Wikipedia... or what? How to look things up?

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nisiprius
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Re: Wikipedia... or what? How to look things up?

Post by nisiprius »

It's not a general reference site, but for certain things, archive.org can be sheer gold. It is a messy, difficult to search website. The digitized images are often poor quality; the OCRed text even worse. But it contains things you can't find anywhere else. It contains all sorts of printed material Google Books hasn't touched. Comic books, for example. US comic books like Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge. Brazilian comic books like Turma da Mônica.

It also attempts to periodically capture and save the entire web. The captures are viewable in archive.org's "Wayback Machine." That, too, has all sorts of problems. The UI is awkward, the captures sometimes have technical glitches, and it can't generate with dynamically generated web pages, for example. Nevertheless, in an age when entities try to avoid embarrassment by rewriting their own history, archive.org stands between us and 1984's "memory hole."
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Hebell
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Re: Wikipedia... or what? How to look things up?

Post by Hebell »

NeighborhoodScout for comparing neighborhoods, in extraordinarily granular detail. Not cheap but worth it. There are some things for free.

When I was trying to decide where in the midwest to go, I used it to really narrow down my locations. I paid a high fee for one month, and used it non-stop that month.

https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/
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PottedPlant
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Re: Wikipedia... or what? How to look things up?

Post by PottedPlant »

I start with searching using DuckDuckGo.
I use an adblocker almost everywhere.
I try to find specialized sites, e.g., GCaptain.
Often my searches are “subject, Reddit”
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rogue_economist
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Re: Wikipedia... or what? How to look things up?

Post by rogue_economist »

bikefish wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 4:28 pm
rogue_economist wrote: Fri Jan 31, 2025 2:33 pm Google in some cases, DuckDuckGo in others.

Wikipedia peaked about 10-15 years ago. Since then, the quality of many articles has fallen and I find myself reading it much less.
I agree with your opinion on Wikipedia. Larry Sanger mentioned the bias, particularly with political topics. Wikipedia may get you started but don’t rely on it.
Yes bias, but also the obsession with sources and being "encyclopedic" (ironically not in the correct meaning of the term) has resulted in killing the one true advantage Wiki always had, which was a marginal cost of 0 for including additional information. A print encyclopedia obviously has to play by different rules, but Wiki has for some reason tied its own hands to be like print materials and often rejects more detailed information on that basis.
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Miriam2
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Re: Wikipedia... or what? How to look things up?

Post by Miriam2 »

littlerfish wrote: Fri Jan 31, 2025 1:45 pm I'm curious about what people use to look things up these days. . . . What else do people use?
Key word searches on Google. To find more info, change the words. Don't use too many words like 8-10 in each search. For older articles that may be golden, scroll through the Google search result pages to the end. You'll find articles that are not accessed as much, but still possibly valuable for you. For the Bogleheads forum, search the same way, but with fewer words, in the Bogleheads search box, adding the name of the poster if you remember who wrote the post or thread.
AnEngineer
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Re: Wikipedia... or what? How to look things up?

Post by AnEngineer »

Badinvestor wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 11:23 am
nisiprius wrote: Sat Feb 01, 2025 2:34 pm Microsoft Copilot, originally touted for citing sources, has cited non-existent URLs; URLs that exist but don't support the fact they are cited in support of; and somewhat generic URLs that are just places where you might reasonably expect to find the information.
The non-existent URLs are easy to deal with, since seeing if a URL exists or not is quick. Nonsupportive sources are more of a problem because you have to read the source carefully to determine that it's nonsupportive.
A related failure mode I've seen: the link is good, the quoted sentence is in the source, but the source is saying the exact opposite of the quotation.
That your facts or argument are wrong does not necessarily mean I disagree with your conclusion
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littlerfish
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Re: Wikipedia... or what? How to look things up?

Post by littlerfish »

More thanks to everyone who's contributing!

A note on AI: it's a term that's come to mean a number of different things. Some of the undifferentiated general purpose interfaces, like ChatGPT, can give bizarre results. A classic illustration of the old principle of Garbage In yields Garbage Out. But LLMs trained on carefully curated corpora and compendia are proving very useful in distilling masses of information. Careful curation is the key. Not unlike editing an encyclopedia.
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littlerfish
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Re: Wikipedia... or what? How to look things up?

Post by littlerfish »

On the topic of searching, the most helpful book I've read on this subject is "The Joy of Search", by Daniel M. Russell.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546072/ ... of-search/

But it pre-dates the Gemini rollout.
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Re: Wikipedia... or what? How to look things up?

Post by yankees60 »

nisiprius wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 5:45 pm It's not a general reference site, but for certain things, archive.org can be sheer gold. It is a messy, difficult to search website. The digitized images are often poor quality; the OCRed text even worse. But it contains things you can't find anywhere else. It contains all sorts of printed material Google Books hasn't touched. Comic books, for example. US comic books like Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge. Brazilian comic books like Turma da Mônica.

It also attempts to periodically capture and save the entire web. The captures are viewable in archive.org's "Wayback Machine." That, too, has all sorts of problems. The UI is awkward, the captures sometimes have technical glitches, and it can't generate with dynamically generated web pages, for example. Nevertheless, in an age when entities try to avoid embarrassment by rewriting their own history, archive.org stands between us and 1984's "memory hole."
Definitely a GEM!
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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yankees60
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Re: Wikipedia... or what? How to look things up?

Post by yankees60 »

littlerfish wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 10:49 am On the topic of searching, the most helpful book I've read on this subject is "The Joy of Search", by Daniel M. Russell.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546072/ ... of-search/

But it pre-dates the Gemini rollout.
Thanks for letting us know about it.

Led me to buy a Like New used copy for $9.07 delivered:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262042878/?c ... _lig_dp_it
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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