School vs. Wikipedia

Post by Cyberdog » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

mherdeg wrote: post #133

I'm actually really glad that schools are sending the message "don't use Wikipedia as a trusted source". Students and parents naturally being contrarians will ... use Wikipedia, or learn to read primary sources and re-cite them, which is a step towards primary source research and a step in the direction of critical media consumption. If students and teachers happen to notice that the Wikipedia consensus is close to r…

Post by IncRnd » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 7:07 PM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #232

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 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.

Post by Dylan16807 » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 7:10 PM UTC

elif wrote: post #259

tux3 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always happy to be corrected if I've misunderstood. I'm not sure what the link demonstrates, though, I opened it and I just don't see anything like you described. About poor faith, these kind of accusations happens so often, there's plenty of existing essays and material on whether you should assume people are posting in bad faith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AOBF is a good reference, it's used pretty regula…

if you are genuinely interested in your misunderstanding, i would begin by listing the following assumptions you've made: - the element in my original anecdote was carbon - the wayback machine in 2004 captured a website exactly as it appeared in 2003

Post by jarenmf » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 7:12 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…

Post by nuancebydefault » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 7:23 PM UTC

thebooktocome wrote: post #134

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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_differential_equatio... Repetitive content, written at several levels simultaneously, weird fixations on tangential topics.