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Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

shkspr.mobi

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Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#231

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

arp242 wrote: post #111
btrettel wrote: post #47

As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. Sometimes, citations are not specific enough (e.g., citing a huge book rather than the specific page with the evidence). So, better than giving a URL would be to give a URL with a "fragment" if possible, i.e., #id. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

> Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. I have similar experiences with Wikipedia; if I want to know about something I generally go to Wikipedia first and just loads a bunch of the references. They usually pan out, but not infrequently the reference simply doesn't contain whatever the Wikipedia article claimed.

One of the problems with Wikipedia is that the citation syntax does not require (it's possible but quite rare) specifying what part of the preceding text the citation relates to. As a result it often covers, deceptively, only part of the sentence it's attached to, or the paragraph it's attached to, and it can get worse with editing which doesn't account for the citation's content.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#232

Post by btrettel »

elliekelly wrote: post #221
btrettel wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a HTTP status code for pages which were deleted: 410 Gone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#4xx_... This was famously used by Mark Pilgrim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pilgrim#%22Disappearance%...

Has anyone ever seen this in the wild? I didn’t even know it existed. Who knew there were so many different status codes.

Seems that I edited my comment to add an example at the same time you posted yours.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#233

Post by marcusverus »

btrettel wrote: post #47

As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. Sometimes, citations are not specific enough (e.g., citing a huge book rather than the specific page with the evidence). So, better than giving a URL would be to give a URL with a "fragment" if possible, i.e., #id. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

There is an additional trick that the media use which is generally referred to as 'the media sourcing itself'. To do so, article A will make a claim, and as evidence will cite article B. Upon inspection of Article B, you find that it is merely making the same claim. Frequently, article B will cite the supporting evidence, but not always.

Here's an example:

A top-level Ars Technica article claims "the US fossil fuel industry receiving huge subsidies, estimated at $649 billion in 2015 alone."[0] To support this claim, they don't link supporting evidence, but instead they link a Forbes article[1] which merely makes the same claim. Only by searching the Forbes article can you find a link to the actual supporting evidence [2], which, as it turns out, doesn't even support the original assertion.

[0]https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/us-green-economys-gr...

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/united...

[2]https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Glo...

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#234

Post by jimbokun »

SkyBelow wrote: post #78
duxup wrote: post #59

I hate URL fights. I give little extra value to people providing links with their clams. I largely given up providing links to information when called out as well. It's not worth the time. Discussion on the internet is broken in most places (HN is less broken than most). I find little value providing URLs. Much of the time I provide them, few folks seem to read it, fewer actually want to read it in an intellectually…

>I largely given up providing links to information when called out as well. It's not worth the time. Demanding citations you don't plan to read, to either waste a person's time or to make them look unreliable, is a tactic I've seen used so often I normally don't care to provide links. Instead, I'll just point out some 'so you agree with my argument but doubt data backs it up?' at which point, if they respond, it'll b…

> Demanding citations you don't plan to read

Yes, I often ask for a citation, and make a point to at least always scan them when provided, out of respect for someone putting in that effort on my behalf.

And often, turns out they are right and I make a point to sincerely thank them for the new information.

So yes, requesting a citation and then not reading it is extremely rude.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#235

Post by sixstringtheory »

dane-pgp wrote: post #203
agustif wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899838

Thank you. ;) That was the response I was hoping for.

It occurs to me, though, that many people may not even click that link, or its content might disappear* one day, and its mere existence in the conversation might let readers assign more weight to the argument.

* Thanks to the good folks at Internet Archive for working this problem.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#236

Post by jimbokun »

raxxorrax wrote: post #10

Judge me all you want, but I would have clicked on "dirty hippy vibes"... Honestly, I don't really believe in ubiquitous misinformation being as a large problem as it is made out to be. Everyone arguing for more content regulation had their own motivations or was in some kind of panic. There will always be people misinformed on the net. Doesn't mean I want a babysitter cleaning everything up, even if I thought they w…

> Doesn't mean I want a babysitter cleaning everything up, even if I thought they wouldn't just want to suppress dissidents.

No, but it is critical that we start educating our citizens to the point where they no longer need babysitters to evaluate truth claims for them, but can do basic research and fact checking on their own.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#237

Post by jimbokun »

soared wrote: post #60
raxxorrax wrote: post #10

Judge me all you want, but I would have clicked on "dirty hippy vibes"... Honestly, I don't really believe in ubiquitous misinformation being as a large problem as it is made out to be. Everyone arguing for more content regulation had their own motivations or was in some kind of panic. There will always be people misinformed on the net. Doesn't mean I want a babysitter cleaning everything up, even if I thought they w…

The majority of “misinformation” I’ve seen (entirely on reddit) isn’t straight up lies. It’s more like reposting an old article on a current topic or leaving out information. When Harvard announced remote class plans, Reddit had a front page article on r/all about it - but it was an article that was a month old about their old plan. It would be so easy for people to read that title (old info), have their friend ask i…

So like the classic game of "telephone", but amplified by a million by the Internet.

You make a good point, in that this is likely the source of even more disinformation than deliberately placed "fake news".

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#238

Post by dgellow »

CM30 wrote: post #117
btrettel wrote: post #47

As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. Sometimes, citations are not specific enough (e.g., citing a huge book rather than the specific page with the evidence). So, better than giving a URL would be to give a URL with a "fragment" if possible, i.e., #id. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

I still remember one fake news site that took this to the extreme, in that it linked to a story that flat out didn't exist on the site it linked to. You clicked on the link, and you just ended up with a 404 error page. The fact that fooled anyone should probably give you a worrying insight into how many people are willing to trust/distrust links without even clicking on them. But yeah, either way, make sure the link…

Almost every time I check a source in a Wikipedia article I get either a 404, or it actually links to the homepage of the target website, or the domain redirects to a YouTube channel, etc.

I arrived to the conclusion that nobody every check the source.

They started using archived articles for some links, that’s already an improvement IMHO.

Re: Any claim without a URI should be treated as suspicious

#240

Post by streb-lo »

marcusverus wrote: post #233
btrettel wrote: post #47

As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. Sometimes, citations are not specific enough (e.g., citing a huge book rather than the specific page with the evidence). So, better than giving a URL would be to give a URL with a "fragment" if possible, i.e., #id. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

There is an additional trick that the media use which is generally referred to as 'the media sourcing itself'. To do so, article A will make a claim, and as evidence will cite article B. Upon inspection of Article B, you find that it is merely making the same claim. Frequently, article B will cite the supporting evidence, but not always. Here's an example: A top-level Ars Technica article claims "the US fossil fuel i…

I didn't read the linked IMF paper but the summary seems to directly support the claim:

>The largest subsidizers in 2015 were China ($1.4 trillion), United States ($649 billion), Russia ($551 billion), European Union ($289 billion), and India ($209 billion).

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