Wiki was getting popular when I was in college over 10 years ago. I recall a history professor telling me not to use Wikipedia as source. I am like, okay, I will just use the source wiki uses, which are pretty solid in my opinion. Wiki came a long way.
Yeah, it’s important to remember that wikipedia, itself, isn’t a source, it’s a summary of different sources. It’s a great resource to find sources and get an overview of a topic, though.
Wikipedia does a pretty decent job of eventually being correct, at any given time it can be outrageously inaccurate. Its good to not just use wikipedia entrys and use the sources that are linked there. By using the sources that are cited you are helping to keep wiki trustworthy and helps avoid you using bad information.
It works well to manage the integrity of wiki. I think being able to intuitively navigate between entries by a variety of metrics like edits that have remained unedited the longest/shorest, newest/oldest, etc would be a very good addition to wiki.
Some kind of webarchive of wiki sources would also be amazing so that if the sources disappear or change over time there is a connection to what it was at the time it originally/previously was used as a source on wiki.
And maybe some of this already exists and im just not very good at getting my 4dollars a month worth :P
Wikipedia does a pretty decent job of eventually being correct, at any given time it can be outrageously inaccurate.
Yeah, I agree with this. I work at a high end engineering company, and some engineers have gotten into trouble using things like materials properties that they got from Wikipedia and turned out to be wrong, with unfortunate results. By policy, if we don’t know something like that we’re supposed to ask our tech library to get us the information, and that’s why.
Why not fix theses pages?
As long as you verify the source still exists. There are so many dead links on Wikipedia.
Archive.org bots replace dead links with working alternatives a lot nowadays. All the more reason to support that modern museum
Please dig a little bit deeper. You may end up with a stack of links to 404 sites instead of actual sources. Just because you copied a citation from WP doesn’t mean the source actually exists, let alone contains the information you seek.
deleted by creator
- With the exception of any article that’s even slightly political.
Even for political content it’s damn good. Every time someone on Lemmy points to an explicit article of bias, it falls into one of 3 categories:
- Slightly unfair bias, but still largely true
- Article is correct, Lemmy cannot provide a reliable source proving otherwise
- Article is incorrect, reliable source found, article amended
The third case happened once in an article about a UN Resolution on North Korea, and it was because the original article source was slightly misinterpreted. But yea, basically what I’m trying to say is if a “political article” is “wrong” but you can’t prove it, it’s not the political article that’s wrong but you.
Edit: ITT - People upset with my analysis, but not willing to provide sources to the articles they disagree with
Wikipedia has a claimed positive-bias, in which negative things are often left out of the article. This is more true the lower profile the page is.
And Wikipedia has an overall left-bias, because of the demographic of contributors.
Meanwhile Tankies are like “B-b-but USA propaganda???1”
And sometimes it literally is USA propaganda. It’s quite rare, but those articles should get fixed. Changing something like “The guerrilla fighters killed babies” to “The US State Department claimed the guerrilla fighters killed babies, but critics call the claim “wholly unfounded” [source]”.
But yea, as I said, actually a lot more rare than you’d think.
tankies be like
“Wikipedia is unreliable, here’s our wiki where we source reddit comments”
Wikipedia completely slanders people it doesnt like. For example Daniele Ganser who helped to reveal Operation Gladio.
deleted by creator
My workplace got a “coronavirus” chat on the corporate chat server. And the known “conspiracy theorist” guy on my team posted a link to some article on some total misinformation mill masquerading as a news source.
I looked up the name of the source on Wikipedia, which said it was a total misinformation mill.
So I linked to the Wikipedia article in the chat.
I work at a fairly big and diverse company, so of course there was more than one conspiracy guy there. It was really surreal watching people who literally think all governments are run by a secret cabal of Democrat extraterrestrial pedophile child-adrenaline junkies attack the trustworthiness of Wikipedia.
Edit: I’d forgotten the name of the “misinformation mill” that originally started that shit storm in the work chat, but I went back and looked it up. It was Project Veritas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas
RIP in Piss P. Veritas I hope hell is hot for you on the way down
They still exist. They just do not have James O’Keefe who was shit canned.
And interestingly it’s trustable because it’s got no central authority core that can be corrupted
Except there are defacto central authorities governing certain pages.
Not only that there’s a turf war going on for control of them.
Certain ahem religious organizations monitor a variety of pages and snipe any changes they disagree with. Businesses are doing it too.
And certain politicians
Which religious orgs?
Probably all of them… Just a guess though.
I think the word you’re looking for is “trustworthy” but yes.
I consider it a separate concept.
yeah, apart from the admins that have absolute authority over everything and can do whatever the hell they want and make up arbitrary rules that disqualify your perfectly valid sources.
deleted by creator
Hardly a loophole - Wikipedia’s greatest strength is as an aggregator of reliable information, and using Wikipedia’s sources is how people SHOULD use it. They just taught you how to use it.
Damn, this is genious. My future kids are going to learn so much cool stuff branded as “loopholes”.
Yup. My friend is a high school teacher, and he did the same thing to his class - told them not to use Wikipedia, but that Wikipedia sources were fine, and the kids did actual research.
“Turns out if you willingly focus on the fear, it diminishes. Neat little loophole”
That is a nice one! Brb, going to internalize it for
my own sakethe theoretical children.
Schools aren’t with it. I was told in the 90s that cursive was the future. We had already progressed beyond word processors and they are having us learn fucking loopy letters.
Uni wasn’t much better. Found myself over thirty years behind industry when I got out.
I think it might depend on the field of study and location, but schools are often a little on the conservative side. Even so “loopholes” as best practices is arguably even better.
It’s basic research and writing. You should absolutely teach your kids common sense practices.
My SO is a little scared I will push too much information on them (I have a degree in geek), so I thought more of the pedagogic value of calling something a loophole/hack/cheat etc…
I agree with that. Word it how they respond to it.
Educators HATE this weird loophole!
Yes. That’s how you use an encyclopedia.
Wikipedia is an excellent starting point for information - but saying you can absolutely trust it hell no.
It’s like chatGPT then!
Nah.
I edited a page for a new OS update that was coming out. The page was FULL of misinformation, and I cleaned it up, linked official documentation as sources, etc.
My edits were reverted by some butt hurt guy who originally wrote the page full of misinformation, 0 sources, and broken English.
I reverted back to mine.
He reverted back to his.
He spammed my profile page calling me names, and then reported me to Wiki admins. I was told not to revert changes or I would be perma-banned. I explained how the original page was broken English, misinformation, and 0 sources were cited. They straight up told me they did NOT care.
Stopped editing wiki pages, and stopped trusting them. They didn’t care about factual information. They just wanted to enforce their reverting rule.
I’d love their perspective on this and the actual messages sent as this isn’t very useful standalone.
Their profile was banned last time I looked about a year ago. My profile I deleted because it was permanently tainted by that asshole spamming my talk page.
I remember posting about it on Reddit back when it happened a few years ago, and everyone in the comments told me how they’ve had similar experiences. Really just made me weary about trusting Wikipedia. I mean sure, if they get the date of a movie wrong that’s fine, but as for more serious topics, I just can’t really trust it.
Even sources can be garbage. I’ve seen plenty of blog spam cited as sources, which means nothing.
Could you link us the article?
Pro wrestling wiki pages used to have entrance themes, finishers and signature moves in the wrestler’s page.
One power-mod removed it and it’s gone.
People suck wiki’s cock on the Internet, but it’s a pretty dogshit site and I wish it dies so that a new and better alternative pops up.
It doesn’t need to die for a new alternative to pop up.
I just doubt any alternative will be as good as the one we have now.
That’s a shame
Nah, you can’t. It’s still a great resource, but you always gotta read it critically.
Love reading any article then opening the talk tab for the civil war of edits proposed.
The thing is that it is very easy to read Wikipedia critically, since it lists every single source they get info from at the bottom of the page.
And here I am fixing missing sources on some wiki articles just yesterday.
Elon Musk Offers to Also Ruin Wikipedia https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-wikipedia-twitter-x-encyclopedia-1234861220/
deleted by creator
Only if the source checks out
Does anyone know if there is a way to see which wiki articles are edited the most? I don’t mean new topics or edits because there’s a lot of new info. I mean potential back-and-forth edits where there is disagreement on facts (or one viewpoint denies a fact, etc.).
If that exists, I’d be curious to know what articles they are (obviously probably religion or politics). On the other side, those articles that have remained unedited for a long time are probably pretty rock solid, assuming they also get traffic.*
*I’m literally thinking out loud here and am sure there are many other factors to consider
Maybe if you keep refreshing this search wiki filtered by talk
Thanks, I think this is effectively the metric I want. Just have to combine it somehow (if possible) with traffic info by page.
I always trust the streets. People lie. Governments lie. News lies. But the streets. The streets never lie.
Gotta be careful roaming the streets, tho.
I do for economic data. I really don’t care what funny numbers the White House and shills put out.
I been listening to these streets for years man and there’s one thing I’ve learned: streets ain’t sayin shit
Except not really.
Lol, everything is sourced.
No. There are plenty of articles with the “needs citations” tag.
But even of the ones that are? A LOT of people never actually read the sources and you have plenty of wild claims that are not at all supported by their citation. Plenty of “celebrities” have even talked about how it was a huge hassle to get something changed because the lie was cited… with something unrelated.
“a huge hassle”
Step 1. Remove the unfounded claim
Step 2. Go to the talk page explaining why you removed it
Step 3. If someone puts it back, edit war them, tag needs citation, call them out in the talk page, get the article locked by an admin, etc etc etc. These things happen all the time, and 95% of the time it gets corrected as long as someone gives a damn
plenty of wild claims not at all supported by their citation
Can you show some examples of this?
Nice.
Lol this guy is getting ready to edit some articles.
A lot of the political entries are written with a bent towards being sympathetic with leftists.
The Kyle Rittenhouse article spends a lot of time on how Rittenhouse ‘appeared in conservative media’ or ‘appeared with conservative personalities’ which is a pretty weird thing to say, if you don’t already understand the political undertones of the Kenosha riot.
When you click the article for the Kenosha riot, it’s titled ‘civil unrest in Kenosha’ and focusses a lot on what a reader would perceive as positive aims of the riot. Protesting racism and police brutality, and doesn’t focus at all on the crime, danger, guns, vandalism, arson, etc
That article mentions BLM and when you read that article it makes sure to state that BLM protests were ‘largely peaceful’ and totally misses the amount of deaths and destruction that had happened at them.
The BLM article, if written like the Rittenhouse article, should focus a fair amount in the organizations ties to Marxism, the overthrowing of capitalism and colonialism, but doesn’t.
Wikipedia articles are written and edited and maintained to push a narrative.
If you agree with the narrative, you probably like that it does this. If you disagree, you probably don’t bother reading Wikipedia very much.
The issue with sources, is that a lot of ‘sources’ for stuff like this are already heavily curated to paint a picture the editors want to put on front street.
And anything that would combat that narrative is just outright banned from the site.
A lot of citations with politically charged topics are just opinions anyway. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer or sources on the war between Palestine and isreal, for example. But if Wikipedia editors want to push propaganda for either side over the other, all they have to do is only cite pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli sources.
This is easily exploitable by editors for whatever narrative they choose to push.
Wikipedia is not an exhaustive gathering of all relevant information, it is a carefully curated propaganda machine for the editors.
Good point. I forgot to mention that Wikipedia editors, for all their flaws, are really good at shutting down hateful right wing bullshit.
So you’d categorize it as hateful right wing bullshit if someone mentions that there as violence or criminal activity at BLM protests?
Why would that be hateful? Or right wing? Or anything other than just a description of what happened?
Exactly
Have you ever looked at the sources? Some pages have some insane blog spam “sources” linked.
That’s a circular argument. If you can’t trust the sources how can you trust the wikipedia article which cites those sources.
You can trust the sources, because unreliable sources can’t be used on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources
You can check the sources… if the source doesn’t check out… Guess what, Wikipedia has given you all the information you need.
In any discipline some part has to be trusted for the next to follow. It is not circular, it is axiomatic. You can do a Descartes to find a “guarantee of truth”, but there won’t be one. Hence your critique could literally be applied to anything. Check sources and be happy they are freely provided (and donate to Wikipedia).
That’s my point, by mistrusting every other website, OP is violating axioms upon which Wikipedia is built, yet still claiming it’s trustworthy
Ah, I now see better what you meant. That is in part a fun little contradiction, but much of Wikipedia’s sources are books and articles that come in printed form. These are easier than other websites to verify as sources due to their tangible nature.
But it takes more effort to confirm a tangible source than one on the internet?
Not really. Just sail the high seas with Library Genesis or Sci-Hub. The nature of being published is being non-editable, a digital copy is an okay compromise.
EDIT: There is an issue of trust in piracy, though hardly in practice, but Open Access should help with this.
Oh, you’re taking me literally. Sorry I didn’t catch that.
Lawl, 1) 25% of Wikipedia in English is unsourced
lAwL 2) 77% of Wikipedia is written by 1% of its editors
RaWfL 3) once a source is credited once, it isn’t rechecked and can be used as a source on Wikipedia countless times
LmFAo 4) literally anyone saying something does not make it credible or true.
deleted by creator
It could even be someone purposefully poisoning the well
Kinda like how the government hires people to put terrible music over all the UFO footage so we perceive it as crazy people stuff.
Not at all. I’m responding to OP, and while my comment is informative and sourced so that other people can understand it too, I do not care at all that my in-kind response turns some people off.
Lol… kinda reminds of something… Wikipedia?
As scrambled as your brain is, anything could.
my comment is informative and sourced so that other people can understand it too, I do not care at all that my in-kind response turns some people off.
Rolfcopter. This guy doesn’t know how to use Wikipedia.
You probably learned how to use Wikipedia from Wikipedia, that’s how you got so wrong.
Not bad actually https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_and_fact-checking
The same people who told you that now do fact checking on facebook instead
Not when elon turns it into dickipedia and makes every page reference him in a positive light
Wikipedia is not for sale.
I’m well aware, it is something that we call a “joke” if you haven’t seen the news lately
Yeah, I c. So sick of that guy. Let him have his toys and he can go fuck off.
