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School vs. Wikipedia

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Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#151

Post by reaperducer »

Uyuxo wrote: post #128
encylopinion wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped using Wikipedia a while ago. Its math and science content is too nonsensical to be useful. I occasionally read a history article, maybe once every 6 months. But history from things happening hundreds to thousands of years ago, predating modern media... sorry historians, it might as well be fiction. I'm sure someone has thought long and hard about why the content is losing quality.

"But history from things happening hundreds to thousands of years ago, predating modern media... sorry historians, it might as well be fiction." What? I'm confused on what you're saying here. Are you stating there are no primary sources on history from more than a few hundred years ago? All history is made up? I'm sure there are poor quality historical articles, but I wouldn't go so far to call all history "fiction".

Some people actually think this way.

I once worked with someone in an important position in a major media organization who believed nothing was recorded before the printing press, and was quite vocal about it. He quite strongly believed that everything else was made up.

I always wanted to ask him what he thought about Egyptian hieroglyphs, but he was too far above my pay grade to approach or challenge.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#152

Post by MrTortoise »

I would expect wikipedias to be more accurate than teachers.

I am a software engineer who spends his life showing people the origional sources of information to help them unpick collective repeated misunderstandings. That takes me, with more experience that my team combined to do that.

teachers have experience of teaching - not possessing knowledge or the practises of sifting, applying and validating their hypothesis aroudn the veracity of information.

Most curriculums are out of date in ways that don't matter all that much. But i still rekon wikipedia is still more up to date than them.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#153

Post by daveslash »

jimmar wrote: post #70

Some teachers like to play god in the classroom. Source: I'm a teacher. I try not to play god and impose non-sensical rules, but I could if I wanted to and nobody could do anything about it. Parents could complain, my department head could try to talk sense into me, but if I impose a rule saying that citations must be written in Comic Sans size 11 font with every third word italicized, then I'm within my rights to ta…

Re>> "if I impose a rule saying that citations must be written in Comic Sans size 11 font with every third word italicized." You would not be "playing God"; that would be the opposite. [Que Church Lady] Satan!

Snark aside, thank you for your contributions. Re >> "there are few checks against bad teachers" -- do you think there should be more checks or do you think well intentioned checks could be weaponized against good teachers?

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#154

Post by graypegg »

One of the most useful parts of a wikipedia article are the table of references on every article, glad the author mentioned that. Maybe they've dealt with some uninterested teachers, but I only remember mine telling me to not CITE wikipedia, not that it was untouchable. For any topic, you have a starter kit of references to go and check out, with a light synopsis of why it's relevant so you can filter out the junk ones, that's a pretty valuable tool on it's own!

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#155

Post by strangattractor »

Wow - these comments are wackier than anything I have ever read in Wikipedia. 1. Using XKCD as a source for academic malfeasance. 2. Thinking that encyclopedias should be/are written by a single individual. 3. Wikipedia's editorial policies result in the amplification and ossification of (political, academic, medical, etc.) establishment narratives and standards, which are often corrupt for a wide variety of reasons. 4. Wikipedia is anti-useful.

I'll add my own.

Wikipedia causes halitosis and ED.

Before Wikipedia people did not have to evaluate their sources.

Wikipedia is causing the culture wars in the US.

Kids should be looking things up in the card catalog because it teaches patience and persistence.

Wikipedia articles don't cover the topics in depth......

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#156

Post by jerf »

greiskul wrote: post #63
guywithahat wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it? Encyclopedias were not regarded as good sources before Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is demonstrably less accurate than encyclopedias and more biased towards their sponsors

Which sponsors does Wikipedia have?

"Sponsor" may not be the right word, but Wikipedia by its nature ends up privileging the most motivated. Sadly, "the most motivated" are not always the most reliable. Sometimes they are! Lots o' love to the That Guy who is obsessed with the 14th century French poetry, and writes an entry that the most detail-oriented academic could hardly hope for. But in general... it's not a good bet.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#157

Post by wpietri »

nkingsy wrote: post #145
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…

We are all watching user-generated content destroy the very concept of truth, and Wikipedia is example A1. There is no solution. Perhaps truth was always an illusion, but the illusion has been destroyed and it is unravelling society. A consensus of reputation used to govern these things, but now reputation means almost nothing and there are no mechanisms for consensus on the web. Attempts at consensus are all based i…

I don't see any particular reason to think that Wikipedia is worse than what existed prior. What exemplar from, say, 1980, do you think was better in terms of information quality?

I'm thinking back to going in to a library, where a given topic would generally have 0-3 books. Books often put together by a single person, a person often chosen because of personal relationships with a publisher, plus that publisher's intent to turn a profit. Or opening up a daily newspaper, where I might get a few paragraphs on a topic, written by one person and edited by a couple more, all paid for by an ad-supported company run by people who often had local political connections.

There may be no mechanism for consensus on the web, but Wikipedia certainly has one, one that has worked reasonably well for 20 years at this point.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#158

Post by squeaky-clean »

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.

Not only that, 4 paragraphs until the first citation, 16 paragraphs until the next one. All that information might be correct, but there's no easy way to confirm it.

PDEs are a significant enough thing that the article is probably correct. But once you get into more niche math articles, a lot of the writing is incorrect.

Re: School vs. Wikipedia

#160

Post by throw10920 »

nkingsy wrote: post #145
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…

We are all watching user-generated content destroy the very concept of truth, and Wikipedia is example A1. There is no solution. Perhaps truth was always an illusion, but the illusion has been destroyed and it is unravelling society. A consensus of reputation used to govern these things, but now reputation means almost nothing and there are no mechanisms for consensus on the web. Attempts at consensus are all based i…

> There is no solution.

How an an explicit web of trust not a solution?

Imagine a system where you can keep a local database of people/sites/pages you know and how much you trust them, selectively expose parts of that database to your immediate friends and/or the web as a whole, and lookup/query the databases exposed by contacts.

"My friend F1 assigns a trust score of 0.9 to website W1, and I assign a trust score of 0.9 to F1, so I trust this site 0.81 and I'm willing to make financial transactions on it without further research (but not give it my SSN)."

"My friend F2 trusts random R1 0.7, who trusts random R2 0.5, who trusts random R3 0.4, who is pushing this new cryptocurrency - maybe I should talk with F2 about R1 and R2 before doing anything with this..."

"My friend F3 distrusts site W2 with a score of -0.7, I'm not going to shop there."

"My friend F4 is a history expert and distrusts this Wikipedia page on history with a score of -0.5, so it's probably not reliable."

What would be wrong with this system?

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