[deleted]
Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology
41–50 of 168 posts
Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology
#42Especially relevant today with the release of grokipedia
Someone please enlighten me: what is the point of an AI-generated Wikipedia when we're all now using (Wikipedia-trained) AIs directly instead of Wikipedias?
Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology
#43Can someone give me a deeper understanding of what this post means or the backstory behind it?
As an early WP editor, I can relate ... the project caught -a lot- of crap back in the early days. This is a smug but accurate, simple recounting of that sordid tale, and the value that WP retains now that AI is around to cite it. I don't edit much any more, but although it's not perfect, it's retinue of backup resources (including links to Wayback for those which died) remains invaluable.
I remember being told in school that we shouldn't use Wikipedia (not just for citations, but at all) because anyone can edit it. We were told to use other websites directly, or better yet: paper books.
I would get in trouble for "talking back" when I pointed out that anyone can make a website or write a book, too.
Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology
#44Can someone give me a deeper understanding of what this post means or the backstory behind it?
McSweeney's is a satirical website, at the intellectual level the New Yorker cartoons aspire to, except that it's sometimes funny. If you need context on why "Wikipedia" would write a smug letter taunting the world's experts and teachers on their predictions of it have aged, ... HN presumably has a limit on the text in a single post, so just read the entire intenet or something.
> so just read the entire intenet or something
Hey I have a great idea for an algorithm that can take all that information and using statistical... No wait nevermind.
Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s so good. I spent 2 hours reading articles on there last night and the consistency was excellent, although a little verbose at times.
It took me less than a minute on the site to run into factually wrong information, broken citations, etc. Cannot imagine rotting my brain with knowingly bad information for over 2 hours
I’ve run into the exact same set of issues on Wikipedia.
Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology
#46Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is satire. You don't need to know the writer to get it. McSweeney's publishes these type of pieces from time-to-time. Laugh or don't. I found this one amusing. Wikipedia, a generation ago, was considered controversial. It is now more accepted as a legitimate encyclopedia and the criticisms appear quaint when compared to the post-truth atmosphere of our current media. The footnotes and the "citation needed" annotat…
> It is now more accepted as a legitimate encyclopedia To be fair, it is easily 10x better as a source than any encyclopedia, even disregarding the scope and quantity of entries. I loved Encyclopedia Britannica, and probably read the set in its entirety as a kid (nonsequentially), but it was like learning biology from Disney specials. Wikipedia is often updated and corrected by multiple experts, and importantly inclu…
I learned much of what I know by reading the set of encyclopedias someone gave my family as a gift when I was born. By the time I really got to them there were a bit out of date.
What a lot of folks miss is that traditional encyclopedias ensured correctness by employing experts in various fields. Wikipedia often cites those same experts via academic papers, etc. They just don't pay those SME's money directly.
If anything, I feel that Wikipedia often has less bias as the financial motives aren't there to just publish something for the sake of a paycheck.
Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is a style of internet humor that went out of fashion about 10 years ago. You know what else has happened in the last 10 years? People got stupid. Between 2017 and 2023, the percentage of U.S. adults at the lowest levels of illiteracy increased from 19% to 28%. Some studies show that the US's peak literacy was around 2015 and has been decreasing ever since.
How? How do 28% of people not know how to read?
Fifty four percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level, and the trend is getting worse rather than better.
Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s so good. I spent 2 hours reading articles on there last night and the consistency was excellent, although a little verbose at times.
Nevermind the Grok-ness of it, I can't seriously believe a thinking human being would spend 2 hours knowingly reading something written by AI.
I'm unsurprised that a human being would glibly dismiss the utility of the most powerful new form of knowledge representation since the written word, since we are all deeply in the grip of motivated reasoning.
Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology
#50Especially relevant today with the release of grokipedia
Someone please enlighten me: what is the point of an AI-generated Wikipedia when we're all now using (Wikipedia-trained) AIs directly instead of Wikipedias?
From the wikipedia on grokipedia:
"Following the public launch of Grokipedia, it was criticised for publishing false information. Wired reported that "The new AI-powered Wikipedia competitor falsely claims that pornography worsened the AIDS epidemic and that social media may be fueling a rise in transgender people."
So, it's a way of Musk using AI to propagandize on a large scale.