Hrefna (DHC)Feb 26, 2023

This idea that somehow search engines _can_ arbitrate "truth" is just so… not how any of this works or could even conceivably work.

The reason that search engines "backstop" with wikipedia is because wikipedia is a giant curated and mostly-audience-appropriate collection of knowledge.

Knowing what is "true" is so incredibly nontrivial.

Show threadAlan Au
@hrefna One quirk I've found is that the reliability of any given Wikipedia page is directly proportional to the popularity of the subject. High-traffic pages about common topics are well curated. Obscure topics less so.
Feb 26, 2023 at 6:18pmTusky
Show threadKatie FFeb 27, 2023
@Alan_Au in my niche subject area I've found very few errors, and the page views are probably on the order of a dozen per year, excluding me. Maybe this is only true of science wiki's. I am mostly looking up compounds and uncommon analytical methods.