How reliable do you consider Wikipedia to be at this point?

More reliable than Google. As far as I know, Wikipedia doesn't curate its articles according to an SJW filter.

In the past I got the impression from you that you were politically on the left but you have been going pretty hard at the left lately.
 
In the past I got the impression from you that you were politically on the left but you have been going pretty hard at the left lately.

I have historically been left leaning and remain so. However, today's "left" has motored quite a bit past my position, to the point that I might be called a centrist now simply for not moving along with them.

I probably agree with the majority of what would be called "leftist" principles, but I am not a fan of ideologues or people / organizations that feel that furthering their (or even my) ideologies justifies deception or surreptitious attempts at social engineering.
 
I have historically been left leaning and remain so. However, today's "left" has motored quite a bit past my position, to the point that I might be called a centrist now simply for not moving along with them.

I probably agree with the majority of what would be called "leftist" principles, but I am not a fan of ideologues or people / organizations that feel that furthering their (or even my) ideologies justifies deception or surreptitious attempts at social engineering.

Perhaps you're a "classic liberal"?

Are you familiar with Dave Rubin? He says of himself something very similar to what you just said, that the left essentially left him behind. His YouTube show is very interesting and he gets a lot of good guests.


 
Perhaps you're a "classic liberal"?

Are you familiar with Dave Rubin? He says of himself something very similar to what you just said, that the left essentially left him behind. His YouTube show is very interesting and he gets a lot of good guests.



Yeah, some overlap in some areas, not on others, but now even classical liberal and libertarian are the same thing as the alt-right to today's far left.
 
Last edited:
Why are only scholarly journal articles accepted in grad school? It seems like they would accept any source that was written by a reputable author. If a credentialed historian writes a book for a popular audience about Abraham Lincoln, for instance, shouldn't that be authoritative enough?

I don't know how grad school works in the US but, here, yeah you can cite anything as long as it's from a reputable author, though obviously journal articles, academic books and chapters are by-far the most common thing to use.

But occasionally other sources make sense if it has a point or fact you want to use, e.g. in a paper I wrote recently I cited the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scottus-eriugena/ The author is an expert on the subject, and even though it's a website it's fine as long as it's from a proper source. Another place I might use would be the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

You could cite popular history books depending in the author, but in general you are unlikely to as it's doubtful it would have a thorough enough analysis...for pop history books (not knocking them, some are fantastic, they are just different) there is almost always an academic monograph dealing with the same subject, or dealing more specifically with a particular theme and so on, sometimes by the same author.
 
Last edited:
Depends on what you are looking up but wiki is a great place to start any self-inquiry before finding real sources or doing real research
 
Depends on what you are looking up but wiki is a great place to start any self-inquiry before finding real sources or doing real research

This I agree with. It's definitely a great starting point and a good way to get an overview of a topic.
 
I only get my facts from Fox News.
 
if it is the kind of information that people arent biased about, then it is pretty reliable.
if not, then it is just like any other "news" outlet.
 
It depends in what the topic is. If you just want a crash course on how cloud is formed, it is quite good, but much more sensitive or ongoing topic like Trump related stuff can be suspect.
 
Last edited:
Despite a lot of flack some may give it, it is pretty reliable with most stuff related to sports, history, etc.
 
Wikipedia can be bigger than Google, Apple, and Facebook combined. Thank good it aint about that with them.

What about the other info pages like About.com?
 
It’s pretty reliable as far as I’m concerned. I haven’t used it for more than looking up dates of when people were born/died, or some mundane detail about something insignificant, but it works well enough. I had actual hardback encyclopedias with each letter getting its own volume when I was younger, so I think an update-able encyclopedia is more accurate compared to those written in stone like the former.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top