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.
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.