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School vs. Wikipedia

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Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#481

Post by end_of_line »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #477
end_of_line wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: Qua…

And this is cherry picking. As studies show the quality varies strongly for historical, politically controversial and highly scientifical topics ( only few wikipedia editors ). Link https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3178876.3186132#BibP... So nothing "easily disproven"

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#482

Post by LtWorf »

akolbe wrote: post #480
LtWorf wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I said I'm a native italian speaker. -_-'

You want to trick me with a french word? As if an italian would be unable to tell a word in italian from one in a different language?

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#483

Post by akolbe »

LtWorf wrote: post #482
akolbe wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I said I'm a native italian speaker. -_-' You want to trick me with a french word? As if an italian would be unable to tell a word in italian from one in a different language?

Turandot is an opera by Puccini; the word is of Persian origin, and the Wikipedia article I linked extensively discusses how Puccini intended for the title to be pronounced in Italian.

Cf. https://medicine-opera.com/2008/12/turandot-without-the-t/

But never mind.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#484

Post by throwaway09223 »

end_of_line wrote: post #481
throwaway09223 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: Qua…

And this is cherry picking. As studies show the quality varies strongly for historical, politically controversial and highly scientifical topics ( only few wikipedia editors ). Link https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3178876.3186132#BibP... So nothing "easily disproven"

No, it's a counter-example which unequivocally disproves your inaccurate generalization.

Cherry picking can only occur if I'm generalizing, and I am not. Counter-examples aren't cherry-picking.

Your statement "At best you can get some people's opinion about something" has been disproven.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#485

Post by thesuitonym »

youainti wrote: post #44
thesuitonym wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If scholars find some claim in Wikipedia, they should cite the source of the claim. If the source actually is Wikipedia, it should not be included in an academic paper. It's clear to me now that there is a divide between people who used physical encyclopedias (And thus know what an encyclopedia is for) and those who have only used Wikipedia. They don't understand that an encyclopedia is a place to get a quick overvie…

Except encyclopedias don't have _actual sources_. They are based on source but don't include references as far as I remember.

I was going to tell you that you're wrong, but in looking it up I found far more examples of encyclopedias without sources than with, so maybe that was more common.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#486

Post by GCA10 »

jumelles wrote: post #379
GCA10 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This is tricky, because some editors on Wikipedia would interpret that as "original research" and remove it. The rule of thumb is that the citation needs to contain the information added, not just allude to it.

Exactly so. It's a rule meant to prevent one type of problem (people injecting unvetted nonsense or personal vanity/grudges into articles) that ends up creating a different and rather over-arching problem. On the longer articles, Wikipedia becomes an almanac of disjointed facts, not an encyclopedia of coherent knowledge.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#487

Post by GCA10 »

random314 wrote: post #465
NavinF wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say they're inaccurate; Just unfocused. Can't think of an example off the top of my head, but it's super weird seeing a whole paragraph about something that's only relevant to historians followed by 1 sentence about something that revolutionized the field a few years ago and is now widely deployed in production.

It is really frustrating that there are dozens of complaints about inaccuracies and awfulness of articles in wikipedia with none of the complainers able to provide a single example, there are 100s of comments with zero example articles at all. I work in ML and have found wikipedia to be a very important reference when I do any research. Which is what an encyclopedia is supposed to be.

Fair question -- here are a few examples:

On Wikipedia's entry for Facebook, there's no discussion in the 2006-12 section about Facebook's steps to monetize the site around targeted ads. That has had gigantic global impact and was the impetus for Meta/Facebook's emergence as one of the world's most profitable companies. But Facebook never "announced" that it was doing this. So the entry is clogged with a string of quite minor "announcements" that it did make -- touching on short-lived headquarters moves, feature tweaks, obscure awards, etc. instead.

Wikipedia's entry on Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins is an achingly long list of votes she's taken over the years, or one-line quotes about her positions at various moments in time, without any effort to write coherently about what's been consistent or evolving in her political views. Also absent is any nuanced sense of how Collins's journey interacted with changing political tides. We end up with a 20,000-word string of factoids that goes on forever, with scant insight about her enduring impact, core principles, etc.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#488

Post by random314 »

GCA10 wrote: post #487
random314 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really frustrating that there are dozens of complaints about inaccuracies and awfulness of articles in wikipedia with none of the complainers able to provide a single example, there are 100s of comments with zero example articles at all. I work in ML and have found wikipedia to be a very important reference when I do any research. Which is what an encyclopedia is supposed to be.

Fair question -- here are a few examples: On Wikipedia's entry for Facebook, there's no discussion in the 2006-12 section about Facebook's steps to monetize the site around targeted ads. That has had gigantic global impact and was the impetus for Meta/Facebook's emergence as one of the world's most profitable companies. But Facebook never "announced" that it was doing this. So the entry is clogged with a string of qu…

I am unfamiliar with Collins. However, looking at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Collins

There is a whole section and separate article on her political positions.

As an encyclopedic reference it looks like a pretty good reference. Obviously a strong narrative like a new Yorker profile can't be expected of an encyclopedia.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#489

Post by GCA10 »

random314 wrote: post #488
GCA10 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair question -- here are a few examples: On Wikipedia's entry for Facebook, there's no discussion in the 2006-12 section about Facebook's steps to monetize the site around targeted ads. That has had gigantic global impact and was the impetus for Meta/Facebook's emergence as one of the world's most profitable companies. But Facebook never "announced" that it was doing this. So the entry is clogged with a string of qu…

I am unfamiliar with Collins. However, looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Collins There is a whole section and separate article on her political positions. As an encyclopedic reference it looks like a pretty good reference. Obviously a strong narrative like a new Yorker profile can't be expected of an encyclopedia.

Actually, back in the day, that's exactly what the top encyclopedias aspired to do. It's worth looking up who wrote the main entries in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Future Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford did the entry on radioactivity. British medical researcher Joseph Lister (the inspiration for Listerine), wrote the entry on slime molds. Environmentalist John Muir weighed in.

And, in my absolute favorite, Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin wrote the article about anarchy.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#490

Post by Kim_Bruning »

chris_wot wrote: post #478
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm sad to hear that. I wish you all the best!
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