Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

School vs. Wikipedia

ratfactor.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 501 posts

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#231

Post by nkingsy »

wpietri wrote: post #201
nkingsy wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It worked for a time and now it is dying at the hands of bad-faith actors who have worked within their mechanism.

That's an interesting claim. Where's your evidence? I'll also note you must have missed my question, as I don't think you have answered it.

disclaimer: Yes the grayzone hires RT reporters and has a strongly anti-us take on pretty much everything. Please don't spout "russian propagandist" takes. They've been heard plenty. This is the lack of truth I'm talking about. These are investigative journalists--a dying breed that western propagandists are attempting to make extinct.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/10/wikipedia-formally-censor...

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#232

Post by jancsika »

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…

> 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.

I wrote a dissertation on Conlon Nancarrow's Player Piano Study No. 36.

Skimming the facts in the article on Conlon Nancarrow, everything looks to be both true and relevant to Nancarrow's life and musical output. I could make a few small improvements. E.g., the proportions of tempos among the twelve voices in Study No. 37 are taken from a peculiar tuning system that apparently only appears in Cowell's New Musical Resources. Making that connection would tie in nicely to the previous section that mentions the influence of Cowell's book on Nancarrow. (I believe that connection is made in Kyle Gann's book in case anyone wants to go ahead and make that edit.)

> That doesn't make Wikipedia useless, but the author's best advice is to use Wikipedia as a map to other sources of information.

As an expert on Conlon Nancarrow's music, I approve of using the Wikipedia article about him as a useful and accurate starting point for learning about his life and music.

Until I read a citation on a current Wikipedia article in your area of expertise that has factually inaccurate information in it, I can only reserve judgment on your opinion about Wikipedia's veracity.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#233

Post by datadata »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #218
akolbe wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. That's why the world thinks an "Alan MacMasters" invented the electric toaster. That particular hoax lasted ten years and spread far and wide: https://wikipediocracy.com/2022/08/11/wikipedias-credibility... Example from the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1D0xzxYf9ykH9gcYp9... Several books have the false info too. Wikipedia is useful, but it is never a good idea to rely on Wikipedia blindly.

>Several books have the false info too Sounds like we shouldn't trust books blindly, either. Is there a source we can trust blindly?

I think pedagogical goal is exactly to prevent the act of blindly trusting any source, regardless of source quality. Trust fails without verification, so the idea of a blindly trusted source is self defeating.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#234

Post by akolbe »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #218
akolbe wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. That's why the world thinks an "Alan MacMasters" invented the electric toaster. That particular hoax lasted ten years and spread far and wide: https://wikipediocracy.com/2022/08/11/wikipedias-credibility... Example from the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1D0xzxYf9ykH9gcYp9... Several books have the false info too. Wikipedia is useful, but it is never a good idea to rely on Wikipedia blindly.

>Several books have the false info too Sounds like we shouldn't trust books blindly, either. Is there a source we can trust blindly?

Well, to be fair, the books in question aren't exactly high-brow material.

But I've even seen University Press books get tripped up by Wikipedia. See the "Coati" example on this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_...

The thing is, this would have been avoidable. If Wikipedia tells you someone called J. Bloggs invented some kind of gadget 100 years ago, you can do a Google Books search to see if there are any 20th-century sources saying so.

If there aren't, then Wikipedia is having you on. Alan MacMasters is not the only example: exactly the same thing happened with the inventor of the hair-straightener. See Example 16 here:

https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday...

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#235

Post by GTP »

xg15 wrote: post #195
hutzlibu wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

My personal annoyance with Wikipedia articles on advanced math is that often it's "monoid in the category of endofunctors" on steroids. A lot of those articles seem to follow a pattern of: "An A is a B that also does C". If you click on the link to understand what a B is, you get "B is a D in the space of Es with properties F and G". and so on... I can understand that this appears logically consistent and very satisf…

But I think that this is a core difference between an encyclopaedia and a textbook. If you need the topics presented in an order that takes you from a certain level of understanding to the next, you need a textbook.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#236

Post by verisimilitudes »

scifibestfi wrote: post #11
chatterhead wrote: post #2

You should be fighting this at the school. Wikipedia should not be used as a source for academic purposes; the sources being referenced on Wikipedia very well could be though and as such Wikipedia is an incredibly useful tool for surface level research and schools should absolutely be taking this approach to using it. They should not, under any circumstance, have children "Googling" the answer to questions. Most of t…

> 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.

> Don't you Google answers to questions?

No. I don't use it at all.

> It's what they will be doing most of their life.

Everyday I hate this website and the people on it more.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#237

Post by skybrian »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #68
tablespoon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If scholars find something on Wikipedia and put it in their papers, they should absolutely cite Wikipedia. Yeah, but scholars shouldn't be putting things from Wikipedia in their paper at all (except, perhaps, in the very narrow case were Wikipedia is the object of their study). Wikipedia isn't even a valid source for Wikipedia itself , and "scholars" citing Wikipedia could very well create a circular reference supp…

> 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…

That's a good rule.

Anything you write in a Wikipedia article is written in "anonymous worker bee" mode. It doesn't count as written by you, even if you wrote it. Any editor could change what you wrote. This defeats the whole point of first-person testimony, where who said it matters.

If you want to tell the story of something that happened at Amazon, you should write an article on your own website and publish it under your own name. Then anyone can cite it (including Wikipedia) as written by you, and it can't be changed or removed without your consent.

(Some might not think a personal blog is a good enough citation, but that's their problem.)

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#238

Post by akolbe »

nailer wrote: post #120

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 webs…

To be fair, they did and do. Every page contains a link at the bottom to a "Disclaimer", the first two paragraphs of which read as follows:

"Wikipedia is an online open-content collaborative encyclopedia; that is, a voluntary association of individuals and groups working to develop a common resource of human knowledge. The structure of the project allows anyone with an Internet connection to alter its content. Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information.

"That is not to say that you will not find valuable and accurate information in Wikipedia; much of the time you will. However, Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here. The content of any given article may recently have been changed, vandalized, or altered by someone whose opinion does not correspond with the state of knowledge in the relevant fields. Note that most other encyclopedias and reference works also have disclaimers."

Moreover, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_r...

It's just that people don't take any notice.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#239

Post by verisimilitudes »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #230
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…

Wikipedia is often okay for science articles. I find many of the mathematics articles to be difficult to read. I'll look at a mathematics concept that I think I understand (or even use often), and it will be written in jargon that is completely incomprehensible to me. However, where Wikipedia really has a problem is in contemporary politics. Anything that is even remotely political is probably controlled by one or an…

> Wikipedia is often okay for science articles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman (4th paragraph)

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#240

Post by yucky »

localhost wrote: post #30
chatterhead wrote: post #2

You should be fighting this at the school. Wikipedia should not be used as a source for academic purposes; the sources being referenced on Wikipedia very well could be though and as such Wikipedia is an incredibly useful tool for surface level research and schools should absolutely be taking this approach to using it. They should not, under any circumstance, have children "Googling" the answer to questions. Most of t…

Was wondering about the money thing and found this on ... Wikipedia :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation Seems like >$235MM in net assets excluding the $100MM in the Wikimedia endowment and growing at a healthy rate YoY.

Yeah the Tides Foundation manages their funding, probably the most politically biased foundation in the US.
Post reply on HN