Every now and then I like to read through Wikipedia pages for things I know more than the average person on. It keeps me skeptical of the things I read on there.
It's always frustrating for me to see things in Wikipedia I know are wrong because I was in the room when a particular decision was made, or because I personally made the decision.
I gave up making corrections because they would always get reverted by someone in another country who wasn't even born when the event happened. Simply because there wasn't a random blogger live streaming it, and nobody's written a book about it, my knowledge remains my own.
Wikipedia is the ultimate example of deleting the world's history because it can't be linked to.
If you've got a good answer to that question I'm sure they'd love to hear it and to update their policy.
For what it's worth, you can write the information you know in a blog that can be linked back to you personally, and that's an acceptable source to cite.
Press sources do often have minor or major inaccuracies which can then get perpetuated in Wikipedia.
"What people outside do not appreciate is that a newspaper is like a soufflé, prepared in a hurry for immediate consumption. This of course is why whenever you read a newspaper account of some event of which you have personal knowledge it is nearly always inadequate or inaccurate. Journalists are as aware as anyone of this defect; it is simply that if the information is to reach as many readers as possible, something less than perfection has often to be accepted." —David E. H. Jones, in New Scientist, Vol. 26
Wikipedians, for that matter, are aware of this defect too (or ought to be), because a great many press articles about Wikipedia contain absolute clangers.
Interesting--looks like I came across an older policy document. But in this case, it sounds like the author is an established and published expert on this topic, so their blog would be acceptable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_and_usin...
> The author is an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications, except for exceptional claims.[4] Take care when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else will probably have done so.[5]
Well, on the same page (which is an essay, not a policy) you have:
"Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about any living people, except for claims by the author about themself. This holds even if the author of the source is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer."
That limits things quite severely. The relevant policy is here:
(Just to explain: in Wikipedia, "policies" are "widely accepted standards that all editors should normally follow"; a "guideline" is "a generally accepted set of best practices that editors should follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply", and an "essay" can be just one editor's opinion; it is "not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.")
I see, thank you for pointing out the classifications of policy-like writings.
I still disagree in the narrow bounds of this conversation, which is articles about technical topics. The prohibition there seems to be on accepting someone's claims about themselves, which is different from an expert on a subject making specific fact-based claims in their field.
You're getting downvoted, but I think for Wikipedia you're correct. Wikipedia's purpose is not to be a cutting-edge repository of all truth. It's to conveniently organize all the knowledge that can be looked up. That's because every bit of it needs to be verifiable by non-expert editors. If there's some knowledge that can't be looked up, then that's not Wikipedia's problem to solve.
Indeed. And even more in general, "truth" is a realtive term. More often than not, it is hardly verifiable, the best thing available is "consensus", which is the aim of Wikipedia content.
It's always frustrating for me to see things in Wikipedia I know are wrong because I was in the room when a particular decision was made, or because I personally made the decision.
I gave up making corrections because they would always get reverted by someone in another country who wasn't even born when the event happened. Simply because there wasn't a random blogger live streaming it, and nobody's written a book about it, my knowledge remains my own.
Wikipedia is the ultimate example of deleting the world's history because it can't be linked to.