On Feb 12, 2008 4:25 PM, Angela Anuszewski psu256@member.fsf.org wrote:
I just was looking at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/politics/bal-primarytracker-html,0,4...
and saw that in one of the boxes on the page, the word "superdelegates" was a hyperlink - imagine my surprise when I clicked on it and it took me to the Wikipedia article.
Does anyone worry that if newspapers make a habit of doing that, their readers will look at Wikipedia as being as authoritative as the newspaper and not bother to check into the article's accuracy? After all, if the paper considers it authoritative enough to link to, it must be so, right?
Angela
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Maybe you don't read a lot of newspapers or something, but most are barely as reliable as your average page on geocities. There are few if any newspapers that should be considered more authoritative than Wikipedia (really, any discerning reader should rank both on the level of reliability I call "rumour mill" - your nomenclature may vary).
In fact, I'd wager we could go head to head for accuracy against any newspaper and "pwn" them, as the young people say. I've never figured out why Wikipedians seem to regard newspapers as some sort of gospel, rather the the fish-wrapping pack of lies they are.
Of course, standards for souces have been increasing with time - maybe something we'll see newspapers dropped as reliable sources.
Cheers WilyD