Comment

Comment on Wikipedia editors adopt a policy giving admins the authority to quickly delete AI-generated articles that meet certain criteria, like incorrect citations

<- View Parent

BrainInABox@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

Wikipedia is the most accurate encyclopedia to date

How did you determine that?

Wikipedia is built near-purely on second hand sources, which is how all encyclopedias are intended to be constructed. As long as one ensures the validity of the second hand source used, encyclopedias are great resources.

True, but basically nobody does check that the sources are valid, and they often aren’t.

source

Sort:hotnew top

crash_thepose@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
How do you know they often aren’t? I’m an academic and regularly use wikipedia to find citations for sources. I’ve have yet to come across any citations that weren’t wrong.

source
- BrainInABox@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Because I see the things they’re getting from Wikipedia and I am them, and they admit they didn’t actually check the sources.
  
  I’ve have yet to come across any citations that were wrong.
  
  How would you determine that a cited source was wrong?
  
  source
  - crash_thepose@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I’ll click on them and then read them.
    
    Here are two pages I’ve gone through a lot I can verify have correct citations in them. In fact, one of the citations in one of these is my research! which I know for certain was cited correctly.
    
    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
    
    …m.wikipedia.org/…/Free_and_open-source_software
    
    source
    BrainInABox@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    I’ll click on them and then read them.
    
    And how will that allow you to know if they’re right or not?
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
  - pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    How would you determine that a cited source was wrong?
    
    Subject matter experts do still exist. They’re dying off, and it’s unclear how many more we intend to create. But we do still have some.
    
    source
    BrainInABox@lemmy.ml ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You can’t be a subject matter expert on everything though?
    
    source
andros_rex@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
For anything that is not politically contentious, it’s very good.

There are communities of people which hyperfixate on certain topics. Think dinosaurs and trains. If a serious Dino-head sees a mistake about the length of Diplodocus, they are going to drop everything and fix it immediately.

I routinely check wiki sources - I’ve taught a lot of college kids that as a way to quickly find sources for papers. Most of the time, topics I know a lot about from my own educational background match what I see on wiki and cite the same kinds of sources I would use.

It’s not perfect - there’s the infamous story of an American teenager writing all of Scots Wikipedia without knowing any Scots - but you have to respect the fact that there are a lot of people who are obsessed with certain topics and will watch their pet articles like a hawk.

source