4 ms·

30 years is not a lot of time. People who grew up with the internet are only now coming into positions of power. A majority of American Internet users grew up i

30 years is not a lot of time. People who grew up with the internet are only now coming into positions of power. A majority of American Internet users grew up in a very different era, and their experiences and expectations may not be reasonable in the current era. Furthermore they have been passing an understanding of media from the 70’s onto future generations. I suspect that it will take quite a lot of time for society at large to adjust. For example, many kids are taught in school that Wikipedia is not reliable since anyone can edit it, whereas corporate publications are more trustworthy since they are written by experts whose reputation is at stake. Wikipedia is not always reliable but it is verifiable/auditable and this is a criteria of trustworthiness that is not widely appreciated for digital literacy.

maxerickson 6y ago
Why aren't they taught that Wikipedia is a tertiary source? It explicitly doesn't aim to be a source of truth, but rather an accurate summary of other sources.
- Ekaros 6y ago
  Also we should teach that these other sources on softer topics are sometimes editorialized... I don't see any issues using it for many topics, especially in computer-science and hard sciences. But there are biases with some content.
manfredo 6y ago
Wikipedia's reliability largely depends on how much traffic an article gets. The more eyeballs on an article the more likely people are to point out inaccuracies. It's also much more reliable for scientific and technical subjects that aren't really subject to ideological influence or bias. In my experience, niche pages tend to be the most suceptible to uninformed or biased editors.
dfraser992 6y ago
"Corporate publications are more trustworthy..."? My brief exposure to that arena would lead me to disagree strongly (but I am an engineer and not in marketing). Everything in my experience has to be vetted by multiple layers of the organization or at least people versed in the art of saying something while actually saying nothing. "Corporate publications" is a very broad term, of course, so it depends - financial type things, yes, that has to be pretty 'solid' though there is still room to elide and be disingenuous. Whitepapers are essentially just marketing material; being an engineer and thinking like one is really detrimental, thus I just couldn't do that sort of stuff... And some subset of shareholders will always try to interpret <whatever> is any number of ways, so that is another reason to spin things as needed while not seeming to spin things. Wikipedia has a pretty robust set of internal controls and correction policies IMO. It may not be authoritative, but it tends to be a good starting point, unless the topic is obscure etc. My brief exposure to higher education would be that yeah you don't want to let students treat Wikipedia as a primary/only source (the lazy ones have that attitude), but I wouldn't go so far as 'not reliable'. The fundamental issue is ho do you teach people/children to synthesize different sets of information and decide what is useful and what isn't - i.e. to think for themselves? Part of that effort is also teaching them to be self aware enough to understand how their emotions or emotional issues might color their interpretation of the information, never mind evaluating the source of information first... A lot of parents think it is a really bad idea, teaching children to think for themselves and to be self-aware...

maxerickson 6y ago

Why aren't they taught that Wikipedia is a tertiary source? It explicitly doesn't aim to be a source of truth, but rather an accurate summary of other sources.

Ekaros 6y ago
Also we should teach that these other sources on softer topics are sometimes editorialized... I don't see any issues using it for many topics, especially in computer-science and hard sciences. But there are biases with some content.

manfredo 6y ago

Wikipedia's reliability largely depends on how much traffic an article gets. The more eyeballs on an article the more likely people are to point out inaccuracies. It's also much more reliable for scientific and technical subjects that aren't really subject to ideological influence or bias. In my experience, niche pages tend to be the most suceptible to uninformed or biased editors.

dfraser992 6y ago

"Corporate publications are more trustworthy..."? My brief exposure to that arena would lead me to disagree strongly (but I am an engineer and not in marketing). Everything in my experience has to be vetted by multiple layers of the organization or at least people versed in the art of saying something while actually saying nothing. "Corporate publications" is a very broad term, of course, so it depends - financial type things, yes, that has to be pretty 'solid' though there is still room to elide and be disingenuous. Whitepapers are essentially just marketing material; being an engineer and thinking like one is really detrimental, thus I just couldn't do that sort of stuff... And some subset of shareholders will always try to interpret <whatever> is any number of ways, so that is another reason to spin things as needed while not seeming to spin things. Wikipedia has a pretty robust set of internal controls and correction policies IMO. It may not be authoritative, but it tends to be a good starting point, unless the topic is obscure etc. My brief exposure to higher education would be that yeah you don't want to let students treat Wikipedia as a primary/only source (the lazy ones have that attitude), but I wouldn't go so far as 'not reliable'. The fundamental issue is ho do you teach people/children to synthesize different sets of information and decide what is useful and what isn't - i.e. to think for themselves? Part of that effort is also teaching them to be self aware enough to understand how their emotions or emotional issues might color their interpretation of the information, never mind evaluating the source of information first... A lot of parents think it is a really bad idea, teaching children to think for themselves and to be self-aware...