... and sometimes it's just plain funny. I found this earlier today:



Five minutes later it was gone, but it was great fun while it lasted.

I know this is presented as humor and not political, but "anybody can edit" makes me avoid reading or using as citations recent, politically charged topics on Wikipedia. And I also have no idea who those people are.

The old idea that wikipedia shouldn't be cited is outdated.

It's probably one of the best policed websites out there nowadays. I wouldn't hesitate to use it as a reference, wouldn't be my only one of course.

This is a real screenshot of a wiki page that I happened upon a long time ago.


I like to imagine that Till Lindemann edited it to that himself.

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
... and sometimes it's just plain funny. I found this earlier today:



Five minutes later it was gone, but it was great fun while it lasted.

I've never heard of either of those people.

quote:

Originally posted by creslin:
I've never heard of either of those people.

It's okay. There are places you can look them up.

quote:

Originally posted by creslin:
I've never heard of either of those people.

I hadn’t either. I looked them up and Payton Wilson is two people, a man and a woman. The man and the other guy mentioned are football players. The woman is a tiktok “star”. I’m going to assume it’s a joke about one sportsing team getting more points than another sportsing team.

I guess you had to be there.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
I’m going to assume it’s a joke about one sportsing team getting more points than another sportsing team.

Indeed.

- - - -

I guess this is one of those things that was much funnier to me than to anyone else. That's okay; I've got a weird sense of humor sometimes.

Here are the basics, y'all:

- UNC and NC State are fierce rivals.

- Payton Wilson is a grad student at NC State, and a talented football player. Based on a couple of interviews with him that I've seen, he's a very decent young man as well.

- Drake Maye is a "legacy" athlete at UNC, the legacy thing having to do with other members of his family being strong/famous athletes before him. Maye is rumored to have said something to the effect of "NC State is for people who can't get accepted at UNC." [That was all well and good, until someone pointed out his evidently less-than-stellar academic record. Anyway....] And -- in my opinion -- he comes off as a smug little snot.

- Maye is a talented quarterback, though, widely hyped this season and rumored to be an NFL draft prospect.

- NC State's team put a full-on whoopin' on UNC this weekend, leading 23-0 in the second quarter and finishing the game 39-20. UNC coach Mack Brown said the first half of that game was probably the worst in his career. "You can't play as bad as we did in the first half without the head coach doing a poor job. And I had our team poorly prepared, obviously."

- Wilson racked up 15 tackles during the game, intercepted a Maye pass, and sacked Maye to boot.

- Wikipedia, being editable by just about anyone, got edited sometime after the game to state that Payton Wilson is "Drake Maye's daddy" -- a harsh (and funny, in my opinion) insult to Maye.

Am I the only one who is delighted that this thread wasn't about Will Smith(and whoever his "daddy" was)?

No, sir, you're not.

quote:

Originally posted by OttoSig:
The old idea that wikipedia shouldn't be cited is outdated.

It's probably one of the best policed websites out there nowadays. I wouldn't hesitate to use it as a reference, wouldn't be my only one of course.

Unless there is a political aspect to the topic. Which includes topics which are not naturally political and which you may not be aware have been politicized.

Plenty of people have had their Wiki bios polluted with BS but they cannot get it corrected. There are swarms of idiots watching Wiki pages just waiting to remove corrections to their political shenanigans.

It is probably a good place to look up basic facts like the population of a city or the distance to Mars.

quote:

It's probably one of the best policed websites out there nowadays …

… and other hilarious jokes you can tell yourself.

quote:

It is probably a good place to look up basic facts like the population of a city or the distance to Mars.

This

Wikipedia is a joke.

I think of it like Snopes. It can be useful and entertaining, but for a politically charged topic, not a be all and end all. You need to be discerning. I recently used it to look up the melting point of silver and the density of gold. Many articles are quite fascinating.