For Those Of You Who Love Wikipedia

Amazoniac

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If you're familiar with a topic, visit its Wikipedia page, it must contain more valuable information than you were expecting to find there, at times it's surprising. Waiting for an official source is a bad habit (except if it's Jennifer, Terma or Travis' thread), it's usually a quality scale and the same skepticism that should be present when consulting other sources that are not corrupt can extend to it. Contrary to Charnathan's writings, the majority is referenced for the reader to inspect. The (collaborative) potential is so high that it remains useful when degraded. It's dangerous, but it's already being regulated as drugs (at least in terms of contribution, we should impose limits for exposure).
 
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mrchibbs

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Back when I was a teenager a decade ago in the late 2000s I used to contribute to Wikipedia heavily. It was a different world back then though
 

lvysaur

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I've always used wikipedia only as a starting point to find legitimate sources (though of course, all sources are prone to various degrees of illegitimacy)
 

orewashin

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Nobody is going to bring up Jimmy Wales pestering for donations every Christmas? Wikipedia gets many times more funding than they actually need, and every year, they act like they desperately need it or else they will be forced to advertise.
 

mrchibbs

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Nobody is going to bring up Jimmy Wales pestering for donations every Christmas? Wikipedia gets many times more funding than they actually need, and every year, they act like they desperately need it or else they will be forced to advertise.
Yeah 10 years ago I think I donated. Never would do that now
 

boris

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If you're familiar with a topic, visit its Wikipedia page, it must contain more valuable information than you were expecting to find there, at times it's surprising.

Reading between the lines.

Serotonin - Wikipedia
  • Biochemically, the indoleamine molecule derives from the amino acid tryptophan
  • serotonin is stored in blood platelets and is released during agitation and vasoconstriction
  • 90% of the human body's total serotonin is located in the enterochromaffin cells in the GI tract
  • There are often serotonin abnormalities in gastrointestinal disorders like constipation and irritable bowel syndrome.
  • Serotonergic projections from the caudal nuclei are involved in regulating mood and emotion, and hypo-[42] or hyper-serotonergic[43] states may be involved in depression and sickness behavior.
  • Several classes of antidepressants, such as the SSRIs and the SNRIs among others, interfere with the normal reabsorption of serotonin after it is done with the transmission of the signal
  • Rodent experiment shows that neonatal exposure to SSRI's makes persistent changes in the serotonergic transmission of the brain resulting in behavioral changes,[65][66]
  • Extremely high levels of serotonin can cause a condition known as serotonin syndrome, with toxic and potentially fatal effects.
  • Serotonin Syndrome: Management is based primarily on stopping the usage of the precipitating drugs, the administration of serotonin antagonists such as cyproheptadine
  • there are a number of case reports detailing apparent improvement after people have been administered cyproheptadine
and.......

:lol:
 
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I've always kind of disliked how their "objective" way of citing, referencing and considering things "noteworthy" is highly based on whether or not the mainstream media/etc. is willing to shine light on something to a certain extent, which seems to boil down then to the Wikipedia administrators' "ruling" over something being significant enough. Interesting to consider that what's "noteworthy" ultimately boils down to what the mass media in a sense wants to be, regardless of any source or person or any contribution in general, news networks/politics/government aside. I guess for the Hollywood-esque touch it makes some sense in determining celebrity status cultural "importance tiers" or whatnot, but might boggle your mind when you presume anything that of which has value must only be decided so (in a Wikipedian-sense) on what one perspective or "channel/body" of authoritative significance rules based on continuous reporting, accommodating and/or catering to/focusing on for whatever purposes they deem over a subject/name/establishment and give them their so-called worthiness and share of the limelight or "credit" which Wikipedia can then decide is "significant" enough. I don't really believe it's all that "neutral" as it's proclaimed to be -- seems a bit controversial to say the least on how it's decided what is "notable" enough or such.

Wikipedia has even said before that the only purpose or relevance of an article is that of which has notability (not necessarily anything good, progressive, useful or even mostly based on truth) -- in other words that means what's trendy enough or pushed enough by whatever drive, authority or groups that get the attention of those capable of deeming something significant enough.

Interesting how Google/Wikipedia/etc. seem to be more entangled now than ever -- like one is a connection to another as a way to confide in people the "correct" sense of going from point A to point B or such when it comes to making sense out of information judgment/assessment and ruling as a "matter of fact" or such. I think it's kind of like leaning people in to a "closed net" sort of path where you only are expected to learn of bits and pieces of supposed relevant info in a specific manner or way. I remember a while back when Google searches and Wikipedia results were not so "fixed" in a way set up like it's almost as if one is urging you to trust another like an attempt at an informational closed course/walled garden, although that's probably not entirely possible.
 

tankasnowgod

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I was watching an interview with G. Edward Griffin, and he mentioned that most of the top Wikipedia editors are on the payroll of large corporations.

From what I remember, all wiki editors started out organically, but over time, some got a great "skill" in editing, and also had a very high rank that trumped other edits (calculated on number of edits and years spent editing). Over time, major companies (especially pharmaceutical companies) started paying these editors to monitor certain pages and make sure info basically followed the "company line." Basically, they are paid to monitor and edit certain pages. Some of those top editors could be on the payroll of several different large companies.

It makes sense, in lot of ways. Say a top editor gets paid $30,000 a year from a big corp. They could easily afford ten editors. Say, also, that top editor has contracts with 10 corporations. They could easily monitor and edit the pages for that many corporations. Big income for the editor, minor expense for the corporations. And anyone who works for Wikipedia doesn't have to have any knowledge of it, or facilitate the deal. And that's how Wikipedia has basically turned into a mainstream mouthpiece, possibly without ever intending to be.
 
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Zionist Editing on Wikipedia - Jewish World

"The strategy and goal of the course is to educate and enable an 'army' of editors of Wikipedia, giving them the professional skills to write and edit the online encyclopedia's content in a manner which defends and promotes Israel's image."

Wikipedia Co-Founder: Site's Neutrality Is 'Dead' Thanks to Leftist Bias

' Further criticism was directed at Wikipedia’s handling of scientific issues, where Sanger acknowledged some would consider a “bias towards science” to be desirable. However, he noted that it is not always clear what constitutes a legitimate scientific view and Wikipeda tends to “take for granted” and “aggressively assert” the views of the scientific establishment despite scientific minorities rejecting or criticizing these views such as on global warming. In the end, Sanger called on Wikipedia’s community to concede that they have abandoned neutrality, while stating this was unlikely as Wikipedia editors “live in a fantasy world of their own making.” '
 

Vajra

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Personally, I very often use Wikipedia for first exposure to something, since it covers 95% of molecules/proteins/etc. you could think of, all neatly interconnected in its own system.
I wouldn't think of using it for anything remotely political or outside of the natural sciences. Wikipedia will not lie to you about what an α-helix is, but it may miss the mark on something, or fail to stress importance, etc.
While the abstracts and introductions to many papers - even when not journal reviews - are surprisingly informative, they suffer this same fault and can be way too specific, but they also might matter-of-factly say something out of left field that makes it all click for you; perhaps making what is usually regarded as merely speculative, definitive. Since it's never a good idea to only trust one source anways (I'm sure plenty of rabbithole Wikipedia articles were simply written by one guy on amphetamines) it's a good idea to absorb several sources on the exact same topic and you let every part of it overlap in your mind like a venn diagram.

Thus, A healthier alternative: sciencedirect.com/search - for the topic overviews, e.g. Pregnenolone. Rather than bombarding you with minutae as it would with Google Scholar/Semantic Scholar, the results are generally what <topic> "is".
 

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