13 ms·
After 25 years, Wikipedia has proved that news doesn't need to look like news
- larodi 9mo agoafter 25 years wikipedia showed what it truly was created for, by selling the content for training. otherwise - okay, this was a cool project, perhaps we need better. like federated, crypto-signed articles that once collected together, @atproto style, produce the article with notable changes to it.
- giuliomagnifico 9mo agoYou’re saying Wikipedia was created 25 years ago to sell its content to train LLMs that didn’t even exist?! I doubt it…
- littlestymaar 9mo ago“Jimmy Wales is even more of a visionary than we thought”
- larodi 9mo agoI’m using a harsh allegory to express massive discontent by the fact that someone was catering to user content for 25 years only for this content to become training corpus. It is perhaps not that Wikipedia in particular been created for this, that much we hope for, but nowadays it seems such public services are best monetised in this way. I have an actual memory from when Wikipedia started and the enthusiasm of millions of people for it. And no, I’m not alright with the fact so many people contributed effort AND money to this project only for Jimmy to figure how to sell it better to big corpo. Seems unfair, as it seems unfair to get these downvotes. Like nobody liked the fact MS bought and used all of GitHub to create copilot, so how is this different?
- RestartKernel 9mo agoTheir enterprise offering is more for fresh retrieval than training. For training, you can just download the free database dump — one you would inadvertently end up recreating if you were to use their enterprise APIs in a (pre-)training pipeline.
- armchairhacker 9mo agoContext: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/01/wikipedia-will-share-content-with-ai-firms-in-new-licensing-deals/ https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/01/wikipedia-will-share-cont... tl;dr: Wikipedia is CC and has public APIs, but AI companies have recently started paying for "enterprise" high-speed access. Notably, the enterprise program started in 2021 and Google has been paying since 2022.
- edgineer 9mo ago[flagged]
- usui 9mo agoWow, I would expect there would at least be a single mention of "born Dagny Benedict" somewhere at the beginning of the background section as is typical in other pages. If this is intentional, to omit this entirely seems like it unnecessarily politicizes the issue rather than documenting the history of a person.
- littlestymaar 9mo agoThere's a tricky ethical question here: if someone changed their name and ask for not being called their former name ever again, you can either ignore their will, which is rude, or chose to follow it but then you are doing a disservice to the public's understanding. The secind option used to be the norm on wikipedia even 15 years ago, but Anti-trans activists using dead-naming as a slur against trans people triggered the shift from the second option to the first. As usual assholes are why we can't have nice things.
- usui 9mo ago> The secind option used to be the norm on wikipedia even 15 years ago, but Anti-trans activists using dead-naming as a slur against trans people triggered the shift from the second option to the first. Just to clarify, I think you mistook the order of the first option and the second option? I was confused by this statement
- lukan 9mo ago"if someone changed their name and ask for not being called their former name ever again" Writing someone was called XYZ, is not calling the person by that name again. It is just stating a historic fact.
- philistine 9mo agoNot all historic facts are relevant. Using someone’s old name when relevance can be achieved by stating the person was transgender is preferable.
- 4rtem 9mo ago[flagged]
- CrzyLngPwd 9mo agoOh goodness, if wiki is news, then it's the most biased and easily editable news outside of Winston Smith and the Ministry of Truth.
- decimalenough 9mo agoReally? News coverage on Wikipedia is a lot more reliable than (say) Fox News. Breaking news events in particular get a lot of eyeballs and while you obviously can't take everything as gospel, genuinely wrong info is usually purged pretty quickly.
- nephihaha 9mo agoMost news outlets get their news either from press releases or press agencies. It means you effectively get the same talking points across different outlets. Fox is designed to promote Republican viewpoints and MSNBC to promote Democrat ones. They present little outside them and are usually telling the same small selection of stories from different angles.
- 8964689797595 9mo agoGenuine info inconvenient to the far-left editors is usually purged pretty quickly.
- whynotmaybe 9mo ago> the most biased Is it biased because it doesn't reflect your opinion or are the facts also biased?
- efilife 9mo agoKeep in mind that Wikipedia itself tells you that "Wikipedia is not a newspaper" https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:NOTNEWS&redirect=yes https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:NOTNEWS... While having an "In the news" section on the front page
- input_sh 9mo agoThose two statements don't contradict each other.
- LudwigNagasena 9mo agoIt clarifies exactly what that means. It doesn’t say that the information have to pass the test of time. Only that it is not a place of original reporting, unsourced gossip, etc.
- hahahahhaah 9mo agoWhich is fine and not contradictory. It is not a newspaper (like HN) but it may overlap with some mainstream news (also like HN).
- brap 9mo agoWikipedia has long been hijacked to serve agendas. The “truth” is whatever the highest bidder wants it to be. Most recently hijacked by the Qatar dictatorship: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/16/pr-firm-portland-accused-of-commissioning-favourable-changes-to-wikipedia-pages https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/16/pr-firm-p... News, influencers, Wikipedia, almost all information we consume nowadays is intentional. And not even getting into billions poured into American colleges by the same people.
- alex1138 9mo agoYou need only to look at how many actual well credentialed doctors get their Wiki pages smeared with words like "misinformation spreader" for dissenting against covid narratives
- jahnu 9mo agoCan you provide an example?
- sigmoid10 9mo agoThey probably mean people like Robert Malone [1], who - despite being well accomplished in a related field - spread verifiably wrong information about vaccines on social media during the pandemic. There are many people like him who showed past accomplishments in a related field, but were totally out of their depth when interviewed about covid on the Joe Rogan podcast or similar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Malone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Malone
- nephihaha 9mo agoYet in officialdom, that kind of thing was perfectly acceptable. In Scotland we had a dentist running Covid lockdown, which is ironic since public dental services were decimated by it and never recovered.
- brigandish 9mo ago
- horsh1 9mo agoComparing the same article in different languages sometimes gets very educational.
- nephihaha 9mo agoYes, and sometimes they are very different. I was surprised to see the German Wikipedia had a couple of articles on Scottish history that were better than the English language one!
- beardyw 9mo agoIt seems a shame Weeklypedia doesn't have an RSS feed.
- phrotoma 9mo agoHuh, TIL about https://weekly.hatnote.com/ https://weekly.hatnote.com/ This is fascinating, thanks for mentioning it!
- Aardwolf 9mo agoWhen there's some big ongoing thing in the news there'll be many articles on that same topic on news websites and sometimes you can't even find the original one that tells what actually happened. Wikipedia's article on it is usually a great summary
- jaccola 9mo agoIn the UK I would say most people are proud of the BBC^; many people I speak to are smug when comparing it to e.g. Fox News, CNBC, etc... I think this is a big mistake, and that the USA system is actually better. It's impossible for one news source to be unbiased, and the delusion that it is unbiased is dangerous. If you truly believe a source is "the truth" and unbiased it allows you to switch off any critical thinking; the information bypasses any protections you have. Much better to have many news sources where the bias is evident and the individual has to synthesise an opinion themselves (not claiming this is perfect by any means, but a perfect system does not exist). It is obviously the case that Wikipedia is biased, and I think competition is a great thing. We would be better served by a market of options to use our own faculties than a false sense of comfort in a fake truth. ^though many are refusing to pay the (almost) legally mandatory "tv-license".
- have_faith 9mo agoNo one who regularly watches biased news sources does so while acknowledging the constant bias. And I don’t think most people think the BBC is unbiased, it’s constantly attacked as having bias to both sides of the aisle ironically. The BBC is far from perfect but it’s in a different league to Fox News to the point that it feels disingenuous to suggest you’d be better off watching Fox News while telling yourself that you’re filtering out the bias.
- graemep 9mo agoI agree we need multiple news sources, but the UK has multiple news sources. What the BBC adds is one with a different funding model so different biases. I do not think this works as well as it did historically. As for unwillingness to pay the license fee, the biggest issue is the rise of streaming alternatives. It reduced the BBC from providing about half of available TV to being one among many providers so the license fee no longer feels like good value for money. Its not mandatory. I have never owned a TV. If you do not watch broadcast TV or Iplayer you do not have to have a TV license. I also think Capita's aggressive scare tactics in trying to get people to pay the license fee have created a lot of hostility towards the BBC.
- 9mo ago
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- akst 9mo agoI think a lot people underestimate how arbitrary some editorial decisions on wikipedia can be. Yeah perfect is the enemy of the good but imperfect is still imperfect. Can’t say I’m a fan of jj mccullough‘s opinions on some stuff but his video on wikipedia is good https://youtu.be/-vmSFO1Zfo8?si=0mS24EVODwLrPJ3T https://youtu.be/-vmSFO1Zfo8?si=0mS24EVODwLrPJ3T I don’t feel as strongly as he does but ever since watching I just don’t see much value in starting with Wikipedia when researching something. He also points out how a lot content creators default to referencing it. After realising how much of history or geography YouTube is just regurgitating Wikipedia articles, it kind of ruined those kinds of videos for me, and this was before AI. So now I try spend more time reading books or listening to audiobooks on a topics I’m interested instead. Like I still use Wikipedia for unserious stuff or checking if a book I was recommended was widely criticised or something but that’s it really. It’s also just not a good learning resource, like if you ever wanted to study a mathematics topic, wikipedia might be one of the worst resources. Like Wikipedia doesn’t profess to be a learning resource and more a overview resource but even the examples they use sometimes are just kind of unhelpful. Here’s an example on the Fourier Transform https://youtu.be/33y9FMIvcWY?si=ys8BwDu_4qa01jso https://youtu.be/33y9FMIvcWY?si=ys8BwDu_4qa01jso
- graemep 9mo agoReading (the right) books is definitely the best way to learn about a topic, but its not great for quickly looking up random stuff. Books can spread misinformation too, from Malleus Maleficarum to Erich von Däniken. It is useful for quickly looking up simple facts, and provides a list of sources. The video makes some interesting criticisms. The lack of diversity is not surprising. Dominated by white, male, American's with time on their hands! how would have thought that? Its very obviously American dominated (at least the English version).
- loloquwowndueo 9mo agoSpanish Wikipedia is dominated by folks from Spain, despite Spain being a minority of Spanish speakers.
- 9mo ago
- gsky 9mo agoI prefer subject experts over Wikipedia.
- alex1138 9mo agoBritannica's online format suits it very well
- endoblast 9mo agoIt's funny how every source of knowledge converges to the same thing: mass media. Telling you what to think and trying to influence your behaviour rather than trying to inform you. Using facts, omitting facts or emphasising particular facts over others in order to mislead you. The scientific journals are now included with their anonymous editorials. Peer review is pretty much the same as fact-checking. Contrast this with good fiction, which employs falsehoods to point towards the truth: truth which cannot easily be verified but which is our real bread and butter.
- nialv7 9mo agoAlthough, due to Wikipedia's own policy, that it must cite other reliable sources, it can never be a source of first-hand news.
- nephihaha 9mo agoWikipedia's main form of academic critique is to "verify" content through a Google search.
- roomey 9mo agoIs there an RSS version of the weekly newsletter about Wikipedia articles?
- flexagoon 9mo agoYou can use https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ to turn it into RSS
- mch82 9mo agoThis article is talking about Portal:Current Events on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events). The current events articles are fantastic! Normal newspaper articles are status updates. Current events articles synthesize news to present the current, comprehensive understanding about an event. It’s cool to monitor how current events articles evolve over time.
- amai 9mo agoI would love to see news sites copying at least some of the technology of wikipedia. First and foremost every article should be versioned and it should be easy to see diffs. Every version of a news article should have a permanent link to it. Why don‘t news agencies use git for example? Also news articles should be written using a markup language that is easy to parse and easy to read by AI agents. Instead most of them still write articles in word and convert it from docx into HTML or PDF. That usually generates terrible documents that break accessibility. And of course a common markup language for news articles would enable many applications. But I guess we will land on Mars before we can have something like that.
- akst 9mo agoMore professional organisations definitely have some kind of CMS, with potentially their own version management (at least for what’s published). But I also don’t think we can fault people for preparing their piece in their preferred writing tool. I just can’t see existing news agencies doing this of their own volition. As Generating stories themselves is what keeps news agencies in business. Unless they had a new competitor who had who kept running rings around them with all three features. But it’s going to come back to having better stories or better long form pieces (depending on the publications niche), as that’s ultimately why someone visits their site. I could however see some 3rd party doing this like an extension that overlays someone’s site or acts as alternative presentation of their content.
- xtiansimon 9mo agoI’m going to reject the premise—this is not “news”, but “recent events”.
- nomdep 9mo ago[flagged]
- aeve890 9mo ago>Alternativa Estudiantil Alternativa Estudiantil is a Spanish patriotic student movement founded in September 2023 to counter perceived left-wing and woke dominance in universities, positioning itself as a conservative alternative emphasizing national identity and meritocracy.[1] A random article in the "edit approved by Grok". Genuinely bias-free my ass.
- flexagoon 9mo agohttps://grokipedia.com/page/Elon_Musk https://grokipedia.com/page/Elon_Musk If this looks like a "genuinely bias-free" page to you, I don't know what to tell you.
- nickthegreek 9mo agocan you provide a few examples where grokipedia outshines wikipedia?
- jakkos 9mo agoI started reading the Grokipedia page on the "Russian invasion of Ukraine". Immediately after the abstract, it starts talking about the "9th century Kyivan Rus" which seems like irrelevant information to a conflict over a millenia later, but then you realize it's exact same thing that Putin started with in his interview with Tucker Carlson to push the 'Ukraine isn't a real country' narrative.
- asacrowflies 9mo agoAre you joking?
- gitaarik 9mo agohttps://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/elon-musk-grokipedia-wikipedia-neo-nazi-grok-42-encyclopedia-rcna244749 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/elon-musk-grokipedia-... "Unlike Wikipedia, Grokipedia centralizes its editing process. Users can submit suggested edits to Grokipedia, but instead of assigning a group of volunteer community editors to decide on the edits, xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, controls whether or not a certain edit is approved and implemented on the website." So you could as well call it "Muskipedia"
- swaits 9mo ago[flagged]
- amanaplanacanal 9mo agoWikipedia has over 7,000,000 articles, and grokipedia only about 6,000,000. Or is that not what you meant?
- gorfian_robot 9mo agojfc
- hulitu 9mo ago> will ensure everyone has access to trustworthy knowledge for everyone for generations to come. Maybe to trustworthy propaganda, just like this website.
- nephihaha 9mo agoWikiMedia has agreed to promote the UN's SDGs. There was a discussion on it several years ago. It was more or less presented as a fait accompli.
- sennalen 9mo agoWikipedia is not a newspaper. Please stop trying to update it with information less than a week old.
- GaryBluto 9mo agoI suggest everybody here take a look at Matthew White's excellent WikiWatch. Despite the last entry being 2006, it is still a very valuable criticism of Wikipedia today. http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.htm http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.htm