I think part of that has been actual elevated standards on Wikipedia with a more robust culture for things like citations, but probably more importantly, it’s readers already being expected to understand that Wikipedia isn’t an inherently credible source and needs checking if you actually care.
Of course part of it now too, as you imply, is generative AI making it look more rigorous by comparison and lowering people’s standards.
I’m lazy and have started treating wikipedia as a primary source. But if I’m quoting it to somebody else, I tend to look at the cited references to make sure I trust those.
But now you also have to check if the citations are AI slop too… still better than an AI overview, but it could become more of an issue as AI slop research papers and AI slop news articles get published more often… 🫠
Wikipedia is by design not citable, unless you include the revision number, but it contains all the sources to cite.
are people actually citing AI? i wonder how that would look like, it certainly sounds like: “my mom said…”
tl;dr: i never saw a problem in using Wikipedia (even at it’s beginning), but it’s an awesome to to get started with a topic, same counts for AI I guess.
I had a customer at the store I work at use GPT for info on what we sell. I’d rather he was referencing twitch chat when he told me chat told him we sold something.
No encyclopedia is citable. They’re not primary or secondary sources.
You can’t use tertiary sources in academic research because they’re just aggregation of references. You need primary sources whenever possible, and secondary sources when primary sources are unavailable.
Which is where going down to the references and grabbing the primary sources there comes in handy, because you can cite those.
It’s funny how things have shifted from people complaining about citing Wikipedia to people citing AI. Now Wikipedia may as well be the gutenberg
I think part of that has been actual elevated standards on Wikipedia with a more robust culture for things like citations, but probably more importantly, it’s readers already being expected to understand that Wikipedia isn’t an inherently credible source and needs checking if you actually care.
Of course part of it now too, as you imply, is generative AI making it look more rigorous by comparison and lowering people’s standards.
I’m lazy and have started treating wikipedia as a primary source. But if I’m quoting it to somebody else, I tend to look at the cited references to make sure I trust those.
🤓 Point of clarification: primary, secondary, and tertiary sources refer to the proximity to the original information, not to their reliability.
Secondary and tertiary sources often comprise both the most reliable and unreliable sources. 🤓
(Ik what you meant by “primary” lol)
But now you also have to check if the citations are AI slop too… still better than an AI overview, but it could become more of an issue as AI slop research papers and AI slop news articles get published more often… 🫠
Wikipedia is by design not citable, unless you include the revision number, but it contains all the sources to cite.
are people actually citing AI? i wonder how that would look like, it certainly sounds like: “my mom said…”
tl;dr: i never saw a problem in using Wikipedia (even at it’s beginning), but it’s an awesome to to get started with a topic, same counts for AI I guess.
I had a customer at the store I work at use GPT for info on what we sell. I’d rather he was referencing twitch chat when he told me chat told him we sold something.
No encyclopedia is citable. They’re not primary or secondary sources.
You can’t use tertiary sources in academic research because they’re just aggregation of references. You need primary sources whenever possible, and secondary sources when primary sources are unavailable.
Which is where going down to the references and grabbing the primary sources there comes in handy, because you can cite those.