20070208

wikipedia stupidity

even as stupid as FOX news is, it's hard to believe they published what i just read (about anna smith):
According to Wikipedia, nurses for Marshall claim she didn’t live with him and did not visit him when his condition became terminal.
WTF? laugh despite being a great site for initial research (if you know what you're doing), wikipedia has been a failure of accuracy. and, increasingly, dumbfucks are referring to wikipedia as a source. just last week i saw it done in the forward to a book.

okay, dumbasses; i'll explain why this is a joke. the concept of wikipedia is that it's a compilation of other sources. one of the primary tenets of the site is that there's no original research. read that again: no original research. therefore, if a wikipedia article is worth a damn, any notable fact in it is traceable, via link or note, to the source of the information, and that source will be notable and reliable. without that traced source, quoting the fact is iffy for casual conversation, and egregious sloppiness for anybody claiming to be a reporter. in any case, quoting wikipedia as a source for non-wikipedia information is about as worthless as saying, "according to some random tool we met on the bus...". why? because any random tool may have written what you're quoting as truth. with its wide reach and popularity, wikipedia's articles are among the world's largest sources of unfounded rumor and bullshit.

hey, wait a minute. i guess it's the perfect source for FAUX news. carry on.

i quit linking to wikipedia last year after seeing one mistaken article after another, often with doubleplus inferior writing. the moving-target aspect alone is enough to discourage links to it in most cases.

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posted by saltypig @ 18:05