There’s a lot of problems with Wikipedia, but in my years editing there (I’m extended protected rank), I’ve come to terms that it’s about as good as it can be.
In all but one edit war, the better sourced team came out on top. Source quality discussion is also quite good. There’s a problem with from positive/negative tone in articles, and sometimes articles get away with bad sourcing before someone can correct it, but this is about as good as any information hub can get.
I remember in the past few years that I’ve had to switch to non-American or non-British versions of Wikipedia just in order to find the answer I was looking for.
We need to remind Americans and Britains that knowledge on Wikipedia doesn’t stop with their languages. We need to do a better job of gathering knowledge from non-English sources and translating those into English. Same goes vice versa for English sources and pages into languages that other people can understand.
There’s still a lot of work to be done with Wikipedia to make it truly a universal knowledge repository. But it is one of the best we have
I remeber an article form a decade or more ago which did some research and said that basically, yes there are inaccuracies on Wikipedia, and yes there are over-simplifications, but** no more than in any other encyclopaedia**. They argued that this meant that it should be considered equally valid as an academic resource.
There’s a lot of problems with Wikipedia, but in my years editing there (I’m extended protected rank), I’ve come to terms that it’s about as good as it can be.
In all but one edit war, the better sourced team came out on top. Source quality discussion is also quite good. There’s a problem with from positive/negative tone in articles, and sometimes articles get away with bad sourcing before someone can correct it, but this is about as good as any information hub can get.
And don’t forget the British-American bias. Hopefully the automated translation and adaptation that is being pursued by wikipedia helps to improve it.
I remember in the past few years that I’ve had to switch to non-American or non-British versions of Wikipedia just in order to find the answer I was looking for.
We need to remind Americans and Britains that knowledge on Wikipedia doesn’t stop with their languages. We need to do a better job of gathering knowledge from non-English sources and translating those into English. Same goes vice versa for English sources and pages into languages that other people can understand.
There’s still a lot of work to be done with Wikipedia to make it truly a universal knowledge repository. But it is one of the best we have
I remeber an article form a decade or more ago which did some research and said that basically, yes there are inaccuracies on Wikipedia, and yes there are over-simplifications, but** no more than in any other encyclopaedia**. They argued that this meant that it should be considered equally valid as an academic resource.
Thank you for your service 🫡
Any chance you remember what that one edit war was about?