Comment by nearlyepic
8 hours ago
> Don’t be afraid of destroying things. Wikipedia isn’t unique or precious really.
Surely you’re joking?
8 hours ago
> Don’t be afraid of destroying things. Wikipedia isn’t unique or precious really.
Surely you’re joking?
I hope they mean the project is precious but the formal organisation that funds the project isn't. Like Firefox and Mozilla.
Before LLMs, Wikipedia was the greatest source of misinformation in all of human history. It is at best good for satiating an idle curiosity with some plausible-sounding fun facts to amuse oneself with without care for whether they're really true or not, but so many people rely on it for so much more, and I have little doubt it causes more harm than good. Real encyclopedias with professional standards exist.
What truly grinds my gears about Wikipedia isn't the amount of false information but the amount of uncorroborated info. The amount of times I've read an article that made large, sweeping claims about something and then not have any citations, often not even a "citation needed" box should be frankly unacceptable.
That’s very correct. Wikipedia has been an unending source of failing exams among my students.
What do you teach?