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School vs. Wikipedia

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Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#351

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

gpm wrote: post #345
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this domain excluded in Google Scholar searches.

That one in particular? No clue. I'm not sure what google scholar's criteria are. I know things on utoronto.ca turn up sometimes for a example that does (UofTs non-edu domain name, which is used for most things. Though toronto.edu is also owned by the university and used for some things).

TLD alone would certainly not be enough of a filter. Scholar has to account for scientific publishers that use TLDs like .com and .org and other non-school websites that use ccTLDs.

But Scholar proves it is possible to usefully filter for peer-reviewed papers.

Filtering is never "perfect". The question is whether it is good enough to be useful.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#352

Post by idontpost »

codetrotter wrote: post #331
m463 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe traditional encyclopedia might give wikipedia a run for the money on subjects, say toilet paper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper But wikipedia is far ahead on more practical articles like which way the toilet paper goes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation

Something I recently became aware of is that in some cases toilet paper orientation preference may be due to left handedness vs right handedness. I am right handed and prefer to have the paper oriented over itself. A member of my family is left handed and prefers to have the paper under itself. She once said that for her, with left handedness, having the paper under itself makes it easier to grab.

No post body was provided.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#353

Post by mhb »

codetrotter wrote: post #331
m463 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe traditional encyclopedia might give wikipedia a run for the money on subjects, say toilet paper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper But wikipedia is far ahead on more practical articles like which way the toilet paper goes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation

Something I recently became aware of is that in some cases toilet paper orientation preference may be due to left handedness vs right handedness. I am right handed and prefer to have the paper oriented over itself. A member of my family is left handed and prefers to have the paper under itself. She once said that for her, with left handedness, having the paper under itself makes it easier to grab.

Wouldn't this completely depend on which side the toilet paper holder is mounted?

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#354

Post by tracerbulletx »

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…

What is an example of an article you think is misleading or wrong?

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#355

Post by pitchups »

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…

Not sure what your particular area of expertise is but every time I have browsed Wikipedia for articles related to technical topics including math, programming, AI/ML as well as science, I have found their articles accurate and informative. I also recall a few studies comparing the accuracy of articles on Wikipedia with Encyclopedia Brittanica and journals, which conclude that Wikipedia compares favorably with both (easily found via a google search).

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#356

Post by jholman »

hindsightbias wrote: post #308
throwaway09223 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time you read through a copy of Encyclopedia Britannica? Have you done an apples to apples comparison? No encyclopedia is perfect, but as far as I can tell the "standard" encyclopedias are a lot worse. My grandparents had bought a copy of Britannica decades ago and they had something like 50 years of its yearbooks. I would cite it sometimes and no one at school batted an eye. I remember reading thro…

Wiki is transparent in a self-referential sense only. History started in 1992. If there’s no hyperlink, it’s lost. Pick any wiki page and see all the dead, rotting citations. I’d bet any mining of actually working citations would average closer to 2015. It used to be people citing something from the 70’s or 80’s would get strange looks from people who lived then, now I see Millenials looking at Gen-Z kids that way. H…

Pedantry alert, but it drives me crazy:

"Wiki" is a type of software, like "editor" or "web browser". It is not the name of wikipedia.

Yes yes, language evolves, but this is like someone deleting the Internet Explorer link from their Windows desktop and saying "I deleted the internet from this computer, I don't have the internet any more".

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#357

Post by fwipsy »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #191
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…

When was the last time you read through a copy of Encyclopedia Britannica? Have you done an apples to apples comparison? No encyclopedia is perfect, but as far as I can tell the "standard" encyclopedias are a lot worse. My grandparents had bought a copy of Britannica decades ago and they had something like 50 years of its yearbooks. I would cite it sometimes and no one at school batted an eye. I remember reading thro…

I'm not convinced either of you have read enough of either encyclopedia to have anything like a representative sample.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#358

Post by wpietri »

nkingsy wrote: post #299
wpietri wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not evidence, that's a series of disconnected vague complaints from a publisher who is salty that they're not considered a reliable source. They complain about conflicts of interest, but I didn't see them even acknowledging their own. I also couldn't find any financial transparency, so it's not clear to me who is funding this or their other writing. And I'll point out for the last time that you still haven't a…

I thought the article answered your question pretty well and they clearly state on their about page that they are not backed by any government and rely on donations. The entire internet points to wikipedia and its consensus mechanism is inherently vulnerable to editors for hire, as clearly demonstrated with scores of links. So my answer is "pick any publication from 1980 and it is better because its bias can be audit…

They claim they are not backed by any governments, but decline to say who is backing them. Just as an example I came across yesterday, the San Francisco Standard is "not backed by any government and rely on donations", but their funding comes from a billionaire venture capitalist. The same claim could be truthfully made by a site backed by a Russian oligarch just as well. And regardless, there's no evidence.

I agree that Wikipedia's mechanism has its challenges; anybody who knows the site does. But it's vastly better than "any publication from 1980" because every edit is tracked, the citations should be available for all to see, and people can object to and/or edit bad content.

Just as an example of how a book from the olden tymes could go wrong, consider Trump's "The Art of the Deal". It sold more than a million copies, but its ghostwriter took 20 years to admit that it was a lot of horseshit: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-...

Wikipedia is way more auditable than that book or most books from that era. And way more auditable than The Gray Zone that you've chosen to cite.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#359

Post by raydiatian »

What is most interesting about this article is that this doctrine seems not to have changed for 20 years. I was told the exact same thing back in the early 00's: "Wikipedia is the devil".

It's a well known fact to anybody that has passed through them that public schools are a fucking joke. It's not the teachers fault, it's the budget's fault.

Another point with regard to this article is that the notion of single-source citation is absolutely stupid. At CERN, do you think scientists see a single event that confirms the existence of the Higgs boson, and then declare victory? Absolutely not. So why would you rely on one article saying that "X" is true. Use Wikipedia, and Google, and synthesize an averaged perspective, or at least a perspective that takes into account incongruencies between sources if nothing less. The irony then of me assuming that public schools are still peddling "Wikipedia=bad" based on a single article is not lost on me.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#360

Post by EGreg »

concordDance wrote: post #312
EGreg wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

> Wikipedia is far more trustworthy than local news channels even about recent events, and everything is sources (casualty count: who said it etc.) That's more due to the very low quality of news.

What is CONSISTENTLY higher quality that wikipedia?
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