Wikipedia talk:Credibility

Thought flows

• I think wikipedia is credible as long as you can think critically of what you are reading. This page is very one sided and needs to be edited to include information supporting the credibility of wikipedia. Perhaps a section on what wikipedia does to make its articles credible.134.39.247.11 18:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

• We must always ensure our credibility, and for this several initiatives are required. --Bhadani 16:53, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

• I found the best thing here: "Jimmy Wales conceded that Wikipedia's quality may not be up to the level of Britannica, but he added that the 236-year-old encyclopedia had better watch out. Wikipedia is proposing to implement editorial controls soon that Wales thinks will put it on par with Britannica." Please, please, please Jimmy, do something fast. --Bhadani 16:56, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

• Somewhere inside the wikipedia, I found a move towards this - Wikipedia talk:Defense of content. I believe that we must have a mechanism to protect our contents. --Bhadani 17:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

• Wikipedia needs "named" editors who are willing to put their own names behind a specified revision of reviewed articles. Only approved revision of the articles, not the latest revision, should be burnt onto the CD-ROM release. On-line readers should be able to set a preference to choose between viewing only approved revision vs. the current revision. Each named editors should publish their credentials and list their fields of expertise. Their identities and credentials need to be verified by wikipedian staff before granting their approver status. These editors can only approve articles when their areas of expertise match the article catagory. Anonymous editors can help the reviewing process, but without a true identity, they cannot improve the credibility. Each article should maintain a review history to show how many reviewers were involved and how many stamps of approval the article receives. Of course, the readers can still judge the credibility of the articles based on the approvers' credentials, the date and number of approvals etc. For example, an article with only one 3 years old stamp of approval is not as strong as one with 3 current approvals. Article statistics such as age, number of edits, number of contributers etc. can also serve as an indicator of the maturity of the article which improves credibility too. In order to protect the reputation of these editors, their names should not be shown unless the readers are reading the exact revision these editors approved. The current version of wikipedia can never achieve full credibility because the contents are never stable, but it is not hard to make a certern snapshot of the wikipedia to be credible.Kowloonese 01:51, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

• Many people don't want to jeopardize their own reputation by signing something they didn't write themselves. So it is impossible to establish the same kind of credibility that the Britanica enjoys when no one would step up to the plate. Perhaps a different system is needed. Instead of putting their own names behind an article, these editors can give grades to each article, just like a college professor is grading a student's thesis. These editors can give separate score with respect to accuracy, completeness etc. And they would approve an article only when the score meet their own standards. A collective score from multiple editors would become an indicator on how good the article is. These scores can build up reader's confidence and hence credibility of wikipedia. Again only "named" and verified editors are allowed to give grades because the scores themselves need to be credible too. Some critics say nothing anonymous is credible, so the power to judge should be granted to known experts only. Kowloonese 20:16, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

• This makes sense in the context of a CD-ROM version when, as in a hard copy version, Wiki should be putting out a publication which meets minimum standards of academic respectability that will stand the test of time. I will briefly repeat the line I have taken elsewhere. I favour a minimum threshold system for the on-line Wiki, i.e. once an article has reached a minimum standard agreed by a consensus less demanding than the current FA system, all proposed edits should be vetted before being allowed to go public. Thus, the "live" version of each approved page can only improve and never deteriorate. For these purposes, it does not matter whether the supervising editors with responsibility for each group of pages are identified or not so long as they have demonstrated expertise over a period of time. I suspect that the majority of the current editors are either students or have little academic track record. It would be a shame to lose the expertise that is demonstrated daily by those who do not yet have a CV that would impress. Moving to a full and open peer reviewing system which is implicitly what is being advocated here, may not be practical at this time or desirable. David91 17:10, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

• I think controlling the edit of approved articles will hinder the wikipedia progress. The current system of controlling edits on "featured article" will give you an idea of how the system may work, just multiply that with half a million approved articles instead of just a few dozens current features. The blockage will worsen as more and more articles got approved. I proposed that the editors should be allowed to approve any selected revision. If he disapproves the most recent changes, he can simply approve an older revision prior to the current mess. When the current mess stablizes and after the edit war subsides, then he can approve again. That way, the readers can tell that revision 934 and 1021 were approved, but the current revision is still taking shape. These stamps of approval give the on-line readers the confidence that these selected revisions of articles are backed by known experts. When it is time to take a snapshot for hard copy, only the latest approved revision will be used. i.e. there is always a most current in-progress version of unknown quality backed by an approved credible edition. Readers who seek credibility do not need to use the in-progress edition. Kowloonese 21:08, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

• I believe credibility can added to wikipedia if it can weed out the junks using a filtering mechanism. I summarized my thoughts again at User:Kowloonese#credibility.2C_quality_control_etc. Kowloonese 02:05, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Working on

I am working on a page named Wikipedia:Better than the Best. Suggestions and comments are invited. Thanks. --Bhadani 16:09, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Dubious

Credibility is one of Wikipedia's goals which it has struggled to attain, although in its first four years it has only had partial success.

What success is that? Sounds like POV-inline. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 17:04, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

"Partial success" is a fairly common expression, I think. Personally, I don't at all find it illogical; IMHO, this is nothing like "increasing equality" or other similar expressions, where a common usage should be disencouraged, due to the inherent contradiction in terms. "Partial success" is a perfectly valid expression for your thoughts, e.g., if you think that WP has succeeded in getting widely accepted credibility among some groups of people or for articles in some fields, but not among/in others.

On the other hand, if you fundamentally disagree with this description of reality, then you indeed should critisise the formulation; but on factual, not formal grounds. Best, JoergenB (talk) 17:50, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Credibility of this page

This page isn't very credible as it cites no sources. Ironic, isn't it? Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:35, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Truncation?

The current page ends with the end of a sentence and then a promise of more, thus: "[...] as attaining an editorial standard. a" Result of a bad edit? Someone with more time than me needs to check the edit history, I suspect, to see if it's been truncated at some point after a past vandalism or some-such. (I'm just passing through, no time to do it officially right now.) 178.98.198.252 (talk) 21:43, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

There was nothing missing. An editor recently added the "a", presumably as a test edit, and I've removed it. --Bongwarrior (talk) 23:23, 5 May 2013 (UTC)