[dmitryminkovsky]

> All signs point to this strengthening the value of curation and authenticated sources.

This is what they said about Wikipedia viz. Britannica… alas, it’s a brave new world out there… nowhere to run to nowhere to hide, see that Wiezenbaum post also on the homepage now, as another commenter quotes[0]:

> Writing of the enthusiastic embrace of a fully computerized world, Weizenbaum grumbled, “These people see the technical apparatus underlying Orwell’s 1984 and, like children on seeing the beach, they run for it”

> a point to which Weizenbaum added “I wish it were their private excursion, but they demand that we all come along.”

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34546689

[tablespoon]

>> All signs point to this strengthening the value of curation and authenticated sources.

> This is what they said about Wikipedia viz. Britannica...

And they were right. If "they" were wrong about anything, it was the assumption that the masses would prioritize quality over cost, but it turns out that cheap wins every time. When it comes to information, it's like most people's taste buds don't work, so they'll pick free crap over nutritious food.

Edit: Another thought came to mind: stuff like ChatGPT may contribute to killing off Wikipedia: Wikipedia is currently the cheapest and fastest way to find information (that's often crap). However, if something like ChatGPT can get information to people faster (even if it's crappier, just as long as it's minimally acceptable), Wikipedia will become much less popular and could end up just like Britannica.

[idiotsecant]

Were they right, though? I am pretty sure I've seen research that compared the scope and accuracy of both and wikipedia was miles ahead.

[krona]

In most areas you're correct, but the political slant/bias of Wikipedia is fairly blatant and is getting worse.

See for example: https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/41946110

[pessimizer]

The political slant is anything but blatant, because all of the complaints focus on Republican/Democrat wedge issues where both sides are conjuring alternate realities to sell to their bases like soap operas.

The real political slant is put on Wikipedia by governments and companies that are willing to consistently employ people to cultivate and maintain bias (and to provide the technical support to prevent them being easily caught.) They make sure certain things aren't mentioned in particular articles i.e. when they are added they delete them, and when those deletions are controversial, they take advantage of the pseudononymous voting system. They reinsert untruths (and in the worst cases can even commission references for them.) They pay attention to articles that are rarely visited by experts, or rarely visited at all, to make sure that when the article subject is in the news, the first facts that people find are friendly facts (which then shapes the news coverage, and an instant POV for lazy pundits.)

The public really has no chance against this; the only time that bad actors run into serious difficulties is when they encounter their own counterparts, working for their enemies.

Wikipedia's failure mode is the same as Reddit's, or any other forum that allows anonymous control over content or moderation. It's cheap for hugely resourced governments, companies, and individuals to take it over. The price of one tank would keep a thousand distortions on Wikipedia indefinitely.

[dsabanin]

What about political biases of those who publish traditional encyclopedias?

[vixen99]

So it's it's six of one and half a dozen on the other side? Not much evidence of that.

Mediabiasfactcheck.com says 'These sources (Britannica) consist of legitimate science or are evidence-based through the use of credible scientific sourcing. Legitimate science follows the scientific method, is unbiased, and does not use emotional words. These sources also respect the consensus of experts in the given scientific field and strive to publish peer-reviewed science. Some sources in this category may have a slight political bias but adhere to scientific principles'

On the other hand, https://www.newsmax.com/us/wikipedia-liberal-activist-websit... outlines some serious problems with Wikipedia. Here's one.

'Established leftist outlets The New York Times and BBC News are the most cited sources, around 200,000 stories. The Guardian, an equally left-wing outlet, is cited third at almost 100,000 citations'. Among the top 10 most-cited, only one was right-leaning.

[wongarsu]

Though it is worth noting that they conclude

> The bias on a per word basis hardly differs between the sources because Wikipedia articles tend to be longer than Britannica articles.

[jchanimal]

If reality has a left-wing bias, then you still have to control for that confounding effect.

[yellow_postit]

Extending this — it seems to me there will be growing skillset need to identify quality/accuracy.

Under formed thought: The proverbial haystack just got a lot larger, the needle stayed the same size, what tools will needle hunters need to develop both to find the needles and to prove to others they are in fact needles.

[narrator]

The funny thing about ChatGPT is it will write code that uses non-existent confabulated APIs. You have to then call it out and it will say, oh sorry, of course you're right, here's another confabulated API, etc. The amount of convincing B.S it can spew is enormous!

Worse, when you stray into topics that are controversial it will often use informal fallacies. When you call it out, it will say, yes, you're right, I used an informal fallacy, here is what I should have said about controversial topic that's not the party line, and because you're so smart I won't b.s you.

[krupan]

I don’t know why more people don’t notice this? I feel like nearly everyone talking about ChatGPT hasn’t really pushed it very far or read what it says very closely. It’s actually pretty terrible

[cookingrobot]

Running with the analogy.. We’re used to using tools that help us find needles in the haystack. A rake, a bright light, a metal detector. Now someone sold us a machine that turns hay into needles. They’re not quite as good, but they’re definitely needles. So now as you say the haystack is going to get covered in these. Do we ban use of this machine? Build new machines to separate these synthetic needles from real ones? Or improve the machine so that the needles it makes are good enough for what we need?

[ghaff]

In fairness, Wikipedia isn't just about cheap. It also covers a lot more than Brittanica and covers more current events/information (somewhat to a fault as current events are what drives a lot of the bias). I suspect a lot of people would use Wikipedia even if Brittanica were free.

And while Wikipedia has its problems with current events perhaps especially and can be a bit hit or miss, overall it's pretty good these days and--so long as articles are well-sourced--can be a good jumping off point for more serious research.

[moritonal]

Most peoples taste buds don't work? We love sugar even when our bodies cant take anymore?

[mountainb]

It's true though, Wikipedia really is terrible and full of fake citations that lead nowhere. It's an anti-knowledge base that sometimes has good information.

[tablespoon]

> It's true though, Wikipedia really is terrible and full of fake citations that lead nowhere. It's an anti-knowledge base that sometimes has good information.

Yeah, Wikipedia is garbage puffed up beyond all belief. I literally just today saw something just like you describe.

It should be viewed very skeptically on anything anyone disagrees over (because then it's just snapshots of an agenda-pushing battle).

[gptgpp]

Could you elaborate on this? If it is full of garbage a couple examples should be very easy to find.

I completely agree that Wikipedia can have errors, but in topics that I am educated in it seems pretty decent and I can't remember the last time I came across any (comp sci for example).

The most recent example I can think of is about is an article on vulture bees, and a citation about what their honey tastes like, which turned out to be garbage and incorrect (there are no reliable sources on the qualities of honey, it's basic composition and method of production is even in dispute, when I queried journal articles on the topic).

So "garbage puffed up beyond all belief" and "full of terrible and fake citations that lead to nowhere" sounds a bit hyperbolic, tbh.

[tablespoon]

> Could you elaborate on this? If it is full of garbage a couple examples should be very easy to find.

I could give examples but I won't, because that would link my HN and Wikipedia accounts.

> So "garbage puffed up beyond all belief" and "full of terrible and fake citations that lead to nowhere" sounds a bit hyperbolic, tbh.

People unironically describe it as the "sum of all human knowledge," so it's definitely puffed up beyond belief. In reality, much of it is a slow battle of tendentious agenda-pushing, by people with weird personalities, played according to an arcane rule book (the first unstated rule of which is to never, ever acknowledge that you're pushing an agenda). That doesn't taint all of it, but it taints far more than you'd think.

[gptgpp]

I mean... There are lots of ways to browse Wikipedia offline without having your IP recorded, absent using something simpler like a VPN.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

I can understand if this is just too much effort to put into an online discussion though, I probably wouldn't bother myself.

And yeah there have been lots of scandals with Wikipedia. This one was pretty infamous:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-...

Ironically I think your attitude probably protects Wikipedia quite a bit, and from that perspective I'd like to see more of it. The less people see it as a good source of information, the less incentive there is for all of the agenda-pushing you've described (which also definitely happens).

I still think the bulk of it is pretty decent though, on non/less-polarizing subjects, which describes most of IMO.

My main issue is that most articles are an inch deep. I find myself using textbooks and journal articles more often these days, while sailing the open seas as this would otherwise be cost prohibitive.

[mountainb]

If we look at the Vulture Bee article, it cites a couple semi-relevant journal articles (which do exist but are not exactly on point for a general citation), but then it inflates the number of citations pointlessly by citing multiple pop news articles that all cite one of the previously cited research papers, and some of which just blogspam link to the other useless popular science magazine citations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulture_bee

In many history articles, there are random citations to web pages without any provenance that claim to be translated documents. Sometimes this is done despite the existence of reliable public databases of such documents available through universities, foundations, and governments. Then there is the link rot problem which gets worse over time.

[gjvc]

I could give examples but I won't, because that would link my HN and Wikipedia accounts.

How?

[miguelazo]

THIS: "people with weird personalities"

Seen it way too many times for it to be a coincidence.

[tablespoon]

> Seen it way too many times for it to be a coincidence.

It's definitely not a coincidence. Wikipedia is structured to actively select for it.

[datavirtue]

I think I know what you mean but "weird" is subjective.

[hutzlibu]

You could use a throwaway account, if you really have those mindblowing examples to share.

So far all of the claims of Wikipedia as a pile of shit never had a real base to me. And political topics are controversial by its nature. There are authorative sources saying Marxism(Capitalism, or whatever) is good and Marxism(Capitalism) is bad, so what is the right side, Wikipedia should present? It struggles to cover the middle ground of scientific consensus, saying those said this and they said that. Which is why scientific articles about biology or physics are way better of course, but sure, in its current state, Wikipedia is good for a overview of a topic, but to dive in, you should read the quoted sources.

Usually the first thing when I encounter something new, is indeed to check Wikipedia. And I am glad it exists. I know I cannot believe it fully, but I still trust it way more, than some random site that might be better, but how should I know at first glance?

To really study, I read the scientific books and papers about a topic and Wikipedia is a good start for that.

[foobarbecue]

Just use a throwaway

[tablespoon]

> Just use a throwaway

Too late now.

[jhbadger]

Wikipedia is generally excellent on established scientific and technical topics in science and math and things. Where people seem to have issue with it are topics with more controversy -- a history of nation X can be seen as wrong or biased to people of country Y because it may refer to borders, causes of wars with its neighbors, etc. Even citations don't really help because critics will claim the citations are biased. Obviously printed encyclopedias also had this issue but typically people just accepted that Britannica would support the US/UK view of the world.

[aimor]

While claims of Wikipedia's awfulness may be overstated, I do see a lot of problems. And while I am picking on Wikipedia I don't think it's useless, but it does require caution.

The last Wikipedia page I visited ( Elder_Mother ) someone had, years ago, removed all of the citations for the article. These were websites that contained much more and higher quality content than the Wiki page itself, and had been cited with the original page creation. I only found the citations by chance, because I decided to look at the page's history. This poor curation isn't just bad for the usefulness of Wikipedia, it's borderline plagiarism since the entire article was composited from paraphrasing.

Before that I saw a Wikipedia page ( The Voyage of Life ) that admitted its own plagiarism. The page had a big disclaimer at the top: "This page might contain plagiarism" but more delicately worded. So somebody noticed the verbatim plagiarism, added a flag, and then nothing.

Another issue is the lack of expertise, which leads to misleading wishy-washy statements. The page for slugs, talking about control, says crushed eggshells, "are generally ineffective on a large scale, but can be somewhat useful in small gardens." This is false, eggshells are ineffective in all gardens. But to avoid edit wars the language has to pussyfoot around sensitive topics like gardening advice.

Stemming from the lack of expertise, Wikipedia itself becomes out of date without curation. The problem is while it claims to be more up-to-date than printed media, there's no easy way to identify how significant the information on a page is. If I go to an article am I reading things that were written 20 years ago or 2 years ago? Is the material presented relevant in 2023? Was it ever significant to begin with, or did the author happen to have knowledge and interest in something obsolete?

Most pages are also, I think, poorly organized ( Partial differential equation ). I believe a single voice and more effort to write articles for a well defined audience would help immensely, specifically with math and science pages. Wikipedia keeps trying to condense complex material from a textbook into an encyclopedia article format, and it's not working out.

[tablespoon]

> Stemming from the lack of expertise, Wikipedia itself becomes out of date without curation. The problem is while it claims to be more up-to-date than printed media, there's no easy way to identify how significant the information on a page is.

That's an interesting point. A lot of Wikipedia articles seem to be stuck in the late 2000s (2005-2010). When it was new, a lot of people had fun banging out new articles, but then those got more-or-less abandoned. It doesn't help that their population of dedicated "editors" has really dropped off from those highs and is in long-term decline.

[xdennis]

Examples: anything that's political.

Let's take for example the article about Patrisse Cullors (of BLM fame). A video surfaced of her saying "I am a trained Marxist". If you look at the archives[1], many people wanted to include this. But it was rejected with such ridiculous arguments as: "it is entirely unclear what a 'trained Marxist' actually means [...] She doesn't say anything like 'I am a Marxist' "

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Patrisse_Cullors/Archive_...

[lamontcg]

That is a pretty hyperbolic statement, but I found that e.g. Brent's rootfinding algorithm on wikipedia was not good and looped rather than exiting when using an error tolerance of EPS (blowing up in the maxiteration check), while finding a more battlehardened implementation and copying the algorithm worked much better. I never did the work to determine exactly where the bugs were in the algorithm in the wikipedia page though.

[miguelazo]

It's telling that you only cited examples of scientific subjects. As the other commenter noted, articles of consequence for public debate (politics) are generally terrible and there are lots of "editors" who are working for deep state cut-outs doing nothing but trying to damage the reputation of intellectuals who are a danger to the status quo.

[gptgpp]

Yes I agree, it is telling.

It is similarly telling that conservative wikis have barely any articles on core topics like engineering, mathematics, philosophy, and the sciences. These intellectuals you're describing oddly don't seem to have much interest in things most people would deem intellectual...

For example, compare the Wikipedia article on Leonhard Euler with that of conservapedia... It's so absurd I had to double check the self-proclaimed "conservative wikipedia" wasn't satire.

Probably a false flag by the deep state though. Conservapedia has more on that than the entirety of linear algebra and computer science, lol.

[tablespoon]

> It is similarly telling that conservative wikis have barely any articles on core topics like engineering, mathematics, philosophy, and the sciences. These intellectuals you're describing oddly don't seem to have much interest in things most people would deem intellectual...

It's not really telling, it's just a path-dependent artifact about how those projects are positioned in the "ecosystem." When you have a "mainstream" site that's a little biased against some ideology, it monopolizes the general-interest/popular users. A competitor that sets itself to answer that bias will only be able to attract a user base that's highly skewed towards very ideological users who found that bias intolerable, because the general interest users aren't motivated to leave for it.

If Wikipedia had a subtle conservative bias, a hypothetical "Leftopedia" would be similarly full of liberal axe-grinding and weak on general-interest topics.

[miguelazo]

Wow, I didn't even know Conservapedia was a thing. Although conservative interests have way more money to throw around, so not surprising someone would sponsor such a dead-end project. Similar to their wiki directory of lefty intellectuals; can't remember the name.

[xdennis]

I wouldn't say it's garbage, just that the quality varies a lot. Uncontroversial stuff is quite accurate.

A simple metric I use is: how long the talk page is. If a talk page has 15 archives then the article page is probably politically biased hot trash.

[sedev]

Unfortunately this heuristic, while often good, can sometimes lead you wildly astray — for examples see the article on Beyoncé and the article about the plant _Zea mays._ Good articles, but you want a hazmat suit for the talk pages.

[__MatrixMan__]

Did you take a moment to improve the article you had an issue with? That's kind of the point...

[Jiro]

Wikipedia problems with political articles are caused by people actively biasing the articles. You cannot just modify the article; it'd get reverted for, at best, going against consensus.

Someone gave an example above where a person calling herself a trained Marxist was not accepted as evidence that she is a Marxist. Do you seriously think that editing the article to include the reference would be allowed?

Furthermore, the point is that Wikipedia has a systematic problem. Individual instances that people point out are examples. It would be impossible to fix the whole problem yourself and saying "that example doesn't count because you can fix it yourself" is just a way of ignoring examples, not dealing with the problem.

[__MatrixMan__]

No, I suppose you're right. I guess I had never considered going to wikipedia for content of that sort before.

[miguelazo]

There's also tons of censorship on Wikipedia based on nothing but ideology. Just look at how the Grayzone can no longer be used as a source, based on claims it is "state-affiliated" media, despite ZERO evidence after literally years of such BS claims and now documented evidence of Western states targeting them (look up the exposé on Paul Mason) because they report inconvenient facts about what the security state is doing. There are many more lower-profile harassment campaigns carried out by "editors" looking to smear intellectuals (especially on the left) so that they can't get speaking gigs, print articles in major media, etc. Jimmy Wales himself went after the Grayzone. https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/11/meet-wikipedias-ayn-rand-...

[carapace]

A group calling themselves "Guerilla Skeptics" have worked to bias Wikipedia against what they consider badthought. E.g. they deleted the page of a certain author because they feel he's a kook. (Granted, he is pretty kooky by some standards, but that's not the point, eh? He's still on in Germany though if you're curious. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_R._Hawkins the point is that in English WP he's been erased (not to say "cancelled", eh?) not because he's not notable, but because his work offends a fringe group of fanatics.)

https://www.wired.com/story/guerrilla-wikipedia-editors-who-...

[milsorgen]

What state is Grayzone supposedly affiliated with? And what of Bellingcat, I have heard it's state affiliated. Is it an accepted source? What determines state affiliation? This kind of stuff has soured me tremendously on Wikipedia. Post it all and let me sort out I say.

[miguelazo]

They are all Kremlin (or previously Assad) assets, according to groups like Bellingcat, for which there is plenty of hard evidence of state control/funding.

[ROTMetro]

Yes, the problem with Wikipedia is that it doesn't allow enough fringe, pro-violence conspiracy theorists! Nailed it!

[miguelazo]

That's an amazing take, since Grayzone is very explicitly anti-war, and one of the very few US publications taking an active stand against US proxy wars. If anyone is a pro-violence conspiracy theorist, it is the "paper of record" (NYT), which has actively supported/facilitated virtually every gruesome military intervention of the US for well over a century.

[alangibson]

Wikipedia is somewhere between useless and actively bad on anything controversial. I remember checking the discussion on a famous-ish human trafficking case. The moderator straight up refused to consider new reporting because he considered the whole thing settled by the courts.

That kind of thing has ironically been made much worse by Qanon-style wackos. Anything not widely accepted is now treated as a conspiracy theory psi op.

[TurkishPoptart]

Not only that, but it suffers from a persistent yet subtle liberal bias.

[uoaei]

I can settle for "these people did things that caused lots of harm" but how dare you call them "bad"!!

[foruhar]

There is a world in which AI will be the best source of knowledge (most powerful knowledge generator). There will be many LLMs & AIs, open and branded, and we'll pick our oracle. ChatGPT is an infant of an AI and it will mutate, and evolve beyond transformers. Some (many?) branches will be amazing at serving up "enshittened knowledge" but there will be branches that take different approaches and philosophies. There will likely be AI curators of knowledge bases that weed out AI-generated crap, and disinformation. There will be non-hallucinatory AIs, certainty scores, explanation-based systems, first principles machines, and super focused additive AIs that will layer onto a base LLM (or whatever is next). We'll choose (and probably pay for) our blends of knowledge, humour, bias, filtering, and conviviality. The "internet" of tomorrow may run on TCP/IP but it very unlikely to work like this web that we are using now.