Or “troo” facts. From APS Physics:
Focus: Wikipedia Articles Separate into Four Categories
But do we know which category we are reading?
Wikipedia allows anyone to contribute to its millions of articles and doesn’t exert any central control, yet striking order has emerged, according to an analysis of the entire editing history of the English portion of the website. Researchers found that articles fall into four main categories based on the way they are edited and that a relatively small number of editors have a major influence on the site.
Sure. You would think the multiverse was Settled Science, to listen to them.
The four distinct categories found point to a persisting inequality of influence—with a small number of super-editors controlling the form of many articles. The model results, says Yasseri, imply that editing inequality is increasing with time, with fewer editors gaining an ever more dominant role.
Translation of APS study from the science-ese: The Wikipedia editor could be an utter flaming nut but there is no desk that deals with that fact.
Yun emphasizes a similar message: “There are already reports that the growth of Wikipedia is slowing down,” he says, “and our observation indicates that this will continue unless something is done about it.” He suggests the encyclopedia needs to recruit more new participants to sustain rich, collaborative environments and to avoid the monopolization of content by a few people. More.
We’ve said stuff like this for years, but we seldom heard of tests before, just anecdotes.
Teachers should not be telling students to do their homework on Wikipedia unless the topic is What Trolls Think About This Subject.
See also: How Wikipedia can turn fiction into fact (Sourced enough times, the fiction becomes “troo”)
Wikipedia hacked by elite sources now (The main problem is that the people who use Wikipedia do not care whether it is false or true. “Wikipedia is my library” is the new diagnostic for irresponsible laziness.)
Mathematician complains Wikipedia is promoting “pseudo-science” of multiverse (Then there were the minor revelations that core articles “don’t earn even Wikipedia’s own middle-ranking quality scores” and that some “editors” are paid by outside sources.)
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