Socked Into the Puppet-Hole on Wikipedia

[CrowsNest]

it is usefully (with appropriate caution) for quickly looking up basic core facts

The appropriate caution required for Wikipedia is such that you are always better off simply not even looking at Wikipedia.

Well, that calls for just one single example to disprove: Is there a faster and significantly more reliable way to find the DoB of Winston Churchill?

Well, I Googled (Bing'd, actually) "Winston Churchill" and this is the second result.....

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Winston-Churchill

.....and taking into account the time to load the page and read it, I'd say Today I Learned Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874 at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, from a source of high repute, in oh, about ten seconds?

I could do it faster, shaving off a second or two of reading/scrolling, if much of the real estate wasn't taken up by the first result, which is of course Wikipedia, and the Google Knowledge box, which is probably Wikipedia.

Compare how long it it takes to do that, with how long it takes to verify the answer you get from Wikipedia isn't wrong.

I had assumed it might take minutes, but now I look, it could take weeks, given I have to apparently obtain five books to verify that basic factoid.

-------

As for whether people see Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, I should think it obvious that is what you use to look up basic facts, even simple non-controversial ones. Perhaps the best proof people think it is an encyclopedia, is that in the topic of Wikipedia criticism, certainly in the mainstream media, it's not an encyclopedia comes a distant second to it's unreliable / biased / incomplete / fucking useless. Granted, all of those things mean it is not an encyclopedia, but that central point never seems to catch on, people never seem to object when reading the very words, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It is ubiquitous, yet never questioned....as seen by this randomly picked recent news result......

Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia, allows volunteers globally to create and edit content.

No caveats, no asterisks, no "according to these crazy bastards who call themselves Wikipedians". Just there in black and white, stated as fact, in a nominal reliable source. Hence why the Wikipedia article on Wikipedia, calls it an online encyclopedia. Arguably the greatest con-trick they ever pulled.

[FlatSnout]

@CrowsNest:
Regarding the Winston Churchill DoB example, then: I think we can agree that you didn't really do it faster (had you done it more than ~10 seconds faster, you'd have broken causality), and that saving seconds or milliseconds isn't where Wikipedia truly fails to compete. It's quality of information, which is the major hurdle. You did manage to find Encyclopedia Britannica, which is a source I'd generally would hold in much higher esteem than Wikipedia; but that's really saying nothing at all, because not even Wikipedians regard Wikipedia as a generally trustworthy source. The real question is: Is Wikipedia, for this very particular example, less trustworthy(?) Well, both gave same result (DoB= 30.Nov.1874). And I don't think Wikipedia got it correct by pure dumb luck (no random generator was used). In fact (given the sources stated in Wikipedia article for Winston Churchill), it's even conceivable that both Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia, got the DoB right from same root source.

If there is a true difference in opinion here, then it's the "religious" view you presented, i.e.: Wikipedia can not be trusted for anything at all.
If that truly is your opinion, and not just exaggeration to make a point or statement, then we simply have to disagree.

Regarding the labelling of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia or not, then: Media, not being critical, doing mindless copy & paste within stories/articles/pieces - can't be used as evidence of what common perception is. While common sense is far less prevalent than I'd like it to be, then common sense is in fact common amongst people in real life
(that common sense and sanity seem uncommon amongst Wikipedians, is probably because anyone sane, having common sense, flee the editing scene shortly after having ventured entering it.)

[CMAwatch]

Administrative sanctions against editors are not punitive, and imposed solely to prevent harm to the encyclopedia

(Source)

But wait…

Their work should be erased, their actions made futile. They should grow tired, knowing their work will always be eradicated.

(From the article)

So, does that more sound preventative or punitiveto you?

This clearly is punitive.

Not only is WP:G5 dipshit retarded, but it actually gives power to banned users!

That's right! As described here, WP:G5 is a banned user's weapon to censor content they want gone!

A banned user can deliberately get himself caught sock puppeteering after adding content they want gone.

After that content gets deleted per G5, everyone else gets strongly discouraged from re-adding that content, regardless of factual correctness.

Also, a website that proclaims itself as “the sum of all knowledge” should not be deleting any quality encyclopedic content (for non-legal reasons).

Whichever deletionist invented WP:G5 must be dipshit retarded.

[Wikipedia is] a stupid video game, and the "encyclopedia" is an accidental byproduct.

Could not agree more. I may put this into my signature shortly.

[Bbb23sucks]

This article was in a DYK, yet was deleted by Liz over six months after the user had been blocked and nearly a year after the article had been created.

[ChaosMeRee]

I like how she unlinks it in the now archived record of the DYK nomination.

What's that about?

Being generous, it's so that if the article is ever re-created, nobody randomly perusing DYK archives is misled. After much head scratching at the lack of a link at all, if they're into Wikipedia enough to be looking through their old stuff in the back of the spare room for some bizarre reason, they can now presumably figure out the current version post dates the version presented to DYK.

But in all honesty, why even bother? Whose time is she wasting or benefiting?

Will there ever be a scenario where the time and thought that she put into such a decision, is returned to Wikipedia in the time saved by not confusing whoever is perusing the historical DYK nominations for some bizarre reason.

A red link tips them off without her wasting her time thinking about this issue and clicking the buttons required to unlink it. So does a blue link with no DYK template on the talk page and a page creation date that post-dates it.

So unless I am missing something, the inescapable conclusion is that Liz is a Wikipedia Administrator who either doesn't use her time efficiently, or uses her Admin buttons in a rather thoughtless way. Or uses automated tools that she might not fully understand.

I don't buy any argument that this specific unlinking would be any valid implementation of any kind of DENY philosophy. Whose utility to Wikipedia from a cost benefit analysis is already hotly disputed. The red link is a denial. The lack of a pre-DYK history in a future blue link is a denial.

The existence of a historical DYK with a confusing illogic to it, is embarrassing, but as we can now see, it was surely more embarrassing for a Wikipedia Administrator to have been seen reacting to such a mild and actually pretty hard to explain to an outsider curiosity, by spending even a second on it at all, if denial was her intent.

[Ognistysztorm]

I like how she unlinks it in the now archived record of the DYK nomination.

What's that about?

Being generous, it's so that if the article is ever re-created, nobody randomly perusing DYK archives is misled. After much head scratching at the lack of a link at all, if they're into Wikipedia enough to be looking through their old stuff in the back of the spare room for some bizarre reason, they can now presumably figure out the current version post dates the version presented to DYK.

But in all honesty, why even bother? Whose time is she wasting or benefiting?

Will there ever be a scenario where the time and thought that she put into such a decision, is returned to Wikipedia in the time saved by not confusing whoever is perusing the historical DYK nominations for some bizarre reason.

A red link tips them off without her wasting her time thinking about this issue and clicking the buttons required to unlink it. So does a blue link with no DYK template on the talk page and a page creation date that post-dates it.

So unless I am missing something, the inescapable conclusion is that Liz is a Wikipedia Administrator who either doesn't use her time efficiently, or uses her Admin buttons in a rather thoughtless way. Or uses automated tools that she might not fully understand.

I don't buy any argument that this specific unlinking would be any valid implementation of any kind of DENY philosophy. Whose utility to Wikipedia from a cost benefit analysis is already hotly disputed. The red link is a denial. The lack of a pre-DYK history in a future blue link is a denial.

The existence of a historical DYK with a confusing illogic to it, is embarrassing, but as we can now see, it was surely more embarrassing for a Wikipedia Administrator to have been seen reacting to such a mild and actually pretty hard to explain to an outsider curiosity, by spending even a second on it at all, if denial was her intent.

G5 has to be one of the most pettiest aspects of Wikipedia, after all.