Germany once had a minister of defence with a ridiculous number of first names. I think 12 names or so. Then one guy kept editing in another into Wikipedia. During the edit war where people were deleting the extra name and he was putting it back in some journalist used Wikipedia as a source for the names and they copied the fake one down. So now the guy had a source he could point to to win the edit war.
I think it took several months until this was resolved.
themurphy@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
Wikipedia is very good, but ALWAYS look for more than one source.
I also once wrote a paper about WW2 in school, and when I got into Wikipedia, someone had edited the entire page to say “Hitler won”. Nothing else.
It was only in my language tho, and was resolved quickly.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Wikipedia is a terrible source, but it’s a great source for other sources.
One of the biggest problems with the site is that it doesn’t archive the linked material. So you can have a bunch of dead links to older historical entries, which undermines the value over long terms.
Archangel1313@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Lol! That’s what makes it a great source, not a terrible one. It compiles a wide variety of sources on different subjects, and cross references them with related subjects, so that additional information is easy to find.
Wikipedia itself should never be what you’re quoting. Quote the sources you find there.
madame_gaymes@programming.dev 4 weeks ago
You know, that’s an excellent point. I am surprised that, in 2025, there isn’t an automatic Internet Archive service in place that does that for any link added to a Wiki entry.
RedIce25@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I could swear that on some occasions Wikipedia sources have sent me to a wayback machine archived site
rikudou@lemmings.world 4 weeks ago
In elementary school I was doing a paper on Al Capone and there was the section with his early days which included “like every young boy he liked jerking off.”
Most likely true, though the sources were missing.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Is it bad that I didn’t know masturbation was a thing until AFTER I had already had sex? My girlfriend was like “Why are your loads always so massive??? How often do you jerk off???”
And I was like “…what do you mean by jerk off?”
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
They should be teaching kids how to use Wikipedia properly rather then banning it out right. Use it like a search engine and follow the cited sources for real research. Check the authors of the cited sources for any bias. Check the edit history if something seems suspicious.
Jumi@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Also teach when it’s necessary to do so and when not so much and if they have to check how deep they need to go.