What about Wiki?
I often see online references to how unreliable Wiki is as a source.
I used to ascribe to that point of view, particularly when Wiki was first becoming popular. I would add a kind of disclaimer whenever I linked to it.
But I’ve found over the years that, although it’s hardly an impeccable or unbiased source (especially for things related to politics), it’s one of the better places to go for general information on a topic. After all, Wiki ordinarily uses information from other sources, available in its “References” list at the end of each article. The list is often extremely lengthy and includes many of the very sources that people who deride Wiki would consider rather reliable. And then after that, Wiki often has a group of “External Links” to tell you more.
So, what’s with all the contempt directed towards Wiki? One should always take online information—or that matter, any information—with a grain of salt, and read primary sources whenever possible. Wiki is no exception to that rule. But Wiki is a fairly good way to quickly get a host of information from many sources, and I often find it useful.
Don’t you?
[ADDENDUM: I had absolutely no idea about this:
wikilove:
The state of being completely infatuated with open source media, source codes, wikis, freeware, ect. Wikilove can lead to all sorts of problems, including misinformation and spyware infestation.“Billy’s in wikilove! He’s downloaded Google Earth, does all his word processing on Writely, and visits Wikipedia ever day. His computer also has more spyware than a sailor has STD’s.”
I notice that that entry is from 2006. The Stone Age of Wiki, which began in 2001.
And here is Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Wikipedia—according to Wikipedia.]
I think it’s relatively safe to depend on Wikipedia for basic stuff about public figures but for complex political issues caution is required.
The one area that annoys me is when they delve into the political musings of actors, athletes, musicians and the like. I don’t see how it’s relevant that some actor supports the Labor party or whatever and that raises a red flag with me.
But for a quick check on a musicians discography I find it pretty reliable.
I do not trust Wikipedia for anything that has a political tinge.
I do trust it for basic facts that cannot be twisted to serve a political agenda.
One major, fundamental aspect/goal of the Gramscian “Long March though our institutions/culture” is to control what we know and what we can say and think, via things like the Left’s control of the Educational Establishment, the MSM, like PC, and the manipulation of language.
Why, then, would you think that an entity like Wiki which, as I understand it, can be edited by just about anyone, can be trusted as the source for complete and factually accurate information; for the truth.
I forget where I saw this the other day, but someone noted that the Wiki biographical article on someone who was suddenly involved in the political frey had some hundreds of edits done to it in just the last couple of days.
It’s better than any paper encyclopedia ever was. Even if correct at publication — a massive if — they soon outdated.
I think it’s funny that people think the editors of the old paper encyclopedias didn’t have political bias that bled through. With Wikipedia you can at least look to see the arguments about wordings, so you know if there are disagreements.
For the links alone, Wiki is a valued source.
Millions of links without a bookmark on your device. Similar to the bottom third of the Drudge Report.
Links = footnotes.
P.S.–Beside those who have an agenda behind their editing, you also have to count the edits done by the stupid and the simply misinformed.
Adding up all this editing, it seems to me that Wiki is a very precarious source to rely on.
Even if you say, “well, I just want to bone up on the fundamentals of this issue, person, or situation,” who is to say that even the fundamental information on Wiki is correct and complete, and isn’t missing something that is key? Are they all polymaths at work there?
Moreover, since you’ve come to Wiki as a “shortcut,” do you really have the time to chase down and read/confirm each and every one of the cited references?
It’s a great place to start when you need some “initial context” when researching something, but that’s really as far as it should go. Lists of references are useful, as long as one realizes that the list may not be comprehensive (e.g. useful references may have been omitted).
That said, for innocuous topics, it’s great. Anything the least bit controversial has to be suspect.
Finally, keep in mind that any crowdsource knowledge project can have a large proportion of edits made by people with absolutely nothing better to do with their time…
I like Wiki a great deal for science and tech material. I recall that the Wiki page on Sara Palin was edited over 200 times within the 24 hours after her VP selection, and the result was all propaganda trash. Recently, there was some similar political edit fest, and the result did appear to be much better.
Agreed. Wiki is mostly great for anything far from a political agenda. I have no compunction about making wiki my first stop when I’m starting to get my arms around a topic.
But it is so annoying that something so great should be such a tool for the left.
This wouldn’t be hard to change, if Wikians wanted to. But they don’t and until they do, they deserve the asterisk as unreliable.
And they will never get a dime from me.
steve.c–The problem is that, increasingly, there isn’t one single thing–no matter how innocuous or seemingly “neutral”– that doesn’t, somehow or the other, fall under the foul, spreading penumbra of something that is, for the Left, “political.”
“So, what’s with all the contempt directed towards Wiki?”
I see this all the time. It’s a way to signal your superiority to something. Someone mentions a popular movie or tv show, read the comments, people are quite eager to say X is terrible, or they never watch tv, or they stopped watching movies 15 year ago, etc. If you criticize or dismiss something, you must be better than that something.
I agree, Wikipedia very useful, I probably wouldn’t use it as a source for info on George Bush, for example, beyond basics, but if I want to know the population of Moscow say, or World Series winners since 1900, or something about the Magna Carta, etc, it’s a great reference.
In light of the ability to edit Wiki pages at some furiously fast pace, it occurs to me that this could be used for purposes not unlike those described in “1984.”
“Winston Smith works in the Minitrue RecDep (Records Department), “rectifying” historical records to concord with Big Brother’s current pronouncements so that everything the Party says is true.” — Wikipedia (Ha!)
Ignore last week’s Wiki page. Only pay attention to today’s page. What did last week’s page say anyway??
I find for science and math it’s usually reliable if the topic is not one that draws crackpots; however it is typically at a very advanced level and not usually for the normal audience an encyclopedia draws.
It does suffer from lack of perspective: some manga 3 people read might have an article 10 times as long as say, Thomas Edison’s. But you don;t have to read anything you don’t want to.
When I was a child we treated encyclopedias as the “last word” in general information. If you want some amusement, go into a second-hand store and find a very old set of encyclopedias. If you spend any time at all perusing them, you will be shocked at the misinformation they contain. No doubt, it was the common wisdom of it’s time, but these things change.
Wikipedia is a useful source, and it usually remains mostly current (unlike your parents’ set of encyclopedias). For politically tainted subjects, always read both sides and make up your own mind. The facts have probably been skewed and spun by both sides. Caveat emptor.
Wikipedia is often good for facts, but not so much for truth.
Snow on Pine on August 23, 2019 at 3:45 pm said:
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I forget where I saw this the other day, but someone noted that the Wiki biographical article on someone who was suddenly involved in the political frey had some hundreds of edits done to it in just the last couple of days.
* * *
Sometime earlier this year, I did a deep dive on the history of a particular topic (which I do not now recall) and watched a rather interesting back and forth of change, counter-change (repeated several times), discussion, concession, and eventually “final” version. It was a semi-political topic, as I recall, which (as Snow remarked to steve) seems to include just about everything these days.
However, if you are researching some reasonably arcane subject (as I often do for historical interests) and happen upon a page edited by a true aficionado, you can save yourself days, if not weeks, in a large university library (small ones won’t have the resources in the first place).
Over the years, the Wiki article on my old high school has provided amusement. Now and again, it contained some howlers- which were usually short-lived. IIRC, one time it contained a statement to the effect that “George Bush is a doofus.” The edit adding that statement came from a classmate of mine, whom I see when I am back in my hometown. I never asked her about her edit. 🙂
While I agree that on controversial political topics, one should take Wiki with a grain of salt, Wiki also contains data which can be used in political arguments. For example, the Southern Strategy narrative that the South went Republican because of Nixon and because Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Bill in 1964 can be easily refuted by Wiki election data. Dewey got 27% of the Southern vote in 1948. Eisenhower got 48% of the Southern vote in 1952. Ike’s Southern percentage in 1956 also was higher than Goldwater’s in 1964.
For arguments against the advocates for lefty regimes in Latin America, I find the following data-filled websites useful.
FAOSTAT: Food and agriculture data
World Bank Open Data
A Chavista tool once replied that because the “Evil Empire” controls the World Bank, its data is suspect. Only problem with that argument is that the World Bank gets its data from the government. The Venezuelan government sends its data to the World Bank.
If you want learn about a mathematical topic or some pop culture figure, wikipedia is fine. Not so much for political topics like global warming and such. I use wikipedia all the time with the caveat that it cannot be trusted on some topics. You can sometimes tell if some comment to make someone or something look has been inserted, as it often doesn’t fit in smoothly with the rest of the writing. For an example of what looks like bias, see the article on Richard Lindzen when it comes to the subject of climate change.
I use Wikipedia a lot, but carefully. I agree with many of the comments here: it’s good for noncontroversial topics, and sometimes even for links on controversial topics. If in doubt, check the footnotes.
I recently wrote about misinformation in the Wikipedia article about Smugglers Notch in my town in Vermont:
https://switchelphilosopher.blog/2019/07/29/a-wikipedia-story/
The problem is that, increasingly, there isn’t one single thing–no matter how innocuous or seemingly “neutral”– that doesn’t, somehow or the other, fall under the foul, spreading penumbra of something that is, for the Left, “political.”
Snow on Pines: Too true.
One of the best Brexit arguments was that the EU is always a “work in progress” but moving only to the left and towards more centralized power. Maybe the EU is OK enough now, but who knows how much further it goes tomorrow.
I somehow end up rarely using it.
For pop culture, it’s pretty damn good. I often look it up for its movie synopses when I’m watching a movie and can’t figure out what’s going on. For bands, songs, albums it will tell you the sum total of what has been said about these subjects, on the net, anyway. For old TV shows or video games, ditto.
It’s not definitive on sports subjects, but it’s pretty good.
But for politics, obsessive left wing admins have scrubbed all leftist politicans’ profiles of any negative information and larded up conservatives with fake news. Any political issue, including science and history, will lean so far left as to be a parody. There is no balance at all. It’s worse than a Wash Post fact check.
So, there you have it. Good for pop culture, useless for anything remotely political.
Gell Mann amnesia. I trust wiki for birth/death dates, and that’s about it. The citation in Wiki, about Gell Mann Amnesia, was wrong, for quite a long time.
You mean you used to “subscribe” to that view. Ascribe means attribute.
I do not trust Wikipedia for anything that has a political tinge.
I do trust it for basic facts that cannot be twisted to serve a political agenda.
Exactly. I have been reading a series of novels on 19th and 18th century British military and economic history. I keep running to Wiki to check his facts and all are right there. It’s useless on any modern political issue.
This has been Wiki unpersoned: https://thepeoplescube.com/
Wiki doesn’t seem as bad as it used to be. Unfortunately, I think that’s because the legacy media has gotten much worse.