Tankies think Wikipedia is western liberal CIA-funded propaganda.
Show them articles on the genocides in Ukraine or the Chinese genocide of Uyghurs and them lose their minds.
Lumidaub@feddit.org 5 days ago
I have literally never encountered anyone who got mad at me for using Wikipedia. There are certain people who will still repeat what they learnt about it in school 20 years ago when they were told that “don’t use Wikipedia as a source” and then they stopped listening. But even those people see the benefits.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 5 days ago
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
They’ll happily use it for things that paint any of their chosen “western” countries in a negative way while happily ignoring any that do the same for their obsession countries. It’s totally not hypocritical.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 4 days ago
I have encountered both irl and on SC. mostly if you are in a class that need to cite articles or in a writing lab, they moniter your internet activity.
BossDj@piefed.social 5 days ago
See the thing is tons of exhausted teachers just keep teaching the same shit every year; many of them teach the stuff they learned when they were in school. So a crazy number of them do in fact still teach kids that Wikipedia can’t be trusted because anyone can edit it
protist@retrofed.com 5 days ago
But Wikipedia can’t be trusted as a source. It’s great for overviews of topics and for listing out many other potentially valid sources in the reference list at the end of every article. If you’re writing a paper though, you should never actually cite Wikipedia
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
Wikipedia has quite strict rules on who cam edit what, and what can be changed, especially on major articles.
Besides, you follow the sources the Wikipedia article uses and cite those things. Not cite Wikipedia itself
protist@retrofed.com 5 days ago
That’s literally what I said lol
funksoulkitchen@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
I agree. You don’t use it as a source in an academic paper, just like you shouldn’t be using an encyclopedia. It’s still way better than listing Chat GPT as a source, but the quality of your sources matter in that setting.
It’s an incredible resource though and great jumping off point for research. It’s so much bigger than any normal encyclopedia, and from what ive heard it’s usually more accurate than a traditional encyclopedia (do they still exist?), despite anyone being able to edit it. It’s a source for winning an argument with a friend, not for academic papers (the sources listed on the Wikipedia article are often good). Expect to be called out on it if you cite it.
There’s many issues with academic journals and one could argue Wikipedia is actually better for evading those traps, but your prof isn’t going to see it that way and you’ll lose marks for using a bad source
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 4 days ago
the only people thare stickler over it, are writing labs in colleges.
protist@retrofed.com 4 days ago
No, it’s universal across all academic and research settings
justaman123@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Yeah, this is the answer. Lots of grade school teachers don’t continue learning because they were perfectly happy to just believe that nothing changes and they are the ones in a class that know stuff and their students don’t. You’ve had these teachers and they got mad at your questions when their answers conflicted. You know the ones. They say don’t quote wikipedia still