> Just as academics must cite any AI-generated machine outputs they rely upon in their research and writing, they can also cite Wikipedia if they use it in their work. Doing so can highlight Wikipedia’s value to other academics as a source of knowledge and provide greater transparency in one’s research processes. Despite longstanding skepticism of Wikipedia among some scholars, citations to Wikipedia in academic journals appear to be increasing – even in high-impact publications in subject areas like the health sciences.
As someone who's contributed to Wikipedia and seen how the sausage is made: that's stupid. Even Wikipedia itself considers wikis (including itself) to lack sufficient authority to be cited as a source.
Such citations could be easily gamed (if you cite a particular change) or are useless (the content you cite may not be there in the future), and are obvious pathways to "citogenesis."
If you look up something on Wikipedia and include it in your work without citing it, it's an even worse pathway to citogenesis, since someone trying to check whether you can be used as a source for Wikipedia won't know that that's where you got it from in the first place.
Of course for most things you should have no need to refer to Wikipedia at all, and hence also no need to cite it.
Open knowledge systems like Wikipedia are not really defensible. Letting anybody edit any page is a great way to get AI and human slop everywhere. It makes it extremely easy to insert knowledge with dubious quality and sources.
We need "open access" knowledge systems with known authors who are sponsored by non-profit and educational organizations and its their duty to defend their reputation.
Humanity needs more openly accessible curated and factually checked information and "open to modify" systems are bad at in all.
Something like Wikipedia is a wonderful idea in theory, but it's tough to defend when their policies allow factually incorrect content to remain just because it appears on a third-party source that the editors consider reliable. Most media sources contain a pretty high percentage of fake news and when this slop makes its way into Wikipedia that makes the problem even worse. Can we find a better solution?
Philosiphers have been trying to work on how to define what is "True" since forever without much to show for it.
Wikipedia tries to kick the bucket by going with what "reliable" secondary sources say. Thus the goal is not to say the capital T Truth, but to essentially sumnarize academic knowledge.
To steal a saying - its the worst method except for every other known method.
If anyone has a better idea how to determine what is true and what isn't - i'd certainly be very interested.
I understand that "truth" and "facts" are squishy philosophical concepts at the edges, but I'm talking about something much more basic. There are Wikipedia pages which are flat out wrong (by any common definition of the term) and yet the editors won't allow any corrections because the primary sources are also wrong.
One thing that might help a bit would be to tag or color code specific statements with a confidence factor. So a statement sourced only from a single trash site like the NY Times or Fox News would be red, whereas another statement sourced from multiple independent scholarly journals would be green. Or something like that.
Sorry but scientific method has been the default for "Truth" for many academic subjects. It is reliable and idempotent. If all of the human information and most of the knowledge workers are removed from the Earth tomorrow, many will arrive in the same conclusion in most of the natural sciences and maths. The language and representation will be different but prime numbers will still be prime numbers and the matter will still be made of one neutral and two "interactive" elements.
Social sciences like politics, history and economy are harder to replicate with the scientific method, however repeated observations, statiscial information as well as qualitative analysis with evidence-based research can still provide replicable analysis.
> If anyone has a better idea how to determine what is true and what isn't - i'd certainly be very interested
This kind of excuse is often cited to shut down any discussion, especially in history, politics and economics. I find it deeply anti-intellectual and dogmatic. As long as evidence and counter-evidence is followed, it should be possible to discuss alternative interpretations and solutions.
The scientific method can be used to falsify hypotheses. It cannot prove that something is true. Fields that use the scientific method typically rely on social consensus for determining the truth. Empirically speaking, the social consensus seems to converge to a reasonable approximation of the truth with a high probability, but the process can take decades.
While I agree with your sentiment, I must add to this that to say that something is unequivocally true that holds in all conditions everywhere is difficult to ascertain in general. So we have to deal with that two (or more) things can be true at the same time (sometimes). This may be less the case for things such as prime numbers but more the case when the underlying principle is void of simple cause and effect (in the linear sense).
Fair to assume that the library of Alexandria contained books written by the most erudite scholars and philosophers of their day, not Joe and Jane and their cohort of terminally online gatekeepers.
> Just as academics must cite any AI-generated machine outputs they rely upon in their research and writing, they can also cite Wikipedia if they use it in their work. Doing so can highlight Wikipedia’s value to other academics as a source of knowledge and provide greater transparency in one’s research processes. Despite longstanding skepticism of Wikipedia among some scholars, citations to Wikipedia in academic journals appear to be increasing – even in high-impact publications in subject areas like the health sciences.
As someone who's contributed to Wikipedia and seen how the sausage is made: that's stupid. Even Wikipedia itself considers wikis (including itself) to lack sufficient authority to be cited as a source.
Such citations could be easily gamed (if you cite a particular change) or are useless (the content you cite may not be there in the future), and are obvious pathways to "citogenesis."
If you look up something on Wikipedia and include it in your work without citing it, it's an even worse pathway to citogenesis, since someone trying to check whether you can be used as a source for Wikipedia won't know that that's where you got it from in the first place.
Of course for most things you should have no need to refer to Wikipedia at all, and hence also no need to cite it.
I guess Larry Sanger was right all along about experts vs amateurs?
Open knowledge systems like Wikipedia are not really defensible. Letting anybody edit any page is a great way to get AI and human slop everywhere. It makes it extremely easy to insert knowledge with dubious quality and sources.
We need "open access" knowledge systems with known authors who are sponsored by non-profit and educational organizations and its their duty to defend their reputation.
Humanity needs more openly accessible curated and factually checked information and "open to modify" systems are bad at in all.
Something like Wikipedia is a wonderful idea in theory, but it's tough to defend when their policies allow factually incorrect content to remain just because it appears on a third-party source that the editors consider reliable. Most media sources contain a pretty high percentage of fake news and when this slop makes its way into Wikipedia that makes the problem even worse. Can we find a better solution?
Philosiphers have been trying to work on how to define what is "True" since forever without much to show for it.
Wikipedia tries to kick the bucket by going with what "reliable" secondary sources say. Thus the goal is not to say the capital T Truth, but to essentially sumnarize academic knowledge.
To steal a saying - its the worst method except for every other known method.
If anyone has a better idea how to determine what is true and what isn't - i'd certainly be very interested.
I understand that "truth" and "facts" are squishy philosophical concepts at the edges, but I'm talking about something much more basic. There are Wikipedia pages which are flat out wrong (by any common definition of the term) and yet the editors won't allow any corrections because the primary sources are also wrong.
One thing that might help a bit would be to tag or color code specific statements with a confidence factor. So a statement sourced only from a single trash site like the NY Times or Fox News would be red, whereas another statement sourced from multiple independent scholarly journals would be green. Or something like that.
Sorry but scientific method has been the default for "Truth" for many academic subjects. It is reliable and idempotent. If all of the human information and most of the knowledge workers are removed from the Earth tomorrow, many will arrive in the same conclusion in most of the natural sciences and maths. The language and representation will be different but prime numbers will still be prime numbers and the matter will still be made of one neutral and two "interactive" elements.
Social sciences like politics, history and economy are harder to replicate with the scientific method, however repeated observations, statiscial information as well as qualitative analysis with evidence-based research can still provide replicable analysis.
> If anyone has a better idea how to determine what is true and what isn't - i'd certainly be very interested
This kind of excuse is often cited to shut down any discussion, especially in history, politics and economics. I find it deeply anti-intellectual and dogmatic. As long as evidence and counter-evidence is followed, it should be possible to discuss alternative interpretations and solutions.
The scientific method can be used to falsify hypotheses. It cannot prove that something is true. Fields that use the scientific method typically rely on social consensus for determining the truth. Empirically speaking, the social consensus seems to converge to a reasonable approximation of the truth with a high probability, but the process can take decades.
While I agree with your sentiment, I must add to this that to say that something is unequivocally true that holds in all conditions everywhere is difficult to ascertain in general. So we have to deal with that two (or more) things can be true at the same time (sometimes). This may be less the case for things such as prime numbers but more the case when the underlying principle is void of simple cause and effect (in the linear sense).
yeah and for some reason primary literature can't be used, except when it can, but review articles are allowed. makes no sense.
Wikipedia has been the default result on Google for most things for years now.
Of course it has faults, but so did the Library of Alexandria. However, can anyone argue that Wikipedia is not our best attempt at collective facts?
Of course agreeing on collective facts is extremely messy.
Show me a better attempt, please.
Fair to assume that the library of Alexandria contained books written by the most erudite scholars and philosophers of their day, not Joe and Jane and their cohort of terminally online gatekeepers.
As long as we acknowledge its limitations and biases