/lit/ - Literature

>>6637338
things are only said to be reliable because people who claim to know say it, so in the end there's no difference
does a credential make a source "reliable"? not clear
the real problem is wikipedia is an inconsistent hodge-podge
at this point i go there for the same reason i go here: to get a smattering of what some random group of people have to say -- not anything remotely authoritative on the matter

>>6637338
crazy SJW edit wikipedia all the time to make everybody gay.

alexander the great wikipedia is an example, now it's nowhere near as bad as it used to. I remember one time there was a whole section talking about how gay he was and at the very end there was a little sentence saying "there's no proof he was gay"

Nietzsche is also gay according to wiki, so is achilles. Plato write gay romance and lolita like books if i'm supposed to trust wiki.

>>6637338
Wikipedia's great, I often use it instead of reading books so I can talk about a book with people when I haven't *technically* read it. It's really useful for stuff like that.

>>6637338
I hate Wikipedia. I spent hour of time and translated material from one language division of Wikipedia to another.
They erased my work without the explanation of reasons. I hate Wikipedia.

>>6637450
>>>/v/

>>6637486
Nah, you have to actually play games to get anything out of them.

>>6637338
Most people don't actually 'read' Wikipedia, they just skim it and use their newfound info to best suit them.
Talking about outdated old media that you're unfamiliar with? Wiki it.
Want to blurt out some ol' English so you can rub your sophisticated vocabulary in your friends' faces? Wiki it!

I'm sure that if you explain the trustworthy of Wikipedia in detail to the opposing critic, he's sure to change his mind on the spot. Feel free to throw in unique phrases such as 'objectively accredited' and 'user created, scholar approved'.
Go get 'em, tiger!

>>6637338
>Show me one instance where this is true
Ample amount, I'm not going to bother. The point is that Wikipedia articles are supposed to link to sources for all their claims. If you can't track down that source and so your only source is Wikipedia itself, there is by definition and by Wikipedia's own rules nothing reliable about whatever you just copied from there.

>>6637483
>without the explanation of reasons
If your translation was into English, this might be an indication of why... :^)
I think they have a policy about article translations too, but don't remember what it's about.

>>6637338

because wikipedia its a secondary source at best and often tertiary or even higher, follow the sources at the bottom of the page and use those instead you dumb fuck

A lot of academic papers don't use very reliable sources either. Pretty much any paper that gets written, you can find some discrepancy in their sources, if you look.

Wikipedia is the same. Maybe a little worse seeing how it's written by multiple people.

The problem is that there's no such thing as "Truth". Unless you're talking about purely scientific things, and even then things can get iffy. History, people, literature, anything subjective has about 100 different sides to the story, usually pretty hard to sort out what is "true".

>>6637610
Have you ever written a paper? Do you happen to be familiar with the concept of 'canon'?

>>6637634
Yes and yes. Just because something is canon, doesn't necessarily mean it's correct either.

>>6637639
It happens all the time. All it takes is one asshole to actually investigate a source and then the whole academic community is shook. "Oh my god! This shit we blindly took for granted for 50 years might not be true!!!"

>>6637639
Well yeah, sure, but it's the academic consensus. Hence the added reliability.

>>6637647
Why wouldn't the source be investigated? How does something become canon in the first place?

>>6637338
A lot of wikipedia articles do have noticable bias to them, even if they're decently sourced. It's just because a small group of autists have a disproportionate contribution.

Wikipedia isn't considered a source because it's a compilation of sources. It is reliable in the sense that they do try crack down on errors, and it's generally as reliable as any other encyclopedia.

>>6637338
It used to be more unreliable and the reputation stuck.

Use it and just cite Wikipedia's sources

>>6637668
Maybe it couldn't be investigated until now. Maybe people thought the case was so simple it didn't need investigated. Lots of reasons.

Why is it that they used to think fats were the main cause of heart problems, now they think that excess sugars are? There's lots of examples of this.

Even though academics like to think they're above this. A lot of time there's the whole "Well, XX said this, and he's REALLY FUCKING SMART, so it must be true!" Then 50 years after he's dead some asshole comes by and asks if that guy was really fucking smart. There was a point where Freud was thought a genius and an authority on the mind. Now...most will kind of shrug at him and say "Well...he got the ball rolling."

All mathematics articles and proofs in wikipedia are pretty good.

>>6637711
Yeah but they logically follow from explicit premises. They include everything you need to verify them on your own / are their own verification.

>>6637689
Okay, I have another question: Are you familiar with the concept of new editions?

>>6637746
Sure, like real new editions, or new editions where they just mix the content around and call it a new edition?

>>6637338
It says morning glory seeds don't give a psychedelic experience.

>>6637765
They don't? I got morning glories growing all over the place...

>>6637753
Ugh, you gonna get pissed by my being a condescending asshole anytime soon or do I have to troll harder?

I think they make new editions because of some irregularity that people always point out from time to time. It's how an entire field corrects itself over time. People also check sources if they're older than a given period (4-5 years, I think?) to make sure the new papers submitted use the newest information.

>>6637798
What makes you think I'm pissed?

I'm actually drinking tea, listening to a podcast, and reading a technical manual, only paying about 1/4 attention to anything you say.

anyway, what you're describing is science correcting itself when they actually find discrepancies in sources, which was my entire point in the first place. So, point proven. Thanks.

>>6637338
I've seen lots of articles on Wikipedia with no sources whatsoever, and many dittoes lacking citations as well as the [citation needed] tag.

I have also often encountered articles with proper citations, but with extreme cherry-picking among the sources.

>>6637805
Wat. I said I was waiting for you to get pissed.

And I was trying to prove the validity of canon.

It's got an anti religious bias. On the Christianity page it goes straight ahead and criticizes it.

>>6637908
The modern world has an anti religious bias. Get on with the times gramps

>>6638046
modern Europe*

The vast majority of the world is still deeply religious

>>6637787
They do!

>>6637338
Wikipedia being biased in favor of feminism

>>6637338
https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipediainaction

>>6637908
>>6638046
Bet they don't do this with the religion of peace

rub you balls with your fingers and smell them
do it now

>>6637338
A couple years ago the article on Lucius Iunius Brutus ommited the fact that such a person, in all likelyhood, never even existed. This is how bad wikipedia can be.

>>6637338

I love wikipedia. It contains nearly everything mankind has ever done or discovered, available to everyone and for free. I mean, some 14 year old kid could add "Sally is a slag" to some random page and it would take the mods a few minutes to ban said kid and fix it. It is not perfect; some sources are unreliable, people use it for all the wrong reasons and it can be biased at times, but it is sill pretty great. Note I do not use it, but respect it nonetheless.

>>6638357
this is a frightening idea

>>6637338
I use wikipedia all the time, but I never cite it. I just go to the sources they cite and read those and cite them if I think they are credible.

Just go to the citations and read those, never fails.

>>6638357
This is why peer review is so important...

>>6637729
It's mostly that they are done by competent people tbh. Past is the time when you could look at wikipedia for some quick vulgarization math article, now it's proofs all the way down. It's good for research, but it doesn't benefit laymen anymore.

A fun test is to read a given page in two or three languages and see if the informations are consistent between the articles. Sometimes you'll discover that some famous guy finished undergraduate at age 13,15 or 17 depending on the article. Rather funny.

>>6637668
Because academics are charlatans that would rather assume sources are correct when it coincides with their ideology.

>>6637813
Well you're genuinely retarded, so your efforts were unfruitful.

>>6638524
As is evident from your responses, I will assume that you simply have poor reading comprehension. Heck, you had my meaning head-ass-backwards.

>>6638515
Okay.

>>6638357
>key was was designed

>>6637610
A lecturer at my former university wrote a book and when that subject came up, several students used it as a source and got fairly low marks. A few weeks later, he apologised before a lecture to say his book was wrong. It had been published two years earlier and this is the first time he or anyone had noticed the mistakes. Academia is a joke.

>>6637338
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_glass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_glass

In the first link about sea glass, the article says that one of the rare colors prized by collectors is yellow, which comes from old Vaseline jars from the 1920s. This is incorrect. The author is referring to "Vaseline glass" which is an old nickname (originating in the 1920s) for certain types of uranium glass which often has a yellowish color similar to that of petroleum jelly (see second link). Vaseline glass was not actually used in Vaseline jars.

>>6638713
Which is why the community edit feature exists
That article obviously isn't tampered for malicious/defamatory reasons, it was simply a mistake. Where people like you can then apply your knowledge, flag the mistake and give comment to the problem, the problem can be resolved in a cohesive body.

I mentioned this in another thread, but the context leading up to Mussolini's death during the Italian Social Republic, which where at one time quite accurate if I remember correctly, has almost completely been committed to make him seem like the kind of bastard who would kill his own son in law.

While maybe not technically false,
>Feeling that he had to do what he could to blunt the edges of Nazi repression
is a lot different from the reality where he only agreed to be a Nazi puppet leader after Hitler threatened to destroy several major Italian cities and threatened massacring civilians.

I wouldn't trust wikipedia for anything political.

>>6637373

You're pretty worked up aou the gays son. Maybe you need to be more honest with yourself...

>>6637595
>influences
>ghostbusters
Kek

>>6637526
>Ample amount, I'm not going to bother.
>It' not true. There are none.

cunt.

>>6637908

>the war on christianity.

>>6638423
>ommited

>>6639594
>the problem can be resolved in a cohesive body
But it hasn't been. The discussion is about whether or not Wikipedia IS a reliable source, not its potential to be reliable.

Most articles have a bias and many sources provided don't have sources themselves or just don't exist

>>6637595

>>6637338
On the wikipedia article about the battle at Pavlov's house in Stalingrad there was a clear bias from the Russian perspective. Must've been written by a overzealous sovietboo so I edited it to make it more neutral

First sentence read: "Pavlov's House (Russian: дoм Пaвлoвa dom Pavlova) was a fortified apartment building which held heroically for 60 days against the heavy Nazi offensive during the Battle of Stalingrad."

and I edited it to

"Pavlov's House (Russian: дoм Пaвлoвa dom Pavlova) was a fortified apartment building which held for 60 days against a heavy Wehrmacht offensive during the Battle of Stalingrad."

>>6638277
>>>/v/
What an appalling waste of dubs.

>>6638357
>linking to reddit
>linking to a subreddit filled with GamerGate crap
Get out.

http://www.dailydot.com/lol/amelia-bedelia-wikipedia-hoax/

It happens all the time, OP. So much so that wikipedia has an article detailing it all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia

>>6637338
I wrote an article about a book by a famous philosopher over ten years ago. I thought it would be a good exercise to write out a summary of the book as I got past each chapter. Half way through I lost interest but still posted a half-summary of what I finished.

It's full of inaccuracies and in the past ten years not a single fucking person has so much as touched that article, let alone try to correct it. Because it's about an obscure topic in a book that no one else has ever bothered to read.

Wikipedia is a great source if you want to learn about Harry Potter or Mila Kunis, because those articles have rabid fanboys constantly editing them every single day to the bureaucratic letter. But if you want to learn about something that doesn't have autistic fanboys, you don't have that same level of fact checking to rely on.

Also, Sasha Grey tried to edit the Sasha Grey article. You can still see the edits she tried to make in the history log. So there's bias to look out for.

>>6637338
Other than the short, little-read articles, wikipedia tends to be pretty reliable. I guess the main rule is to go by the info with citations.

Sometimes I like to skim an article on something I've read recently out of interest. Sometimes I'll have missed something in the text, so I'll look in to the article's source, or sometimes I'll have forgotten a thing or two and the article reminds me of it.

>>6640209
>dubs
>>>/v/

>>6640225
It's true

Make me leave faggot

>>6637373
>in answer to: Was Alexander the Great bisexual?
Tbh it looks a bit like someone's just jealous he isn't bisexual master race.

Hmm...

>>6642802
*

>>6637373
Dude, Achilles was gay af.

Say you're writing a report on the battle of Waterloo and just before you access the page I've just changed the casualty number.

If wiki is always reliable why are people allowed to edit it

>>6642803
Oh, Venus, Isis, and Venus of Willendorf because they are goddesses and a votive figure and thus not actually a person.

>>6642817
So they can gradually push a more biased narrative over time

Pic related from the Wikipedia feminist edit-a-thon (yes leftists actually do this in their free time)

>>6637373
Plato was so fucking gay, and not even fun gay like Alexander and Achilles. Nietzsche was just into femdom not an actual faggot. Best wikipedia section on bisexuality is Hans Christian Andersen's, the eloquent spaghetti spiller the poor faggot was makes it beautifully awkward. Come wrestle me irl fucboi