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> The teacher instead should be directing the children to print or digitized encyclopedias Any data source you encounter needs to be validated. Wikipedia is a

> The teacher instead should be directing the children to print or digitized encyclopedias Any data source you encounter needs to be validated. Wikipedia is a fine source for lots of types of data, traditional encyclopedias aren’t known to be any more accurate. The reality is you have to think about the importance of the information you’re looking up, but most people shouldn’t be referring to primary sources as they are much harder to validate than secondary sources. “Wikipedia has a similar number of errors to professional and peer-reviewed sources” — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6889752/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6889752/ Another source: https://www.nature.com/articles/438900a https://www.nature.com/articles/438900a

mountainb 4y ago
You just linked to what is effectively a press release written by someone affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, but you presented it as if it were some sort of highfalutin study merely because it links to a handful of articles. It does not even go into any detail on what it is citing. Each cherry picked citation except for the fifth in that press release covers a relatively narrow area of knowledge, but the core question of Wikipedia's suitability for general education is how reliable it is as a general resource. The fifth citation itself cites to another cluster of studies of questionable relevance. Citing encyclopedias is already forbidden by most research manuals. The real question is whether it should be used as a research starter at all. My answer is "no," because minute-for-minute of time spent researching, almost anyone will be better off with other resources, even just browsing by topic for book titles in the Library of Congress. When the internet was shit, Wikipedia was impressive. Now, you can get virtually any digitized book title instantly with academic access. You can retrieve any academic article instantly with academic access. There is no reason apart from lack of academic database access or laziness to use Wikipedia for anything at all.
- deleted 4y ago
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- mikkergp 4y ago
  I may just be seeing the problem in a different way because our positions seem irreconcilable. fair enough to your position though.
- Avicebron 4y ago
  What? I'd be interested to see which digitized book provided a curated list of js exploits in a .txt ready to be fed into a parser... Google certainly can help solve problems.

mountainb 4y ago

You just linked to what is effectively a press release written by someone affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, but you presented it as if it were some sort of highfalutin study merely because it links to a handful of articles. It does not even go into any detail on what it is citing. Each cherry picked citation except for the fifth in that press release covers a relatively narrow area of knowledge, but the core question of Wikipedia's suitability for general education is how reliable it is as a general resource. The fifth citation itself cites to another cluster of studies of questionable relevance. Citing encyclopedias is already forbidden by most research manuals. The real question is whether it should be used as a research starter at all. My answer is "no," because minute-for-minute of time spent researching, almost anyone will be better off with other resources, even just browsing by topic for book titles in the Library of Congress. When the internet was shit, Wikipedia was impressive. Now, you can get virtually any digitized book title instantly with academic access. You can retrieve any academic article instantly with academic access. There is no reason apart from lack of academic database access or laziness to use Wikipedia for anything at all.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mikkergp 4y ago
I may just be seeing the problem in a different way because our positions seem irreconcilable. fair enough to your position though.
Avicebron 4y ago
What? I'd be interested to see which digitized book provided a curated list of js exploits in a .txt ready to be fed into a parser... Google certainly can help solve problems.