Criticism of Wikipedia from Wikipidia For a list of criticisms of Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Criticisms. See also Wikipedia:Replies to common objections. Two radically different versions of a Wikipedia biography, presented to the public within days of each other: Wikipedia's susceptibility to edit wars and bias is one of the issues raised by Wikipedia critics http://medicalexposedownloads.com/PDF/Criticism%20of%20Wikipedia%20from%20Wikipidia.pdf http://medicalexposedownloads.com/PDF/Examples%20of%20Bias%20in%20Wikipedia.pdf http://medicalexposedownloads.com/PDF/Wikipedia%20is%20Run%20by%20Latent%20Homosexual%20Homophob ics.pdf http://medicalexposedownloads.com/PDF/Bigotry%20and%20Bias%20in%20Wikipedia.pdf http://medicalexposedownloads.com/PDF/Dear%20Wikipedia%20on%20Libelous%20lies%20against%20Desire%20 Dubounet.pdf http://medicalexposedownloads.com/PDF/Desir%c3%a9%20Dubounet%20Wikipidia%20text.pdf Criticism of Wikipedia—of the content, procedures, and operations, and of the Wikipedia community—covers many subjects, topics, and themes about the nature of Wikipedia as an open source encyclopedia of subject entries that almost anyone can edit. Wikipedia has been criticized for the uneven handling, acceptance, and retention of articles about controversial subjects. The principal concerns of the critics are the factual reliability of the content; the readability of the prose; and a clear article layout; the existence of systemic bias; of gender bias; and of racial bias among the editorial community that is Wikipedia. Further concerns are that the organization allows the participation of anonymous editors (leading to editorial vandalism); the existence of social stratification (allowing cliques); and over-complicated rules (allowing editorial quarrels), which conditions permit the misuse of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is described as unreliable at times. In "Wikipedia: The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge" (2010), Edwin Blackcharacterized the editorial content of articles as a mixture of "truth, half-truth, and some falsehoods".[1] Similarly, in "Wisdom?: More like Dumbness of the Crowds" (2011), Oliver Kamm said that the encyclopedic articles usually are dominated by the editors with the loudest and most persistent editorial voices (talk pages and edit summaries), usually by an interest group with an ideological "axe to grind" on the subject, topic, or theme of the article in question.[2] Politics and ideology are also criticized on Wikipedia. In two works published in 2012, "The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia" by Timothy Messer-Kruse, and "You Just Type in What You are Looking for: Undergraduates' Use of Library Resources vs. Wikipedia" by Mónica Colón-Aguirre and Rachel A. Fleming-May, the authors analyzed and criticized the undue-weight policy (relative importance of a given source), and concluded that, because the purpose of Wikipedia is not about providing correct and definitive information about a subject,[3] but to present, as editorially dominant, the majority opinion perspective taken by the authors of the sources for the article, the uneven application of the undue-weight policy creates omissions (of fact and of interpretation) that might give the reader false knowledge about the subject matter, which knowledge the reader has based upon the factually incomplete content of the Wikipedia article.[3][4][5] Wikipedia is sometimes characterized as having a hostile editing environment. In Common Knowledge?: An Ethnography of Wikipedia (2014), Dariusz Jemielniak, a steward for Wikimedia Foundation projects, stated that the complexity of the rules and laws governing editorial content and the behavior of the editors is a burden for new editors and a licence for the "office politics" of disruptive editors.[6][7] In a follow-up article, "The Unbearable Bureaucracy of Wikipedia" (2014), Jemielniak said that abridging and rewriting the editorial rules and laws of Wikipedia for clarity of purpose and simplicity of application would resolve the bureaucratic bottleneck of too many rules.[6][7] In The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia's Reaction to Popularity is Causing its Decline (2013), Aaron Halfaker stated that the over-complicated rules and laws of Wikipedia unintentionally provoked the decline in editorial participation that began in 2009— frightening away new editors who otherwise would contribute to Wikipedia.[8] There have also been works that describe the possible misuse of Wikipedia. In "Wikipedia or Wickedpedia?" (2008), the Hoover Institution said that Wikipedia is an unreliable resource for correct knowledge, information, and facts about a subject, because, as an open source website, the editorial content of the articles is readily subjected to manipulation and propaganda.[9] The 2014 edition of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's official student handbook, Academic Integrity at MIT, informs students that Wikipedia is not a reliable academic source, stating, "the bibliography published at the end of the Wikipedia entry may point you to potential sources. However, do not assume that these sources are reliable—use the same criteria to judge them as you would any other source. Do not consider the Wikipedia bibliography as a replacement for your own research."[10] Contents [hide] 1Criticism of content o 1.1Accuracy of information . 1.1.1Not authoritative . 1.1.2Comparative study of science articles . 1.1.3Lack of methodical fact-checking . 1.1.4Neutral point of view and conflicts of interest . 1.1.5Scientific disputes . 1.1.5.1Exposure to political operatives and advocates . 1.1.5.2Commandeering or sanitizing articles . 1.1.5.3Editing for financial rewards o 1.2Quality of the presentation . 1.2.1Quality of articles on U.S. history . 1.2.2Quality of medical articles . 1.2.3The Wall Street Journal debate o 1.3Systemic bias in coverage . 1.3.1Notability of article topics . 1.3.2Partisanship . 1.3.3American and corporate bias . 1.3.4Racial bias . 1.3.5Gender bias and sexism o 1.4Sexual content o 1.5Exposure to vandals o 1.6Privacy concerns 2Criticism of the community o 2.1Role of Jimmy Wales o 2.2Conflict of interest cases o 2.3Allegations of unfair treatment of female contributors o 2.4Lack of verifiable identities . 2.4.1Scandals involving administrators and arbitrators . 2.4.1.1Essjay controversy . 2.4.2Anonymity o 2.5Editorial process . 2.5.1Level of debate, edit wars and harassment . 2.5.2Consensus and the "hive mind" . 2.5.3Excessive rule-making o 2.6Social stratification 3See also 4References 5Further reading 6External links Criticism of content[edit] Accuracy of information[edit] For more details on this topic, see Reliability of Wikipedia § Assessments. Not authoritative[edit] Wikipedia acknowledges that the encyclopedia not be used as a primary source for research, either academic or informational. The British librarian Philip Bradley said that "the main problem is the lack of authority. With printed publications, the publishers have to ensure that their data are reliable, as their livelihood depends on it. But with something like this, all that goes out the window."[11] Likewise, Robert McHenry, editor-in-chief of Encyclopædia Britannica from 1992 to 1997, said that readers of Wikipedia articles cannot know who wrote the article they are reading—it might have been written by an expert in the subject matter or by an amateur.[12] In 2015,Wikipedia co- founder Larry Sanger was interviewed by Zach Schwartz in Vice which he said, in part, "I think Wikipedia never solved the problem of how to organize itself in a way that didn't lead to mob rule" and that since he left the project, "People that I would say are trolls sort of took over. The inmates started running the asylum."[13] Comparative study of science articles[edit] Teaching, Criticism, and Praise: an analysis of talk-page messages for the Wikipedia Summer of Research (2011) convention.[14] In "Internet Encyclopaedias Go Head-to-head", a 2005 article published in the Nature scientific journal, the results of a blind experiment (single-blind study), which compared the factual and informational accuracy of entries from Wikipedia and the Encyclopædia Britannica, were reported. The 42-entry sample included science articles and biographies of scientists, which were compared for accuracy by anonymous academic reviewers; they found that the average Wikipedia entry contained four errors and omissions, while the average Encyclopædia Britannica entry contained three errors and omissions. The study concluded that Wikipedia and Britannica were comparable in terms of the accuracy of its science entries".[15] Nevertheless, the reviewers had two principal criticisms of the Wikipedia science entries: (i) thematically confused content, without an intelligible structure (order, presentation, interpretation); and (ii) that undue weight is given to controversial, fringe theories about the subject matter.[16] The dissatisfaction of the Encyclopædia Britannica editors led to Nature publishing additional survey documentation that substantiated the results of the comparative study.[17] Based upon the additional documents, Encyclopædia Britannica denied the validity of the study, stating it was flawed, because theBritannica extracts were compilations that sometimes included articles written for the youth version of the encyclopedia.[18] In turn, Nature acknowledged that someBritannica articles were compilations, but denied that such editorial details invalidated the conclusions of the comparative study of the science articles.[19] The editors of