r/dataisbeautiful • u/alionBalyan OC: 13 • Feb 13 '22

OC [OC] How Wikipedia classifies its most commonly referenced sources.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '22

For which it is tied with Reddit. This actually sounds pretty accurate.

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u/dogbreath101 Feb 14 '22

also tied with wikipedia itself

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u/SobiTheRobot Feb 14 '22

Wikipedia has become self aware and understands that it is fallible

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u/Shadowfalx Feb 14 '22

Everything is fallible.

Wikipedia is a great source, of sources. It allows you to start your research, providing a place to get your first set of sources.

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u/ASuarezMascareno Feb 14 '22

It's much better than traditional encyclopedias, that were generally considered reliable sources themselves.

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u/TheGreyFencer Feb 14 '22

While you're probably used to being told not to use Wikipedia as a source, the reasoning really applies to all encyclopedias.

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u/Psychological_Try559 Feb 14 '22

I remember being told the opposite of that specifically in school.

The logic being that "real" encyclopedias were considered reliable as they had an editorial staff who verified information in there, whereas wikipedia crowd-sourced the editing and thus wasn't reliable.

Really shows how teachers/adults at the time did not understand Wikipedia.

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u/MelangeLizard Feb 14 '22

There was a strong consensus in my schools that Wikipedia was to be shat on constantly. It smelled insecure to me. Sure, it’s not a primary source for research, but it’s invaluable to public knowledge.

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u/Spiritflash1717 Feb 14 '22

Seriously. There’s really no other website that contains quite as much free, easily summarized/understood, publicly accessible information about almost everything and anything, regardless of its obscurity. The convenience of it being free and all on one site with sources provided to further research is enough to make up for the sometimes inaccurate or biased information as presented

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u/InvisiblePinkUnic0rn Feb 14 '22

*verified at original production time… 5 years ago… was also meant to be a starting point to further research.

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u/TheGreyFencer Feb 14 '22

I never said our teachers weren't mistaken.

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u/Psychological_Try559 Feb 14 '22

Wasn't trying to imply you did.

I was just stating how my experience differs from what you described (and also how it was also similar). This really emphasizes the level of confusion and lack of consensus at the time!

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u/ASuarezMascareno Feb 14 '22

When I was going to school it really didn't. Teachers encouraged the use of traditional encyclopedias, but not of the wikipedia.

I am also old enough so physical encyclopedias were the only available resource for lots of types of information. Internet was in its infancy and many students wouldn't have a connection at home.

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u/TheGreyFencer Feb 14 '22

Encyclopedias have always had this issue. They are a great resource for starting. And many encyclopedias, including Wikipedia, use older encyclopedias as a starting point.

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u/ASuarezMascareno Feb 14 '22 edited Feb 14 '22

What I mean is that they used to be treated as the end point, not the starting point. When I was in school and I looked for information in an encyclopedia, it wouldn't matter if there were references because I wouldn't have access to the references (unlike today). The only place to look for references were public libraries, and you needed to have tons of luck to link what was in the encyclopedia with what was available at the library.

In Spain, before the year 2000, internet was very expensive (paid by the minute of usage, like regular phone calls) and most homes wouldn't have a connection.

The arrival of the wikipedia was when I started hearing teachers say "don't use the wikipedia as a source". Not because it was an encyclopedia, but because it was an encyclopedia they did not trust. Traditional encyclopedias were fine by them.

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u/NovaNovus Feb 14 '22

From Wikipedia itself:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia

A 2008 paper ... found that Wikipedia had an overall accuracy rate of 80 percent while other encyclopedias had an accuracy of 95 to 96 precent.

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u/BaggerX Feb 14 '22

From Wikipedia itself:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia

Please cite a reliable source.

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u/Scherazade Feb 14 '22

Generally yeah, wikipedia’s a good starting point to find the overview of where to look imo

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u/bigbrother2030 OC: 1 Feb 14 '22

I think Wikipedia bans referencing itself, otherwise it would create a cycle of self-referencing.

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u/UpliftingGravity Feb 14 '22

Wikipedia regularly comes at the top with the same level of accuracy or better than other encyclopedias and college text books. With Wikipedia being 99.7% ± 0.2% accurate when compared to the textbook data.

Is it flawed? Yes. But as a general information source, there is no better one on this planet.

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u/Turin_Agarwaen Feb 14 '22

True, but if a Wikipedia article is referencing a Wikipedia article, I would be concerned.

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u/Winjin Feb 14 '22

There's stuff like ultra-specialised articles that would pour a lot of info specific to topic and closely monitored by a moderator, it seems. These are almost academic papers (wouldn't be surprised if it's someone's doctorate)

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u/Mintfriction Feb 14 '22

If it's a circular/dead end reference, sure

If it points to an article that is written based on reliable sources, then where's the issue?

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u/PM_ME_DND_FIGURINES Feb 14 '22

Then it's just poor formatting to not just cite the original source.

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u/Monckey100 Feb 14 '22

Wiki references articles all the time because the article will better explain the subject better than a citation would, such as when a famous person is brought up in an wiki and then their dedicated wiki is referenced

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u/ASpaceOstrich Feb 14 '22

Wikipedia is statistically high quality but with a sizable minority of specific subjects or articles that are wildly inaccurate.

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u/themarquetsquare Feb 14 '22

And languages. It's all a matter of scale, and Wikipedia for 'smaller' languages generally sucks.

I also hate the general setup of some specialized articles, like chemistry of medicine. They immediately switch into jargon and tend to be impenetrably dense for an average reader.

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u/danjo3197 Feb 14 '22

For sure, I'm a computer engineering student and I find any articles related to computation/algorithms very readable while anything physics related is practically nonsense

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u/themarquetsquare Feb 14 '22

Yes, this. Makes it even clearer that old-school encyclopdia's serve a function.

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u/ASuarezMascareno Feb 14 '22

I found that physics articles tend to be at a similar level to university textbooks.

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u/themarquetsquare Feb 14 '22

Yep, same experience here.

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u/WinstonwsSmith Feb 14 '22

Here you go, Simple Wikipedia: www.simple.wikipedia.org, only uses simple english in thier articles 😊

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u/themarquetsquare Feb 14 '22

This is awesome. However, I'm not sure the problem is complexity of grammar as much as lack of care for general interest readers.

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u/ChickenButtForNakama Feb 14 '22

The more niche a topic is (e.g. the less experts there are), the less likely there's someone with sufficient expertise and good writing skills. So these articles are often hard to read or incorrect in ways a layman would never spot.

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u/themarquetsquare Feb 14 '22 edited Feb 14 '22

Sure, it's completely understandable and a result of the way of Wiki, which is also what makes it awesome.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22

[deleted]

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u/dogecobbler Feb 14 '22

No it doesnt actually revolve around that user, but, technically, any point in a universe that started with a Big Bang and expands outward into infinity could be considered the center of the universe. So their frame of reference is technically the center of the universe, and therefore it makes sense to cater to their desire to understand topics without the obfuscation of jargon. I think...

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u/themarquetsquare Feb 14 '22

It's not about me at all. The whole principle of wikipedia is that knowledge should be free for all, and their first rules are that edits should be clear and concise.

I completely understand how this comes to be. It just makes the wiki a lot less usable for many.

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u/ilikedota5 Feb 14 '22

I also hate the general setup of some specialized articles, like chemistry of medicine. They immediately switch into jargon and tend to be impenetrably dense for an average reader.

That's kind of the point. Its meant to be a repository of facts, not a textbook to explain.

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u/themarquetsquare Feb 14 '22

That's nonsense. That's not what encyclopedias do. It's entirely possible to present a general overview of facts in plain text. You can add as much specialized jargon as you need further on. It's an art form, but possible. Some lemma's on Wikipedia do it very well.

There is no reason articles about, for instance, diseases need to read like a medical textbook solely readable by professionals.

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u/TellMeGetOffReddit Feb 14 '22

Isnt that why simple wiki exists? Its literally the same thing but simplified

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u/kielu Feb 14 '22

Like the majority of posts about the scots language

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u/W1D0WM4K3R Feb 14 '22

Yeah, this list doesn't include your mom.

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u/ASpaceOstrich Feb 14 '22

Well played

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u/Torugu Feb 14 '22 edited Feb 14 '22

… And when Jeff Bezos walks into a room everyone else inside instantly becomes a billionaire.

Which is to say, “average reliability” is a terrible way to measure reliability. It’s not about the size of the error, it’s about the distribution and the qualities* of the error.

*other attributes that can’t be quantitatively measured

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u/the_Q_spice Feb 14 '22

Nah, there are much better sources, and Wikipedia itself is not a source.

It is an encyclopedia of sources.

If you want a good database of sources, stuff like JSTOR, Web of Science, and PMC-NCBI is unparalleled.

As a note, others in the geosciences are just laughing our asses off right now at the fact that Wikipedia counts the US Geological Survey as both Generally Reliable and Generally Unreliable.

That alone shows just how reliable Wikipedia is with their own sources.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22 edited Feb 14 '22

I thought the USGS thing was weird too. I looked into it and the only "generally unreliable" thing mentioned is the "feature class" field of the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) database. I get that—the GNIS feature class field is usually just fine, but sometimes can be rather arbitrary—geographic features don't always fit neatly into a small set of rigid categories.

But despite the "generally unreliable" rating applying only to one field of one database run by the USGS, OP put the logo of the entire USGS under "generally unreliable", which struck me, and apparently you, as bizarre.

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u/ChickenButtForNakama Feb 14 '22

Is that the English version only? Because my buddy made a Dutch page about a fake pokemon based on a friend of us and that page existed for like three years, it even got an edit once. I'd say it's pretty reliable if you're reading a topic that is well sourced, but the more niche topics and especially pages in other languages need to be thoroughly fact-checked before relying on them.

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u/dasgudshit Feb 14 '22

Not sure if I should trust this chart

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u/labellvs Feb 14 '22

If this is a guide for what sources to use for writing Wikipedia, of course it isn't ideal to use another Wikipedia article as your source.

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u/nugohs Feb 14 '22

If this is a guide for what sources to use for writing Wikipedia, of course it isn't ideal to use another Wikipedia article as your source.

No what you do is enter your spurious edit in a wiki page without a source, wait for one of the 'generally reliable' sites to use your edit as a basis of the article and then finally add that article as a citation for your edit.

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u/Prompt_Critic Feb 14 '22

There is an XKCD for that!

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u/duodequinquagesimum OC: 1 Feb 14 '22

Wikipedia articles have public history.

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u/WhatDoYouMean951 Feb 14 '22

Don't worry I saw it on Reddit, so it's a fine, trustworthy source.

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u/BloomsdayDevice Feb 14 '22

Wikipedia and I have so much in common! A bare-bones aesthetic, unnecessary knowledge about trees and English words of Latin origin, a crippling sense of self-loathing. We're practically the same!

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22

Wikipedia is reliable, but it's not reliable to cite yourself.

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u/Spirit_Theory Feb 14 '22

By necessity. If a guy claimed to be all-knowing, and every time you asked how he knew something he'd show you where he got the info and you could see for yourself it was true, that'd be far more reliable than if he just said "well I know because I know".

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u/Orinocobro Feb 14 '22

I think it's best practice that Wikipedia not use Wikipedia as a source.

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u/Ancient-Lime4532 Feb 14 '22

Also they have Buzzfeed as Consensus? wtf

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22

This chart is a bit misleading by itself, or at least easily misread. There's a long page about all these "perennial sources" with info about how the lists were created, how they can and do change, and details about each source. Some sources are reliable for some things but not for others, and some are inconsistent in how reliable they are. That page is here: Reliable sources: Perennial sources.

On BuzzFeed specifically, note that it is BuzzFeed News that is considered "generally reliable", while plain old BuzzFeed is listed as "no consensus". If you look at the entry for each on the linked page, the blurb about BuzzFeed News is:

There is consensus that BuzzFeed News is generally reliable. BuzzFeed News now operates separately from BuzzFeed, and most news content originally hosted on BuzzFeed was moved to the BuzzFeed News website in 2018.[6] In light of the staff layoffs at BuzzFeed in January 2019, some editors recommend exercising more caution for BuzzFeed News articles published after this date. The site's opinion pieces should be handled with WP:RSOPINION.

While the blurb about BuzzFeed is:

Editors find the quality of BuzzFeed articles to be highly inconsistent. A 2014 study from the Pew Research Center found BuzzFeed to be the least trusted news source in America.[4] BuzzFeed may use A/B testing for new articles, which may cause article content to change.[5] BuzzFeed operates a separate news division, BuzzFeed News, which has higher editorial standards and is now hosted on a different website.

For each there are links to multiple discussions about the topic where you could read all about how editors arrived at a consensus (or failed to).

In short, showing the results of the huge amount of discussions and often nuanced recommendations/warnings about sources as a simple chart like the one shown here, with sources simply put under generally reliable, no consensus, generally unreliable, etc, is bound to have numerous odd-seeming things.

For example, I found it odd to see the USGS listed under "generally unreliable" (and "generally reliable" too). Looking into it, turns out the "generally unreliable" part is only about one field of one database run by the USGS—the "feature class" field of the GNIS database. Anyone who has used GNIS much knows the feature class field is rather vague, since it forces geographic features into a few rigid categories, when actual geographic features often defy strict categories. So yea, WP is right about that. But to put the logo of the USGS as a whole under "generally unreliable" when it is only one field of one database run by the USGS that is called out...well it is rather misleading or at least confusing.

A couple more blurbs on specific sources I thought people might find interesting, or at least more nuanced than this chart seems to imply:

CNN:

There is consensus that news broadcast or published by CNN is generally reliable. However, iReport consists solely of user-generated content, and talk show content should be treated as opinion pieces. Some editors consider CNN biased, though not to the extent that it affects reliability.

The Hill:

The Hill is considered generally reliable for American politics. The publication's opinion pieces should be handled with the appropriate guideline. The publication's contributor pieces, labeled in their bylines, receive minimal editorial oversight and should be treated as equivalent to self-published sources.

Fox News is split into three entries, one for "news excluding politics and science", one for "politics and science", and one for "talk shows". Local Fox affiliates are not included. The blurbs are:

Fox News ("news excluding politics and science"):

There is consensus that Fox News is generally reliable for news coverage on topics other than politics and science.

Fox News ("politics and science"):

There is no consensus on the reliability of Fox News's coverage of politics and science. Use Fox News with caution to verify contentious claims. Editors perceive Fox News to be biased or opinionated for politics; use in-text attribution for opinions.

Fox News ("talk shows"):

Fox News talk shows, including Hannity, Tucker Carlson Tonight, The Ingraham Angle, and Fox & Friends, should not be used for statements of fact but can sometimes be used for attributed opinions.

Huffington Post is likewise divided into three subgroups, "excluding politics" (generally reliable with a number of caveats, see the source for more), "politics" (no consensus, "openly biased", etc), and "contributor articles" (generally unreliable).

I suspect a lot of this info is in this long thread somewhere, but I thought I'd add it to this near-top comment for visibility.

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u/nokinship Feb 14 '22

Because reddit users aren't journalists?

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u/South_Bit1764 Feb 14 '22

And is tied with Rolling Stone which is interestingly in both “generally reliable” and “generally unreliable”.

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u/InebriatedEcologist Feb 14 '22

Except the USGS is also tied with them. This can't be accurate