What do you think about Wikipedia?

[Sonikkumania]

Personally I think it's become worse.

 

I keep sering articles filled with personal bias, though I guess it's always been like that..

[heliumlamb]

A Free Encyclopedia

[Biodegradable]

I've always found it to be a pretty handy resource when I want to learn more about something. Despite the objections from out-of-touch university teachers, it's not like an unoccupied wall behind an abandoned factory you can just graffiti all over without a care in the world as some people try to make it out to be. Wikipedia is a pretty dedicated community that take itself seriously when it comes to sourcing the stuff that's written in its articles. I'm sure there's some fair criticisms that can be thrown at it, but I've always found it pretty reliable most of the time in the nearly 20 years I've been reading it. :^P

[ducon]

A long time ago, I was admin there but I left because of its cognitive relativism (10 lines for Scientology, 10 lines against this cult, 10 lines for homoeopathy, 10 lines against this pseudo-medicine).

[Serum]

Every once in a while, I notice some bias. Typically on articles about people. But overall, still one of the most important existing websites. Donate to it when I can. Love it

[Mr. Freeze]

Good for quick reference, lousy for anything beyond that. 

[Graf Zahl]

It may have some occasional problems and certain people trying to abuse it, but not having it would be a major loss.

 

[Ralphis]

Well, in my opinion,

 

Wikipedia (/ˌwɪkɪˈpiːdiə/ (listen) wik-ih-PEE-dee-ə or /ˌwɪki-/ (listen) wik-ee-) is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers through open collaboration and a wiki-based editing system. Its editors are known as Wikipedians. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history. It is consistently one of the 10 most popular websites ranked by Similarweb and formerly Alexa; as of 2022, Wikipedia was ranked the 7th most popular site in the world. It is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American non-profit organization funded mainly through donations.

 

On January 15, 2001, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia. Sanger coined its name as a blend of "wiki" and "encyclopedia". Wales was influenced by the "spontaneous order" ideas associated with Friedrich Hayek and the Austrian School of economics after being exposed to these ideas by Austrian economist and Mises Institute Senior Fellow Mark Thornton. Initially available only in English, versions in other languages were quickly developed. Its combined editions comprise more than 59 million articles, attracting around 2 billion unique device visits per month and more than 17 million edits per month (1.9 edits per second) as of November 2020. In 2006, Time magazine stated that the policy of allowing anyone to edit had made Wikipedia the "biggest (and perhaps best) encyclopedia in the world".

 

Wikipedia has received praise for its enablement of the democratization of knowledge, extent of coverage, unique structure, culture, and reduced degree of commercial bias; but criticism for exhibiting systemic bias, particularly gender bias against women and alleged ideological bias. The reliability of Wikipedia was frequently criticized in the 2000s, but has improved over time, as Wikipedia has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s. The website's coverage of controversial topics such as American politics and major events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has received substantial media attention. It has been censored by world governments, ranging from specific pages to the entire site. In April 2018, Facebook and YouTube announced that they would help users detect fake news by suggesting fact-checking links to related Wikipedia articles. Articles on breaking news are often accessed as a source of frequently updated information about those events.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Great for most things, just do deeper research when it comes to people/topics prone to bias. I notice a lot of bias on articles about drugs, kratom as an example - article was positive until the DEA tried to ban it, then it was all false doom and gloom bullshit. If you're reading an article about a car, or an animal, or a mineral, it's perfect. If you're researching a politician and you're relying on Wikipedia to get all your info, that makes you a dumbass. It's an incredibly important website, but no archive with a gazillion entries is going to be perfect. Out of all the widely popular websites on the internet, it is probably the most pure - a shining diamond compared to Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. In the end, spending time on Wikipedia will increase your knowledge. It also has a great and simplistic design without any bullshit. I certainly hope the website does not experience a downhill trip anytime soon.

[holaareola]

I've seen the bias creep in as political tribalism has taken on an increasingly religious character. But it's an amazing resource nonetheless and there are still many topics that don't attract political energy thank god, so I still donate every year.

[Clippy]

I like it

[Dimon12321]

Good knowledge assistance, but it doesn't fully cover most of the topics I was learning as a student. 

[Endless]

I'm in love with the idea of free knowledge for all and I think it is one of the greatest inventions of human kind.

 

I also agree that when it comes to political and historical articles, there's some bias that usually slightly leans to a side or the other; sometimes is straight up noticeable, other times is just more on semantics.

 

However, I think it's a fascinating resource for curiosity-readers, and the articles on animals, geography, science, space, geology, biology, anthropology, paleontology, etc, are absolutely fantastic and a great entry point to learn about it. I spent most of my free time reading the Mountains Portal, for example.

 

As for the inner workings of Wikipedia, it's a mixed one. It's a massive, HUGE, open wiki that allows anyone to edit and write for it. This alone encourages vandalism, but there's many bots and living people that make their hobby to correct this vandalism (I have corrected some myself, mostly on obscure articles) yet, when it comes to edit wars, and notability guidelines, I think it sucks. It is quite arbitrary and prejudiced on what you can and can not write about. There's a strong obsession with sources notation, and I agree with sources, but the problem is that most editors only take mainstream media articles as a source, so if you take from less known, or more niche-focused topics, you get rejected. There's an entire group of wikipedia contributors called ''deletionists'' that whole purpose is to pretty much reject articles by the most minuscule error or mistake. Their goals:

1. Outpace rampant inclusionism
2. Further our goal of a quality encyclopedia containing as little junk as possible

All good until you realize ''junk'' is a very subjective word to them.

 

My first foray into a wiki was with the Doomwiki, and I have contributed quite a lot and I feel happy to have learnt the basics, so I decided to try and contribute to Wikipedia, but there's wall, against wall, against wall. You really have to be a masochistic and enjoy arguing with people online to contribute there.

[dasho]

It's just like Reddit in that it's usually good for technical or niche subjects but quickly becomes a cesspool in areas that the general public is interested in.

[Rudolph]

I like that it exists and it is a great tool for cursory research, especially when looking for information about movies and video games.

 

I even used to donate to it on a monthly basis, but I have stopped doing so after a while in order to save that donation money for other causes. Also, I have become frustrated with the way the website has been used as a neoliberal propaganda tool and as a source by certain badly-motivated influencers.

[BlueThunder]

I mean it usually gives you the most basic of information you could want to know about most anything,  would not live by it of course though

[SilentD00mer]

I see it as some kind of start point if you want to research something but know nothing about that subject. Like, you can find new terms related to that subject and go find another sources anywhere else. As long as you don't use Wikipedia as a definitive source for your knowledge, it's fine I guess

[KillPixel]

A good resource for trivial and inconsequential information (e.g. when and where was Leo Tolstoy born, or how many GTX 8800s were produced, etc).

But for information regarding anything relevant or consequential, such as social and political stuff, I think it's unreliable at best, so I look elsewhere.

[MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai]

It's good as a reference for secondary sources.

[7Mahonin]

Since college doesn’t accept Wikipedia as a source, I’ve rarely used the site. 

[Herr Dethnout]

I don't have a good opinion of it after the official spanish Wikipedia Twitter decided to use "inclusive language" in one his posts.

[stphrz]

I don't. 

[LadyMistDragon]

I mean, it's fine so long as you don't use it for controversial subjects beyond anything that's a verifiable fact. If there's any chance for politics to be involved with a specfic subject though....don't really bother.

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[Redneckerz]

10 hours ago, Sonikkumania said:

Personally I think it's become worse.

Feel free to explain this to expand your OP.

10 hours ago, Sonikkumania said:

I keep sering articles filled with personal bias, though I guess it's always been like that..

On lesser known subjects its an amazing resource, but then again this is usually done by people at the scholar level.

 

Others, not so much. Today i reverted the Dell Optiplex page because some one removed tables upon tables of valuable information (Listing of all the separate models released since the early 90s) because it read too much like an advertisment. Not realizing it is rather difficult to find all the info on Dell's site to start with.

[DoomPlayer00]

Wikipedia is excellent for when you're looking up stuff related mathematics, biology & chemistry etc. but horrid when looking up info about people or historical events because there might be bias included in the article.

[MrFroz]

It's become part of my Internet life since I was a kid, and I pretty much scour through it without even realizing that I'm doing it, a bit like using Google for searching.

[ChopBlock223]

It's a useful resource, but i hate how they frequently beg for donations implying they're at the end of their rope when they in fact can cover all the costs they need to. and have been able to do so for a VERY long time. Jimbo Wales is in fact very rich.

Over time, some pretty strong political biases have grown on Wikipedia, which unfortunately makes it less valuable.

[Herr Dethnout]

7 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Others, not so much. Today i reverted the Dell Optiplex page because some one removed tables upon tables of valuable information (Listing of all the separate models released since the early 90s) because it read too much like an advertisment. Not realizing it is rather difficult to find all the info on Dell's site to start with.

This remembers me the time that I made a translation of a Wikipedia article to Spanish and was deleted because it was "Not Enciclopedical content"... My man, is the same article as the English Wikipedia WTF!

[Sonikkumania]

7 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Feel free to explain this to expand your OP.

I feel like this encyclopedia project should remain calculatively fact cold and base it's article resources on valid sources, but as many people have posted here, some articles have personal bias, especially political and historical ones. This is no doubt obvious when the use of internet has become as mainstream as today, and the so called "political awareness" is relevant.

7 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

On lesser known subjects its an amazing resource, but then again this is usually done by people at the scholar level.

Give me an example.

[Dr. Zin]

The fact that science entries on Wikipedia are being considered "reliable" by many here is a bit troubling. Looking at almost any article for a subject for which I have technical knowledge reveals tons of errors, omissions, misrepresentations and generally incomplete information. These problems are usually not from malice, just clearly the result of being written by people who aren't familiar with the topic. Let's be real, people with professional expertise on topics don't have the time to edit Wikipedia, so a lot of the content is produced by high school students and undergraduates recycling information from whatever pops up in the first page of results on Google. The adults involved tend to have editing Wikipedia as a hobby, not any deep understanding of the subjects they are writing on either. Of course the most dangerous are those people with an agenda who try to insert it into subject pages, but I think outside hot button topics that's pretty rare. As others have said above, Wikipedia is a good way to get a surface level overview of a subject, but check it against other sources. TL;DR Much like the news, Wikipedia seems reliable until you run into a subject on which you have personal knowledge, at which point you go, "How the hell did they get that wrong?"

 

On a somewhat related note, does anyone else get driven a bit crazy when they run across a page where about 10% of the content is about the actual subject, and 90% goes off on some tangent that isn't really relevant to what most people will be visiting the page for?