Submitted 1 month ago by NotAnotherLemmyUser@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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.
I once searched for Barack Obama years ago right when a rogue editor turned it into a page about Blackops Apache Assault Helicopters and Seals copypastas. I still dont know why. I occassionally wondered if I was sleepwalking.
Theoretically this should still be available somewhere in the edit history.
Gather around children. u/bjoern_tantau is going to tell us of one of the mighty Wikipedia Edit Wars.
Citogenesis in action
Some journalists just scour Reddit or buzzfeed for content.
I don’t call them journalists. They’re bloggers.
Haha, you’re right. My mistake. 😂
Yet another not-a-showerthought.
What makes it not a shower thought
I mean the comparison used to be Wikipedia vs finding the right literature in a library. Now it’s mostly Wikipedia vs AI that sometimes makes things up including sources. The real degradation happens over time though. People using AI to write papers which then get fed into AI as a source. It already is but will become increasingly hard to verify how reliable the information is that you find.
This all happens in the background of short video clips dominating the engagement of young people. We have students at our school who aren’t even capable of using AI to cheat and they don’t care either. They saw some tiktoks telling them once they’re 18 they can get rich with betting or real estate (despite having no capital) so why do homework? I’d rather they trust wikipedia blindly than what they currently do.
themurphy@lemmy.ml 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month ago
I could swear that on some occasions Wikipedia sources have sent me to a wayback machine archived site
rikudou@lemmings.world 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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.