4 ms·
My dad likes to dismiss Wikipedia, and he used to be an admin. They may just know how the sausage is made. His rule of thumb is "If it isn't a major article th
by 50CNT 10y ago
My dad likes to dismiss Wikipedia, and he used to be an admin. They may just know how the sausage is made.
His rule of thumb is "If it isn't a major article there's probably errors". His favorite example is that of an article about an ancient persian poet, which says that there's only 2 of his poems known, and only 1 remains. Next to that line, there's a picture of the other poem.
Eh, who knows.
- berntb 10y agoI didn't argue that Wikipedia always was correct (no source is that, I'd guess), just that it smelled really bad to dismiss it with just hand waving. It do have sources and have been whetted (for reasonably popular subjects.)
- 50CNT 10y agoWasn't trying to imply you meant that. It's more that I could see where someone like that could come from, dismissing the Wikipedia article out of habit, especially if they've been involved with the project. Not backing it up with additional sources is of course bad form, but finding and linking extra sources is additional work. Minor nitpick, vetting is someone checking something and approving it, whereas whetting is grinding away metal to sharpen a blade.
- berntb 10y agoOK, you more or less agree with my argument. Enough about that, then. I am curious about something else. Do you have non anecdotal information about Wikipedia's general dependability? How is the dependability for large subjects? For subjects like a poet where less than a hundred people even recognize the name? (The last I saw on this was years ago, when Wikipedia edged out the Encyclopædia Britannica. It would be strange to be less dependable now?!)
- berntb 10y agoIt seems I was trolled, but in a funny way. I discuss how you can see bad behaviour from even old accounts at HN, dismissing serious references with just hand waving. This got a well written answer about how non serious my example reference was, arguing with a family anecdote. When I ask for better sources (I don't know the writer or his/her family from Adam/Eve) -- then I get no answer. :-)
- nothrabannosir 10y agoYou can see Wikipedia as a mixture of different "subpedias". I find articles on technical and mathematical topics to generally be extremely accurate, content rich, and surprisingly bias free (so not very, but still). Protocols, theorems, proofs, even very advanced topics (way over my head, so perhaps I can't tell...). You could do much worse than take everything Wikipedia says about mathematics at face value.* On the other hand, everything about currently living people, or worse, companies, you can essentially dismiss out of hand. * Please don't. I'm just making a point.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago"I find articles on technical and mathematical topics to generally be extremely accurate, content rich, and surprisingly bias free (so not very, but still)." Same here. I usually just link the Wikipedia article because it's either totally accurate or accurate enough for what I'm trying to accomplish. I added a bunch of stuff to it as a result from my domain. I do spot marketing BS on occasion in there but the baseline makes it really stand out. Most people doing IT work are going to say, "Wait, that looks like a fan or advertiser wrote it" then dismiss that specific point.
- jeff_petersen 10y ago> His rule of thumb is "If it isn't a major article there's probably errors" ...and if it is a major article, there are definitely errors, some likely introduced on purpose[1] (since major articles are the juiciest targets) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ravpapa/Tilt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ravpapa/Tilt