Honestly, wikipedia is one of the greatest things to ever exists, and possibly the single best thing that internet has done for civilization.
Yeah, “Don’t trust Wikipedia” always has been like “don’t trust books” because it literally is at least on par and even references sources. We literally can’t do original research on everything ourselves and even just verifying the sources is infeasible for most topics because it’s not just a list but a forest of deep-rooted trees. It takes decades to learn to know what’s real and what’s just a commonly believed lie. Sometimes someone proves the empirically validated assumptions of the past wrong, and then we get new tech like GPS… That said: Don’t trust AI. It’s not as good as the humans filling Wikipedia - yet.
Remember: the people saying, “Wikipedia isn’t a valid source” accepted some random PDF sharing website with 10 popup ads, which you got to after clicking “Accept the risk” as a “valid source”.
as if a book written by any random dude would be any better source
books are valid sources, if your looking at books written by opinions and on fiction thats on you. there are plenty of non-fiction books out there with valid research sources.
it’s really difficult to find good sources. books? written by random dude. wikipedia? written by random dudes. school books? written by a government that wants you to be a docile worker. where do you get information from?
Hahaha
👍
The people telling you Wikipedia wasn’t a valid source were teachers who wanted you to learn to verify information. The people telling you to “just ask chatgpt” are middle managers who just want to get their kpi up to justify their yearly bonus.
They were never the same people, and implying they are is very disingenuous.
The people telling you Wikipedia wasn’t a valid source were teachers who wanted you to learn to verify information
They should have told their students to use the sources cited on Wikipedia (when credible), not pretended that the entirety of the world’s premier encyclopedia is only a wretched hive of vandalism and misinformation.
They were never the same people, and implying they are is very disingenuous.
The “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” (90s) to “reads a lot of clickbait articles” (~2010 and beyond)) pipeline is real, though.
Both of my parents are examples of that, though my dad is center right by Danish standards and my mom is left wing, so none of the articles are from Faux News or Breitbart, thank FSM!
They should have told their students to use the sources cited on Wikipedia (when credible), not pretended that the entirety of the world’s premier encyclopedia is only a wretched hive of vandalism and misinformation.
Unusual straw man because that is what we do.
I was unaware of the change since it’s been a long time since I was in school myself. My bad 🤷🏻
I don’t know what sort of school, and I wasn’t coming after you, but educational attainment gets shot on a lot.
A significant proportion of our training is understanding information. Where it comes from, how useful it is, etc. Trust in information is vital to our existence.
