7 ms·

When was the last time you read through a copy of Encyclopedia Britannica? Have you done an apples to apples comparison? No encyclopedia is perfect, but as far

When was the last time you read through a copy of Encyclopedia Britannica? Have you done an apples to apples comparison? No encyclopedia is perfect, but as far as I can tell the "standard" encyclopedias are a lot worse. My grandparents had bought a copy of Britannica decades ago and they had something like 50 years of its yearbooks. I would cite it sometimes and no one at school batted an eye. I remember reading through it and cross-referencing articles against Wikipedia and Wikipedia's accuracy was far superior. The thing to keep in mind is that not only are all encyclopedias fraught with errors, primary sources are often wrong too! The goal isn't perfection, it's transparency -- and Wikipedia in this department is enormously better than any private encyclopedia you'll ever find.

deleted 4y ago
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verisimilitudes 4y ago
- TrinaryWorksToo 4y ago
  They're about the same accuracy according to this data: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/study-wikipedia-as-accurate-as-britannica/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/study-wikipedia-as-a...
  - akolbe 4y ago
    Well, for a particular set of fairly obscure science articles. It's quite different in the social sciences, for example. What people don't appreciate is that Wikipedia has very different strengths and weaknesses to Britannica. Britannica doesn't contain outright hoaxes and nonsense. Examples: https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday_fails/ https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday... https://wikipediocracy.com/2022/08/11/wikipedias-credibility-is-toast/ https://wikipediocracy.com/2022/08/11/wikipedias-credibility... But Britannica can never be as up to date as Wikipedia: https://www.inputmag.com/culture/queen-elizabeth-ii-death-wikipedia-updates https://www.inputmag.com/culture/queen-elizabeth-ii-death-wi... Nor can it cover as many topics as Wikipedia. Wikipedia's quality also depends on the topic area. Hard science and computing tend to be covered more adeptly than philosophy for example. And article quality simply varies much more in Wikipedia. It ranges from some of the finest writing anywhere, rivalling anything in Britannica and surpassing it in up-to-dateness, to complete rubbish and intentionally falsified content.
    - throwaway09223 4y ago
      I think you are drastically underestimating how absolutely bonkers the 1970 Britannica edition was in terms of (using your example) Social Sciences. I did this analysis long ago and i don't have the set in front of me, but there absolutely were hoaxes and nonsense which were believed to be true (or which fit the prevailing narrative) in 1970. Not being up to date isn't just about incorporating new information. Fields like social sciences have huge revisions and reversals because conclusions in those fields are so often rooted in opinion and inference rather than empirical observation. Yet, no teacher would complain about using an old copy of Britannica.
      - akolbe 4y ago
        Perhaps so, but why choose the 1970 edition, rather than one from the 1990s, or the current online one? At any rate, here is a quote from a BBC journalist: "In the Wikipedia gullibility stakes, no one is infallible. That means any journalist in any newsroom will likely get a sharp slap across the head from an editor for treating Wikipedia with anything but total scepticism (you can imagine the kicking I've taken over this article)." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-37523772 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-37523772 I doubt any journalist ever got such a kicking because they cited Britannica.
        throwaway09223 4y ago
        It's simply what my grandparents had in my home, back when I still cared about school and when Wikipedia was relatively new. I remember being astounded that this ancient crappy thing would be accepted, while wikipedia would not be. You know in the world of tech they have a similar saying: "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." This does not mean IBM is either a superior choice, or a wise choice.
        akolbe 4y ago
        Yeah, it's a valid comparison. I will let you in on a secret: I have a full 1990s' Britannica set in my home, about three metres from my desk. I consult it maybe four or five times a year, and the Britannica website maybe another dozen times or so. Still, it's good to always be aware that the ways Wikipedia and Britannica are produced are very different and to factor that in (see my post below from just a couple of minutes ago, about the desert article).
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    I'm glad you posted that information, because it really shows that random online information can often be wrong or conflict with other online authorities. Here are two quotes from an article that was posted 10 years after your link. [1] "There has been lots of research on the accuracy of Wikipedia, and the results are mixed—some studies show it is just as good as the experts, others show [that] Wikipedia is not accurate at all." and later in that article They found that in general, Wikipedia articles were more biased—with 73 percent of them containing code words, compared to just 34 percent in Britannica. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2015/01/20/wikipedia-or-encyclopaedia-britannica-which-has-more-bias/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2015/01/20/...
    - xapata 4y ago
      > code words I'm not sure that's a great measure of bias. It's easy to write in an unbiased tone, yet still be biased.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - tuukkah 4y ago
        Further, unbiased articles may easily contain biased words. Especially since Wikipedia is an international projects, the articles describe multiple points of view, and the "code words" of the research were terms such as the following: "tax breaks, minimum wage, fuel efficiency [--] death tax, border security, war on terror".
    - TrinaryWorksToo 4y ago
      Bias is not the same thing as being correct or incorrect.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - jcampbell1 4y ago
  - 0x0000000 4y ago
    I remember hearing this a long time ago, and the article you linked is from 2005. I wonder if Wikipedia having >= accuracy to traditional encyclopedias remains true today, given how different the web and web users are today.
- thrwyoilarticle 4y ago
  Foreign to who?
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
m463 4y ago
Maybe traditional encyclopedia might give wikipedia a run for the money on subjects, say toilet paper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper But wikipedia is far ahead on more practical articles like which way the toilet paper goes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation
- codetrotter 4y ago
  Something I recently became aware of is that in some cases toilet paper orientation preference may be due to left handedness vs right handedness. I am right handed and prefer to have the paper oriented over itself. A member of my family is left handed and prefers to have the paper under itself. She once said that for her, with left handedness, having the paper under itself makes it easier to grab.
  - idontpost 4y ago
  - mhb 4y ago
    Wouldn't this completely depend on which side the toilet paper holder is mounted?
  - OJFord 4y ago
    That doesn't make sense to me, surely it's always easier (by whatever little amount) if it's away from the wall ('over itself' as you say I think), whichever side it is, and whichever hand you use dominantly?
  - spc476 4y ago
    I don't think handness has anything to do with it. I'm left handed and I prefer the paper oriented over itself.
    - rubslopes 4y ago
      Me too.
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hindsightbias 4y ago
Wiki is transparent in a self-referential sense only. History started in 1992. If there’s no hyperlink, it’s lost. Pick any wiki page and see all the dead, rotting citations. I’d bet any mining of actually working citations would average closer to 2015. It used to be people citing something from the 70’s or 80’s would get strange looks from people who lived then, now I see Millenials looking at Gen-Z kids that way. History is written not by the victor, but by the last wiki editor.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  Maybe, but with the extensive number of books, journals, magazines and newspapers scanned and available to view on the Internet Archive, it's never been easier to add or verify a printed source citation. Also various other newspaper archives have mind-numbing amounts of scanned material dating back well over 100 years, and the Wikipedia Library provides free access to these resources for editors.
- throwaway09223 4y ago
  > If there’s no hyperlink, it’s lost This just isn't true. Most wikipedia references have a hyperlink and a proper citation which can be looked up using traditional means. For example, a cite might look like this: "Intel Pentium Processor G6950 (3M Cache, 2.80 GHz) with SPEC Code(s) SLBMS". Ark.intel.com. 2010-07-13. Archived from the original on 2011-03-09. Retrieved 2010-07-29. The link to intel.com has rotted, but: 1) There's an archive of the page so the information hasn't been lost 2) There's also a full citation, with which you can write a letter to Intel asking them for the document in question ("Intel Pentium Processor G6950 (3M Cache, 2.80 GHz) with SPEC Code(s) SLBMS"). This is a lot more detail than you'd have in a traditional encyclopedia. If you're a researcher, the encyclopedia has given what you need to seek more detail from the primary source - and that's the whole point! archive.org and wikipedia.org working together is really powerful.
  - froh 4y ago
    with history begins 1992 they are referencing books, content which is not in the web. you talk about the link quality. other problem.
Tangurena2 4y ago
Last time our family had an encyclopedia set was back in the 70s. And yes, nerd that I was (am, and will forever be) I read it. When we moved overseas, we had to put a lot of stuff in storage, and this was one of the things stolen from storage.
fwipsy 4y ago
I'm not convinced either of you have read enough of either encyclopedia to have anything like a representative sample.
BashiBazouk 4y ago
Heh...Reminds me when I was in school doing a report using the leather bound Encyclopedia Britannica from 1911 that we still had in the book shelves. I still wonder how accurate it was. It was a history report so maybe more so than later editions as it was closer to the event? Who knows...
Test0129 4y ago
It's transparent and unfortunately that's exactly why we know we can't trust it. If you want an eye opening experience pick something in the news that might be scientific. Say, COVID. Then run a correlation between the release of news articles and the frequency of edits to Wikipedia. In theory, this provides the most up to date information. In reality, Wikipedia is a disinformation farm. Contributors may think they are updating the "latest" version of "truth" (like a "fact" checker) but in reality they are making knee jerk decisions to sometimes literally change the definition of something. Still not convinced a paper encyclopedia is better? Still worried a scary private corporation controls Encyclopedias? Steven Pruitt is a legendary "editor" (what an appropriate name) of wikipedia. Holding the record for the most Wikipedia edits of anyone by a large margin, he is a veritable gatekeeper of what Wikipedia defines as truth. Whereas in a corporation you might have this divided among dozens of experts in their field, one man with no known expertise in anything and a dramatically one-sided and well-known political leaning is in control of a LOT of information. In summary, I refuse to donate to Wikipedia and actively promote other sources of information (such as scholarly articles, meta-analyses, expert blog posts, etc) as better secondary or primary sources of information. Parents, teachers, and schools are absolutely right to be suspect of Wikipedia. Aside from relatively niche, infrequently edited articles, Wikipedia is no better than asking your neighbor what he thinks about a subject. At least you might get a beer out of doing that, though.
- howenterprisey 4y ago
  Leaving aside your other points, it's beyond ludicrous to claim that Steven Pruitt controls anything on Wikipedia. Please take more care that you yourself don't repeat random misinformation about Wikipedia.
  - Test0129 4y ago
    > it's beyond ludicrous to claim that Steven Pruitt Someone with millions of edits does not de-facto have the systems in place, the time, and the power to influence any article he puts his mind to? What I posted is inference, not misinformation, and worth considering despite the downvote parade happening on it right now by pro-wiki shills. To call what I posted misinformation is a sign of times. Inference is not misinformation and while I have no "fact checked" articles proving he manipulates wiki articles he is a defacto central power of Wikipedia whose contributions are vast. So vast, in fact, they shadow every other contributor by orders of magnitude. If this doesn't concern you I guess by all means, cite wikipedia in all your scholarly works. Isn't my problem, anyway. I don't use it and I don't donate to it. I have no dog in this race. Ignoring Pruitt my point stands in general. Wikipedia edits spike during times of political strife, elections, major news, etc. They are edited so frequently that it's impossible to tell what is real and fake. This is the principle failing of any truly open system that does no KYC. It inevitably collapses under the weight of idiots (which have more density than smart people). If Wikipedia expects to be trusted authors should be credential-locked to fields and vetted by the community. Except that can't happen because then you'd have to pay for it, and then it's not wikipedia. I'd rather have vetted experts writing articles on their fields (e.g. an actual encyclopedia) than any random shmuck off the street being able to contribute to an alleged body of "knowledge". Right now I can go contribute to the article on theoretical physics. Something I know nothing about. That should not be possible on any system alleging to be a source of truth.
chris_wot 4y ago
Yes, but good authors are routinely removed from Wikipedia by a mob of less than great editors. Happens all the time. Happened to me. For a sample of my work, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Baker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Baker
- janandonly 4y ago
  What if you happen to have a minority view that happens to be the correct one?. No amount of wiki editors can protect you from “mob” changes on their platform.
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago
  You are -ah- not a big fish! I always thought you were a bit eccentric, but you seemed to be fairly sane otherwise, and managed to always keep yourself out of trouble. How did you manage to get yourself sitebanned of all things? %-( I mean, arbcom reviewed it too, so it's not just a mob. Did you get tempted into saying or doing something unwise? I hope you're doing ok now at least.
  - chris_wot 4y ago
    ArbCom took over the block, I believe they did this so they could review it at a later date if I ever wanted to ask to come back. Could be wrong about that. Unlikely this will ever happen. My mental health is not always the best.
    - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
      I'm sad to hear that. I wish you all the best!
dtgriscom 4y ago
Back in the late '50s, my dad had just gotten his first significant paycheck. That evening, Mom and he were admiring the cash on the kitchen table, when the Encyclopedia Brittanica salesman knocked. And that's all she wrote. By the time I was able to read, we had two separate complete editions of the Brittanica, and he'd read both through, A-Z.
Archelaos 4y ago
I think Encyclopedia Britannica should not be the benchmark, but "real" scientific/scholarly encyclopedias and dictionaries.
verisimilitudes 4y ago
I was waiting for my comment to be flagged. Here it is again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33124973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33124973 > Give a single example of how the Encyclopedia Britannica be worse than random idiots, foreign agents, and shills on Wikipedia. I received no answer, which is what I expected. It was easier to flag the comment, because this forum is pathetic.

deleted 4y ago

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verisimilitudes 4y ago

TrinaryWorksToo 4y ago
They're about the same accuracy according to this data: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/study-wikipedia-as-accurate-as-britannica/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/study-wikipedia-as-a...
- akolbe 4y ago
  Well, for a particular set of fairly obscure science articles. It's quite different in the social sciences, for example. What people don't appreciate is that Wikipedia has very different strengths and weaknesses to Britannica. Britannica doesn't contain outright hoaxes and nonsense. Examples: https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday_fails/ https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday... https://wikipediocracy.com/2022/08/11/wikipedias-credibility-is-toast/ https://wikipediocracy.com/2022/08/11/wikipedias-credibility... But Britannica can never be as up to date as Wikipedia: https://www.inputmag.com/culture/queen-elizabeth-ii-death-wikipedia-updates https://www.inputmag.com/culture/queen-elizabeth-ii-death-wi... Nor can it cover as many topics as Wikipedia. Wikipedia's quality also depends on the topic area. Hard science and computing tend to be covered more adeptly than philosophy for example. And article quality simply varies much more in Wikipedia. It ranges from some of the finest writing anywhere, rivalling anything in Britannica and surpassing it in up-to-dateness, to complete rubbish and intentionally falsified content.
  - throwaway09223 4y ago
    I think you are drastically underestimating how absolutely bonkers the 1970 Britannica edition was in terms of (using your example) Social Sciences. I did this analysis long ago and i don't have the set in front of me, but there absolutely were hoaxes and nonsense which were believed to be true (or which fit the prevailing narrative) in 1970. Not being up to date isn't just about incorporating new information. Fields like social sciences have huge revisions and reversals because conclusions in those fields are so often rooted in opinion and inference rather than empirical observation. Yet, no teacher would complain about using an old copy of Britannica.
    - akolbe 4y ago
      Perhaps so, but why choose the 1970 edition, rather than one from the 1990s, or the current online one? At any rate, here is a quote from a BBC journalist: "In the Wikipedia gullibility stakes, no one is infallible. That means any journalist in any newsroom will likely get a sharp slap across the head from an editor for treating Wikipedia with anything but total scepticism (you can imagine the kicking I've taken over this article)." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-37523772 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-37523772 I doubt any journalist ever got such a kicking because they cited Britannica.
      - throwaway09223 4y ago
        It's simply what my grandparents had in my home, back when I still cared about school and when Wikipedia was relatively new. I remember being astounded that this ancient crappy thing would be accepted, while wikipedia would not be. You know in the world of tech they have a similar saying: "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." This does not mean IBM is either a superior choice, or a wise choice.
        akolbe 4y ago
        Yeah, it's a valid comparison. I will let you in on a secret: I have a full 1990s' Britannica set in my home, about three metres from my desk. I consult it maybe four or five times a year, and the Britannica website maybe another dozen times or so. Still, it's good to always be aware that the ways Wikipedia and Britannica are produced are very different and to factor that in (see my post below from just a couple of minutes ago, about the desert article).
- IncRnd 4y ago
  I'm glad you posted that information, because it really shows that random online information can often be wrong or conflict with other online authorities. Here are two quotes from an article that was posted 10 years after your link. [1] "There has been lots of research on the accuracy of Wikipedia, and the results are mixed—some studies show it is just as good as the experts, others show [that] Wikipedia is not accurate at all." and later in that article They found that in general, Wikipedia articles were more biased—with 73 percent of them containing code words, compared to just 34 percent in Britannica. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2015/01/20/wikipedia-or-encyclopaedia-britannica-which-has-more-bias/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2015/01/20/...
  - xapata 4y ago
    > code words I'm not sure that's a great measure of bias. It's easy to write in an unbiased tone, yet still be biased.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - tuukkah 4y ago
      Further, unbiased articles may easily contain biased words. Especially since Wikipedia is an international projects, the articles describe multiple points of view, and the "code words" of the research were terms such as the following: "tax breaks, minimum wage, fuel efficiency [--] death tax, border security, war on terror".
  - TrinaryWorksToo 4y ago
    Bias is not the same thing as being correct or incorrect.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - jcampbell1 4y ago
- 0x0000000 4y ago
  I remember hearing this a long time ago, and the article you linked is from 2005. I wonder if Wikipedia having >= accuracy to traditional encyclopedias remains true today, given how different the web and web users are today.
thrwyoilarticle 4y ago
Foreign to who?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

m463 4y ago

Maybe traditional encyclopedia might give wikipedia a run for the money on subjects, say toilet paper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper But wikipedia is far ahead on more practical articles like which way the toilet paper goes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation

codetrotter 4y ago
Something I recently became aware of is that in some cases toilet paper orientation preference may be due to left handedness vs right handedness. I am right handed and prefer to have the paper oriented over itself. A member of my family is left handed and prefers to have the paper under itself. She once said that for her, with left handedness, having the paper under itself makes it easier to grab.
- idontpost 4y ago
- mhb 4y ago
  Wouldn't this completely depend on which side the toilet paper holder is mounted?
- OJFord 4y ago
  That doesn't make sense to me, surely it's always easier (by whatever little amount) if it's away from the wall ('over itself' as you say I think), whichever side it is, and whichever hand you use dominantly?
- spc476 4y ago
  I don't think handness has anything to do with it. I'm left handed and I prefer the paper oriented over itself.
  - rubslopes 4y ago
    Me too.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hindsightbias 4y ago

Wiki is transparent in a self-referential sense only. History started in 1992. If there’s no hyperlink, it’s lost. Pick any wiki page and see all the dead, rotting citations. I’d bet any mining of actually working citations would average closer to 2015. It used to be people citing something from the 70’s or 80’s would get strange looks from people who lived then, now I see Millenials looking at Gen-Z kids that way. History is written not by the victor, but by the last wiki editor.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
Maybe, but with the extensive number of books, journals, magazines and newspapers scanned and available to view on the Internet Archive, it's never been easier to add or verify a printed source citation. Also various other newspaper archives have mind-numbing amounts of scanned material dating back well over 100 years, and the Wikipedia Library provides free access to these resources for editors.
throwaway09223 4y ago
> If there’s no hyperlink, it’s lost This just isn't true. Most wikipedia references have a hyperlink and a proper citation which can be looked up using traditional means. For example, a cite might look like this: "Intel Pentium Processor G6950 (3M Cache, 2.80 GHz) with SPEC Code(s) SLBMS". Ark.intel.com. 2010-07-13. Archived from the original on 2011-03-09. Retrieved 2010-07-29. The link to intel.com has rotted, but: 1) There's an archive of the page so the information hasn't been lost 2) There's also a full citation, with which you can write a letter to Intel asking them for the document in question ("Intel Pentium Processor G6950 (3M Cache, 2.80 GHz) with SPEC Code(s) SLBMS"). This is a lot more detail than you'd have in a traditional encyclopedia. If you're a researcher, the encyclopedia has given what you need to seek more detail from the primary source - and that's the whole point! archive.org and wikipedia.org working together is really powerful.
- froh 4y ago
  with history begins 1992 they are referencing books, content which is not in the web. you talk about the link quality. other problem.

Tangurena2 4y ago

Last time our family had an encyclopedia set was back in the 70s. And yes, nerd that I was (am, and will forever be) I read it. When we moved overseas, we had to put a lot of stuff in storage, and this was one of the things stolen from storage.

fwipsy 4y ago

I'm not convinced either of you have read enough of either encyclopedia to have anything like a representative sample.

BashiBazouk 4y ago

Heh...Reminds me when I was in school doing a report using the leather bound Encyclopedia Britannica from 1911 that we still had in the book shelves. I still wonder how accurate it was. It was a history report so maybe more so than later editions as it was closer to the event? Who knows...

Test0129 4y ago

It's transparent and unfortunately that's exactly why we know we can't trust it. If you want an eye opening experience pick something in the news that might be scientific. Say, COVID. Then run a correlation between the release of news articles and the frequency of edits to Wikipedia. In theory, this provides the most up to date information. In reality, Wikipedia is a disinformation farm. Contributors may think they are updating the "latest" version of "truth" (like a "fact" checker) but in reality they are making knee jerk decisions to sometimes literally change the definition of something. Still not convinced a paper encyclopedia is better? Still worried a scary private corporation controls Encyclopedias? Steven Pruitt is a legendary "editor" (what an appropriate name) of wikipedia. Holding the record for the most Wikipedia edits of anyone by a large margin, he is a veritable gatekeeper of what Wikipedia defines as truth. Whereas in a corporation you might have this divided among dozens of experts in their field, one man with no known expertise in anything and a dramatically one-sided and well-known political leaning is in control of a LOT of information. In summary, I refuse to donate to Wikipedia and actively promote other sources of information (such as scholarly articles, meta-analyses, expert blog posts, etc) as better secondary or primary sources of information. Parents, teachers, and schools are absolutely right to be suspect of Wikipedia. Aside from relatively niche, infrequently edited articles, Wikipedia is no better than asking your neighbor what he thinks about a subject. At least you might get a beer out of doing that, though.

howenterprisey 4y ago
Leaving aside your other points, it's beyond ludicrous to claim that Steven Pruitt controls anything on Wikipedia. Please take more care that you yourself don't repeat random misinformation about Wikipedia.
- Test0129 4y ago
  > it's beyond ludicrous to claim that Steven Pruitt Someone with millions of edits does not de-facto have the systems in place, the time, and the power to influence any article he puts his mind to? What I posted is inference, not misinformation, and worth considering despite the downvote parade happening on it right now by pro-wiki shills. To call what I posted misinformation is a sign of times. Inference is not misinformation and while I have no "fact checked" articles proving he manipulates wiki articles he is a defacto central power of Wikipedia whose contributions are vast. So vast, in fact, they shadow every other contributor by orders of magnitude. If this doesn't concern you I guess by all means, cite wikipedia in all your scholarly works. Isn't my problem, anyway. I don't use it and I don't donate to it. I have no dog in this race. Ignoring Pruitt my point stands in general. Wikipedia edits spike during times of political strife, elections, major news, etc. They are edited so frequently that it's impossible to tell what is real and fake. This is the principle failing of any truly open system that does no KYC. It inevitably collapses under the weight of idiots (which have more density than smart people). If Wikipedia expects to be trusted authors should be credential-locked to fields and vetted by the community. Except that can't happen because then you'd have to pay for it, and then it's not wikipedia. I'd rather have vetted experts writing articles on their fields (e.g. an actual encyclopedia) than any random shmuck off the street being able to contribute to an alleged body of "knowledge". Right now I can go contribute to the article on theoretical physics. Something I know nothing about. That should not be possible on any system alleging to be a source of truth.

chris_wot 4y ago

Yes, but good authors are routinely removed from Wikipedia by a mob of less than great editors. Happens all the time. Happened to me. For a sample of my work, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Baker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Baker

janandonly 4y ago
What if you happen to have a minority view that happens to be the correct one?. No amount of wiki editors can protect you from “mob” changes on their platform.
Kim_Bruning 4y ago
You are -ah- not a big fish! I always thought you were a bit eccentric, but you seemed to be fairly sane otherwise, and managed to always keep yourself out of trouble. How did you manage to get yourself sitebanned of all things? %-( I mean, arbcom reviewed it too, so it's not just a mob. Did you get tempted into saying or doing something unwise? I hope you're doing ok now at least.
- chris_wot 4y ago
  ArbCom took over the block, I believe they did this so they could review it at a later date if I ever wanted to ask to come back. Could be wrong about that. Unlikely this will ever happen. My mental health is not always the best.
  - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
    I'm sad to hear that. I wish you all the best!

dtgriscom 4y ago

Back in the late '50s, my dad had just gotten his first significant paycheck. That evening, Mom and he were admiring the cash on the kitchen table, when the Encyclopedia Brittanica salesman knocked. And that's all she wrote. By the time I was able to read, we had two separate complete editions of the Brittanica, and he'd read both through, A-Z.

Archelaos 4y ago

I think Encyclopedia Britannica should not be the benchmark, but "real" scientific/scholarly encyclopedias and dictionaries.

verisimilitudes 4y ago

I was waiting for my comment to be flagged. Here it is again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33124973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33124973 > Give a single example of how the Encyclopedia Britannica be worse than random idiots, foreign agents, and shills on Wikipedia. I received no answer, which is what I expected. It was easier to flag the comment, because this forum is pathetic.