Certainly the task of determining "the truth" is a difficult one, but Wikipedia's definition of reliable sources is not very good and basically just means "mainstream, well-funded news organization."
This is the better criticism of Wikipedia. But it's really not a criticism of Wikipedia directly - it's more of a indictment on how media creates Zeitgeists and reality conforms to them.
But it is a criticism of Wikipedia directly. There is no reason why they couldn't come up with a more thoughtful, complete validation method. Instead, they just default to a last-century model of trust.
No, not really. More like a broadly Western one. It’s more complicated and specific than that, but I don’t really want to get into it here. All I’ll say is that if you read a variety of different opinions on subjects, the viewpoint of Wikipedia becomes fairly easy to predict and observe.
I don’t have anything in mind, because I don’t run a Wikipedia competitor. I haven’t spent enough time thinking about it. But certainty anything other than “just trust what the big media companies say” would be an improvement.
In general I find Wikipedia articles to be written from a very specific viewpoint that highlights certain facts and hides others. Whether this is from Wikipedia writers themselves or is merely a reflection of their sources, I’m not sure. But if the goal is to provide the truth, I don’t think they make a particularly good effort at incorporating alternative perspectives.
The thing is: mainstream validation works. Whenever little-known sources are introduced, the chances of information being false or misleading just skyrockets. Moderator rings are often detected that way - all citing the same obscure publications that turn out to be factually incorrect.
The internal essay on "verifiability, not truth" [1] comes to mind. Determining what is Actually True is difficult and often contentious; determining what reliable sources say about the topic is easier and can itself convey important information when those sources disagree.
