It didn’t help when any page which could be rewritten with mathematical notation was rewritten as mathematical notation.
Comment on Wikimedia Foundation's plans to introduce AI-generated summaries to Wikipedia
sbv@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
There’s a core problem that many Wikipedia articles are hard for a layperson to read and understand. The statement about reading level is one way to express this.
The Simple version of articles shows humans can produce readable text. But there aren’t enough Simple articles, and the Simple articles are often incomplete.
I don’t think AI should be solely trusted with summarization/translation, but it might have a place in the editing cycle.
perviouslyiner@lemmy.world 1 day ago
applemao@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Maybe people should actually learn to use their brains so they can read slightly more difficult articles. Holy shit are we gonna have some idiots running around in 10 years. Didn’t think we could get dumber but here we are. (I’m not including people with learning disabilities obviously, they may need an article written or summarized differently to grasp it).
sbv@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Is the point of Wikipedia to provide everyone with information, or to allow editors to spew jargon into opaque articles that are only accessible to experts?
I think it’s the former. There are very few topics that can’t be explained simply, if the author is willing to consider their audience. Best of all, absolutely nothing is lost when an expert reads a well written article.
applemao@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Thats fair
FourWaveforms@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Many people who are in a position to write opaque jargon lack the perspective that would be required to explain it to a person who isn’t already very well-versed. Math articles are often like that, which doesn’t surprise me. I’ve had a few math professors who appeared completely unable to understand how to explain the subject to anyone who wasn’t already good at it. I had to drop their classes and try my luck with others.
I feel like a few of them are in this thread!
sbv@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Trolling aside, yeah, being able to explain a concept in everyday terms takes careful thought and discipline. I’m consistently impressed by the people who write Simple articles on Wikipedia. I wish there were more of those articles.