151–160 of 391 posts
Nothing beats its rabbit hole and its barebone-but-focused interface. It does not replace any in-depth source of any topic you want to learn, of course.
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That's one version. Another version, that I know will go over very well here, is that some have invested a lot of money to bring high quality, accessibly-written off-line content by experts in the field to the Web, only for Wikipedia editors to poorly rewrite it in thousands of articles and rank over the original content in Google. And then Wikipedia started using non-follow links so the original sites got no benefit…
I don't like Wikimedia nor the Wikipedias, but I don't get your point and I think you're incorrect (unless you're talking about Wikipedia's early days). The way Wikipedia should work is by sourcing verifiable facts from reputable sources, and copyright violations are not allowed. I don't understand to what are you referring with "high quality, accessibly-written off-line content"? Britannica isn't high-quality and jo…
Plenty of subtle agenda-pushing on Wikipedia if you're paying attention
I've been funding Wikipedia for years and use it several times daily. It has indeed grown into an amazing source of knowledge documenting this world. However there are insidious problems building up. For example, I've noticed that they are starting to encode a lot of biases into its articles, particularly on topics that are part of the political sphere. These articles often reflect a US progressive-left worldview rat…
Saying that (en.)wikipedia has a US progressive-left worldview is subtly misleading. Specifically en.wikipedia.org has a western (US/UK sphere of influence) worldview. This is because en.wikipedia is/can be edited by everyone who speaks English: not just the USA, not just regular English speaking countries, but also all those countries that teach children English as a second language, (and a not insignificant smatter…
I'm not sure that this is the case. Maybe with respect to English-speaking countries, the U.S. leans more capitalistic which some people would call "right". But U.S. society/worldview is nonetheless far more liberal, socially progressive and open to diverse views than most countries around the world.
Its reputation is severely declining, especially on topics relating to current events, figures, or politics. It, however, remains excellent for technical knowledge.
This. Wikipedia severely locks out content creators to provide balanced views on politics. It’s no secret the current content creators lean towards one side of the isle.
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This might not be quite the examples you're looking for, but here's a study of Wikipedia's leftward bias from Harvard: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/41946110/greenst...
Are you sure? That article talks about how unbiased Wikipedia is: >Our study finds that crowd-based knowledge production does not result in articles with more biased than articles produced by experts when the crowd-based articles are substantially revised.
You literally just had to keep reading to find the cases where they do show bias
2017 - 'Researchers found that 77 percent of Wikipedia articles are written by 1 percent of Wikipedia editors, and they think this is probably for the best.' https://www.vice.com/en/article/7x47bb/wikipedia-editors-eli...
There's a strong long-tail effect. Here's a 2015 essay that sets out to debunk the above 2017 source. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia
Its reputation is severely declining, especially on topics relating to current events, figures, or politics. It, however, remains excellent for technical knowledge.
This. Wikipedia severely locks out content creators to provide balanced views on politics. It’s no secret the current content creators lean towards one side of the isle.
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That's not my point. My point is that to understand a fairly rudimentary topic using only Wikipedia you already have to understand post-grad mathemarics concepts because the derivation and terminology is needlessly contrived because the editors are usually post-grads writing as though the article is for other post-grads. There are countless examples but I'm on my phone at the moment.
Hmm. Maybe these post-grads are on their phone too writing about very complicated mathematics that to a post-grad might seem rudimentary. The beauty is that nothing prevents YOU from adding clarity to these "needlessly contrived" concepts... so what's stopping folks like you from contributing?
I think post-docs are probably better suited for accurate explanations but at the same time they are (at least, fairly often) not as good at explaining a concept using a simpler framework.
The other problem is that because different editors write maths articles, related concepts can use fairly different terminology or concepts with similar derivations use different derivations leading to possible confusion about how concepts are related.
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Saying that (en.)wikipedia has a US progressive-left worldview is subtly misleading. Specifically en.wikipedia.org has a western (US/UK sphere of influence) worldview. This is because en.wikipedia is/can be edited by everyone who speaks English: not just the USA, not just regular English speaking countries, but also all those countries that teach children English as a second language, (and a not insignificant smatter…
> When you compare countries around the world, The United States of America is said to lean rather right of center. I'm not sure that this is the case. Maybe with respect to English-speaking countries, the U.S. leans more capitalistic which some people would call "right". But U.S. society/worldview is nonetheless far more liberal, socially progressive and open to diverse views than most countries around the world.