series of errors

[mrissa]

There was an entry on this lj about presidents' children, but then it turned out that not only is Wikipedia not reliable enough for an article or a term paper (surprise!), it's not even reliable enough for an interesting but casual discussion on the internet.

Some of you might be interested in going in to edit some Wikipedia pages with things you know about presidents, though. You folks are awesome.

I am butchering a poor quiche right now. It may be edible, but we may end up with pizza or equivalent. Uff da, what a thing.

Good thing I had no plans for today more serious than making dinner and babbling on the internet, because who knows what I might have messed up. It's good to have days like that fall on scheduled days of quiet.

Comments

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

No surprises there. Wikipedia is absolutely rife with errors, specifically errors of omission or the incomplete. Studies that examine error rates too often only check presented facts, not facts that should be in a seemingly comprehensive entry.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That makes sense as a failure mode, sadly.

[brooksmoses]

On a somewhat related note, I was just pondering today, in thinking about one of james_nicoll's recent posts, that Wikipedia fundamentally has no mechanism for addressing issues of the sort that are, "This is widely reported, but it is nonetheless stupid and wrong."

[crimini.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

The email worked, btw. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, good. Sometimes there's a weird line between "this thread of conversation is interesting" and "I want to start other conversations along these lines."

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

Add in "there are seven different conversations that spring from this topic, which one shall we have?"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yes. And sometimes there's no polite way to say, "No, no, wrong one! Any of the other six would do!" to someone who has wandered into an open post and started up the one out of seven I didn't want to have.

(That didn't happen here. But when it does, it's hard.)

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

Well, and I chose my words *really* carefully in the hopes that nobody would turn "Do people without kids vote less?" Into "People without kids are irresponsible sucky bags of suck!" Which can totally happen.

So without the bad Wiki facts, is there still a valid question in play? Are we as a society biased in favor of candidates with kids? Does the lack of sons specifically mean anything? Should we stop voting for men with sons because it hasn't gone so well historically? (And do we stipulate that John Q. Adams was less than stellar or would we like to dissect him Presidency?)

And how many pieces of Halloween candy can one eat in the morning before it becomes "having candy for breakfast" and therefore irresponsible?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Without the bad Wiki facts, there are still more presidents with just daughters in the 20th and 21st centuries by a longshot. And I think that the juxtaposition of Johnson and Nixon, of Bush fils and Obama, should make it clear that it isn't a partisan thing. It may just be random chance catching up with us: we've only had 44 presidents, counting the incoming one. That's not all that many coins to flip. Or it may be smaller families and less bias towards trying until you get a son; I don't know.

The childless presidents are looking like a rarity even before that, however. So I think that not only are we probably biased in favor of candidates with kids, we probably have been biased in favor of candidates with kids for quite some time--as long as we're counting the ones with stepkids and adopted kids, which I definitely think we should unless we're forming some theory about virility. Which I'd really rather not.

Also, three.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I generally use Wiki as the start of research, not necessarily the end. Sometimes a page looks pretty good, and I'm surprised that presidential history isn't better served, but I try not to use it as a primary source.

Incidentally, I was in the middle of composing a response and wanted to check out a preview, when the whole thing went blooey. Oh well.

I'll just (re)make one geeky point: Technically speaking, McKinley was president in the 20th Century. For a few months.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Primary sources are not usually a major concern of mine when soliciting whackadoo theories on casually touched-upon topics on my lj.