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All human advancement was created by nerds. Spears were invented by weaklings too slow to kill with their bare hands. Fire was tamed by the people who were scared of the dark
I think the post makes a point important in modern capitalism: people will create “value” for free because they can, they care, they want to, it’s a challenge. Capital and/or the threat of starvation is not actually always necessary for people to be “productive”. Ego, boredom, altruism, adventure, these are also traits of humanity besides survival and greed.
What makes them think that the library of Alexandria did it any other way? Nerds have existed long before the internet…
Nerds were invented by Charles Nerd, when in 1948, separated from the Poindexters and the eggheads after disagreement.
umm ackshually this is false, the concept of nerd originates from a viking ship that docked at Lübeck in 873, whereupon the crew got into an extended argument about the precise value of their cargo, leading to the Lübeck merchants exclaiming “Fücking Nörds!” and that quickly caught on and eventually the term started generally referring to anyone that was annoyingly pedantic but technically correct.
Can I cite this on Wikipedia?
absolutely. I am a tyrant that you should trust, and you should let me run your life. I know what is best for you.
Just ignore the 150M a year they spend managing finances, contributors, tech, moderation, etc. Takes a lot to maintain an accurate library.
Wikipedia is not a library neither is it a reliable source of accurate information.
It’s definitely not 100% foolproof to misinformation, but I’ve always found wikipedia to be reliable. Why do you feel it isnt?
Wikipedia’s reliability in it’s own words - check out the holocaust misinformation from last year!
US congressional staff editing controversies as documented by and presented in wikipedia
A ten year long hoax running until two years ago
Wikipedia’s own list of its controversies - pay special attention here to the 2023 exposure of an administrator pretending to be a spanish folk singer as a sockpuppet of another administrator who was banned in 2015 for making “promotional edits”.
I want to be clear: i do not feel that wikipedia isn’t reliable. I can clearly observe that wikipedia is unreliable.
Info on Wikipedia shouldn’t be taken at face value, check the sources given! A lot of the examples you gave likely didn’t have any citation. The blame for misinformation partly lies with the people accepting information with no sources given. Also, any example of known misinformation just means that it has been caught and corrected. Everyone should know wikipedia is not right 100% of the time but it is always getting better. There millions of articles and I don’t think the examples you listed should lead anyone to believe it is overall unreliable. It is good however to not blindly put your trust in whatever you read from it, and if you do come across something that isn’t correct, you have the opportunity to fix it.
That’s wild.
If you knew a person who shouldn’t be taken at face value and whose claims had to be verified, what word would you use to describe them? Would that word be reliable? Trustworthy?
Wikipedia isn’t a person though. It’s a website of articles that summarizes topics and ideally lists sources that contain the info within it. I agree a person that sounds like that is untrustworthy, but that doesn’t mean anything on the topic of wikipedia.
Woah.
So, like, if you knew of a website which shouldn’t be taken at face value and whose claims had to be verified, what word would you use to describe it? would that word be reliable? Trustworthy?
It depends on the website. A Twitter post with no source? Untrustworthy. Wikipedia page with plenty of sources to back up the article? I would default to saying trustworthy, but of course I would still have to check the sources myself. Wikipedia is a tool. It connects you to outside sources of info. It has the reputation of being reliable enough to get trustworthy info in its summaries. As I’ve already stated before, mistakes have been made though.
It’s as accurate as any university textbook and way more accurate than any school textbook.
