Comment on ChatGPT Mostly Source Wikipedia; Google AI Overviews Mostly Source Reddit
edryd@lemmy.world 3 days agoThe common reasons given why Wikipedia shouldn’t be cited is often missing the main reason. You shouldn’t cite Wikipedia because it is not a source of information, it is a summary of other sources which are referenced.
You shouldn’t cite Wikipedia for the same reason you shouldn’t cite a library’s book report, you should read and cite the book itself. Libraries are a great resource and their reading lists and summaries of books can be a great starting point for research, just like Wikipedia. But citing the library instead of the book is just intellectual laziness and shows to any researcher you are not serious.
Wikipedia itself also says the same thing: en.m.wikipedia.org/…/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia
Chulk@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
Right, and if an LLM is citing Wikipedia 47.9% of the time, that means that it’s summarizing Wikipedia’s summary.
Exactly my point.