Doyle Brunson - RIP or not ??!!??

Wanted to show someone the wikipedia page to a friend as he didn't know who he was ..

Look at that:
http://i41.tinypic.com/1605uoh.jpg

and:
http://i44.tinypic.com/1zqeu7l.jpg

What the hell ..

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Comments

dynamik

If there's no news about it anywhere else, and its been changed back, it was probably just someone screwing around on Wikipedia. Happens all the time.

tiersten

Wikipedia isn't a reliable source and anybody using it as such needs to slap themselves hard. Anybody can do a change or write an article. Moderation and fact checking are done by other random people and not guaranteed to occur. Nothing to say that they're not all wrong or have some ulterior motive.

JDMurray

tiersten wrote:

Wikipedia isn't a reliable source and anybody using it as such needs to slap themselves hard. Anybody can do a change or write an article. Moderation and fact checking are done by other random people and not guaranteed to occur. Nothing to say that they're not all wrong or have some ulterior motive.

I completely disagree. This "fact editing error" was likely found and and corrected by one of Wikipedia's paid moderators, and is an indication that Wiki edits are fact-checked and (dis)approved expeditiously. Wikipedia's articles are not peer-reviewed by subject-matter experts; if you need resources that are, then you can't use Wikipedia, but you also can't use 99% of the published books and journals articles available elsewhere either.

tiersten

JDMurray wrote:

This "fact editing error" was likely found and and corrected by one of Wikipedia's paid moderators, and is an indication that Wiki edits are fact-checked and (dis)approved expeditiously.

I've found incorrect information in popular mainstream articles that have been there for a long time. I don't mean edits that were made in the last few days. In one case it was several months. There had been many edits since the false info was originally added. It wasn't even a case of a possibly incorrect fact. It was somebody making things up and attributing them to himself as a weird form of ego boost. Nobody even bothered to give it a citation needed tag.

Don't believe everything you read. Anybody can create/edit a website or Wiki article. The website can't be corrected by a third party whilst a Wiki can but the reverse is also true, don't assume that because a Wiki allows a third party to correct the article that it has been.

dynamik

It's not perfect, but more often then not, it's a really good source of information. The good articles provide sources for the information, and if there's anything that seems odd or controversial, it's easy to dig a little deeper. I don't use it as my sole source of information for more important projects (i.e. college research papers), but it's usually a good springboard for whatever topic I'm researching.

Oh, and while searching for this article, I came across this one. That got a few lols out of me

Webmaster

I've never been a huge Wiki-fan but it's been proven to be useful on many occasions. It's an ongoing work-in-progress and it's only getting better and better. Especially since I don't consider it an authoritative source of information and usually just use it to get a quick description/definition and some more info to search further it doesn't dissapoint me very often.

The main problem I have with it is that the huge quantity of information gives a false impression about its quality to some people. It seems to make certain people lazy, who would normally do some more research and now just go with the Wikipedia info (down to politicians basing laws on it). That shows that with providing so much information comes the responsibility to ensure its accurate. Afterall accuracy is one of the essential traits of information, and it is something many people expect from something that implies to be an online 'encyclopedia'... perhaps "Wikipinion" would have been more appropriate. As long as wikipedia isn't used as the sole source of information to base important decisions on or as a source for more authorative publications I think it's one of the best 'features' of the Internet.

jibbajabba

I don't mind when people make mistakes in that wiki especially when its a free service. However, saying that someone is dead is not just a mistake ... its a made up story ..