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Really? I search through google.
Often still doesn’t count as accredited sources.
true, but wikipedia is free
Woo Hoo!
You’d wish, troll.
d’oh
Since when wasn’t google/wikipedia accredited?
that was exactly my thought!
if you listen to some of my professors lectures its pretty much word for word from wiki so apparently they think it is
What does “accredited” even mean with regards to research sources? Published by faculty or associates of an accredited university
That said, I’ve found Wikipedia to be a reasonable resource for most purposes; citing it as a research source is pointless, though, because any article reliable enough to be used for that purpose has comprehensive citations of its own that can be referred to.
That said, it seems that pretty much all of the sneering about Wikipedia seems to derive from an exaggerated listing of the potential weaknesses of such a project, filtered through a thick layer of “HUH HUH HUH NO 1 SPENDS ANY TIME ON DA INTERNETS EXCEPT DUMB TEENAGERS,” and coupled to the flat, unevidenced assertion that nothing whatsoever has been done to remedy or compensate for these potential issues.
(Either that or it’s just another dumb, excruciatingly unfunny, self-perpetuating “joke”-meme).
Agree completely with the second paragraph. For educational purposes, (Not looking up random stuff) Wikipedia is almost always fine. I’ve only ever found one page on there that wasn’t cited enough, and even then Wikipedia automatically labeled it “More citations needed on this article.” That said I’d never use Wiki as the SOLE source of information, even in an internet argument. Maybe the sole citation, because this site won’t let us link but one site.
true – but i would’nt recommend using it as the sole source for a paper either.
From Wikipedia’s own page about itself:
“Critics of Wikipedia accuse it of systemic bias and inconsistencies,[11] and target its policy of favoring consensus over credentials in its editorial process.[12] Wikipedia’s reliability and accuracy are also an issue.[13] Other criticisms are centered on its susceptibility to vandalism and the addition of spurious or unverified information”
go to school you lazy bastards.
Paying for knowledge is brain slavery.
You get what you pay for.
paying for knowledge has been until recently the only way to get the most advanced knowledge available to society at a given point in time.
It doesn’t get any more peer-reviewed than Wikipedia.
By “peer” do you mean any high school kid with a computer? Or do you mean things like this:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
Not to entirely change the subject, but I find it interesting that the author of that article seems bothered by the fact that laws in this country protect the identity of internet users and ensure that ISPs are not liable for what their users say/do online. I understand he’s upset about the situation he’s in, but without laws like those, none of us would have internet access – because ISPs would not be willing to take on the financial risk of being held accountable for their users. Plus there’s the privacy issue for users. This guy wants the name and address of whoever it was who wrote bad things about him on Wikipedia. Again, while I understand he’s upset, privacy on the internet and in our own homes is rather important, in my opinion.
Heck yes!
wikipedia also says
“In practice, vandalism is fairly easy to remove from wikis, and the median time to detect and fix vandalisms is typically very low, usually a few minutes,[15][16] but in one particularly well-publicized incident, false information was introduced into the biography of American political figure John Seigenthaler and remained undetected for four months.[54] John Seigenthaler, the founding editorial director of USA Today and founder of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, called Jimmy Wales and asked him, “…Do you …have any way to know who wrote that?” “No, we don’t”, said Jimmy.[55]
This incident led to policy changes on the site, specifically targeted at tightening up the verifiability of all biographical articles of living people.” and “Defences
The Wikipedia has a complex multi-layered defence against these kinds of attacks. These include users checking pages and edits, computer programs (‘bots’) that are carefully designed to try to detect them and fix them automatically (or semi-automatically), blocks on the creation of links to particular websites, blocks on edits from particular accounts, IP addresses or address ranges.
For heavily attacked pages, particular articles can be semi-protected so that only well established accounts can edit them,[61] or for particularly contentious cases, locked so that only administrators are able to make changes.[62]“
WHY do you have a LOL account again?
chart type fail.
percentages are for pie charts.
Indeed my fellow friend. Kill it with fire
NOT ALWYS!
As soon as I saw the title of this on my news feed, I knew it was going to be about Wikipedia.
I like how people think “anyone can add anything to wikipedia”, then assume the rest of the internet is actually credible.
it’s on the internet therefore it MUST be true
So, so true.
This topic has been done to death several times already, therefore not funny!
Oops, you beat me to it!
agreed. originality fail.
Irony recognition fail.
Your post didn’t add any original input; you just agreed with the person above you.
Oh Heavenly Father, please save us from horribly unfunny graphs, and guide our future graphmaking that they may more resemble Your own divine plots. Help us to remember that lolcats, Narnia, Wikipedia, and Murphy’s Law are no longer even slightly funny topics to graph about, and bless us with Your wisdom, that we may find enlightenment and inspiration in other, fresher topics. Finally Lord, we ask that You guide our spelling, grammar, and punctuation today and every day until we come into Your holy kingdom.
Amen.
OMG! That was awesome.
I just Googled “lolcats” and read the first several words of its hit on the Wikipedia. It was a) helpful and b) convincing.
A+
What about the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button?
I like your feel.
Wait, there are other sources than wikipedia‽‽‽‽ *brainsplode*
Yeah, but they only exist for wikipedia to get the info from.
Speaking of witch,
Where DOES wikapidea git its stuffz?
Hell, yes!
[Citation needed]
i always start with wikipedia. then confirm with a more reputable source.
i agree. it’s a good way to start a project and get some basic background info.
I start with wikipedia and go to the sources cited
by “accredited” did you mean “credible?”
ya nobody who publishes an article on Wikipedia is required to cite sources at all…it really is just a place to have fun and screw with research…o, wait a second…yes, they DO have to cite their sources on all their info…BUT WAIT, where could they possibly find all this misguiding info?!?!?!…seriously jeddycakes, and any other person responding to this in a positive manner…do u honestly believe that wikipedia must be just horrendously false no matter what b/c of its user-oriented community that supply their own researched information to probably the largest encyclopedia in the world…i really just dont see the backup for why it’s not a trustworthy site…i think that this previous reply suits best for my point…
“Nameless says:
June 25, 2009 at 10:08 am
I like how people think “anyone can add anything to wikipedia”, then assume the rest of the internet is actually credible.”
Seeing how Wiki has a lot, and I mean A LOT of sources for various topics looking up stuff on Wiki is like looking at those sources.
I pronounce this graph officially as a FAIL.
I could list the mistakes I’ve found in Wikipedia, but they’re gone now. I fixed them. It took about an hour each time to find references to justify my corrections.
So are there windows in your parents’ basement? If not, do you ever see the sun?
Because there sure aren’t any in your parents’. That’s what makes you so grumpy. Being a Wiki admin doesn’t mean you have no life, it means you dedicate your time to something useful that millions of people use each day.
Me, I mostly just correct grammar, spelling, and spacing. But every once in a while, I can get substantive.
And yes, there’s a small but adequate window in my computer room in my basement, which used to be my younger brother’s bedroom 40+ years ago.
I saw it on mythbusters!
…you mean there’s other ways?
lol
Does anybody remember libraries?
Maan.. those were the days..
You had actually.. y’know.. Look.. for the right place to find information.
And then like.. carry all the books.. and turn the pages..
Dude.. it was like.. slavery.
The problem wasn’t any of the above, except as they impacted speed. It was searchability.
Now, Wikipedia sometimes serves the very helpful purpose of orienting me to the subject area an unknown word or phrase applies to–in some case, when even the best dictionary couldn’t or wouldn’t.
The problem with Wikipedia is that it is not *reliable*, and by its very nature (anyone can any part of nearly any article) it will never be _reliable_. The crux of the matter is that there is no practical way to determine**, for any given Wikipedia article at any given moment, which parts –which particular paragraphs, sentences, and/or words– were written by people who knew what they were talking about, and which by people who did not know what they were talking about. For the same reasons, the supposed “source citations” does nothing to improve the reliability of the articles because there is no practical way to determine from Wikipedia whether the current article text in any way resembles the text to which the source/footnote was originally attached (or, indeed, whether the article text ever accurately represented what the cited source said). It is routine for Wikipedia articles to cite as support sources that directly contradict what the Wikipedia article claims.
Even so, the intrinsically unreliable nature of Wikipedia would not be a problem if it were not for the fact that the vast majority of people who use Wikipedia use it as if it were something it simply is not, that is, they use it as if it were reliable.
**Unless, of course, one is already an expert in the subject — in which case one hardly needs to use a Wikipedia article as a source.
It is often but not always possible to check the sources cited, either online or in print.
And I, with a Bachelor’s in English and a Master’s in linguistics–which hasn’t made me an expert in the are, merely somewhat knowledgeable–used it to get a term, “rises,” for the accented syllables in Old English verse lines. Of course I immediately checked against other online sources until I was morally certain it was in fact established before I used it in a presentation to our Salt Lake SF convention on “Old English Verse and the Riders of Rohan.”
Approved, SKrossa?
As said, the intrinsically unreliable nature of Wikipedia would not be a problem if it were not for the fact that the vast majority of people who use Wikipedia use it as if it were something it simply is not, that is, they use it as if it were reliable.
Examples of people finding Wikipedia useful as an _unreliable_ source (e.g., not believing what they find there unless and until they confirm it in reliable sources and/or people using it to try to find other, more reliable sources) don’t change this. And no matter how useful something may be as an _unreliable_ source, it is the reliable sources themselves, not the unreliable source that helped you find them, that should be cited as the source of the relevant information in any subsequent work.
Why do stupid people always assume that everyone else is as stupid/lazy as they are?
actually, wikipedia links to MANY accredited sources, and most times the information on a page is accurate. there are few times that some people put up stupid, inaccurate, or not adequately researched information. and when that kind of stuff IS posted, the wikipedia mediators mark it as such or delete it.
“Most times … accurate”. This is another way of saying Wikipedia is _not_ reliable. When you read any given article, you don’t know whether the bit you are reading one of those (supposedly) “most times” or one of the other times (of which there are far more than a few — it is routine). And you have no way to find out, either, from Wikipedia — only by doing research in more reliable sources can you determine this. And if you do research in more reliable sources, then those other sources are the source of your information, not Wikipedia.
And don’t fall for the Wikipedia propaganda. When “stupid, inaccurate, or not adequately researched information” is posted in Wikipedia, most of the time it is _not_ marked or deleted, but rather remains, year after year, unnoticed. Indeed, there are a number of articles (such as the ones on “feudalism”) where accurate information is swiftly “fixed” back to inaccurate.
Remember, with very few exceptions (mainly a small number of highly controversial subjects like abortion), anyone can edit any part of any article, and the only “wikipedia mediators” involved in the vast majority of articles is that selfsame _anyone_ (in other words, the source of the unreliability in the first place).
As an unreliable source, Wikipedia can be very useful. But it simply is not, and by its nature never can be, a reliable source.
whenever i research i always go to wikipedia.
so most times that I do research, it’s for a class that i’m taking. so when i’m reading an article on wikipedia about a specific subject, i find that i am reading stuff that i have learned in my classes. for example, pick up a biology textbook and read about how the Krebs Cycle works. Then read the wikipedia page about it. Wikipedia actually makes it easier to understand, and it’s accurate.
Also, here’s a good example of the wikipedia mediators marking things that are crap: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endometriosis#Alternative_and_complementary_medicine
Hey, Wikipedia is credible
But Wikipedia writers use accredited sources.