by cyounkins on 9/10/22, 7:18 PM with 21 comments
by akolbe on 9/10/22, 7:45 PM
One recent example was that everyone from Google to the BBC now believes that an "Alan MacMasters" invented the electric toaster. In fact, this was a hoax perpetrated on Wikipedia 10 years ago:
https://wikipediocracy.com/2022/08/11/wikipedias-credibility...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
More examples here:
https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday...
by PopAlongKid on 9/10/22, 9:22 PM
No one can be an expert, or take the time for deep dive, on every topic, so I love the fact that most of the time I can do a quick sanity check on an alleged fact, or learn the gist of some new (to me) concept or theory, using Wikipedia. In my own personal areas of expertise, I almost never rely on Wikipedia even for an overview, and I suspect that is true for others. Even this speaker acknowledges that he doesn't know of many alternate sources for topics outside his specialty like math, science, etc., so why not love Wikipedia for lighting at least a candle in those areas where your current vision is most limited by darkness?
His main complaint boils down to Wikipedia does too good of a job of collecting a lot of generally reliable information about a topic in one place, without the benefit of someone like him to interpret, explain, and distill it for us.
by akolbe on 9/10/22, 7:37 PM
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2020-21_Report
Moreover, it's not a question of "keeping Wikipedia running" – the Wikimedia Foundation is taking more than enough money for that. Revenue has increased every year of the Wikimedia Foundation's existence, and it had (including endowment growth) a total surplus of nearly $90 million in its 2020/21 financial year, as well as hundreds of millions in reserves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial...
In fact, the success of Wikipedia fundraising is such that by now, many Wikipedia volunteers feel that fundraising emails asking people to donate money "to keep Wikipedia online", "ad-free", or "independent", are grossly misleading and unethical:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28prop...
by ZeroGravitas on 9/10/22, 7:41 PM
The youtuber may be interesting in the Simple English Wikipedia:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Harper
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver
And I think the copyleft nature of Wikipedia is important when talking about monopolies.
The recommendation of books is good, but Wikipedia does often link to books, and has various schemes in place to give access to the book content so that citations can be checked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia Finally, despite what was claiming in the video, about wikipedia hiding the demographics of it's editors, Wikipedia itself is probably the best place to find people discussing that data and making attempts to expand it.
by Jiro on 9/10/22, 8:43 PM
Plain hoaxes like the inventor of the toaster are actually less harmful because if someone does eventually catch them, they can get fixed.
by cyounkins on 9/10/22, 9:41 PM
* Books (non-fiction, credible publisher)
* Interviews with authors (CSPAN Booknotes+ and Q&A, New Books Network)
* News orgs with ample reporting resources (New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, The Atlantic)
* Obituaries in above news orgs
* Encylopedia Britannica, Biography.com, History.com
by sylware on 9/10/22, 7:31 PM
by silisili on 9/10/22, 8:35 PM
by beardyw on 9/10/22, 8:50 PM
by quantum_state on 9/11/22, 12:24 AM