The wiki was actually wrong about this fundamental digital fact by a factor of like 3x, and my teacher got to i-told-you-so me about citations.
Ever since then I've not been able to enjoy Wikipedia without scrutinizing the edit history
the entire "references" section back then was one link
That's the correct number for the molar mass of carbon, as far as I know, it doesn't look off by 3x!
About poor faith, these kind of accusations happens so often, there's plenty of existing essays and material on whether you should assume people are posting in bad faith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AOBF is a good reference, it's used pretty regularly.
Normally people provide relevant links. Even if this is showing bad sourcing, it still sources the important numbers. "External links" is helping with that too.
And this 2003 vs. 2004 distinction is a waste of time when wikipedia has a perfectly good history feature.
If I ask pretty please will you name the element?
> Normally people provide relevant links
It is relevant. It's pointing out that lots of articles back then were not well referenced. It doesn't have to be his article. I know this quite well as I added a lot of stuff to Wikipedia in those days, and never provided a reference. No one challenged me.
Likely the page he got his information from didn't provide any reference for that number.
The lines are not individually cited but that's a stylistic thing, not a failure to have references. I'm sure there's several lines without backing but overall this has reasonable links and I don't think it supports the narrative about having "one" reference and getting a "fundamental digital fact" wrong like that.
So I would like to see the real example. Or one that is equivalently bad. And linking it would be in the best interests of a fruitful discussion; it's not like a particular element is going to be a controversial issue that causes a time-wasting tangent.
I think this is the first sentence I've read about an internet encyclopedia that started with "Back in my day..."
* Interviewing "experts" (their level of expertise would be something you'd need to establish since no third party has prescribed that) who contribute and discuss the topic.
* Referencing cited sources.
* Referencing edit history and reverted changes, rejected sources, etc.
I think the issue is that academia has a lot of systems in place (I'd argue that they're only partially effective) that help establish credibility of experts and sources through "academic honesty" policies.
IMO, part of figuring out how to properly cite wikipedia will come with a reckoning that academic honesty isn't 100% nor are the arguments of authority that come from academia quite enough to establish credibility. I think that's the real issue -- this shorthand is pretty good, but it doesn't mesh with wikipedia's own shorthand.
I think we all assumed the situation had evolved.
Before wikipedia you had academics writing things like this. You really think the average wikipedian is more "motivated" then the average academic with a PhD who spent their life studying some topic?
People who edit wikipedia make more edits than people who don't edit Wikipedia. Well no shit.
If you want to do an apples to apples comparison, compare how many hours people edit wikipedia vs how many hours PhD candidates spend writing their dissertation. i think on average traditional accademia rewards obsessiveness much more than wikipedia does.
It's available at https://archive.org/details/encyclopdiabrita12chic/page/n307... .
I think it's a better intro than the Wikipedia one for someone looking for an intro overview.
The Wikipedia has a bunch more cross-references and goes into more depth.
Same with the census detail pages you find everywhere; they're probably accurate for that point in time, because nobody really cares.
To be fair this is a problem for most academic papers and most books as well, so it's not unique to wikipedia. It does however, require a lot of "faith" to be exercised. As a skeptical person, I find that unsatisfactory.
This can make it more difficult for things that nobody ever bothered reporting.
My dad is wrapping up the first monograph on a not too obscure New Deal artist who had a long career and plenty of notable works (at least in his niche).
The entire wikipedia page was written by my dad. If you search the artist there's plenty of hits on art for sale by him, but not much on the man himself.
My father who was a journalist and now a researcher has done several projects and he's been the first 'story' written for a lot of these projects.
When the Philadelphia Union started a feeder team named after the historical club in Bethlehem - they called him up and asked him if he owned the copyright! In fact, basically all of the pictures and details, later written into a book done by another local soccer journo type, was dug up by him. A lot of this information was either in microfiche or in dusty piles in the Bethlehem area library. Now it's diligently organized and stored online.
One of the things he's told me about his work is it's immensely difficult to put a story together that is cohesive. Even for someone who's relatives are still alive, and for the soccer club? He could probably have made up half of the articles and didn't.
All of these things to find out that wikipedia will delete your article for non-importance because there's a lack of recent news links online to it.
Someone has to actually collect it all up together. Go talk to original people. Then you write a book and wikipedia will happily take it. They might not be happy to quote your great auntie Margaret who said there was a bastard son, but until some biographer writes that into a book nobody thinks it's real.
I doubt anyone is fetching and fact checking 2000 links a semester.