Wikipedia seemed like a good idea at the time.
From Breitbart
Wikipedia celebrated its 20th anniversary on January 15, following a year of considerable controversy for the online encyclopedia. The site’s increasing leftward bias became more apparent in the preceding year with Wikipedia’s owners imposing a “code of conduct” advancing left-wing identity politics, editors actively pushing a Black Lives Matter agenda, disputes regarding its medical coverage, an ongoing purge of conservative media, and aiding the 2020 Presidential campaign of Joe Biden.
Such problems highlight the unreliability of the site at a time when media, academics, and Big Tech, are only increasing their own reliance on the site with the Foundation seeking to capitalize on this by launching a new commercial service catering to Big Tech. Following are six of the controversies that Wikipedia experienced throughout its 20th year:
If I am looking something up I now avoid any search results going to Wikipaedia.
As an engineer and a SDA fan, wikipedia’s political bias is the second worst thing about the site.
The people who write the pages about math, engineering are the kind of people who are technically correct in their words, but their words are so obfusticative as to make learning 20 times harder than it need be.
Wikipedia’s definition for Differential Calculus:
In mathematics, differential calculus is a subfield of calculus that studies the rates at which quantities change.[1] …
The primary objects of study in differential calculus are the derivative of a function, related notions such as the differential, and their applications.
While technically correct, using that definition to explain to high school students, or undergraduates – – > will be met with blank stares.
Written by the kind of person who refuses to define differential calculus as :
basically a way to find the exact slope of any graphed curve
Because the straightforward explanation might result in smarter students.
[really had to get that off my chest]
When my math-genius son ran into difficulties (beyond Differential Calculus) … at UCLA he didn’t turn to Wikipedia … or an ESL TA … nope. He went straight to The Kahn Academy … which has tutorials on surprisingly HIGH level mathematics. Helped him sort it all out. They are written very practically.
Agree 100% Kenji. (That’s 110% to progressives.)
I haven’t yet seen a Khan Academy video that is anything less than clear and concise.
One can study from grade 1 to at least 2nd (?) year university. All for free. And not just math.
The teachers unions must hate him.
Even Chinese Wikipedia (Google translated here) is an improvement:
“Differential calculus…is a part of calculus. It is a discipline that uses derivatives and differentiation to study the slope, acceleration, maximum and minimum of curves. It is also a discipline that explores the rate of change of a specific quantity. Differentiation is one of the two main branches of calculus, and the other branch is Integral, which discusses the area under the curve.”
Best is Simple English Wikipedia (i.e. English for Chinese speakers):
“Differential calculus, a branch of calculus, is the study of finding out the rate of change of a variable compared to another variable, by using functions. It is a way to find out how a shape changes from one point to the next, without needing to divide the shape into an infinite number of pieces.”
In other words, if you’re not Chinese, they want your kid to switch to Gender Studies.
Wikipedia seemed like a good idea at the time
No it didn’t. It’s the pure expression of the open source philosophy, which has pretty much failed to produce workable anything.
You are nothing, if not a persistent guardian of your particular www. techno-niche. Open source is hardly the problem … the Lord-Editors with their slanted biases are.
Open source did release Red Star OS for Linux.
I think it even comes with a calculator!
Don’t go there for anything related to climate change. It’s a joke.
Wikipedia appears to believe … “the science is settled”. And all competing information, opinions, and theories are immediately binned. It’s a nauseatingly Lonnnnnnngggg read … as if MORE words will help convince the science-illiterate of their “truth”.
“It’s a nauseatingly Lonnnnnnngggg read … as if MORE words will help convince the science-illiterate of their “truth”.”
Is it ever. I went looking for the ‘Climategate’ thing…specifically the intimidation of the journal publishers who might dare publish a contrary narrative. Read hundreds of words (maybe thousands) on why the “trick to hide the decline” was a nothing burger and a bunch of other baffle-gab related to how innocent it all was and how terrible the people who exposed it probably were…then when I finally got to the end of it I went, “wait…what?”: somehow I had managed to miss the parts about threatening and intimidation of climate skeptics. I read it again (painful as it was). Nope, didn’t miss it: it just WASN’T THERE.
“After all Wikipedia’s “expert” on global warming is a weasel.”
Yeah, I’ve read about him (is he really still there?). They have a lot of nerve putting on regularly scheduled ‘fundraisers’ to help them spread their one-sided propaganda.
I go there for TV and movie information now, nothing political.
Amusing how quickly Wikipedia threw all their self identified values aside to reveal their true intentions.
Controlling the narrative.
Now their fellow travellers point to them as “The Authority”,while the rest of us see them for the liars they are.
Little Cartmans to quote Southpark.
After all wikipedias “expert” on global warming is a weasel.
Whenever someone uses Wikipedia as a source I know I won the argument.
One thing that “old school” taught you was double check to find any errors.
Where our governments and politicians want you believe in their self anointed experts most of the time with no background experience in the area they pretend to know.
Ask how they come up with that conclusion and you get stone walled in trust our experts propaganda.
Governments created a great many laws and restrictions based off their experts opinions.
This destroyed my employment by making it illegal through enforced fines to work on projects that had some possibilities of being dangerous.
Being careful and cautious was outlawed.
Easy solution. Use: https://infogalactic.com/info/Infogalactic
Add the infogalactic plugin to your browser and you never have to see WikiPedo crap ever again. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/infogalactic-transporter/majmoinlepbjapaaljlhlfhlmbblaeip?hl=en-GB