List of common misconceptions

List of common misconceptions(en.wikipedia.org)

10 points by mawhidby 15 years ago | 4 comments

klochner 15 years ago |

duplicate from two weeks ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1465001

I usually do a quick google search of HN before posting, e.g.:

  "site:news.ycombinator.com common misconceptions"

petercooper 15 years ago | |

It's weird how Wikipedia says a page has been "redirected" from an alias, yet no redirection actually occurs (in the typical HTTP sense). If it did, dupes could easily be avoided by storing the final, canonical URL.

alecco 15 years ago | | |

At the personal level, to avoid this problem, I made a wikipedia search engine in my browser doing a google search with "feeling lucky." This also improved my wikipedia access as you can search based on content, too. For copy-paste:

  https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=site:en.wikipedia.org+%s&btnI=Search

emordnilap 15 years ago |

Another common misconception is that Wikipedia is a good place to get reliable facts.

A serious question: Do you ever verify citations? Or do you just assume that since there is one, the article is probably correct?

emordnilap 15 years ago | |

Wow, that came out a lot more snarky than I meant it to be.

I recently spent a several hours trying to find correct information about some hardware, all the while running into incorrect information copied and pasted from a wikipedia article.

I eventually found the information, but almost all the top search results from google and yahoo (and even duckduckgo) pointed to the inaccurate wikipedia information, most times pasted verbatim and passed off as truth.