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Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

(www.theverge.com)
598 points leotravis10 | 2 comments | 04 Sep 25 15:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.417s | source
1. submeta ◴[05 Sep 25 08:27 UTC] No.45136273[source]▶
Does it survive though? I haven’t opened Wikipedia in years. And young folks rather ask Chatgpt for their homework instead of Wikipedia. And that’s the crux. Llms are vacuuming the content of Wikipedia, just like Google is doing the same with Web content.
replies(1): >>45145210 #
2. Aachen ◴[06 Sep 25 00:10 UTC] No.45145210[source]▶
It's dirt cheap to host text contributed by volunteers compared to audiovisual media or newspapers written by paid people

Which is not to say free and without challenges, definitely not at Wikipedia's scale, but compared to how much donation money they get it's peanuts, not even the same ballpark (the vast majority of the money they get via Wikipedian beg banners goes to projects other than Wikipedia)

Also, personal opinion but

> I haven’t opened Wikipedia in years.

sounded like someone proudly telling a group of supposedly cool friends how they don't read stuffy books anymore now that they've discovered one-page summaries online. This might fall on deaf ears but there's value in reading the actual thing including following references where relevant