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25 Years of Wikipedia

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Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#91

Post by InsideOutSanta »

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. I'm really bothered by the almost cruel glee with which a lot of people respond to SO's downfall. Yeah, the moderation was needlessly aggressive. But it was successful at creating a huge repository of text-based knowledge which benefited LLMs greatly. If SO is gone, where will this come from for future programming languages, libraries, and tools?

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#92

Post by trackflak »

shuntress wrote: post #69
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…

[flagged]

[dead]

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#93

Post by oytis »

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…

Wikipedia itself says Larry Sanger "co-founded" Wikipedia, but I don't quite understand why. If you get into the details, he was Wales' employee at the time, and made initial version of Wikipedia while being paid as such. So I'm tentatively with Wales on that ATM.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#94

Post by tux3 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #67
jamespo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

LLMs disclose sources now.

Right. Try clicking those sources, half the time there is zero relation to the sentence. LLMs just output what they want to say, and then sprinkle in what the web search found on random sentences.

And not just bottom of the barrel LLMs. Ask Claude about Intel PIN tools, it will merrily tell you that it "Has thread-safe APIs but performance issues were noted with multi-threaded tools like ThreadSanitizer" and then cite the Disney Pins blog and the DropoutStore "2025 Pin of the Month Bundle" as an inline source.

Enamel pins. That's the level of trust you should have when LLMs pretend to be citing a source.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#95

Post by whynotmaybe »

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…

It is tedious because you must edit with facts, not ideology.

But we now live in a world where people agree that ideology should be able to change facts.

> or the impact of certain wars

Exactly, like China wanting to completely censor anything regarding the Tiananmen Square protests.

> for example questioning homosexuality

I don't know what you have to question about this.

>If you are seeking for a global view you better ask different LLMs for arguments and counter-arguments on a subject.

All the LLM I've tested have a strong tendency to increase your echo chamber and not try to change your opinion on something.

>This is why you need to use different sources.

Only if deep down, you're ready to change your POV on something, otherwise you're just wasting time and ragebaiting yourself. Although I admit, it can still be entertaining to read some news to discover how they're able to twist reality.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#96

Post by [deleted] »

FiveOhThree wrote: post #55
amrocha wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "

[deleted]

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#97

Post by zxcvasd »

encom wrote: post #64
gibspaulding wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not going into an edit war with some deranged redditor activist.

this attitude is exactly why and how those "deranged redditor activists" (we're from the superior hacker news, of course, where there is no controversy or activists or differences in opinion) took and maintain control.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#98

Post by amiga386 »

shuntress wrote: post #69
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…

[flagged]

Clearly there's no love lost between the two co-founders, but if either of them had been missing, Wikipedia wouldn't be what it is today.

Larry may have left the project, but sticks his oar in frequently, see for example the Nine Theses he posted to Wikipedia last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger/Nine_Theses

Neither Larry nor Jimbo "are" Wikipedia. Wikipedia's editors are Wikipedia, and if they collectively agree with any of Larry's policy ideas, they'll adopt them in time.

I used to glibly agree with what you said, because back in the early 2000s it was primarily the right-wing nutters being fed a diet of Fox News bullshit that were deranged from reality... "reality has a liberal bias", right? Remember the crackpot Conservapedia? But these days I find plenty of equal opportunity derangement from terrible news sources chasing clicks, promoting FOMO, anxiety and keeping their readers/viewers addicted. No political flavour of bullshit belongs on Wikipedia.

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#99

Post by burnt-resistor »

CrulesAll wrote: post #65
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.

[flagged]

Corporate editors, boiler room political operations, and random conspiracy cranks are given a bothsideism platform to edit and narrate facts in their favor.

https://en.ejo.ch/public-relations/manipulation-wikipedia

https://imemc.org/article/59294/

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026-01-14/lon...

https://avim.org.tr/en/Analiz/THE-DARKNESS-BEYOND-WIKIPEDIA-...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/congress-opens-inves...

https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.13990

https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/identifying-sock-...

https://www.city-journal.org/article/policing-wikipedia

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/oct/30...

https://www.techdirt.com/2007/08/14/diebold-disney-many-othe...

Re: 25 Years of Wikipedia

#100

Post by chairhairair »

jyscao wrote: post #88
thiht wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't wait for the specific examples

What for? To start a flame war? No one is going to get convinced one way or the other. Which was why I just wanted to point out that while I think Wikipedia is a net good overall, it is not without blemishes.

> Makes claim.

> Is asked for evidence.

> Refuses.

Brilliant work. These kinds of posts should be bannable.

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