Comment on Wikipedia sources their information better than most journalists do in their articles.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 day agoWikipedia is very good, but ALWAYS look for more than one source.
Wikipedia is a terrible source, but it’s a great source for other sources.
One of the biggest problems with the site is that it doesn’t archive the linked material. So you can have a bunch of dead links to older historical entries, which undermines the value over long terms.
One of the biggest problems with the site is that it doesn’t archive the linked material. So you can have a bunch of dead links to older historical entries, which undermines the value over long terms.
You know, that’s an excellent point. I am surprised that, in 2025, there isn’t an automatic Internet Archive service in place that does that for any link added to a Wiki entry.
I could swear that on some occasions Wikipedia sources have sent me to a wayback machine archived site
Often a better link than the original, since Wayback is better supported and not prone to the whims of a billionaire oligarch.
But it isn’t mandated nor is it integrated with Wikipedia.
Archangel1313@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Lol! That’s what makes it a great source, not a terrible one. It compiles a wide variety of sources on different subjects, and cross references them with related subjects, so that additional information is easy to find.
Wikipedia itself should never be what you’re quoting. Quote the sources you find there.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Nah dawg. That’s a gaping hole in Wikipedias model and value proposition. How can THE global encyclopedia not archive its source material? What happens if all the sources get nuked? How can future historians calculate the accuracy of Wikipedia over time if the sources are not archived?
Apart from decentralization, their focus should not only be on archiving all current and future source material, but archiving all historic source material side its inception.
Archangel1313@lemm.ee 3 hours ago
Dude. Do you know how massive that project would have to be? You wouldn’t be able to do that, without serious funding. And it would also be the opposite of “decentralization”. It would make them the largest single repository of all that information. If anyone wanted to “nuke” that material, they’d only need one bomb.
scintilla@lemm.ee 1 day ago
The more you research a specific topic the worse Wikipedia seems as a source. For a general overview before writing a paper and starting real research? It’s great.
For actually researching and compuiling that paper? Terrible. The Wikipedia editors are people too and they cant know everything.
I love Wikipedia and have donated and will donate again but looking back on it there’s a reason that most schools don’t let you source it as Wikipedia and make you look at the actual sources that Wikipedia uses.