[adlpz]

> And the best part is that I can trust this information to be neutral and factually correct.

Excuse me, what?

Wikipedia is great. But assuming it's neutral and factually correct is delusional.

Like with every single organization made up of human beings, power dynamics and censorship are part of Wikipedia.

It's still the less bad one, but no one should trust it that blindly.

[carschno]

You might have an absolutist view on the meaning of neutrality. Of course, you can argue philosophically that absolute neutrality does not exist in theory. What Wikipedia does achieve in practice, though, is a very successful attempt to provide balanced and well researched information on an incredible number of topics.

The inevitable occasional mistake does not bring it down to the level of arbitrary internet resources.

[somenameforme]

Wikipedia, unlike more classical encyclopedias such as e.g. Britannica, is not a primary source, by design. On anything tangentially related to topics like politics it's obligated to rely on sources like the US media which make no effort to even feign neutrality or balance. And of course these sources are then cited by editors who, similarly, have little interest in even feigning balance, beyond some minimal pretext.

The ideal of checks and balances keeping the system relatively neutral would only work if there was a relative balance of ideological views among overactive editors. And on that, I'm reminded of that line from the Blues Brothers, 'We have all types of music here - country and western!'

[bazoom42]

Brittanica is not a primary source either. Encyclopedias are considered tertiary sources. Encyclopedias are not supposed to perform original research but to aggregate and condense information from secondary sources.

What sources do you think Britannica can use which are not available to Wikipedia?

[somenameforme]

Among Britannica's authors are Einstein, Trotsky, Asimov, Milton Friedman, and many such others. [1] In Wikipedia, Trotsky himself could not opine on e.g. communism. By contrast, the words of a random junior journalist in an opinion piece published on a newspaper website are perfectly legitimate for publication in an article on communism. Wikipedia is simply a very different sort of project than an encyclopedia.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica#P...

[bazoom42]

Perhaps you misunderstand what “encyclopedia” means? Britannica itself classify Wikipedia as an encyclopedia (https://www.britannica.com/topic/encyclopaedia/The-kinds-of-...)

[somenameforme]

Now you're shifting the goal posts to semantics. You implied Wikipedia and encyclopedias used the same methods, which is incorrect. Britannica is written by field domain experts, many of them world leading. Wikipedia is instead, as you described, a collection of citations of other work, written by random people, and which relies heavily on the US media as a source for any sort of cultural, social, or political topic.

There was a pretty interesting paper written looking at the biases in Wiki vs Britannica. [1] You might find it interesting.

[1] - https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/do-experts-or-collective-intellig...

[jstummbillig]

Trust is a concept around personal choice and not facts. The feeling that you can trust something is what trust is.

For different people to get to that feeling means different things. A lot of people place trust in certain figures of authority, in politics or on social media. The reasons for which they do so differ wildly and very often have very little to do with ground truth (although I suspect most people would find that hard to admit).

When somebody says they can trust Wikipedia to be factually correct that mostly is a reflection of choices and what they believe helps them to navigate the world, in a way that is manageable and reasonable to them. Given that time is always a constraint to a varying degree, I think you could do a lot worse if being less wrong is your goal.

[curtisblaine]

Is it even "the less bad one"? I guess it's not if you're on the wrong side of censorship.