Wikipedia, the online nonprofit encyclopedia, laid out a simple plan to ensure its website continues to be supported in the AI era, despite its declining traffic.

  • Jimbo@pawb.social
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    5 days ago

    In the age of AI slop that you can’t trust, Wikipedia use is going down??

    • who@feddit.org
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      5 days ago

      Kind of funny: When Wikipedia was new, people often said that you couldn’t trust information on it because anyone could have written it, even if they were unqualified, biased, or deliberately deceptive. I guess that’s still true today, but with the advent of automated misinformation generators, the Wiki almost seems authoritative in comparison.

      • MurrayL@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Yeah, when I was at school in the early 00s we were specifically banned from referencing Wikipedia as a source because it was seen as untrustworthy.

        • quick_snail@feddit.nl
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          4 days ago

          You’re supposed to reference the articles that Wikipedia references, not Wikipedia itself

        • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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          5 days ago

          Which is ridiculous, everybody knows that the reason you should be banned from referencing Wikipedia as a source is because an encyclopedia is not a source

          • arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone
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            5 days ago

            Uh, it’s a tertiary source. It’s still a source, just not one you should be directly citing. They’re great for finding other sources though.

    • Sciaphobia@sh.itjust.works
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      5 days ago

      People think they can trust the slop, is the thing. If they even think so far ahead, they probably think that an answer that exists on wikipedia will just be provided by the AI, saving them the time to search for it themselves. I’ve heard more than one horror story of ChatGPT use in particular backfiring on someone who somehow legitimately thought it was just another form of search engine, and didn’t verify the information provided.