Posts by Rex Widerstrom
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Ron Mark later expanded on his "clothes literally maketh the man" theme, calling for a ban on pantomimes, a cut in military funding, and restrictions on strippers.
"Obviously, any male who puts on a frock to play the Dame is going to immediately become a raving drag queen," said Mr Mark. "While I have no wish to see our nation's young transformed into gun toting gangstas (make sure you print that with the 'a' on the end to show I'm hip to the groove, he added) I think turning them gay against their will is equally repre... reepra... bad."
Hestitating to ask, nonetheless we ventured onto the theme of strippers.
"Well some of them wear these police uniforms... or at least so I'm told," Mr Mark said, stuffing what looked like a pair of panties back into his coat pocket. "Clearly we can't allow this because really, who wants strippers to have the power of arrest?".
Asked how this relates to military funding, Mr Mark pointed out that upon induction into the services, everyone is issued a uniform.
"See, no need for all this expensive training. Once they've slipped on the camo gear, bingo - instant highly trained soldier. Worked for me," he added, "though for some reason people keep saying I go round shooting myself in the foot".
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"Gynaffectionate love"? What on earth...? I seem to have stumbled on something quite bizarre when all I really wanted to say was that David has created one of the most brilliant pieces of satire it has ever been my pleasure to read.
Now I'm going to ponder the question of whether gynaffectionate love involves a surgical glove, a speculum and a box of candy and, if so, how.
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Yet again Deborah you either unwittingly or wilfully misrepresent the results of the study which you hold up as evidence of Wikipedia's comparable accuracy to the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
So yet again I'll attempt to put some parameters around that claim.
- It was an incredibly small sample of just 42 entries out of millions. That's hardly a statistically significant sample particularly when one considers that:
- All the entries were science-related. Much less likely to be contentious, and thus to be subject to malicious misrepresentation by contributors and editors than topics such as politics, religion, morals etc. and that:
- The comparison was by way of peer review by scientists. So ironically, the result itself is opinion (albeit educated opinion).So no, I'll accept the opinion of a group of scientists about 42 articles on science as having greater validity than my own opinion on those same 42 articles.
As for the rest of Wikipedia, my opinion - yet to be refuted by any study - is that it's riddled with inaccuracy and anyone who does not attempt to fact check anything they pick up from there by using a more reputable source is at grave risk of promulgating misinformation.
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Deborah says:
Get it right, Rex. I put a link to an article documenting research that showed that "Wikipedia is about as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica."
Indeed it does: for a sample of just 42 scientific articles subject to peer review.
An example of pecisely the kind of misrepresentation of "fact" that Wikipedia perpetuates. All you'd need to do to have that "Gospel of Wikipedia Accuracy" accepted as fact by vast numbers of readers would be, ironically, to make such a claim on Wikipedia itself.
And, in my opinion, the ratio of inaccuracy on more contentious topics would favour Brittanica by a much greater margin.
The problem is, as ali bramwell has aptly pointed out, that:
...you cannot safely accept what is published on face value without tiangulating your sources. the problems you cite about too ready acceptance of information presented to you are not limited to wiki.
However, because it's readily searchable and linkable it's used unquestioningly by far too many people as an infallible source for their contentions.
I'd feel happier if every Wikipedia page carried some sort of caveat phrased much as ali has.
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A while back on this thread: http://publicaddress.net/system/topic,786,hard_news_reading_material.sm;jsessionid=5FB6C9D2DA03040C497DEEBBFE56B934?p=31173
I commented that:
It's what I call the "Wikipedia effect" - the "broadcaster" of the information imbues that information with a level of credibility it sometimes doesn't deserve, as evidenced by the number of people in blog comments referencing Wikipedia articles as fact when they're probably, on average, about as accurate as the average Fox News broadcast.
I was immediately contradicted by Deborah, who claimed Wikipedia was "as accurate as Encyclopedia Brittanica". And then 3410 showed the depths of his/her wit by enquiring as to whether I'd like to join "the fight against dihydrogen monoxide".
But as this post shows, Wikipedia is no more an unimpeachable source of fact that the collected opinions of the contributors to this or any other discussion thread here or on any blog.
That commenters and even some bloggers continue to reference it as though it is anything else illustrates its intrinsic problem - it is imbued by those who quote it with an air of finality it does not deserve and thus, amongst the uninitiated, perpetuates errors of fact across the Interwebs and out into the real world.
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I realise those who recycle the Dihydrogen monoxide prank to fool politicians think they're awfully clever, in a "we put Glad Wrap over the toilet bowl" kind of way. But no thanks.
While the pollies caught by recycled student "humour" could indeed have avoided falling into the trap with a quick Google search, politicians are hardly a random sample of the population - they're generally indolent and expect a researcher to tell them what to think. I wouldn't be surprised if some bored party researcher knew all about the DiHyMo myth and thought "bugger it, let her stew".
It's easy to assume that we internet-savvy types are also a representative sample. We're not. I remember that when One was trumpeting "More people get their news from us than any other source" in fact it was the "bulletins" on TV2, lasting all of 2 minutes and read by former cheerleaders rather than journos which some survey or other demonstrated had become the primary source for the bulk of the population.
While the readers of Public Address are more than capable of weeding the wheat from the chaff on sites like Wikipedia, many are not. And to those who'd defend Wikipedia's accuracy I'd respond yes, I agree the bulk of information is okay. But to cite but one example - go read the biography of any living pollie. It's probably been initiated by, and is certainly regularly tweaked and tended by, his or her spin doctors and / or the pollie themselves. Some people might come along and insert the unvarnished truth, but don't have the time to keep coming back and repeating it.
Or try talking to any GP who's now confronted by patients carrying armloads of internet-sourced documents which "prove" that wearing a tinfoil hat cures baldness or that the stomach upset they've had for a few days is in fact som obscure Amazonian plague.
Or go on being glib. See if I care.
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Only read the Executive Summary so far so could be prematurely expostulating here, but I didn't see any discussion of a significant problem with the "internetification (c)" of television - namely that a lot of the user-generated material online is incorrect, either because of benign ignorance of malicious disinformation.
People have learned to automatically associate a certain believability to their media. I'd suggest that in NZ it goes, from most beliveable to least, print, radio, TV, internet - though of course the internet sites of official news outlets such as Radio NZ, Stuff, The Herald etc are imbued with much greater believability due to their association with the respective media.
So if more and more low quality, user-produced material makes it to our TV screens (and don't get me wrong, I think this is potentially a good thing) or whatever form of interactive moving picture device TV evolves into, how will viewers decide upon the credibility of what they're reading?
It's what I call the "Wikipedia effect" - the "broadcaster" of the information imbues that information with a level of credibility it sometimes doesn't deserve, as evidenced by the number of people in blog comments referencing Wikipedia articles as fact when they're probably, on average, about as accurate as the average Fox News broadcast.