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Tim Bray on Grokipedia

(www.tbray.org)
175 points Bogdanp | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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ValveFan6969 ◴[] No.45779417[source]
On the other hand, I click on a Wikipedia article and I'm immediately bombarded with "[blank] is an alt-right neo-nazi fascist authoritarian homophobic transphobic bigoted conspiracy theory (Source: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HATE THIS TOPIC I BEG YOU)"

At least Grokipedia tries to look like it was written with the intent to inform, not spoonfeed an opinion.

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1. whatthesmack ◴[] No.45788297[source]
> At least Grokipedia tries to look like it was written with the intent to inform, not spoonfeed an opinion.

In addition, Grokipedia isn't encumbered by a Perennial Sources List[0] whose "generally reliable" section consists entirely of center and/or center-left media sources, and seems to be entirely purposed for gatekeeping.

The web site of the US television news network with by far the most viewership (Fox) was moved from "generally reliable" to "marginally reliable" for scientific and political claims, while MSNBC and CNN remain "generally reliable". This fact is laughable, considering MSNBC and CNN's mutual refusal to report on things like the Arctic Frost[1] (currently) and Hunter Biden laptop[2] (historically) conspiracies initiated under the Biden administration. Fox reported on both, but is not allowed as a source despite being the only major news network to not suppress the stories.

When an "encyclopedia" only allows unrestricted use of sources that fail to report information on notable news (such as conspiracies that are more far-reaching than Watergate), the encyclopedia will become less used by people because they no longer trust its new organizational and editorial biases.

Some folks, including myself, rarely reference Wikipedia anymore, because it often doesn't have the information being researched, and even if it does, we can't be sure we're getting very much (or any!) of the full story. This is broadly demonstrated by Wikipedia's constant decline in traffic from 2022 (~165M visits/day) through the present (~128M visits/day)[3].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_sources_list [1] https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/new-jack-... [2] https://grokipedia.com/page/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy [3] https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2025-exploring-tren...

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2. cowboylowrez ◴[] No.45791453[source]
As a counterpoint, I found wikipedia's "perennial_sources_list" to be a pretty reasonable efficiency measure. Additionally whats the problem with wikipedia's entry about "artic frost"? (your [1] did not link to anything regarding that entry)

>This is broadly demonstrated by Wikipedia's constant decline in traffic from 2022 (~165M visits/day) through the present (~128M visits/day)[3].

This demonstrates only the decrease in web traffic, and there are plenty of discussions about the reasons why and I suspect that conservatives didn't all of a sudden decide to hate wikipedia starting in 2022 as you seem to imply.