It’s funny how things have shifted from people complaining about citing Wikipedia to people citing AI. Now Wikipedia may as well be the gutenberg
I think part of that has been actual elevated standards on Wikipedia with a more robust culture for things like citations, but probably more importantly, it’s readers already being expected to understand that Wikipedia isn’t an inherently credible source and needs checking if you actually care.
Of course part of it now too, as you imply, is generative AI making it look more rigorous by comparison and lowering people’s standards.
I’m lazy and have started treating wikipedia as a primary source. But if I’m quoting it to somebody else, I tend to look at the cited references to make sure I trust those.
🤓 Point of clarification: primary, secondary, and tertiary sources refer to the proximity to the original information, not to their reliability.
- A primary source would be something like a study on a drug.
- A secondary source would be something like a news article discussing the study or a meta-analysis collating a bunch of studies on that drug.
- A tertiary source would be something like a Wikipedia article or a section of a textbook discussing the drug as a whole.
Secondary and tertiary sources often comprise both the most reliable and unreliable sources. 🤓
(Ik what you meant by “primary” lol)
I meant it exactly as your definitions. Academically. My fuck up was saying “as” instead of “equal to” or “like.” Hence me admitting how utterly lazy that is. I should also add irresponsible.
Even Wikipedia is union-busting now.
The Wikimedia Foundation has very little to do with what goes on on the English Wikipedia. It hosts the infrastructure, puts some legal policies in place, and really from there, the community-elected administrators (who are themselves active contributors) are the ones who handle enforcement, and the rules are discussed by the community.
Even the administrators don’t exercise all that much power. In ten years, I think I’ve seen the office have to step in exactly one time – for a possible libel issue when even the administrators couldn’t agree with each other.
Lesser of two evils, one can be better, one can only be worse.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is how they led us into this mess.
Who, when and what
I still have that Google newsfeed enabled on my phone, just trying to stay informed. The AI overview is actually hella useful, by summarising all the news reports and circumventing the trash clickbait
You know, you’re getting downvoted for this, and I get why, but I also think you should’ve been offered a suggestion: RSS feeds. They let you get your news from good, reliable sources that aren’t The Daily Beast talking about “Elon Musk drops SHOCKING new post on X (did he shit his pants??)” Unironically, it’s the best way to keep up with the news bar none. I can even give you personalized suggestions if you’d like.
Your problem is real. Your problem is not your fault. Your solution is understandable. I just think it’s misguided.
Holy fuck is this healthy. Thank you sir for, well, existing. I salute this behavior!
I appreciate that. I feel like it’s all of our jobs to help each other in this information hurricane where we can; nobody deserves to be punished for not being a strong sailor.
Wikipedia is suspect now too. They’ve sold the site to AI search. Hard to say that they had much of a choice, but the sure did it swiftly and gleefully.
