Edit, Revert: The Wikipedia Discussion Thread.

[Llan]

Since there wasn’t a thread I decided to make one, so let’s bring you up to date. Wikipedia is 25 years old, is widely used, houses millions of articles and is in 348 languages. It has a very active community, its credibility is debated but it is alright for everyday use. It uses the mediawiki software, it is deeply integrated with the Wikimedia Foundation, and most people can join and become an editor!

[DutchFormosa]

I'd never try to write my own articles. The only thing I really do is just proofread and spell check some stuff. But I guess doing that can be useful too

[Ethensia]

Has anyone else been told not to use wikipedia because it's unreliable and people can edit it at anytime?
I still use it anyway.

[Jedi Council]

Does this really need to be a thread? Wikipedia is cool - it's fun to surf. It's also not always reliable without further research or verification.

[Magna-Parva]

Is it just me, or has the WMF been fucking up even more frequently than usual lately? The scandals seem to be coming fast and furious. Simple summaries, the WWU fiasco, etc., etc.,

[Unogonduria]

I have created multiple articles on the Bulgarian Wikipedia, particularly regarding extinct creatures like Anomalocaris. I have made numerous edits, the majority of which are in historical articles, however.

[Slembana]

I love Wikipedia. It’s my favourite website.

[Welves]

I love reading Wikipedia, my commonly visited articles are often about history relating to the Habsburgs, Liechtenstein, the HRE, Austria, etc.

I have edited the Austria-Hungary article before, fixing some small inaccurate details. I've donated 10 dollars to Wikipedia and plan on donating more soon.

I often visit the Liechtenstein article when changing things in my overview.


Also, Wikipedia is like the only major informational website that does not use AI

[Llan]

Does this really need to be a thread? Wikipedia is cool - it's fun to surf. It's also not always reliable without further research or verification.

I edit Wikipedia, it has a verification process, it requires citations, and it has only experienced editors edit protected pages to prevent spam and defamation.

[Kay Pacha]

Has anyone else been told not to use wikipedia because it's unreliable and people can edit it at anytime?
I still use it anyway.

What people mean by this is that you shouldn't be citing any encyclopedia in your essays, including Wikipedia. Wikipedia is as reliable as the reader is competent at checking references, which is to say, quite, in a better world, etc. etc., cheers

[Of the islands]

I don't think wikipedia is such a bad source. And it's not like anyone can edit that much because of page protection,other users can reverse your edits, and they are attributed to a user or ip address! I personally don't have a wikipedia account but i do have a wikitravel account.

[Jedi Council]

Does this really need to be a thread? Wikipedia is cool - it's fun to surf. It's also not always reliable without further research or verification.

I edit Wikipedia, it has a verification process, it requires citations, and it has only experienced editors edit protected pages to prevent spam and defamation.

I have no doubt the team behind Wikipedia is dedicated. Most of the pages I frequent (history, politics, etc) are decent, but I have found inaccuracies or simplifications. Wikipedia is great to get an overview or layman's understanding of an issue.

[Neo Lunatea]

If I was a wikipedia editor, I'd do something similar to this and get instantly banned

[Ethensia]

If I was a wikipedia editor, I'd do something similar to this and get instantly banned

(Image)

stuff that teachers worry about when their kids use wikipedia

[Colourful Clothed]

how strict is getting wikipedia articles through is? I'm writing my first (bad) article on a somewhat niche elementry-idol group called Himelove (i cant type the kana for it bc i havent downloaded jap on my school computer, but roumanji is 'himerabu'). and, even for the japanese vers of the article, there is NOT enough sources and articles. Would I just be able to get it through easy by translating it to english and keeping sources?

[J Andrew Murray]

wikipedia is way more biased than it seems to be
please don't use it if you're researching controversial subjects
IMO the internet archive's better for that

[Colourful Clothed]

wikipedia is way more biased than it seems to be
please don't use it if you're researching controversial subjects
IMO the internet archive's better for that

yea, esp on the jap wiki. the whole nanjing massacre article kept getting changed in tiny details to fit a revisionist narrative, even being renamed to 'the nanjing incident' to undermine the significance of the whole thing.

[Neo Lunatea]

wikipedia is way more biased than it seems to be
please don't use it if you're researching controversial subjects
IMO the internet archive's better for that

which one, there are multiple articles called Nanjing incident and Nanjing massacre

edit: never mind. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/南京事件

[Unogonduria]

If I was a wikipedia editor, I'd do something similar to this and get instantly banned

(Image)

It'd get immediately deleted bro

[Cole Whyte-Gurney]

I suspect wikipedia is a lot less biased than any answer you will get from asking an AI agent. Particularly an AI agent that Musk has fucked about with.

[Unogonduria]

I suspect wikipedia is a lot less biased than any answer you will get from asking an AI agent. Particularly an AI agent that Musk has fucked about with.

You still think Musk is among the biggest fish in the sea?

[Cole Whyte-Gurney]

I suspect wikipedia is a lot less biased than any answer you will get from asking an AI agent. Particularly an AI agent that Musk has fucked about with.

You still think Musk is among the biggest fish in the sea?

What?

[The Archregimancy]

I edit Wikipedia, it has a verification process, it requires citations, and it has only experienced editors edit protected pages to prevent spam and defamation.

I have no doubt the team behind Wikipedia is dedicated. Most of the pages I frequent (history, politics, etc) are decent, but I have found inaccuracies or simplifications. Wikipedia is great to get an overview or layman's understanding of an issue.

This is fair.

Wikipedia is usually a good starting point for an overview, or as a quick reminder on a point of fact, and is usually fine as a reference point for supporting casual internet forum debate.

But... as I always used to tell my students back when I was still teaching at university level, it should absolutely not be considered an acceptable citable source for supporting academic research. It's never a replacement for studies written by actual specialists in a subject. It should never be cited in student essays/papers as a reliable citation except in the narrowest of circumstances; for example, to compare and contrast robust academic work with inaccuracies in Wikipedia.

And yes, university lecturers can often tell when students are using the citations in a Wikipedia article as the basis of their research rather than doing their own research. If a batch of students are all using the same citation that isn't in the work you've assigned them, then that's a signal to check if that citation is in the Wikipedia article on the subject. That said, it can be a launch pad for research if those Wiki citations are only used as a starting point rather than the end point.

I've also been the editor of two peer-reviewed archaeology journals over the last 15 years, and a couple of times I've even had to send papers back to the author because they were attempting to use Wikipedia as a citation in a peer-reviewed paper. That's absolutely not on.

[The Archregimancy]

I suspect wikipedia is a lot less biased than any answer you will get from asking an AI agent. Particularly an AI agent that Musk has fucked about with.

Absolutely.

I once, for giggles, asked ChatGPT to summarise my main areas of work and my publications. It was broadly fine up until 10 years ago - though it missed a few - but from 2015 onwards it simply started making things up out of whole cloth. It did at least provide a bit of a laugh for a colleague and I over a non-existent book we were supposed to have co-authored.

This is, incidentally, something that's also now creeping into a small number of submissions to peer reviewed journals; and regrettably it tends to be from authors in the developing world. I won't even name the country, but we recently had a submission to the journal I currently edit, and one of the referees thought the bibliography was a bit odd, so on their own initiative decided to doublecheck some of the entries. A good number didn't seem to exist. The author in this case had in fact declared that they'd used AI to help fine-tune their English - which is considered acceptable use by our publishers - but it looks like they went significantly further than that.

[Unogonduria]

Most of the times when I write a Wikipedia article regarding some ancient extinct creature (which I then link as the translation of the other articles regarding the same subject), which is very exhausting because I have to find multiple sources and then wonder how I am going to possibly translate them from English into Bulgaria. This is partly the reason I rarely do it, although a notable exception is Megalograptus, for which I created a draft, which I then copied and paste into the Notepad app, which then I finished a few days later.