[thoroughburro]

My appreciation of Wikipedia has decreased as my own expertise has increased. A long way before I’m anywhere near an expert on a topic, I begin to spot misleading inaccuracies in its Wikipedia articles. Most often, information that is decades out of date — correct once, but now actively perpetuating old, inaccurate information.

If you’re relying on Wikipedia for more than discovery, be aware that you’re internalizing some amount low-quality or false information along with your layman’s view of the topic.

[jsmallberries]

> If you’re relying on Wikipedia for more than discovery, be aware that you’re internalizing some amount low-quality or false information along with your layman’s view of the topic.

Where would you suggest getting up-to-date encyclopedic information?

[thoroughburro]

Wikipedia is fine for that.

My point is that “encyclopaedic information” is low-quality by necessity: there is no shortcut to truly expert information on a topic.

Too many have convinced themselves they can find expertise without joining an actual discourse of experts.

[mingus88]

This is a silly take. How many experts are available to provide “actual discourse” with everyone out there.

That’s why experts write articles for encyclopedias.

The issue that I have is that Wikipedia editors are terminally online political actors. All you have to do is browse the edits and talk sections for popular pages to become jaded with it. These are not serious editors.

I am old enough to have had childhood access to actual printed encyclopedias, and they were amazing. I don’t really care if the section I am reading about the renaissance is not up to date. Funny how you never hear that complaint about libraries filled with old books, where research has been done for centuries.

[hawthornet]

Perhaps someone could start an alternative to Wikipedia that allows people to register blogs and papers of experts on topics that an LLM could extract information from and that experts could be invited to edit and curate?