Wikipedia is unreliable for politically controversial topics, I’ve seen multiple articles on the Gaza genocide with specific claims citing fucking Times of Israel with no other supporting evidence whatsoever, Times of Israel has been caught lying more than once and shouldn’t be used as a source at all. Each article is only as good as the sources cited and they’re not all equally well sourced, it is entirely possible to insert false info into articles especially if you’ve got a well funded organization behind the effort, and even if it is eventually caught and corrected it will already have served as useful propaganda for anyone reading the article in the interim.
Wikipeter was the founder of the site in 1993 when he wanted to know more about model trains without having to visit the library
Submitted 9 hours ago by ObviouslyNotBanana@piefed.world to [deleted]
https://media.piefed.world/posts/BV/De/BVDe9BovAu7gWyX.jpeg
Comments
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 17 minutes ago
BanMe@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
My historic house has a Wikipedia page, I’ve tried updating it with information I know is accurate (I mean, I live here), but it was always removed. Must have a primary source that’s not “individual research” like, you know, counting the bedrooms or fireplaces.
Which is what lead to me getting our city’s newspaper to interview me, print several facts and stories, and now that published article is a primary source.
During this process I realized that Wikipedia is pretty goddamn serious.
thatsTheCatch@lemmy.nz 1 hour ago
Yeah I was reading about the editing guidelines and they have a principle that surprised me at first:
Basically, you could edit an article with information you know is true (like your bedrooms or fireplaces), but truth is not the criteria that edits get tested upon. It must be verifiable by a source.
Pretty cool that you didn’t just give up and actually got the local newspaper to interview you! That’s awesome!
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 54 minutes ago
That is hilarious. At that point if I was annoyed enough, I’d do something like hang a picture in the house taking a dig at Wikipedia and then the interview could mention that and now it could be in the article about the house taking a dig at them.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 43 minutes ago
if I was annoyed enough, I’d do something like hang a picture in the house taking a dig at Wikipedia and then the interview could mention that and now it could be in the article about the house taking a dig at them.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
To a degree. But you also run into the classic XKCD problem of Citogenesis. This isn’t a hypothetical, either.
Had you, for instance, mentioned something you read about your own historical house on Wikipedia in the city’s newspaper, it would now be a cited piece of information that Wikipedia links onto.
There’s also the problem of link rot. When your small town newspaper gets bought up by ClearChannel or Sinclair media and the back archives locked down or purged, the link to the original information can’t be referenced anymore.
That’s before you get into the back-end politics of Wikipedia - a heavy bias towards western media sources, European language publications, and state officials who are de facto “quotable” in a way outsider sources and investigators are not. Architectural Digest is a valid source in a way BanMe’s Architecture Review Blog is not. That has nothing to do with the veracity of the source and everything to do with the history and distribution of the publication.
Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
There’s a lot of misinformation on Wikipedia too, of many different kinds. Some smaller pages exists purely for someone’s PR. I’ve seen blatantly false (but “verifiable”) stuff too but the most common thing is to have pages that are just creative with the truth.
Also sometimes I’ll notice an article make multiple different claims that all point to the same source and then check the source and realize it is not a valid source for all of those claims, just some.
And also there’s stuff that gets flagged as verified based on extrapolation of data from a combination of sources. For example: one source says “John Doe facing 1 billion dollars fines if found guilty” and another source says “John Doe was found guilty”, then the article says “John Doe fined 1 billion dollars after being found guilty” as verified, then you go search the web and find no mention of any fines actually being issued following the verdict.
Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
Btw this is not an argument against Wikipedia in any way.
Zorcron@piefed.zip 3 hours ago
How is it not? Genuine question, I use wiki a lot, and generally trust the articles, though I have seen some inaccuracies before.
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 8 hours ago
It’s not just smaller pages. Brands and people pay for PR people to maintain their page.
FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
But shouldnt fact be neutral? For example: “the holocaust was evil and killed countless innocent civilians” or “the holocaust resulted in (actual estimate) civilian deaths” The former is emotional and the latter is factual, but both highlight the perpetrated evil against the innocent.
Maybe I’m oversimplifying your point.
saltesc@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I frequently check Wikipedia citations, just to be disappointed. Wiki sources can be a great shortcut to good citations, but often I realise much of an article’s content is built out of the soggiest cardboard.
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Anybody who thinks Wikipedia is bad should have grown up on encyclopedias. Looking back at my childhood set, they are hilariously riddled with errors.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Yes, but they have professional errors. Not those errors that could have been written by just about anyone.
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 29 minutes ago
People paid good money for those errors though! Not like those freeloading people doing it all for donations…
taiyang@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Honestly I think it comes from a misunderstanding regarding secondary sources vs primary ones. Wikipedia, as well as encyclopedias and textbooks, are secondary sources. It’s not good practice to cite secondary sources without primary ones, but a lot of people (namely, teachers) don’t grasp why which leads these sources to get classified as bad.
That, plus Wikipedia is accessible without the usual gatekeeping and money behind what textbooks and encyclopedias have, which adds to the sources “credibility.” Money means marketing, including constant email campaigns targeting people like me trying to validate whatever textbook they’re peddling. (And in case you wonder if they’re evil, they sometimes offer kickbacks to adopt their expensive textbooks for my university classes).
Fedi users already get that, though, as that’s a common problem FOSS usually has. Point is, wiki lives in a weird place because no, you shouldn’t cite it just like you shouldn’t cite textbooks, but yes, it’s perfectly valid so long as you check those sources. And, speaking from experience, some students really don’t understand as I see citations for so much worse.
onehundredsixtynine@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
Wikipedia, as well as encyclopedias and textbooks, are secondary sources.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 3 hours ago
Back when I was in school they outright censored Wikipedia. Fuck that shit
SupraMario@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Same here, but everyone used it by…just siting the sources at the bottom of the page. It was honestly the dumbest logic ever. Professors telling you, you can’t use Wikipedia because anyone can edit it, but being ok with the literal source the Wikipedia article used for its info…just made zero sense.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I’m on the fence about not cutting primary sources. And especially in the sciences, where it’s actually the slow, boring, long process of many publications and many datat sets coming together to conclude something 'in the aggregate '. Like I’ll usually go to a review or meta analysis paper as a citation, because it’s combining and comparing the results across studies.
And really, a living document like Wikipedia is more like that kind of review or meta analysis paper.
I’m not disagreeing that were taught to go for primary sources, but in some ways, they’re actually less reliable than secondary sources if those secondary sources are taking in a a broader collection of primary sources, which something like Wikipedia is.
sheridan@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
I once posted a Wikipedia article to r/TodayILearned, and my post went really popular. Someone a few hours later then edited the Wikipedia page to contradict my Reddit post title, reported my post to the subreddit mods, and my post got taken down.
db2@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Reddit gonna reddit
GreenShimada@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Imagine being the level of asshole that would spend the time to do this. I’m not surprised, just…disappointed.
titanicx@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
Why be disappointed. That’s more effort than most people go through on the internet. I’m actually impressed.
brbposting@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
Is that Wikipedia page accurate today?
sheridan@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
I’m not sure. It was about the “turbo” button on 80s PCs, and how its function could be confusing to users depending on how it was wired. You look at the talk page and edit history there’s still a lot of arguments about this.
titanicx@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
Yeah unless the fact that the original Wikipedia article was grossly inaccurate in person that edited actually did edit it correctly then this sounds like a bullshit made up sorry. I mean not that it didn’t actually happen because that shit happens all the time. But if we compete I would have been edited and then had somebody report it within usually a few hours or so it would be removed and returned it back to the original state once it was verified false.
gmtom@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Nah fuck this attitude, if you ever tried to use Wikipedia for an actual research project you’ll know how dubious those “”“sources”“” can be.
It’s actuslly an exercise one of my TA friends sets for students when they’re just learning to research things properly. She gives them a claim on Wikipedia and and asks them to find the primary source for it. So they end up spending hours following chains of citations, until they are checking out old books from the library to try and find excerpts that some blog post that was cited in a paper that was cited in a newspaper, that was cited in a different blog post that was cited in another news article that was cited by Wikipedia claims exists, just to find out it doesn’t.
But seriously, don’t take Wikipedia seriously unless it cites a primary source directly.
onehundredsixtynine@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
primary> don’t take Wikipedia seriously unless it cites a primary source directly. Primary sources are against the policy in 99.9% of cases.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
You’ll regularly find a link to a secondary source that contains a reference to a primary source. If you just want generically available historical, scientific, or broadly epistemological knowledge, its great. If you want an on-the-ground testimonial from an eye-witness, it may give you the start of a breadcrumb trail towards your destination.
That said, the bias endemic to Wikipedia is largely a product of its origins - primarily English, western media focused, heavily populated by editors from a handful of global north countries. If you want to learn about the history of a mayoralty in Saskatchewan going back to the 18th century, its a rich resource. If you want to find out the political valence of the major political parties of Nepal or Azerbaijan, you’ll find a much thinner resource.
Some of that is a consequence of the editors (or absence of them) around a particular topic. Some of that is a consequence of the moderators/admins graylisting or outright blacklisting sources. Newer sources - 404media, for instance - aren’t tracked while older sources that have changed management significantly and lost some of their trustworthiness - WSJ, CBS, National Geographic, as recent examples.
jaybone@lemmy.zip 6 hours ago
In this day and age, where newspapers will publish any bullshit dictated by their corporate / billionaire owners, and any idiot can publish a book, how do we know the sources themselves are even valid? Like just because it’s physically printed doesn’t make it any more true.
LotrOrc@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
No it generally makes sense to teach kids to not cite Wikipedia. Though it is consistently checked and updated you can look at the wiki link and drama for the Israeli genocide just to see a perfect example of why it shouldn’t be cited.
The great part of wikipedia is going to their actual resources ans reading and understanding those. What you were supposed to learn was HOW to research things and come to your own conclusions, not just how to cite information.
turmacar@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
You shouldn’t cite wikipedia in a paper because it’s a tertiary source. Somehow that got lost in translation sometime in the 90s.
You shouldn’t cite any other encyclopedia either, because they’re “some guy” writing a paragraph or so about a thing. I think it was Britannica that Tolkein wrote a lot of the “W”'s for. I’m sure he did a great job, but it’s not exactly easy to fact check him either.
dil@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
You know what, I was gonna agree because last time I was googling some sikh history as a sikh it seemed to be driding the indian governement but looking at the articles now it has correct casualty estimates. I swear last time I looked it was framed like the government estimate for casualties at 83 killed 900 injured was accurate, now it frames it like how every news article not on wikipedia did with 10k deaths being the likely estimate.
I see no mention of israel tho, which is odd since operation blue star was an israeli trained operation, had the isreali flag as the symbol and name lol. I can’t find the older article from india celebrating the anniversary of them working together, training soldiers to massacre civilians, but its out there somewhere, times india 1990s or 2000s.
dil@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
Maybe im not looking hard enough but youd think the country that trained the operation and has the operation (blue star) named after their flag would pop up more in the article.
Sidenote my grandpa left india shortly after that time working on a ship and was lost at sea for a bit. He was saved by an isdf vessel and they were apparently nice and bought him a first class ticket on the plane to his destination in america. Just a nice reminder that not all people anywhere are bad, just like america might seem like a hellscape but the average person here isn’t the vocal maga person you see online, they just clock in.
ObviouslyNotBanana@piefed.world 2 hours ago
I think it would be reasonable to teach kids to look at Wikipedia to find sources.
Oppopity@lemmy.ml 40 minutes ago
It’s not enough to just find sources they have to learn how to critically read them.
13igTyme@piefed.social 4 hours ago
I haven’t done it in a while, but I would make little edits to Republican political figures. If they “ended” or “stopped” a business. I change it to “aborted” the business.
Some they would fix, but not all of them.
TwodogsFighting@lemdro.id 8 hours ago
And then there’s the scots language wiki;
plantfanatic@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz 5 hours ago
afaik Wikipedia shut down the Greenlandic language version to prevent this exact situation, apparently the language used there was getting very poor
Burninator05@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
The quotes used in the article sound like something Groundkeeper Willie would say. Im not sure why anyone would take them seriously.
Zwiebel@feddit.org 8 hours ago
Man why people so mean. I highly doubt he did actual damage
dontsayaword@piefed.social 8 hours ago
I think this person has possibly done more damage to the Scots language than anyone else in history.
ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 2 hours ago
Wikipedia is like the War Thunder forums on steriods minus the who leaking classified information.
Dasus@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
“Yeah, did you read that on Wikipedia?”
Yes, I did.
Just like I used to read things at the library in the 90’s, and no-one would’ve thought to mock that. And one of the books I read was some Soviet scientists from the 50’s describing how spiritual auras work in real life.
Although that was in the 00’s I just didn’t have the internet all the time while in the army.
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Wikipedia may be flawed, it’s because people are flawed. That’s why the scientific method and editors exist, not Wikipedia, but science in general. IMO.
Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 6 hours ago
Wikipedia is wonderful… for most things.
The main demographic contributing to and editing English Wikipedia are young, highly educated white men from western countries. It will portray on average the bias that most of these people espouse. So it will have racist bias, misogynistic bias and pro-western bias.
That said, it’s still probably less misogynistic and less racist and less pro-western than your average outlet, because it filters out some of the most blatant false narratives and propaganda from conservative sources such as FOX.
scholar@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
That’s why I only get my information from lemmy comments
Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 4 hours ago
I only get my information from Hexbear comrades who share links ;)
TragicNotCute@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I registered a domain and wrote an article to try to get a submission through. It worked for a few months, but was removed after that. Very vigilant.
Stefan_S_from_H@piefed.zip 8 hours ago
Meanwhile, my cousin and her friend were listed as honorary citizens of our village for a few months.
canihasaccount@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
A problem with Wikipedia is that experts are not allowed to contribute to their areas of expertise because they’re “biased”. I know a professor at a top university who used to spend his free time editing Wikipedia outside of his specific area but in his broad area of expertise as a method of disseminating science knowledge to the public. When the higher-up Wikipedia editors found out who he was, they banned his account and IP from editing.
Having the lay public write articles works when expertise isn’t required to understand something, but much of Wikipedia around science is slightly inaccurate at best.
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 6 hours ago
Can you share the author/topic?
Wikipedia welcomes expert contributors, but people editing articles about themselves is a big no-no. You’re also not allowed to do promotion of your pet theories, even if you’re “expert”.
canihasaccount@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Things appear to have changed; thanks for drawing my attention to that. I may start editing some articles in my broader area.
canihasaccount@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I can’t without doxxing myself more than I’d like. It wasn’t an article about himself, nor his research. This was about 10 years ago, so the rules may have changed. I’ll take a look and edit my post accordingly if so.
LeopoldBloom@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
This is true for most articles, but anything to do with Israel, Palestine, or Zionism has been taken over by jihadists.
Allero@lemmy.today 3 hours ago
One of the core policies of Wikipedia, remaining from its inception, is neutrality.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie…
This fully applies to describing international conflicts and wars. If you find Wikipedia biased, there are two things you can do:
- Collect credible evidence, and suggest edits
- Check if you are biased yourself
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
jihadists
Arabic word that means “exerting”, “striving”, or “struggling”, particularly with a praiseworthy aim
Curious choice of words.
istdaslol@feddit.org 5 hours ago
And than there is the fake toaster inventor who only got found out nearly a decade later because the thought the joke got out of hand
notreallyhere@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
idk I’ve seen a lot of total bs on wikipedia
titanicx@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
Let’s see some please.
mushroomman_toad@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 minutes ago
The point isn’t that Wikipedia is wrong, the point is that your research papers should cite primary sources published by the field instead of a generic encyclopedia. Even if the pages on encyclopedia are maintained by respected authors, it’s not immediately obvious, and the information is likely surface level and not worth citing.
ITGuyLevi@programming.dev 4 minutes ago
Growing up, pretty much all our hick schools had were encyclopedias; when wikipedia showed up it felt like they were just against the ease of it’s use. Smarter kids would still use the sources cited in Wikipedia, but teachers hated when you referenced a research paper because they couldn’t find it.