What is Digg?63 Comments
- SultanTravi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+55Yeah, my university doesn't allow it as a citation. But that doesn't matter, because I just cite the articles the Wiki writers used for evidence. I can get a good summary of the information, and then click on one of many links to direct evidence that I can use.
- coldphoenix, on 10/12/2007, -3/+37disclaimer: I love wikipedia
Wikipedia simply shouldn't ever be cited as a source on a research paper or anything of academic value...no encyclopedia should be, as they are conglomerations of information from a variety of editors who aren't necessarily specializing in that topic of study. Wikipedia should be used as the starting point to branch out to the sources you do want to cite. - rm999, on 10/12/2007, -3/+29I'm surprised wikipedia's news website wasn't mentioned in the article:
http://www.wikinews.org/
It's actually quite a good source for world news. - suprdiggr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+26No supervisors? There is supervision on wikipedia, you can't just go there and write whatever you like because you have to write about real facts and cite sources when possible. If you write *****, your addition will be deleted promptly. There are even bots that supervise some aspects of the site so that's not exactly what I call 'no supervisors'.
No chain of command? well, there are administrators as many of you know. And they have more power than the average wikipedia user.
I love wikipedia anyway :) - noah45, on 10/12/2007, -5/+23i've never cited wikipedia...scared to. but its always a good reference point for almost anything
- Shuk, on 10/12/2007, -6/+23Wikipedia isn't allowed to be cited at my University, but I still "refer" to it for "extra" information.
- RobotAwesome, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17"The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work."
Somehow Wikipedia is like bizzaro communism... Dugg - LonesomeFighter, on 10/12/2007, -11/+25“Wikipedia distinguishes itself by the ability to bring all the facts, and useful background information, together in one place.”
I've been telling my teachers that for sometime now, but for some reason they still hate Wikipedia. oh well, I'll still always use it and cite it. - ousthouse, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14When I was in high school in the late 90s, I had a teacher who told us we could only use .org or .net sites as sources "because .com sites mean commercial and that means they're just trying to sell you something."
- alphaeno, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13I cant believe Britannica is still in business
- RobotAwesome, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I disagree with part of your comment "information that was unsourced." The article thoroughly sourced itself via mainstream media. See for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre
- Vicissidude, on 10/12/2007, -10/+20Wikipedia is a website based on consensus. That makes the site tend towards truthiness rather than concrete fact, which does not depend on how many people agree it. As such, Wikipedia is hardly a reputable source of knowledge and why it is likely to never be taken seriously as an academic source.
- rm999, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8ning
Perhaps that's true, and it's understandable why - most people have heard of Wikipedia, and most people haven't heard of wikinews. The problem with news on Wikipedia is that Wikipedia isn't really made for it. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and an article that is included in an encyclopedia should stand the test of time - meaning that it should be notable enough that it will still be in the encyclopedia in a year. The news, on the other hand, is often full of minor events.
For example, here are the top Reuters stories right now:
-Iran won't back down in atom row: president
-Famed Vietnam War reporter Halberstam dies
-Nine US soldiers killed in Iraq suicide attack
All of these deserve to be in the news, but the only one that will still be worth a mention in wikipedia by next week is the Halberstam death story, and even then it will only be a few lines added to an existing article. Wikinews, on the other hand, should cover each of these stories with an entire article. This is why I think wikipedia is inherently a bad medium for most news stories, and why wikinews exists.
The VT incident is a misleading exception to what I'm saying because it is very notable and deserves mention in wikipedia, even years from now. My guess is that more than 95% of news stories are not notable, however. - TheTaoOfBill, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8See thats the problem right there. You said "Just because [you] don't agree with it." That is a damn good reason to hate a news source. Because you should never have to disagree or agree with a news source. Maybe guests on the news source. Maybe interviewees. But if you ever find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with a news anchor's view on his show then that is not an unbiased news source.
News anchors should report the news. Not give their opinion on it. It's not just fox news guilty of this but fox news is the biggest culprit because just about every single show on the channel is highly opininated. Not to mention times where they flat out lie. - cmadach, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Wikinews is great, digg is great, blogs are even sometimes great. But they're not genuine news sources: they're aggregates. And as much as these three communities enjoy cutting down and slamming conventional news, reporters, and journalism, the former three don't even exist without the latter. A lot of people already realize this, but those who don't probably never will.
- Kamikrazy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Without the "old media," Wikipedia wouldn't have any sources to base its information on. Look at the sources in the VA Tech Wikipedia article. Most of them are old media, either directly or via the old media's websites. And, with Wikipedia's no original reporting rule, it will be destined to remain dependent on old media.
- jacobmiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Well that's just totally untrue. The article was very conservative in speculating about the potential killer, and the only information used was referenced to the mainstream media. Any unsourced information was immediately removed. See the history of the article to get a clear view of how the article developed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre - funkytaco, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10Wikipedia after the shootings was an anarchy of misinformation. My real problem with it was how people were trying to finger a shooter with little evidence. It was about as reliable as foxnews.com
- LordSkywalker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Who cites encyclopedias normally anyways? The general rule is to cite the articles listed on Wikipedia. Preferably multiple articles for confirmation.
- kevptim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Here is a time-lapse youtube video of the VT Shooting's Wikipedia page in the 12 hours following the event.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrCQ9dUsfqU
Wikipedia is a fricken living organism. - Amablue, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I love Wikipedia, and I feel it's a great source to find information. But it's just a starting point. Some articles are hardly ever visited and poorly written or documented or just generally uninformative.
As long as you use Wikipedia as a starting point it's fine, but always check the sources if you're really going to use it for information. I've used Wikipedia for papers on more than one occasion - but only because everything is sourced well for the most part. - mark101, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I enjoy reading the debates on the edit pages of any and all entries.
- acceptab1euname, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Agreed. I've gotten sucked into Wikipedia on numerous occasions, reading the Talk pages and tracing debates and arguments all across the site...it makes for interesting reading when you're bored.
- bondfreak05, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5We can cite Wikipedia at our high school, but it's blocked via the school's filtering system (as well as Digg, heh).
Google Cache helps a TON though, but I'm afraid if too many people use it, they'll start blocking Google xP - krinthekuz, on 09/16/2008, -1/+3@vicissidude
digg comments work similarly. in an argument, someone stating a dislikable but true fact will be buried in minutes. it's incredibly annoying and one of the major shortcomings of digg
@ning
you're getting buried because of self promotion and a link to newsvine. newsvine is a competitor to digg but has a much nastier model which promotes copying and pasting of entire articles so that users stay on the newsvine page... either that, or it's always the equivalent of digg's blogspam. some non-scholarly dumbass with just as little credibility as bill oreilly opines on a subject with which he has little or no experience. it's never impressive. - saitama, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2well, i dugg down your blog spam. how do you find *that* information?
- insovietrussia, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Wikipedia had US$1,508,039 in income last year. There is money - just not enough.
(Oh yeah, donate! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising ) - Cwo655321, on 10/26/2007, -1/+3imagine 2000 different opinions in one article; can't wait ;)
- ThreeGs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Uhh. Not so fast. Wikipedia editors only remove what they know. As one having first hand experience with this, I know that lots of crap can go unedited. But then again, that's true of any communication medium. The real problem is Wikipedia has no one (individual or corporate) that is held accountable.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Grrr! I hate how so many people over look that.
And oh yeah, about the whole citing Wikipedia:
"IMPORTANT NOTE: Most educators and professionals do not consider it appropriate to use tertiary sources such as encyclopedias as a sole source for any information — citing an encyclopedia as an important reference in footnotes or bibliographies may result in censure or a failing grade. Wikipedia articles should be used for background information, as a reference for correct terminology and search terms, and as a starting point for further research.
As with any community-built reference, there is a possibility for error in Wikipedia's content — please check your facts against multiple sources and read our disclaimers for more information. " - Right of Their Site - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Despite its flaws, Wikipedia has become a *necessity* nowadays. It's not a luxury anymore. It's not something that's "nice to have". It's something that's very, very hard to live without. Kids and adults, men and women, all nationalities, ethnicities and religions, all read it and take information from it. There probably has never been - in the entire history of mankind - a story like this, i.e. people from around the world absorbing information from one source.
- havokzero, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Wikipedia is groundbreaking in the sense that content is completely unmoderated. True, this sometimes results in faulty data. More importantly, though, it is essentially the first free-speech news medium that is exposed to the masses, yet not part of the mass media. Freedom of speech has a new meaning.
- stalefries, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3"yet no supervisors or managers."
Are you sure? - specialK16, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ousthouse:
There are still ignorant teachers, mine keeps saying "Linux isn't free anymore".... but it is way worse, I'm in college. - acceptab1euname, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I *THINK* (not absolutely sure) that Wikinews requires one to cite 'old media' (verifiable, notable, etc) as sources for their stories - basically making Wikinews little more than a collection and conglomeration of already-published news. You won't find anything late-breaking there (unless the MSM has already reported on it).
- rye419, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ cwo655321: often times better than 1 opinion *cough*foxnews*cough*
ideally, the law of averages should take effect and end up presenting a rather neutral article (in theory anyway) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Um, wikipedia has supervisors and managers, they are called admins. There are over a thousand of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:ADMIN - jamesjarvis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Digg is all the news I need.
- gamerjon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Definitely dugg. I hate how so many people don't trust or dislike Wikipedia. It's probably attempting the single most important objective that you can. They are gathering the worlds information into one source, link the information together, make it publicly and freely available, and then allow anyone to edit. This can only grow into one huge encyclopedia that captures the known information of the human race. I don't understand why people disprove of it. Maybe its because people can edit it incorrectly or edit it subjectively. That's where the other millions of editors that want a clean, rich, and accurate source of information fix those attempted problems. I hope, many years in the future, that we will look back and realize how important starting a free encyclopedia that encompasses everything it possibly can. No other encyclopedia can ever attain as much information as Wikipedia. In the future they will undoubtedly taking information from the enormous wiki. Besides, all encyclopedias that exist currently derive from humans. Until otherwise, Wikipedia has the ultimate right to pursue their goal of the largest, most informative, always available, free encyclopedia.
- Tiggi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"No supervisors? There is supervision on wikipedia, you can't just go there and write whatever you like because you have to write about real facts and cite sources when possible. If you write *****, your addition will be deleted promptly. There are even bots that supervise some aspects of the site so that's not exactly what I call 'no supervisors'.
No chain of command? well, there are administrators as many of you know. And they have more power than the average wikipedia user.
I love wikipedia anyway :)"
There is definitely supervision and chain of command at Wikipedia - just as like as it is in any other such project - there is simply no other way to keep their quality. But I still love wikipedia too! That's an obligatory part of their success. - DrawingTheSun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1any one here checked out citizendium?
- ning, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@djlosch
Yea, sigh. Unfortunately, readers depending upon Digg would likely have missed the Wikipedia coverage. As of today, http://digg.com/world_news/Virginia_Tech_Shootings_What_is_wrong_with_the_world still has only 7 diggs, while my submission to a much smaller site had more. The burying just smacks of groupthink. Filters like Digg merely minimize cognitive dissonance in response to unconventional and iconoclastic ideas. They won't necessarily lead to truth, sadly. - sunamiebob, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Oh ya, and No Money.
- squidboy101, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1though flawed it is an amazing source of information.
ive managed to add multiple NAVY usage bits my self
so when talking to a squid your not faced with a language barrier - ruz322, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1With the advent of Wikipedia as a news source, it becomes much easier to have biased news reporting. Both sides are already pushed enough in today's media, whether it be liberal with CNN or conservative with Fox News.
- trilioth, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2@ rm999
I never see links to wikipedia when other sites refer to their content. Answers.com will return will a direct copy of wikipedia's material without a single link to the article it copied. - postjm9, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Frontline (on PBS) had a series called "News War" that at one point talked about the 'new media'. Their take was scathing but unfortunately true: Blogs, Web sites in general and wikipedia (by extension) are a good place to find out what's happening, but most actual _journalism_ still comes from print newspapers.
- zjordan04, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0nerd.
- SpikeLee, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2As a lover of journalism, I will have to disagree with what is presented. Journalism is good but what was describe was nothing but information that was unsourced and unaccountable.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3More wiki propaganda. Inflate it and sell it. That's the game.
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