6 ms·

I do it. I don't know how to explain why but these pages sometimes contain more information than people think. Like the critics, key-people, government involvem

by phyphy 3y ago

I do it. I don't know how to explain why but these pages sometimes contain more information than people think. Like the critics, key-people, government involvement, controversies, etc. And the best part is that I can trust this information to be neutral and factually correct.

avarun 3y ago
> And the best part is that I can trust this information to be neutral and factually correct. Relatively compared to other sources, sure, but not absolutely. Wikipedia supereditors have their own biases that are obvious when reading articles on topics one has expert knowledge on.
- berkes 3y ago
  What other accessible resources are there that would give a higher neutrality, and factual correctness? (I include "accessible" deliberate, because while I like reading scientific papers, they are hard to read and often difficult to get or impossible to find)
  - AlbertRosen 3y ago
    You can find most scientific papers on Sci-hub.
- carschno 3y ago
  Obviously, Wikipedia editors are human too. As opposed to most other resources, however, Wikipedia has the primary goal to provide high quality information. The contributors are not perfect, but they come astonishingly close to achieving that goal. Of course, you should never blindly trust any source, but in spite of the simple fact that every author has their own "biases", Wikipedia's general level of trustworthiness exceeds that of most other internet resources by far.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > Wikipedia's general level of trustworthiness exceeds that of most other internet resources by far. This can be true of technical articles, especially covering popular subjects which are likely to be reviewed by enough people that errors get removed. Anything even tangentially related to politics is hopeless.
    - jl6 3y ago
      Not completely true. There are two different types of political articles: 1) Those where two opposing edit-warring factions have battled each other into a compromise/stalemate, resulting in a passably neutral article, and 2) Those where a single aligned group of edit-warriors have gained supremacy and have come to gatekeep the article against any opposing perspectives.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        It's worse than that. It affects the entire site. Here's an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Three_(automobile_manufacturers) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Three_(automobile_manufact... > "GM, for instance, at one time picked up the entire cost of funding health insurance premiums of its employees, their survivors and GM retirees, as the US did not have a universal health care system." This is an article about automakers. The reason they picked up future healthcare costs is because they're future healthcare costs, which lets the bosses pay themselves bonuses from current profits and then the company can go bankrupt from unfunded future obligations after they've moved on to another company. The reason isn't that the US doesn't have a universal healthcare system, and even if it did, they could have provided supplemental insurance etc., and would still have wanted to because that too is a future cost instead of a present day one. The reason that qualifier is there is as a dig against the US healthcare system, in a way that aligns with particular partisans. The opposing partisan might have inserted something like "as the US has high healthcare costs as a result of regulatory dysfunction" though of course neutrality would have been to say neither of them because it's an article about automakers rather than healthcare systems. And yet it's there, and that kind of thing is all over the place.
- aierou 3y ago
  Moreover, Wikipedia relies heavily on news articles as sources. It goes without saying that news outlets are not well known for holding neutral positions.
adlpz 3y ago
> And the best part is that I can trust this information to be neutral and factually correct. Excuse me, what? Wikipedia is great. But assuming it's neutral and factually correct is delusional. Like with every single organization made up of human beings, power dynamics and censorship are part of Wikipedia. It's still the less bad one, but no one should trust it that blindly.
- curtisblaine 3y ago
  Is it even "the less bad one"? I guess it's not if you're on the wrong side of censorship.
- jstummbillig 3y ago
  Trust is a concept around personal choice and not facts. The feeling that you can trust something is what trust is. For different people to get to that feeling means different things. A lot of people place trust in certain figures of authority, in politics or on social media. The reasons for which they do so differ wildly and very often have very little to do with ground truth (although I suspect most people would find that hard to admit). When somebody says they can trust Wikipedia to be factually correct that mostly is a reflection of choices and what they believe helps them to navigate the world, in a way that is manageable and reasonable to them. Given that time is always a constraint to a varying degree, I think you could do a lot worse if being less wrong is your goal.
- carschno 3y ago
  You might have an absolutist view on the meaning of neutrality. Of course, you can argue philosophically that absolute neutrality does not exist in theory. What Wikipedia does achieve in practice, though, is a very successful attempt to provide balanced and well researched information on an incredible number of topics. The inevitable occasional mistake does not bring it down to the level of arbitrary internet resources.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    Wikipedia, unlike more classical encyclopedias such as e.g. Britannica, is not a primary source, by design. On anything tangentially related to topics like politics it's obligated to rely on sources like the US media which make no effort to even feign neutrality or balance. And of course these sources are then cited by editors who, similarly, have little interest in even feigning balance, beyond some minimal pretext. The ideal of checks and balances keeping the system relatively neutral would only work if there was a relative balance of ideological views among overactive editors. And on that, I'm reminded of that line from the Blues Brothers, 'We have all types of music here - country and western!'

by phyphy 3y ago

avarun 3y ago

> And the best part is that I can trust this information to be neutral and factually correct. Relatively compared to other sources, sure, but not absolutely. Wikipedia supereditors have their own biases that are obvious when reading articles on topics one has expert knowledge on.

berkes 3y ago
What other accessible resources are there that would give a higher neutrality, and factual correctness? (I include "accessible" deliberate, because while I like reading scientific papers, they are hard to read and often difficult to get or impossible to find)
- AlbertRosen 3y ago
  You can find most scientific papers on Sci-hub.
carschno 3y ago
Obviously, Wikipedia editors are human too. As opposed to most other resources, however, Wikipedia has the primary goal to provide high quality information. The contributors are not perfect, but they come astonishingly close to achieving that goal. Of course, you should never blindly trust any source, but in spite of the simple fact that every author has their own "biases", Wikipedia's general level of trustworthiness exceeds that of most other internet resources by far.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > Wikipedia's general level of trustworthiness exceeds that of most other internet resources by far. This can be true of technical articles, especially covering popular subjects which are likely to be reviewed by enough people that errors get removed. Anything even tangentially related to politics is hopeless.
  - jl6 3y ago
    Not completely true. There are two different types of political articles: 1) Those where two opposing edit-warring factions have battled each other into a compromise/stalemate, resulting in a passably neutral article, and 2) Those where a single aligned group of edit-warriors have gained supremacy and have come to gatekeep the article against any opposing perspectives.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      It's worse than that. It affects the entire site. Here's an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Three_(automobile_manufacturers) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Three_(automobile_manufact... > "GM, for instance, at one time picked up the entire cost of funding health insurance premiums of its employees, their survivors and GM retirees, as the US did not have a universal health care system." This is an article about automakers. The reason they picked up future healthcare costs is because they're future healthcare costs, which lets the bosses pay themselves bonuses from current profits and then the company can go bankrupt from unfunded future obligations after they've moved on to another company. The reason isn't that the US doesn't have a universal healthcare system, and even if it did, they could have provided supplemental insurance etc., and would still have wanted to because that too is a future cost instead of a present day one. The reason that qualifier is there is as a dig against the US healthcare system, in a way that aligns with particular partisans. The opposing partisan might have inserted something like "as the US has high healthcare costs as a result of regulatory dysfunction" though of course neutrality would have been to say neither of them because it's an article about automakers rather than healthcare systems. And yet it's there, and that kind of thing is all over the place.
aierou 3y ago
Moreover, Wikipedia relies heavily on news articles as sources. It goes without saying that news outlets are not well known for holding neutral positions.

adlpz 3y ago

> And the best part is that I can trust this information to be neutral and factually correct. Excuse me, what? Wikipedia is great. But assuming it's neutral and factually correct is delusional. Like with every single organization made up of human beings, power dynamics and censorship are part of Wikipedia. It's still the less bad one, but no one should trust it that blindly.

curtisblaine 3y ago
Is it even "the less bad one"? I guess it's not if you're on the wrong side of censorship.
jstummbillig 3y ago
Trust is a concept around personal choice and not facts. The feeling that you can trust something is what trust is. For different people to get to that feeling means different things. A lot of people place trust in certain figures of authority, in politics or on social media. The reasons for which they do so differ wildly and very often have very little to do with ground truth (although I suspect most people would find that hard to admit). When somebody says they can trust Wikipedia to be factually correct that mostly is a reflection of choices and what they believe helps them to navigate the world, in a way that is manageable and reasonable to them. Given that time is always a constraint to a varying degree, I think you could do a lot worse if being less wrong is your goal.
carschno 3y ago
You might have an absolutist view on the meaning of neutrality. Of course, you can argue philosophically that absolute neutrality does not exist in theory. What Wikipedia does achieve in practice, though, is a very successful attempt to provide balanced and well researched information on an incredible number of topics. The inevitable occasional mistake does not bring it down to the level of arbitrary internet resources.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Wikipedia, unlike more classical encyclopedias such as e.g. Britannica, is not a primary source, by design. On anything tangentially related to topics like politics it's obligated to rely on sources like the US media which make no effort to even feign neutrality or balance. And of course these sources are then cited by editors who, similarly, have little interest in even feigning balance, beyond some minimal pretext. The ideal of checks and balances keeping the system relatively neutral would only work if there was a relative balance of ideological views among overactive editors. And on that, I'm reminded of that line from the Blues Brothers, 'We have all types of music here - country and western!'