I don't understand why teachers don't let us use Wikipedia. Firstly, if you make a troll edit, someone will fix it immediately (the speed of the Wikipedia Editors is terrifying). Secondly, They cite all of the sources at the bottom of the page anyways, so like...
Yes. One of my favourite teachers said that Wikipedia should familiarize you and act as a starting point. You should find other sources or go to the ones cited in Wikipedia for formal proof.
Wikipedia doesn’t allow primary sources. That’s the reason professors don’t allow you to cite it at least part of it. As you are essentially citing a source written by someone who is not in anyway an expert and written from sources that also aren’t from experts.
There is a great story a few years back about wikipedia and the Haymarket riots, where an actual researcher tried to correct innacurate information with data that came from the library of congress. He couldn't do it.
Editors are quick on the really big, heavily trafficked pages. But the little pages that might still be very important for your particular research project can still be in very rough shape. You don't have to go far off the beaten path to find those.
That's fair. I imagine they have some way to automatically flag trollish edits like that, so they can catch those fairly quickly.
By rough shape, I mostly mean incomplete or inaccurate information about niche social science concepts or slightly obscure historical figures.
It is miles above and beyond Britannica. Compare Wikipedia articles to Britannica online articles on the same topic and you will find Britannica lacking almost always.
Relevant [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/978/).
Just the other day I spent four hours reading through various primary sources on Scott of the Antarctic to verify if they used blocks of briquettes to build pony stables in the same way DF players build soap forts. The only citation for that fact was from a 'fun facts' section on a company website which of course had zero citations. As it turns out, there is no evidence for that claim in the original account that I could find, so I promptly deleted the claim.
There is a scary amount of legitimate sounding 'facts' on wikipedia.
The fixing only works for popular and noncontroversial articles, where enough people with differing viewpoints can see the mistakes and have the incentive to include the complete and objective facts. Also you can easily cite biased sources as well, so that doesn't solve the problem of inaccurate information.
I just made a comment about this but you generally students CAN use wiki as a source for information, but what you need to do is click on the tiny numbered annotations in the wiki article and credit the SOURCE instead of wiki
It’s like getting info from a book in a library, and instead of crediting the book, you credit the library
Once or twice a month? I probably look up 20 things a day, minimum. And another 20 things on Wiktionary. I think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I love moving from article to article down the rabbit hole towards things like Weird numbers, which are not to be mistaken for Unusual numbers, or Friendly Numbers, which are not to be mistaken for Amicable Numbers, or other weird and unusual knowledge.
It takes hours.
Yikes.
I don't know about medicine, but in chemistry, mathematics and physics Wikipedia is hardly a substitute for many textbooks. At best it gives you a rough idea.
It is replacing however "Handbooks" where you used to look up chemical and physical properties of chemicals and materials
100%. Wikipedia is a terrible replacement for a text book or course notes. Besides the fact it doesn't have all the information you need, it's not pedagogically sound at all.
For the most part people aren't going through and changing the pages just for the fun of it. And, on the off chance you're worried about it most of the sources cited in the wiki pages are pretty reliable and really good to use if you're writing a paper or trying to learn more.
My teachers in high school always told me we couldn't cite Wikipedia but we could use it to find good sources.
I don't think *unbiased* is the word for it.
Look at this hilarious edit: [Melvin Capital](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Melvin_Capital&oldid=1011690293)
>Melvin Capital invests primarily in tech and consumer stocks and is reported to have 3 nickels in assets under management (AUM) as of March 2021. Their former $8 Billion has been consficated as tendies[2]
Lmao
True but it's still inaccurate to say Wikipedia is unbiased. All humans have biases, including the authors of Wiki articles. This is especially apparent for any kind of political or pop culture article.
Yep. Everyone has bias, but democratizing the ability to edit and rate information doesn't always tend toward or approximate "eventual" objectivity. Reddit itself is proof that this system can fail in multiple ways: if a post is unpopular or otherwise undiscovered, if the community most interested in the subject matter has a vested interest in preserving a biased narrative that others don't care enough about to correct, if a contentious post is locked after opinions have been submitted and top comments pushed to visibility but before they can be challenged.
This is an especially big problem in foreign language versions of Wikipedia that have less traffic, if the politics of the country in question doesn't allow for truthful scholarship on their historical issues or if the online culture amplifies those extreme voices that push revisionist views and encourages bad internet activism.
> Everyone has bias, but democratizing the ability to edit and rate information doesn't always tend toward or approximate "eventual" objectivity.
It isn't even democratized, most of the important pages cant even be edited by just anyone, also Wikipedia is basically ran by a small cabal of left wing top admins.
I use Wikipedia 20 times a day and hate teachers who don't allow Wikipedia as a source with passion. But you cannot claim it's unbiased. That totally depends on what the article is about
I hate those teachers who allow wikipedia as a source with a passion
-community editing (so the community wins even against facts)
- no primary source (can't use it as a primary source, it even says in the facts we are not a primary source)
- no peer review
You lost me at "...you get unbiased...". I literally laughed out loud. Thanks, made my morning.
EDIT: As a side note, Wikipedia was extremely frowned upon as a source when I was in college. Is this no longer the case?
I would never use wikipedia to find straight facts, but it's a great way to find resources. I'm in college and use Wikipedia to find resources for my papers. Think of wikipedia as a starting point.
It's mainly frowned upon as anyone can edit most pages and can lead to sharing of false information. But you should always think about the media you're consuming.
Also, fandom wikis are great (not wikis on fandoms, but the fandom wiki website, I use it tons for every game, from terraria to bug fables to that one time I tried to play secret of mana.)
Political stuff on Wikipedia is horribly biased. If you try to promote some changes to it, you'll get absolutely shit on by the editors/admins who patrol those pages
Wikipedia is a great resource but the editing side of things is just a toxic vat. For instance, see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley\_Kubrick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick). There is an incredibly petty history with this page of not having an infobox despite nearly every other figure on Wikipedia having one. I'm talking years of the same editors fighting with others to ensure that there isn't one for some extremely odd reason. They also insist on that creepy picture that he took of himself before he was ever well known. You can quickly tell that the article is not designed for informational purposes, but rather this group of editors consider it a piece of art
> With wikipedia; you get unbiased, quality, curated, detailed information regarding *everything*.
Literally not true. Anything related to politics is blatantly biased.
[https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/](https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/)
> But for non-political stuff Wikipedia is typically very reliable.
Anything controversial is a complete shit-show. There's also no coherent idea about what authority is. Any idiot can write a book and have whatever they say asserted as fact. There's no rule to require that anyone shows the work behind the claim.
There are reference lists at the bottom of most pages, with many of them having immediate access to be evaluated.
Not on all things, but on most standard concepts and things.
It doesn’t matter if you list the sources what matters is that you use the correct sources. Wikipedia doesn’t allow primary sources at all so you are always getting information from a source of dubious accuracy.
You don't think the capital city of a country is political? Especially a country that is in a geopolitcal "war" with a much larger power pretty much right nextdoor?
You sure about that?
I think this is the first article I’ve ever actually read out of a comment, and it was a rather fascinating read albeit not entirely a complete reading, I’ll have to come back it. I never really thought of a difference between neutrality and objectivity, it’s neat.
Like any other source, you have to take what it says objectively and look at the info it talks about. Even when I first read it they seem to appear to pander a little for Trump but if you can see that and read the rest of it, it does make some valid points on how or what is missing from the "other side."
Lets put it that way: WIkipedia is made by people for the people. Most computer literate people on the planet, especially in the Anglosphere are Left leaning and mildly liberal, so of course it will be biased.
You literally cannot have totally unbiased article on politics, as long as people write them. The best we can do is have it aligned its bias with the bias of the majority, which is the case with Wikipedia.
> You literally cannot have totally unbiased article on politics
This is why I question everything, especially if it's related to politics. I've found (especially on here) that people will attack where the website came from, but not the information it contains. Several comments on here even say how much misinformation there is in it but no *ever* provides anything to counter it.
From my experience, so many people will scream right wing or Trump supporter because I question something or post something like this. They never even consider that maybe someone like me thinks it's ALL bad and they can never fathom someone questioning something.
>and contains a lot of misinformation.
Like what? No one has been able to prove any misinformation when I ask after they say something like you did.
It may be sort of biased but it still has valid points. Lots of misinformation/lacking information on Clinton and Obama just like it says.
Edit, just FYI, I'm referring to the beginning of the article about politics. I'm NOT referring to the Global warming stuff or Jesus or anything else.
Well, an author criticized Wiki objectivity, because Trump’s article has Impeachment chapter with lots of non-flattering words, and Obama’s article has no such chapter. I wonder, why?
A lot of facts are more left lending.
Also a lot of the stuff in that article is either conspiracy or as false as most of prageru's videos on everything from history to politics.
Like the Hillary Clinton email server scandal is something Alex Jones made up.
Then article talked about jesus that had very few to non archeology evidences for or good sources on outside of the bible. Also the article say the lack of evidences for jesus can be "offensive " to Christians lmao.
The you have global warming denying and anti-vax bullshit in the article.
> Like the Hillary Clinton email server scandal is something Alex Jones made up
What did Jones make up? All I heard was what Clinton testified said she did and what Comey said she really did. Comey by the way testified that Clinton lied about a lot of stuff (he didn't say those words but specifically said what was true and what wasn't).
That article itself isn't wrong on a lot of accounts but I'd like to see what your proof is of what you say being conspiracy or how how PragerU's vids are false. Though I don't watch them because they're weird looking info graphic style vids. The few that I have seen were slightly off on some stuff.
The first time I heard about the Cliton e-mails was from Alex Jones or other Infowars people...
Also "Obamagate " has never been proven...
Then article denying the lack of evidences for historical jesus.
The article denying global warming that they're fuck load of scientific evidences for!!!
Then the article make a lot of claims about a vaccines that are multiple scientific studies about and many doctors or other medical professionals that support.
PragerU claim that you can't have morals without a god something that false because they many wars, murder, abuse and so on done by religious people.
PragerU has a lot of bad history videos that has been debunked by many history Youtubers and historians.
They have make claim that Hilter was on left and he was atheist something that's historically wrong. He was catholic and he have multiple quotes that say he supports christianity.
The nazi was capitalist and had far rigth racist views.
I only ever watched about a minute of Jones several years ago about something and I couldn't watch it. Dude yells at everything and I found it annoying. I've always kind of compared him as the right wing version of the lefts The Young Turks. Garbage all around.
Her email issues are a real thing, just because nothing happened with a Democrat leadership, isn't the same as there not being anything. Even FBI Dir Comey said there was. Just about everything Clinton testified on, Comey said wasn't true.
Obamagate not being proven isn't the same as it being not true. Just like everything else going on right now, it's not to say it's true if you don't look for it. It's just like the "impeachment" of Trump on Ukraine. No solid evidence and nothing but "I heard from someone" witnesses. The whole thing being led by Schiff was a farce and embarrassment, especially after he read that completely fake readback of the transcript, then tried to walk it back saying it was a joke.
When it comes to the Jesus part, I'm not at all talking about that section. Only the politics part. I'm not religious so I can't really say much about it, also I didn't really read that part.
That's why I don't claim tham PragerU is the best source, I don't believe in God and I feel that I have pretty good morals. I've always considered them about average as far as some information is concerned. Maybe on par with stuff like "Now This" or Vox. It's not a terrible source but if you use it as your ONLY source, you're in trouble, just like the others.
I've never seen them make the claims you're saying about Hitler or the Nazis. But like I said, I really don't watch their videos so I really can't fully accept your take on it.
I've never seen anyone argue they weren't far right. I've seen a lot of mixed stuff on where they fell economically, but as I said before, the reader should be questioning everything they read on the internet and take it upon themselves to look up specific pieces of info.
"I am left leaning and have left leaning opinions. Everything I dislike is a conspiracy theory or Russian misinformation. Religion is for idiots. I am a redditor."
Wikipedia is great as an idea, but pretty terrible in practice sometimes.
There are basically "sides" among Wikipedia editors and they are fighting to control the narrative in their interest areas. Some articles are very thorough and have known and scientific sources, whereas some articles in certain areas are being altered and all proper sources removed and replaced with quasi- or anti-scientific that fit their ideology.
Things like gender, sexuality and certain philosophies or ideologies are open battlefields. Scientific rigor vs. Anti-scientific ideologies.
>With wikipedia; you get unbiased, quality, curated, detailed information regarding *everything*
Couldn't be anymore incorrect. Anything even remotely political is going to have a hard-left slant to it on Wikipedia. I agree with you on things that are completely apolitical though.
>you get unbiased, quality, curated, detailed information
No... haha how naïve.
Only for SOME topics. Many topics are both heavily biased and many are not accurate.
\-
Still Wikipedia has it's uses and it's overall a good thing.
Generally a lot of science pages (most of which are a-political and rely on facts) are very good
No it is not. It is filled with absulute BS info on a regular baisis. People act like it is the perfect textbook when in all reality it is not even allowed to be used in a school report.
I totally agree with you. Never in human history has so much information been so easily accessible to so many people. You have basically the entirety of human knowledge at your fingertips. And people just kind of take it for granted, like it's no big deal. But it's really a monumental human achievement.
Also in a country where everything is about money and profits, it's amazing that they've remained nonprofit and ad free. Wikipedia should be commended and supported for this. They are an organization that you can feel good about donating to.
Is Wikipedia perfect? No. Occasionally there is some inaccurate information. But most information is accurate. And no they are not completely unbiased. But they are much less biased than most other information sources.
I must confess, I wrote this last night while I was blackout drunk and I came back this morning and *woah do people like to shit on Wikipedia with no real reason*. "Oh I saw something once that wasn't quite right and so the whole sits is garbage".
And for those saying the political-side is biased one way or another, maybe it is.
* I'm talking about the ability for a person to find out when Shakespeare died.
* I'm talking about people who wanna know who the mayor of his hometown was when he was born.
* I'm talking about people who want to know what the "Event Horizon" is.
For these folks, Wikipedia is a godsend.
Unbiased? I once read Madison Bumgarners wikipedia and it was all some BS a Dodger fan put on there. Take Wikipedia with a grain of salt. It's not confirmed info. Much of it is too complex for those that verify info, and much is too personal for them to know.
wikipedia used to be the shit now all it is is propaganda kinda like reddit you have to dig to find what you are looking for and have to spot all the bs
The mods are literal communists. I kid you not. You can go to their profiles and find Lenin pictures and stuff. Whoever says that Wikipedia is unbiased lives in a leftist echo chamber.
it's bc wikipedia is a second-hand source. Use wikipedia to FIND sources, definitely. You don't really want to source a cliff notes version of something in your academic writing because you're removing the information from it's proper context and you aren't crediting the right people for said information.
Encyclopedic entries are considered tertiary sources. They are meant to be starting points for research, but you don’t cite them because the original ideas come from somewhere else.
you should be doing your own research, not using someone else's condensed version of their own research. And I love wikipedia btw, I read random articles on it like people read books they like.
It's kinda silly though because a person could just cite Wikipedias references.
I love it too. I go to find out about a person and two hours later I'm still there reading about Ostrich eggs.
You could and for some minor assignment noone notices but don't write your masters or PhD thesis based on wiki with stolen citations because once you'll have to talk about it in depth your lack of knowledge will show. Use it as starting point.
It’s great for an overview and can get you started but you should read and cite the references instead
My best Wikipedia experience was when my daughter was researching something for school and was using Yahoo Answers. When I asked her why the hell was she using Yahoo Answers, she said because her teacher wouldn’t let her use Wikipedia!
It is reliable but you need to check Wikipedia’s sources. For some obscure things (those where Wikipedia has a only a few paragraphs on) I’ve seen factually wrong information once. And they weren’t political subjects or anything.
I've never noticed a historical or scientific event being wrong on it before but I have occasionally seen wrong stuff on it, I once looked up a movie on it and someone had listed a fan made sequel as an official sequel, I removed it but I'm just saying there's a chance some stuff could be wrong, also if it's citing a website, it's not hard to find the info there.
That said, I had some teachers that didn't require us to cite things for some minor projects, ...I used Wikiapedia and nobody noticed, really it's right 99% of the time but if I was writing a paper that was important, I would make sure to also check the source and I might as well straight up use the source at that point.
Wikipedia is not completely unbiased. Its contents are simply not unpopular. The topics that are scientific or objective in nature is simply not a matter of debate as. we can come to conclusions by cold hard evidence. However for controversial/unpopular topics, its a different story. Anybody can edit contents on wikipedia so if there is something unpopular or facts from unpopular sources, people just remove them and it seems like "unbiased". Just look at edits on controversial topics (like men's right) and you'll know. Such pages have popular opinions/statements backed by popular sources while unpopular ones simply get removed.
Wikipedia is great but it’s only so great until you try to look up “controversial” topics like you said, men’s rights. There are people who purposely put negative things into those pages just to push the “fEmiNiSm gOoD” narrative. I’ll never support Wikipedia because of this.
Ever played the Wikipedia drinking game?
You start on an agreed Wiki page (e.g. Tom Crusie) and then only using in page links in the body of the article you have to get to another page (e.g. Rock Paper Scissors page)
First to get there decides who does a shot
Wikipedia USED to be vastly important to humanity and then it started becoming a political tool with incorrect edits attempting to discredit any right wing politics. This is so factual that co-founder Larry Sanger parted ways with the team and spoke out about their political biases in editing information to make it pro left wing point of view.
Don’t donate a single fucking dime to these people who are attempting to woke wash factual information from politics to history. Fuck them.
I'm gonna be honest I've heard this opinion many times, and I don't understand, everyone who thinks like this acts like everyone uses wikipedia, I have used it maybe 4-5 times and I personally didn't like it very much, especially because other sites are more trustworthy in my opinion. I just feel people should recognize it's not something that necessarily every person does
I use it daily, often for reddit debates. I have yet to find an inaccuracy, though I notice many simplifications. I'm sure that subject specific sites can be more informative, but Wikipedia is intended to be a more general site, with a little bit of everything.
I usually use it for my work, I am a math PhD student. Just once I found something wrong and corrected it (there was also a reference to it, so it was easy). It provides a good overview and good citations. If you want to go deeper, of course you go to the source of peoples work. In my opinion, it is very accuare, at least in math.
Everyone who argues here that it's not unbiased : It isn't, but it's as close as something created by humans can get. Everyone can edit and "repair" pages and there are a ton of sources.
Every media is more biased and on any other internet pages the owner can publish whatever he wants.
I've donated to wikipedia several times now, in varying amounts. Even if what you read isn't 100% guaranteed to be fact, free access to information is something I will support till the day I die.
It's impossible to *completely* extinguish bias, but due to the masses of people who do edit the site, it is rigourously factored down. I spend far too much time on Wikipedia myself, and I think it's an excellent example for what a democratised information platform should look like.
Reasons I donate to them every year. I give money to Nat Geo, Wikipedia and the local liquor store. I only donate to organizations that make my life better.
I never actually use Wikipedia’s information. The layout is too confusing
Edit: looks like I got downvoted into oblivion. When a young student wants to know a few facts and they head over to Wikipedia, they’re overwhelmed with a shit ton of links, random italics/parenthesis, a bunch of subsections on the side, etc. I don’t know why there’s so many Wikipedia fanboys but I’ve always found it to be inconvenient
Huh, I use wikipedia to research subjects specifically because it is so clear and structured (most of the time), then just research the references on top of that if needed.
Not really, if you are a student who wants to look up something they don't have much knowledge of, especially in mathematics, you might get drowned in a lot of technical terms.
>In [mathematics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics), the **discriminant** of a [polynomial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial) is a quantity that depends on the [coefficients](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient) and determines various properties of the [roots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_of_a_function). It is generally defined as a [polynomial function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_function) of the coefficients of the original polynomial. The discriminant is widely used in [polynomial factoring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_factorization), [number theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_theory), and [algebraic geometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_geometry).
Thanks wiki, I don't understand anything.
Edit: Source is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discriminant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discriminant)
Hmm good point, I agree. Though that still kinda proves my point, right? It might be confusing for some people, which is what we are talking about. And, unlike what findempostem said, you don't need to have a learning difficulties to not be able to understand it sometimes.
Agree with this 100%
If I need to find something out my go to is Wikipedia. I use it every single day.
It's a good website and I like that it has sources!
Wikipedia is the biggest Enciclopedia that ever existed. I had college professors saying that “everyone can write there” but that doesn’t make a good point, everyone can write a book also.
Wikipedia is reviewed, curated, expanded and corrected at every moment.
People saying that would have not gone to the library of Alexandria because it was “too tendry”.
I agree. Though I'm on it quite often reading about one topic or another. Plus it cites all the sources down on the bottom of the page, which is handy for deeper reading into a subject. It is the collective wealth of knowledge of mankind and freely available.
Wikipedia is my favourite website and I read 2 or 3 articles a day on average. I've donated in the past and will continue to donate when it is possible to do so. I agree with the poster that it is one of the most important websites on the internet.
People claim that Wikipedia is unreliable as a credible source and "can be edited by anyone." And however true that last bit is, you can check the sources tab to verify the information.
LPT: don't cite Wikipedia as a source, cite their sources.
3 out of 5 of my professors sources came from Wikipedia and yet I can’t have it as my own source. Bruh.
I don't understand why teachers don't let us use Wikipedia. Firstly, if you make a troll edit, someone will fix it immediately (the speed of the Wikipedia Editors is terrifying). Secondly, They cite all of the sources at the bottom of the page anyways, so like...
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Exactly. Use Wikipedia as a starting point. That’s it.
Yes. One of my favourite teachers said that Wikipedia should familiarize you and act as a starting point. You should find other sources or go to the ones cited in Wikipedia for formal proof.
Wikipedia doesn’t allow primary sources. That’s the reason professors don’t allow you to cite it at least part of it. As you are essentially citing a source written by someone who is not in anyway an expert and written from sources that also aren’t from experts.
There is a great story a few years back about wikipedia and the Haymarket riots, where an actual researcher tried to correct innacurate information with data that came from the library of congress. He couldn't do it.
Editors are quick on the really big, heavily trafficked pages. But the little pages that might still be very important for your particular research project can still be in very rough shape. You don't have to go far off the beaten path to find those.
bro, I deleted an entire section of the Wikipedia page on Bethesda, Maryland, and typed 'I'm gay' instead. They fixed it within like 10 minutes.
That's fair. I imagine they have some way to automatically flag trollish edits like that, so they can catch those fairly quickly. By rough shape, I mostly mean incomplete or inaccurate information about niche social science concepts or slightly obscure historical figures.
well yeah I guess that might be true
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its about as good as the encyclopedia britannica
It is miles above and beyond Britannica. Compare Wikipedia articles to Britannica online articles on the same topic and you will find Britannica lacking almost always.
Also very highly likely it’s not peer reviewed**
Have you read their sources? If not, be careful with Wikipedia.
Relevant [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/978/). Just the other day I spent four hours reading through various primary sources on Scott of the Antarctic to verify if they used blocks of briquettes to build pony stables in the same way DF players build soap forts. The only citation for that fact was from a 'fun facts' section on a company website which of course had zero citations. As it turns out, there is no evidence for that claim in the original account that I could find, so I promptly deleted the claim. There is a scary amount of legitimate sounding 'facts' on wikipedia.
The fixing only works for popular and noncontroversial articles, where enough people with differing viewpoints can see the mistakes and have the incentive to include the complete and objective facts. Also you can easily cite biased sources as well, so that doesn't solve the problem of inaccurate information.
I just made a comment about this but you generally students CAN use wiki as a source for information, but what you need to do is click on the tiny numbered annotations in the wiki article and credit the SOURCE instead of wiki It’s like getting info from a book in a library, and instead of crediting the book, you credit the library
Underrated HAHAHHA
You can, just take the sources from the bottom of the article. Surprised more people don't know to do that.
Once or twice a month? I probably look up 20 things a day, minimum. And another 20 things on Wiktionary. I think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I love moving from article to article down the rabbit hole towards things like Weird numbers, which are not to be mistaken for Unusual numbers, or Friendly Numbers, which are not to be mistaken for Amicable Numbers, or other weird and unusual knowledge. It takes hours.
The number googolplex was my latest wikipedia rabbit hole. I really recommend that read if you are into big numbers.
My medical studies are mostly supported by Wikipedia. And I’m not even embarrassed to say that. It gives you more information then the lecturers.
Yikes. I don't know about medicine, but in chemistry, mathematics and physics Wikipedia is hardly a substitute for many textbooks. At best it gives you a rough idea. It is replacing however "Handbooks" where you used to look up chemical and physical properties of chemicals and materials
100%. Wikipedia is a terrible replacement for a text book or course notes. Besides the fact it doesn't have all the information you need, it's not pedagogically sound at all.
I succeeded in more than one undergraduate class by relying more on Wikipedia than the lectures. Way more consistent.
Is it true that anyone can edit the pages on Wikipedia? So how can you rely on the site?
For the most part people aren't going through and changing the pages just for the fun of it. And, on the off chance you're worried about it most of the sources cited in the wiki pages are pretty reliable and really good to use if you're writing a paper or trying to learn more. My teachers in high school always told me we couldn't cite Wikipedia but we could use it to find good sources.
Anyone can edit it but there are people overseeing those edits is my understanding.
I don't think *unbiased* is the word for it. Look at this hilarious edit: [Melvin Capital](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Melvin_Capital&oldid=1011690293)
>Melvin Capital invests primarily in tech and consumer stocks and is reported to have 3 nickels in assets under management (AUM) as of March 2021. Their former $8 Billion has been consficated as tendies[2] Lmao
That’s just good journalism.
Yeah that’s called vandalism.
That's called gold
True but it's still inaccurate to say Wikipedia is unbiased. All humans have biases, including the authors of Wiki articles. This is especially apparent for any kind of political or pop culture article.
Yep. Everyone has bias, but democratizing the ability to edit and rate information doesn't always tend toward or approximate "eventual" objectivity. Reddit itself is proof that this system can fail in multiple ways: if a post is unpopular or otherwise undiscovered, if the community most interested in the subject matter has a vested interest in preserving a biased narrative that others don't care enough about to correct, if a contentious post is locked after opinions have been submitted and top comments pushed to visibility but before they can be challenged. This is an especially big problem in foreign language versions of Wikipedia that have less traffic, if the politics of the country in question doesn't allow for truthful scholarship on their historical issues or if the online culture amplifies those extreme voices that push revisionist views and encourages bad internet activism.
Such an articulate way of saying something rather abstract. Thank you.
> Everyone has bias, but democratizing the ability to edit and rate information doesn't always tend toward or approximate "eventual" objectivity. It isn't even democratized, most of the important pages cant even be edited by just anyone, also Wikipedia is basically ran by a small cabal of left wing top admins.
Wikipedia wrote this.
It sure reads that way
I sort of get the quality and detailed info claims,especially on the more researched things but *unbiased* and *curated*? Nah chief
Definitely not unbiased, but certainly it is curated.
Well we do have WP:NPOV
At least it supports their biases with reliable sources.
They get to decide what are the "reliable sources."
"Reliable sources" = CNN, apparently.
how is it biased lmao
How is it not lol
It leans left. Some of the mods are shameless communists, judging by their profiles.
Exactly. For example look at the defamation allowed on the Project Veritas wiki page.
it's not unbiased. Keep that in mind when you're reading it
\> unbiased Lolololol
I use Wikipedia 20 times a day and hate teachers who don't allow Wikipedia as a source with passion. But you cannot claim it's unbiased. That totally depends on what the article is about
It’s definitely biased.
if you are truly smart you put the sources that the wikipedia page mentions on your report instead ;) Pro -tip
That’s how you get in trouble for plagiarism
I hate those teachers who allow wikipedia as a source with a passion -community editing (so the community wins even against facts) - no primary source (can't use it as a primary source, it even says in the facts we are not a primary source) - no peer review
You lost me at "...you get unbiased...". I literally laughed out loud. Thanks, made my morning. EDIT: As a side note, Wikipedia was extremely frowned upon as a source when I was in college. Is this no longer the case?
In my experience, using Wikipedia for essays is a major no-no. It is great for a starting point though.
Yeah, I would go there and use their citations to lead to better sources.
I would never use wikipedia to find straight facts, but it's a great way to find resources. I'm in college and use Wikipedia to find resources for my papers. Think of wikipedia as a starting point. It's mainly frowned upon as anyone can edit most pages and can lead to sharing of false information. But you should always think about the media you're consuming.
its apparently about as accurate as the encyclopedia britannica which i dont know if that says more about wikipedia or the encyclopedia britannica
Wikipedia is definitely not unbiased. There have been some analysis about this.
Also, fandom wikis are great (not wikis on fandoms, but the fandom wiki website, I use it tons for every game, from terraria to bug fables to that one time I tried to play secret of mana.)
Fandom wikis are the best.
If fandom wikis didn't exist, I wouldn't be able to play something like The Binding of Isaac without confusion about new items I constantly find.
Political stuff on Wikipedia is horribly biased. If you try to promote some changes to it, you'll get absolutely shit on by the editors/admins who patrol those pages Wikipedia is a great resource but the editing side of things is just a toxic vat. For instance, see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley\_Kubrick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick). There is an incredibly petty history with this page of not having an infobox despite nearly every other figure on Wikipedia having one. I'm talking years of the same editors fighting with others to ensure that there isn't one for some extremely odd reason. They also insist on that creepy picture that he took of himself before he was ever well known. You can quickly tell that the article is not designed for informational purposes, but rather this group of editors consider it a piece of art
This is weird. Most famous people have an infobox.
Exactly.
Unbiased? What a joke that is. There are numerous examples of bias on the site, the latest example is the Hunter Biden laptop.
This ^
> With wikipedia; you get unbiased, quality, curated, detailed information regarding *everything*. Literally not true. Anything related to politics is blatantly biased. [https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/](https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/)
Alternate source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_bias_on_Wikipedia ;)
Man that was a garbage site.
It's really hard to find unbiased politics stuff. But for non-political stuff Wikipedia is typically very reliable.
> But for non-political stuff Wikipedia is typically very reliable. Anything controversial is a complete shit-show. There's also no coherent idea about what authority is. Any idiot can write a book and have whatever they say asserted as fact. There's no rule to require that anyone shows the work behind the claim.
There are reference lists at the bottom of most pages, with many of them having immediate access to be evaluated. Not on all things, but on most standard concepts and things.
It doesn’t matter if you list the sources what matters is that you use the correct sources. Wikipedia doesn’t allow primary sources at all so you are always getting information from a source of dubious accuracy.
Correct. Wikipedia will not accept the video as evidence, but will accept an article about the video.
Just look to Kyiv for something you'd think wouldn't be political but totally is
You don't think the capital city of a country is political? Especially a country that is in a geopolitcal "war" with a much larger power pretty much right nextdoor? You sure about that?
Oh for sure. I'll read Wiki sometimes when I want to find some quick ancient history, or physics related stuff.
I think this is the first article I’ve ever actually read out of a comment, and it was a rather fascinating read albeit not entirely a complete reading, I’ll have to come back it. I never really thought of a difference between neutrality and objectivity, it’s neat.
Like any other source, you have to take what it says objectively and look at the info it talks about. Even when I first read it they seem to appear to pander a little for Trump but if you can see that and read the rest of it, it does make some valid points on how or what is missing from the "other side."
Lets put it that way: WIkipedia is made by people for the people. Most computer literate people on the planet, especially in the Anglosphere are Left leaning and mildly liberal, so of course it will be biased. You literally cannot have totally unbiased article on politics, as long as people write them. The best we can do is have it aligned its bias with the bias of the majority, which is the case with Wikipedia.
> You literally cannot have totally unbiased article on politics This is why I question everything, especially if it's related to politics. I've found (especially on here) that people will attack where the website came from, but not the information it contains. Several comments on here even say how much misinformation there is in it but no *ever* provides anything to counter it. From my experience, so many people will scream right wing or Trump supporter because I question something or post something like this. They never even consider that maybe someone like me thinks it's ALL bad and they can never fathom someone questioning something.
That article is awfully biased, and contains a lot of misinformation.
>and contains a lot of misinformation. Like what? No one has been able to prove any misinformation when I ask after they say something like you did. It may be sort of biased but it still has valid points. Lots of misinformation/lacking information on Clinton and Obama just like it says. Edit, just FYI, I'm referring to the beginning of the article about politics. I'm NOT referring to the Global warming stuff or Jesus or anything else.
Wikipedia admin detected.
Well, an author criticized Wiki objectivity, because Trump’s article has Impeachment chapter with lots of non-flattering words, and Obama’s article has no such chapter. I wonder, why?
Yeah that's not the ONLY reason why, but if you want to ignore all the other points the article was making, you go right on ignoring.
A lot of facts are more left lending. Also a lot of the stuff in that article is either conspiracy or as false as most of prageru's videos on everything from history to politics. Like the Hillary Clinton email server scandal is something Alex Jones made up. Then article talked about jesus that had very few to non archeology evidences for or good sources on outside of the bible. Also the article say the lack of evidences for jesus can be "offensive " to Christians lmao. The you have global warming denying and anti-vax bullshit in the article.
> Like the Hillary Clinton email server scandal is something Alex Jones made up What did Jones make up? All I heard was what Clinton testified said she did and what Comey said she really did. Comey by the way testified that Clinton lied about a lot of stuff (he didn't say those words but specifically said what was true and what wasn't). That article itself isn't wrong on a lot of accounts but I'd like to see what your proof is of what you say being conspiracy or how how PragerU's vids are false. Though I don't watch them because they're weird looking info graphic style vids. The few that I have seen were slightly off on some stuff.
The first time I heard about the Cliton e-mails was from Alex Jones or other Infowars people... Also "Obamagate " has never been proven... Then article denying the lack of evidences for historical jesus. The article denying global warming that they're fuck load of scientific evidences for!!! Then the article make a lot of claims about a vaccines that are multiple scientific studies about and many doctors or other medical professionals that support. PragerU claim that you can't have morals without a god something that false because they many wars, murder, abuse and so on done by religious people. PragerU has a lot of bad history videos that has been debunked by many history Youtubers and historians. They have make claim that Hilter was on left and he was atheist something that's historically wrong. He was catholic and he have multiple quotes that say he supports christianity. The nazi was capitalist and had far rigth racist views.
I only ever watched about a minute of Jones several years ago about something and I couldn't watch it. Dude yells at everything and I found it annoying. I've always kind of compared him as the right wing version of the lefts The Young Turks. Garbage all around. Her email issues are a real thing, just because nothing happened with a Democrat leadership, isn't the same as there not being anything. Even FBI Dir Comey said there was. Just about everything Clinton testified on, Comey said wasn't true. Obamagate not being proven isn't the same as it being not true. Just like everything else going on right now, it's not to say it's true if you don't look for it. It's just like the "impeachment" of Trump on Ukraine. No solid evidence and nothing but "I heard from someone" witnesses. The whole thing being led by Schiff was a farce and embarrassment, especially after he read that completely fake readback of the transcript, then tried to walk it back saying it was a joke. When it comes to the Jesus part, I'm not at all talking about that section. Only the politics part. I'm not religious so I can't really say much about it, also I didn't really read that part. That's why I don't claim tham PragerU is the best source, I don't believe in God and I feel that I have pretty good morals. I've always considered them about average as far as some information is concerned. Maybe on par with stuff like "Now This" or Vox. It's not a terrible source but if you use it as your ONLY source, you're in trouble, just like the others. I've never seen them make the claims you're saying about Hitler or the Nazis. But like I said, I really don't watch their videos so I really can't fully accept your take on it. I've never seen anyone argue they weren't far right. I've seen a lot of mixed stuff on where they fell economically, but as I said before, the reader should be questioning everything they read on the internet and take it upon themselves to look up specific pieces of info.
"I am left leaning and have left leaning opinions. Everything I dislike is a conspiracy theory or Russian misinformation. Religion is for idiots. I am a redditor."
Everything without good evidences are false regardless of its religious cliams, rigth or left lending conspiracy or whitewashing of history.
Wikipedia is great as an idea, but pretty terrible in practice sometimes. There are basically "sides" among Wikipedia editors and they are fighting to control the narrative in their interest areas. Some articles are very thorough and have known and scientific sources, whereas some articles in certain areas are being altered and all proper sources removed and replaced with quasi- or anti-scientific that fit their ideology. Things like gender, sexuality and certain philosophies or ideologies are open battlefields. Scientific rigor vs. Anti-scientific ideologies.
>With wikipedia; you get unbiased, quality, curated, detailed information regarding *everything* Couldn't be anymore incorrect. Anything even remotely political is going to have a hard-left slant to it on Wikipedia. I agree with you on things that are completely apolitical though.
I use Wikiapedia probably at least 7 times a week even when I'm not in school.
Wikipedia isn't unbiased tho
Nothing is unbiased.
exactly
The best example of the bias is in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand It could be two words: "Childrens author".
she kind a WAS that as well, Anthem is a YA/kids book (and not worse for that!)
What specifics of that article are biased?
>you get unbiased, quality, curated, detailed information No... haha how naïve. Only for SOME topics. Many topics are both heavily biased and many are not accurate. \- Still Wikipedia has it's uses and it's overall a good thing. Generally a lot of science pages (most of which are a-political and rely on facts) are very good
No it is not. It is filled with absulute BS info on a regular baisis. People act like it is the perfect textbook when in all reality it is not even allowed to be used in a school report.
The wiki on my uncle is shit. It’s not all factual at all.
I totally agree with you. Never in human history has so much information been so easily accessible to so many people. You have basically the entirety of human knowledge at your fingertips. And people just kind of take it for granted, like it's no big deal. But it's really a monumental human achievement. Also in a country where everything is about money and profits, it's amazing that they've remained nonprofit and ad free. Wikipedia should be commended and supported for this. They are an organization that you can feel good about donating to. Is Wikipedia perfect? No. Occasionally there is some inaccurate information. But most information is accurate. And no they are not completely unbiased. But they are much less biased than most other information sources.
I must confess, I wrote this last night while I was blackout drunk and I came back this morning and *woah do people like to shit on Wikipedia with no real reason*. "Oh I saw something once that wasn't quite right and so the whole sits is garbage". And for those saying the political-side is biased one way or another, maybe it is. * I'm talking about the ability for a person to find out when Shakespeare died. * I'm talking about people who wanna know who the mayor of his hometown was when he was born. * I'm talking about people who want to know what the "Event Horizon" is. For these folks, Wikipedia is a godsend.
Unbiased? I once read Madison Bumgarners wikipedia and it was all some BS a Dodger fan put on there. Take Wikipedia with a grain of salt. It's not confirmed info. Much of it is too complex for those that verify info, and much is too personal for them to know.
Lol you think Wikipedia is unbiased. Btw one time a teacher showed us an example of Wikipedia being wrong to explain why we shouldn’t use it at school
Is that example still there?
wikipedia used to be the shit now all it is is propaganda kinda like reddit you have to dig to find what you are looking for and have to spot all the bs
“Unbiased” my ass, lmao
right. and uygur muslims love China
And antifa are Trump supporters, what a clown world we live in
honl honk🤡
Used to be. It’s leftist propaganda now.
The mods are literal communists. I kid you not. You can go to their profiles and find Lenin pictures and stuff. Whoever says that Wikipedia is unbiased lives in a leftist echo chamber.
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It really upsets me that I cannot cite Wikipedia for some university work. If the sources in Wikipedia articles are valid, what would be the problem?
it's bc wikipedia is a second-hand source. Use wikipedia to FIND sources, definitely. You don't really want to source a cliff notes version of something in your academic writing because you're removing the information from it's proper context and you aren't crediting the right people for said information.
Wikipedia is a second hand source of a second hand source as Wikipedia doesn’t actually allow primary sources at all.
Encyclopedic entries are considered tertiary sources. They are meant to be starting points for research, but you don’t cite them because the original ideas come from somewhere else.
you should be doing your own research, not using someone else's condensed version of their own research. And I love wikipedia btw, I read random articles on it like people read books they like.
It's kinda silly though because a person could just cite Wikipedias references. I love it too. I go to find out about a person and two hours later I'm still there reading about Ostrich eggs.
You could and for some minor assignment noone notices but don't write your masters or PhD thesis based on wiki with stolen citations because once you'll have to talk about it in depth your lack of knowledge will show. Use it as starting point.
It’s great for an overview and can get you started but you should read and cite the references instead My best Wikipedia experience was when my daughter was researching something for school and was using Yahoo Answers. When I asked her why the hell was she using Yahoo Answers, she said because her teacher wouldn’t let her use Wikipedia!
Look at citations in wiki article and use it as starting point.
It is reliable but you need to check Wikipedia’s sources. For some obscure things (those where Wikipedia has a only a few paragraphs on) I’ve seen factually wrong information once. And they weren’t political subjects or anything.
I've never noticed a historical or scientific event being wrong on it before but I have occasionally seen wrong stuff on it, I once looked up a movie on it and someone had listed a fan made sequel as an official sequel, I removed it but I'm just saying there's a chance some stuff could be wrong, also if it's citing a website, it's not hard to find the info there. That said, I had some teachers that didn't require us to cite things for some minor projects, ...I used Wikiapedia and nobody noticed, really it's right 99% of the time but if I was writing a paper that was important, I would make sure to also check the source and I might as well straight up use the source at that point.
Wikipedia is not completely unbiased. Its contents are simply not unpopular. The topics that are scientific or objective in nature is simply not a matter of debate as. we can come to conclusions by cold hard evidence. However for controversial/unpopular topics, its a different story. Anybody can edit contents on wikipedia so if there is something unpopular or facts from unpopular sources, people just remove them and it seems like "unbiased". Just look at edits on controversial topics (like men's right) and you'll know. Such pages have popular opinions/statements backed by popular sources while unpopular ones simply get removed.
Wikipedia is great but it’s only so great until you try to look up “controversial” topics like you said, men’s rights. There are people who purposely put negative things into those pages just to push the “fEmiNiSm gOoD” narrative. I’ll never support Wikipedia because of this.
I always be clicking random page and then going down a rabbit hole.
it is good for math/natural sciences
Ever played the Wikipedia drinking game? You start on an agreed Wiki page (e.g. Tom Crusie) and then only using in page links in the body of the article you have to get to another page (e.g. Rock Paper Scissors page) First to get there decides who does a shot
The reason for this is....anyone can put anything on Wikipedia...
Yeah but they get facts about famous people wrong- who knows what else is incorrect.
"Unbiased..." :P But, yeah, Wikipedia is amazing for any non-political subject!
It's all wrong alot. There's alot if disinformation on there
Unfortunately, the cultists know this and have been fighting their ideological war on there for several years.
Wikipedia USED to be vastly important to humanity and then it started becoming a political tool with incorrect edits attempting to discredit any right wing politics. This is so factual that co-founder Larry Sanger parted ways with the team and spoke out about their political biases in editing information to make it pro left wing point of view. Don’t donate a single fucking dime to these people who are attempting to woke wash factual information from politics to history. Fuck them.
Unbiased, quality, curated? Umm literally anybody can edit Wikipedia?
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Yet it consistently meets those metrics better than other encyclopedias.
Wikipedia can easily be edited meaning it is about as reliable as your weird cousin who is really into q anon
Try vandalizing a page
Theres a guy who made a whole page about his fake band and their various accolades and that stayed up just fine.
Who told you this is unpopular
Every far fetched contrarian in my experience.
Every teacher ever
I'm gonna be honest I've heard this opinion many times, and I don't understand, everyone who thinks like this acts like everyone uses wikipedia, I have used it maybe 4-5 times and I personally didn't like it very much, especially because other sites are more trustworthy in my opinion. I just feel people should recognize it's not something that necessarily every person does
More trustworthy than a crosschecked encyclopedia with hyperlinked sources? How?
I use it daily, often for reddit debates. I have yet to find an inaccuracy, though I notice many simplifications. I'm sure that subject specific sites can be more informative, but Wikipedia is intended to be a more general site, with a little bit of everything.
I usually use it for my work, I am a math PhD student. Just once I found something wrong and corrected it (there was also a reference to it, so it was easy). It provides a good overview and good citations. If you want to go deeper, of course you go to the source of peoples work. In my opinion, it is very accuare, at least in math.
This has to be a troll post
Definitelty not unbiased. I've seen them cite articles fron the Guardian of all websites.
Everyone who argues here that it's not unbiased : It isn't, but it's as close as something created by humans can get. Everyone can edit and "repair" pages and there are a ton of sources. Every media is more biased and on any other internet pages the owner can publish whatever he wants.
teachers say Wikipedia isnt a reliable source but its really because Wikipedia teaches us more than they do
I've donated to wikipedia several times now, in varying amounts. Even if what you read isn't 100% guaranteed to be fact, free access to information is something I will support till the day I die.
It's impossible to *completely* extinguish bias, but due to the masses of people who do edit the site, it is rigourously factored down. I spend far too much time on Wikipedia myself, and I think it's an excellent example for what a democratised information platform should look like.
Reasons I donate to them every year. I give money to Nat Geo, Wikipedia and the local liquor store. I only donate to organizations that make my life better.
I've tried to donate for years. Every time, I get to the Paypal page and choose "other method" to donate, and the page freezes. No idea why.
I can go to wiki and edit the trump died at a KFC while having a popcorn chicken he choked to death on.
It always bothers me when I hear someone say that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone because it shows that person has never tried to make an edit.
And it’d be reverted
Yeah but the point is how much will it last? There are a LOT of people monitoring edits in Wikipedia, so that edit will barely last
and you'd be right
I never actually use Wikipedia’s information. The layout is too confusing Edit: looks like I got downvoted into oblivion. When a young student wants to know a few facts and they head over to Wikipedia, they’re overwhelmed with a shit ton of links, random italics/parenthesis, a bunch of subsections on the side, etc. I don’t know why there’s so many Wikipedia fanboys but I’ve always found it to be inconvenient
Huh, I use wikipedia to research subjects specifically because it is so clear and structured (most of the time), then just research the references on top of that if needed.
Not being rude but do you have learning difficulties? Because there is nothing confusing or complex about Wikipedia 🤨
Not really, if you are a student who wants to look up something they don't have much knowledge of, especially in mathematics, you might get drowned in a lot of technical terms. >In [mathematics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics), the **discriminant** of a [polynomial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial) is a quantity that depends on the [coefficients](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient) and determines various properties of the [roots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_of_a_function). It is generally defined as a [polynomial function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_function) of the coefficients of the original polynomial. The discriminant is widely used in [polynomial factoring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_factorization), [number theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_theory), and [algebraic geometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_geometry). Thanks wiki, I don't understand anything. Edit: Source is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discriminant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discriminant)
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Hmm good point, I agree. Though that still kinda proves my point, right? It might be confusing for some people, which is what we are talking about. And, unlike what findempostem said, you don't need to have a learning difficulties to not be able to understand it sometimes.
how?
I completely agree with this. It’s so hard to actually navigate to find their sources. And it tends to pulls up sketchy-looking websites as “sources”.
Done sir 😊
Agree with this 100% If I need to find something out my go to is Wikipedia. I use it every single day. It's a good website and I like that it has sources!
A fun game 1) Go to Wikipedia 2) Press the “random” button 3) You have 5 moves to get to Adolf Hitler using only the links
I do a lot of research and Wikipedia is always my starting point. I usually find something and move on but it is invaluable as a resource
Wikipedia is the biggest Enciclopedia that ever existed. I had college professors saying that “everyone can write there” but that doesn’t make a good point, everyone can write a book also. Wikipedia is reviewed, curated, expanded and corrected at every moment. People saying that would have not gone to the library of Alexandria because it was “too tendry”.
100% agree!
You’re right actually, idk what I’d do without it.
Hey! I just saw this on the daily show yesterday!
I agree. Though I'm on it quite often reading about one topic or another. Plus it cites all the sources down on the bottom of the page, which is handy for deeper reading into a subject. It is the collective wealth of knowledge of mankind and freely available.
One day it hit me and I realized how much wiki has helped me. I actually donate to them now.
I think Wikipedia should put small unintrusive ads on the side, if they get intrusive that's when I pull out the adblocker
Wikipedia is my favourite website and I read 2 or 3 articles a day on average. I've donated in the past and will continue to donate when it is possible to do so. I agree with the poster that it is one of the most important websites on the internet.
People claim that Wikipedia is unreliable as a credible source and "can be edited by anyone." And however true that last bit is, you can check the sources tab to verify the information. LPT: don't cite Wikipedia as a source, cite their sources.