Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
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Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
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Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#2I wish it banned Vice.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#3For all their flaws, Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. Everybody has something they hate about Wikipedia, but the general gist is that they're more or less credible. Alternative encyclopedic efforts are totally fringe and/or money-making scams like Everipedia.
With this in mind, perhaps social media companies should piggyback on Wikipedia's reputation and flag articles from sources like InfoWars and Breitbart with a banner that reads: "Wikipedia doesn't accept this site as a valid source."
That would let Facebook and Twitter off the hook from having to make these calls themselves, and would provide readers with valuable context.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#4A web site banned as a source for facts from schools the world over now bans a web site as a a source of its banned facts.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#5For all their flaws, Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. Everybody has something they hate about Wikipedia, but the general gist is that they're more or less credible. Alternative encyclopedic efforts are totally fringe and/or money-making scams like Everipedia. With this in mind, perhaps social media companies should piggyback on Wikipedia's reputat…
that doesn't solve the problem it just offloads it.
wikipedia could collapse under the weight of being the internets authority of epistemology.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#6For all their flaws, Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. Everybody has something they hate about Wikipedia, but the general gist is that they're more or less credible. Alternative encyclopedic efforts are totally fringe and/or money-making scams like Everipedia. With this in mind, perhaps social media companies should piggyback on Wikipedia's reputat…
That depends a lot on the topic. I've seen articles on Wikipedia that were ridiculously wrong and couldn't be corrected for some byzantine reasons. For the longest time Wikipedia claimed Bitcoin was a pyramid scheme, despite it failing to meet the criteria on Wikipedia's own page on pyramid schemes.
I certainly wouldn't accept Wikipedia as correct on any topic that gets caught up in the culture wars. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is by its nature very easy to manipulate for small very intense groups who believe they're on a holy mission to cleanse the internet of "bad people".
This change being a case in point. I read all kinds of news sources, from the Washington Post to CNN to the Daily Mail to Breitbart. I wouldn't say Breitbart is wildly different in accuracy to any of the rest, not because it's great, but because so many other outlets (like the NY Times, BBC and CNN) routinely publish things that are false as well. CNN is practically a byword at this point for biased misleading nonsense, they publish stories that collapse all the time. Yet Wikipedia isn't banning CNN, only conservative outlets like the Daily Mail and Breitbart. Isn't that strange?
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#7For all their flaws, Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. Everybody has something they hate about Wikipedia, but the general gist is that they're more or less credible. Alternative encyclopedic efforts are totally fringe and/or money-making scams like Everipedia. With this in mind, perhaps social media companies should piggyback on Wikipedia's reputat…
As is sometimes said in management theory "it was a great measure until it was made a target".
Wikipedia is a good reference for what is and isn't likely to be factually accurate, but if it is going to be _the_ standard then it will quickly be corrupted by people pushing a non-factual agenda.
Also, Breitbart being loose with the facts isn't something that the social media platforms want to get involved in. If we count twitter as a publishing platform similar to Breitbart, twitter will spread much more misinformation (arguably in a more damaging way, flash mobs are scarier than anything a print media style organisation can do). You may as well prefix every single tweet with "Wikipedia doesn't accept this tweet as a valid source".
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#8A web site banned as a source for facts from schools the world over now bans a web site as a a source of its banned facts.
I get the joke, but it is worth clarifying that schools don’t ban it because it’s unreliable, but because it’s a secondary source. It’s done to teach sourcing discipline.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#9Wikipedia = The Ministry of Truth
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#10A web site banned as a source for facts from schools the world over now bans a web site as a a source of its banned facts.
I get the joke, but it is worth clarifying that schools don’t ban it because it’s unreliable, but because it’s a secondary source. It’s done to teach sourcing discipline.
Unfortunately, most teachers don't understand this, and they tell the kids that Wikipedia is normally wrong about everything.
At least, that was my experience.