this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
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Wikipedia, is becoming one of few places I trust the information.
It’s funny that MAGA and ml tankies both think that Wikipedia is the devil.
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 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.
Thank you for your service 🫡
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.
Any chance you remember what that one edit war was about?
It was about whether Bitcoin Cash was referred to as "Bcash" or not.
I forget the semantics, but there were a lot of sources calling it Bcash, but then there were equally reliable sources saying that was only the name given by detractors. The war was something about how Bcash should be referenced in the opening paragraph
Thank you very much!
I'm glad it was at least about something fairly trivial.
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
It's worth checking out the contribs and talk regarding articles that can be divisive. People acting with ulterior motives and inserting their own bias are fairly common. They also make regular corrections for this reason. I still place more faith and trust in Wikipedia as an info source more than most news articles.
Wikipedia has an imperfect process, but it is open to review and you can see how the sausage is made. It isn't perfect, but the best we have.
Luv u Wiki
Tankies don't think Wikipedia is the devil. You could call me a tankie from my political views, and I very much appreciate Wikipedia and use it on a daily basis. That is not to say it should be used uncritically and unaware of its biases.
Because of the way Wikipedia works, it requires sourcing claims with references, which is a good thing. The problem comes when you have an overwhelming majority of available references in one topic being heavily biased in one particular direction for whatever reason.
For example, when doing research on geopolitically charged topics, you may expect an intrinsic bias in the source availability. Say you go to China and create an open encyclopedia, Wikipedia style, and make an article about the Tiananmen Square events. You may expect that, if the encyclopedia is primarily edited by Chinese users using Chinese language sources, given the bias in the availability of said sources, the article will end up portraying the bias that the sources suffer from.
This is the criticism of tankies towards Wikipedia: in geopolitically charged topics, western sources are quick to unite. We saw it with the genocide in Palestine, where most media regardless of supposed ideological allegiance was reporting on the "both sides are bad" style at best, and outright Israeli propaganda at worst.
So, the point is not to hate on Wikipedia, Wikipedia is as good as an open encyclopedia edited by random people can get. The problem is that if you don't specifically incorporate filters to compensate for the ideological bias present in the demographic cohort of editors (white, young males of English-speaking countries) and their sources, you will end up with a similar bias in your open encyclopedia. This is why us tankies say that Wikipedia isn't really that reliable when it comes to, e.g., the eastern block or socialist history.
MAGA and tankies are pretty much the same except MAGA votes while tankies whine.
They are scared of facts.
So very much on-script though
That instance is fucking bananas
growing up I got taught by teachers not trust Wiki bc of misinformation. times have changed
Nope, we all misunderstood what they meant. Wikipedia is not an authoritative source, it is a derivative work. However, you can use the sources provided by the Wikipedia article and use the article itself to understand the topic.
Wikipedia isn't and was never a primary source of information, and that is by design. You don't declare information in encyclopedias, you inventory information.
Wikipedia was not then what it is now. You're spot on with all that, spot on, but in the early days it wasn't nearly as trustworthy.
"Nope" to what exactly? you regurgitated what I said - but told us how you misunderstood it
Now in some states, you can't trust teachers not to be giving you misinformation.
We homeschool our daughter. Saw a cool history through film course that taught with an example movie every week to grow interest... nothing in the itinerary said they'd play a video of Columbus by PragerU. They refused the refund, as it was 2 weeks in, and said it was used to foment conversation, but no other video was being offered or no questions were prepared to challenge the children. I worded my letter to call out the facts about Columbus vs the video, and the lack of accreditation of the source. I tried not to be the "lib", but I very much got the gist that's their opinion of me, and how they brushed me off. That fucking site is a plague on common sense, decency, and truth. Still fired up, and it was last month. We pulled her out of the course immediately after the video.
I can't imagine homeschooling. Not that I think it's bad but that it has to be so hard to do. And harder still to do it right.
Glad you pulled out of that course. PragerU is hot garbage and I hate how my autocorrect apparently knows PragerU and didn't try to change it to something else.
How hard do you find it to homeschool? How many hours do you reckon it takes a day?
You've gotta keep in mind that in a regular school your kid is one of 20-30 for the teacher and they are lucky if they get five minutes of individual help/instruction. Everything else is just lecture, reading, and assignments.
It doesn't have to be onerous. We homeschooled until around 3rd grade. Even so, the other kids they are in school with are academically..... not stellar. My youngest (13) has a reading disability and she struggles to pass classes. She still frequently finds herself helping out other students because they are even worse off.
I'm not anti-public education, but whether it's Covid or just republicans gutting the system, public education is in a state right now. I figure funding needs to increase by 30-50%. Kids need more resources than they are getting. And until they do, homeschooling isn't an unreasonable option. But it's not for everyone, of course. One parent has to work (or not) from home or odd hours.
I'm not exactly qualified to speak on the issue, but I think it's also important to focus on where the money gets spent. Anecdotally it seems like a lot is spent on classroom tech ("smart boards", Chromebooks, iPads), which while nice, has abysmal value in terms of returns on cost.
Personally, I think the most important things are basic supplies, school lunches, and teacher salaries.
If this is only 6 weeks ago now then you can still most likely do a credit card charge back if you paid that way
How ironic that school teachers spent decades lecturing us about not trusting Wikipedia... and now, the vast majority of them seem to rely on Youtube and ChatGPT for their lesson plans. Lmao
Unfortunately the current head of Wikipedia is pro-AI which has contributed to this lack of trust.