Comment by bberenberg

> But in that case, there is still the option to edit the page or start a discussion.

Honestly, I think on any politicised topic, that’s a waste of time - there’s a large contingent of Wikipedia editors with a shared deeply ingrained perspective that will reliably back each other up. There are better uses of one’s time than fighting such a losing battle.

> Personally, I do not know a better alternative. I have a friend who told me Wikipedia is biased, so he refuses to use it. When I asked him what he uses instead, he said, completely seriously, “X is my main source of information.”

I tend to use AI to surface sources and concepts, and then go read the sources for myself to verify the AI’s claims. AI has a strong tendency to e.g. misrepresent what journal articles say, but (if they are open access or otherwise available-and they generally are if an AI is citing them) you can then read them yourself and make up your own mind.

AI has genuinely taught me things I didn’t know before about topics of interest to me-e.g. Islamic history-but I’m careful to verify its claims with reliable sources rather than just trusting them-which of course one should do with Wikipedia too

> The overwhelming majority of Wikipedia is not meaningless politics, but stated facts backed by decent sources.

This is true of good articles, but the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia tends to lack citations or, worse, cites sources that don't actually support the stated facts.

If an account in good standing adds a cited sentence the likelihood that anyone will actually go and check the source to confirm it supports the sentence is low. It's more likely that the edit will be reverted for other reasons.

Citogenesis is also a real problem, and wildly under-documented.

And most people who read Wikipedia do not take the time to examine all of the sources (if they're even able to - just cite a book if you want to make something up), read through the edit history, and get up to speed on the article-specific politics playing out on the talk page.

Still, it's better than everything else out there.

> Personally, I do not know a better alternative.

For a long time, traditional encyclopedias had a much better track record on topics related to politics and society, simply because their editor selection process largely eliminated single-issue crusading. You wouldn't be picked to lead a particular domain unless your academic track record made it clear that you're level-headed.

But I think that AI, just like your X friend anecdote, actually illustrates an interesting point: most of the time, when we consult some sort of an online reference, we're not doing anything important, so the accuracy is not critical. Quite often, we're just trying to validate our beliefs or win online arguments. An LLM that's 90% accurate but sounds 120% authoritative (and almost always willing to support your priors) is perfect for that.

> stated facts backed by decent sources.

Like WW2-era articles backed by books wtitten in 2003 from an obscure author. And only this author.

Articles where almost everyone agrees on the facts are not interesting for discussing whether a particular encyclopedia is unbiased - it's precisely the contented topics where that distinction matters.

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He got done voted because that's an exaggerated claim. With no proof. Most of the articles on Wikipedia are just facts about nature, geography, history, etc and they don't need a newspaper as a source.

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