List of common misconceptions

#1

Post by mawhidby » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 8:42 PM UTC

List of common misconceptions
en.wikipedia.org

Re: List of common misconceptions

#2

Post by klochner » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 9:36 PM UTC

duplicate from two weeks ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1465001

I usually do a quick google search of HN before posting, e.g.:

  "site:news.ycombinator.com common misconceptions"

Re: List of common misconceptions

#3

Post by petercooper » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 10:28 PM UTC

klochner wrote: post #2

duplicate from two weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1465001 I usually do a quick google search of HN before posting, e.g.: "site:news.ycombinator.com common misconceptions"

It's weird how Wikipedia says a page has been "redirected" from an alias, yet no redirection actually occurs (in the typical HTTP sense). If it did, dupes could easily be avoided by storing the final, canonical URL.

Re: List of common misconceptions

#4

Post by alecco » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 10:42 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #3

klochner wrote: post #2

duplicate from two weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1465001 I usually do a quick google search of HN before posting, e.g.: "site:news.ycombinator.com common misconceptions"

It's weird how Wikipedia says a page has been "redirected" from an alias, yet no redirection actually occurs (in the typical HTTP sense). If it did, dupes could easily be avoided by storing the final, canonical URL.

At the personal level, to avoid this problem, I made a wikipedia search engine in my browser doing a google search with "feeling lucky." This also improved my wikipedia access as you can search based on content, too. For copy-paste:

  https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=site:en.wikipedia.org+%s&btnI=Search

Re: List of common misconceptions

#5

Post by emordnilap » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 11:08 PM UTC

Another common misconception is that Wikipedia is a good place to get reliable facts.

A serious question: Do you ever verify citations? Or do you just assume that since there is one, the article is probably correct?

Re: List of common misconceptions

#6

Post by emordnilap » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 11:46 PM UTC

emordnilap wrote: post #5

Another common misconception is that Wikipedia is a good place to get reliable facts. A serious question: Do you ever verify citations? Or do you just assume that since there is one, the article is probably correct?

Wow, that came out a lot more snarky than I meant it to be.

I recently spent a several hours trying to find correct information about some hardware, all the while running into incorrect information copied and pasted from a wikipedia article.

I eventually found the information, but almost all the top search results from google and yahoo (and even duckduckgo) pointed to the inaccurate wikipedia information, most times pasted verbatim and passed off as truth.