LotrOrc@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
No it generally makes sense to teach kids to not cite Wikipedia. Though it is consistently checked and updated you can look at the wiki link and drama for the Israeli genocide just to see a perfect example of why it shouldn’t be cited.
The great part of wikipedia is going to their actual resources ans reading and understanding those. What you were supposed to learn was HOW to research things and come to your own conclusions, not just how to cite information.
You shouldn’t cite wikipedia in a paper because it’s a tertiary source. Somehow that got lost in translation sometime in the 90s.
You shouldn’t cite any other encyclopedia either, because they’re “some guy” writing a paragraph or so about a thing. I think it was Britannica that Tolkein wrote a lot of the “W”'s for. I’m sure he did a great job, but it’s not exactly easy to fact check him either.
You know what, I was gonna agree because last time I was googling some sikh history as a sikh it seemed to be driding the indian governement but looking at the articles now it has correct casualty estimates. I swear last time I looked it was framed like the government estimate for casualties at 83 killed 900 injured was accurate, now it frames it like how every news article not on wikipedia did with 10k deaths being the likely estimate.
I see no mention of israel tho, which is odd since operation blue star was an israeli trained operation, had the isreali flag as the symbol and name lol. I can’t find the older article from india celebrating the anniversary of them working together, training soldiers to massacre civilians, but its out there somewhere, times india 1990s or 2000s.
Maybe im not looking hard enough but youd think the country that trained the operation and has the operation (blue star) named after their flag would pop up more in the article.
Sidenote my grandpa left india shortly after that time working on a ship and was lost at sea for a bit. He was saved by an isdf vessel and they were apparently nice and bought him a first class ticket on the plane to his destination in america. Just a nice reminder that not all people anywhere are bad, just like america might seem like a hellscape but the average person here isn’t the vocal maga person you see online, they just clock in.
I think it would be reasonable to teach kids to look at Wikipedia to find sources.
It’s not enough to just find sources they have to learn how to critically read them.
Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 30 minutes ago
Wikipedia is generally terrible for anything that was politically controversial since Wikipedia has been a thing. A lot of why is very intentionally buried in layers of bureaucracy and wikilawyering to make it look like totally reasonable, neutral point of view decision making. One of the big routes to viewpoint control on Wikipedia is arguments about notoriety and what is or is not a “reliable source” and what sources are sufficient to discuss a topic.