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CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

abc.net.au

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Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#141

Post by schnable »

kergonath wrote: post #78
ekianjo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunate. So many essays that I wrote in school cited The World Facebook as a source. A source of propaganda? There's nothing the CIA does without political motivation.

> There's nothing the CIA does without political motivation. Even then, political motivation in itself does not make it inaccurate. It’s easy to see why a liberal democracy supposed to defend liberty across the globe would be interested in making facts accessible. Facts and education are the best way to fight obscurantism and totalitarianism. It’s also easy to see why a regime sliding back towards autocracy would hav…

there used to be a higher alignment in the US between political motivations and morality.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#142

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

butlike wrote: post #121
khat wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CIA was formed in 1947 and the first known controversy was in 1953. And has a whole list of controversies since then. From giving citizens LSD, wiretapping citizens, to supporting Central American cocaine distribution. And this is where you draw the line on trustworthiness? Lol

CIA-distributed LSD would be a weird trip

I would love to get some of that.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#143

Post by O1111OOO »

hexagonsuns wrote: post #124
PLenz wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing at all wrong with Wikipedia but it needs sources to cite since it doesn't allow original research and the World Factbook is an important one.

>There's nothing at all wrong with Wikipedia Well, except for the very obvious political bias https://manhattan.institute/article/new-study-finds-politica...

When it comes to politics and studies... We all should know by now to research those sources too, right?

"The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit[5] conservative think tank."

It is a report generated by this conservative organization (that presumably gets donations from many other conservatives). Is there a chance that the report itself is suspect?

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#144

Post by cataphract »

hexagonsuns wrote: post #124
PLenz wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing at all wrong with Wikipedia but it needs sources to cite since it doesn't allow original research and the World Factbook is an important one.

>There's nothing at all wrong with Wikipedia Well, except for the very obvious political bias https://manhattan.institute/article/new-study-finds-politica...

"Bias" here is just sentiment analysis. The report (from a conservative think-tank) is not about factual errors. Plus, the effect they find shows only for US politics, where there is really not much of a "left".

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#145

Post by pseudalopex »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #125
regenschutz wrote: post #26

Unfortunate. So many essays that I wrote in school cited The World Facebook as a source. I'm worried that the death of these easily accessible sources will push more and more pupils into relying on Wikipedia or even worse: AI. Being critical of what you see online and finding facts yourself is crucial to digital literacy.

Isnt it already in AI as the prior version were publicly and should be in training corpus?

The World Factbook was updated weekly. This was because facts changed.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#146

Post by xphos »

detourdog wrote: post #132
xphos wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you add context on what Gopher is for the unknowning? I searched for it but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) is the only seemingly relavent thing I found not sure if thats exactly what your refering too?

It predated the World Wide Web as a client for browsing. It was developed at the University of Minnesota and named for the School's mascot. The client was not graphical. I felt like it was like swinging from vine to vine with each vine being a gopher site. Once one was on a site one could drill down a directory structure of published data. One would access an initial site by typing in it's IP address or domain name.…

Gosh that actually sounds a amazing I am always annoyed that I have to leave terminal so much to explore I can understand the common person being daunted by that but a terminal accessible browser client sounds lovely for a lot of use cases

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#147

Post by tyre »

hexagonsuns wrote: post #124
PLenz wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing at all wrong with Wikipedia but it needs sources to cite since it doesn't allow original research and the World Factbook is an important one.

>There's nothing at all wrong with Wikipedia Well, except for the very obvious political bias https://manhattan.institute/article/new-study-finds-politica...

Looking at the underlying study, this isn’t evidence of bias. It’s evidence of correlation between Republicans and negative sentiment.

If you look at the sentiment for public figures given, the bottom one is, for example, Brett Kavanaugh. Well, he was credibly accused of sexual assault during his confirmation hearings, which was a huge deal at the time. Someone with that on their record will probably be read as negative, but, I mean, not the editors’ fault!

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#148

Post by tokai »

notRobot wrote: post #27
Antibabelic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think the information on Wikipedia comes from? Not that Wikipedia strongly relies on The World Factbook, but it can't exist without other secondary sources like these.

Wikipedia is actually the secondary source when someone reads a page on it, and it requires primary sources (like factbooks) to cite to exist.

Encyclopedias are by definition tertiary sources.

Re: CIA to Sunset the World Factbook

#149

Post by serf »

kshahkshah wrote: post #17
riazrizvi wrote: post #10

An outdated service that belongs to the era of encyclopedia. Wikipedia moved us past it. ChatGPT has moved us so far past it, it's become a relic.

ChatGPT and Wikipedia are not primary sources of information.

a primary source is not inherently the accurate one, and collab tools like wikipedia allow for more sources -- this makes the difference.

yeah it's game-able, and a bad actor can ruin work, but we're comparing it to a literal singular gospel source of information from a three letter agency.

p.s. I noticed I used an em dash, appropriately or not. i'm leaving it in. I like it. maybe im turning bot. changing the way I speak/type to avoid being taken that way irks me to hell.

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