[Isamu]

The Factbook dates from a time when this was the most convenient source of updated concise summaries of all countries. It didn’t necessarily go into great detail except for countries important to the US national interest. This has been eclipsed by Wikipedia, the information there is far more comprehensive and govt officials will go there to make updates and corrections.

[Antibabelic]

Where do you think the information on Wikipedia comes from? Not that Wikipedia strongly relies on The World Factbook, but it can't exist without other secondary sources like these.

[notRobot]

Wikipedia is actually the secondary source when someone reads a page on it, and it requires primary sources (like factbooks) to cite to exist.

[Antibabelic]

This is incorrect. Wikipedia relies primarily on secondary sources, which makes it a tertiary source, and it describes itself this way.[1] The World Factbook does not collect the information it provides, making it a secondary source.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:PSTS

[FrustratedMonky]

It can be both. It uses Primary and Secondary sources. That is why you check the references and use them appropriately.

[TheCoelacanth]

> Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources, and to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources. Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and avoid novel interpretations of primary sources. All analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary or tertiary source and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.

Primary sources aren't completely disallowed, but they are definitely discouraged.

[FrustratedMonky]

So, not, not allowed.

"The concept of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources originated with the academic discipline of historiography. The point was to give historians a handy way to indicate how close the source of a piece of information was to the actual events.[a]

Importantly, the concept developed to deal with "events", rather than ideas or abstract concepts. A primary source was a source that was created at about the same time as the event, regardless of the source's contents. So while a dictionary is an example of a tertiary source, an ancient dictionary is actually a primary source—for the meanings of words in the ancient world."

"All sources are primary for something

Every source is the primary source for something, whether it be the name of the author, its title, its date of publication, and so forth. For example, no matter what kind of book it is, the copyright page inside the front of a book is a primary source for the date of the book's publication. Even if the book would normally be considered a secondary source, if the statement that you are using this source to support is the date of its own publication, then you are using that book as a primary source."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_and_usin...

[Loughla]

The problem is who checks the sources. Of the what billions of sources, how many have actually been verified?

[Isamu]

>who checks the sources

I do, when I’m reading something and accuracy matters. Anybody who cares about accuracy will investigate the sources. I know people will complain that “nobody” does this, but it is essential, without checking sources you are just casually reading. That goes for books and all media consumption. If a book or any media (ahem Tucker) doesn’t give you enough information to be able to look something up, that is rather a red flag of obfuscation.

[philwelch]

The thing is, there’s really no good way to check a lot of the numbers you see in sources like the World Factbook.

Take population estimates for instance. Much of the world either doesn’t have the state capacity or can’t be trusted to maintain accurate, publicly known population figures. There are some countries where they haven’t had a census in decades and their official population figures are entrusted to numbers provided by regional governments which receive national funding on a per capita basis. Every region has an incentive to inflate their population numbers and, in a system where they’re all competing for funding from the central government, this eventually becomes common practice. Even national governments have little incentive to share honest figures with the rest of the world, and national governments that aren’t even accountable to their own people like China and Russia are also well practiced in keeping secrets. And population is probably one of the easiest things to measure.

The problem is that some people just accept the first number they find and are militant about not thinking beyond that point. If you tell them the radiation meter tops out at 3.6 roentgen, they say “3.6 roentgen, not great, not terrible”.

[lazide]

Also, when there are conflicts, who decides what the ‘facts’ are, eh?

is is the Gulf of America or not?

[hk__2]

Nobody, you just mention the different points of view that are in the sources.

[lazide]

Which nobody does (really) because it turns into a giant narcissist shit fight then for who can come up with the most absurd ‘truthy’ answer for publicity.

Everyone has to end up filtering at some point or it’s all just noise.

[tokai]

Encyclopedias are by definition tertiary sources.

[SanjayMehta]

Wikipedia does not allow primary sources.

[Antibabelic]

This is very much false, Primary sources only play a supporting role on Wikipedia, but they are definitely allowed. For example, if you're writing an article on Apple you can cite Apple for what Wikipedia calls "uncontroversial self-description". However, before that, you have to establish the notability of Apple through reliable secondary independent sources. The contents and focus of articles is also dictated by secondary sources. For example, if you take a controversial subject like Urbit, the article would have to reflect the priorities of (mostly critical) journalistic pieces on Urbit. You can cite its documentation for a technical description (that would be "uncontroversial self-description", as I mentioned before), but this would have to be a small part of the article, because it wouldn't reflect the focus of secondary sources.

[NetMageSCW]

Which is often stupid when the only people who know the truth are the people who were there. Hearsay from secondary sources is not an improvement in that case.

That’s why I used to like Quora - you would often see an answer provided by the primary (and only definitive) source for questions.

[wongarsu]

Most countries have some kind of statistics department that publishes that kind of data in great detail.

The issues start when you try to compare data, because different sources will use different methodologies

[pseudalopex]

And some methodologies use false information.

[nikanj]

The Factbook dates from a time when facts mattered

[837263292029]

> govt officials will go there to make updates and corrections

That's one way of putting it.

[alex1138]

Can we please, please not outsource everything to Wikipedia? Many of the editors there are hardly impartial

[hk__2]

And the CIA is impartial? ;)

[alex1138]

Do please take note of the fact that I did not include "We should trust the CIA" in my comment

[hk__2]

No, but you seemed to imply there are people that aren’t partial. Wikipedia is designed to approach impartiality even if its editors are people like you and me who are far from impartial. Are there better alternatives out there?

[alex1138]

Wikipedia is incredibly weaponized. I meant what I said