Why do people get mad at you for using Wikipedia, but treat Google and AI chatbots like they're gospel?

Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨LarryBetraitor@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

No, this isn’t a case of different people having different opinions about different ways to obtain information during different times. More often than not, I find that the SAME people who act like Wikipedia is the most unreliable thing on Earth unironically trust the FIRST Google Search result they see, as well as everything they’ve ever seen in ChatGPT.

Need I remind you that Google is LITERALLY designed to cater to your biases? And it’s gotten WORSE because the first result you see is NOW AI-Generated. Also, Google is not a source! And AI Chatbots cite THEMSELVES as sources!

Wikipedia on the other hand is curated by REAL VOLUNTEER HUMANS who strive to be accurate as possible. I’m aware that Wikipedia is no stranger to agendas or vandalism, but these editors are quick and dedicated to be as accurate as possible. So much so that whenever a building is on fire, they LITERALLY label it as “Status: Burning”. Not burned… BURNING! ~~Meanwhile, Google tells you to put glue on your pizza…~~

And yes, I know that Wikipedia is not a source. Like Google, Wikipedia is a GATEWAY to sources, and not a source in and of itself. But at the very least, Wikipedia DOESN’T try to give you what you will like, because you’ll get what is (most likely) the truth instead, backed up by several CREDIBLE sources that are constantly fact-checked by volunteer humans.

So why do people hate Wikipedia so much? And why do these SAME PEOPLE cite Google and ChatGPT as a source?

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

Lumidaub@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I have literally never encountered anyone who got mad at me for using Wikipedia. There are certain people who will still repeat what they learnt about it in school 20 years ago when they were told that “don’t use Wikipedia as a source” and then they stopped listening. But even those people see the benefits.

source
- BossDj@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  See the thing is tons of exhausted teachers just keep teaching the same shit every year; many of them teach the stuff they learned when they were in school. So a crazy number of them do in fact still teach kids that Wikipedia can’t be trusted because anyone can edit it
  
  source
  - protist@retrofed.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    But Wikipedia can’t be trusted as a source. It’s great for overviews of topics and for listing out many other potentially valid sources in the reference list at the end of every article. If you’re writing a paper though, you should never actually cite Wikipedia
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
  - justaman123@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yeah, this is the answer. Lots of grade school teachers don’t continue learning because they were perfectly happy to just believe that nothing changes and they are the ones in a class that know stuff and their students don’t. You’ve had these teachers and they got mad at your questions when their answers conflicted. You know the ones. They say don’t quote wikipedia still
    
    source
- SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Tankies think Wikipedia is western liberal CIA-funded propaganda.
  
  Show them articles on the genocides in Ukraine or the Chinese genocide of Uyghurs and them lose their minds.
  
  source
  - EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    They’ll happily use it for things that paint any of their chosen “western” countries in a negative way while happily ignoring any that do the same for their obsession countries. It’s totally not hypocritical.
    
    source
- Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I have encountered both irl and on SC. mostly if you are in a class that need to cite articles or in a writing lab, they moniter your internet activity.
  
  source
Malyca@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I consider Wikipedia one of the best sources out there, mainly because they have their own sources listed below each article. You can verify everything. Anyone calling them a bad source is misinformed or acting with malicious intent.

source
- marxismtomorrow@lemmy.today ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  They’re a bad source as they don’t actually vet sources in any objective way, they just require them. There are breitbart articles on some wikipedia pages.
  
  This has resulted in what should be a neutral information site usually having a bias towards western and especially American propaganda points.
  
  source
  - Malyca@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Ah I didn’t know that
    
    source
- Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  i would use wiki as a overview and find research articles outside of wiki, often times its not enough to follow the wiki sources.
  
  source
brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
First… are the people bringing this up really into social media? Or conservative, by chance?

There’s three potentially confused things:

Oldschool “Wikipedia isn’t a primary source.” I learned this in middle school. It’s technically true.

There’s slightly newer accusations of a liberal Wikipedia bias. Hence the attempt to create Conservapedia. There’s a tiny nugget of truth, perhaps, but not to the outrageous extent suggested.

THEN there are modern attempts to discredit Wikipedia as a whole. Mind my tinfoil hat, but I’d argue it’s largely algorithmic and Big Tech driven, as it’s a high profile information source they cannot control, a place where things are documented they don’t necessarily want in the limelight.

There’s some overlap too, like Musk’s motivations, rants, and actions falling into category 2 and 3. Or some hijacking of point 1.
source
- sbeak@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  liberal Wikipedia bias
  
  Well of course, the wiki that supports free access to information is more often than not contributed by people who support that. But that is a very slight bias, and you’re pretty messed in the head if you believe that information should inherently be restricted to a certain group of people.
  
  source
  - EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Reality has a left wing bias.
    
    source
  - TheFogan@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Unfortunately the biggest part is, there’s kind of 2 definitions of bias at this point.
    
    There’s the older, what I’d consider should be the truer form where bias is about taking a side or leaning the interpretation of the established facts on things that don’t have a 100% perfect consistant answer. IE Sportsball team A is better than sportsball team B, when obviously every part of that equasion is a dynamic, every player has good and bad days. good and bad weather conditions etc… who they’ve played against and how good they are etc…
    
    Same for political concepts where at the very least it’s worth noting there’s no agreed upon by all of political science good and bad with regards to ideas etc…
    
    Then you’ve got the type B bias where… well one side is outright denying the objective facts. Going to the sportsball analogy, that’s like one side says “Team A won 900 to 0 against team B”, while fans of team B go “look the game’s score is right here… team b won 52-20”. and they call you bias for trusting the sportsball leagues official scores, and the game that aired on national television, over the word of team A’s number one fan.
    
    source
OccasionallyFeralya@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
This isn’t really a question this is more like a rant with a question mark

source
blindbunny@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Because AI tells them what they want to hear and Wikipedia tells them the truth.

I remember telling my Dad he was brainwashed by the state to think he wasn’t sent to Afghanistan to steal oil but to protect “our freedoms” and provided evidence of Halliburton no bid contracts that Dick Cheney used to be a board member of. He just couldn’t accept that the state was lying to him.

Having people you care about tell you when you are wrong and you adjusting and accepting new information as fact is part of being a better person and its real fucking sad some people just don’t want to do that. They’d rather have a plagiarism machine lie to their faces.

source
RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I know not a single person who hates Wikipedia.

You wanna hear ironic? My dad got me to install GrapheneOS on his Pixel because google was trying to get him to activate the AI. Now dad is using the google search. I explained its all AI junk “but its easy” is his reply.

source
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
In my opinion, these people aren’t thinking deeply. They had it hammered to them in school that wikipedia isn’t a valid source and so they’ve internalized that, but nobody properly explained to them that AI isn’t a valid source

source
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I’ve never had this happen to me.

source
- njm1314@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Nobody has.
  
  source
nimpnin@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Very few do. There’s your answer

source
JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Years of “Wikipedia is not a source” without critically thinking about what that means or when to apply it. The same people who will say that will ignore that it was meant for research papers, but somehow forgot what makes sources credible. It’s really a suffering from success thing. The phrase was just said so often it became part of people’s thoughts. Sort of like the “five dollar footlong” thing with Subway.

source
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Nobody’s ever gotten mad at me for using wikipedia. Does this happen anywhere specific?

source
- ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  At school but this was before chatbots. The teacher in question has probably changed her views since.
  
  source
remon@ani.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
You know some strange people.

source
Solumbran@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
People that criticize the use of Wikipedia are generally doing so to intentionally be manipulative. They use the vague confusion around how Wikipedia works to make it look unreliable, then imply that it makes whatever you say wrong.

Generally, it is a fascist take, because fascists hate the idea of a community-based anything. If there is no central authority/boss, then they hate it.

AI is seen as the opposite, it is this one magic entity that you refer to and tells you whatever you want to hear and leads you to believe that they are amazing. Which coincidentally is what all fascist politicians do.

Anyone that considers LLMs to be anything else than worthless has opinions that are as worthless anyway, so I’d advise ignoring them.

source
artwork@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Nonsense, sorry. The most people I know like Wikipedia, and hate and distrust anything even remotely related to LLM/“AI” if there’s no sources.
And, if by Google you mean the Google Search, then may I ask, how is it wrong to use a search?

Yet, wait… sources you say? Let’s send a prompt to the dead machine:

Image

source
Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I really want to know more about these specific people you’ve run into this with, particularly age, education level, and maybe political affliations (curious if it runs the gamut or not).

For my part, Wikipedia’s usually a good starting point ‘source’, like an encyclopedia would be. But the actual sources referenced by a given article, carefully evaluated, are much better. A Google Search (once you scroll past the AI summary) can also yield good sources. I don’t bother with LLMs at all, too many issues with accuracy.

End of the day, these are all signposts to actual sources, not sources themselves. What you find through any of them need to be evaluated by where they are getting their information. It also depends on the topic and level of discussion. I’m personally OK with quoting Wikipedia about a general piece of trivia, but if I’m trying to make a serious argument about something it’d be silly to rely on it if I don’t know how strong the source behind it is. Could be well-researched and rock solid, could be bullshit with a flimsy reference no one’s caught yet.

source
- FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Wikipedia is useful for having a topic explained in layman’s terms
  
  source
flx@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Image

source
nerv@fedinsfw.app ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I had a teacher forbidding Wikipedia as a study source and a class formed by over 80 students quietly aquiesced. It took one question of why wasn’t Wikipedia a valid source for general context to help in forming a broad stroke idea on a subject to nearly make the teacher go into a fit on how it was inacurate and unproperly revised. Wich was not the point.

source
- JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  To say you can’t look at it at all is so insane, and his would you even prove it? The entire point of encyclopedias is to give you a brief overview of a new topic.
  
  source
  - nerv@fedinsfw.app ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    My personal take?
    
    Funneling.
    
    This was a class on Social Psychology and even the books for the class were not to be read in full. Instead, only excerpts were to be consulted.
    
    That creates a huge context gap. Drills in narrow concepts. Does not foster thinking and relation of concepts and ideas.
    
    The teacher was creating a low effort class, easily manageable, with little to no opposition to her methods and ideas.
    
    source
- Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  you just cant cite it as a source on research papers, or essays. but english teachers, computer writing lab moniters are “source nazis” over wikipedia, they dont even want you using it. i was hovering over wiki for more than a few minutes the perosn in charge of the writing lab got mad/ or gave attitude over using it, in the 2000s.
  
  source
garbage_world@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Can you confirm that there’s non insignificant group of people who claim both of those things are true?

source
schwim@piefed.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I have never met a person that was upset about me citing Wikipedia and I e been using it for as long as it has existed.

This seems like desperately reaching for something to be upset about.

source
JigglySackles@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
How they have been marketed makes the biggest difference.

source
adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Wikipedia: it’s an encyclopedia. Fine for a general overview of a topic, but you need to follow it to primary sources if you want to make an authoritative argument.

Google: it’s got an AI summary at the top and a bunch of SEO’d results on the first pages.

LLMs: really good at translating a lot of content down into something that’s easy to read. Not necessarily easy to understand, not necessarily accurate, not citing it’s sources accurately, but easy to read.

So: where do people’s attitudes come from towards them?

We now have 25 years of Wikipedia. That means that for 25 years, anyone in school from K through university has had it drilled i to them “you can’t use Wikipedia as a primary source!” Which is often interpreted by kids (now adults) as “don’t trust Wikipedia!”

Google has been around for 28 years. When it started, the other search engines always missed things, had a bunch of ads, and were slow. Google was this fast clean interface that could instantly find whatever you were looking for on the world wide web, and the exact human created content you wanted would almost always be featured on the first page of results. People who grew up with that might be slow to catch on to the fact that Google today doesn’t do that. So they trust the results and assume the information they’re looking for must be there somewhere on the first page.

LLMs are new. They hold the promise of early Google in that they crawled all the source material for you and present a summary so you don’t even have to decide which link has the right answer. They haven’t been around long enough for a generation to be trained to distrust the messages they provide.

source
- fonix232@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  LLMs are great when they work well. Problem is, they hallucinate a lot.
  
  For example I was just trying to research if/how I could stay and work at a nearby airport - I need to leave my Airbnb by 10am but my flight is at 7pm, so I'm thinking of heading right to the airport and just working from there.
  
  Gemini told me that at this airport there's numerous landside cafés and work pods available.
  
  Perplexity said for sure there will be spots I can work from.
  
  Both were incredibly wrong as they collated information from airside - even though I specifically asked for landside as the airline I'm flying with doesn't offer early luggage dropoff, so until ~4pm I'm stuck landside.
  
  guess what there is landside? a single cafe with about 10 seats...
  
  source
  - adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    LLMs are also stuck in the past. Always ask an LLM what the date is before starting a session that has any expectation of current results. Usually you’ll find the information it prioritizes is from a few years ago.
    
    LLMs also often incorrectly weight information.
    
    If you have a popular website that has outdated information with a note at the top that the information is outdated, the LLM will see it’s a well respected site, ignore the disclaimer at the top that falls out of it’s context window, and happily tell you the annotatedly incorrect information is the baseline truth.
    
    It’s possible to get good results out of an LLM, but it’s a skill, just like engineering a good Google search string or using Wikipedia to find the primary source information you need.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
sbeak@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Wikipedia is good for getting a good overview of a topic, but like any other source, should not be used alone. Wikipedia by itself is bad, an article by itself isn’t good, even the most accurate source should never be used alone. Always refer to multiple sources. Don’t trust one Google result, use many. Ideally don’t only use Google results, use other engines too (metasearch engines like SearXNG instances are great for this). Use Wikipedia, Britannica, or whatever other wiki in combination with each other. Feed into multiple news sources, not just one or two.

I don’t think many people are trusting the first Google result while also disliking Wikipedia, since for many topics, Wikipedia is the first result you see!

As for LLMs, it’s a case of convenience and laziness.

source
LarryBetraitor@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Having trust issues with Wikipedia is one thing. But trusting AI and the first Google Search result you see over Wikipedia? That’s CRAZY to say the least!

source
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
in schools,universities they get mad. also on some SC AS WELL.

source
silly_goose@lemmy.today ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Because wikipedia has some opinions but chatgpt strokes their ego by being sycophantic and validating every stupid idea in their head.

source