It can be taken seriously enough but I can also change Suleiman the Magnificent’s birthplace to Nairobi and no one will notice for a week.
Wikipedia should publish curated “editions” like a traditional encyclopedia.
Wikipedia should publish curated “editions” like a traditional encyclopedia.
It's not hard to find articles that are written with some agenda, either product advertisement or political motives, but presented with the same objective encyclopedic tone as the rest.
This article is a pretty good example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming
The entire article is basically an advertisement for the idea, citing a handful of fairly old studies, including prominently a fairly odd one in its own section:
"In an online survey of pair programmers from 2000, 96% of programmers stated that they enjoyed work more while pair programming than programming alone. Furthermore, 95% said that they were more confident in their work when they pair programmed. [...]"
Just... stop and think about that survey for a moment. At a glance you might not catch it, but they basically asked people who prefer pair programming whether they prefer pair programming, and discovered that yeah, almost all of them did.
Both the "indicators of non-performance" and "pairing variations" also seem oddly out of place in a wiki article.
Also, I tend not to make big life decisions on anything in Wikipedia; if it is doing any more than satisfying curiosity, I am looking for additional sources.
I think it is a good general purpose encyclopedia and the world is better for having it.
Have you actually tried doing something like that? You might be surprised how fast it gets reverted.
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/amelia-bedelia-wikipedia-ho...
https://wikipediocracy.com/2022/08/11/wikipedias-credibility...