Is the Internet a Valid Resource for Firearm Knowledge?

[GardoneVT]

This inquiry was inspired by a professor here who has made it clear Wikipedia ranks below "my brother's wife's second cousin" in terms of source validity.In viewing a set of YouTube videos on firearms I own and shoot, out of ten hits only two contained any information of merit, and all were ridddled with factual errors.

Combined with the recent thread about forum grievances and the spread of derp, I wonder if an informed pistolero should adopt the academic principle of my professor. If the source material is not a published book by an SME, and with the internet cluttered with nonsense posing as information, why bother?

[Tamara]

Is the Internet a Valid Resource for Firearm Knowledge?

Why are you asking the internet this question?

[GardoneVT]

Why are you asking the internet this question?

Because this cormer of it is enlightened enough to handle the subject matter.

[JV_]

and with the internet cluttered with nonsense posing as information, why bother?

We've always had to separate the wheat from the chaff, I don't think that's different from the old printed world to the internet world. We just have access to a lot more data, so the separation task is harder.

The author/source of the information does matter, regardless of the transmission method.

[tremiles]

Schrödinger's Cat.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[JHC]

Why are you asking the internet this question?

ROFL --- aspirating Copenhagen --- still ROFL

[mizer67]

There are excellent pockets of knowledge on the internet, if you know where to look and how to evaluate the information presented in a critical manner, and yes the source does matter.

I taught myself to reload mainly by extensively reading websites dedicated to Bullseye and USPSA for instance, finding vetted posters, then through trial/error. With a wealth of knowledge at my fingertips, my learning curve was significantly shortened. That same knowledge would've been very time consuming and expensive for me to learn on my own or through other media.

[Artemas]

Because this cormer of it is enlightened enough to handle the subject matter.

This^

I think it depends on which part of the internet you are soliciting and a good bit of common sense.

I would rate wikipedia much higher than most off the shelf gun magazines.

[rob_s]

The problem with the good pockets is that even the bad pockets think they are good. And many of the pockets that are good to one group are ridiculed by another. A lot of the minutiae that gets discussed here is scoffed at by the Lightfighter bunch, while many here might find amusement in the fact that a guy who was an Army cook 25 years ago gets more cred there than someone that shoots matches 4 times a month. Perspective matters.

But you don't have that perspective until you've been around for quite a while. And even then, such things only matter to the aficionados, not the mass public. If one of us were to go onto a golfing forum would we be able to tell the difference between the duffers and the pros (assuming, of course, they don't have an SME process...).

The good news is that it doesn't matter. A golf pro comes here and asks for a holster suggestion for his Taurus judge and all the hipsters jump his ass. One of you goes to a golf forum and asks for a suggestion for a $25 driver and gets laughed into the sand trap. About the time that it matters if the guy giving you advice is an idiot or not, you are also at the point to tell the difference. It's the time when people are approaching that hump and working their way over it that they get the most annoyed, and annoying, about the fact that someone else knows less than they do.

it doesn't matter. Nobody cares.

so, there is tons of good information available on the internet, and everyone for whom separating out that good information matters, is capable of doing so.

[Tamara]

I would rate wikipedia much higher than most off the shelf gun magazines.

Definitely. The people who review guns in print mags are a pack of howling idiots. The people here are a lot smarter.