Lisa Lawler had no reason to suspect Const. Boris Borissov but now her opinion of police has changed — she’s convinced other grieving families have been victims of similar thefts

    • Old_Geezer@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      Wikipedia is hardly an authoritative source for political factoids. As I explained earlier, if ones does any sort of search you’ll find that there isn’t a definition that everyone agrees with.

      • TheOakTree@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Wikipedia is hardly an authoritative source for political factoids.

        factoid: A piece of unverified or inaccurate information that is presented in the press as factual, often as part of a publicity effort, and that is then accepted as true because of frequent repetition.

        So tell me, what is an authoritative source of factoids?

        • Old_Geezer@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          factoid: A piece of unverified or inaccurate information that is presented in the press as factual, often as part of a publicity effort, and that is then accepted as true because of frequent repetition.

          Actually, this is strictly an American definition. In original English, (Cambridge Dictionary) it means what I used it for: FACTOID | English meaning—Cambridge Dictionary I’m Canadian, and we use/follow the King’s English! July 19, 2023 — FACTOID definition: 1. an interesting piece of information, 2. an interesting piece of information. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/factoid

        • Old_Geezer@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          So tell me, what is an authoritative source of factoids?

          I like Quora. Encyclopedia’s on print stock used to be the gold standard due to professional fact-checkers, Wikipedia is NOT an alternative to that medium IMHO. BTW, I did not know of the definition of Factoid — Had thought it was slang for Fact.

      • joshhsoj1902@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Yes, but it’s a great starting point for people who have no idea what they are talking about (you).

        Once you have a basic understanding it’s possible to have more constructive conversations about a topic and branch out into more detailed explanations.

        But if you don’t have the basics down it’s hard to have any real conversation with you (I often describe it as trying to have a conversation with someone who never watched star wars when they are insistent that star wars is a medieval fantasy, so you can converse with them, but if they are unwilling to grasp the basics, the conversation will never go anywhere)

            • Old_Geezer@lemmy.ca
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              6 months ago

              A single website source like that is even worse of a source than Wikipedia…

              Not really, it’s as representative as anything else out there, which reinforces my point. There is no common meaning for ‘Defund the Police’. You are just pissing in the wind.

              • joshhsoj1902@lemmy.ca
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                6 months ago

                I’ll go back to my earlier point. Wikipedia is a fine place to start to get a summary of all the different aspects of defunding the police, you’re focused on a single source when there isn’t a single definition of the movement overall.

                • Old_Geezer@lemmy.ca
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                  6 months ago

                  I’ll go back to my earlier point. Wikipedia is a fine place to start to get a summary of all the different aspects of defunding the police, you’re focused on a single source when there isn’t a single definition of the movement overall.

                  Absolutely not for anything political related. It’s a well-known fact that the deep state authors many of that type of article. It’s great for official propaganda.

                  • joshhsoj1902@lemmy.ca
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                    6 months ago

                    Yep, being aware of that is part of being able to read anything objectively. Every single thing you read has a political slant.

                    Wikipedia is great because it does reference out to sources, so you can easily find multiple sources and using critical thinking skills you can distill common themes across multiple different sources.

                    If you’re savvy, you can even look at the page edit history and the “talk” happening behind the article to get a better idea of what parts are disputed and which are generally accepted.