In this day and age, where newspapers will publish any bullshit dictated by their corporate / billionaire owners, and any idiot can publish a book, how do we know the sources themselves are even valid? Like just because it’s physically printed doesn’t make it any more true.
gmtom@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Nah fuck this attitude, if you ever tried to use Wikipedia for an actual research project you’ll know how dubious those “”“sources”“” can be.
It’s actuslly an exercise one of my TA friends sets for students when they’re just learning to research things properly. She gives them a claim on Wikipedia and and asks them to find the primary source for it. So they end up spending hours following chains of citations, until they are checking out old books from the library to try and find excerpts that some blog post that was cited in a paper that was cited in a newspaper, that was cited in a different blog post that was cited in another news article that was cited by Wikipedia claims exists, just to find out it doesn’t.
But seriously, don’t take Wikipedia seriously unless it cites a primary source directly.
jaybone@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
onehundredsixtynine@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
You’ll regularly find a link to a secondary source that contains a reference to a primary source. If you just want generically available historical, scientific, or broadly epistemological knowledge, its great. If you want an on-the-ground testimonial from an eye-witness, it may give you the start of a breadcrumb trail towards your destination.
That said, the bias endemic to Wikipedia is largely a product of its origins - primarily English, western media focused, heavily populated by editors from a handful of global north countries. If you want to learn about the history of a mayoralty in Saskatchewan going back to the 18th century, its a rich resource. If you want to find out the political valence of the major political parties of Nepal or Azerbaijan, you’ll find a much thinner resource.
Some of that is a consequence of the editors (or absence of them) around a particular topic. Some of that is a consequence of the moderators/admins graylisting or outright blacklisting sources. Newer sources - 404media, for instance - aren’t tracked while older sources that have changed management significantly and lost some of their trustworthiness - WSJ, CBS, National Geographic, as recent examples.