on, you innocents-- the VALUE is the site traffic that someone will soon want to harness for profiteering. ~S~ |
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22 Aug 07 - 03:24 AM (#2130897) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Joe Offer I agree with Ted that it would be wonderful to have a FolkWiki here. We have so much information that it's getting hard to find. We do have some compulsively verbose posters here who will post answers to music requests whether they have accurate information or not. I suppose Wikipedia has to deal with that, too. I use Wikipedia all the time. Since it's likely to change, I tend to quote directly rather than providing a link to a changing resource. I think the preponderance of information in Wikipedia is quite reliable - you have to watch for "spin" and illogical information, but that's true for any resource. -Joe- |
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22 Aug 07 - 06:28 AM (#2130967) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: GUEST,Guest AG Joe, Found out a few years ago that it was a 'hobby' for many to go in and change the site. Any and all content is capable of being edited by anyone at any time. Not the case for University sources or those one must sign up to. (And pay for) |
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22 Aug 07 - 09:40 AM (#2131053) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: goatfell well why don't you then create one then Joe. Tom because like you I use it all the time as well.
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22 Aug 07 - 09:53 AM (#2131060) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: redsnapper Found out a few years ago that it was a 'hobby' for many to go in and change the site. Any and all content is capable of being edited by anyone at any time. Correct. And, strangely, this may be its strength too as, for anything of note, there are a lot of peer users trying to ensure that the content is reasonably accurate. RS |
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22 Aug 07 - 10:11 AM (#2131079) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: TheSnail Anybody can put a "Watch" flag on an article so that they are informed if it changes. It can be reverted to it's previous state with a single click. Vandalism often only lasts minutes. Responsible editors far outnumber vandals. If an "edit war" breaks out, administrators (also volunteers) with greater powers can intervene. |
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22 Aug 07 - 05:08 PM (#2131431) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: M.Ted The great value of Wikipedia is that it has entries on subjects that you cannot get much information on anywhere else. Music and musical artists, technology of all kinds, and historical events outside of the mainstream (all of which are Mudcat interests). |
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22 Aug 07 - 06:37 PM (#2131488) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Stringsinger One thing about Wiki is that it is a good starting point because if they make a statement that doesn't add up, you can always research it furthur. A lot of folklore about folksongs is not science. There are and always will be conflicting information about any song. "Dixie" comes to mind. This has not yet been fully researched in a conclusive way. You can pretty much say the same for any song that has been sung. It is my experience that history can be rewritten many different ways. There is no short cut to finding out about a song and relying on printed matter alone is not conclusive, either. Sam Hinton described a folk song as a photo of a bird in flight when you see it in print. Copyright dates are not reliable either. Many songs have been appropriated by singers who didn't write them or changed them from another source. (A.P.Carter, John Jacob Niles, Alan Lomax). I think it was John Lomax who had a big dispute over "Home on the Range". Dan Tucker is an important song I think because of Dan Emmett, a controversial performer (by today's standards) in blackface who premiered the song on the New York stage. I believe that it was introduced by minstrelsy through Emmett and wound up as a dance tune in Appalachia through this manner. Stephen Foster songs such as "Angelina Baker" soon became "Angeline The Baker". Foster wrote many of these minstrelsy songs because that's how he could make a few bucks. He really wanted to be more of a Schubert than a popular "Ethiopian" tunesmith. So there is no substitute for painstaking research on a song and accepting the first authoratative information is not helpful. The interesting thing about folk music (or songs in general) is that it's the blind man and the elephant. Every contribution may be relevant (which rhymes with elephant) but it is seeing only one side of the picture. That's why it is called the "folk process". Frank Hamilton |
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22 Aug 07 - 08:51 PM (#2131586) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: The Fooles Troupe "If an "edit war" breaks out, administrators (also volunteers) with greater powers can intervene." Pages which have been vandalised regulary are often 'locked'. |
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23 Aug 07 - 06:48 AM (#2131831) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Peter K (Fionn) There already was a thread for discussing Wikipedia generally. I was more interested in how Wikipedia measures up specifically on Mudcat territory (which is why I didn't use the BS prefix).But only Frank Hamilton seems to have read it that way. Never mind.... |
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23 Aug 07 - 09:14 PM (#2132387) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Joe Offer I see your point, Peter, but I think that a folk song Wiki would be better suited for a folk community like this one - individual folk songs are likely to get lost in a huge undertaking such as Wikipedia. Also, because of the high visiblility of a Website like Wikipedia, I wonder if there are copyright concerns about posting lyrics. Arran asks why I haven't started a folk song Wiki, and I have to say that I don't have the time just now. Still, it's a good idea. Since it's a cooperative effort, it's a big improvement over my DTStudy experiment, which attempts to consolidate information we have on songs. Jon Freeman has done very well with his folkinfo.org. -Joe- |
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08 Jan 17 - 09:02 PM (#3831288) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Joe Offer I've been working on databases of supporting information for the Rise Up Singing and Rise Again songbooks, with links to YouTube videos for each song, and to Wikipedia, Mudcat, Roud, and the Traditional Ballad Index and other sources. The Rise Again database is available online, but we still have a lot of work to do on it. I was surprised to find that there were Wikipedia entries for the vast majority of songs in the two books - and that the Wikipedia information is usually quite good. I don't want to get into yet another extended argument about the pros and cons of Wikipedia. I can read the articles myself and make up my own mind about the value of information there, thankyouverymuch, just as I critically read everything I read. But still and all, there's an awful lot of good information about songs there, and I really wonder who put it there. Seems to me, that it's likely that a lot of the good stuff there, was put there by people we must know. But who are they? And then the second thing I want to know is how to put an article in about things that are missing. I was looking today for the camp song, Rise And Shine (and Give God Your Glory, Glory). Wikipedia didn't have an entry for the song, but its "disambiguation page" listed the song as written by Peter Anders Svensson, a member of the Cardigans pop group who wrote a song titled "Rise and Shine" in 1995 that had nothing to do with giving glory or arks. I corrected the page entry as best I could, but it might have been nice to have started a Wikipedia page for the camp song. So, just how does one go about starting a page on a song that will fit Wikipedia criteria? Has anyone here started song pages there with any success? -Joe- |
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09 Jan 17 - 04:26 AM (#3831333) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: DaveRo I've set up several pages in Wikipedia - but not for some years. I see my account dates from 2006. In those days you just got on with it - wrote your entry and let others correct or reject. The motto was 'Be Bold' - and I think it still is. It helped that I'm a techy and know how wikis work. So I was interested to read in this recent thread: Deficit of Doerflinger on Wikipedia that there is now an approval process. I guess it might be different for new users. I may still be able to just bung up a new page; if you want to email me a draft I'll give it a try. Probably better, though, to follow the drafting procedure described in that Doerflinger thread and build your own reputation. Do set up your user page so folk know you're serious. The best approach is to copy a similar page and change it. Happy to help - you have my email, and I'll review and edit draft pages if you announce them on mudcat. Be Bold! |
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09 Jan 17 - 05:19 AM (#3831342) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Mr Red Wikipedia is a wondrous resource. But beware if you have a choice bit of data to share. There are plenty of rules and methodologies it employs and woe-betide those that don't know them. I have tried to add a snippet on Lewis Carroll and each time the moderators jump on it with reasons that are summarised with one or two word jargon. If you aren't a regular contributor it IS a foreign language. The last failure was because I referenced a YouTube video which was most likely a copyright violation, and that at least was understandable, but it took a few goes to get that far! I started one on shanty collector William Main Doerflinger in response to a Mudcat thread bemoaning the lack thereof. & that took about 3 goes to get the technicalities right (I am a techie) and 3 months to be approved. There are still internal Wiki links to add, (technicalities forced me to leave them out at the time). FWIW Basically, references are external links (Wiki links are not allowed as references, called self-referencial links!). Internal links are inline blickies to Wiki pages. And those familiar with HTML - it doesn't translate directly. Learn again! I inspect & copy. |
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09 Jan 17 - 06:49 AM (#3831367) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Will Fly Interesting to see that wysiwyg's prediction of the future marketability of Wikipedia for profit has, as yet, been unfulfilled. |
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09 Jan 17 - 09:44 AM (#3831408) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: DaveRo Other sites do use its entries and wrap them in their own adverts and clickbait. For example, this link was recently posted: Victoria_Square_House Easy to do, as the result of a search. Let's all avoid this, and link straight to wikipedia. |
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09 Jan 17 - 09:10 PM (#3831593) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Mark Clark I remember reading some time ago (lost citation) that Wikipedia's accuracy is on a par with that of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Deep experts often find flaws in the Britannica too. With Wikipedia, usually someone with deep knowledge will see a serious error and correct it very soon. Once in a while, subjects that may have interpretations will experience an update war but the mods seem to catch those pretty fast. - Mark |
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09 Jan 17 - 09:29 PM (#3831595) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Joe Offer My degree is in Theology, so of course I'm interested in religious subjects. I have been pleased to find that Wikipedia has information on almost any Bible topic that is solidly within the progressive intellectual mainstream. I had thought that the ultra-conservatives would have taken it over by now, but they really haven't. -Joe- |
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15 Jan 17 - 10:44 PM (#3832885) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Tony Rees Hi all, I've created and/or extended a few wikipedia pages over the years and not encountered many problems at all from vandals etc. - list of music-related ones here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tony_1212 the only thing I have found is satisfying WP's criteria for "notability" which is more difficult for folk rather than mainstream artists (no/fewer chart placings etc...) - but generally OK once you can chase a few independent published articles about the subject. I also have started digitising and uploading some of my folk-related photos (also shown at the link above) for the articles via wikimedia commons, since I am happy to put them into the public domain for others to use without needing to consult me - better that than staying in albums that will go to the tip when I am gone! (plus I never thought of them as a revenue stream). I have had a small number of bad experiences with the odd pedantic or disagreeable WP contributor but not enough to lose sleep over. In general I am happy to contribute for so long as I feel my efforts are making a small improvement to the general WP coverage and might be appreciated by others I may never meet. - Tony |
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16 Jan 17 - 06:16 AM (#3832923) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: GUEST,Jon Jon Freeman has done very well with his folkinfo.org. Well that site's been gone a while now, Joe. I did consider a wiki type page a couple of times. I think after the layout change, I'd have opted to have as another tab with the discussion and song tabs. Whatever that never got off the ground. Thinking back now, while I think we (perhaps helped by starting from scratch) were in a position to present things in way that personally I think more effective for songs and I think where we could try other ideas, a major problem there was generating enough interest/contributions (perhaps not helped by restrictions on material requiring a tune perhaps my own personality etc.) to do something like that. Moving on to your mention of books in your following post. We had 2 possible methods there. The source for a song was always given so it was possible to pick out all entries we had from a given book. There were problems there though in that a misspelling of the book would throw a query and that in the case of ST we didn't duplicate songs we already had. I think the workaround (which I sort of used to produce the ST listing at joe-offer.com – that process was part manual to create a small table I could run a query against) would have been to maintain book index table although policies such as no more than 10% from in print books would have limited its usefulness… The other posiblity would have been the abc projects which I it had have been used would probably have been more useful for tunes. I think had that one at least in a draft form – possibly lost – would allow a sort of 'project manager' and contributors. Pretty crude but to use ST as the example the idea would be that different people could take on different pamphlets, submit these as abc text files and the system would produce the indexes pdfs midis etc. from that. Coming back to me doing a good job and thinking about things today I think (largely thanks to dmcg who posted the bulk of the songs and to you for ensuring its not lost) we did wind up with a nice collection of songs and the abc converter now managed at mandolin tab remains useful and we had a few ideas etc. - but maybe it could have been better… Whatever, I remain happily retired from trying these sort of projects and am still a little unsure even where I am with folk music – although re the latter, the gift on a new Ome Celtic tenor banjo has got me playing tunes at home more than I'd been doing in a good nuber of years |
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16 Jan 17 - 12:35 PM (#3832993) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Bill D (side note... I see my prediction from Aug. 07 still holds. Hasn't gone 'pay site' yet.) |
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17 Jan 17 - 03:07 AM (#3833076) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Joe Offer Jon refers to my post of August 2007, where I said I didn't think Wikipedia would be a very good tool for information on folk songs. I think I was wrong. Wikipedia has articles on lots of folk songs, and they're generally very good and very accurate - and when they're wrong, WE can correct them. Peter Blood and Annie Patterson, editors of the Rise Up Singing and Rise Again songbooks, set up databases to supplement the songbooks. I'm the one doing a good part of the work on the databases - maybe most of the work. I'm researching each song in the two books, and making links to Wikipedia, Mudcat, Traditional Ballad Index, Roud, and other sources. Others are adding links to YouTube recordings of the songs. I have to say that Wikipedia has excellent information on many of the songs (and so does Mudcat). Here's a link to what we've published so far: |
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17 Jan 17 - 07:47 AM (#3833123) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: GUEST,Jon And Joe I was mostly rambling about our attempts at means of organising and presenting information rather than the quality of information. To me, I don't see any reason why Wikipedia should not be good on the latter and contributors may include Mudcatters as well as people we don't know about. I can be suspicious of the treatment of controversial topics (eg some politcs) on Wikipedia but I think most people would want to pull together with folk songs. On the former all things other things being equal, I'd choose Wikepidia. I know there are the dt study threads and threads may be cross referenced by you but I think it could take a while to get to the latest corrected information an there is the chance that may not even be found. At worst I suppose I could liken it to my (so far failed) attempts to get a particular rtl8821 wifi/bluetooth dongle working on Linux. Lot's of information in various threads for different distributions and it can take some time to pick out what may be worth trying. hat particular problem arguably has one advantage though - I will know if I hit on the particular correct (for me) solution (if it exists - I doubt it) by a simple (although time consuming) test - verification is simply "it works!". But maybe I'm being a bit too harsh on MC there. Recordings sound a good idea but you either need some means of hosting them yourself (which i guess these days could be your own Youtube page?) or be able to check/correct/replace links to external sites. I think perhaps the closest we came to that one was a link generated on the song title to what was originally a gracenote (which IIRC we hit trouble with Sony ownership and had to find an alternative) search for CDs/Dvd recordings. The page for displaying a song also had a search into the Roud Index to find other documents containing the song. So what we tried to offer was the song from a "documented source" with at least some links for follow up. I'm not sure if it still exists for your site (I think I provided an update on closure) was a link from the VWML to our songs - they had a page on our site that generated a comma separated list of Round numbers and updated based on that. Oh well I can't stop rambling on.... I like your work on the Rise Up Singing. |
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17 Jan 17 - 10:01 AM (#3833154) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Jack Campin I've never trusted Wikipedia as a resource for folk music after seeing what Kuntz did with his godawful fiddle tune site (stuffed with any old unchecked crap uploaded by Oirish-urban-legend-mongers). Moved to some other site and then much of the "content" into Wikipedia. Try to correct anything and his sock puppets will uncorrect it - it was something between whack-a-mole and a zombie apocalypse. I gave up. I only trust sites which have identifiable authors who take responsibility for their own words. If they're wrong at least I'll know who's wrong. |
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17 Jan 17 - 10:51 AM (#3833164) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: GUEST,Jon I'm a bit surprised there, Jack. I know there can be a direction in folk music that is inclined to make everything from The Wild Rover to St Anne's Reel traditional Irish but had not imagined things as you describe. |
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17 Jan 17 - 11:37 AM (#3833177) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: robomatic I think Wikipedia correctly understands that accurate information is a work in progress and often a fight for one set of memes over another. Time was when the expense of publication provided a barrier to misinformation because with names like "Encyclopedia Americana" (or "Britannica" indicated that only the best and brightest would or could contribute. Those days are gone. I use Wikipedia on a daily basis (and sometimes it seems hourly). And I contribute to the effort. |
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17 Jan 17 - 06:20 PM (#3833246) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Tony Rees Over on another Mudcat thread Deficit of Doerflinger on Wikipedia there is a good example of Mudcat folk catalysing some (hopefully useful) new Wikipedia content, the result in question now residing at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Main_Doerflinger. I certainly believe in Wikipedia as a convenient and suitably prominent place to assemble such information, and remain (moderately) optimistic of its ability to withstand future vandalism attempts... probably assisted by the non-controversial nature of the subject matter, at least. Regards - Tony |
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17 Jan 17 - 07:28 PM (#3833253) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: GUEST,.gargoyle I trust a Mudcat thread and discussion....many fold over a quiki-wiki... WHY? There are two decades of clearly idenified posters...and several lead to the LOC. If the "old dudes" can continue to channel the "new-byies"...and teach them links..... MC is breached to become.... a dream few foresaw. |
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17 Jan 17 - 08:58 PM (#3833264) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Steve Shaw I completely take that point. Mudcat is a wondrous resource and so is Wikipedia. On both there are hawks who will pounce on errors and that's all to the good. The greater anonymity of Wikipedia authorship is a potential problem that makes cheating easier. In the media there are are good and bad journalists and commentators. Quite often there's a relationship between the potential emotional load of a topic and the likelihood of information about it being subverted. More "mundane" stuff that can't contribute much to hidden agendas is more likely to remain untampered with. The last hundred years' history of the Bude canal is pretty well settled because no-one is ever really going to fall out with someone else who finds a mistake in the narrative. Compare that with the last hundred years' history of the Middle East... The usual prosaic advice is still the best: use lots of different sources and use your brain and don't buy used cars off people you don't know. |
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18 Jan 17 - 02:12 AM (#3833289) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Tony Rees Steve Shaw wrote: "Mudcat is a wondrous resource and so is Wikipedia". Wise words - but did not stress that they are also different animals. On Mudcat, people can express their own opinions as well as ferret out facts. However, nobody then tries to synthesise the latter into a coherent whole (very much) - to get an overview of a subject it is generally necessary to trawl through all previous posts, sometimes in multiple related threads; also there is not much internal linking (start here, go somewhere else to explore a point or fact further). Wikipedia is not a place for personal opinions but it is a place for coherent information summaries, including lots of cross-page links, which (at least in principle) have their various sources cited so the reader can check for themselves. Any cited opinions have to be sourced as well (xxx says Bob Dylan is the greatest songwriter of all time *here*), and non neutral-point-of-view assertions can be challenged and removed. It's not an either/or choice: I use both, accepting their limitations. If I want encyclopedic overviews I may well start with Wikipedia, then follow up with the cited sources especially if they are available on line. If I find an error on WP I can also suggest a correction, or correct it myself. Nothing is error free but at least the information is freely available, and the more eyes look at it the more likely wiki elves will spot any issues. If I want more multiplicity of opinions or some information not yet in Wikipedia, I will go to Mudcat. In an ideal world Wikipedia pages will also link to relevant Mudcat threads where more info is available, and vice versa (I already placed 2 Mudcat links in the W.M. Doerflinger article previously cited). So in my mind the 2 systems both work pretty well and even better when in synergy. Just my 2 cents of course, Regards - Tony |
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18 Jan 17 - 04:40 AM (#3833306) Subject: RE: Wikipedia's value for Mudcatters From: Steve Shaw Well said, Tony. |