Comment on YSK: When you want to learn the facts on a controversial topic, check Wikipedia
amio@kbin.social 11 months agoThis is why you don't take anything at face value. Check the sources, which you should be doing on Wikipedia anyway.
Comment on YSK: When you want to learn the facts on a controversial topic, check Wikipedia
amio@kbin.social 11 months agoThis 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?
amio@kbin.social 11 months ago
Because it's a crowdsourced way of collecting and correlating those sources.