this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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Credulous coverage of AI slop on Wikipedia (awful.systems)
submitted 3 days ago by blakestacey@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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Everybody loves Wikipedia, the surprisingly serious encyclopedia and the last gasp of Old Internet idealism!

(90 seconds later)

We regret to inform you that people write credulous shit about "AI" on Wikipedia as if that is morally OK.

Both of these are somewhat less bad than they were when I first noticed them, but they're still pretty bad. I am puzzled at how the latter even exists. I had thought that there were rules against just making a whole page about a neologism, but either I'm wrong about that or the "rules" aren't enforced very strongly.

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[–] UberKitten@lemmy.blahaj.zone -1 points 3 days ago (18 children)

The prompt engineering article has 61 sources. Why should it not exist? What’s your source for that?

If the vibe coding article violates the rules, nominate it for deletion and cite the rules then.

[–] self@awful.systems 3 points 3 days ago (13 children)

no thx, nobody came here for you to assign them tedious homework

[–] BussyGyatt@feddit.org -1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Its fine if you don't want to do the 'homework,' but op doesn't get to complain about the rules not being enforced on the notoriously democratic editable-by-anyone wikipedia and refuse to take up the trivial 'homework' of starting the rule violation procedure. The website is inherently a 'be the change you want to see in the world' platform.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 5 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Counterpoint: I get to complain about whatever I want.

I could write a lengthy comment about how a website that is nominally editable by "anyone" is in practice a walled garden of acronym-spouting rules lawyers who will crush dissent by a thousand duck nibbles. I could elaborate upon that observation with an analogy to Masto reply guys and FOSS culture at large.

Or I could ban you for fun. I haven't decided yet. I'm kind of giddy from eating a plate of vegan nacho fries and a box of Junior Mints.

[–] xgranade@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

acronym-spouting rules lawyers

That's pretty much the response I got offering even extremely mild dissent from AI spam. Apparently, "WP:MNA" means you can just make shit up as long as industry blog posts rely on that wild fever dream being true, for instance. Handy!

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

you realise i'm gonna ask for links to your example of this being misapplied here

[–] xgranade@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's deep in the replies to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Prompt_engineering#Neutral_point_of_view. Thanks as well for reinstating the NPOV template, really bothers me that it was unilaterally deleted without any addressing of the problem.

[–] flaviat@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago

So perhaps one alternative way to estimate their quality is to check the number of citations, many have more than 100 citations, which is a sign of quality

Andrew Wakefield's 1998 paper has 457 citations on PubMed

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 3 points 3 days ago

I could elaborate upon that observation with an analogy to Masto reply guys and FOSS culture at large.

Please do, I wanna see FOSS get raked over the coals

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

acronym-spouting rules lawyers who will crush dissent by a thousand duck nibbles

hey now, my duck nibbling is thoroughly weaponised

[–] self@awful.systems 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

there’s something fucking hilarious about you and your friend coming here to lecture us about how Wikipedia works, but explaining the joke to you is also going to be tedious as shit and I don’t have any vegan nacho fries or junior mints to improve my mood

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

The "trivial" procedure for suggesting that an article be deleted was evidently written by the kids who liked programming their parents' VCR.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 5 points 3 days ago

Wikipedia rules make more sense when you understand they are entirely to keep the most pedantic nerds on earth from fighting

[–] self@awful.systems 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

oh yeah, I’m waiting for David to wake up so he can read the words

the trivial ‘homework’ of starting the rule violation procedure

and promptly explode, cause fielding deletion requests from people like our guests who don’t understand wikipedia’s rules but assume they’re, ah, trivial, is probably a fair-sized chunk of his workload

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 4 points 2 days ago

my lethal weapon is my WP:WTF

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