When talking to other people and bringing up sources, it’s common for them to say “I don’t like that website” or “it’s not trustworthy”. On Lemmy, this is most commonly said about Reddit, where you will be questioned if you use it as a source of knowledge or show off something you did there. Wikipedia is another one.
However, the other day, me and a friend noticed something. The most discredited websites all correspond to the most neutral websites. Minus its overt traditionalism, Reddit is pretty neutral and doesn’t promote a specific leaning. Wikipedia is another one, as the whole point of Wikipedia was that it could be a source of knowledge made by the people and for the people. Recently ChatGPT became something a lot of people consult, and nowadays you get a lot of ridicule for mentioning things like asking it for advice or going to it to check on something. Quora is a fourth example, in fact it currently has a “spammy” reputation that I don’t see the inspiration for. I don’t know, this all seems too big a coincidence in our world.
Do these websites (and other ones) really inspire being looked down upon as much as the people around you claim, and which ones do you have the most and least amount of issue with? And why?
The wikipedia one seems nuts to me. Like you literally can cross-check the sources if you think it is making a wrong claim.
People are quick to say “but everyone can modify it!” as if claims made by other souces arent made by basically random guys as well.
It’s mostly a holdover from the early days of the internet I think. I remember in the olden days when Wikipedia was fairly new, and the amount of contributors back then were much smaller and the rigorousness with which sources was provided was also completely different. I was in what, middle school back then, and every teacher would remind us for every assignment: “remember that Wikipedia is not an admissible source”. I think the reputation remains from those days, basically. In today’s day and age I consider Wikipedia a fairly reliable source, honestly.
I also think its important to note the thing that wikipedia itself has an article about, which is that it is an encyclopedia.
You wouldn’t cite the encyclopedia in a scientific paper, or even a university hand-in. It’s just bad praxis. However, you would absolutely check the encyclopedia if you wanted to quickly gain a basis of knowledge on a topic.
you literally can cross-check the sources if you think it is making a wrong claim
When the source is readily available. A lot of stuff is not online and books go out of print and may be hard to track down. There’s a sizable set of bad actors on Wikipedia who rely on this by quoting passages from out of print books out of context to support their stance.
That being said, this is a minor problem and WIkipedia is an acceptable source of general knowledge. Claiming it’s a bad source of information would apply to any other lay-level source including the Encyclopedia Britannica.
That being said, I would note that obscure articles can often be dominated by a small number of editors with specific ideological axes to grind. As long as you know the bureaucratic processes of Wikipedia, and have an infinite amount of energy to waste arguing with people in the Talk pages, you can get away with quite a bit. Not outright misinformation, but portrayal of fringe academic theories as mainstream, and vice-versa.
ChatGPT and all the other AI models are notoriously unreliable when it comes to facts. They tend to report back false information, or will simply make stuff up.
Someone should tell Simon Whistler that then, he’s been using it in every two Brain Blaze episodes.
Simon Whistler is a presenter and it often shows. He’s pretty entertaining, and he has the look of a scholar which gives him some gravitas and credibility when he talks, but he isn’t particularly knowledgeable of anything (including topics he’s already covered in one channel when presenting the same topic on another).
So of course he thinks ChatGPT is smart.
I want good sources. Reddit is a lot of hear say. Its not about political leaning its about provability. At least for me.
Edit: also a lot of folks came here because they were mad at reddit. They may still be mad lol. I get why Lemmy would end up anti-reddit.
I can definitely confirm they’re still mad. Even those who are banned from both places would rather ban evade on Lemmy a hundred times before considering doing it on Reddit.
Fair, reddit could probably try a Mac address ban and slowly actually ban you from the whole site. Lemmy is too decentralized to do that effectively.
In general there is no “neutral” source of information. At all. Yes, including Wikipedia with its “NPOV” policy. (It even says that there’s no such thing in its own policies, so I’m not exactly saying anything new here.) Most of the sources you cite as “neutral” will actually be sources that agree, broadly, with your own cultural assumptions that you are likely not even aware of, not to mention actively questioning.
That being said, since there is no such thing as a neutral source of information, you can still have good sources of information. Wikipedia is one such. Is it perfect? No. Because nothing is. But it is good enough for most general knowledge. It gets a bit dicey as a source when you leave the realm of western assumptions, or if you enter into the realm of contentious politics. But for most things it’s just fine as a quick resource to get information from. It’s a decent encyclopedia whose ease of access isn’t matched by anybody else.
Reddit is not, however. Because reddit has no disciplined approach to information-gathering and -sharing. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia (with all the strengths and flaws that form takes on). Reddit is a lot of people talking loudly in a gigantic garden party from Hell. Over by the roses you have a bunch of people loudly expounding on the virtues of the Nazi party. Over by the fountain you’ve got another group loudly expounding on how vile and gross the Nazis were casting glares in the direction of the roses. In the maze park you’ve got a bunch of people meandering around and laughing while they babble inanities. Out in the driveway you’ve got a bunch of Morris dancers practising their craft. It may be fun if you like that kind of thing, but it is absolutely not a source of reliable information unless you do so much fact checking that you might as well skip the reddit step and go straight to getting the facts from the places you’re using to check.
ChatGPT, to continue using strained analogies, is that weird uncle in your family. He’s personable, bright, cheerful, and seems to know a lot of stuff. But he’s a bit off and off-putting somehow, and that’s because behind the scenes, when nobody’s looking, he’s taking a lot of hallucinogens. He does know a lot. A whole lot. But he also makes shit up from the weird distortions the drugs in his system impose on his perceptions. As a result you never know when he’s telling the truth or when he’s made a whole fantasy world to answer your question.
My personal experience with ChatGPT came from asking it about a singer I admire. She’s not a really big name and not a lot of people write about her. I wanted to find more of her work and thought ChatGPT could at least give me a list of albums featuring her. And it did! It gave me a dozen albums to look for. Only … none of them existed. Not a single one. ChatGPT made up a whole discography for this singer instead of saying “sorry, I don’t know”. And when I went looking for them and found they didn’t exist, I told it this and it did its “sorry, I made a mistake, here’s the right list” thing … and that list contained half of the old list that I’d already pointed out didn’t exist and half new entries that, you guessed it!, also didn’t exist.
And the problem is that ChatGPT is just as certain when hallucinating as it is when telling things that are true. It is PARTICULARLY unsuited to be a source of information.
Reddit is only ‘pretty neutral’ insofar as Reddit is barely an entity in and of itself; Reddit communities are much more relevant to the question of bias, and it’s Reddit communities that all Reddit content is derived from.
Wiki is generally reliable, but in the same way that an encyclopedia is reliable. It can make mistakes, and editors can implant their own biases into articles. That being said, most of the “CIAPEDIA” nonsense on here is unfounded.
ChatGPT and other AI are trash for accurate information in my experience. At best, they can point you in the right direction. At worst, they send you on snipe hunts.
Quora used to be better, but has continually degraded and enshittified over the years.
Wiki is generally reliable, but in the same way that an encyclopedia is reliable. It can make mistakes, and editors can implant their own biases into articles.
Wikipedia is a lot better than I originally expected. I started out thinking “this is never gonna work”, then transitioned to “this is okay now, but when it gets big, targeted marketing efforts are gonna make this not work”, and yet it’s just kept on plugging.
How was Quora enshittified? Did I miss something in my time not using it?
Depends on how far back you were using it. I think it was around '21 that they started fucking with the interface and monetizing answers, and after that, it became much less communal and self-regulating.
