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Wikipedia row erupts as Jimmy Wales intervenes on 'Gaza genocide' page

thenational.scot

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Re: Wikipedia row erupts as Jimmy Wales intervenes on 'Gaza genocide' page

#2

Post by angelgonzales »

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I think Wikipedia would do really well for itself if it instead created a set of public high level rules for an open model to follow. The model would write the article using all publicly available information. This would enable the article to feature all perspectives on the issue to avoid “lying by omission”. Articles would instead be overviews and about a topic rather than appearing biased to a particular set of talking points and coverage. Summary is much more approachable and benefits people who want to learn all about a topic rather than those who seek confirmation reinforcement. I think the end result of this would be that people would be equally happy/unhappy with Wikipedia because the rules would be applied to every article equally and would be a place to go when users didn’t know what to prompt while apps like Grok/ChatGPT are resources used when people already have a question prepared. I agree with Jimmy’s opinion that Wikipedia is not a place to adjudicate disagreements.

Re: Wikipedia row erupts as Jimmy Wales intervenes on 'Gaza genocide' page

#4

Post by JumpCrisscross »

angelgonzales wrote: post #2

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I think Wikipedia would do really well for itself if it instead created a set of public high level rules for an open model to follow. The model would write the article using all publicly available information. This would enable the article to feature all perspectives on the issue to avoid “lying by omission”. Articles would instead be overviews and about a topic rather than appe…

> Wikipedia would do really well for itself if it instead created a set of public high level rules for an open model to follow

This is literally every LLM that quotes Wikipedia.

The value in Wikipedia is it’s curated. A model is the opposite of that.

As for the topic at hand, it seems nobody agrees on what genocide means anymore, few are willing to accept there is legitimate disagreement, everyone has a unique definition they’re loudly committed to, all of which makes the entire debate self obsessed.

Re: Wikipedia row erupts as Jimmy Wales intervenes on 'Gaza genocide' page

#6

Post by angelgonzales »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4
angelgonzales wrote: post #2

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I think Wikipedia would do really well for itself if it instead created a set of public high level rules for an open model to follow. The model would write the article using all publicly available information. This would enable the article to feature all perspectives on the issue to avoid “lying by omission”. Articles would instead be overviews and about a topic rather than appe…

> Wikipedia would do really well for itself if it instead created a set of public high level rules for an open model to follow This is literally every LLM that quotes Wikipedia. The value in Wikipedia is it’s curated. A model is the opposite of that. As for the topic at hand, it seems nobody agrees on what genocide means anymore, few are willing to accept there is legitimate disagreement, everyone has a unique defini…

I don’t think curation is the answer, if Wikipedia was based off rules and if fundamental articles were dependencies to more complex downstream articles I think people would have more respect the site. Curation invites unintentional omission of information which people may suspect is intentional. If a Wikipedia model first defined rules for a genocide article and then screened events that were suspected to be genocides against the genocide article then a more uniform interpretation of genocide across the entire site would be possible. I think the goal for Wikipedia is to avoid inconsistency, to cover every viewpoint in a topic with rationale and to do so truthfully with associated references.

Re: Wikipedia row erupts as Jimmy Wales intervenes on 'Gaza genocide' page

#9

Post by JumpCrisscross »

angelgonzales wrote: post #6
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wikipedia would do really well for itself if it instead created a set of public high level rules for an open model to follow This is literally every LLM that quotes Wikipedia. The value in Wikipedia is it’s curated. A model is the opposite of that. As for the topic at hand, it seems nobody agrees on what genocide means anymore, few are willing to accept there is legitimate disagreement, everyone has a unique defini…

I don’t think curation is the answer, if Wikipedia was based off rules and if fundamental articles were dependencies to more complex downstream articles I think people would have more respect the site. Curation invites unintentional omission of information which people may suspect is intentional. If a Wikipedia model first defined rules for a genocide article and then screened events that were suspected to be genocid…

> if Wikipedia was based off rules and if fundamental articles were dependencies to more complex downstream articles I think people would have more respect the site

These structured sources of truth have been tried. They don’t work. Natural language allows for ambiguity where necessary in a way code does not.

> If a Wikipedia model first defined rules for a genocide article

It would be worthless. Also, futile. You think when the world’s governments can’t agree on what genocide is, a random editorial decision at Wikipedia will control?

> the goal for Wikipedia is to avoid inconsistency

It’s a goal, but certainly not the goal. Truth isn’t a mathematical schema, particularly when it comes to social constructs like genocide.

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