Wiki was getting popular when I was in college over 10 years ago. I recall a history professor telling me not to use Wikipedia as source. I am like, okay, I will just use the source wiki uses, which are pretty solid in my opinion. Wiki came a long way.
Yeah, it’s important to remember that wikipedia, itself, isn’t a source, it’s a summary of different sources. It’s a great resource to find sources and get an overview of a topic, though.
Wikipedia does a pretty decent job of eventually being correct, at any given time it can be outrageously inaccurate. Its good to not just use wikipedia entrys and use the sources that are linked there. By using the sources that are cited you are helping to keep wiki trustworthy and helps avoid you using bad information.
It works well to manage the integrity of wiki. I think being able to intuitively navigate between entries by a variety of metrics like edits that have remained unedited the longest/shorest, newest/oldest, etc would be a very good addition to wiki.
Some kind of webarchive of wiki sources would also be amazing so that if the sources disappear or change over time there is a connection to what it was at the time it originally/previously was used as a source on wiki.
And maybe some of this already exists and im just not very good at getting my 4dollars a month worth :P
Wikipedia does a pretty decent job of eventually being correct, at any given time it can be outrageously inaccurate.
Yeah, I agree with this. I work at a high end engineering company, and some engineers have gotten into trouble using things like materials properties that they got from Wikipedia and turned out to be wrong, with unfortunate results. By policy, if we don’t know something like that we’re supposed to ask our tech library to get us the information, and that’s why.
Consider the following completely made up scenario that bears no relation to any real life examples at all:
Ferrous logic designs and manufactures the 420blaze ic, which is available in several different package specifications. The Wikipedia article on the chip says it’s available in the 69ubga package, used in the earbean made by famous Cupertino tech company legume computer.
Look at the data sheet, there’s no 69ubga package specified. Make an edit to the article, get reverted because the data sheet is a primary source (Wikipedia doesn’t like primary sources). Look at the secondary source for the possibly erroneous claim that the chip is available in 69ubga and it’s an obscure industry article riddled with spelling and grammar errors directly copying whole paragraphs out of the company’s marketing materials.
Look up a tear down of the earbean, it doesn’t even have the 420blaze chip in it, but does have a different ic in the 69ubga package.
Push a different edit with the tear down as a source, get reverted. A person directly looking at the thing in question and providing evidence that it’s not true is a primary source. Make a suggestion in the talk that the low quality secondary source used may be not the best and has multiple errors and is just directly transcribing the marketing material which at the time the source was published was talking up the now torpedoed deal to supply chips to legume computer for their earbean.
Have my comments deleted and get banned for an edit war.
A bunch of wikipedia sources are already archived on the wayback machine, anything cited to like pre-2010, online, there’s a good chance it got taken down or changed in the last 13 years.
Please dig a little bit deeper. You may end up with a stack of links to 404 sites instead of actual sources. Just because you copied a citation from WP doesn’t mean the source actually exists, let alone contains the information you seek.
And it’ll get even better. That being said, it’s worth checking out the Talk pages on the articles you want to use, as they may contain information about what is (and isn’t) displayed.
I started passively editing it and I’ve been incredibly impressed.
Wiki was getting popular when I was in college over 10 years ago. I recall a history professor telling me not to use Wikipedia as source. I am like, okay, I will just use the source wiki uses, which are pretty solid in my opinion. Wiki came a long way.
Yeah, it’s important to remember that wikipedia, itself, isn’t a source, it’s a summary of different sources. It’s a great resource to find sources and get an overview of a topic, though.
Wikipedia does a pretty decent job of eventually being correct, at any given time it can be outrageously inaccurate. Its good to not just use wikipedia entrys and use the sources that are linked there. By using the sources that are cited you are helping to keep wiki trustworthy and helps avoid you using bad information.
It works well to manage the integrity of wiki. I think being able to intuitively navigate between entries by a variety of metrics like edits that have remained unedited the longest/shorest, newest/oldest, etc would be a very good addition to wiki.
Some kind of webarchive of wiki sources would also be amazing so that if the sources disappear or change over time there is a connection to what it was at the time it originally/previously was used as a source on wiki.
And maybe some of this already exists and im just not very good at getting my 4dollars a month worth :P
Yeah, I agree with this. I work at a high end engineering company, and some engineers have gotten into trouble using things like materials properties that they got from Wikipedia and turned out to be wrong, with unfortunate results. By policy, if we don’t know something like that we’re supposed to ask our tech library to get us the information, and that’s why.
Why not fix theses pages?
They get fixed, but that doesn’t prevent someone from using erroneous information on the next one. Just one bad number can be a big deal.
Because editors will revert it.
Consider the following completely made up scenario that bears no relation to any real life examples at all:
Ferrous logic designs and manufactures the 420blaze ic, which is available in several different package specifications. The Wikipedia article on the chip says it’s available in the 69ubga package, used in the earbean made by famous Cupertino tech company legume computer.
Look at the data sheet, there’s no 69ubga package specified. Make an edit to the article, get reverted because the data sheet is a primary source (Wikipedia doesn’t like primary sources). Look at the secondary source for the possibly erroneous claim that the chip is available in 69ubga and it’s an obscure industry article riddled with spelling and grammar errors directly copying whole paragraphs out of the company’s marketing materials.
Look up a tear down of the earbean, it doesn’t even have the 420blaze chip in it, but does have a different ic in the 69ubga package.
Push a different edit with the tear down as a source, get reverted. A person directly looking at the thing in question and providing evidence that it’s not true is a primary source. Make a suggestion in the talk that the low quality secondary source used may be not the best and has multiple errors and is just directly transcribing the marketing material which at the time the source was published was talking up the now torpedoed deal to supply chips to legume computer for their earbean.
Have my comments deleted and get banned for an edit war.
Never trust wikipedia.
A bunch of wikipedia sources are already archived on the wayback machine, anything cited to like pre-2010, online, there’s a good chance it got taken down or changed in the last 13 years.
As long as you verify the source still exists. There are so many dead links on Wikipedia.
Archive.org bots replace dead links with working alternatives a lot nowadays. All the more reason to support that modern museum
Please dig a little bit deeper. You may end up with a stack of links to 404 sites instead of actual sources. Just because you copied a citation from WP doesn’t mean the source actually exists, let alone contains the information you seek.
In that case, try using an archived version of the webpage, for example at the Wayback Machine
And it’ll get even better. That being said, it’s worth checking out the Talk pages on the articles you want to use, as they may contain information about what is (and isn’t) displayed.
I started passively editing it and I’ve been incredibly impressed.
deleted by creator