There’s a wide number of critiques in how Wikipedia aggregates, edits, and presents information that isn’t worth going into here.
But I think what has become remarkable is the number of failed attempts to outcompete Wikipedia, corrupt it’s contents, or poison people into not using/trusting it.
Like, it’s less that Jimmy Wales landed on the secret sauce his first try and more that nobody (in any Western nation anyway) seems capable of marshalling the resources or labor necessary to cobble together a project that’s functioned half as well over as long a time period.
Tons of cited links are utter bunk, just in ways that don’t blatantly violate Wikipedia’s guidelines. So many references to slop (in the pre-AI sense) books written by people with no real subject matter authority. Actually looking at the sources section makes it a lot more apparent how flawed Wikipedia is for anything that is not cut and dry.
More websites should archive their linked content. Great practice in general.
Are supposed to, and generally are, but there is a risk of somebody making unsourced changes and you seeing the article before it’s caught. Not a big deal for popular articles, but there are a lot of niche topics.
It pretty much always was?
It’s a tertiary source, so not appropriate for citing in your essays, but that isn’t a comment on the accuracy.
There’s a wide number of critiques in how Wikipedia aggregates, edits, and presents information that isn’t worth going into here.
But I think what has become remarkable is the number of failed attempts to outcompete Wikipedia, corrupt it’s contents, or poison people into not using/trusting it.
Like, it’s less that Jimmy Wales landed on the secret sauce his first try and more that nobody (in any Western nation anyway) seems capable of marshalling the resources or labor necessary to cobble together a project that’s functioned half as well over as long a time period.
Especially considering the sources are always listed at the end of the article and most include internet archive links.
Tons of cited links are utter bunk, just in ways that don’t blatantly violate Wikipedia’s guidelines. So many references to slop (in the pre-AI sense) books written by people with no real subject matter authority. Actually looking at the sources section makes it a lot more apparent how flawed Wikipedia is for anything that is not cut and dry.
More websites should archive their linked content. Great practice in general.
Are supposed to, and generally are, but there is a risk of somebody making unsourced changes and you seeing the article before it’s caught. Not a big deal for popular articles, but there are a lot of niche topics.