Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts • Hacker News Board

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#81

Post by ajot » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 2:46 PM UTC

ndnxhs wrote: post #60

HBlix wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sci-Hub is pretty amazing for any paper that has been out for as long as most sources on Wikipedia have been, so in truth you can almost always read them in full.

Never finds the stuff I search :/

You should try with Library Genesis first. Both projects cooperate (so if LG doesn't have something, it gets added when downloaded from SH, and SH gives you a link from LG when it's already on their DB), but I find the LibGen search engine to be far more powerful, throwing me the article I need when SH can't.

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#82

Post by vnorilo » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 2:50 PM UTC

blahblahthrow wrote: post #78

vnorilo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should clarify that I'm from Finland, which gained independence from Russia in a clearly nationalist context. Not to belittle the troubling consequent alignment with Germany in WW2 which we tend to try to explain with "we didn't know Hitler was so evil" and the existential threat by Stalin. Regardless, national pride can take several forms. You could learn folk song and dance. Or you can wield torches in a skinhead…

It feels like you're moving the goal posts - "celebrating national pride" is something you can do without banning people from your country or marginalizing them. Nationalism seems fundamentally opposed to multicultural society - it's not about people electing to do folk song and dance, and multiculturalism doesn't prohibit celebrating culture.

Nationalism does not directly lead into those things. My understanding is that's primarily about national sovereignity. Nativism is about discrimination of people based on origin or ethnicity. Obviously there are overlaps in the supporters of these ideologies. I am neither a nationalist nor a nativist myself.

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#83

Post by wpietri » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 2:51 PM UTC

koboll wrote: post #80

pavlov wrote: post #3

For all their flaws, Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. Everybody has something they hate about Wikipedia, but the general gist is that they're more or less credible. Alternative encyclopedic efforts are totally fringe and/or money-making scams like Everipedia. With this in mind, perhaps social media companies should piggyback on Wikipedia's reputat…

>Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. This is totally wrong. Wikipedia has always been received with skepticism because it's "the site where anyone can write anything", and it's never managed to shake that reputation.

That's a common complaint, but in practice people generally accept Wikipedia as a source of factual information. It's the 9th-most viewed site in the world [1], and it's not like people go there for the rich multimedia experience. Surveys show a relatively high level of general-audience trust. [2] And for good reason; one of the best places to find criticism of Wikipedia is Wikipedia. [3]

[1] https://moz.com/top500

[2] https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/08/09/more-british-people-tru...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#84

Post by jccalhoun » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 2:51 PM UTC

arthev wrote: post #4

A web site banned as a source for facts from schools the world over now bans a web site as a a source of its banned facts.

I'm a college professor and I tell students they shouldn't cite wikipedia because they shouldn't be citing any encyclopedias (except something like a legal encyclopedia or something like that) because they should look for primary sources. However, I tell them to go read wikipedia and look at the sources cited in a wikipedia article.

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#85

Post by enriquto » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #3

For all their flaws, Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. Everybody has something they hate about Wikipedia, but the general gist is that they're more or less credible. Alternative encyclopedic efforts are totally fringe and/or money-making scams like Everipedia. With this in mind, perhaps social media companies should piggyback on Wikipedia's reputat…

> perhaps social media companies should piggyback on Wikipedia's reputation and flag articles from sources like InfoWars and Breitbart with a banner that reads: "Wikipedia doesn't accept this site as a valid source."

I'm already tired of the media treating me as an idiot. But when a channel of communication (like a social media site) starts to insert its own comments into the information, well, that's really many steps beyond treating me like an idiot. Completely unacceptable.

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#86

Post by dmitrygr » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

blahblahthrow wrote: post #57

dmitrygr wrote: post #46

Unpopular opinion: Sometimes Breitbart does have useful info. They were the only ones who had the full leak of the Google all-hands that was definitely newsworthy, for example. Discard that and you missed some useful info. You canot just color publications as "good" and "not". This sort of maximalism (seeing the world in black and white) is rarely good long term. Almost everything in the world has a use.

> almost everything in the world has a use Do you routinely read far-left news sources like Current Affairs and Jacobin to make sure you're getting the full picture?

Yes I do. And also foreign news to get a non-usa-centric view.

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#87

Post by mythrwy » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 2:55 PM UTC

If sources which occasionally play lose with facts or spin are to be banned from Wikipedia some mainstream news outlets should probably go as well.

Not a fan of Breitbart, but this reeks of political preference. Wiki should be above this kind of thing but apparently isn't, which speaks to it's own credibility.

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#88

Post by geezerjay » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 3:01 PM UTC

gajjanag wrote: post #24

pavlov wrote: post #3

For all their flaws, Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. Everybody has something they hate about Wikipedia, but the general gist is that they're more or less credible. Alternative encyclopedic efforts are totally fringe and/or money-making scams like Everipedia. With this in mind, perhaps social media companies should piggyback on Wikipedia's reputat…

A funny thing I have noticed about Wikipedia is that although citing Wikipedia itself in an academic paper is still not a good idea generally speaking, the references provided in a Wikipedia article are usually far more relevant than the ones provided in a typical IEEE paper. It was a shock for me to discover that the "literature review" of an IEEE paper I was reading was essentially useless compared to the one provi…

> It was a shock for me to discover that the "literature review" of an IEEE paper I was reading was essentially useless compared to the one provided by Wikipedia on the same topic.

That says nothing about wikipedia, and only indicates that you've stumbled on a poorly written paper.

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#89

Post by WilliamEdward » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 3:02 PM UTC

koboll wrote: post #80

pavlov wrote: post #3

For all their flaws, Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. Everybody has something they hate about Wikipedia, but the general gist is that they're more or less credible. Alternative encyclopedic efforts are totally fringe and/or money-making scams like Everipedia. With this in mind, perhaps social media companies should piggyback on Wikipedia's reputat…

>Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. This is totally wrong. Wikipedia has always been received with skepticism because it's "the site where anyone can write anything", and it's never managed to shake that reputation.

Horrifically bad argument that always comes from people who have never contributed to wikipedia or researched for 5 minutes how it works. Pages of high importance are moderated and restricted, so no you can't just write anything, and even in the cases where you can there needs to be a citation.

Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts

#90

Post by forapurpose » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 3:02 PM UTC

avs733 wrote: post #58

DanBC wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wikipedia is one of the few web information sources that are globally accepted as more or less correct. Not even Wikipedia claims this, which is why they tell users to never quote Wikipedia but to go to the sources (which all articles are supposed to have) and quote those instead.

That's not a "Wikipedia" thing though...that's standard practice with any encyclopedia.

Britannica has been recommended to me many times, by academics, as a source of basic facts - it doesn't contain in-depth research, of course, but they considered it to be reliable.