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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

#391

Post by nearbuy »

crazygringo wrote: post #362
GuB-42 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When educators say that Wikipedia is not reliable, what they usually mean is that serious work should be based on primary sources, not secondary sources like Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia. Wikipedia is good for casual research, and in practice, I found the English Wikipedia very reliable, at least for scientific topics, but it is also pretty good on big controversial subjects. Reliability only starts to drop on…

No, they genuinely mean it's unreliable. Obviously popular articles are great -- they have so many eyeballs and editors that they're not just quite accurate, but often more comprehensive than other sources (in terms of describing competing schools of thought, for example). But when you really drill down into more niche articles, there's a tremendous amount of information that is uncited or not found in the citation,…

> (Also, Wikipedia is a tertiary source, as it is meant to only cite secondary sources, not primary sources.)

Wikipedia absolutely cites primary sources (as well as secondary and tertiary sources), and this is in accordance with their policy. Breaking news stories and scientific papers are some commonly used primary sources. You may be thinking of their "no original research" policy or their warnings against editors adding their own interpretation to primary sources.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#392

Post by fkyoureadthedoc »

torium wrote: post #375
fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me getting free movies and music, piracy good Meta getting free books to train an LLM, piracy bad

Powerful entities getting a pass, bad. Individuals getting a pass, good. See, it just depends on how you slice the Venn diagram. With a bit of imagination you'll be able to start connecting the dots by yourself in no time.

I've already connected the dots of the HN zeitgeist. Besides this was done by a few individuals at Meta, or are you thinking they had a board meeting and shareholder vote on it?

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#393

Post by tejohnso »

sorbusherra wrote: post #377
torium wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrents are also a good thing on the internet.

Linux is also good thing on the internet.

Definitely!

So I guess we need a go-to "good things on the internet" list :)

I submit libgen / annas-archive

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#394

Post by 47282847 »

blackbear_ wrote: post #345
estimator7292 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is very little about the universe that is axiomatically true and correct in and of itself. Math is about the only thing I can think of, and really that's in a different category. Everything we know as a species is really just consensus . "Truth" is what we agree it is because the universe does not offer actual truth. What we know is the best guess that our greatest minds can agree on. What we consider to be tru…

I think you are confusing what we believe to be the truth at a point in time and how the physical world is. Either atoms exist or they dont. Our idea of atom has evolved over time, but the thing that we call "atom" has always been there (at least on the time scale of human civilization). The probabilistic nature of quantum objects isn't really a problem either. Electrons may be particles, waves, both or neither, but…

> Either atoms exist or they dont

Perfect example, since they only exist as a concept to describe an observation. With higher precision of observation, it became “the new truth“ that most of the time even on the observation level do not actually exist in terms of matter; they “flicker“ fast enough to appear existing at all times. When you look often enough or at the wrong times, there is nothing to observe.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#395

Post by Levitz »

LastTrain wrote: post #338
Levitz wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to produce such material with a complete lack of bias, sure. I know of at least of one case in which a person publicly admits he is using Wikipedia to promote their political stances and who is right now at the center of an arbitration case in which he intends to silence opposition. This is not that.

People who edit Wikipedia run the gamut from those that are zealous about neutral point of view up to and including people that do it for their own selfish purposes. But lets take the zealous NPOV type. If I were to try and do that, to try my hardest to produce an article which truly takes an NPOV stance, it would still come off biased to you because you and I can't possibly share the same idea about what is neutral.…

I'm really at a loss on how to make this any more clear.

You are looking at a case of a person LITERALLY admitting they are using it for propaganda and your reaction is "I'm sure it's actually not, it's actually neutral and it's just that it differs from your view". I'm sorry but I can only explain it to you, I can't understand it for you.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#397

Post by jfengel »

rafram wrote: post #191
jfengel wrote: post #169

I was surprised that Wikipedia wasn't immediately overrun by trolls, griefers, and spammers. I'm still not entirely sure how it avoids that, though I've got some speculations. Unlike most user contributed sites it's happy to throw stuff away. It does grow but it doesn't care about growing fast. That's great but it's a hard formula to replicate.

Because contributions from new users are immediately reviewed by legions of volunteer cops who are eager to revert vandalism, and most wannabe vandals don’t have the sense to make a couple legitimate edits before vandalizing.

Can you imagine any other crowdsourced site who was willing to subject new users to so much scrutiny, and err on the side of deleting contributions?

Certainly that's not a great way to make money. Not if you're depending on people to spend a lot of time seeking new content (and be shown ads).

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#398

Post by zahlman »

Prime_Axiom wrote: post #383
zahlman wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you see the "reply" link underneath each comment?

There wasn’t one, I took a screenshot to make sure I wasn’t missing it. It was the newest comment by krunck that had the button missing.

It does seem to be missing from individual comments on rare occasions. I've assumed this to be a bug in the past. Maybe refreshing helps?

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#399

Post by rc_mob »

damnesian wrote: post #363

It was inevitable that the ideologues who fancy themselves responsible leaders would attack the relative openness of Wikipedia. This makes it all the more important that you DONATE to help maintain it. I put my $2 in every month, every bit helps to fortify the bastions against invaders. In a world run by criminals, telling the truth becomes a crime.

oookay. I hear ya. Will do.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#400

Post by will4274 »

nl wrote: post #217
will4274 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how much you know about the Washington Redskins naming controversy. There's little doubt that "redskin" is a slur today - Native Americans say so, and it's kind of up to them. The status in the 17th and 18th century is a bit less clear IMHO. Wikipedia says (or said, I guess - I haven't checked) that it unambiguously *was* a slur then too. As evidence, it cites a study of 17th century literature that note…

> Wikipedia says (or said, I guess - I haven't checked) that it unambiguously was a slur then too. It doesn't seem to say this - there's quite a nuanced discussion about whether or not it was a slur during that time period[1]: > The term redskin underwent pejoration through the 19th to early 20th centuries and in contemporary dictionaries of American English it is labeled as offensive, disparaging, or insulting.. > D…

Like I said, this was a few years ago. Since the controversy is basically over, the article has normalized somewhat. Fwiw, the current article still says:

> A controversial etymological claim is that the term emerged from the practice of paying a bounty for Indians, and that "redskin" refers to the bloody scalp of Native Americans.[55] Although official documents do not use the word in this way, a historical association between the use of "redskin" and the paying of bounties can be made. In 1863, a Winona, Minnesota, newspaper, the Daily Republican, printed an announcement: "The state reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth."[56]

This is all WP:UNDUE. The claim is not just contoversial, it's downright nonsensical, unless you also believe "Indian" is a racial slur.

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