School vs. Wikipedia • Hacker News Board

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#111

Post by encylopinion » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

aimor wrote: post #89

Every now and then I like to read through Wikipedia pages for things I know more than the average person on. It keeps me skeptical of the things I read on there. For people unfamiliar with a subject (students) I think Wikipedia pages are misleading, poorly organized, and sometimes wrong. That doesn't make Wikipedia useless, but the author's best advice is to use Wikipedia as a map to other sources of information. I d…

I stopped using Wikipedia a while ago.

Its math and science content is too nonsensical to be useful.

I occasionally read a history article, maybe once every 6 months. But history from things happening hundreds to thousands of years ago, predating modern media... sorry historians, it might as well be fiction.

I'm sure someone has thought long and hard about why the content is losing quality.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#112

Post by bombcar » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:09 PM UTC

mananaysiempre wrote: post #98

wobbly_bush wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all content there is good. I see the pages on some political content, or in general a lot of content about country X (intentionally omitted) are of pretty poor quality.

... And at the same time, the English-language mathematics section is a fairly reliable and—in some cases—very broad reference, covering a range of viewpoints that would usually require trawling through half a dozen books for different subjects and target audiences. (It is rarely a good introduction , but then a single reference for a skilled reader is doable while a single introduction for every taste, background, a…

For factual areas that don't change much Wikipedia can be exceptionally good. You're not likely to have a drawn-out edit war over a mathematical topic (I'm sure there are examples, but the final admin decision is likely to be "show both sides".

Same with the census detail pages you find everywhere; they're probably accurate for that point in time, because nobody really cares.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#113

Post by EGreg » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:09 PM UTC

aimor wrote: post #89

Every now and then I like to read through Wikipedia pages for things I know more than the average person on. It keeps me skeptical of the things I read on there. For people unfamiliar with a subject (students) I think Wikipedia pages are misleading, poorly organized, and sometimes wrong. That doesn't make Wikipedia useless, but the author's best advice is to use Wikipedia as a map to other sources of information. I d…

I have found the opposite… there is hardly a consistsntly more organized and accurate source that is accessible to the public, but I would be glad to hear what it is if you have one in mind.

Wikipedia is far more trustworthy than local news channels even about recent events, and everything is sources (casualty count: who said it etc.)

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#114

Post by mikkergp » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:09 PM UTC

mountainb wrote: post #80

mikkergp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The teacher instead should be directing the children to print or digitized encyclopedias Any data source you encounter needs to be validated. Wikipedia is a fine source for lots of types of data, traditional encyclopedias aren’t known to be any more accurate. The reality is you have to think about the importance of the information you’re looking up, but most people shouldn’t be referring to primary sources as they…

You just linked to what is effectively a press release written by someone affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, but you presented it as if it were some sort of highfalutin study merely because it links to a handful of articles. It does not even go into any detail on what it is citing. Each cherry picked citation except for the fifth in that press release covers a relatively narrow area of knowle…

I may just be seeing the problem in a different way because our positions seem irreconcilable. fair enough to your position though.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#115

Post by Avicebron » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:09 PM UTC

mountainb wrote: post #80

mikkergp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The teacher instead should be directing the children to print or digitized encyclopedias Any data source you encounter needs to be validated. Wikipedia is a fine source for lots of types of data, traditional encyclopedias aren’t known to be any more accurate. The reality is you have to think about the importance of the information you’re looking up, but most people shouldn’t be referring to primary sources as they…

You just linked to what is effectively a press release written by someone affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, but you presented it as if it were some sort of highfalutin study merely because it links to a handful of articles. It does not even go into any detail on what it is citing. Each cherry picked citation except for the fifth in that press release covers a relatively narrow area of knowle…

What? I'd be interested to see which digitized book provided a curated list of js exploits in a .txt ready to be fed into a parser...

Google certainly can help solve problems.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#116

Post by Kim_Bruning » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:09 PM UTC

thesuitonym wrote: post #20

jacobolus wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If scholars find some claim on Wikipedia and repeat it in their published work, they should unquestionably cite Wikipedia. When scholars fail to cite Wikipedia, a few years later other Wikipedia editors come back and cite that work as evidence for the original claim, sometimes for claims that turn out to be nonsense, and people trying to figure out what happened won’t notice that the citation chain is a circle. Cf. h…

If scholars find some claim in Wikipedia, they should cite the source of the claim. If the source actually is Wikipedia, it should not be included in an academic paper. It's clear to me now that there is a divide between people who used physical encyclopedias (And thus know what an encyclopedia is for) and those who have only used Wikipedia. They don't understand that an encyclopedia is a place to get a quick overvie…

I got away with this once. I used wikipedia as the source on a table that everyone in the field knows by heart anyway. When questioned about it (I think briefly?) I said I'd personally edited the article and checked that the table was correct (which I had!) . --~~~~

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#117

Post by bombcar » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #92

aidenn0 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since 2004, Wikipedia has gotten better and random pages on the internet have gotten worse. Uncovering useful primary sources on the internet that aren't paywalled has had a steady upwards-trend of difficulty.

I chase a lot of wikipedia citations, and this is a much bigger problem than I think most people realize. A huge chunk of citations (at least around 19th century history) is paywalled or is a printed source that is impossible to find and verify. To be fair this is a problem for most academic papers and most books as well, so it's not unique to wikipedia. It does however, require a lot of "faith" to be exercised. As a…

Wikipedia also requires citations to be secondary sources, so you have to find someone reporting about whatever it was, because Wikipedia isn't for original research.

This can make it more difficult for things that nobody ever bothered reporting.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#118

Post by cycomanic » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

thesuitonym wrote: post #20

jacobolus wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If scholars find some claim on Wikipedia and repeat it in their published work, they should unquestionably cite Wikipedia. When scholars fail to cite Wikipedia, a few years later other Wikipedia editors come back and cite that work as evidence for the original claim, sometimes for claims that turn out to be nonsense, and people trying to figure out what happened won’t notice that the citation chain is a circle. Cf. h…

If scholars find some claim in Wikipedia, they should cite the source of the claim. If the source actually is Wikipedia, it should not be included in an academic paper. It's clear to me now that there is a divide between people who used physical encyclopedias (And thus know what an encyclopedia is for) and those who have only used Wikipedia. They don't understand that an encyclopedia is a place to get a quick overvie…

That is actually common for all encyclopaedias, they do generally cite secondary sources. Especially if the primary sources are not easily verifiable. Similarly they should (I haven't actually checked if they do) cite a translation of an ancient Greek text, not the original Greek text.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#119

Post by bombcar » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #95

jimmar wrote: post #70

Some teachers like to play god in the classroom. Source: I'm a teacher. I try not to play god and impose non-sensical rules, but I could if I wanted to and nobody could do anything about it. Parents could complain, my department head could try to talk sense into me, but if I impose a rule saying that citations must be written in Comic Sans size 11 font with every third word italicized, then I'm within my rights to ta…

As someone who suffered under teachers who like to play god, and thrived under teachers like you, thank you . > citations must be written in Comic Sans size 11 font with every third word italicized you would become a legend if you did this :-D

I could see it as a easy example of the "brown M&Ms" theory: https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2012/02/14/146880432/...

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#120

Post by nailer » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

This is Wikipedia's fault.

- Wikipedia know people mistakenly cite Wikipedia itself

- Wikipedia agree that people should not do this

- Wikipedia had the opportunity to educate Wikipedia's audience not to do this.

- Wikipedia has not educated Wikipedia's audience not to cite Wikipedia itself.

What they should have done:

> We hope you find Wikipedia useful. Remember to never cite Wikipedia itself! Instead cite the websites and research papers Wikipedia cites. If information isn't cited by Wikipedia, don't use it! It can be added by anyone and can even be removed from Wikipedia at any time!

That's all they needed to do.