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    Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

    (www.theverge.com)
    598 points leotravis10 | 15 comments | 04 Sep 25 15:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.932s | source | bottom
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    jl6 ◴[05 Sep 25 07:04 UTC] No.45135750[source]▶
    Wikipedia is fabulous. I wish educators would stop telling people that it’s not reliable, and start using it to teach media literacy - which, for wiki purposes, is essentially to read the talk page to see what viewpoints have been included and excluded and why.
    replies(8): >>45135774 #>>45135842 #>>45135916 #>>45136636 #>>45137380 #>>45137612 #>>45138117 #>>45138439 #
    1. scandox ◴[05 Sep 25 07:19 UTC] No.45135842[source]▶
    My daughter's teacher told her class that Wikipedia is unreliable because it's just made up by volunteers. So I asked her where they should find information and she said other sites on the internet that can't just be edited by anyone.

    Blew my mind.

    replies(7): >>45135867 #>>45136115 #>>45136235 #>>45136281 #>>45136343 #>>45138663 #>>45138677 #
    2. jl6 ◴[05 Sep 25 07:23 UTC] No.45135867[source]▶
    I can’t count how many times I’ve heard “Wikipedia is unreliable because it can be edited by anyone”. I tend to think that Wikipedia converges on reliable because it can be edited by anyone.
    3. jajko ◴[05 Sep 25 07:59 UTC] No.45136115[source]▶
    Simple phrases heard elsewhere which make the person feel for 5s like a really smart experienced one in given topic, while being the opposite. A very common trait in large part of population, any population, which usually comes in pair with lack of critical thinking inward & outward.

    At the end though, most of us are guilty of such behavior from time to time.

    4. Nition ◴[05 Sep 25 08:20 UTC] No.45136235[source]▶
    I have sometimes thought about firing up my old Encarta 98 CD. A bit outdated now though.
    replies(1): >>45136305 #
    5. Cthulhu_ ◴[05 Sep 25 08:29 UTC] No.45136281[source]▶
    This is the argument used for almost 25 years (...yes), did the teacher never get updated?

    I'd love to see your daughter submit something extremely wrong with citations from nonsense on the internet.

    6. Cthulhu_ ◴[05 Sep 25 08:31 UTC] No.45136305[source]▶
    I think you might be surprised, a lot of information on there is pretty timeless. Before Encarta and the internet, people would buy series of encyclopedias - but they wouldn't buy new ones every year.

    I'm seeing an ISO for Encarta on the Internet Archive, but I was hoping for a runnable version.

    replies(1): >>45137543 #
    7. thefz ◴[05 Sep 25 08:39 UTC] No.45136343[source]▶
    Had a colleague make the same point on open source, "don't trust code everyone can modify". He was a bottom tier programmer at best.
    replies(1): >>45136967 #
    8. rollcat ◴[05 Sep 25 10:21 UTC] No.45136967[source]▶
    Is there any modern programming environment / IDE / toolchain / etc that doesn't heavily rely on open source work? Even initially-proprietary solutions like .NET are mostly OSS nowadays.
    replies(1): >>45141816 #
    9. InMice ◴[05 Sep 25 12:00 UTC] No.45137543{3}[source]▶
    Dont use iso. Pick up an original CD for cheap on ebay. It's not the same without disc spinning
    replies(2): >>45137723 #>>45139042 #
    10. BenjiWiebe ◴[05 Sep 25 12:27 UTC] No.45137723{4}[source]▶
    An iso can easily be burned to a CD, too.
    11. SoftTalker ◴[05 Sep 25 13:57 UTC] No.45138663[source]▶
    The thing about Wikipedia is that every claim is sourced. And those that aren't are usually noted with a "Citation Needed" disclaimer.

    So even if Wikipeda isn't permitted as a direct source for students, it's a great place to find other sources for claims and facts about almost any topic. That's how I taught my kids to use it in school. It's a ready-made bibliography on almost anything.

    12. jowea ◴[05 Sep 25 13:59 UTC] No.45138677[source]▶
    Did the teacher teach how to recognize a reliable other site?
    13. nickthegreek ◴[05 Sep 25 14:29 UTC] No.45139042{4}[source]▶
    The company Abadonware sells Encarta95 baseball caps. I love mine. https://abandonware.online/products/encarta95-hat?srsltid=Af...
    14. wilsonnb3 ◴[05 Sep 25 18:20 UTC] No.45141816{3}[source]▶
    SQL server comes to mind
    replies(1): >>45159334 #
    15. thefz ◴[07 Sep 25 15:59 UTC] No.45159334{4}[source]▶
    Yup