Flipboard Tech DeskWikipedia has banned its editors from using AI to create articles, @404mediaco reports. @emanuelmaiberg talked to the Wikipedia editor who proposed the guideline about why.
π‘πππΊππππΊπ π°ππππ±@TechDesk @404mediaco @emanuelmaiberg
The problem is Wiki already contains a lot of wrong info. I saw an article yesterday which I'm pretty sure was mostly AI slop regurgitaed from a very wrong Wiki page. The problem with it is your next-door-neighbour Joe Blow, who has forgotten the rules of Maths, is totally allowed to admin a page about Maths. Welcome to why I post it here instead. Wikipedia is "like an encyclopedia" in the same way that Madonna is like a virgin
The problem is Wiki already contains a lot of wrong info. I saw an article yesterday which I'm pretty sure was mostly AI slop regurgitaed from a very wrong Wiki page. The problem with it is your next-door-neighbour Joe Blow, who has forgotten the rules of Maths, is totally allowed to admin a page about Maths. Welcome to why I post it here instead. Wikipedia is "like an encyclopedia" in the same way that Madonna is like a virgin
Furbland's Very Cool Mastodonβ’@SmartmanApps @TechDesk @404mediaco @emanuelmaiberg for every troll who edits an article, thereβs 5 dedicated editors standing by to correct it. the beauty of wikis is that theyβre constantly being fact-checked by tons of experts. @wikipedia even has a dedicated counter-vandalism team!
@SmartmanApps @TechDesk @404mediaco @emanuelmaiberg @wikipedia the problem with traditional encyclopedias is they tend to be biased and can be hard to update. Wikipedia and its many policies bypass all that
@GroupNebula563 @TechDesk @404mediaco @emanuelmaiberg @wikipedia
"for every troll who edits an article" - Professor Rick Norwood isn't a troll https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rick-Norwood and yet his Maths corrections keep getting backed out by admins. Welcome to why I post my Maths facts on Mastodon, where no-one can back them out https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/110968910722113903
@GroupNebula563 @TechDesk @404mediaco @emanuelmaiberg @wikipedia
"theyβre constantly being fact-checked by tons of experts" - and getting backed out again by admins. See previous comment. None of the Maths pages ever cite any Maths textbooks, despite the fact there are many available for free on the Internet Archive
"many policies bypass all that" - including bypassing fact-checking π so either the policies don't work, or aren't followed. Either way Wikipedia has a facts problem
@SmartmanApps @TechDesk @404mediaco @emanuelmaiberg @wikipedia the policies do work, and are followed. they work quite well, in fact. the articles don't cite textbooks, but they *do* cite papers from credible mathematicians/universities, which IMO tend to be far more authoritative. if this rick norwood is a highly credible mathematician, he himself would likely have a wikipedia article, and unless he died in 1675, he does not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Norwood
@SmartmanApps @TechDesk @404mediaco @emanuelmaiberg @wikipedia the only "rick norwood" i can find on wikipedia, unless he goes under another username there, is an avid contributor to the project and seems to quite enjoy it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rick_Norwood
@SmartmanApps @TechDesk @404mediaco @emanuelmaiberg @wikipedia ...or he was, until he was diagnosed with alzheimer's and begun making disruptive edits to pages, which are probably the ones getting reverted that you're talking about. not to mention, there's zero indication i can find that the wikipedia editor rick and the researchgate rick are the same person
@SmartmanApps @TechDesk @404mediaco @emanuelmaiberg @wikipedia if you have any further concerns about wikipedia or any other wikimedia projects, i highly suggest taking that up with @LucasWerkmeister, the only person i can think of off the top of my head who is more qualified than i to answer this sort of thing
@GroupNebula563 @TechDesk @404mediaco @emanuelmaiberg @wikipedia @LucasWerkmeister
"the policies do work, and are followed" - clearly not, given pages like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.999... exist
"IMO tend to be far more authoritative" - I see you haven't read any of their blog posts then, where they can't even get order of operations right (spoiler alert: they don't teach it at university, it's taught in high school, which they've long since left - high school textbooks are the references to use)
@GroupNebula563 @TechDesk @404mediaco @emanuelmaiberg @wikipedia @LucasWerkmeister
"an avid contributor to the project and seems to quite enjoy it" - yep, that's him. Now go look at the Maths talk pages where his corrections kept getting backed out
"which are probably the ones getting reverted that you're talking about" - nope! Probably more than a decade ago now
"are the same person" - and yet, the corrections were still correct, and were still backed out
@SmartmanApps @TechDesk @404mediaco @emanuelmaiberg @wikipedia @LucasWerkmeister it seems like every time i prove my point in one regard you completely steer the debate in another direction in a futile attempt to remain prevalent. if you really must waste time arguing about this further, please do so with lucas and remove me from any further mentions in this thread. thank you.