Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a hard time with the idea that Wikipedia is unbiased when the main source in most cases is news reporting. Wikipedia is a societal form of Gell-Mann Amnesia.
This is not entirely fair. The overwhelming majority of Wikipedia is not meaningless politics, but stated facts backed by decent sources. The phenomenon you are referring to usually happens in areas where there is ideological or political friction. Sure, some articles can be biased, because staying perfectly factual in the middle of an active political debate or social change is difficult for most people. But in that…
Honestly, I think on any politicised topic, that’s a waste of time - there’s a large contingent of Wikipedia editors with a shared deeply ingrained perspective that will reliably back each other up. There are better uses of one’s time than fighting such a losing battle.
> Personally, I do not know a better alternative. I have a friend who told me Wikipedia is biased, so he refuses to use it. When I asked him what he uses instead, he said, completely seriously, “X is my main source of information.”
I tend to use AI to surface sources and concepts, and then go read the sources for myself to verify the AI’s claims. AI has a strong tendency to e.g. misrepresent what journal articles say, but (if they are open access or otherwise available-and they generally are if an AI is citing them) you can then read them yourself and make up your own mind.
AI has genuinely taught me things I didn’t know before about topics of interest to me-e.g. Islamic history-but I’m careful to verify its claims with reliable sources rather than just trusting them-which of course one should do with Wikipedia too