As longtime readers know, I am not a fan of Wikipedia, which I consider a sinkhole of rumors and errors run by coding tweakers, factoid zealots and folks with tinfoil hats. This week, in fact, a Daily Mirror reader questioned the origin of a 1922 Kodachrome film clip, citing Wikipedia’s entry on the film process, even though the clip was clearly labeled “Kodachrome” and was posted on Kodak’s YouTube stream.
So the latest news of an elaborate hoax comes as no surprise. Read more on the purported Bicholim Conflict, a fictitious entry which has spread all over the Internet.
I will say again: I don’t know of any serious researcher who considers Wikipedia anything other a joke.
ladailymirror.com 
Hi Larry, Well, I’m a serious researcher and so are some of my colleagues. And, no, we don’t expect total accuracy from Wikipedia, but often their entries (unlike the hoax you noted) do list endnotes of sources that are extremely accurate. And so I do frequently check out Wikipedia entries (especially on popular and/or cultural icons). I challenge you to visit the Los Angeles history entry and take a look at all the books cited. Wikipedia is not the last word, but not a bad way to start looking for information on a subject you know exists.
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Anna: Yes, Wikipedia does have its uses, especially when it comes to pop culture (an episodic breakdown of “The Simpsons,” for example. But just as you can never stand in the same river twice, you can never read the same Wikipedia entry twice because the posts are constantly being tweaked and vandalized. I know firsthand the frustration of seeing a day’s work ruined by some idiot or erased and replaced with “jason is gay ha ha.”
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Well, yes, but you do hjave to admit, Jason IS gay.
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I was shocked beyond chagrin (I dropped my lorgnette) when I recently read a non-fiction book that blithely cited Wikipedia as a primary research source. When writing obits, I will use it as a jumping-off place–if they say someone is dead, I will go ahead and check actual sources (surprisingly, TMZ is very reliable). But Wikipedia regualrly kills, say, Connie Francis and Muhammed Ali.
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Just for the sake of argument, let me take the opposite view. I read the occasional Wikipedia entry (they are, after all, ubiquitous) and feel generally capable of separating the wheat from the chaff. Of course, I also don’t consider myself a ‘serious researcher’ but I typically find Wikipedia jogs my memory or offers up a newsy nugget and gives me a point from which I might go fact checking. The internet is a dangerous place, full of snake oil and chat room wenches, but by the same token last I checked Barnes and Noble was still selling Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard.
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Yes… If you want a shot-by-shot breakdown of “Gangnam Style,” Wikipedia is the place to find it. In other subjects one must be careful.
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I wouldn’t know ‘Gangnam Style’ from a gingham dress.
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Gangnam Style
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So let me get this straight, Gangnam Style is a beefy Korean gentleman who can’t dance, favors too tight clothes in loud colors and raps about what? Thanks Larry, I may have to gouge out my eyes.
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I wholeheartedly agree with Larry. A good example, under the entry for Santa Claus Lane, what Hollywood Blvd. was called during the Christmas holiday season for decades, it is claimed the name came from the Gene Autry song, “Here Comes Santa Claus,” from the 1950s, when the street was actually called that by the Hollywood Blvd. Business Assocation in 1928 when they started the promotion.
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And another reason why Wikipedia is a terrible place to go to for information. Plenty of my friends are considered the experts when it comes to such people as Rudolph Valentino, Virginia Rappe, Thomas Ince, and so on, but these entries are mostly fabrications. When they have corrected the mistakes, pranksters or people who believe in myths quickly return the false information that is purely gossip and innuendo.
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Add Harry Houdini to that list. I consider myself pretty knowledgable about Houdini and originally helped flesh out the Houdini page with solid info, but now it has been over-run with bad and downright false info. I’ve given up on it.
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John, I had the same experience. I was an early adopter of Wikipedia but my work was overrun with nonsense… Various trolls adopt pages and snuff out all attempts at sanity.
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I agree with Anna Sklar. It’s a good jumping-off place, and I’ve found a lot of interesting tidbits there that I’ve verified with other sources. Some of the entries give fine general overviews of their subjects. And it’s good to keep in mind that any source can have errors. Just the other day I was reading a translated French book about costume history–a book that is in many public libraries and theater collections–which repeats the canard about Howard Hughes and the Jane Russell bra. Ms. Russell herself has stated she never wore the thing Hughes designed–a fact Wikipedia gets right.
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BTW, since the example above happened to relate to pop culture, I’ll also mention that Wikipedia entries on war history are rather thorough. Their entry on the Franco-Prussian war and the Blitz, for example, gibe pretty well with the versions told by my European-history-professor father-in-law.
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Belated spellcheck: I meant “entries” in the second sentence above.
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Wikipedia is a tool. No more and no less. One must know how to use tools and their limitations. It is a valuable basic source, and might satisfy one’s need for certain types of information. That’s efficient. But, when it is important to have accurate information, as when writing about a topic, the writer needs to go beyond Wikipedia to original sources, when possible. However, it also must be understood that such sources are also often not accurate. Census takers make mistakes, folks filling out death certificates sometimes do not actually know background information first hand. And, when relying upon published bound volumes, they are full of misinformation. One need only read about a Hollywood personality that you personally knew and you realize that fact. I have personally been involved in many newsworthy stories, and when I read about them I am still amazed at the misinformation that is published by professional journalists and writers, yet these sources are in writing, and are relied upon later by researchers. Finding the truth is always illusive and requires much diligence in using the tools that are available.
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Here’s how I described doing research on the Internet in my book on leading study teams:
“… let’s say a talking dog stops you on the street, jumps up and puts his paws on your chest, and lays an intriguing factoid on you. Now what?
One option is to reject that factoid out of hand, because no sane person listens to talking dogs.
The other is to forget where that factoid came from and chase it down. [A] frog doesn’t care if a fly got there on its own power, was shipped by FedEx, or came down a transporter beam from the Starship Enterprise: if it looks edible and it’s within range, it’s lunch.”
Wikipedia is the Internet’s largest kennel of talking dogs. Those aren’t facts, ladies and gentlemen, they are just what intelligence analysts call “tippers,” the end of a thread to be pulled. Usually it doesn’t take much of a yank to find out there’s nothing at the other end.
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I consider Wikipedia not so much a talking dog, but an interesting message board. It is s good jumping-off place, but it is full of various peoples’ opinions and nothing more. Interesting, yes, and useful in it way–but too many dumb, lazy people just believe whatever any talking dog tells them.
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Before I posted the Kodachrome comment on your site I naturally Googled the subject. It’s not just Wikipedia that reports that Kodachrome was invented in 1935–In just a minute or two I was directed to six or eight different websites that relate the 1935 date. I suspect that the authors of these sites used Wikipedia as their source. Delving a little deeper, I found that US patent #1997493 was applied for by L. D Maness on January 24, 1922 and finally issued on April 9, 1935. But the process “Color Photography” as detailed in the 1922 application describes a single camera strip (as compared with 2 or 3 strip Technicolor) which produces a negative and thus must be printed against separate color-sensitive film stock in order to yield a positive image for projection . Clearly this is not the same product which was marketed by Kodak beginning in 1935, in which the in-camera film was processed to a positive. Another source I consulted notes that Manness and his co-inventor Leopold Godowsky Jr. were hired by Kodak in 1930 to develop a marketable consumer product.
My original comment was prompted by the observation that the posted video clip exhibits (to my eyes anyway) color balance resembling 2 strip Technicolor much more than what I remember with the old ASA 10 Kodachrome of my youth. Regardless of the conflicting dates and details, all of us who feed on twentieth century history owe a huge debt of gratitude to the inventors (“Man and God”) as they were known, who brought color photography from the laborotory and into the hands of amateur photographers.
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