Kind of funny: When Wikipedia was new, people often said that you couldn’t trust information on it because anyone could have written it, even if they were unqualified, biased, or deliberately deceptive. I guess that’s still true today, but with the advent of automated misinformation generators, the Wiki almost seems authoritative in comparison.
Comment on Wikipedia urges AI companies to use its paid API, and stop scraping
Jimbo@pawb.social 3 days ago
In the age of AI slop that you can’t trust, Wikipedia use is going down??
who@feddit.org 3 days ago
MurrayL@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yeah, when I was at school in the early 00s we were specifically told not to use Wikipedia as a research source.
Revan343@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
Which is ridiculous, everybody knows that you should be banned from referencing Wikipedia as a source because an encyclopedia is not a source
arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Uh, it’s a tertiary source. It’s still a source, just not one you should be directly citing. They’re great for finding other sources though.
quick_snail@feddit.nl 2 days ago
You’re supposed to reference the articles that Wikipedia references, not Wikipedia itself
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Can confirm, I’ve been a Wikipedia zealot the entire time and people really do seem to have accepted it. If you ignore what else makes them cheer, it’s a huge victory.
quick_snail@feddit.nl 2 days ago
Doubtful
Sciaphobia@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
People think they can trust the slop, is the thing. If they even think so far ahead, they probably think that an answer that exists on wikipedia will just be provided by the AI, saving them the time to search for it themselves. I’ve heard more than one horror story of ChatGPT use in particular backfiring on someone who somehow legitimately thought it was just another form of search engine, and didn’t verify the information provided.