But the fact that a lot of editors fight about such issues means that it ends up being somewhat neutral, no?
Comment on YSK: When you want to learn the facts on a controversial topic, check Wikipedia
HKayn@dormi.zone 11 months ago
No, absolutely not.
For purely scientific articles Wikipedia is great. But anything remotely controversial or even political on that site should be taken with a grain of salt.
There’s too many editors out there who enforce their biases and wage war on such articles.
darcy@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
HKayn@dormi.zone 11 months ago
Depends on who’s currently winning the fight.
cwagner@lemmy.cwagner.me 11 months ago
[deleted]Aatube@kbin.social 11 months ago
Found you! While he appears to be way more than a Russian troll, he was indeed very insulting in his edit summaries. The admin also appears to be an invested contributor to the article who merely coincided with this event; it seems they were merely resolving this discussion. Pending edits (ones that require approval) are separate from the usual edits people fly by.
JPJones@lemmy.one 11 months ago
*citation needed
amio@kbin.social 11 months ago
This is why you don't take anything at face value. Check the sources, which you should be doing on Wikipedia anyway.
Maven@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
A wikipedia sources list is not some sort of list of all available data on a subject. It’s a list of what information was used to build the article.
On anything remotely divisive, there will be available primary sources for multiple viewpoints, and obviously a slanted article will largely contain sources supporting its slant and leave out sources that don’t. Just checking the sources can easily result in the illusion of consensus where there is none.
amio@kbin.social 11 months ago
I'm going out on a limb and assuming basic fact checking skills here, yes.
nyar@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Checking facts in a list of curated facts is not fact checking.
Most people do not actively have access to scholarly works, nor the aptitude to review it, nor the time to do so.
Maven@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
In this case, the primary relevant fact checking skill would be searching for sources independent of Wikipedia, in which case, why was one starting with Wikipedia in the first place?