Comment on Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors

badbytes@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  It’s funny that MAGA and ml tankies both think that Wikipedia is the devil.

  source

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    There’s a lot of problems with Wikipedia, but in my years editing there (I’m extended protected rank), I’ve come to terms that it’s about as good as it can be.

    In all but one edit war, the better sourced team came out on top. Source quality discussion is also quite good. There’s a problem with from positive/negative tone in articles, and sometimes articles get away with bad sourcing before someone can correct it, but this is about as good as any information hub can get.

    source

    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Thank you for your service 🫡

      source
    • SaraTonin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I remeber an article form a decade or more ago which did some research and said that basically, yes there are inaccuracies on Wikipedia, and yes there are over-simplifications, but** no more than in any other encyclopaedia**. They argued that this meant that it should be considered equally valid as an academic resource.

      source
    • markko@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Any chance you remember what that one edit war was about?

      source

      • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        It was about whether Bitcoin Cash was referred to as “Bcash” or not

        source
    • vin@lemmynsfw.com ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      And don’t forget the British-American bias. Hopefully the automated translation and adaptation that is being pursued by wikipedia helps to improve it.

      source

      • Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I remember in the past few years that I’ve had to switch to non-American or non-British versions of Wikipedia just in order to find the answer I was looking for.

        We need to remind Americans and Britains that knowledge on Wikipedia doesn’t stop with their languages. We need to do a better job of gathering knowledge from non-English sources and translating those into English. Same goes vice versa for English sources and pages into languages that other people can understand.

        There’s still a lot of work to be done with Wikipedia to make it truly a universal knowledge repository. But it is one of the best we have

        source
  • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    It’s worth checking out the contribs and talk regarding articles that can be divisive. People acting with ulterior motives and inserting their own bias are fairly common. They also make regular corrections for this reason. I still place more faith and trust in Wikipedia as an info source more than most news articles

    source

    • HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Wikipedia has an imperfect process, but it is open to review and you can see how the sausage is made. It isn’t perfect, but the best we have.

      source

      • brbposting@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Luv u Wiki

        source
  • devolution@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    MAGA and tankies are pretty much the same except MAGA votes while tankies whine.

    source

    • kameecoding@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Red hat vs red coat fascists

      source
  • Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Tankies don’t think Wikipedia is the devil. You could call me a tankie from my political views, and I very much appreciate Wikipedia and use it on a daily basis. That is not to say it should be used uncritically and unaware of its biases.

    Because of the way Wikipedia works, it requires sourcing claims with references, which is a good thing. The problem comes when you have an overwhelming majority of available references in one topic being heavily biased in one particular direction for whatever reason.

    For example, when doing research on geopolitically charged topics, you may expect an intrinsic bias in the source availability. Say you go to China and create an open encyclopedia, Wikipedia style, and make an article about the Tiananmen Square events. You may expect that, if the encyclopedia is primarily edited by Chinese users using Chinese language sources, given the bias in the availability of said sources, the article will end up portraying the bias that the sources suffer from.

    This is the criticism of tankies towards Wikipedia: in geopolitically charged topics, western sources are quick to unite. We saw it with the genocide in Palestine, where most media regardless of supposed ideological allegiance was reporting on the “both sides are bad” style at best, and outright Israeli propaganda at worst.

    So, the point is not to hate on Wikipedia, Wikipedia is as good as an open encyclopedia edited by random people can get. The problem is that if you don’t specifically incorporate filters to compensate for the ideological bias present in the demographic cohort of editors (white, young males of English-speaking countries) and their sources, you will end up with a similar bias in your open encyclopedia. This is why us tankies say that Wikipedia isn’t really that reliable when it comes to, e.g., the eastern block or socialist history.

    source

    • DMCMNFIBFFF@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      One would think that leftists, socialists, communists, tankies, and/or others would come up with supplementary wikis such as Conservapedia or RationalWiki that are good.

      and, FWIW:

      Category:Wikidebates

      en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Category:Wikidebates

      e.g.

      Is capitalism sustainable?

      en.wikiversity.org/…/Is_capitalism_sustainable%3F

      It’s sad how little news there is relatively little news in Wikinews ( en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page ).

      source

      • Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        supplementary wikis

        We have them, e.g. ProleWiki, but good luck trying to explain to the average western Wikipedia user that for certain geopolitical topics they might be worth checking out and contrasted with Wikipedia. My problem isn’t the lack of alternatives, my problem is the anticommunist and pro-western bias in Wikipedia in geopolitically charged topics.

        source

        • -> View More Comments
  • scala@lemmy.ml ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    They are scared of facts.

    source
  • mistermodal@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    The site engages in holocaust denial, apologia for wehrmacht, and directly collaborates with western governments. Jimmy Wales is a far-right libertarian. It might be a reliable source of information for reinforcing your own worldview, but it’s not a project to create the world’s encyclopedia. Something like that would at least be less stingy about what a “notable sandwich” is.

    source

    • SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Citation needed.

      source

      • mistermodal@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Your mother.

        source

        • -> View More Comments
    • I_Clean_Here@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Ah yes, you were personally insulted and now discredit the biggest collection of knowledge the world has ever had. Fuck you, you fool.

      source

      • mistermodal@lemmy.ml ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        WRONG. You are thinking of the Quran 🙏🏻

        source
    • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Show me. That’s a simple request.

      source
    • antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      As a Wikipedia editor I can comfirm - we regularly say that napalm sticking to objects in water is POV. I do it at least twice a week. I’ll try making a bot to do it automatically so I’ll have more time for holocaust denial.

      source

      • buttnugget@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I have been editing Wikipedia since 2004, and my very first edit was to deny a clearly POV edit to a sticky napalm article. It’s kind of a point of pride for me.

        source
      • mistermodal@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        As a fellow Wikipedia editor I have confirmed that you are in fact the intern who kept making edits directly from the Capitol without even using a VPN.

        source
    • ripcord@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      No it doesn’t

      source

      • mistermodal@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        This is a very low-quality reply. Try making more high-quality replies to contribute to discussions here on Lemmy. Thanks!

        source

        • -> View More Comments
    • DMCMNFIBFFF@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      FWIW,

      wp:Talk:Napalm#Burns_under_water?

      ​

      wp:Talk:Burn/Archive 1#Burn pain

      This page was last edited on 20 February 2024, at 12:50 (UTC).

      ​

      wp:Jimmy Wales#Personal life

      Wales defended his comments in response to backlash from supporters of Gamergate, saying that “it isn’t about what I believe. Gg is famous for harassment. Stop and think about why.”[125]

      …

      Wales labeled himself a libertarian, qualifying his remark by referring to the Libertarian Party as “lunatics”, and citing “freedom, liberty, basically individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a manner that is not initiating force against them” as his guiding principles.[10] In a 2014 tweet, he expressed support for open borders.[104]

      …

      Wales has lived in London since 2012,[146] and became a British citizen in 2019.[147]

      source
  • Ulvain@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    So very much on-script though

    source
  • username123@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    That instance is fucking bananas

    source
• krypt@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  growing up I got taught by teachers not trust Wiki bc of misinformation. times have changed

  source

  • isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Nope, we all misunderstood what they meant. Wikipedia is not an authoritative source, it is a derivative work. However, you can use the sources provided by the Wikipedia article and use the article itself to understand the topic.

    Wikipedia isn’t and was never a primary source of information, and that is by design. You don’t declare information in encyclopedias, you inventory information.

    source

    • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Wikipedia was not then what it is now. You’re spot on with all that, spot on, but in the early days it wasn’t nearly as trustworthy.

      source

      • isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Fair enough, I’m not old enough to remember those days of Wikipedia, my memory starts in roughly 2010 wrt Wikipedia use 😅

        source

        • -> View More Comments
    • krypt@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Nope, what? you’re regurgitating what I meant

      source
  • wesker@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Now in some states, you can’t trust teachers not to be giving you misinformation.

    source

    • unphazed@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      We homeschool our daughter. Saw a cool history through film course that taught with an example movie every week to grow interest… nothing in the itinerary said they’d play a video of Columbus by PragerU. They refused the refund, as it was 2 weeks in, and said it was used to foment conversation, but no other video was being offered or no questions were prepared to challenge the children. I worded my letter to call out the facts about Columbus vs the video, and the lack of accreditation of the source. I tried not to be the “lib”, but I very much got the gist that’s their opinion of me, and how they brushed me off. That fucking site is a plague on common sense, decency, and truth. Still fired up, and it was last month. We pulled her out of the course immediately after the video.

      source

      • Devmapall@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I can’t imagine homeschooling. Not that I think it’s bad but that it has to be so hard to do. And harder still to do it right.

        Glad you pulled out of that course. PragerU is hot garbage and I hate how my autocorrect apparently knows PragerU and didn’t try to change it to something else.

        How hard do you find it to homeschool? How many hours do you reckon it takes a day?

        source

        • -> View More Comments
      • mierdabird@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        If this is only 6 weeks ago now then you can still most likely do a credit card charge back if you paid that way

        source
  • buttnugget@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Not to trust wiki as a format? Or did you mean Wikipedia specifically?

    source

    • krypt@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      subject at hand was wikipedia, but it applies to any wiki format I guess - just check sources.

      source
• FosterMolasses@leminal.space ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  How ironic that school teachers spent decades lecturing us about not trusting Wikipedia… and now, the vast majority of them seem to rely on Youtube and ChatGPT for their lesson plans. Lmao

  source
• finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Unfortunately the current head of Wikipedia is pro-AI which has contributed to this lack of trust.

  source
• ill_presence55@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Who would’ve thought??

  source
• slaacaa@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  One thing I don’t get: why the fuck LLM’s don’t use wikipedia as a source of info? Would help them coming up with less bullshit. I experimented around with some, even perplexity that searches the webs and give you links, but it always has shit sources like reddit or SEO optimized nameless news sites

  source

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It’s not that AI don’t or cannot use Wikipedia they do actually, but AI can’t properly create a reliable statement in general. It halucinates so goddamn much, and that can never, ever, be solved, because it is at the end of the day just arranging tokens based on statistical approximation of things people might say. It has been proven that modern LLMs can never approach even close to human accuracy with infinite power and resources.

    That said, if an AI is blocked from using Wikipedia then that would be because the company realized Wikipedia is way more useful than their dumb chatbot.

    source