I downloaded the entirety of wikipedia as of 2024 to use as a reference for “truth” in the post-slop world. Maybe I should grab the 2022 version as well just in case…
Wikipedia is the most accurate encyclopedia to date; its perceived unreliability as to its correctness is largely a misunderstanding that arose from misconceptions as to why one can’t (or shouldn’t, depending on case) cite it in academia. People think that it can’t be cited because of its unreliability but in reality it’s simply because it’s a third hand source; i.e. a resource.
Wikipedia is built near-purely on second hand sources, which is how all encyclopedias are intended to be constructed. As long as one ensures the validity of the second hand source used, encyclopedias are great resources.
Wikipedia is the most accurate encyclopedia to date
How did you determine that?
Wikipedia is built near-purely on second hand sources, which is how all encyclopedias are intended to be constructed. As long as one ensures the validity of the second hand source used, encyclopedias are great resources.
True, but basically nobody does check that the sources are valid, and they often aren’t.
How do you know they often aren’t? I’m an academic and regularly use wikipedia to find citations for sources. I’ve have yet to come across any citations that were wrong.
Here are two pages I’ve gone through a lot I can verify have correct citations in them. In fact, one of the citations in one of these is my research! which I know for certain was cited correctly.
For anything that is not politically contentious, it’s very good. Even the politically contentious stuff tries to give the most “balanced”/“mainstream” interpretation usually.
There are communities of people which hyperfixate on certain topics. Think dinosaurs and trains. If a serious Dino-head sees a mistake about the length of Diplodocus, they are going to drop everything and fix it immediately.
I routinely check wiki sources - I’ve taught a lot of college kids that as a way to quickly find sources for papers. Most of the time, topics I know a lot about from my own educational background match what I see on wiki and cite the same kinds of sources I would use.
It’s not perfect - there’s the infamous story of an American teenager writing all of Scots Wikipedia without knowing any Scots - but you have to respect the fact that there are a lot of people who are obsessed with certain topics and will watch their pet articles like a hawk.
What a shock that someone who pretends to be an anarchist would go to bat to defend the reliablity of far right western propaganda outlets like Radio Free Asia, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Remember, if it doesn’t’ have the Western Neo-liberal seal of approval, it’s not credible and should be removed, that’s the anarchist way!
I’m talking about how unsurprising it is to me that a western pseudo-anarchist treats far right propaganda outlets as gospel truth, so long as they’re laundered though something like wikipedia.
A lot of western liberals really do treat it like the Holy Scripture. Any intelligence agencies would just have to pay a few admins and higher some people to sculpt the list of “reliable sources” that Wikipedia uses and they can basically fully control what hundreds of millions of neoliberals believe.
See? You’ve just straight up given up the game, immediately disregarding any pretense that you ever cared about reliable sources or honestly, and just straight up admit that it’s only about politics alliegence. You will believe anything Wikipedia tells you, even if it openly comes from western propaganda outlets like the Victims of Communism Foundation or Radio Free Asia, because they agree with your politics.
Yessir, i do believe that the information on Wikipedia resembles the truth a lot more than anything that comes from lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml or hexbear.net.
Yes, I do: because it confirms the things you already believed
Because Wikipedia gives me sources i can read up and decide myself if that’s bullshit or not
And do you? Do you read all those books from Anne Applebaum and similar right wing pundits? Do you read all the reports from far right think tanks like Australian Strategic Policy Institute? Do you read claims of not just the publications, but the save individual people, who have consistently repeated every verified lie to come out of the US state department, from WMDS in Iraq to babies in ovens in Gaza? How exactly are you “deciding for yourself” if that’s bullshit?
And also because Wikipedia leaves politics aside as good as they can
They really don’t. Not that it’s even possible to “leave politics aside” when talking about things that are political. Thinking they do is basically admition that you consider your politics “the default”.
if your perception of reality has anything to with what the world at large has agreed on, but there i lost ya, didn’t i?
You really want to commit the argument “it’s true because it agrees with the average political position of westerners?” (because by “the world at large”, you, naturally, where only talking about westerners.)
I downloaded the entirety of wikipedia as of 2024 to use as a reference for “truth” in the post-slop world. Maybe I should grab the 2022 version as well just in case…
Why would wikipedia of all things be your go to for that?
This guy is a troll and he’s going to keep asking questions as long as people keep answering them.
I’m just going to block him and move on; got no time to suffer fools like this any more.
Man, you people really loath anyone who doesn’t just shut up and agree.
Wikipedia is the most accurate encyclopedia to date; its perceived unreliability as to its correctness is largely a misunderstanding that arose from misconceptions as to why one can’t (or shouldn’t, depending on case) cite it in academia. People think that it can’t be cited because of its unreliability but in reality it’s simply because it’s a third hand source; i.e. a resource.
Wikipedia is built near-purely on second hand sources, which is how all encyclopedias are intended to be constructed. As long as one ensures the validity of the second hand source used, encyclopedias are great resources.
How did you determine that?
True, but basically nobody does check that the sources are valid, and they often aren’t.
How do you know they often aren’t? I’m an academic and regularly use wikipedia to find citations for sources. I’ve have yet to come across any citations that were wrong.
Because I see the things they’re getting from Wikipedia and I am them, and they admit they didn’t actually check the sources.
How would you determine that a cited source was wrong?
I’ll click on them and then read them.
Here are two pages I’ve gone through a lot I can verify have correct citations in them. In fact, one of the citations in one of these is my research! which I know for certain was cited correctly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software
And how will that allow you to know if they’re right or not?
Post-truther detected.
Then I read them and use my critical thinking skills. For research I put trust in peer review articles by reputable journals.
But regardless,
Isn’t that a broader question as to what we consider truth and not something specific to wikipedia ?
Subject matter experts do still exist. They’re dying off, and it’s unclear how many more we intend to create. But we do still have some.
You can’t be a subject matter expert on everything though?
For anything that is not politically contentious, it’s very good. Even the politically contentious stuff tries to give the most “balanced”/“mainstream” interpretation usually.
There are communities of people which hyperfixate on certain topics. Think dinosaurs and trains. If a serious Dino-head sees a mistake about the length of Diplodocus, they are going to drop everything and fix it immediately.
I routinely check wiki sources - I’ve taught a lot of college kids that as a way to quickly find sources for papers. Most of the time, topics I know a lot about from my own educational background match what I see on wiki and cite the same kinds of sources I would use.
It’s not perfect - there’s the infamous story of an American teenager writing all of Scots Wikipedia without knowing any Scots - but you have to respect the fact that there are a lot of people who are obsessed with certain topics and will watch their pet articles like a hawk.
NATOpedia is a great resource if you go in with an assumption of a pro-western bias, but a source of truth lmao.
Someone is mad their sources got removed for not being credible.
What a shock that someone who pretends to be an anarchist would go to bat to defend the reliablity of far right western propaganda outlets like Radio Free Asia, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Remember, if it doesn’t’ have the Western Neo-liberal seal of approval, it’s not credible and should be removed, that’s the anarchist way!
What in the fuck are you talking about
I’m talking about how unsurprising it is to me that a western pseudo-anarchist treats far right propaganda outlets as gospel truth, so long as they’re laundered though something like wikipedia.
A lot of western liberals really do treat it like the Holy Scripture. Any intelligence agencies would just have to pay a few admins and higher some people to sculpt the list of “reliable sources” that Wikipedia uses and they can basically fully control what hundreds of millions of neoliberals believe.
And they have.
Well you’re free to submit sources that are credible and challenge that old ones aren’t.
I tried that once, a bunch of power users got together and tried to dox me
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Lol. Reality isn’t what you wanted it to be, so you’re just going to deny it.
You’re just salty that the russian and chinese propaganda edits are thrown out as soon as they pop up lol
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It’s very easy to just spit out rote strawman that don’t resemble anything I actually said, rather than actually engage with what I said.
See? You’ve just straight up given up the game, immediately disregarding any pretense that you ever cared about reliable sources or honestly, and just straight up admit that it’s only about politics alliegence. You will believe anything Wikipedia tells you, even if it openly comes from western propaganda outlets like the Victims of Communism Foundation or Radio Free Asia, because they agree with your politics.
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Yes, I do: because it confirms the things you already believed
And do you? Do you read all those books from Anne Applebaum and similar right wing pundits? Do you read all the reports from far right think tanks like Australian Strategic Policy Institute? Do you read claims of not just the publications, but the save individual people, who have consistently repeated every verified lie to come out of the US state department, from WMDS in Iraq to babies in ovens in Gaza? How exactly are you “deciding for yourself” if that’s bullshit?
They really don’t. Not that it’s even possible to “leave politics aside” when talking about things that are political. Thinking they do is basically admition that you consider your politics “the default”.
You really want to commit the argument “it’s true because it agrees with the average political position of westerners?” (because by “the world at large”, you, naturally, where only talking about westerners.)
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I’m not using the conservative pedia.