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25 Years of Wikipedia

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Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#51

Post by FiveOhThree »

gibspaulding wrote: post #39
FiveOhThree wrote: post #24

I can't be the only one who feels that Wikipedia's quality has really started to go downhill over the past 5 or so years. I've noticed more and more articles which read as ridiculously partisan, usually around subjects with any link to politics or current events. That's probably linked to the increasing polarisation in the US, but I get the impression that the sites neutrality policies have gradually been chipped awa…

Friendly reminder that we all have the power to improve this! Become an editor and If you come across a problematic article, you can make improvements, or even just flag it as needing work. I know this is not a small ask, and can feel discouraging if you see more issues than you have time to address or your edits are not accepted, but when you consider the relatively small number of editors and the huge number of rea…

The impression I've had from trying to contribute in the past has been that some editors will fight tooth and nail to prevent changes to an article they effectively own. The maze of rules and regulations makes it far too easy to simply block changes by dragging everything through protracted resolution processes.

Even something as clear-cut as "the provided source doesn't support this claim at all" becomes an uphill struggle to correct. When it comes to anything related to politics this problem is also exaggerated by editors selectively opposing changes based on whether they apply a desired slant to the text.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#52

Post by hulitu »

cm2012 wrote: post #2

This is cute, but kind of an example of Wikipedia's off-mission bloat. It irks me that they constantly fundraise when most of it is not needed for Wikipedia proper, but rather used for initiatives people know less about and may not fund if they knew.

They, just like some newspapers, try to present themselves as neutral, not tied to any interest.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#53

Post by jamespo »

rvnx wrote: post #50
xemoka wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh. Wow. I had no idea Jimmy Wales was like that. Enlightening.

Wikipedia is literally a spin-off of a porn company. From that point on, where it came from or who founded it is not so important. The question is how it acts today. It is a highly-political organization supporting lot of “progressive” ideas, California-style. So if you like reading politically biased media it may be for you. If you are seeking for a global view you better ask different LLMs for arguments and counter…

Yes LLMs that don't disclose sources are much better.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#54

Post by rvnx »

threetonesun wrote: post #48
adventured wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is already dead, they just don't know it yet. They'll get Stackoverflowed. The LLMs have already guaranteed their zombie end. The HN crowd will be comically delusional about it right up to the point where Wikimedia struggles to keep the lights on and has to fire 90% of its staff. There is no scenario where that outcome is avoided (some prominent billionaire will step in with a check as they get really despe…

If we kill all the platforms where content for training LLMs comes from, what do LLMs train on?

Newspapers, scientific papers and soon, real-world interactions.

News is the main feed of new data and that can be an infinite incremental source of new information

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#55

Post by FiveOhThree »

amrocha wrote: post #32
FiveOhThree wrote: post #24

I can't be the only one who feels that Wikipedia's quality has really started to go downhill over the past 5 or so years. I've noticed more and more articles which read as ridiculously partisan, usually around subjects with any link to politics or current events. That's probably linked to the increasing polarisation in the US, but I get the impression that the sites neutrality policies have gradually been chipped awa…

It’s more likely that you became more radicalized so what used to read as neutral seems partisan now.

Is it radicalised to want even a basic premise of neutrality in an encyclopedia?

Despite not being particularly political, even I raise an eyebrow when an article opens with "____ is a , , known for "

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#56

Post by hliyan »

jader201 wrote: post #16
dreslan wrote: post #10

Wikipedia is and continues to be the best thing that happened to the internet. A shining example of an open platform that works.

Except for their unnecessarily incessant fund raising. There’s zero reason it should happen that often, and that intrusively.

On Twitter/X "for you" feed, I'm frequently served posts by handles that are openly hostile toward Wikipedia. The most often cited reason is excessive fundraising / bloat (previously it was bias). But in my opinion, whatever bloat the Wikipedia organization suffers from, it is still a better alternative than all the other ad/engagement driven platforms.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#57

Post by rvnx »

hulitu wrote: post #52
cm2012 wrote: post #2

This is cute, but kind of an example of Wikipedia's off-mission bloat. It irks me that they constantly fundraise when most of it is not needed for Wikipedia proper, but rather used for initiatives people know less about and may not fund if they knew.

They, just like some newspapers, try to present themselves as neutral, not tied to any interest.

Like Hackernews, supposedly neutral.

The main issue with neutral people is that we do not know in which camp they are.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#58

Post by gjm11 »

observationist wrote: post #46

[flagged]

What does "challenged Wikipedia so thoroughly" mean?

(My impression is that Grokipedia was announced, everyone looked it and laughed because it was so obviously basically taking content from Wikipedia and making it worse, and since then it's largely been forgotten. But I haven't followed it closely and maybe that's all wrong.)

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#59

Post by reddalo »

amiga386 wrote: post #19

https://wikipedia25.org/en/the-first-day > Founder Jimbo Wales on a challenge overcome Aren't you forgetting someone, Jimmy? Your co-founder Larry Sanger, perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger Let's check one of the citations from the History of Wikipedia page: https://www.mid-day.com/lifestyle/health-and-fitness/article... > It was Larry Sanger who chanced upon the critical concept of combining the thr…

>He may not be with the project now, but don't airbrush him out of history.

I don't want to defend Jimbo Wales (he's very touchy about the subject), but to be honest, even if he's a founder, Larry Sanger didn't contribute much to what Wikipedia today is.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#60

Post by jrmg »

threetonesun wrote: post #48
adventured wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is already dead, they just don't know it yet. They'll get Stackoverflowed. The LLMs have already guaranteed their zombie end. The HN crowd will be comically delusional about it right up to the point where Wikimedia struggles to keep the lights on and has to fire 90% of its staff. There is no scenario where that outcome is avoided (some prominent billionaire will step in with a check as they get really despe…

If we kill all the platforms where content for training LLMs comes from, what do LLMs train on?

This always feels to me like, an elephant in the room.

I’d love to read a knowledgeable roundup of current thought on this. I have a hard time understanding how, with the web becoming a morass of SEO and AI slop - with really no effort being put into to keeping it accurate - we’ll be able to train LLMs to the level we do today in the future.

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