Boi,
All comparisons of WP with other sources were cherry picked. They picked
articles where
the science was well established, or they picked articles which were
being edit warred to
exhaustion if you know of comparisons where that isn't the case then
cough them up.
Wikipedia happens to figure high in Google search rankings. That is the
only reliable relevance that
it has to any subject. Often its high ranking is to the detriment of far
more reliable sites. Richard II
king of England in 1345 - three years that resided in a feature article.
Thomas Rainsborough the
noted Ranter a year. Jagged85 years and years falsifying articles in
History, Medicine,
Mathematics, and Literature, and allowed to carry on doing so for
several years after discovery.
Much of his nonsense remains.
Ignoring the millions of "X is a footballer in the 6th division of the Y
league", "X is a moth in the
Y family", "X is a village of 50 people in the region of Y" type
articles. Most of the rest are like
John Dee. An unreadable hodge-podge of 'maybe facts' culled from ancient
sources, and mangled
into nonsense to avoid charges of plagiarism. Article that give as much
weight to gossip and
sensation as they do to achievements. Lets try "Alfred Gilbert" where
the pursuit of gossip has
lost the actual story of his life.
On 05/04/2015 12:07, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi,
Research is not what we compete with. Research is not encyclopaedic
either. The research I refer to compared a set of subjects and
compared those in several sources... Then again why bore you with
information you already could know..
Cherry picking an article from Brittanica is wonderful, it "proves"
your point, it however fails to convince.
Your God or mine, the fact is that Wikipedia is a most relevant
source. Given your complaint about the John Dee article, there is an
opportunity for you. You claim to know the subject matter.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 5 April 2015 at 12:06, Lilburne <lilburne(a)tygers-of-wrath.net
<mailto:lilburne@tygers-of-wrath.net>> wrote:
On 05/04/2015 06:36, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi,
Reliable is not an absolute. Wikipedia is in the final analysis an
encyclopaedia. It is not original research.
One can indeed engage in original research by cherry picking the
sources.
Studies have indicated that
Wikipedia is as reliable as its competitors.
Nonsense. Reliability has only ever been checked in the case of
well established scientific
knowledge (where it was found to have 30% more errors), and highly
disputed content.
It has not been checked over the millions of articles that are
neither of the above.
Take the WP article on John Dee and compare it to the Britannica
article. The Britannica
article is both readable and well rounded. The WP article is a
rambling mess that tries
to present Dee the Mathematician, Scientist and natural
philospher, but is thwarted
at every turn by those that want John Dee to be foremost the
magician and conjuror.
Perhaps in the end Dee the mathematician wins out, but it is a
close run thing, and
one has to pour over the stilted language and mish mash of thought
processes to
get there.
Ironically enough many of the sources used to promote Dee the
magician are instead
promoting Dee the mathematician.
I think you have it backward. Given that Wikipedia is best of
breed, people
do care about Wikipedia Zero.
God help us if that is the case. Fortunately there are far more
informative and reliable
sites about then wikipedia. Unfortunately they tend not to be on
the first page of a
search engine's results.
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