When Wikipedia first emerged in 2001, it was still a time when most had to be patient for information — waiting for the high-pitched scree and its answering cry as the computer connected, painstakingly, to the internet via dial-up.
And the idea of an open source encyclopedia that could be updated by anyone in real time — or its equivalent in those pre-fibre-optic days — sparked questions and plenty of criticism about how accurate that information could be.
Fast-forward 25 years and Wikipedia is now the ninth most visited site on the internet, with nearly 15 billion visitors each month, searching and editing its more than 65 million articles.
But despite its speedy ascent in the early years and steady growth thereafter, Wikipedia isn’t as visible as it used to be. Now, when you Google a question, the top search result will likely be a Wiki link, but its AI will also handily synthesize the answer for you above it. And ChatGPT? That cuts Wikipedia out altogether.
Now, human visitors to the site are on the decline, dropping by roughly eight per cent in parts of 2025, while large language models (LLMs) — chatbots or other forms of AI that can condense words and information — are hammering Wikipedia’s servers and using it as a training ground.
If these trends continue, alongside the decline in local news outlets that are Wikipedia’s main sources, the future is “more dire than you think,” says Zachary McDowell, an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago and the author of Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality.
“Dismissing Wikipedia” is my political litmus test.
To be clear, it’s never been a reliable source; we learned that in middle school. You take everything written on it with a grain of salt.
…But it’s still an oasis in a desert.
When some of my family started questioning its utility because of its “liberal bias,” like post-grad-educated family saying this as Fox News blares in the background, I knew things had gotten bad.
I haven’t seen any extreme left question it IRL, but I’m afraid that’s coming too, with how tankies a some terminally online bits of Reddit are skeptical of it.
You literally just scroll down to the Works Cited and find sources there
Yeah. Funny how we have those guardrails for wikipedia, yet people still take ais as factual.
Google tried to do something similar with thier AI summaries, but every time I’ve looked at its “citations” they’ve said nothing that it said they did, or the exact opposite…
often time the “source” googles AI is from non-reputable sources like a block or someones opinion on a site.
Human brains just aren’t wired for citations. Especially outside academia I guess.
I think it would help if people were more “LLM literate” though, eg they took a lesson in school on how they work at a low level. Folks would be horrified they ever put so much trust in them.
I used to be an editor on there so have a lot of mixed feelings about it, there’s a lot of bullshit that goes on.
It’s good for hard sciences, but most articles on “soft” subjects like history do have a pro western liberal capitalist bias. Although the amount of bias usually depends on what senior editor decided he owns the article, despite “owning” articles being against the Wikipedia rules.
i wouldnt say good on non-phyiscs stem, often times its outdated and never fixed for years. pretty bad for biology when referring to discovery or correction of phylogenetic positions.
I find that to be true too, that wiki isn’t a reliable source. Wiki is just a battle ground for internet warfare for political ideas in every field. Whoever has the most resources on their side gets to write it.
My understanding is if you’re not sure use the little numbers next to the quotes that you’re not sure about
But the vast majority of people seem to think the little numbers are just for show or something
This is what frustrates me. Wikipedia is one of the last places where sources are cited. I understand that sometimes the sources are not that great, but at least the claim comes with a source to verify. That’s a far cry from the nonsense spewed on say facebook.
Or Lemmy.
Information hygiene in the news subs is terrible, at least here on .world.
Someone must have skipped middle school when you didn’t learn what “citations” are.
We certainly did. We learned Chicago/APA style, types of sources, and how to make citations in reports.
And that Wikipedia is not appropriate as a source to cite.
That’s why you use Wikipedia as means of sourcing the citations. You look up an article, learn about it through Wiki, then further educate yourself on the topic through the citations.
Exactly!
Users generally don’t check citations though; they read and make a judgement. This is why Wikipedia, with all its flaws, is still such a valuable resource to me, as at least it’s built on citations.