/sci/ - Science & Math

>popup appears
>Hey there folx, it appears this article was originally written from a cis-white perspective..
>Would you instead like to hear about this from a proud BiPoC, global majority, queer conscious voice??

>>15260360
as a millennial born in the late 89s, who passes for white, and identifies as a man who is cis…….

i too think wikipedia is unreliable. almost anti-reliable now.

if anything it is clearly flawed in that it’s official policy is to only accept “secondary or tertiary sources”. this means, in laymen’s terms. that everything you read on wikipedia is a rehash of what the media has said already. it is officially not allowed in Wikipedia to use primary sources, like the articles written in first-person by people who actually made discoveries or did original research

instead their official policy at Wikipedia is to prefer only sources who “report” on things second-hand. and if they report on things in the “wrong” media outlets then that is banned from wikipedia. like the Daily Mail.

so in a nutshell Wikipedia is a collection of crap rewritten from a select subset of media hand-picked by the admins. and they don’t pick their media sources in any sort of unbiased way

>>15260432
First hand sources are good however obviously there will be a lot of bias. You also need to ban certain sources typically if they out right lie a couple times. (Idk anything about daily mail to say if they lie alot or not) wikipedia also doesnt just accept second hand sources from select shit. They will basically accept any book as a source which is where most info comes from on wikipedia

>>15260446
i would agree that for topics where “a book has already been written on the topic” then they are usually OK, not great but OK (since often the wikipedians misread the books they are using as soirces for their edits and the reviewers let anything go as long as it confirms their biases and only stage an assault in things that challenge their biases)

the main problem is with topics where no books have been written yet. you will find many such articles on wikipedia and they are often factually deficient and often misleading

>>15260360
<-- Stuff on the right side of the scale is mostly accurate but written by undergrads with no understanding of good exposition.

Stuff on the left side of the scale has questionable reliability and is tainted with lefty political bullshit at every possible chance.

Anything not on the scale isn't even worth reading.

>>15260360
Wikipedia is biased as FUCK. Just keep that in mind.

>>15260432
can you please give an example?

>>15260522
This source claims that the locomotive has "875 hp"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_G8
This source claims that the same locomotive has "1500 hp"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Railway_Company_of_Cuba