wikipedia

they view the encyclopedia as a “consensus truth,” as one of them put it: It acts as a reality check in a society where facts are increasingly contested. That truth is less about data points — “How old is Joe Biden?” — than about complex events like the Covid-19 pandemic, in which facts are constantly evolving, frequently distorted and furiously de... See more

The key is that knowledge is a human endeavor, and the development of Wikipedia and its sister projects depends on human collaboration and consensus. Machine learning tools can augment the process, but AI cannot replace volunteer Wikimedians.

Some Wikipedians remark that their endeavor works in practice, but not in theory.

Welcoming language, customized wayfinding, instructional onboarding, familiar contribution and consumption interfaces, suggested actions, and explicit gratitude and feedback are all areas where small changes could make significant improvements in the Wikimedia experience—and potentially improve the quality of new editor contributions and overall re... See more

Wikipedia is probably the most important single source in the training of A.I. models

Wikipedia marked its 22nd anniversary in January. It remains, in many ways, a throwback to the Internet’s utopian early days, when experiments with open collaboration — anyone can write and edit for Wikipedia — had yet to cede the digital terrain to multibillion-dollar corporations and data miners, advertising schemers and social-media propagandist... See more

Over the past decade it has become a kind of factual netting that holds the whole digital world together.

Jimmy Wales described it in 2004, was to create “a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” The following year, Wales also stated, “We help the internet not suck.

“Sharing knowledge is by nature an act of kindness,”