Comment on YSK: When you want to learn the facts on a controversial topic, check Wikipedia
Maven@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months agoA 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 8 months ago
I'm going out on a limb and assuming basic fact checking skills here, yes.
nyar@lemmy.world 8 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 8 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 8 months ago
Because it's a crowdsourced way of collecting and correlating those sources.
Maven@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
Often, collecting and correlating sources that agree with one viewpoint of a complex issue, which is the whole problem we were discussing. If a wiki article is camped by an admin with a slant, as they often are, the sources do not represent some neutral middle ground or wisdom of the crowd, they represent the things that ended up in the article and nothing more. If you want to learn the facts of a controversial topic, why would you start with a potentially biased list?