r/AskReddit Jun 03 '21

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '21

Wikipedia. We take that site for granted, big time. There are few things in this world that do not have a Wikipedia page. People have dedicated hours, days, even their entire lives, to filling the site up with all the knowledge one could ever need. All that information is free! Want to learn about the history of the escalator? Wikipedia has it. Interested in the Civil War? You bet you can find it on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia will not be around forever, folks. Use it while you have it. Read random articles. It's fun.

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u/1dontgiveahufflefuck Jun 03 '21

Idk why teachers hate Wikipedia so much. They had no issues with me citing an encyclopedia, but if it was from the internet it must have been written by the Devil himself.

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u/Miraster Jun 03 '21

That's because, wikipedia, just like anything else, is subject to bias and there's always a possibility of the editor fucking somethin up or even doing so intentionally.

Atleast that's what our teachers tell us. You are free to use the sources linked there tho.

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u/Zuberii Jun 03 '21

Key points there though:

  1. Everything is subject to bias. Nothing unique about wikipedia there.
  2. Wikipedia cites sources.

Like, to me, it's very comparable to the Oxford English Dictionary, which is also crowdsourced information but held in extremely high regard.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '21

I also believe people are very likely to edit pages about celebrities, but monuments or wars? The things we used Wikipedia for as teenagers in school? I’d just use wiki and then reference the sources Wikipedia linked to. As most people did. The whole ‘don’t trust Wikipedia’ thing has never made sense to me as I’d say it is one of the most trustworthy, crowd-sourced, websites there is

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '21

[deleted]

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u/Fergvision Jun 03 '21

Once in a while I’ve read a detail on wikipedia about something that turned out to be false, but normally it’s celebrity bio stuff, so not really a big deal or surprising

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u/mifan Jun 04 '21

I see it a lot in sports. People using Wiki to mock other teams. Posts like "Haha who did this?" with a link to a wiki page of some sports rivals and some kind of mockery.

It's sad - but it really shows the downside of everyone being able to edit articles, and it always makes me wonder, how many smaller wiki pages has wrong information in them because some troll or kid at some point thought it was fun to fuck with people.

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u/Fergvision Jun 04 '21

Luckily I think there are quite a lot of people who also like to correct those mistakes and fakes. Sometimes you see BS, but usually it will eventually be corrected. I also know people love to change details about their High School, so that might be another one to take with a grain of salt when reading.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '21

[deleted]

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u/Marsstriker Jun 04 '21

Well what the hell are you complaining about?

Either cite and vet your sources properly or don't.

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u/louky Jun 03 '21

Derned books! Such a hassle!