Amarna Forum

When I was in school teachers always made a big point about how you shouldn't trust wikipedia or use it as a source. I understand wanting students to put effort into their research, but they always seemed to take it a step further and pretend like it's a conspiracy website or something, which I just chalked up to them being grammar nazi types. But as we were leaving the shop today my coworker played a rap song and said something about how 21 savage is underrated, and I said something like "Isn't he the british guy" to which my coworker said "Does this nigga sound british?" I said no, but when I looked him up it said it confirmed he was. Coworker asked where I read that, and when I told him wikipedia he said "You can't trust that shit" and turned the volume up, although that may have been because a different song was coming on. Anyway, I'm just wondering why people are so skeptical of wikipedia. I'm sure some of it's inaccurate or out of date, but it doesn't seem to be any better or worse than the news and stuff like that. 

Sorry if my typing's a bit messy here I'm riding to a job in one of our shitty vans.

Because it's not written by "the experts".

It's a collaborative effort, meaning it is outside the immediate control that journalists/editorial boards have over their articles. It can still be exploited, that much can be seen now, but it was easier to do damage control first (the example that you gave about teachers) than to let it have uncontested influence on the minds of young men.

Back in the 2000s, young JohnTrent would browse Wikipedia voraciously. It was a good tool for accessing information that was completely unavailable to me. Even now, looking up the name of Denis Diderot can give you the names Temple Stanyan and William Mitford: Temple Stanyan's two-volume work on Ancient Greece was translated by Diderot, but was superseded by William Mitford's five-volume work History of Greece. Both works would now be seen as anti-democratic historical interpretations. It's safe to say that you wouldn't find these names prematurely, unless if you were conducting research in a history department.

I heard this from schoolmarms too, the argument doesn't make much sense because you can follow the primary source and read that instead if you don't trust the claims made in the article. However, many political articles are swarmed by groups of editors with ideological bias who build a biased consensus. An obvious example. Wikipedia's elaborate bureaucracy attracts certain kinds of people who find it enjoyable to game the system, and repulses good faith editors.

Also, many biographical pages for less notable people were created by the person themselves so they can pretend to be important. These types of pages are usually quite easy to spot once you are aware of how common this is. They often don't understand the tone of the average Wikipedia page and stand out as reading like a CV. Here's a more sophisticated example, a lot of them are barely sourced.

Wikipedia is actually kiked right now. Can’t write much on it now, but it’s one of the sites most subverted by leftists since it’s inception.

All really interesting replies, appreciate it.

Don't listen to them Jerbear. Most of the hate for Wikipedia comes from it being too good.

It drives the self-proclaimed experts (liberals, professors, etc.) insane that any sufficiently intelligent forum poster can humiliate them within minutes using such powerful and well organized reference material.

It's also great for figuring out if a guy is Jewish or not.

Hamamelis Wrote:Because it's not written by "the experts".

Wikipedia policy actively discourages experts from contributing if they can't cite secondary sources of their own work.

Mostly because its easy. Wikipedia absolutely cites sources. The notion you're told in school that people can make up whatever is nonsense.

It gets you accustomed to slaving away hunting down sources for paper writing.

As someone whose been through college and grad school-a worse form of enslavement you'll never find.

I'll go against the crowd here. Wikipedia is innately distrustworthy. Articles on STEM topics are generally excellent and historical sketches of people/events 100+ years ago are okay.

That said, if you try to learn about a modern historical/political topic, you must practice *extreme* skepticism. As an example, I was recently trying to find some articles on characters involved in China's cultural revolution - particularly Lin Biao, whose wikipedia page I've looked at a few times over the years, and it has been completely and totally rewritten from what it was maybe 8 or so years ago - and it now portrays him as an incompetent fool. Active constant revisionism concerning these topics is huge.

China plays with it extensively but so does everyone else. The usual sinners (Turks, Armenians, Israelis, Kurds, Syrians, Russians, Indians, Egyptians) are only distinguished by the fact that they're generally quite bad at subtly revising history, and it's easy to spot their manipulative prose/flourishes. China articles, by comparison, are extremely subtle- even if they are more comprehensive in their revisionism.

(11-19-2023, 07:15 AM)Zed Wrote: [ -> ]I'll go against the crowd here. Wikipedia is innately distrustworthy. Articles on STEM topics are generally excellent and historical sketches of people/events 100+ years ago are okay.

That said, if you try to learn about a modern historical/political topic, you must practice *extreme* skepticism. As an example, I was recently trying to find some articles on characters involved in China's cultural revolution - particularly Lin Biao, whose wikipedia page I've looked at a few times over the years, and it has been completely and totally rewritten from what it was maybe 8 or so years ago - and it now portrays him as an incompetent fool.  Active constant revisionism concerning these topics is huge.

China plays with it extensively but so does everyone else. The usual sinners (Turks, Armenians, Israelis, Kurds, Syrians, Russians, Indians, Egyptians) are only distinguished by the fact that they're generally quite bad at subtly revising history, and it's easy to spot their manipulative prose/flourishes. China articles, by comparison, are extremely subtle- even if they are more comprehensive in their revisionism.

I would like to think that anybody who wants to seriously understand history is aware of the problems of perspective and has hopefully heard the word 'historiography' before. Would like to, but considering the state of the schools who's going to teach this? A lot of people who could make intelligent sense of these things probably are going online looking for the right answer. Or the history.

You just need to understand how to read history. Anybody who does should see the whole premise of wikipedia as highly suspect, and so will know that they should look at bit further, from a few other angles, at any issue of human interest.

Wikipedia is still a decent source in order to obtain basic information about topics. Especially non-political topics. History pages are quite reliable up until you get to the American Civil War and after.

I think its fair to take anything Wikipedia says that might have libtards(or Jews) influencing it with a heavy helping of salt. For example-their article on the great replacement/White genocide conspiracy theory is laughable when you look at the sources, but given the nature of the topic-you can't expect anything better.

Articles on religion should also be taken critically, given Wikipedia has been part of the internet atheist sphere for a long time.

Zed Wrote:I was recently trying to find some articles on characters involved in China's cultural revolution - particularly Lin Biao, whose wikipedia page I've looked at a few times over the years, and it has been completely and totally rewritten from what it was maybe 8 or so years ago - and it now portrays him as an incompetent fool.

The Green Groyper Wrote:anything Wikipedia says that might have libtards(or Jews) influencing it with a heavy helping of salt. For example-their article on the great replacement/White genocide conspiracy theory is laughable when you look at the sources

With these specific articles in mind, I think it would be useful to compile a list of articles that are being sat on by editors with an ideological axe to grind and thus can't be corrected, especially articles that we think are formerly good if we can pinpoint a good date to revert them to. Formerly good versions could someday be listed on a site similar to Deletionpedia.

I'd say articles on any "right wing" topic or author. You're not going to get even disinterested objectivity there.

WW2 as well-especially as relating to National Socialism.

I'd say articles on Jewish subjects/conspiracies-are not going to be reliable.

IQ/race/HBD stuff-depends. How much attention does a specific subject get from liberals?

Religion in general-I think its fairly useful, is it maybe anti Christian by the prejudices of certain editors? Sure but not unreadable.

Conspiracy theories in general.

I'd say its best to presume on any "RW" cultural, political or historical interest-wikipedia is not your friend.

If there's a counter example then I'd be overjoyed to hear about it.

genericMC Wrote:I think it would be useful to compile a list of articles that are being sat on by editors with an ideological axe to grind and thus can't be corrected, especially articles that we think are formerly good if we can pinpoint a good date to revert them to. Formerly good versions could someday be listed on a site similar to Deletionpedia.

Something like Caucasian race is probably the most obvious. Naturally, because of how obvious it is, this is only the tip of the iceberg with how pernicious the site's editors are when it comes to Certain Topics. Regardless of whether the terms "Caucasian" or "Caucasoid" are valid, what is the point of including the section screenshotted below?



What seems to have happened is that there was a reversal of sorts. Jeremy's school teachers and his coworker told him not to trust Wikipedia because anyone could go into an article and make changes. In truth, Wikipedia's untrustworthiness comes from the fact that only """The Experts""" are permitted to make changes. 

I agree with all the others above who have already mentioned that it's useful for things like quick history reading, and that people of a certain caliber are obviously going to look far beyond Wikipedia articles. Of course, most people aren't going to do that, and most people aren't really concerned with learning about something like, for example, the Battle of Poitiers, or the Hudson River School. How much can you really blatantly lie about with articles like those? In a time when the common masses have such ready access to information, moderated by people who claim to only include trustworthy and reliable source material, telling them that it is "clear and unambiguous" that race doesn't exist (but don't forget, you're still a racist), you eventually realise that returning to a time of mass illiteracy would be easily preferable to whatever halfway state of flux we find ourselves in today.

blanched_chards Wrote:Wikipedia's policy on "reliable sources" forces editors to cite mainstream journalism and science almost exclusively. This works well for the non-controversial parts of Wikipedia, but makes it impossible to get accurate information about domains that TPTB have a vested interest in obscuring. The bans on user-generated content, and "publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist", are subtle ways that Wikipedia shuts out information coming from sources anathema to the MSM.

Adding on to this regarding journalism in particular, here's the extensive list of "reliable sources" which Wikipedia's users have decided through consensus should be allowed to be used as citations. The bias is very obvious: Fox News and other non-leftist publications are "deprecated" in red (not even yellow), while MSNBC, NYT, WSJ, CNN, and even the ADL are all green. This should not be surprising, but it helps to understand the mechanisms by which leftist ideology can affect the content of articles. Reading contentious talk pages you'll observe editors trying to challenge specific claims being hit by bureaucratic arguments that refuse to even contend with the truthfulness of the claims: "It doesn't matter if it's misleading, it's a reliable source and it's not our job to evaluate its accuracy!".

You guys know what's great? Wikipedia talk pages. That tab at the top of the screen above the article. Any subject you see or suspect interference in, go into the talk pages and watch the voluntary stalinist janny overseers at work. Wikipedia is a de facto public resource and these people are our de facto Ministry of Truth. If you want a recommendation to get started why not 'Gamergate'?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gamer..._campaign)

anthony Wrote:You guys know what's great? Wikipedia talk pages. That tab at the top of the screen above the article. Any subject you see or suspect interference in, go into the talk pages and watch the voluntary stalinist janny overseers at work. Wikipedia is a de facto public resource and these people are our de facto Ministry of Truth. If you want a recommendation to get started why not 'Gamergate'?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gamer..._campaign)

Yeah, these large and overtly political pages are battlegrounds for this stuff. Wikipedia does have some good pages for technical stuff like math though.

Even if Wikipedia was not clasped in an iron grip by a cabal of unpaid communist tranny jannies, it would still be a terrible way to engage with a subject you're passionate in. Like X accounts who post "funny" factoid image macros about a certain period of history. It might be useful for summaries, if it was de-ZOGged, but little else.

If the entirety of your engagement with a subject consists of Wikipedia and image macros, I do not believe you actually care about the subject. In all likelihood, in fact, you are forcing yourself to "like" it as a remedy to a perceived lack in your character, because, in ZOG, everyone has to be a passionate intellectual studying something or other, even if essentially none of them are actually cut out for it. Poseur culture.