{"id":30245,"date":"2016-10-10T01:00:14","date_gmt":"2016-10-10T05:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=30245"},"modified":"2016-10-10T09:15:35","modified_gmt":"2016-10-10T13:15:35","slug":"qotd-wikipedia-shaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/10\/10\/qotd-wikipedia-shaming\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: <em>Wikipedia<\/em>-shaming"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Did you know it is 2015 and people will still criticize you for getting facts off of <em>Wikipedia<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not even talking about controversial conclusions, like \u201con balance, the research about gun control shows\u2026\u201d. I\u2019m talking about simple facts.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A:<\/strong> \u201cChina is bigger than the United States\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>B:<\/strong> \u201cWhere\u2019d you hear that one, <em>Wikipedia<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>A:<\/strong> \u201c\u2026yes?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>B:<\/strong> \u201cYou expect me to believe something you literally just took off a <em>Wikipedia<\/em> article?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yes. Yes I do. I could go find the <em>CIA World Factbook<\/em> or whatever, but it will say the same thing as <em>Wikipedia<\/em>, because <em>Wikipedia<\/em> is pretty much always right. When you challenge <em>Wikipedia<\/em> on basic facts, all you do is force people to use inconvenient sources to back up the things <em>Wikipedia<\/em> says, costing people time for no reason and making them hate you. There may have been a time when<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theonion.com\/articles\/wikipedia-celebrates-750-years-of-american-indepen,2007\/\" target=\"_blank\"> <em>Wikipedia<\/em> was famously inaccurate<\/a>. Or maybe there wasn\u2019t. I don\u2019t know. <em>Wikipedia<\/em> doesn\u2019t have an article on it, so it would take time and energy to find out. The point is, now it\u2019s 2015, and the matter has been settled.<\/p>\n<p>How accurate is <em>Wikipedia<\/em>?:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Several studies have been done to assess the reliability of <strong>Wikipedia<\/strong>. An early study in the journal <strong>Nature<\/strong> said that in 2005, <strong>Wikipedia<\/strong>\u2019s scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in <strong>Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica<\/strong> and had a similar rate of \u201cserious errors\u201d. The study by <strong>Nature<\/strong> was disputed by <strong>Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica<\/strong>, and later <strong>Nature<\/strong> replied to this refutation with both a formal response and a point-by-point rebuttal of <strong>Britannica<\/strong>&#8216;s main objections. Between 2008 and 2012, articles in medical and scientific fields such as pathology, toxicology, oncology, pharmaceuticals, and psychiatry comparing <strong>Wikipedia<\/strong> to professional and peer-reviewed sources found that <strong>Wikipedia<\/strong>\u2019s depth and coverage were of a high standard.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I know this because I got it from <em>Wikipedia<\/em>\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reliability_of_Wikipedia#Comparative_studies\" target=\"_blank\">Reliability Of <em>Wikipedia<\/em><\/a> article. Go ahead, challenge me, I dare you.<\/p>\n<p>Scott Alexander, <a href=\"http:\/\/slatestarcodex.com\/2015\/01\/21\/these-are-a-few-more-of-my-least-favorite-things\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;These Are A Few (More) Of My (Least) Favourite Things&#8221;, <em>Slate Star Codex<\/em><\/a>, 2015-01-21.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did you know it is 2015 and people will still criticize you for getting facts off of Wikipedia? I\u2019m not even talking about controversial conclusions, like \u201con balance, the research about gun control shows\u2026\u201d. I\u2019m talking about simple facts. A: \u201cChina is bigger than the United States\u201d B: \u201cWhere\u2019d you hear that one, Wikipedia?\u201d A: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[28,41],"tags":[444],"class_list":["post-30245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-quotations","tag-wikipedia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7RP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36079,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30245\/revisions\/36079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}