Strongman on Wikipedia

[Alex Klotz]

I was reading up on Strongman on Wikipedia and the articles seem incomplete (compare it to the article on powerlifting, for instance). The two articles I'm mainly thinking of are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strongman_%28strength_athlete%29 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_athletics. I added the section on training that I wrote to both articles, but I'm sure if the community got together we could add descriptions of each event, history, pictures, etc and make the articles answer any questions people have and more.

Is anyone interested in sprucing up these articles?

[Joe Chiarella]

I don't know anything about editing wikipedia but it looks like the main article for World's Strongest Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Strongest_Man) was defaced. Check the list of champions from 1980-1982. Also check the list of countries. Those are both clearly wrong, and you can see in the history that they changed recently. Anyone know how to fix this?

[Lucjan Zolnierowski]

Yea, Ill write up some stuff if I have time.

And the countries are now fixed

[Scott Markowitz]

I changed this year's winner back, as well as 1980-82. By the time I went to count up the country totals, someone else had beaten me to it.

Morons.

[Grant Buhr]

That article is defaced often -- sometimes several times per day. I took responsibility for fixing it for months -- in fact, I re-wrote it totally once -- but I haven't thought about it for a while.

[Lucjan Zolnierowski]

I see I'm faster than you Scott...MUAHAHA, I also translated the info about Sebastian Wenta from the polish wikipedia and put it in

It seems a lot of wikipedia gets vandalized nowadays.....

[Zach Snyder]

i would like to see lots more pages on the athletes themselves on there. I know mariuz, poundstone's and travis' are both pretty complete, but the rest of them are severely lacking information.

[Grant Buhr]

That's the beauty of open source, Zach -- you can do it yourself with a bit of research.

[Jay Hagadorn]

Wikipedia is a horrible source to get information from, you don't know if what you are looking at is true or not.

[Alex Klotz]

If you're doing serious research it's not a valid source, but it's very good for looking things up and learning things. Most external studies on Wikipedia have found that it's about as accurate as text encyclopedias.

[Jay Hagadorn]

If you're doing serious research it's not a valid source, but it's very good for looking things up and learning things. Most external studies on Wikipedia have found that it's about as accurate as text encyclopedias.

Sorry to disagree with you, but look at the examples in this post. Any resource that anyone can go in and edit is a bad resource with no authority, giving it no credibility as being accurate...

[Zach Snyder]

That's the beauty of open source, Zach -- you can do it yourself with a bit of research.

that's true. i may attempt it, but i'm afraid i'd get some information wrong. Plus, it's hard to find information on a lot of the guys!

[Scott Markowitz]

Sorry to disagree with you, but look at the examples in this post. Any resource that anyone can go in and edit is a bad resource with no authority, giving it no credibility as being accurate...

Sort of. SAGE Publications for some reason let me write several encyclopedia entries for a "real" encyclopedia - the Encyclopedia of U.S. Campaigns, Elections, and Electoral Behavior, available for only $225 at amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Campaigns-Elections-Electoral-Behavior/dp/1412954894/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1201307382&sr=11-1) [/shameless plug]
Encyclopedias are only as good as their editors. I've used wiki on occasion. Usually it's pretty close or better, and the ease of access makes it at least somewhat useful.
That said, I wouldn't rely on it, and if I was to cite it in a paper I'd likely get laughed out of grad school.

[Josh Kamins]

and if I was to cite it in a paper I'd likely get laughed out of grad school.
I'm still surprised this hasn't happened anyway

[Scott Markowitz]

It has...just not by me. I had a seminar on state and local government last year, and apparently a couple of masters students cited wiki in the first paper. We had to listen to about 15 minutes about why that's not a good idea.

And don't even get me started on undergrads... :disgust:

[Josh Kamins]

Sorry i wasn't clear, I meant you getting laughed out of grad school :M:

[Scott Markowitz]

That's been pretty close...just not for citing wiki.

Jerk.

Actually I had my theory class going when I basically said that a feminist writer (who I subsequently found out was the prof's dissertation chair when he was in grad school) needed to shut up and get laid.