You won't like this.....

[EricBarbour]

As mentioned by Jeeembo yesterday at the closing of Wikimania.
Britons trust Wikipedia 'more than the news' in a YouGov poll.

[lilburne]

Excellent news.

[Randy from Boise]

I'm surprised the BBC rates so lowly. Ditto for the major British press.

WP seems about right.


RfB

[Poetlister]

I'm surprised the BBC rates so lowly. Ditto for the major British press.

WP seems about right.


RfB

Do people realise how many WP editors source things to the despised redtops and certainly the Daily Mail?

[thekohser]

I'm surprised the BBC rates so lowly. Ditto for the major British press.

WP seems about right.


RfB

Do people realise how many WP editors source things to the despised redtops and certainly the Daily Mail?

It's an excellent point you bring up, Poetlister. I wonder if RfB realizes it?

Also, Jimmy (in his speech) said that Encyclopedia Britannica was left off the graphic, but that resource was trusted by something like 89 percent of the UK public -- far greater than the Wikipedia score. Why did the graphic drop EB, I wonder?

[Randy from Boise]

I'm surprised the BBC rates so lowly. Ditto for the major British press.

WP seems about right.


RfB

Do people realise how many WP editors source things to the despised redtops and certainly the Daily Mail?

It's an excellent point you bring up, Poetlister. I wonder if RfB realizes it?

Also, Jimmy (in his speech) said that Encyclopedia Britannica was left off the graphic, but that resource was trusted by something like 89 percent of the UK public -- far greater than the Wikipedia score. Why did the graphic drop EB, I wonder?

I wonder....

Also, I'm not sure you can trust the source ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8150129.stm ), but one 2009 survey found the good old EB the 10th ranked consumer brand in the UK.

[eppur si muove]

I'm surprised the BBC rates so lowly. Ditto for the major British press.

The journalism numbers are old data and a lot closer to the chaos in the BBC over Newsnight not running with the Jimmy Savile story and then overreacting to that mistake by running with false allegations against the former Tory treasurer. The written press figures are also lowered by Lerveson the phone-bugging scandal.

[SB_Johnny]

"I'm not going to rest until they trust us more than they ever trusted Encyclopaedia Britannica in the past," Wales said.

[Mancunium]

Why you probably trust Wikipedia more than the BBC
By Jamie Bartlett, The Telegraph, 12 August 2014 link

A significant moment slipped by this weekend and hardly anyone noticed. Brits now trust Wikipedia, the crowd sourced online encyclopedia, more than the mighty BBC, the independent, professional, national media outlet. A YouGov poll of almost 2,000 British adults found 64 per cent trust Wikipedia entries to tell the truth "a great deal" or "a fair amount"; compared to 61 per cent for Auntie. (Journalists on tabloids came in at only 13 per cent). On one level, this is a remarkable coup for Wikipedia. At "Wikimania", the annual conference of Wikipedians – the small army of honourable people who give up their time to audit and check entries – which took place in London over the weekend, Jimmy Wales announced the stunning result to cheers from hundreds of delighted devotees. ‘The project’, as Wikimedians call it, had finally done it! Well, almost. Wikipedia isn’t quite as trusted as the the venerable old master. Yet. "I'm not going to rest until they trust us more than they ever trusted Encyclopaedia Britannica in the past," Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told the crowd. [...] Of course it’s wrong sometimes. A recent study found, for example, it’s probably not the best place to go if you’ve a health complaint. [...]

The reason this is important is because it marks a moment: when the new model of trust finally dislodged the old. We live in the age of the crowd, when we have more faith in what others think collectively than what we might find ourselves or are told by the experts. It’s partly a result of the collapse of trust in expertise and institutions generally. Whether it’s the justice system, the police, the government, or the media, over the last decade trust has been on a marked downward trend. [...] More importantly, crowd wisdom has become the only way to manage the deluge of digital material coming at us all the time. The internet is a mass of conflicting, confusing, overwhelming information. [...] There is too much to choose from: too many songs, too many books, too many hotels, too much news, too many opinions. [...] So the simplest way to work out what’s what is to look at what everyone else thinks. [...] So much more of our life is now driven by the crowd: numbers of views, or stars, or download numbers – have become the handy little gatekeepers that help us manage our limited time. After all, two heads are better than one. So a thousand must be better still, yes?

Not always. Online, things aren’t always what they seem. For example, the importance of online reviews is feeding a growing "Online Reputation Management" industry. Dozens of companies now offer to repair and improve the reputation of companies online – and several major companies have been fined for manipulating or faking their reviews. According to one recent report, roughly 16 per cent of all restaurant reviews on Yelp are fraudulent, and tend to be more extreme than other reviews. [...] And even on Wikipedia, which has developed the best way of dealing with this sort of thing, there are still problems. As I reported here, there is a worrying amount of wikiwashing – where paid editors write and edit entries. [...] Perhaps the bigger problem is that we’re herding animals. We bunch together, we tend to follow each other. As Ross Clark wrote in his Spectator feature on the death of individualism: "Social media works on the latest obsessive-compulsive disorder in us; the voice in us telling us we must do or see something because everyone else is telling us to." The result, unless we’re careful, is a loss of individualism, or at its worse, independent thinking and discovery.

So much more of our life is being driven by the crowd? We are herding animals? We bunch together? We tend to follow each other? Social media works on the latest obsessive-compulsive disorder in us? The voice in us telling us we must do or see something because everyone else is telling us to? The result, unless we are careful, is a loss of individualism, or at its worse, independent thinking and discovery?

What Bartlett is describing here is himself, his little circle of colleagues and friends-- and Germany in the late 1930s. You, Mr Bartlett, are not "we". Do not presume to include me in your "we" and in your "us".

[Mancunium]

Why People Trust Wikipedia More Than the News
by Joseph Cox, Motherboard, 11 August 2014 link

[...] But before you bat off these poll results as just another manifestation of how the public don't trust the media in general, maybe it's time to give Wikipedia—that saviour of last-minute study sessions and the final arbiter of drunken arguments—a little credit. Perhaps people don't have more faith in the site just because they're sceptical of newspapers and television; Jimmy Wales' creation has its own reasons for becoming the world's go-to source for information. Wikipedia's defining feature is of course its open-source, crowd-sourced construction. If you see something that you know to be wrong or out of date, or you deem the content to be biased in some respect, you—or anybody else—can change it. [...] It's not a complete free-for-all, however. Over a thousand users have administration privileges, meaning they can rename and delete pages at will, amongst other things. Some of these become Wikipedia veterans, such as user "gwern," who has made over 90,000 edits on the site and contributed to hundreds of articles.

Nevertheless, it may still seem surprising that people think a page anyone can edit—an academic, a hobbyist, or an internet troll—can maintain any sort of veracity. But it's not just public perception; several studies suggest Wikipedia can actually rival established sources of knowledge in the accuracy stakes. [...] A Guardian piece from 2005, entitled “Can you trust Wikipedia?”, asked a series of experts from different disciplines to review articles within their subject areas. Generally, the information was accurate, although there were mentions of omissions and not everyone was impressed. Another from Nature held up Wikipedia against a more traditional tome: Encyclopaedia Britannica. It claimed that “Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries,” [...] It's important to point out that the results of the poll don't necessarily indicate that Wikipedia is more trusted than all media. As mentioned, BBC News journalists still came in at 61 percent, and the researchers wrote that the difference between them and Wikipedia editors in the poll was "insignificant." Wikipedia should be treated with scepticism, as any source should. But for what it is—a free to access, flexible record of history—it does its job pretty damn well.

Dashed off by Joseph Cox, posing as a journalist. Even for what he is -- a low-rent hack -- he does his job pretty damn shoddily.

Brits trust Wikipedia more than the BBC, "serious" newspapers
by Corry "Happy Mutant" Doctorow, BoingBoing, 11 August 2014

Go straight to Discuss: link

[Mancunium]

Wikipedia More Accurate Than News Outlets, Readers Say; Why They're Wrong
by Jeff Stone, International Business Times, 12 August 2014 link

Wikipedia, the crowd-sourced Internet encyclopedia demonized by educators, is a more trusted news source than a number of major British media outlets, according to a new poll that highlights a growing mistrust in the media while failing to note many Wikipedia entries, in fact, are based on those same media reports. Research from YouGov, an Internet market research firm, indicates 52 percent of Britons have used Wikipedia for research, with 64 percent admitting they have “a fair amount” of trust in the authors of the entries to tell the truth. [...] (U.S. media outlets don’t fair much better, according to a June Gallup poll that found only 22 percent of Americans have confidence in newspapers, which are more trusted than TV or online news outlets.) Having “a fair amount” of trust in Wikipedia while holding on to questions about media accuracy and bias forget a key point, though, since many of the most popular Wikipedia articles rely almost entirely on news stories to fill out accurate entries on a subject. Iain_Duncan_Smith (T-H-L), Britain’s conservative work and pensions secretary who is seeking to restrict welfare benefits, mafia boss Terry Adams (Clerkenwell_crime_syndicate#Personnel_and_members (T-H-L)) and Foreign Minister Mark_Simmonds (T-H-L) were among the most popular British news stories Monday, for example.

Of the 30 cited Wikipedia sources that make up the description for Smith’s time as secretary, though, 26 are from the Guardian, the Telegraph and other publications in which Britons claim to have less faith. The references section on Simmonds’ Wikipedia page is made up of a paltry four sources, three of which are major media outlets. Likewise for Terry Adams, whose Wikipedia entry is based almost entirely on news accounts published by the BBC and the Guardian, as well as some tabloid items. [...] “When half a dozen students in Neil Waters’s Japanese history class at Middlebury College asserted on exams that the Jesuits supported the Shimbara Rebellion in 17th-century Japan, he knew something was wrong,” began a 2007 New York Times article about the growing trend. “He figured out the problem soon enough, the obscure, though incorrect, information was from Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia, and the students had picked it up cramming for his exam.” That stereotype fails to note Wikipedia is crowd-sourced, meaning a student who references a Wikipedia page in the midst of researching a paper, for example, would have a better grasp of a certain topic than if only looking at an argument from one angle. Wikipedia’s army of volunteers has also proven to be a strength of the site, with the Atlantic explaining in 2012 the site is ahead of the academic world when new information trumps long-held assumptions, as was the case when an expert on the Haymarket Riot sought to correct the accepted version of history. “When new research emerges that contradicts an accepted version of history, the earlier books, textbooks and paper encyclopedias don’t change overnight,” the magazine noted. “The process of how history is taught and revised over time is a slow one, whether in a book, online or in people’s minds.”

OMG WP:NOR.

[thekohser]

Wikipedia More Accurate Than News Outlets, Readers Say; Why They're Wrong
by Jeff Stone, International Business Times, 12 August 2014 link

Wikipedia, the crowd-sourced Internet encyclopedia demonized by educators, is a more trusted news source than a number of major British media outlets, according to a new poll that highlights a growing mistrust in the media while failing to note many Wikipedia entries, in fact, are based on those same media reports.

Bravo, Jeff Stone! Hooray, IBT!

[HRIP7]

It seems to me some of the reports have failed to notice the difference between "trusting authors to tell the truth", and "trusting that an article is reliable". With the Savile case and so on, there is a public fear that journalists may be withholding information available to them in order to please someone, whereas Wikipedians are usually very keen to get what information is available to them (from those selfsame sources, of course) into an article, especially if it can embarrass someone. It's true that Wikipedians may be less beholden to anyone (I guess that's an advantage of being anonymous).

[Mancunium]

People trust Wikipedia more than the BBC. They shouldn't.
by Charlie Burton, GQ, 15 August 2014 linkhttp://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/comment/ar ... t-mistakes[/link]

One-nil to Jimmy Wales this week after a YouGov poll showed that more people trust his site, Wikipedia, than the BBC's. All well and good but according to a recent study, 13 percent of Wikipedia articles contain blunders and sabotage. Here are nine memorable examples…

1. Timmy Mallet [...] was credited as being a former world Jet Ski champion. [...]

2. [...] one of Robert Kennedy's former assistants was falsely connected to the deaths of the Kennedy brothers.

3. A new version of the Kama Sutra was said to have been published courtesy of television gardener Alan Titchmarsh. [...]

4. Michael Winner supposedly died in 2007 [...] - he put his knife and fork together for the last time in 2013.

5. [...] Death In The Afternoon [...] was [...] "A non-fiction book by Ernest Hemingway about the ceremony and traditions of Spanish whores." [...]

6. Janis Joplin apparently speed walked everywhere - a reference to a 30 Rock episode [...]

7. [...] a tennis player named "Griffin Ridout" replaced Roger Federer at the top of a table ranking the best players of all time.

8. David Beckham was a famous "Chinese goalkeeper in the 18th century" [...]

9. [...] Friedrich Nietzsche [...] "raised the bar in terms of moustache thickness and size". [...]

"Recent study"?

[Johnny Au]

Britons would generally rather trust the lies found in Encyclopedia Jimbonica than in talking heads that merely uncritically quote unverified tweets and elaborate on them, despite both being made up of lies, although the former consists of sourced lies, including those sourced from the latter.

[Anthonyhcole]

"I'm not going to rest until they trust us more than they ever trusted Encyclopaedia Britannica in the past," Wales said.

You do that by making Wikipedia worthy of the reader's trust. I'd have liked him to follow up with a strategy to achieve that goal. He followed up with, "So, one of the core things I want to talk about this year ... civility."

In her speech to Wikimania this year, Lila warned that innovation comes in waves, and the biggest mistake an established innovator can make is to just wait for the next major innovation to overtake them. I believe the next major innovation in broad online knowledge distribution will be actual knowledge distribution - as opposed to Wikipedia's unreliable assertion distribution. There is a massive unmet (but meetable) need for actual knowledge out there. Wikipedia must become a reliable source, or it will fail. Soon.

[Poetlister]

Wikipedia must become a reliable source, or it will fail. Soon.

The fact that it hasn't failed yet rather suggests that people either don't know or don't care about its unreliability.

[Anthonyhcole]

Wikipedia must become a reliable source, or it will fail. Soon.

The fact that it hasn't failed yet rather suggests that people either don't know or don't care about its unreliability.

Oh.

[Mancunium]

Why Do People Trust Wikipedia? Because An Argument Is Better Than A Lecture
Techdirt, 18 August 2014 link

I've never really understood the debate about how trustworthy Wikipedia is compared with once-printed, more "official" encyclopedia volumes, like the old Encyclopedia Britannica. What rarely made sense to me was the constant assertions that an information system to which anyone could contribute was inherently unreliable because anyone could contribute to it. Sure, you get the occasional vandals making joke edits, but by and large the contributions by the community are from informed, interested parties. The results tend to be close to, if not on par, with traditional encyclopedias. But if I can't understand the comparison between Wikipedia and printed encyclopedias, I'm completely flabbergasted why anyone would be shocked to find that the public trusts Wikipedia more than their traditional news sources.

The British public trusts Wikipedia more than they do the country's newsrooms, according to a new poll by research firm Yougov. Sixty-four percent of respondents said they trusted Wikipedia pages to tell the truth “a great deal,” or “a fair amount”—more than can be said for journalists at the Times or the Guardian, and also slightly above BBC News.

Well, no shit. That's because, as I've been trying to scream at you people for the past three years, the corporate mass-media news industry sucks. More specifically, the once proud fourth branch of our government has been reduced to screaming-head opinionators formulating commentary on the basis of politicized ratings. In other words, Wikipedia and the news are in two different businesses: one is about facts and the other is about shock and spin. Argue with me all you like, you know it's true. But perhaps even more importantly, the general public trusts crowd-sourced Wikipedia articles more than the news because an argument is always more trust-worthy than a lecture. That's the real difference. If you want to know how good a teacher in a school is, you gather up the best student, the worst student, the principal and the teacher and then analyze what they all say together. You don't ask the school's PR director. [...] This doesn't mean you blindly read Wiki articles without questioning them. But a properly sourced article is simply more trustworthy than a talking head telling you how to think.

[Anthonyhcole]

Wikipedia must become a reliable source, or it will fail. Soon.

The fact that it hasn't failed yet rather suggests that people either don't know or don't care about its unreliability.

Oh. It hasn't failed yet because there is no alternative. That effective monopoly won't last. Wikipedia will be swept away by an alternative that offers readers content they can trust, unless Wikipedia itself starts to offer actual knowledge, rather than these unreliable assertions it currently produces.

[Poetlister]

Wikipedia must become a reliable source, or it will fail. Soon.

The fact that it hasn't failed yet rather suggests that people either don't know or don't care about its unreliability.

Oh. It hasn't failed yet because there is no alternative. That effective monopoly won't last. Wikipedia will be swept away by an alternative that offers readers content they can trust, unless Wikipedia itself starts to offer actual knowledge, rather than these unreliable assertions it currently produces.

People have been saying that for some time. The trick is to create a rival large enough to be serious.

[eppur si muove]

Wikipedia must become a reliable source, or it will fail. Soon.

The fact that it hasn't failed yet rather suggests that people either don't know or don't care about its unreliability.

Oh. It hasn't failed yet because there is no alternative. That effective monopoly won't last. Wikipedia will be swept away by an alternative that offers readers content they can trust, unless Wikipedia itself starts to offer actual knowledge, rather than these unreliable assertions it currently produces.

People have been saying that for some time. The trick is to create a rival large enough to be serious.

The WMF's recent activities may lead to a rival coming into existence. The problem is that a fork will contain just as much rubbish as the original.

[Poetlister]

The WMF's recent activities may lead to a rival coming into existence. The problem is that a fork will contain just as much rubbish as the original.

Very true, but with intelligent management it should improve. It may take years before it's reliable of course.

[sparkzilla]

The WMF's recent activities may lead to a rival coming into existence. The problem is that a fork will contain just as much rubbish as the original.

I'll throw my hat in the ring here. First of all we are talking about a specific function of Wikipedia; the news archive. Each biography and news-based page is a news archive, made up of sources to newspapers, magazines and interviews. As I have said elsewhere, the wiki software, policies and leadership are not up to the task of creating a news archive. The software may be good at making an encyclopedia but it performs poorly as a new archive. The Google power of the site, and the WMFs push for the site to be "the sum of all human knowledge" (without defining what that means) has led to people adding content in areas beyond the software's ability. The back-to-the-90s textbook design is one problem, but the real problems are much deeper.

My site, Newslines, proves that a crowdsourced alternative to Wikipedia's news archive is possible. It is not a fork, and works completely differently for Wikipedia. I specifically wanted to make a news archive so I selected software for that purpose. First of all I wanted to sort the news events on the page, so I abandoned the MediaWiki software I had been using up to then. Then I decided to pay people for their time, so I pay our writers to contribute. I created a simplified data structure structure that means there is very little conflict when adding news. As a result our writers have added 10,000 news posts over the past few months with no conflict. We have a waiting list of 400 writers.

When I started I thought I would try to get Wikipedia writers to write the site. Instead, mainly because we pay the writers, 80% of our writers are women and minorities, mainly women working from home. The system is designed to minimize expert knowledge so almost anyone can work on the site (you don't have to be an expert to read or transcribe news). We are also designed to use all the parts of the modern web, such as (gasp!) embedded videos, tweets and other supporting documents. Wikipe

We are more reliable than Wikipedia because the system is designed so that news cannot be censored. Writers cannot claim ownership of pages so groupthink is impossible, and bullying and harassment are very difficult.

The fact that it hasn't failed yet rather suggests that people either don't know or don't care about its unreliability.

I wouldn't take the survey results too seriously. The UK press has taken a battering over the past few years and was never held in high esteem. People just don't know enough about Wikipedia's failings yet. They soon will...