5 ms·

The further back in time you go the more ignorance and skepticism of Wikipedia you find. When I was in college in the early 2000s the professors would say “don’

The further back in time you go the more ignorance and skepticism of Wikipedia you find. When I was in college in the early 2000s the professors would say “don’t use Wikipedia, anyone can edit it so you can’t trust anything it says”

pdonis 6y ago
The thing about Wikipedia is not so much that it's "unreliable", it's that, for any topic that is at all disputed, in order to know if what you're reading on Wikipedia is reliable, you have to already be knowledgeable about the topic, in which case you don't need to find out about it on Wikipedia.
- livre 6y ago
  In order to know if anything you are reading anywhere is reliable you have to already be knowledgeable about the topic. It doesn't matter if you are reading about it on Wikipedia, a random blog, a printer book or a published paper. The thing about Wikipedia is that for most popular topics that you aren't knowledgeable about you can be sure they've been reviewed by thousands of users and kept somewhat reliable and up to date, unlike reading the same topic on a random blog or an old printed book.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > In order to know if anything you are reading anywhere is reliable you have to already be knowledgeable about the topic. Not necessarily. Consider a good textbook or paper on, say, physics, for example. The textbook will not just tell you things, perhaps with a bunch of references. It will actually construct the theoretical model(s) it is going to use, step by step, starting with premises that are either common knowledge or are supported by experiments (an example of the latter is the premise that the speed of light is the same in all inertial frames, which Einstein used to construct the theoretical model of special relativity in his famous 1905 paper). You don't have to already be knowledgeable about the topic to evaluate what you're reading. You can evaluate it on its merits: are the premises true, or at least reasonable? Is the construction of the model valid? There are some articles on Wikipedia that actually try to do this; but the ones that do it correctly, that I've seen, aren't on topics that are at all disputed. That's why I put that qualifier in my statement. > The thing about Wikipedia is that for most popular topics that you aren't knowledgeable about you can be sure they've been reviewed by thousands of users and kept somewhat reliable and up to date You must be joking. Most articles on Wikipedia have only been reviewed by a small number of people. And for any topic that is at all disputed, those people are all partisans, and usually they are mostly partisans of one side, who revert or overwrite any contributions they disagree with. In some cases, when there are vociferous partisans on both sides, the whole process breaks down and it's basically impossible to get any useful content into an article.
- KMnO4 6y ago
  Every now and then I play the “is it bullshit” game on Wikipedia. When I come across a reference that just gives me a gut feeling as being off, I’ll follow up on the citation. Usually it’s just a strangely worded sentence (common on biographies of not-famous people). Every now and then I’ll find completely fabricated information with sources that either a) don’t exist at the URL or b) say something completely different.
- strken 6y ago
  This is true for books and other sources too. I remember reading that really popular sleep book, then going and looking at the papers it cited and seeing the first one I read showed the 7 hour bucket had lower all-cause mortality than the 8 hour bucket. I also remember an article posted on HN at the start of the pandemic that claimed masks were ineffective, but as proof cited a study that showed the best mask fabric blocked 99% of aerosoles and the worst blocked 20%.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > This is true for books and other sources too. Yes, agreed.

pdonis 6y ago

The thing about Wikipedia is not so much that it's "unreliable", it's that, for any topic that is at all disputed, in order to know if what you're reading on Wikipedia is reliable, you have to already be knowledgeable about the topic, in which case you don't need to find out about it on Wikipedia.

livre 6y ago
In order to know if anything you are reading anywhere is reliable you have to already be knowledgeable about the topic. It doesn't matter if you are reading about it on Wikipedia, a random blog, a printer book or a published paper. The thing about Wikipedia is that for most popular topics that you aren't knowledgeable about you can be sure they've been reviewed by thousands of users and kept somewhat reliable and up to date, unlike reading the same topic on a random blog or an old printed book.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > In order to know if anything you are reading anywhere is reliable you have to already be knowledgeable about the topic. Not necessarily. Consider a good textbook or paper on, say, physics, for example. The textbook will not just tell you things, perhaps with a bunch of references. It will actually construct the theoretical model(s) it is going to use, step by step, starting with premises that are either common knowledge or are supported by experiments (an example of the latter is the premise that the speed of light is the same in all inertial frames, which Einstein used to construct the theoretical model of special relativity in his famous 1905 paper). You don't have to already be knowledgeable about the topic to evaluate what you're reading. You can evaluate it on its merits: are the premises true, or at least reasonable? Is the construction of the model valid? There are some articles on Wikipedia that actually try to do this; but the ones that do it correctly, that I've seen, aren't on topics that are at all disputed. That's why I put that qualifier in my statement. > The thing about Wikipedia is that for most popular topics that you aren't knowledgeable about you can be sure they've been reviewed by thousands of users and kept somewhat reliable and up to date You must be joking. Most articles on Wikipedia have only been reviewed by a small number of people. And for any topic that is at all disputed, those people are all partisans, and usually they are mostly partisans of one side, who revert or overwrite any contributions they disagree with. In some cases, when there are vociferous partisans on both sides, the whole process breaks down and it's basically impossible to get any useful content into an article.
KMnO4 6y ago
Every now and then I play the “is it bullshit” game on Wikipedia. When I come across a reference that just gives me a gut feeling as being off, I’ll follow up on the citation. Usually it’s just a strangely worded sentence (common on biographies of not-famous people). Every now and then I’ll find completely fabricated information with sources that either a) don’t exist at the URL or b) say something completely different.
strken 6y ago
This is true for books and other sources too. I remember reading that really popular sleep book, then going and looking at the papers it cited and seeing the first one I read showed the 7 hour bucket had lower all-cause mortality than the 8 hour bucket. I also remember an article posted on HN at the start of the pandemic that claimed masks were ineffective, but as proof cited a study that showed the best mask fabric blocked 99% of aerosoles and the worst blocked 20%.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > This is true for books and other sources too. Yes, agreed.