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Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

mcsweeneys.net

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Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#161

Post by johnnyanmac »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #63
rconti wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a website called Wikipedia that is a free online encyclopedia; a compendium of knowledge that can be freely viewed OR edited by anyone with an internet connection. Founded in 2001, it has been looked down upon by academics who believe that compiling and providing knowledge for free leads to cheating. Over the past few years, ANOTHER new technology called Large Language Model, or LLM, has been invented. This n…

I never shat on Wikipedia. The closest thing to it was probably those sets of encyclopedias that seem to be so ubiquitous in middle class, split-level America. And I have little doubt that Wikipedia and its army of contributors outperformed those.

It happened a lot in acedemia. And there was good reason there too. Wikipedia is horrible for developing stories, for example.

The real key for rigorous use was to look at what was cited, not quote directly from wikipedia.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#162

Post by johnnyanmac »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #140

Wikipedia does not conduct scientific research or fact-finding. It's only a publisher. It routinely sources citations from books, journals and other sources, many of them produced by members of the "global academic, scientfic ... community" Without those sources Wikipedia would have relatively little value, except to quote and cite to web pages In many (most) fieds, web pages are not a substitute for scientific journ…

I don't see that any different from saying "bloggers have little value, except to quote and cite to web pages". Even if I agreed, could we both agree that that itself offers value?

Delivering acedemic results to laymen is in many ways more important than the research itself, given the landscape of social media.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#163

Post by johnnyanmac »

embedding-shape wrote: post #101
j2kun wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the guy whose wife cheated on him with an LLM

Not sure I have to, that makes as much sense as considering your wife using a vibrator as cheating.

>a violation of a couple's emotional or sexual exclusivity that commonly results in feelings of anger, sexual jealousy, and rivalry

Well, the shoe fits. You can say the boundaries are extremely unreasonable but it fits the definition.

I guess as a more realistic example: I have heard of couples break up over porn habits. Not a viable romantic rival, but one that seeded jealousy and rivalry regardless.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#165

Post by hagbard_c »

gamerdonkey wrote: post #96
antonymoose wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve run into the exact same set of issues on Wikipedia.

Did you fix them?

This is sometimes hard when the editors keep on reversing edits which attempt to fix those errors. It will be interesting to see how Grokipedia - a bad name, surely they can come up with something better - deals with this.

I often come across out-of-place or clearly ideologically driven content on Wikipedia and normally just leave this alone - I have better things to do with my limited time than to fight edit wars with activist editors. Having said that I did a number of experiments some 5 years ago with editing Wikipedia where I removed clearly ideologically driven sections out of articles where those sections really had no place. One of these experiments consisted of removing sections about ´queer politics and queer viewpoints' from articles about popular cartoon characters. These sections - often spanning several paragraphs - were inserted relatively recently into the articles and were nothing more than attempts to use those articles to push a 'queer' viewpoint on the subject matter and as such not relevant for a general purpose encyclopedia. I commented my edits with a reference to the NPOV rules. My edits were reversed without comment. I reversed the reversion with the remark to either explain the reversion of leave the edits in place and was reversed again, no comments. I reversed again with an invitation to discuss the edits on the Talk pages which was not accepted while my edits were reversed again. This continued for a while with different editors reversing my edits and accusations of vandalism. Looking through the 'contribs' section for the users responsible for adding the irrelevant content showed they were doing this to hundreds of articles. I just checked and noticed the same individuals are still actively adding their 'queer perspectives' to articles where such perspectives are not relevant for a general-purpose encyclopedia.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#166

Post by brightball »

hagbard_c wrote: post #165
gamerdonkey wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you fix them?

This is sometimes hard when the editors keep on reversing edits which attempt to fix those errors. It will be interesting to see how Grokipedia - a bad name, surely they can come up with something better - deals with this. I often come across out-of-place or clearly ideologically driven content on Wikipedia and normally just leave this alone - I have better things to do with my limited time than to fight edit wars wi…

Correct. That's the main reason I dove into reading subjects I was already knowledgeable of to see how it did.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#167

Post by orwin »

tim333 wrote: post #146
orwin wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, their isn't any evidence for any explanation how COVID happened. The only thing we know is that gene splicing isn't involved, it's a genetically 'natural' variant. All other theories about what happened, including it's origin, is unsatisfactory at best. Some Chinese I talk to think it's not from Wuhan, but rural China, and got confused with flu there, and since no one care about them [0]. If the virus cir…

I wouldn't say it's proven one way or the other but you can cite evidence on both sides, like in favour of a zoonotic origin, the previous SARS outbreak and other viruses have been zoonotic, there were cases near the wet market. In favour of lab, it's a bit of a coincidence that a novel form or SARS popped up near the number one lab in the world researching such stuff, and in a way that could be easily explained by r…

What I meant that we only have circumstantial evidence, not hard evidence, so any explanation will be about beliefs, not about facts.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#168

Post by gamerdonkey »

hagbard_c wrote: post #165
gamerdonkey wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you fix them?

This is sometimes hard when the editors keep on reversing edits which attempt to fix those errors. It will be interesting to see how Grokipedia - a bad name, surely they can come up with something better - deals with this. I often come across out-of-place or clearly ideologically driven content on Wikipedia and normally just leave this alone - I have better things to do with my limited time than to fight edit wars wi…

Do you happen to remember any of the articles where you performed this experiment? I ask because specifically around 5 years ago, I know there were a number of cartoons where the creators intentionally wrote characters with queer representation in mind (She-Ra is the first to come to mind). So, if the sections you were removing had been properly cited and relevant to the actual series, then the removal for being "nothing more than attempts to use those articles to push a 'queer' viewpoint on the subject matter" probably did not represent a neutral viewpoint.

Of course, this depends on you opening up your research to some peer review.

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