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Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

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Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#11

Post by LtWorf »

jalapenod wrote: post #6
djoldman wrote: post #4

> Wikipedia is the largest compendium of human knowledge ever assembled, with more than 7 million articles in its English version, the largest and most developed of 343 language projects. but: > The collections of the Library of Congress include more than 32 million catalogued books and other print materials in 470 languages; more than 61 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America ... http…

[flagged]

Honestly it's the first place I look when I must implement some network protocol.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#12

Post by bawolff »

There has been this trend recently of calling Wikipedia the last good thing on the internet.

And i agree its great, i spend an inordinate amount of my time on Wikimedia related things.

But i think there is a danger here with all these articles putting Wikipedia too much on a pedestal. It isn't perfect. It isn't perfectly neutral or perfectly reliable. It has flaws.

The true best part of Wikipedia is that its a work in progress and people are working to make it a little better everyday. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact we aren't there yet. We'll never be "there". But hopefully we'll continue to be a little bit closer every day. And that is what makes Wikipedia great.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#14

Post by mschuster91 »

LtWorf wrote: post #11
jalapenod wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Honestly it's the first place I look when I must implement some network protocol.

yup. the amount of times I have looked up how to send an email over raw SMTP for troubleshooting...

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#15

Post by freedomben »

LtWorf wrote: post #11
jalapenod wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Honestly it's the first place I look when I must implement some network protocol.

Network protocol stuff on Wikipedia has been top notch and my go-to since at least 2010. It really is highly underrated for that. I had to implement a layer 7 protocol on top of UDP back in the day, and it required a lot of understanding/fiddling with UDP and IP packet details to get it working right, and even required some router config (IP fragmentation became a huge problem, gotta love protocols designed by committee D-:)

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#17

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #8
yapyap wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

false equivalence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

Maybe give some arguments or evidence instead of linking wikipedia. Everyone clicking on that archive link avoided having to pay someone to see information. I'm personally a copyright abolitionist, so I'm pretty okay with that - but I want people who pearl clutch about AI systems not paying to realize that it's the same damn thing going on when they click on the archive link.

I'd disagree that it's the same thing.

With AI content scraping, the people whose content was ingested aren't getting paid. That part does align to paywalls.

But there's more in the AI content situation. The scraped content is repackaged without any credit being given to the people who made the content. In most cases, the models trained on the content are intended to be monetized, and there is no intent to share revenue with the people who made the content.

When I bypass a paywall, there is no particular expectation that I'm going to take the content, modify it, and display / sell it as my own. In the vast majority of cases, someone reads some free content and moves on. The damage to the site or publication is limited to the unpaid viewing.

AI content scraping absolutely comes with an expectation that the content will be modified, presented, and sold. The damage goes beyond the unpaid viewing of the content.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#18

Post by mdp2021 »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #8
yapyap wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

false equivalence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

Maybe give some arguments or evidence instead of linking wikipedia. Everyone clicking on that archive link avoided having to pay someone to see information. I'm personally a copyright abolitionist, so I'm pretty okay with that - but I want people who pearl clutch about AI systems not paying to realize that it's the same damn thing going on when they click on the archive link.

The submission is not about LLMs being fed copyrighted material during training.

The poster does not immediately seem to be an advocate condemning the practice.

Your post was out of place.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#19

Post by potato3732842 »

bawolff wrote: post #12

There has been this trend recently of calling Wikipedia the last good thing on the internet. And i agree its great, i spend an inordinate amount of my time on Wikimedia related things. But i think there is a danger here with all these articles putting Wikipedia too much on a pedestal. It isn't perfect. It isn't perfectly neutral or perfectly reliable. It has flaws. The true best part of Wikipedia is that its a work i…

When you put something on a pedestal it almost always eventually gets co-opted by people who's goals are not noble enough to build a pedestal themselves and who are seeking a ready made pedestal from which to spew their garbage.

Of all the demographics who should understand this, you'd think that people complaining about the failure of all the other institutions would be high on the list.

Re: Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

#20

Post by mdp2021 »

bawolff wrote: post #12

There has been this trend recently of calling Wikipedia the last good thing on the internet. And i agree its great, i spend an inordinate amount of my time on Wikimedia related things. But i think there is a danger here with all these articles putting Wikipedia too much on a pedestal. It isn't perfect. It isn't perfectly neutral or perfectly reliable. It has flaws. The true best part of Wikipedia is that its a work i…

It's a miracle that the model of voluntary contribution from random agents and imperfect overview partially worked.

The science that could emerge by studying the phenomenon could constitute a milestone.

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