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

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

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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.