Why do people get mad at you for using Wikipedia, but treat Google and AI chatbots like they're gospel?
No, this isn't a case of different people having different opinions about different ways to obtain information during different times. More often than not, I find that the SAME people who act like Wikipedia is the most unreliable thing on Earth unironically trust the FIRST Google Search result they see, as well as everything they've ever seen in ChatGPT.
Need I remind you that Google is LITERALLY designed to cater to your biases? And it's gotten WORSE because the first result you see is NOW AI-Generated. Also, Google is not a source! And AI Chatbots cite THEMSELVES as sources!
Wikipedia on the other hand is curated by REAL VOLUNTEER HUMANS who strive to be accurate as possible. I'm aware that Wikipedia is no stranger to agendas or vandalism, but these editors are quick and dedicated to be as accurate as possible. So much so that whenever a building is on fire, they LITERALLY label it as "Status: Burning". Not burned... BURNING! Meanwhile, Google tells you to put glue on your pizza...
And yes, I know that Wikipedia is not a source. Like Google, Wikipedia is a GATEWAY to sources, and not a source in and of itself. But at the very least, Wikipedia DOESN'T try to give you what you will like, because you'll get what is (most likely) the truth instead, backed up by several CREDIBLE sources that are constantly fact-checked by volunteer humans.
So why do people hate Wikipedia so much? And why do these SAME PEOPLE cite Google and ChatGPT as a source?
Very few do. There's your answer
I know not a single person who hates Wikipedia.
You wanna hear ironic? My dad got me to install GrapheneOS on his Pixel because google was trying to get him to activate the AI. Now dad is using the google search. I explained its all AI junk "but its easy" is his reply.
Subtle difference between on-device services that hoover up every conceivable data point VS a search assistant
This isn’t really a question this is more like a rant with a question mark
Years of "Wikipedia is not a source" without critically thinking about what that means or when to apply it. The same people who will say that will ignore that it was meant for research papers, but somehow forgot what makes sources credible. It's really a suffering from success thing. The phrase was just said so often it became part of people's thoughts. Sort of like the "five dollar footlong" thing with Subway.
I had a teacher forbidding Wikipedia as a study source and a class formed by over 80 students quietly aquiesced. It took one question of why wasn't Wikipedia a valid source for general context to help in forming a broad stroke idea on a subject to nearly make the teacher go into a fit on how it was inacurate and unproperly revised. Wich was not the point.
To say you can't look at it at all is so insane, and his would you even prove it? The entire point of encyclopedias is to give you a brief overview of a new topic.
My personal take?
Funneling.
This was a class on Social Psychology and even the books for the class were not to be read in full. Instead, only excerpts were to be consulted.
That creates a huge context gap. Drills in narrow concepts. Does not foster thinking and relation of concepts and ideas.
The teacher was creating a low effort class, easily manageable, with little to no opposition to her methods and ideas.
I have literally never encountered anyone who got mad at me for using Wikipedia. There are certain people who will still repeat what they learnt about it in school 20 years ago when they were told "don't use Wikipedia as a source" and then they stopped listening. But even those people see the benefits.
Tankies think Wikipedia is western liberal CIA-funded propaganda.
Show them articles on the genocides in Ukraine or the Chinese genocide of Uyghurs and them lose their minds.
They'll happily use it for things that paint any of their chosen "western" countries in a negative way while happily ignoring any that do the same for their obsession countries. It's totally not hypocritical.
See the thing is tons of exhausted teachers just keep teaching the same shit every year; many of them teach the stuff they learned when they were in school. So a crazy number of them do in fact still teach kids that Wikipedia can't be trusted because anyone can edit it
Yeah, this is the answer. Lots of grade school teachers don't continue learning because they were perfectly happy to just believe that nothing changes and they are the ones in a class that know stuff and their students don't. You've had these teachers and they got mad at your questions when their answers conflicted. You know the ones. They say don't quote wikipedia still
But Wikipedia can't be trusted as a source. It's great for overviews of topics and for listing out many other potentially valid sources in the reference list at the end of every article. If you're writing a paper though, you should never actually cite Wikipedia
Wikipedia has quite strict rules on who cam edit what, and what can be changed, especially on major articles.
Besides, you follow the sources the Wikipedia article uses and cite those things. Not cite Wikipedia itself
First… are the people bringing this up really into social media? Or conservative, by chance?
There’s three potentially confused things:
Oldschool “Wikipedia isn’t a primary source.” I learned this in middle school. It’s technically true.
There’s slightly newer accusations of a liberal Wikipedia bias. Hence the attempt to create Conservapedia. There’s a tiny nugget of truth, perhaps, but not to the outrageous extent suggested.
THEN there are modern attempts to discredit Wikipedia as a whole. Mind my tinfoil hat, but I’d argue it’s largely algorithmic and Big Tech driven, as it’s a high profile information source they cannot control, a place where things are documented they don’t necessarily want in the limelight.
There’s some overlap too, like Musk’s motivations, rants, and actions falling into category 2 and 3. Or some hijacking of point 1.
One point 1, the academics have gone real quiet about that in the face of the modern information apocalypse. It’s still true, but it’s like complaining about rain while drowning in a tsunami. The pot-stirrers lost point 2.
…And Big Tech is gonna win on point 3.
They control everyone’s information bubble now. They can make people distrust Wikipedia, as you have seen with your own eyes.
Well of course, the wiki that supports free access to information is more often than not contributed by people who support that. But that is a very slight bias, and you're pretty messed in the head if you believe that information should inherently be restricted to a certain group of people.
Reality has a left wing bias.
Wikipedia: it’s an encyclopedia. Fine for a general overview of a topic, but you need to follow it to primary sources if you want to make an authoritative argument.
Google: it’s got an AI summary at the top and a bunch of SEO’d results on the first pages.
LLMs: really good at translating a lot of content down into something that’s easy to read. Not necessarily easy to understand, not necessarily accurate, not citing it’s sources accurately, but easy to read.
So: where do people’s attitudes come from towards them?
We now have 25 years of Wikipedia. That means that for 25 years, anyone in school from K through university has had it drilled i to them “you can’t use Wikipedia as a primary source!” Which is often interpreted by kids (now adults) as “don’t trust Wikipedia!”
Google has been around for 28 years. When it started, the other search engines always missed things, had a bunch of ads, and were slow. Google was this fast clean interface that could instantly find whatever you were looking for on the world wide web, and the exact human created content you wanted would almost always be featured on the first page of results. People who grew up with that might be slow to catch on to the fact that Google today doesn’t do that. So they trust the results and assume the information they’re looking for must be there somewhere on the first page.
LLMs are new. They hold the promise of early Google in that they crawled all the source material for you and present a summary so you don’t even have to decide which link has the right answer. They haven’t been around long enough for a generation to be trained to distrust the messages they provide.
LLMs are great when they work well. Problem is, they hallucinate a lot.
For example I was just trying to research if/how I could stay and work at a nearby airport - I need to leave my Airbnb by 10am but my flight is at 7pm, so I'm thinking of heading right to the airport and just working from there.
Gemini told me that at this airport there's numerous landside cafés and work pods available.
Perplexity said for sure there will be spots I can work from.
Both were incredibly wrong as they collated information from airside - even though I specifically asked for landside as the airline I'm flying with doesn't offer early luggage dropoff, so until ~4pm I'm stuck landside.
guess what there is landside? a single cafe with about 10 seats...
LLMs are also stuck in the past. Always ask an LLM what the date is before starting a session that has any expectation of current results. Usually you’ll find the information it prioritizes is from a few years ago.
LLMs also often incorrectly weight information.
If you have a popular website that has outdated information with a note at the top that the information is outdated, the LLM will see it’s a well respected site, ignore the disclaimer at the top that falls out of it’s context window, and happily tell you the annotatedly incorrect information is the baseline truth.
It’s possible to get good results out of an LLM, but it’s a skill, just like engineering a good Google search string or using Wikipedia to find the primary source information you need.
Because wikipedia has some opinions but chatgpt strokes their ego by being sycophantic and validating every stupid idea in their head.
Wikipedia is good for getting a good overview of a topic, but like any other source, should not be used alone. Wikipedia by itself is bad, an article by itself isn't good, even the most accurate source should never be used alone. Always refer to multiple sources. Don't trust one Google result, use many. Ideally don't only use Google results, use other engines too (metasearch engines like SearXNG instances are great for this). Use Wikipedia, Britannica, or whatever other wiki in combination with each other. Feed into multiple news sources, not just one or two.
I don't think many people are trusting the first Google result while also disliking Wikipedia, since for many topics, Wikipedia is the first result you see!
As for LLMs, it's a case of convenience and laziness. They summarise information to a readable format (often leaving out important details) that are easily digestible (but often lacking in context) compared to some of the longer Wikipedia entries (or most other sources in general)
Nonsense, sorry. The most people I know like Wikipedia, and distrust or even hate anything even remotely related to LLM/"AI" valuing their own precious priceless lifetime.
And, if by "Google" you mean the "Google Search", then may I ask, how is it wrong to use a great search to try finding the actually accountable information?
There are options to hide the "AI-Generated":
- https://udm14.com/;
- Hide Google AI Overviews extension;
- How do I disable all AI features in Chrome?;
- https://justthebrowser.com/;
Yet, wait... sources you say? Let's send a prompt to the dead machine:
People that criticize the use of Wikipedia are generally doing so to intentionally be manipulative. They use the vague confusion around how Wikipedia works to make it look unreliable, then imply that it makes whatever you say wrong.
Generally, it is a fascist take, because fascists hate the idea of a community-based anything. If there is no central authority/boss, then they hate it.
AI is seen as the opposite, it is this one magic entity that you refer to and tells you whatever you want to hear and leads you to believe that they are amazing. Which coincidentally is what all fascist politicians do.
Anyone that considers LLMs to be anything else than worthless has opinions that are as worthless anyway, so I'd advise ignoring them.
I have never met a person that was upset about me citing Wikipedia and I e been using it for as long as it has existed.
This seems like desperately reaching for something to be upset about.
Having trust issues with Wikipedia is one thing. But trusting AI and the first Google Search result you see over Wikipedia? That's CRAZY to say the least!