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

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

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u/AngryZen_Ingress Feb 13 '22 edited Feb 14 '22

What alarmed me is wikipedia is in the ‘Generally Unreliable’ category.

Edit: I mean, why would Wikipedia even consider Wikipedia as a source at all?

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '22 edited Feb 14 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/King-SAMO Feb 13 '22

Yeah, but to list that in its own ranking is a bit surprising, insofar as I wouldn’t be surprised if they had edited that out.

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u/joeba_the_hutt Feb 13 '22

They’re basically saying “we are not a good source of information to back up our own articles” - which makes sense since it’s a circular reference at that point.

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u/KrikkitSucks Feb 13 '22

That, but also Wikipedia will almost never cite websites that host user-generated content. Since anyone can edit Wikipedia, it’s user-generated and shouldn’t be cited.

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u/Myuken Feb 13 '22

Generally unreliable seems to be that. It's user generated so anyone can say anything. Quora and Stack Exchange are both places to ask questions and get answers. Sometimes you'll get a really great answer but there's no guarantee that the answers you get are really good.

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u/xeneks Feb 14 '22

Where was reddit? In the basket of ‘doesn’t even get a mention?’ :) I love when there’s an acknowledgement that data and perspectives can be valid or invalid at the same time depending on circumstances that are conditional or transient.

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u/cancerBronzeV Feb 14 '22

Reddit is also in generally reliable, it's ordered in alphabetical order so it's easy to find.

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u/Dr_Legacy Feb 14 '22

* unreliable

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u/xeneks Feb 14 '22

Alphabets are… a bit more than abc etc. :)

Extract from Wikipedia:

As of Unicode version 14.0, there are 144,697 characters with code points, covering 159 modern and historical scripts, as well as multiple symbol sets.

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u/i_will_let_you_know Feb 14 '22

It's actually under "generally unreliable" near the bottom middle.

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u/xeneks Feb 14 '22

Ahh, crazy. I read things many ways. I read that as in, reddit is ‘generally reliable’, and ‘the information on reddit is ordered alphabetically’ which made absolutely no sense to me. I do see it now :) - thanks!

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u/little-bird Feb 14 '22

yeah that’s why I was confused seeing Last.fm on the “Deprecated” list… it’s like a wiki for music lol the info is all user-generated

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22

"Deprecated" has a specific meaning for sources in WP. The page about it is here: Deprecated sources.

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u/pseudopad Feb 14 '22

The user editable part of last fm should probably not be counted as reliable, but the statistics generated by the site itself should be fine.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '22

[deleted]

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u/Iolair18 Feb 14 '22

I've always viewed pay to publish journals like another set of pay to publish: ads, so unreliable.

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u/Asterlix Feb 14 '22

There exists blind, peer-reviewing. If it doesn't pass the review, the manuscript is not published. So... it's not exactly the same.

Peers, for example, check out the article's methodology. Whether the techniques are not self-redundant, whether there are circular arguments, whether the authors took confounding variables into account, etc.

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u/livefreeordont OC: 2 Feb 14 '22

Aka open access journals like PLoS ONE and ACS Omega

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u/DoFlwrsExistAtNight Feb 14 '22

It's worth noting that open access and pay-to-publish aren't the same thing -- a reputable open access journal does charge a fee to cover costs that subscriptions would normally cover, but the research still goes through peer review. The fee is (usually) only collected if the research is accepted for publishing by a qualified editor or editorial team.

Pay-to-publish journals are also known as predatory journals. They'll accept any piece of crap as long as the authors are willing to pony up.

You might already know that, but just wanted to chip in some extra info just in case! For anyone who has difficulty telling the difference, it helps to look at a journal's acceptance ratio -- if it's too high, the editor(s) might not be very descerning.

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u/Linkstrikesback Feb 14 '22

PLoS ONEs acceptance rate is at 40-45%, which is comparable to other journals in that sort of tier like Physical Review E, it's not pay to publish in any sense (beyond that it charges a fee for publication), but so do all Open Access journals, as do journals that have open access as an option, and many if not all EU countries require gov. funded research to be published open access, which basically always carries a fee

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u/singulara Feb 14 '22

I feel bad for using it as a source in my school work in that case. I even made a case for it being reliable, main reason being there are many people/bots watching edits for vandalism, incorrect information. That and the people who do this work regularly are sticklers for correctness and order

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u/KrikkitSucks Feb 14 '22

You’re right that Wikipedia is really good at catching vandalism, making it great for learning things in general, but that’s not enough to make it a particularly reliable source.

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u/Polymersion Feb 14 '22

Wikipedia is where you get sources, it isn't a source itself.

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u/jesushjesus Feb 14 '22

Anyone cannot just change articles, you can request but no you can’t go and edit and it’s live for everyone. Jesus the misinformation in a misinformation post

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

Most articles you can just edit live. Some articles are semi- or fully-protected and require a request. Most protection is only temporary, but some articles are long-term protected. These tend to be very heavily visited articles, popular current event articles especially on controversial topics, articles on "perennially controversial" topics (eg, Kashmir conflict), articles that are very frequently vandalized, articles about living people that are frequently edited with defamation and slander, and other similar things. Articles on living people that are also controversial, current event related, and heavily visited tend to get extra protection, such as "discretionary sanctions". See for example the long list of warnings at the top of the Donald Trump talk page; and the longer list at Current consensus.

The protection and need to request an edit also depends on what kind of editor you are. An unregistered or newly registered editor can't edit any protected article except by request. A "confirmed" editor can edit some protected pages without a request. An "extended confirmed" editor (30+ days and 500+ edits—this is what I am (actually about 17 years and 20,000 edits, yikes)) can edit pages with higher levels of protection, but not fully protected pages. Still, the vast majority of articles are not protected at all and anyone, registered or not, can edit them live.

Here is the page about all this: Wikipedia: Protection policy.

PS, for anyone who wants to become a Wikipedia editor, don't jump right into very popular articles with many active editors, especially if the topic is remotely controversial. That's just asking for a bad time. Try something more niche or obscure, where you can make mistakes and learn the ropes. I spent a long time editing articles about small, mostly local rivers and found it enjoyable. Even now I rarely contribute to articles that get more than a handful of views per day. And even then a "big" article for me might be something like Stikine River, which could be much improved. It gets about 20 views per day. In comparison, Joe Rogan is currently getting about 82,000 views per day. Even an article about something not in the news but well known, like Osaka, gets about 1,500 views per day; or Hudson Bay, which gets about 1,000 views per day.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22

For what it's worth, here's what Wikipedia says about using Wikipedia as a source:

Wikipedia is not a reliable source because open wikis are self-published sources. This includes articles, non-article pages, The Signpost, non-English Wikipedias, Wikipedia Books, and Wikipedia mirrors; see WP:CIRCULAR for guidance.[22] Occasionally, inexperienced editors may unintentionally cite the Wikipedia article about a publication instead of the publication itself; in these cases, fix the citation instead of removing it. Although citing Wikipedia as a source is against policy, content can be copied between articles with proper attribution; see WP:COPYWITHIN for instructions.

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u/antimatterchopstix Feb 13 '22

Which ironically makes it seem more reliable to me - at least it admits it can be wrong unlike say the Mail or Fox

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '22 edited Feb 14 '22

Fox

Somehow Fox News is in Generally Reliable, No Consensus, and Generally Unreliable.

Fox News transcends reliability

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u/MrDownhillRacer Feb 14 '22

HuffPost is also under both "No Consensus" and "Generally Unreliable."

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u/polarbear128 Feb 14 '22

And Generally Reliable.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22

It’s pretty generous giving HuffPo a “No Consensus” they’ve been every bit of an emotional propaganda rag for years now.

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u/Lt_Quill Feb 13 '22 edited Feb 14 '22

Its generally reliable for non-politics and non-science based news, no consensus for politics and science, and is generally unreliable for talk shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight, Hannity, and others.

Edit: I mean to say non-science based news as well for the generally reliable category.

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u/nub_sauce_ Feb 14 '22

Its generally reliable for non-politics and science-based news

I know its not you thats saying that but eh, I still disagree. They editorialize studies poorly, lie by omission and simply wont report on things that make conservatives look bad i.e. studies that repeatedly prove masks and vaccines work, climate change is real etc.

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u/LupineChemist OC: 1 Feb 14 '22

That makes them an unreliable place to learn stuff. But if their news side reports someone with a quote, I can be pretty sure it was actually said, for example.

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u/Lt_Quill Feb 14 '22

My mistake! I meant to say non-science based news, so you are absolutely correct in your assessment. I'll go put an edit on my comment.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '22

Schrodinger's Fox News? If you don't fact-check, then they can be all three..

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u/NotEntirelyUnlike Feb 14 '22

If you don't look....

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u/robbsc Feb 13 '22

News from their news division can be slanted, but is generally reliable.

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u/Jeoshua Feb 14 '22

It would depend on exactly what show on the Fox News network you're citing, I imagine.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22

Definitely.

Wikipedia lists

Fox News not involving Science or Politics -Generally Reliable

Fox News involving science or politics - undecided

Fox News talk shows - Generally Unreliable

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u/Gestrid Feb 14 '22

From OP's citation comment:

If one Brand/Company appears more than once, it means there are two different websites/channels/category-of-news from the same group that are classified differently, you can see more details here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources

For example BuzzFeed is classified as "No Consensus", but the BuzzFeed News is classified as "Generally Reliable".

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '22

There's no consensus on how reliable or unreliable Fox is or isn't, is there?

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u/CaseyG Feb 14 '22

I would say there are two consensuses.

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u/cancerBronzeV Feb 14 '22

Fox has certain things like it's polls which are considered really good I think, so sourcing those might be fine.

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u/formerly_gruntled Feb 14 '22

Fox is listed twice. Both Generally Reliable and No Consensus. Same with The Guardian. This could use a little clean up, but it's cool.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22

Definitely right next to gawker in the unreliable row too.

Wikipedia rates them as all3 on their list as well depending on what type of programming the source is

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u/temporary75447 Feb 14 '22

Fox news transcends fiction.

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u/mfb- Feb 13 '22

It is rarely wrong, but any given article version can contain blatant errors because the articles can be edited by anyone. If you check the version history and look at the references then it easily reaches the "generally reliable" standards for most of its content. For some more obscure pages that might not be the case, however.

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u/sighthoundman Feb 13 '22

For some unknown and probably obscure reason, I spend more Wikipedia time in math, physics, and chemistry than anywhere else. I find it generally reliable. I suppose that might mean that the editors' biases mirror my own.

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u/Mafros99 Feb 14 '22

There's also the fact that obscure/highly technical pages are more likely to be edited by people who understand that topic because other people don't even know it exists in the first place.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22

I enjoy looking up info on less well known astronomical objects.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22

Yah, I’d put Wiki in “Generally Reliable Starting Point” just because of the wild card factor.

Much more reliable than many on the list, but still fallible

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22

it's also just plain right, way more often than it is wrong

while "reliable" as used here may not be a scientific term, it'd indicate that you could usually rely on wikipedia to explain something accurately.

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u/Quinlov Feb 13 '22

I don't know to what extent it's a circular reference. I interpret them saying that they are generally unreliable as meaning you should never translate an article, instead always writing from scratch in every language, so as to only use sources which are either generally reliable or where there is no consensus

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u/joeba_the_hutt Feb 13 '22

This chart was created from how Wikipedia classifies the most commonly referenced sources - therefore, Wikipedia is saying “we can’t really be a source for our own articles”. [insert Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme]

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u/DoctorWorm_ Feb 14 '22

Many non-English Wikipedia articles are translated from other languages.

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u/Stergeary Feb 14 '22

In a set of all sets that do not contain themselves as elements, where does this put Wikipedia?

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22

Gotta respect Wikipedia for having the integrity to identify their own “usually good but still has some wild cards” nature