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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 abo

by livre 5y 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 5y 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.

by livre 5y ago

pdonis 5y 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.