4 ms·

It's worth noting that SE and Wikipedia are two of the most valuable reference resources human civilization has produced, ever in history. Maybe the reductionis

It's worth noting that SE and Wikipedia are two of the most valuable reference resources human civilization has produced, ever in history. Maybe the reductionism contributes to their high level of signal.

reitanqild 9y ago
My problem is that it feels like they could have been much more useful. Annoyingly often it is also the most useful questions that are closed while things I consider trivia style/karma-farming operations like: "what is the reason for x" seems to be totally OK. I too find those trivia questions and their answers interesting but IMO they are a distraction.
- sleepychu 9y ago
  SE aims to answer every relevant question, even basic questions. Karma is a reward for the users which do activities to generate the relevant Q&A entries.
- brohee 9y ago
  I used to think like you, then I saw Quora become an useless "stupid questions answered by smart people" site...
sitkack 9y ago
> SE and Wikipedia are two of the most valuable reference resources human civilization has produced Again, this a pull quote that couldn't even be asked to be written. Pure gold! Wikipedia is entertaining, valuable ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRC_Handbook_of_Chemistry_and_Physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRC_Handbook_of_Chemistry_and_...
adamsea 9y ago
More valuable than Charms of Defence and Deterrence by Catullus Spangle?
mfukar 9y ago
As a member of both, no, they're really not. The information on SE is very useful but highly transient (and redundant, but at least we constantly try to rectify that). It'd be extremely more valuable if it could be condensed into a guide or textbook or what have you to teach idioms to beginners. As for Wikipedia, I'm almost convinced most information on it is erroneous, unverifiable, or useless in the forms it is presented. I've stopped making contributions and try not to ever reference it at all.
- sanderjd 9y ago
  Can you point me to a few erroneous articles?
  - mfukar 9y ago
    My favourite is the one that pretends pseudo-random binary sequences are only generated by LFSRs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRBS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRBS
    - sanderjd 9y ago
      Huh? That clearly reads to me like it is just using an LFSR as an example implementation.
sanderjd 9y ago
This gives no indication one way or the other of which direction causality points. ie. I could just as accurately say: maybe their value as a reference has led to reductionism. We can't go back and do an experiment, so we'll never really know.

reitanqild 9y ago

My problem is that it feels like they could have been much more useful. Annoyingly often it is also the most useful questions that are closed while things I consider trivia style/karma-farming operations like: "what is the reason for x" seems to be totally OK. I too find those trivia questions and their answers interesting but IMO they are a distraction.

sleepychu 9y ago
SE aims to answer every relevant question, even basic questions. Karma is a reward for the users which do activities to generate the relevant Q&A entries.
brohee 9y ago
I used to think like you, then I saw Quora become an useless "stupid questions answered by smart people" site...

sitkack 9y ago

> SE and Wikipedia are two of the most valuable reference resources human civilization has produced Again, this a pull quote that couldn't even be asked to be written. Pure gold! Wikipedia is entertaining, valuable ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRC_Handbook_of_Chemistry_and_Physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRC_Handbook_of_Chemistry_and_...

adamsea 9y ago

More valuable than Charms of Defence and Deterrence by Catullus Spangle?

mfukar 9y ago

As a member of both, no, they're really not. The information on SE is very useful but highly transient (and redundant, but at least we constantly try to rectify that). It'd be extremely more valuable if it could be condensed into a guide or textbook or what have you to teach idioms to beginners. As for Wikipedia, I'm almost convinced most information on it is erroneous, unverifiable, or useless in the forms it is presented. I've stopped making contributions and try not to ever reference it at all.

sanderjd 9y ago
Can you point me to a few erroneous articles?
- mfukar 9y ago
  My favourite is the one that pretends pseudo-random binary sequences are only generated by LFSRs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRBS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRBS
  - sanderjd 9y ago
    Huh? That clearly reads to me like it is just using an LFSR as an example implementation.

sanderjd 9y ago

This gives no indication one way or the other of which direction causality points. ie. I could just as accurately say: maybe their value as a reference has led to reductionism. We can't go back and do an experiment, so we'll never really know.