@@stevanmiladinovic4007 Wikipedia is not a valid source *for wikipedia*. Any article at any time may contain vandalism or original research, which is a big no-no.
@@stevanmiladinovic4007 yes, this is a fact, which is why edits must not be sourced directly from wikipedia but rather from an official source. Copying info from wiki article to wiki article is a big no-no unless sources are also copied over which support the conclusions reached. Wikipedia is a great jumping-off point for research though, and can help you get a general idea of what you're doing. It's an encyclopedia, not an all-knowing being. Using it as your sole research point is stupid, but you should use it to help you navigate topics you know nothing about.
I never use Wikipedia for politics unless it's history related (like reading about how the Constitution was written). I use Wikipedia for science technology engineering and math topics 99% of the time. The kind of stuff that you can't really have bias about or things you can't fake. (like you cant fake the fundamental theorem of calculus)
Would not have survived some of my college comp sci classes without wikipedia. Anything outside of mathematics on there (including history) is useless imo
The problem is that, at least in the spanish wikipedia, a huge amount of the articles are just (bad) translations of the english ones, even in some articles wikipedia put a disclaimer saying this article is translated from other article.
@@JR-oc5yf the English Wikipedia is actually FLOODED of many shitty editors that you must to identify a fake news and discern with a cherry-picking reference loot. Spanish Wikipedia can lack of this kind of moderation, but some articles are well-made. German Wikipedia blasts to the rest of the Wikipedia.
Ok, but as you said, there is no real solution to Wikipedia, so I'll just use it with the filter implemented in my brain, as always. I think it's very easy to distinguish "controversial" articles from articles on physics, mathematics, etc., which are 99% based on university articles, etc. Wikipedia is like all other websites, but its advantage is that you can easily check sources, discussions and other language versions of these articles. Therefore, you should be smart enough to verify before pressing those information into your brain. Simple enough I think.
Additionally, I think Wikipedia guys (inventors) are really cool, they actually use free software and they don't put tons of ads and javascript bloat that I would need to block.
@@Anonymous-hk4cj Yes, that's a great argument. I really don't want to start a discussion about politics, but i think that what makes a liberal setting stand ahead of socialisms is infact the ability of choice for the individual (accompanied by a good deal of intelligence in selecting what's good for himself, and hopefully respect for the other)
@@Houshalter I don't know about what small specific webpages you are talking. Specific sites that I'm using are fine and they are doing their own thing well. Maybe I'm just not informed enough, but I agree with you that it would be awesome to have decentralized model of sites with Wikipedia being one of them all and not one above them all.
Well, not that you can trust university articles. Nothing can be trusted, not even your own judgement, maybe especially your own judgement. The best thing to do is to be aware of as many possibilities as possible and experiment with different ideas until you get the results that you want. Being too committed to ideas is a bad idea that always leads either to terrible results or to stagnation. Most problems in the world come from people using ideas as a source of identity, getting too attached to that identity, and then being completely unwilling to change and improve.
I finally managed to block wikipedia from search results (it tends to show up in the sidebar). It's insane how this propaganda-machine has wormed itself into practically EVERY search engine.
it's plagued with "reviewers" who will apply their personal view on a subject and will delete whatever addition the don't agree with, not following the objective rules, they get admin levels based on activity and not on a knowledge base, it's a waste of time redact anything anymore you'll get everything deleted, they delete like if they get points for activity
This is quite the rapid fire. I use Wikipedia to research established facts. Not news. Wikipedia news is just a aggregate for other sites. Please do a follow-up with examples of established facts that have bias in them. I would be very interested in that.
Mark Levin has brought to light verifiably false information on himself. He has contacted Wikipedia directly and they have refused to make corrections to the false information. He is a conservative news commentator.
@@soundmanbrad That is still very different from things such as how an algorithm works. As you said, he is a news commentator, he is inherently political. Just avoid that part of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is just a source of information like many others. There's no such thing as a trustworthy source in my opinion, you just compare information from multiple sources and make a decision out of that.
They have been calling themselves "the free encyclopedia" for years! They purport themselves to be an unbiased source of information, whereas that couldn't be farther from the truth.
This makes me sad cause I write a lot for Wikipedia :( It is true though, so many sources on rely on msm articles. I always aim to source from books and papers where I can, it's not a hopeless issue. I'm happy though that you demonstrate some knowledgability about how Wikipedia is actually run and its policies; No Original Research is a pain in the ass sometimes but a line has to be drawn as to how to measure notability.
@@Extys Not quite. While it does play a big role in ensuring verifiability, WP:NOR importantly covers WP:SYNTH. It is possible do original research while still being verifiable, by purely taking multiple reliable sources and synthesising them, but it's not allowed. Regardless of how obviously connectable two facts may seem to be. At first glance that might seem unfair - but actually, it's far too much of a leap to let editors apply what they feel is logical, what serves their prejudice, biases, etc. On the matter of notability, articles unchecked for OR is how irrelevant, unnotable, garbage and fancruft gets in. Checkout the Garfield article, and have a look at the paragraphs that entirely rely on connecting up primary sources. Horrid stuff.
@@jacobscrackers98 Who's denying that? I don't know what your position is, but if it's that of Luke's, then I don't understand what your point is. Luke is arguing that Wikipedia overwhelmingly represents the biases and prejudices of MSM, which is a fair argument. He is also arguing, it seems fatalistically, that Wikipedia fails to also represent (ultimately, the biases and prejudices of) authors, academics and, uh... I guess redditors. I don't really accept that. Plenty of books and academic material is used. User-generated-content (reddit, etc) tends to be used as primary source, usually to qualify or cross-reference something another source said. The whole point is, Wikipedia represents the different biases of material you find in a library and elsewhere, which is all a encyclopedia does. Not the single biases of the editors themselves. I recommend reading this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability,_not_truth
Back in 2008, the administrators of Wikipedia acted to the effect of saying that I was not allowed to write on my user page about my stand on gender politics.
I learned this lesson the hard way in 2017, when I rewrote the International Phonetic Alphabet templates. It's *extremely* toxic, and *what* *gets* *in* *isn't* *what's* *true* -- *it's* *what's* *most* *persistent* .
@@5days61 I'm not using the Woke/Leftist meaning of the word. I just mean that the people who edit are largely insufferable asshats without the slightest shrivel of emotional intelligence or integrity; operating solely off of pride, anxiety, and other mental disorders.
All of my teachers throughout high school literally made it a point several times, DO NOT TRUST/USE WIKIPEDIA for referencing information. Since the beginning of high school (ok maybe like yr 2) it was drilled into us all. My first year or high school was 8 years ago- I went to high school in Scotland.It's low key irking me that I'm only just seeing a video like this now...
My teachers went further. They didn't trust sources from Wikipedia. They were bad teachers. I think they misunderstood something. It was fairly early on in public schools discovery of Wikipedia.
Same here but I graduated in 2005. Even in college they'd doc points for Wikipedia because it's not robust self-research. Teaching the kid to do their own research is the point. However recently I've seen people your age and younger insist Wikipedia is the ultimate repository of ALL knowledge and facts. They really think it can't be edited by anyone but official experts and scholars. Tbh even if only "experts" could edit it, it'd still be biased. Then it would be the persons/organizations declaring unfit or only certain people "expert" enough to contribute. If Galileo were alive today he wouldn't have had a chance editing or posting his research on Wiki. Though I am glad some people like us still can see how this centralizing of info is problematic.
> media bad > reddit thread good Seriously, who uses Wikipedia for news and opinions and actually believes im what it says? For me wikipedia has always been a great tool for jumpstarting into a subject, and more like an index of what i should research if i want any sort of deep knowledge on that topic
@@g00zik97 >Media good >Reddit good >State Department good >UN Council on Foreign Relations good >World Economic Forum good >World Health Organization Good >ADL good >SPLC good >Now I’m gonna pretend anyone who doesn’t get information from the sources of the globalist cabal is a 4channer, a dated site that nobody notable uses anymore
Depends on the math and science. It is fine for looking up something non-controversial and purely factual like how to find eigenvectors. But if you look up something controversial like "global warming" then you will be lied to.
@@atmbm5261 This isn't the place to discuss that topic, there's plenty of well reasoned arguments online as to why the current establishment consensus on GW is flawed and may not be true. However, you are not going to find those arguments being discussed on Wikipedia in any great detail. In terms of reference counts, you might as well say that the statement "Orange Man Bad" must be scientifically true because there are over 3,000 references from CNN, MSNBC and University Professors on Twitter stating so. And these organisations and people never lie according to Google, so the statement must be true.
@@MrEdrftgyuji Ahh you are one of those GW critics.. Well tell me more. I always hear "Do your own research" or "don't believe the mainstream media". I actually did my research, and there is no reason why the climate change is not human made. The scientific consensus is *huuge*. There are not many subjects where the consensus is so immense. While I agree that those opinions are not discussed in great detail, I'm very grateful that it isn't. Those "opinions" are mostly propaganda or unscientifc arguments which should not have the same platform against a 97% consensus of scientists who conclude that the climate change is real. Trump has nothing to do with this. Global warming is a scientific subject and the orange man is politics. I don't get where you want to go with this argument. Of course a lot of articles are biased. That's the human nature, you have to read articles with healthy scepticism. Though he is an absolute asshole for what he is saying during this crisis.
id be fine with the bias, if it allowed space for multiple biases. But trying to reduce things down to a 4 inch picture-frame snapshot, while clear-cutting all the rest.. sigh.
Who tf learns FFT from Wikipedia? It's taught in all undergrad science and engineering courses. If I somehow skipped that course, then I'll pick up a textbook, not Wikipedia.
I STUDY PHYSICS AND I HAVE TO SAY RESEARCHING IN WIKIPEDIA IS SOMETIMES CONVENIENT BECAUSE OF THE TIME YOU DON'T HAVE. I USSUALLY GO FOR MATH AND SCIENCE STUFF AND AS I READ I CAN SAY IT WAS WRITTEN BY PROFFESSIONALS BECAUSE TOPICS LIKE QUANTUM MODELINGS OR INFINTE-DIMENSIONAL SPACE THEOREMS CAN'T BE WRITTEN WITH THAT LEVEL, BY JOURNALISTS. AND LIKE U, I DON'T EVEN TRUST IN MY OWN SHADOW, SO WHEN I'M READING SOMETHING THAT IT'S NOT DEMONSTRATED OR THE DEMOSTRATION IS KINDA WEIRD I JUST GO TO THE CITATIONS. SOME MONTHS AGO I WAS READING A DISCUSSION ABOUT THE STERN-GERLACH EXPERIMENT AND IN THE ARTICLE THERE WAS LIKE A NOTE THAT SAID IT'S NEEDED A REVISION AND A LINK TO A DISCUSSION WHERE A STUDENT WAS TALKING WITH THE AUTHOR OF THAT PAGE IN WIKIPEDIA AND HE WAS CLEARLY A PHYSCIST AND HE EVEN GAVE TO HER SOME LINKS WITH INFORMATION WRITTEN BY FEYMAN ITSELF AND SOME SPRINGER ARTICLE. SO I THINK FOR MATH/SCIENCE TOPICS IT'S OK BUT WE HAVE TO VERYFY THE CITATIONS. BUT AS U SAY FOR SOCIAL TOPICS WE HAVE TO BELIEVE IN NONE.
Hey Luke, actual examples works be useful. Stuff I look up is usually stuff like critical fracture toughness. Pretty accurate and well summarized last time I checked.
Obama's page vs Trump's page 'nuff said It's not that it is always wrong or inaccurate, but it's full of information that is ripped straight from crappy journalism
Web Wanderer, tldr: English Wikipedia articles on "wrongthink" topics or people look just like ones from The Big Soviet Encyclopedia as they both begin with ideological/pseudoscience/unethical/personal accusations. I’m from Russia, and it’s the most unpleasant thing about the English Wikipedia. I’ve read a number of articles form the BSE so I know what I’m talking about. For example look at "Вульгарная политическая экономия" [vulgar political economics, a term for any other economical theory which dares criticize Marxism] in the BSE and compare it with any modern political/controversial article on wiki, the similarity will be uncanny.
Anything political (avoid all). Any article on an individual. It will either be basically advertising (meaning they paid for it or had it written to support their career or person) or a bunch of highly selective moral judgements on someone's supposed views, or the views they suppose them to have, avoids actually explaining their views ofc. e.g. reducing their views to a label such as 'sexist' without understanding much less explaining them. People are not caricatures. Anything you notice, regardless of the article, that relates to the present day events or tries to shoehorn some present day ideology into something (happens a lot in the history articles, wilful misinterpretation and misrepresentation for ideological goodboy points). Anything regarding the achievements or supposed achievements of women (looking at you in particular Ada Lovelace). Basically: history rewritten or represented for ideological purposes AND presentday political propaganda AND personal or sometimes organisational advertisement.
@@redd_cat The left sticks to what is believable and puts in cumulative bias over time and the right just goes off the rails immediately. This is why "Reliable" sources always have a slight left wing bias. The left has been gradually and steadily shifting the overton window while the right tried way too hard and lost traction immediately.
No Luke no, there is one big difference between news media and Wikipedia: most journalists do not feel the need to cite sources, in Wikipedia you have to. And if you use Wikipedia looking at references, aware that it can't be better than the sources, Wikipedia IS amazingly useful. Most often, sources at not good for current topics and politics. But that's not what one usually uses Wikipedia for. Also, fact checking does not work that way.
I think I got the point entirely. If I see that the main source of an entry is a crappy article, I will consider that entry unreliable. I have a way to see where information comes from. I don't think it makes sense to say that "Wikipedia is biased" globally. I think Wikipedia is a website whose pages are written by different people with different biases. Each of these people has to cite some sources, so I can see (even if indirectly) if the specific entry I'm reading is worth considering.
In fact, I do not assume every article is reliable. But instead of stopping using Wikipedia as a matter of principle I might consider contributing to improve articles about things I am actually competent about.
the "point" doesn't seem to be the biases. even scientific papers -- the gospel of our current age, besides they are not even read -- also cannot help but have biases. what's more crucial, from a bunch of dull conspiracy theorists' perspective, is rather the centralization of the information. therefore, more power to one source (in this case, wikipedia) represents two main consequences basically: 1) the burial of other little independent sources that less people bother to consult, 2) the exponential growth of more and more lazy af people that would feel rewarded as if they've learnt something while merely consuming fast food on that familiar page, without any further check (and forgetting it all a few hours later). actually you can consider these two consequences as one, yet another vicious circle. as long as you don't use wikipedia this way, but you do compare an article in multiple languages, with external sources and go visiting other little (biased) websites scattered in the Wired or wherever, you're doing just fine.
Me during college years: as an open source encyclopedia, Wikipedia is tops. Professors during my college years: Wikipedia is not a viable source. Me long after college: Wikipedia is biased. College professors long after I left: Wikipedia is valid. Lessons learned: Wikipedia's legitimacy has changed & Professors are still getting it wrong.
You didn't mention that Wikipedia is no longer editable by anyone. Now, you need to be part of a special circle to edit articles. No prizes for guessing who gets accepted into that club.
Correction: changing semi-protected (generally the most visited or controversial) articles require a account that is verified. Less popular pages can still be edited by anyone with an unbanned IP. But, after some research, I can confirm the hierarchy is indeed very rigid and dogmatic. If you make edits an admin doesn't like or agree with, your IP will be quickly banned. The number of editors has severely declined over the past decade due to this authoritarian, increasingly centralized caste system.
A lot of people say Wikipedia is fine for scientific/historical/mathematical topics. I think in general yes, but, especially for history, such opinions may seep down into what is thought to be uncontroversial topics, the less it is used, the better.
Thank you. I'd even go further (to me the Big Bang is political, and no I'm not some kind of Creationist, just someone who realizes the Standard Model's full of glaring holes) but I daresay everyone would scream at me. Nevertheless, I'm glad someone pointed out that even the most objective science includes some kind of politics, somehow. Humans are complex and complicated creatures, nothing we do is "pure" or immune from our preconceptions and prejudices.
tl;dr Continue using Wikipedia for sciences and non-controversial subjects, please... Wikipedia is extremely useful for unbiased quantitative topics such as maths, computer science or physics. Tbh all sciences, including psychology even. The best thing is that it links sources, which link more sources and etc. It isn't meant to be (or at least shouldn't be) used for anything remotely controversial where bias and human error can exist. Take calculus for example - it will exhaust concisely give you everything you could ever need to know, and you know that it's probably definitely correct because it gets checked and is easily checked. If any information isn't there, find some line and click on the source link and there's your information you needed. Take history as another example - it's not so easy to prove as it is based on past media, which isn't necessarily based on truth and can't be proven easily. This can provoke controversy, and as a result, information can be contradictory and sources will be biased to what media says and what editors want you to think/see. This is unfortunately something Wikipedia isn't useful for. lol WikiLeaks is the perfect place for that :)
@@tissuepaper9962 The problem with using Wikipedia for current events/history is that the sources in the bibliography will be biased in the same way. May as well just cut out the middleman and go straight for MSM. It will very rarely show anything from the opposing view point, let alone with an actual source.
What's most surprising is that Wikipedia is bad for quick summaries too. If you want a quick understanding of a topic, there's almost invariably a better resource for that.
I've used Wikipedia for CS research for years, it's not the only resource I use and if something looks dodgy I check the citations. Hasn't hurt me yet.
I have found plenty of inaccuracies in Wikipedia. I've tried to convince editors that the information was not accurate but they wouldn't even check the validity.
@@crusaderACR That depends on the pages, some pages are protected against vandalism. But if you have an account for more than a few days, you can modify it.
@@snowcode953 Refer to the Scots language controversy on wikipedia. A single guy refused modifications of anyone on like 100k pages he himself made. Worst thing is he didn't even know the language
Luke, you did not even touch on the worst thing - that a huge percentage of links in wikipedia articles are dead, and of the ones that are live another large percentage do not say what the articles say they do and sometimes say the exact opposite. This makes auditing the truthfulness of wikipedia articles nearly impossible. And that situation appears to only get worse with time.
What is democracy without journalism? The platform (wikipedia) was revolutionary, it has done more to liberate information than anything that has come before.
@@LukeSmithxyz Without journalists, those chosen in power are less likely to be held accountable. I did not realize you already checked out, and given up on democracy.
I lost all trust in wikipedia when I started noticing articles having spin on them that reinterpreted things I remember from being alive during. GG...amiright
Yep, GG was my first taste at how garbage Wikipedia policies are and how they're meant for biased editors to hide behind and essentially make the site another main steam media outlet. It was pretty unreal to see an article about a protest against media and the only "reliable sources" accepted was by media. It might as well have been written by the journalists gamers were protesting.
I wish Wikipedia was actually neutral and allowed sources from the left-wing, centre and right-wing points of view not just acting as an advocacy group in disguise on political topics.
Well honestly Wikipedia is really great for some things and understandably terrible for many others. It makes a difference whether you're reading an article about the siege of Sarajevo or about organic chemistry and oxidation states of metal ions. Know what you're reading instead of just flat out banning Wikipedia from your life.
a) I like the idea behind wikipedia b) it is highly useful for non-controversal topics like checking the engine and transmission options of specific vehicles or population of a certain country etc.
I don't know about that. Wikipedia seems to have a fairly neutral point of view on things I care about (which is historical events, technical data, and science). I don't believe current events are represented accurately by any media, and wikipedia is certainly not the place to get news anyway. The reason you can't do "original research" is because people will inevitably put pseudoscience, such as essential oils or free energy, into otherwise trustworthy and correct articles, giving beginner or amateur researchers the idea that stuff is real. Which really is far more important than the latest meme stock, or presidential tweet. The no original research policy isn't designed to keep "alternative thinkers" down, or push people into believing a certain viewpoint; it's meant to keep people from using wikipedia as a way to publish their papers that reputable publishers rejected. Until events are severely studied and debated by real academics and historians, they just aren't meant to be on wikipedia. That's why current events by their very nature cannot be accurately represented on there. If you see a date for an event that happened less than 20 or so years ago, you should in your mind realize this article is basically a forum, and everything you read in it should be taken with several grains of salt. And using basic research techniques, you should be able to pick information out from the bias anyway. Heavy bias (no matter the tone) isn't exactly subtle, and different perspectives tend to focus on particular aspects of a thing the other side missed, or flat out chose to ignore. I personally think completely rejecting one of the finest online repositories for knowledge over inaccurate reddit posts is a major overreaction, especially considering the objectional portion is an infinitesimally small fraction of the whole. No need to play martyr over a spot in a potato, you know? Just scoop it out, and enjoy the good part.
Another thing about wikipedia is that it has articles on all of these psychological tricks. If it was specifically engineered to be a propaganda machine (like radio, tv, newspapers, etc.) why would it contain the exact information you as a hobbist researcher need to render propaganda ineffective? I think the whole root of the issue is the news media's sensationalism and greed. As romantic as the idea of a "wild west internet" is, word of mouth learning is far less efficient, for both the teacher and student. I see it like traditional farming as compared to modern farming. If you suddenly reduce the efficiency of a system, you cannot expect the systems relying on it to not collapse. We need this kind of accessable, free, knowledge to continue advancing as a society/internet people. Without that, we suddenly have to go back to paying for giant, dull textbooks, and bothering people for information all of the time. "Unbiased" decentralized internet (which is impossible anyway, it simply becomes mob bias instead of elite bias) is not worth the reconcentration of knowledge to just the "nerds", or people who can afford to buy books. Knowledge is power, and by rejecting knowledge, you make yourself weak to propaganda.
You know..Wikipedia is an Encyclopaedia.. it’s not “the source”. Actually, it’s provides excellent sources, papers etc so check the details of a claim.
Yeah, trying to explain why my friend needed to pay attention to the sources section on the Russia-gate wikipedia page (which is exactly what you said - "a repository" of mainstream outlets uncritically repeating eachother's unverified garbage) was a huge headache.
Wikipedia is a great tool for looking up really objective trivia bits: what's the population of Newfoundland, what year were each of the Beatles albums released, etc. But when I look up a page on a person for example, I shouldn't see "...is a racist and conspiracy theorist [3][4][5][6]" in the opening paragraph, let alone with the links going to a bunch of dumbass Buzzfeed and Slate articles.
This is the same conclusion I came to about Consumer Reports years and years ago. I used to subscribe to it. But then I noticed when they reviewed something that I happened to know a lot about - they look at all the wrong things and ignore what really matters.
This is an excellent parallel! I, too, used to subscribe but noticed that they are horribly biased towards one product over another for no reason at all. Probably funds changing hands under the table.
What was meant to be a repository of human knowledge is now a repository of human bias to it's worst degree. That's what happens when curation takes over as a persons prime motive and nothing is left to the people anymore.
I use the English Wikipedia a lot. I know you don't have to believe everything they say, and some info are outdated. But if someone writes something stupid they quickly revert it, thank God. On the other hand, the Hungarian Wikipedia is awful. (I am Hungarian btw.) It is full of uninteresting stuff like footballers who haven't even played a game, buses, roads, teachers and doctors from the 1770's, celebrities, loads of disambiguation pages...and the useful or interesting stuff is nowhere to be found. I know they say that Wikipedia is edited by contributors in their free time, about stuff they are interested in, but still, this is ridiculous. And to top it off, most of the community is toxic. I quitted it a few days ago and never looked back. I don't want any of this. English Wikipedia gets even more of my attention.
I need to understand the mechanics of the editing system, but my experience hasn't been bad using Wikipedia. Always gotta keep it in mind that the info is only as good as the sources.
Having attempted editing for Wikipedia a few times I can honestly say the bias is real. Most recently I attempted to make an edit suggestion on an article for another media platform that would slightly alter it's synopsis. It was a slight change that would merely alter the tone of the synopsis from one that is blatantly liberal-biased to a more objective one. I attempted to cite the website itself in reference to it's categories and was quickly admonished by an admin for using the website itself as a reference. Understandable, but when it's something as intrinsic as the categories displayed within the website I feel that should not be the case. I was told to only use "reliable third-party sources". The kicker is that they then directed me to notes referencing heavily opinion laden articles from BuzzFeed, The Daily Dot, The Verge and even one *youtube video* . After a quick look at this user's "talk" page and following a link to their twitter (which was posted on their talk page) it became very evident why they were fighting so hard to keep a negative tone in the synopsis of the article. I think it's of note that this user is not only and administrator for the site but also has checkuser privileges (can view your accounts IP address), oversight privileges (deletes information in a way that is so thorough even admins can't view it) and is a member of the arbitration committee (settle disputes between editors and determines punitive actions. also decides who has checkuser and oversight privileges). Yes it is biased and with Administrators that have this much authority and can't remain impartial it will remain that way.
Well said, Wikipedia immediately suggests the way they want you to think about the particular topic/person that you're looking up before you've even learned about it/them, that's if that subject's actions conflict with silicon valley's political affiliations and doners. Notice how they will come straight out with someone as a conspiracy theorist as soon as you begin to read and then talk about their 35 years as a professor who just happened to also revolutionise something in their chosen field and has been highly regarded their whole career up until now for some reason. I never use it and it's hard to find an alternative, I tried online britannica also but they're shit too, in regards to politics mainly. Great video
Thank you very much. I've always wondered what's wrong with Wikipedia. I've been using Wikipedia and for the majority of cases it corresponded to what I knew, but a lot of people really hate it and say that it's wrong to use it for anything (these are mostly intelligent educated people). Now I understand why. I'll have to fix and improve myself to understand everything better.
Why is Wikipedia any different from any other source? People should be skeptical of the information that they read regardless of where it comes from, there aren't any special "decentralised" resources that are objectively true. If it's a topic that you care about, read as broadly as you can, be aware of the potential biases of your sources and then form an opinion.
wikipedia has become a battlefield for editors who think x vs who think y. And this is a problem that's hard to overcome by the side of the media, however the solution it's the same with every piece of information, that is, individual thiking, decentralized information, authority based on technical expertise over politics and aesthetics, even science has become some kind of tecnocracy, jee.
Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for this video. I was looking up the nickname for John and when doing so the name Karen came up. I was shocked to read what Wikipedia gave as the meaning for the name we gave our daughter . The terms they used were not even used when we named her . I did this on 11/24,2022. I will avoid using them for this date forward. Great video but a little to long. Mark
I trust wikipedia on a lot of subjects, social ones and politics, less. Computer related things are pretty much 90% or better from what I can see, which is pretty much the most important to me.
In 2016 I recommended adding to the 2016 timeline page a part about the at the time recent Pulse Nightclub shooting, which was a rather relevant event with historical repercussions, and I was told in the talk page that it was too "American centric." As of today, they have a section about it on that page. But that shows a pretty clear anti-American bias by some of the users where a major event is just too "American centric" to talk about.
also one of the things is that even after their approved media finally talks about something you HAVE TO only talk about things they deemed worthy of talking and you have to say it the way they did.
Dude...wikipedia is amazing and is as close to decentralized as anything useful can be...If you think a purely decentralized version of wikipedia with no oversight would produce less biased content than wikipedia, you have too much faith in humanity. It is literally the least biased source I can think of. I think most people would probably say wikipedia is "left" leaning, but it's by far less biased than any news source in existence because of the whole [citation needed] meme and the fact that anything you post with an explicit bias will be removed quickly by someone with an opposing view! They discourage original research because "original" usually means that your research hasn't had the time to be corroborated by other people. It's a way to remove bias!
What are some good alternatives then? Cause searching for primary sources throughout the internet isn't something you can afford to do all the time. I've tried (and still am) using encyclopedia britannica, but it is very narrowly oriented compared to wikipedia and some of the articles are behind a paywall. Wolfram mathworld is pretty good for maths and physics but it is very non layman-friendly and mathematics is barely a controversial field. So yea, any good recommendations?
Reminds me of Kurzgesagt. It used to be a great channel portraying interesting facts and stating very clearly once they leave the realm of science and enter their opinion or explore an idea. I feel that because of this, they are now established as an objective channel with unbiased information but at some point they stopped the clear division of facts and opinion and started with political or other controversial topics. Since then I could not stand them anymore because I get the impression that it seems to people as if they are still just portraying facts. It could be that they got better again but I stopped checking their videos so I wouldn't know about it. I don't know if wikipedia is as bad as you say but since I mostly used it to look up some science related stuff or names, I doubt that there is much bias here.
I've despised that channel from the very beginning. I saw a few videos that were narrated by Alain de Botton. Had bad vibes, so (ironically) looked up him on Wikipedia and learned he's a Cambridge academic.
It's fine for pure math proofs as you can follow along yourself so you can confirm if it's right or not, on literally any other topic you are right though.
For those of you saying you use it for defs and theorems, why not just use the Wolfram wiki? I understand using Wikipedia for looking up quick dates and the most bare bone information but even then it can easily be changed. I specifically remember checking out the Computer Science entry on Wikipedia maybe 5 years ago and the top level explanation was "Computer Science is the study and practice of those who consume Doritos and Mountain Dew while playing video games on their PC". I'm not going to completely object to that entry but just goes to show that the quick edits allowed on Wiki could make it that 1-2 minutes waste of time. I will say I like Wikipedia for including their sources at the bottom but its also rare I have to use Wikipedia and I more use it to play "6 Degrees" when I'm bored.
media be like: it says on wikipedia
wikipedia: sources:media
There's a Wikipedia-Article in *every single language that Wikipedia supports* on why Wikipedia is NOT a valid source.
@@stevanmiladinovic4007 Wikipedia is not a valid source *for wikipedia*.
Any article at any time may contain vandalism or original research, which is a big no-no.
@@TheDankEngineer Wikipedia is not a valid scientific source period.
@@stevanmiladinovic4007 yes, this is a fact, which is why edits must not be sourced directly from wikipedia but rather from an official source.
Copying info from wiki article to wiki article is a big no-no unless sources are also copied over which support the conclusions reached.
Wikipedia is a great jumping-off point for research though, and can help you get a general idea of what you're doing. It's an encyclopedia, not an all-knowing being.
Using it as your sole research point is stupid, but you should use it to help you navigate topics you know nothing about.
It's like that obama giving medal to obama meme
I never use Wikipedia for politics unless it's history related (like reading about how the Constitution was written). I use Wikipedia for science technology engineering and math topics 99% of the time. The kind of stuff that you can't really have bias about or things you can't fake. (like you cant fake the fundamental theorem of calculus)
yet
Much of that stuff is also uselessly laid out.
It could be biased, the devil is in the details.
Would not have survived some of my college comp sci classes without wikipedia. Anything outside of mathematics on there (including history) is useless imo
Even on history it's absolute trash
I only use wikipedia to check that early life button, when checking whos a member of the tribe
One of the best tricks is to use Wikipedia bilingually, if you really need to use it.
The problem is that, at least in the spanish wikipedia, a huge amount of the articles are just (bad) translations of the english ones, even in some articles wikipedia put a disclaimer saying this article is translated from other article.
Use english and latin wikipedia 😎
doesn't help you if the other language you speak is german
@@JR-oc5yf the English Wikipedia is actually FLOODED of many shitty editors that you must to identify a fake news and discern with a cherry-picking reference loot. Spanish Wikipedia can lack of this kind of moderation, but some articles are well-made.
German Wikipedia blasts to the rest of the Wikipedia.
Portuguese Wikipedia = English wikipedia + google translator + badly written style.
Ok, but as you said, there is no real solution to Wikipedia, so I'll just use it with the filter implemented in my brain, as always.
I think it's very easy to distinguish "controversial" articles from articles on physics, mathematics, etc., which are 99% based on university articles, etc. Wikipedia is like all other websites, but its advantage is that you can easily check sources, discussions and other language versions of these articles. Therefore, you should be smart enough to verify before pressing those information into your brain.
Simple enough I think.
Additionally, I think Wikipedia guys (inventors) are really cool, they actually use free software and they don't put tons of ads and javascript bloat that I would need to block.
@@Anonymous-hk4cj Yes, that's a great argument. I really don't want to start a discussion about politics, but i think that what makes a liberal setting stand ahead of socialisms is infact the ability of choice for the individual (accompanied by a good deal of intelligence in selecting what's good for himself, and hopefully respect for the other)
@@Houshalter I don't know about what small specific webpages you are talking. Specific sites that I'm using are fine and they are doing their own thing well. Maybe I'm just not informed enough, but I agree with you that it would be awesome to have decentralized model of sites with Wikipedia being one of them all and not one above them all.
i like your profile
Well, not that you can trust university articles. Nothing can be trusted, not even your own judgement, maybe especially your own judgement. The best thing to do is to be aware of as many possibilities as possible and experiment with different ideas until you get the results that you want. Being too committed to ideas is a bad idea that always leads either to terrible results or to stagnation. Most problems in the world come from people using ideas as a source of identity, getting too attached to that identity, and then being completely unwilling to change and improve.
did you tried to create a page about yourself again?
awowkwkwk
That was savage
@@sandikodev >using aowkkw instead of hahahaha
i see you are indonesian
Did you try*
@@weakspirit_
here
The Virgin Wikipedia vs the Chad 18th Century London Coffeehouse
OK
@@stevethea5250 shut up
@@stevethea5250 Shut up.
oh
unfortunately wikipedia is its own social media channel at this point.another vehicle to push the corporate narrative
I use Wikipedia often, but I only really use it for math topics, or occasionally historical things. For current events, I just use memes.
ngl Wikipedia is pretty accurate and rich in terms of mathematical topics and it offers really robust examples
I finally managed to block wikipedia from search results (it tends to show up in the sidebar). It's insane how this propaganda-machine has wormed itself into practically EVERY search engine.
it's plagued with "reviewers" who will apply their personal view on a subject and will delete whatever addition the don't agree with, not following the objective rules, they get admin levels based on activity and not on a knowledge base, it's a waste of time redact anything anymore you'll get everything deleted, they delete like if they get points for activity
This is quite the rapid fire. I use Wikipedia to research established facts. Not news. Wikipedia news is just a aggregate for other sites. Please do a follow-up with examples of established facts that have bias in them. I would be very interested in that.
Good point. I would add that that's the main use case for Wikipedia anyway
Basically everything political on Wikipedia is extremely biased
^ this
if im researching mathematics, physics, biology, computer science... anything real and based basically.. wikipedia is rather good.
Mark Levin has brought to light verifiably false information on himself. He has contacted Wikipedia directly and they have refused to make corrections to the false information. He is a conservative news commentator.
@@soundmanbrad That is still very different from things such as how an algorithm works. As you said, he is a news commentator, he is inherently political. Just avoid that part of Wikipedia.
idk I have found the Early Life section useful
Yep, he's based.
Based
Nice
Based.
Based.
Wikipedia is just a source of information like many others. There's no such thing as a trustworthy source in my opinion, you just compare information from multiple sources and make a decision out of that.
anyway this video is ironic, all this channel is some kind of sarcasm
^^^critical thinking
Wikipedia seems to be very politicaly bias and thats the problem
They have been calling themselves "the free encyclopedia" for years! They purport themselves to be an unbiased source of information, whereas that couldn't be farther from the truth.
@Lacey Holmes alright man this is the 5th time. What does "based" means ?
Hahaha, "come on Wikipedia. Accept this Reddit thread on Holocaust revisionism."
STICK TO ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
Nobody on Reddit loses their job for giving a wrong answer.
Credentials automatically make you wrong.
This makes me sad cause I write a lot for Wikipedia :(
It is true though, so many sources on rely on msm articles. I always aim to source from books and papers where I can, it's not a hopeless issue.
I'm happy though that you demonstrate some knowledgability about how Wikipedia is actually run and its policies; No Original Research is a pain in the ass sometimes but a line has to be drawn as to how to measure notability.
No Original Research is just a consequence of the policy of verifiability to be honest.
@@Extys Not quite. While it does play a big role in ensuring verifiability, WP:NOR importantly covers WP:SYNTH. It is possible do original research while still being verifiable, by purely taking multiple reliable sources and synthesising them, but it's not allowed. Regardless of how obviously connectable two facts may seem to be. At first glance that might seem unfair - but actually, it's far too much of a leap to let editors apply what they feel is logical, what serves their prejudice, biases, etc. On the matter of notability, articles unchecked for OR is how irrelevant, unnotable, garbage and fancruft gets in. Checkout the Garfield article, and have a look at the paragraphs that entirely rely on connecting up primary sources. Horrid stuff.
@JC S Ah sorry, did you write the Garfield article? Did not mean to offend.
@@derick1259 But of course 'trusted authors' can't possibly be as biased as or more than wikipedia editors, oh no..
@@jacobscrackers98 Who's denying that? I don't know what your position is, but if it's that of Luke's, then I don't understand what your point is. Luke is arguing that Wikipedia overwhelmingly represents the biases and prejudices of MSM, which is a fair argument. He is also arguing, it seems fatalistically, that Wikipedia fails to also represent (ultimately, the biases and prejudices of) authors, academics and, uh... I guess redditors. I don't really accept that. Plenty of books and academic material is used. User-generated-content (reddit, etc) tends to be used as primary source, usually to qualify or cross-reference something another source said. The whole point is, Wikipedia represents the different biases of material you find in a library and elsewhere, which is all a encyclopedia does. Not the single biases of the editors themselves. I recommend reading this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability,_not_truth
But Luke, how will I become buddhist by reading few lines of text from Wikipedia?!
Eternally based.
By finding the right thread on /x/
@@andrew_mb How 2 summon succubus?
@@TheAnalatheist And the nobody general thread
@@TheAnalatheist what is based ?
Yep, Wikipedia is out of my life since 2012. It got so bad back then, can't even imagine how shit it is now.
Sad
Same so glad I stopped using that propaganda website
Back in 2008, the administrators of Wikipedia acted to the effect of saying that I was not allowed to write on my user page about my stand on gender politics.
I learned this lesson the hard way in 2017, when I rewrote the International Phonetic Alphabet templates.
It's *extremely* toxic, and *what* *gets* *in* *isn't* *what's* *true* -- *it's* *what's* *most* *persistent* .
Can you describe it in more detail?
Stop using words like toxic
@@5days61 I'm not using the Woke/Leftist meaning of the word. I just mean that the people who edit are largely insufferable asshats without the slightest shrivel of emotional intelligence or integrity; operating solely off of pride, anxiety, and other mental disorders.
@@5days61 why?
@@5days61 You are toxic
I use it for reading about animals and plants because it usually has range maps. For history or anything else its appalling.
All of my teachers throughout high school literally made it a point several times, DO NOT TRUST/USE WIKIPEDIA for referencing information. Since the beginning of high school (ok maybe like yr 2) it was drilled into us all. My first year or high school was 8 years ago- I went to high school in Scotland.It's low key irking me that I'm only just seeing a video like this now...
My teachers went further. They didn't trust sources from Wikipedia. They were bad teachers. I think they misunderstood something. It was fairly early on in public schools discovery of Wikipedia.
Same here but I graduated in 2005. Even in college they'd doc points for Wikipedia because it's not robust self-research. Teaching the kid to do their own research is the point.
However recently I've seen people your age and younger insist Wikipedia is the ultimate repository of ALL knowledge and facts. They really think it can't be edited by anyone but official experts and scholars.
Tbh even if only "experts" could edit it, it'd still be biased. Then it would be the persons/organizations declaring unfit or only certain people "expert" enough to contribute.
If Galileo were alive today he wouldn't have had a chance editing or posting his research on Wiki.
Though I am glad some people like us still can see how this centralizing of info is problematic.
> media bad
> reddit thread good
Seriously, who uses Wikipedia for news and opinions and actually believes im what it says?
For me wikipedia has always been a great tool for jumpstarting into a subject, and more like an index of what i should research if i want any sort of deep knowledge on that topic
>media bad
>reddit bad
>wikipedia bad
>4chan x post good
>luv me larpers
>luv me psycho schizo larpers
>simple as
@@g00zik97 >Media good
>Reddit good
>State Department good
>UN Council on Foreign Relations good
>World Economic Forum good
>World Health Organization Good
>ADL good
>SPLC good
>Now I’m gonna pretend anyone who doesn’t get information from the sources of the globalist cabal is a 4channer, a dated site that nobody notable uses anymore
I only use Wikipedia for math and science and to see what the overlords of the world would like for me to believe.
Depends on the math and science. It is fine for looking up something non-controversial and purely factual like how to find eigenvectors. But if you look up something controversial like "global warming" then you will be lied to.
@@MrEdrftgyuji The article about global warming has over 300 sources, mostly from scientific papers. Where exactly are they lying?
@@MrEdrftgyuji That is true.
@@atmbm5261 This isn't the place to discuss that topic, there's plenty of well reasoned arguments online as to why the current establishment consensus on GW is flawed and may not be true. However, you are not going to find those arguments being discussed on Wikipedia in any great detail.
In terms of reference counts, you might as well say that the statement "Orange Man Bad" must be scientifically true because there are over 3,000 references from CNN, MSNBC and University Professors on Twitter stating so. And these organisations and people never lie according to Google, so the statement must be true.
@@MrEdrftgyuji Ahh you are one of those GW critics.. Well tell me more. I always hear "Do your own research" or "don't believe the mainstream media". I actually did my research, and there is no reason why the climate change is not human made. The scientific consensus is *huuge*. There are not many subjects where the consensus is so immense.
While I agree that those opinions are not discussed in great detail, I'm very grateful that it isn't. Those "opinions" are mostly propaganda or unscientifc arguments which should not have the same platform against a 97% consensus of scientists who conclude that the climate change is real.
Trump has nothing to do with this. Global warming is a scientific subject and the orange man is politics. I don't get where you want to go with this argument. Of course a lot of articles are biased. That's the human nature, you have to read articles with healthy scepticism.
Though he is an absolute asshole for what he is saying during this crisis.
id be fine with the bias, if it allowed space for multiple biases. But trying to reduce things down to a 4 inch picture-frame snapshot, while clear-cutting all the rest.. sigh.
I use wikipedia for the "EARLY LIFE" section
Yeah, I always wait for the mainstream media to report on the Fast Fourier Transform before I upload the article to Wikipedia
Who tf learns FFT from Wikipedia? It's taught in all undergrad science and engineering courses. If I somehow skipped that course, then I'll pick up a textbook, not Wikipedia.
Better yet, Independently reinvent Fast Fourier Transforms yourself.
Return to Monke.
I STUDY PHYSICS AND I HAVE TO SAY RESEARCHING IN WIKIPEDIA IS SOMETIMES CONVENIENT BECAUSE OF THE TIME YOU DON'T HAVE. I USSUALLY GO FOR MATH AND SCIENCE STUFF AND AS I READ I CAN SAY IT WAS WRITTEN BY PROFFESSIONALS BECAUSE TOPICS LIKE QUANTUM MODELINGS OR INFINTE-DIMENSIONAL SPACE THEOREMS CAN'T BE WRITTEN WITH THAT LEVEL, BY JOURNALISTS. AND LIKE U, I DON'T EVEN TRUST IN MY OWN SHADOW, SO WHEN I'M READING SOMETHING THAT IT'S NOT DEMONSTRATED OR THE DEMOSTRATION IS KINDA WEIRD I JUST GO TO THE CITATIONS. SOME MONTHS AGO I WAS READING A DISCUSSION ABOUT THE STERN-GERLACH EXPERIMENT AND IN THE ARTICLE THERE WAS LIKE A NOTE THAT SAID IT'S NEEDED A REVISION AND A LINK TO A DISCUSSION WHERE A STUDENT WAS TALKING WITH THE AUTHOR OF THAT PAGE IN WIKIPEDIA AND HE WAS CLEARLY A PHYSCIST AND HE EVEN GAVE TO HER SOME LINKS WITH INFORMATION WRITTEN BY FEYMAN ITSELF AND SOME SPRINGER ARTICLE. SO I THINK FOR MATH/SCIENCE TOPICS IT'S OK BUT WE HAVE TO VERYFY THE CITATIONS. BUT AS U SAY FOR SOCIAL TOPICS WE HAVE TO BELIEVE IN NONE.
OK THANK YOU
I think wikipedia is still ok for stuff that isn't political or doesn't 'matter' i.e., movie details, non-political historical events, etc.
There are plenty of good alternatives like Encyclopedia britannica or thousands of little known websites about math, history, computer science, etc.
Hey Luke, actual examples works be useful. Stuff I look up is usually stuff like critical fracture toughness. Pretty accurate and well summarized last time I checked.
Obama's page vs Trump's page
'nuff said
It's not that it is always wrong or inaccurate, but it's full of information that is ripped straight from crappy journalism
Web Wanderer,
tldr: English Wikipedia articles on "wrongthink" topics or people look just like ones from The Big Soviet Encyclopedia as they both begin with ideological/pseudoscience/unethical/personal accusations.
I’m from Russia, and it’s the most unpleasant thing about the English Wikipedia. I’ve read a number of articles form the BSE so I know what I’m talking about. For example look at "Вульгарная политическая экономия" [vulgar political economics, a term for any other economical theory which dares criticize Marxism] in the BSE and compare it with any modern political/controversial article on wiki, the similarity will be uncanny.
difficult to put political spin on physics and engineering topics... They'll find a way one day
Anything political (avoid all).
Any article on an individual.
It will either be basically advertising (meaning they paid for it or had it written to support their career or person) or a bunch of highly selective moral judgements on someone's supposed views, or the views they suppose them to have, avoids actually explaining their views ofc. e.g. reducing their views to a label such as 'sexist' without understanding much less explaining them. People are not caricatures.
Anything you notice, regardless of the article, that relates to the present day events or tries to shoehorn some present day ideology into something (happens a lot in the history articles, wilful misinterpretation and misrepresentation for ideological goodboy points).
Anything regarding the achievements or supposed achievements of women (looking at you in particular Ada Lovelace).
Basically: history rewritten or represented for ideological purposes AND presentday political propaganda AND personal or sometimes organisational advertisement.
@@redd_cat The left sticks to what is believable and puts in cumulative bias over time and the right just goes off the rails immediately.
This is why "Reliable" sources always have a slight left wing bias. The left has been gradually and steadily shifting the overton window while the right tried way too hard and lost traction immediately.
sorry to tell you this Luke, but... most people don't have a BS detector as our history proves quite the contrary
>People are natural BS detectors
>Proceeds to not trust people to detect BS in Wikipedia articles
No Luke no, there is one big difference between news media and Wikipedia: most journalists do not feel the need to cite sources, in Wikipedia you have to. And if you use Wikipedia looking at references, aware that it can't be better than the sources, Wikipedia IS amazingly useful. Most often, sources at not good for current topics and politics. But that's not what one usually uses Wikipedia for. Also, fact checking does not work that way.
Wikipedias sources are often those same journalists. This is not an argument.
I think I got the point entirely. If I see that the main source of an entry is a crappy article, I will consider that entry unreliable. I have a way to see where information comes from. I don't think it makes sense to say that "Wikipedia is biased" globally. I think Wikipedia is a website whose pages are written by different people with different biases. Each of these people has to cite some sources, so I can see (even if indirectly) if the specific entry I'm reading is worth considering.
In fact, I do not assume every article is reliable. But instead of stopping using Wikipedia as a matter of principle I might consider contributing to improve articles about things I am actually competent about.
the "point" doesn't seem to be the biases. even scientific papers -- the gospel of our current age, besides they are not even read -- also cannot help but have biases. what's more crucial, from a bunch of dull conspiracy theorists' perspective, is rather the centralization of the information. therefore, more power to one source (in this case, wikipedia) represents two main consequences basically: 1) the burial of other little independent sources that less people bother to consult, 2) the exponential growth of more and more lazy af people that would feel rewarded as if they've learnt something while merely consuming fast food on that familiar page, without any further check (and forgetting it all a few hours later). actually you can consider these two consequences as one, yet another vicious circle.
as long as you don't use wikipedia this way, but you do compare an article in multiple languages, with external sources and go visiting other little (biased) websites scattered in the Wired or wherever, you're doing just fine.
Me during college years: as an open source encyclopedia, Wikipedia is tops.
Professors during my college years:
Wikipedia is not a viable source.
Me long after college: Wikipedia is biased.
College professors long after I left:
Wikipedia is valid.
Lessons learned:
Wikipedia's legitimacy has changed & Professors are still getting it wrong.
If you do the opposite of what professors say you will do good
There is a whole team of biased editors tweaking and changing even the tiniest facts to make their home team look more presentable in world opinion.
You didn't mention that Wikipedia is no longer editable by anyone. Now, you need to be part of a special circle to edit articles.
No prizes for guessing who gets accepted into that club.
Right
Wait, O vey?
whom'stve?
Correction: changing semi-protected (generally the most visited or controversial) articles require a account that is verified. Less popular pages can still be edited by anyone with an unbanned IP. But, after some research, I can confirm the hierarchy is indeed very rigid and dogmatic. If you make edits an admin doesn't like or agree with, your IP will be quickly banned. The number of editors has severely declined over the past decade due to this authoritarian, increasingly centralized caste system.
@@forkliftabortion2458 I'm a verified editor who's able to edit protected and extended-protected articles... I don't feel that special.
A lot of people say Wikipedia is fine for scientific/historical/mathematical topics. I think in general yes, but, especially for history, such opinions may seep down into what is thought to be uncontroversial topics, the less it is used, the better.
Thank you. I'd even go further (to me the Big Bang is political, and no I'm not some kind of Creationist, just someone who realizes the Standard Model's full of glaring holes) but I daresay everyone would scream at me. Nevertheless, I'm glad someone pointed out that even the most objective science includes some kind of politics, somehow. Humans are complex and complicated creatures, nothing we do is "pure" or immune from our preconceptions and prejudices.
Alternate title: Krillin grows a nose and facial hair and becomes an antisocial Linux hipster.
His dots on the forehead disappear
tl;dr Continue using Wikipedia for sciences and non-controversial subjects, please...
Wikipedia is extremely useful for unbiased quantitative topics such as maths, computer science or physics. Tbh all sciences, including psychology even. The best thing is that it links sources, which link more sources and etc. It isn't meant to be (or at least shouldn't be) used for anything remotely controversial where bias and human error can exist.
Take calculus for example - it will exhaust concisely give you everything you could ever need to know, and you know that it's probably definitely correct because it gets checked and is easily checked. If any information isn't there, find some line and click on the source link and there's your information you needed.
Take history as another example - it's not so easy to prove as it is based on past media, which isn't necessarily based on truth and can't be proven easily. This can provoke controversy, and as a result, information can be contradictory and sources will be biased to what media says and what editors want you to think/see. This is unfortunately something Wikipedia isn't useful for.
lol WikiLeaks is the perfect place for that :)
@@tissuepaper9962 The problem with using Wikipedia for current events/history is that the sources in the bibliography will be biased in the same way. May as well just cut out the middleman and go straight for MSM. It will very rarely show anything from the opposing view point, let alone with an actual source.
Some proud prolific Wikipedia editors disliked this video.
I think you're right on the money though.
Wikipedia's gamergate article made me drop them
What's most surprising is that Wikipedia is bad for quick summaries too. If you want a quick understanding of a topic, there's almost invariably a better resource for that.
I've used Wikipedia for CS research for years, it's not the only resource I use and if something looks dodgy I check the citations. Hasn't hurt me yet.
"cs research"
@@azngoku666 Yes I am a computer science student.
Oh nice
For me Wikipedia is mainly a source for good diagrams and graphs.
Any topic that is slightly political is absolutely fucked.
I have found plenty of inaccuracies in Wikipedia. I've tried to convince editors that the information was not accurate but they wouldn't even check the validity.
Why don't you simply changed it?
@@snowcode953 Only certain people are allowed. Not us plebs.
It isn't what it used to be
@@crusaderACR That depends on the pages, some pages are protected against vandalism. But if you have an account for more than a few days, you can modify it.
@@snowcode953 Refer to the Scots language controversy on wikipedia. A single guy refused modifications of anyone on like 100k pages he himself made.
Worst thing is he didn't even know the language
Oh that guy is the admin of the entire Scots language, though again, he doesn't speak it
Some guys have created an alternative to wikipedia - Infogalactic
There are other encyclopedias. I dont actually assume that its good or bad, I use it next to other sources. But I usually prefer books
What can we use instead of Wikipedia? What about Everipedia?
Luke, you did not even touch on the worst thing - that a huge percentage of links in wikipedia articles are dead, and of the ones that are live another large percentage do not say what the articles say they do and sometimes say the exact opposite. This makes auditing the truthfulness of wikipedia articles nearly impossible. And that situation appears to only get worse with time.
Wikipedia moderators are worse than redditors.
Hey Luke, I am going to make a wikipedia page about you.
Do it! 🇧🇬
It's maybe going to be removed for sure because it is not a good topic for an encyclopedia.
What is democracy without journalism? The platform (wikipedia) was revolutionary, it has done more to liberate information than anything that has come before.
Considering "democracy" just means total rule by the information-molding class, I suppose democracy can't exist without journalists.
@@LukeSmithxyz Without journalists, those chosen in power are less likely to be held accountable. I did not realize you already checked out, and given up on democracy.
I used to roll my eyes at teachers calling Wikipedia not a valid source
I lost all trust in wikipedia when I started noticing articles having spin on them that reinterpreted things I remember from being alive during. GG...amiright
@Bloatman McEmacs Alex Jones said it was demons, I've never seen demons, but wikipedia says demons don't exist, who do I trust?
Yep, GG was my first taste at how garbage Wikipedia policies are and how they're meant for biased editors to hide behind and essentially make the site another main steam media outlet. It was pretty unreal to see an article about a protest against media and the only "reliable sources" accepted was by media. It might as well have been written by the journalists gamers were protesting.
I wish Wikipedia was actually neutral and allowed sources from the left-wing, centre and right-wing points of view not just acting as an advocacy group in disguise on political topics.
Trust Wikipedia as much as you'd trust a fan-made Wiki for a videogame.
I'm embarrassed to admit I used to give money to Wikipedia. I haven't for 5 years now.
It is not neutral at all. It's written by people on their high horse who think they are special for editing HTML pages.
And they do it for FREE!
Fuck jannies
*tink tink tink*
Fuck jannies.
There is no Wikipedia article on the Murray-Gell-Mann-Effect... 🤔
Well honestly Wikipedia is really great for some things and understandably terrible for many others. It makes a difference whether you're reading an article about the siege of Sarajevo or about organic chemistry and oxidation states of metal ions. Know what you're reading instead of just flat out banning Wikipedia from your life.
a) I like the idea behind wikipedia
b) it is highly useful for non-controversal topics like checking the engine and transmission options of specific vehicles or population of a certain country etc.
Arabic wikipedia is MUCH worse than English wikipedia
In my first university writing class, the lecturer told us one principal: never cite Wikipedia.
I don't know about that. Wikipedia seems to have a fairly neutral point of view on things I care about (which is historical events, technical data, and science). I don't believe current events are represented accurately by any media, and wikipedia is certainly not the place to get news anyway. The reason you can't do "original research" is because people will inevitably put pseudoscience, such as essential oils or free energy, into otherwise trustworthy and correct articles, giving beginner or amateur researchers the idea that stuff is real. Which really is far more important than the latest meme stock, or presidential tweet. The no original research policy isn't designed to keep "alternative thinkers" down, or push people into believing a certain viewpoint; it's meant to keep people from using wikipedia as a way to publish their papers that reputable publishers rejected. Until events are severely studied and debated by real academics and historians, they just aren't meant to be on wikipedia. That's why current events by their very nature cannot be accurately represented on there. If you see a date for an event that happened less than 20 or so years ago, you should in your mind realize this article is basically a forum, and everything you read in it should be taken with several grains of salt. And using basic research techniques, you should be able to pick information out from the bias anyway. Heavy bias (no matter the tone) isn't exactly subtle, and different perspectives tend to focus on particular aspects of a thing the other side missed, or flat out chose to ignore. I personally think completely rejecting one of the finest online repositories for knowledge over inaccurate reddit posts is a major overreaction, especially considering the objectional portion is an infinitesimally small fraction of the whole. No need to play martyr over a spot in a potato, you know? Just scoop it out, and enjoy the good part.
Another thing about wikipedia is that it has articles on all of these psychological tricks. If it was specifically engineered to be a propaganda machine (like radio, tv, newspapers, etc.) why would it contain the exact information you as a hobbist researcher need to render propaganda ineffective? I think the whole root of the issue is the news media's sensationalism and greed. As romantic as the idea of a "wild west internet" is, word of mouth learning is far less efficient, for both the teacher and student. I see it like traditional farming as compared to modern farming. If you suddenly reduce the efficiency of a system, you cannot expect the systems relying on it to not collapse. We need this kind of accessable, free, knowledge to continue advancing as a society/internet people. Without that, we suddenly have to go back to paying for giant, dull textbooks, and bothering people for information all of the time. "Unbiased" decentralized internet (which is impossible anyway, it simply becomes mob bias instead of elite bias) is not worth the reconcentration of knowledge to just the "nerds", or people who can afford to buy books. Knowledge is power, and by rejecting knowledge, you make yourself weak to propaganda.
Its hard to ignore when wikipedia is seen as the de-facto source of info for most people
At least wikipedia is better than its "alternative" version here in the People's Republic of China called 百度百科.
You know..Wikipedia is an Encyclopaedia.. it’s not “the source”. Actually, it’s provides excellent sources, papers etc so check the details of a claim.
Yeah, trying to explain why my friend needed to pay attention to the sources section on the Russia-gate wikipedia page (which is exactly what you said - "a repository" of mainstream outlets uncritically repeating eachother's unverified garbage) was a huge headache.
Wikipedia is a great tool for looking up really objective trivia bits: what's the population of Newfoundland, what year were each of the Beatles albums released, etc. But when I look up a page on a person for example, I shouldn't see "...is a racist and conspiracy theorist [3][4][5][6]" in the opening paragraph, let alone with the links going to a bunch of dumbass Buzzfeed and Slate articles.
Finally, someone addressing this. My favorite unaboomer
This is the same conclusion I came to about Consumer Reports years and years ago. I used to subscribe to it. But then I noticed when they reviewed something that I happened to know a lot about - they look at all the wrong things and ignore what really matters.
This is an excellent parallel! I, too, used to subscribe but noticed that they are horribly biased towards one product over another for no reason at all. Probably funds changing hands under the table.
Don't trust anyone, not even yourself
What was meant to be a repository of human knowledge is now a repository of human bias to it's worst degree. That's what happens when curation takes over as a persons prime motive and nothing is left to the people anymore.
@@shannonm.townsend1232 nice try. try again. This time be less obvious in your tactics.
@@shannonm.townsend1232 You tried. E for effort. Do better net time you try to be disingenuous.
10:52 "People have natural BS detectors"
(x) Doubt
I use the English Wikipedia a lot. I know you don't have to believe everything they say, and some info are outdated. But if someone writes something stupid they quickly revert it, thank God. On the other hand, the Hungarian Wikipedia is awful. (I am Hungarian btw.) It is full of uninteresting stuff like footballers who haven't even played a game, buses, roads, teachers and doctors from the 1770's, celebrities, loads of disambiguation pages...and the useful or interesting stuff is nowhere to be found. I know they say that Wikipedia is edited by contributors in their free time, about stuff they are interested in, but still, this is ridiculous. And to top it off, most of the community is toxic. I quitted it a few days ago and never looked back. I don't want any of this. English Wikipedia gets even more of my attention.
Couldn't agree more with you on this one Luke. Thanks for yet another great video.
I need to understand the mechanics of the editing system, but my experience hasn't been bad using Wikipedia. Always gotta keep it in mind that the info is only as good as the sources.
My take is just don't it use or be careful when reading about politics and other controversial topics
Having attempted editing for Wikipedia a few times I can honestly say the bias is real. Most recently I attempted to make an edit suggestion on an article for another media platform that would slightly alter it's synopsis. It was a slight change that would merely alter the tone of the synopsis from one that is blatantly liberal-biased to a more objective one. I attempted to cite the website itself in reference to it's categories and was quickly admonished by an admin for using the website itself as a reference. Understandable, but when it's something as intrinsic as the categories displayed within the website I feel that should not be the case. I was told to only use "reliable third-party sources". The kicker is that they then directed me to notes referencing heavily opinion laden articles from BuzzFeed, The Daily Dot, The Verge and even one *youtube video* . After a quick look at this user's "talk" page and following a link to their twitter (which was posted on their talk page) it became very evident why they were fighting so hard to keep a negative tone in the synopsis of the article. I think it's of note that this user is not only and administrator for the site but also has checkuser privileges (can view your accounts IP address), oversight privileges (deletes information in a way that is so thorough even admins can't view it) and is a member of the arbitration committee (settle disputes between editors and determines punitive actions. also decides who has checkuser and oversight privileges). Yes it is biased and with Administrators that have this much authority and can't remain impartial it will remain that way.
Open internet is dead. Little hats win again.
I stopped using too when our history is altered by tamil suprecamists.
They have feminist wikipedia hackathons. Also wikipedia contributers are only a very small group of people.
Well said, Wikipedia immediately suggests the way they want you to think about the particular topic/person that you're looking up before you've even learned about it/them, that's if that subject's actions conflict with silicon valley's political affiliations and doners. Notice how they will come straight out with someone as a conspiracy theorist as soon as you begin to read and then talk about their 35 years as a professor who just happened to also revolutionise something in their chosen field and has been highly regarded their whole career up until now for some reason. I never use it and it's hard to find an alternative, I tried online britannica also but they're shit too, in regards to politics mainly. Great video
The mathematics on Wikipedia is good as fuck.
I came here today just to say that Luke was right about everything he said in this video. Thanks.
the comments from 2yrs ago trying to justify why they need to use wiki lolol
Thank you very much. I've always wondered what's wrong with Wikipedia. I've been using Wikipedia and for the majority of cases it corresponded to what I knew, but a lot of people really hate it and say that it's wrong to use it for anything (these are mostly intelligent educated people). Now I understand why. I'll have to fix and improve myself to understand everything better.
Why is Wikipedia any different from any other source? People should be skeptical of the information that they read regardless of where it comes from, there aren't any special "decentralised" resources that are objectively true. If it's a topic that you care about, read as broadly as you can, be aware of the potential biases of your sources and then form an opinion.
wikipedia has become a battlefield for editors who think x vs who think y. And this is a problem that's hard to overcome by the side of the media, however the solution it's the same with every piece of information, that is, individual thiking, decentralized information, authority based on technical expertise over politics and aesthetics, even science has become some kind of tecnocracy, jee.
0:31 Luke says it all.
If I'm not supposed to use Wikipedia, how am I supposed to know who's an alien? Other sites don't have a convenient "Early Life" section. 👽👾
Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for this video.
I was looking up the nickname for John and when doing so the name Karen came up.
I was shocked to read what Wikipedia gave as the meaning for the name we gave our daughter .
The terms they used were not even used when we named her . I did this on 11/24,2022.
I will avoid using them for this date forward.
Great video but a little to long.
Mark
I trust wikipedia on a lot of subjects, social ones and politics, less.
Computer related things are pretty much 90% or better from what I can see, which is pretty much the most important to me.
When I don't have a clue whether some term means a dish or a computer algorithm, I trust Wikipedia to enhance my knowledge.
Full circle. My high school profs were always damn leery of it (for different reasons of course) and always recommended steering clear.
In 2016 I recommended adding to the 2016 timeline page a part about the at the time recent Pulse Nightclub shooting, which was a rather relevant event with historical repercussions, and I was told in the talk page that it was too "American centric." As of today, they have a section about it on that page. But that shows a pretty clear anti-American bias by some of the users where a major event is just too "American centric" to talk about.
also one of the things is that even after their approved media finally talks about something you HAVE TO only talk about things they deemed worthy of talking and you have to say it the way they did.
Dude...wikipedia is amazing and is as close to decentralized as anything useful can be...If you think a purely decentralized version of wikipedia with no oversight would produce less biased content than wikipedia, you have too much faith in humanity. It is literally the least biased source I can think of. I think most people would probably say wikipedia is "left" leaning, but it's by far less biased than any news source in existence because of the whole [citation needed] meme and the fact that anything you post with an explicit bias will be removed quickly by someone with an opposing view! They discourage original research because "original" usually means that your research hasn't had the time to be corroborated by other people. It's a way to remove bias!
"reality has a liberal bias"
@@Aldrenean hahaha
What are some good alternatives then? Cause searching for primary sources throughout the internet isn't something you can afford to do all the time. I've tried (and still am) using encyclopedia britannica, but it is very narrowly oriented compared to wikipedia and some of the articles are behind a paywall. Wolfram mathworld is pretty good for maths and physics but it is very non layman-friendly and mathematics is barely a controversial field. So yea, any good recommendations?
What Larry Sanger is working on.
The same thing goes for dictionaries, examples of how words are used are extracted from biased articles.
Reminds me of Kurzgesagt. It used to be a great channel portraying interesting facts and stating very clearly once they leave the realm of science and enter their opinion or explore an idea. I feel that because of this, they are now established as an objective channel with unbiased information but at some point they stopped the clear division of facts and opinion and started with political or other controversial topics. Since then I could not stand them anymore because I get the impression that it seems to people as if they are still just portraying facts. It could be that they got better again but I stopped checking their videos so I wouldn't know about it.
I don't know if wikipedia is as bad as you say but since I mostly used it to look up some science related stuff or names, I doubt that there is much bias here.
That's a good point.
I've despised that channel from the very beginning. I saw a few videos that were narrated by Alain de Botton. Had bad vibes, so (ironically) looked up him on Wikipedia and learned he's a Cambridge academic.
It's fine for pure math proofs as you can follow along yourself so you can confirm if it's right or not, on literally any other topic you are right though.
For those of you saying you use it for defs and theorems, why not just use the Wolfram wiki? I understand using Wikipedia for looking up quick dates and the most bare bone information but even then it can easily be changed. I specifically remember checking out the Computer Science entry on Wikipedia maybe 5 years ago and the top level explanation was "Computer Science is the study and practice of those who consume Doritos and Mountain Dew while playing video games on their PC". I'm not going to completely object to that entry but just goes to show that the quick edits allowed on Wiki could make it that 1-2 minutes waste of time. I will say I like Wikipedia for including their sources at the bottom but its also rare I have to use Wikipedia and I more use it to play "6 Degrees" when I'm bored.
wikipedia is a repository of media biases! - a very right and important statement