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School vs. Wikipedia

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471–480 of 501 posts

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#471
post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

with history begins 1992 they are referencing books, content which is not in the web. you talk about the link quality. other problem.

No, OP specifically referenced "dead, rotting citations" which is a link quality problem. In terms of book references Wikipedia simply wins, hands down. Those don't rot.

The owner of the site can remove content even from the web archive. It's far harder to remove books with isbns from national libraries.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#472
post #149
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…

Well said. It's especially frustrating to come across what I'll call "Mudslide Pages" for prominent entities. These consist of a decade or more of minor news items, piled atop one another. No effort to distill key elements of these entities' impact -- let alone the how and why of what they do. It's just endless what and when. So on top-tier companies, the pages are cluttered with details of brief moves in and out of…

What if the Wikipedia can be received in the raw and taste tested cooked? The latter captures the reflection from a subject expert aided by a panel of four judges who happen to be interested learners getting the sealegs to become experts in their own right eventually and the project is funded by a grant and prestige for the expert. There is a timeline of expert review recorded and commentary.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#473
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…

[deleted]

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, OP specifically referenced "dead, rotting citations" which is a link quality problem. In terms of book references Wikipedia simply wins, hands down. Those don't rot.

The owner of the site can remove content even from the web archive. It's far harder to remove books with isbns from national libraries.

Wikipedia has book citations, and more and better book citations than traditional encyclopedias.

It's unclear what your point is. Are you suggesting wikipedia shouldn't also have citations to content published online, simply because it might be removed?

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The owner of the site can remove content even from the web archive. It's far harder to remove books with isbns from national libraries.

Wikipedia has book citations, and more and better book citations than traditional encyclopedias. It's unclear what your point is. Are you suggesting wikipedia shouldn't also have citations to content published online, simply because it might be removed?

Most wikipedia citations are linked to some news articles (this is not too bad, still newspapers are being archived) and some random internet blog articles of some random people which show up and disappear. Source creditworthness analysis? Good joke Wikipedia says :-) At best you can get some people's opinion about something.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#476
post #469
post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember having such an argument with a friend who is vehemently opposed to Wikipedia, because not written by experts, unlike Britannica. I then opened a random page of Britannica, about an opera. And the phonetic pronunciation of the Italian name was incorrect (I'm a native Italian speaker) and it was how a brit might pronounce it. In Wikipedia I would have fixed it. In Britannica the error is probably still there…

Hmm ... there are English pronunciations of foreign words that are considered correct in English, even though they differ from the way the words are pronounced in their original language. In other words, the mispronunciations have become the standard, and the correct pronunciation is considered "wrong" in English . This might have been one of those cases.

If your theory was true, the phonetic pronunciation wouldn't have been there.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia has book citations, and more and better book citations than traditional encyclopedias. It's unclear what your point is. Are you suggesting wikipedia shouldn't also have citations to content published online, simply because it might be removed?

Most wikipedia citations are linked to some news articles (this is not too bad, still newspapers are being archived) and some random internet blog articles of some random people which show up and disappear. Source creditworthness analysis? Good joke Wikipedia says :-) At best you can get some people's opinion about something.

That's a very silly take and is easily disproven. For example, pick any science topic at random. Let's look at Quantum Mechanics:

There are 81 citations. Of these, only 9 are not citing published books with an ISBN, or articles published in journals.

4 are citations to papers or articles published by physics professors on their university websites (Berkeley, Riverside, CUNY, Caltech)

Three are links to magazines: Quanta Magazine, Scientific American, Physics World

The remaining two are a link to the Nobel Foundation (regarding a nobel prize award) and a link to Merriam-Webster for a definition of "Quantum."

> At best you can get some people's opinion about something.

Nah, not even close.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but good authors are routinely removed from Wikipedia by a mob of less than great editors. Happens all the time. Happened to me. For a sample of my work, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Baker

You are -ah- not a big fish! I always thought you were a bit eccentric , but you seemed to be fairly sane otherwise, and managed to always keep yourself out of trouble. How did you manage to get yourself sitebanned of all things? %-( I mean, arbcom reviewed it too, so it's not just a mob. Did you get tempted into saying or doing something unwise? I hope you're doing ok now at least.

ArbCom took over the block, I believe they did this so they could review it at a later date if I ever wanted to ask to come back. Could be wrong about that. Unlikely this will ever happen. My mental health is not always the best.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#479
post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a completely unreasonable idea. Are you also suggesting that Google should also have a prominent disclaimer that appears before they give results that their search results may not be accurate, or might be misleading?

Why and no.

So why is Google any different to Wikipedia?

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#480
post #476
post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm ... there are English pronunciations of foreign words that are considered correct in English, even though they differ from the way the words are pronounced in their original language. In other words, the mispronunciations have become the standard, and the correct pronunciation is considered "wrong" in English . This might have been one of those cases.

If your theory was true, the phonetic pronunciation wouldn't have been there.

I'm intrigued now. :) Was it Turandot?

That's one where the pronunciation is controversial, according to Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turandot#Origin_and_pronunciat...

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