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School vs. Wikipedia

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Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#121

This parent is wrong, and the teacher is also wrong. There is no reason for children to use a source like Wikipedia for anything. Children also should not be permitted to use services like Google, which is bad for similar reasons, amply recited by the link author. Schools usually have access to excellent library databases. It's never too early to teach children useful research skills. Wikipedia is anti-useful. Search…

Whatever the topic, there is a significant benefit from first browsing some high level Wikipedia articles to get the lay of the land. I don't think you are thinking much about the learning process and how our brains work. You're jumping to step 5 because you seem to have an ax to grind. Steps 1-4 are "what the fuck is going on and why should I care" and Wikipedia is great for setting us up to learn more (and to want to learn more, and to know what there is to learn!).

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They should not, under any circumstance, have children "Googling" the answer to questions. Why not? Don't you Google answers to questions? It's what they will be doing most of their life.

Yes, and depending on topic, I discard 10% to 90% of the results out of hand.

This is par for the course. When doing a library course in university, I learned that you typically end up discarding up to 99% of sources. (very rough rule of thumb: you get say something like 1000 hits, review the top 100 titles, read the top 10 abstracts, and select the remaining article(s) as a source. Wash rinse repeat)

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#123
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.

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

Can you name a example?

I found them to be generally of higher quality than controversial topics. So maybe not always with the best didactic approach, but usually a good start. And then I follow the links, if I want to dive in deep.

Wikipedia is useful for me, for quickly checking something. Not scientifically dive into a deep topic.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#124
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.

The problem with math and science content is that there are many possible audiences with many possible backgrounds, and such content tends to require substantial prerequisite knowledge. So when you have a source edited by anyone, you end up with a hodgepodge of different material aimed at different audiences with different expectations of background. It takes a lot of effort and expertise to rewrite this mishmash into a clear and coherent narrative.

This is a much harder problem for an encyclopedia than for a textbook chapter or a journal paper, because each article is supposed to (somewhat) stand alone and be both broadly accessible and somewhat comprehensive. For a textbook chapter you can systematically build up prerequisite knowledge from earlier chapters and you can assume that students will spend significant time and effort working problems and will have some expert guidance and support if they get stuck. For a journal article you can assume readers have deep subject-matter expertise, e.g. have a PhD in the field. In both of those cases you can leave out most information about the topic as clearly out of scope.

Traditional encyclopedias typically punt by just not including much technical detail at all. (Some Wikipedia articles also do this.)

* * *

As a basic example, let’s think about what might be included in an article about “circle”. You can look at this from a kindergartener’s point of view, or a high school geometry student’s, or an ancient astronomer’s, or a physicist’s, or a signal processing engineer’s, or a 19th century projective geometer’s, or a complex analyst’s, or a group theorist’s, or an algebraic geometer’s, or a topologist’s, or a number theorist’s, or an ergodic theorist’s, etc. Some of these audiences are easy enough to satisfy, but to provide deep comprehensive coverage of the way a fundamental concept like the circle is related to every mathematical field is going to take careers worth of background. Which parts to attempt, which parts to skip, and how to organize them is a very challenging set of editorial choices.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wikipedia is an excellent source about many topics, and a mediocre source about many other topics. Wikipedia is a moving target, so it could be a terrible source on a topic for the hour you're looking at it , and much better at other times. Trouble is, those other times don't do you any good. That inconsistency means it can't ever really be an "excellent" source.

Yes and books are moving targets as well, we have figured out ways to deal with that, cite the edition. Similar should most definitely cite the access date when you cite wikipedia.

Yep, if you cite Wikipedia (and you should if you're using it as a source) you can use the fixed URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Y_Combinator&oldi...

Then anyone following can see what you saw.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wikipedia isn't even a valid source for Wikipedia itself, First-hand direct presence isn't even a valid source for Wikipedia. Part of my account of the founding of amazon.com was removed because it wasn't "backed up by published citable sources". I pointed out that I would be the primary source cited by any such source, and was told that wasn't good enough: the contents had to be published somewhere else and then c…

Originally it was permitted, but too many people abused this and wasted a lot of volunteer time. :-( Now you need to get cited by someone else before wikipedia will accept it. (and preferably someone else needs to be cited too of course)

It's outsourcing verification, and it mostly works, but "small tidbits" like you find in Hacker News comments now and then will likely never make it.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#128
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.

"But history from things happening hundreds to thousands of years ago, predating modern media... sorry historians, it might as well be fiction."

What? I'm confused on what you're saying here. Are you stating there are no primary sources on history from more than a few hundred years ago? All history is made up? I'm sure there are poor quality historical articles, but I wouldn't go so far to call all history "fiction".

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#129
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…

> citations must be written in Comic Sans size 11 font with every third word italicized

TBH, after having to follow MLA style guides and various other citation styles over my career, I feel like this isn't as out there as you intended! I hated having to put together citations because the rules always seemed entirely arbitrary and never seemed to capture what I thought was relevant info.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#130
post #84

School rarely helps with learning and almost always harms learning. If you're still sending your kids to school, be mindful that you're doing that for reasons other than to help them learn.

That is a bold claim. In my experience school gave me exposure to subjects I would not have thought or been interested to explore on my own, and put structure around dedicated learning time.

I have kids. I send them to school. They are learning!

You might have a leg to stand on if your argument weren't so incredibly absolutist. I could certainly concede that American schools may be a less than optimal way to learn with some outmoded practices. There are certainly variances in educational quality.

But school rarely helps with learning? School almost always harms learning? I reject those claims as false on their face.

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