Wreck of Nazi U-Boat 576, U.S. Freighter Found Off North Carolina

Started by walkstall, October 22, 2014, 07:22:10 AM

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SVPete

Quote from: TboneAgain on October 24, 2014, 04:52:52 PM
Not sure why you beat on Wikipedia so hard. It is indisputable fact that Wikepedia is the best all-around online source for general encyclopedic information. Actually, there's nothing else even close. Yes, there are Wikipedia "editors" who lean to the left, but there are also plenty who lean to the right. (I'm one of those, and have been for years.) Pissing on the site this way is like saying you hate Wrigley Field because leftists and White Sox fans sometimes sit in some of the seats.

Pretty much anything on Wikipedia that has to do with current and recent political doing and people has to be taken with a block of salt - except for DOB, college attended kind of data. Similarly, historical matters that are of political interest have to be taken with a similar block of salt.

With non-political matters, Wikipedia can be very handy as a quick reference on all kinds of topics, and as a good starting point for something you want to study up on some. For the latter usage, it's a good way to put together an outline or skeleton for your study to identify and give some starting points for key sub-topics (many articles are heavily footnoted, linking to online sources).

For one-stop shopping with some depth, you usually need to look elsewhere. For example, one online resource on U-boats that looks pretty is http://uboat.net/. Or for USN warships, DANFS is a good resource for warships into the 1960s or so.

Like a search engine or a new site, you have to use Wikipedia intelligently if you find its convenience handy.
SVPete

Envy is Greed's bigger, more evil, twin.

Those who can, do.
Those who know, teach.
Ignorant incapables, regulate.

TboneAgain

Fellas, I agree with you. On many subjects, there are better references available, though even now, the bulk of them are not yet on the internet. But what I said was, Wikipedia is "the best all-around online source for general encyclopedic information." I stand by what I said. I chose those adjectives carefully.

Many of us here are old enough to remember the prevalence of printed encyclopedias as primary reference sources. When I was a kid, we had a set of (fairly rare) American Peoples' Encyclopedia volumes at home, and of course the school libraries always had Compton's or the nearly useless World Book. None of them were be-all, tell-all reference sources on any given subject. But if you wanted to know a bit about something quickly and efficiently, you walked over to the bookshelf and snagged a volume for a look-see.

That's what Wikipedia is, and that's what it does.

Anyone who posts here should know better than to trust Wikipedia for straightforward discourse on political matters. In some cases, though it's not the rule, Wikipedia's historical information is a bit skewed. It should be obvious that, because Wikipedia is so undemanding when it comes to who is allowed to write and edit its articles, it deserves especially careful scrutiny in subject areas that are confrontational. That includes politics and things political to be sure, but also subjects like religion, philosophy, and yes, sometimes history.

But as a source of general information, especially when depth is not a requirement, nothing else on the internet even comes close to offering the breadth -- if not depth -- of knowledge.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. -- Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; IT IS FORCE. -- George Washington

SVPete

The elementary school I attended and our home had a set of World Book, early 60s editions.

Like I said, if you use Wikipedia, you have to use it knowing its potential biases. And that's not peculiar to Wikipedia.

My Google-Fu is pretty decent, but it would have to be Olympic-class to be able to do a cold search for any and every thing I want to check out (actually, I use Duck Duck Go, but that name doesn't work for a brief alliterative term for search engine usage skills).
SVPete

Envy is Greed's bigger, more evil, twin.

Those who can, do.
Those who know, teach.
Ignorant incapables, regulate.

Solar

Quote from: SVPete on October 24, 2014, 08:24:04 PM
Pretty much anything on Wikipedia that has to do with current and recent political doing and people has to be taken with a block of salt - except for DOB, college attended kind of data. Similarly, historical matters that are of political interest have to be taken with a similar block of salt.

With non-political matters, Wikipedia can be very handy as a quick reference on all kinds of topics, and as a good starting point for something you want to study up on some. For the latter usage, it's a good way to put together an outline or skeleton for your study to identify and give some starting points for key sub-topics (many articles are heavily footnoted, linking to online sources).

For one-stop shopping with some depth, you usually need to look elsewhere. For example, one online resource on U-boats that looks pretty is http://uboat.net/. Or for USN warships, DANFS is a good resource for warships into the 1960s or so.

Like a search engine or a new site, you have to use Wikipedia intelligently if you find its convenience handy.
I agree Pete, wiki can be a good source for links to what you're searching for, especially if your own search is not bearing fruit.
Otherwise the article posted in Wiki will most likely be stained with bias, and maybe not intentional bias, but bias, none the less, it's human nature, and virtually impossible to escape in present day.

Even science, hard science at that, has been stained with the bloody fingerprints of Marxists.
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Mountainshield

Before when writing a historical article or commentary it meant reading 10-20 history books on the subject before even starting to tackle the theory or supposition. Now it's 4 clicks with a mouse button and type the topic read about 5-10 pages worth of information and that's it. A Wikipedia page is great for fast summarized information, especially for natural science, but it can't compare to the real thing when it comes to history, economics and philosophy which is the books themselves, dozens of them.

And it's not only that Wikipedia is biased, governments have their own dedicated staff to edit Wikipedia pages all day, left wing NGO's that are dedicated to removal of information and spreading disinformation. Kudos to you conservatives out there who fight it though.  But the argument that that children are just as well off reading Wikipedia or internet instead of books will be detrimental, but that's what the public education has come too. I used to work in a high school for some time, 100% of the projects the students did was just copy paste wikipedia page to microsoft office word and that's it. At least books required actual reading as well.