Correcting Wikipedia

[Luca]

I have corrected many wiki entries on the italian language.
My experience is that because of the lack of knowledge, my heavy corrections are still in place after about 6-8 months. Of course many other things can be added and modified, but now if you go on "centurione", as example, the information are no more at 10-years-old level or worste....

[Magnus]

Maybe a moderator or someone else more involved with RA could get in touch with them. Propose something similar what Tarbicus suggested about the subform, like Deepeeka's and see what they say. I find it really hard to believe that they would dislike receiving information from the likes of some of our members who either have been, or are, in the field examining ancient Rome first hand.

I like that idea...perhaps once an article in question is finished Wiki can lock it?

[Magnus]

Constant correcting of (perhaps one day) some hundred or thousand articles on Wikipedia for the rest of your life... Good luck to you this time :wink:

You assume we'd be correcting every article on Wiki. Having a group of people in different time zones who are members of RAT to keep an eye out on the # of articles we could correct on Wiki is not a hard job at all.

I don't want to compete with Wikipedia. And I'm certainly not against this project. I just think it would be better to have the results on some web, where we would have more control over them.

Greetings
Alexandr

Well, it won't be you competing with Wikipedia, I'm not sure why you feel obliged that way lol. If we decide to do this, we'll probably have either nominations for a group of people who are willing to do it. We won't be choosing those who aren't 100% for it.

I wouldn't trade having a greater element of control over a massively larger readership under any circumstances. Especially if we have designated "watch dogs" to ensure the articles we placed remain constant. Wikipedia as already mentioned has a huge number of people using it, whereas the number of people using RA.com or RAT is probably miniscule in comparison. As an added benefit, we can always link back to our websites to increase our own readership, as well as further the learning of those who are in fact using Wiki for the Roman military.

And, we'll be dispelling any false information people obtain before they start posting gibberish here on the forum. That in itself in my mind makes this endeavour worth it.

[Sean Manning]

But one doesn't stop the other; having a Wiki sub-forum here could also double up as a basis for an Encyclopedia here. There's no harm in having both happen.

And so what if someone changes the Wiki. You can get notification of changes so just go back and re-correct it. The fact is that there are some historians out there writing books and using Wiki as a source. Unbelievable as it may seem, it actually happens. If you're trying to compete with Wikipedia then good luck :wink:

Also bear in mind that not ALL entries on Wiki are wrong and worthless.

Unfortunately, if the other person changes it back that comes down to whoever is most persistent and best connected with the Wiki leadership. After a few exchanges of edits and counter-edits the article would likely be locked and the debate would go to the talk page. And the moderator(s) aren't likely to be Roman scholars.

IMHO, trying to make Wikipedia a decent sources about something where the truth is subtle (like history) and often debated (like warfare) is doomed to fail in the long run because of its nature. It can be useful for some things, but it is dangerously unreliable.

[Magnus]

Developing a professional repoir with the Wiki staff would be something that could easily be dealt with by Jasper. So there would be no permanent see-saw battle at all.

I don't see your last point Sean...if the articles on Wiki can be locked by their staff once they've been in contact with Jasper then nothing is "doomed". The nature of Wikipedia is 50% garbage because few scholarly people take the time to put good information on there. We have an opportunity should we decide to take it, to change that. Thus, the nature of it would no longer be unreliable, and would in fact be useful for basic information on the Roman Army, and serve as a gateway to RA.com and RAT.

That sounds plenty useful to me. 8)

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I think Mike Bishop explained the one possibility of not wanting people to log on, ie AOL conflict, but not sure if that is crispus's problem?

[Tarbicus]

I'm on AOL and have no probs. The likeliest culprit is getting the scrambled letters correct during registration. You might think you got it right, but I've had to retry up to half a dozen times in the past.

[jc02005]

What is wrong is that any people that registered can edit the post.I think they should change it to the same as us.But now adays we find more information more efficent so there will be less wrong information.But still people make it wrong cause they think it is funny

[StrategyM]

Gentlemen.

Read the Wikipedia Rules!

For better or worse, Wikipedia is what it is. Don't waste a lot of time thinking you can change that. Talk of "locking" pages once an article reaches the approved standard of RAT is not wiki.

I don't say this to discourage, but rather - just go ahead and start editing. That's what a wiki is all about.

[Matthew]

I have helped out with the occasional Wikipedia Article and my experience has been that it's very rare that something significant is altered once it has a reference. The Gladius Article is probably a good example; I try to keep an eye on it, but very little changes from week to week, That said, it's not a perfect article, but it's a hell of a lot better than what was there before, in my opinion.

Controversial Articles, such as those about the Katana, the Long Bow or the Crusades are subject to a much greater degree of alteration, those are pretty much lost causes without constant attention. On the other hand, the string of articles about the Velites, Triarii, Principes and Hastati are barely ever altered, but are in terrible need of rewriting.

I think it would be great if members of RAT could pool their resources and knowledge to take on one article at a time and bring them up to a reasonably high standard of accuracy; I think that time is the real issue, rather than vulnerability to alteration.

Matthew James Stanham

[Magnus]

So who wants to start a Wiki watchdog? We can make it somewhat official through RAT. Figure out who wants to take care of what article, and who to assign as watch dogs on it. All the watch dogs can have original copies of the "good" version of the article as well, to ensure accuracy.

[Matthew]

Here's a short list of Roman Army Wiki Articles:

Roman Army
Roman Navy
Roman Legion
Roman Auxiliaries

Roman Army Unit Types
Equites
Triarii
Principes
Hastati
Velites

Roman Army Equipment
Pilum
Scutum
Gladius
Pugio
Lorica Hamata
Lorica Squamata
Lorica Segmentata
<Currently no Lorica Musculata Article>

If we could just look at one of these articles and bring it up to a good standard (or approve what is already written), it would be progress.

Matthew James Stanham

[Caratacus]

I did edit the article on lorica segmentata some time back (well, it was a slack Sunday afternoon - and Wales had lost at Rugby the day before - again). I've just checked it and it doesn't appear to have been modified since I did this. Maybe including the reference to Mike Bishop's Monograph No.1 helped?

Caratacus
(Mike Thomas)