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Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

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Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#261

Post by jajko »

Andrex wrote: post #98
voxl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Share an example. This reads like conspiratorial thinking without any evidence.

Not the OP but I'll back him up, and I'll edit this comment when I come across them. They're pretty common. If the domain of knowledge is niche and the page is absolutely huge, that's a good sign to start looking for editoralizations and slants. A lot of wiki pages about smaller companies only list the good things (fundraising, tech, etc.) and omit any controversies. The deliberate omissions due to bias are even more…

Perfect it ain't, I never even heard anybody actually relevant state that, by the core principle of it it can't be.

But, its by far the best human-averaged source of info on most topics. I'd say even politically charged topics, definitely much better than most news out there who always show some clear bias.

Its not exhaustive (another common complain form folks who seek visibility by complaining and denigrating stuff for the heck of it or some immature popularity), its not meant to be. You also don't do postgrad level physics studies from Encyclopædia Britannica, do you, but it may give you some shallow introduction to orientate in the field a bit.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#263

Post by Nition »

scandox wrote: post #238
jl6 wrote: post #233

Wikipedia is fabulous. I wish educators would stop telling people that it’s not reliable, and start using it to teach media literacy - which, for wiki purposes, is essentially to read the talk page to see what viewpoints have been included and excluded and why.

My daughter's teacher told her class that Wikipedia is unreliable because it's just made up by volunteers. So I asked her where they should find information and she said other sites on the internet that can't just be edited by anyone. Blew my mind.

I have sometimes thought about firing up my old Encarta 98 CD. A bit outdated now though.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#264

Post by lordhumphrey »

visarga wrote: post #48
xorvoid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say this is all we really should reasonably expect from our knowledge consensus systems. In fact it’s the same values that “science” stands on: do our best everyday and continue to try improving. It’s a bit hard for me to imagine something better (in practice). It’s easy to want more or feel like reality doesn’t live up to one’s idealism. But we live here and now in the messiness of the present. Viva la Wikip…

> In fact it’s the same values that “science” stands on: do our best everyday and continue to try improving. Scientists realized there is no "Truth", only a series of better and better models approximating it. But philosophers still talk about Truth, they didn't get the message. As long as we are using leaky abstractions - which means all the time - we can't capture Truth. There is no view from nowhere.

Reading your comment, my mind is immediately awash with the endless sea of memories I cherish so dearly of discussions I've had with economists, psychologists, computer scientists, social scientists, political scientists, and of course let's not forget the physicists, chemists, biologists and mathematicians, and every scientist ever in fact, in which they, at all times, without fail, insisted on avoiding dogmatic truth!

Not like those hair-brained philosophers!

Sigh. One would have to possess an impressive level of ignorance in the history of philosophy and science in order to hold such a view. What would Raymond Smullyan, or Bertrand Russell, or Henri Poincaré, or who knows how many others, have to say about this remark, I wonder.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#265

Post by submeta »

Does it survive though? I haven’t opened Wikipedia in years. And young folks rather ask Chatgpt for their homework instead of Wikipedia. And that’s the crux. Llms are vacuuming the content of Wikipedia, just like Google is doing the same with Web content.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#266

Post by spauldo »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #240
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's handy to have a neutral place I can look up books or passages of the Christian Bible so that I have a reference point when talking to people about it

Isn't the issue with this is that you would first have to know which bible to use ?

The differences between the translations are generally very minor. There are very few places where there is any significant difference in meaning.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#267

Post by Cthulhu_ »

scandox wrote: post #238
jl6 wrote: post #233

Wikipedia is fabulous. I wish educators would stop telling people that it’s not reliable, and start using it to teach media literacy - which, for wiki purposes, is essentially to read the talk page to see what viewpoints have been included and excluded and why.

My daughter's teacher told her class that Wikipedia is unreliable because it's just made up by volunteers. So I asked her where they should find information and she said other sites on the internet that can't just be edited by anyone. Blew my mind.

This is the argument used for almost 25 years (...yes), did the teacher never get updated?

I'd love to see your daughter submit something extremely wrong with citations from nonsense on the internet.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#268

Post by psychoslave »

inetknght wrote: post #106
postmodern99 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Scientists realized there is no "Truth", only a series of better and better models approximating it. > it What is "it", if not truth?

> What is "it", if not truth? There's a misconception in this thread and commonly elsewhere. Scientists aren't after truth . They're after facts . Truth depends on context. Facts are indisputable. Imagine you're looking at your computer screen and you see green. Someone else looking at their computer screen might be red/green color blind and might see a shade of brown. The color being green and red can simultaneously…

>Scientists aren't after truth. They're after facts.

Is Bertrand Russel a scientist or a philosopher according to you?

https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/classicreadings/chapter/bertr...

What about Albert Einstein?

https://todayinsci.com/E/Einstein_Albert/EinsteinAlbert-Trut...

Or Richard Feynman?

https://www.cantorsparadise.com/the-fundamental-principles-o...

Finding resources for perspectives on truth by Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie and Rosalind Franklin is left as an exercise.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#269

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Nition wrote: post #263
scandox wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter's teacher told her class that Wikipedia is unreliable because it's just made up by volunteers. So I asked her where they should find information and she said other sites on the internet that can't just be edited by anyone. Blew my mind.

I have sometimes thought about firing up my old Encarta 98 CD. A bit outdated now though.

I think you might be surprised, a lot of information on there is pretty timeless. Before Encarta and the internet, people would buy series of encyclopedias - but they wouldn't buy new ones every year.

I'm seeing an ISO for Encarta on the Internet Archive, but I was hoping for a runnable version.

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