Academics have a duty to defend open knowledge systems like Wikipedia

okanat

Open knowledge systems like Wikipedia are not really defensible. Letting anybody edit any page is a great way to get AI and human slop everywhere. It makes it extremely easy to insert knowledge with dubious quality and sources. We need "open access" knowledge systems with known authors who are sponsored by non-profit and educational organizations and its their duty to defend their reputation. Humanity needs more openly accessible curated and factually checked information and "open to modify" systems are bad at in all.

nephihaha

Wikipedia has been the default result on Google for most things for years now.

10111001

> Just as academics must cite any AI-generated machine outputs they rely upon in their research and writing, they can also cite Wikipedia if they use it in their work. Doing so can highlight Wikipedia’s value to other academics as a source of knowledge and provide greater transparency in one’s research processes. Despite longstanding skepticism of Wikipedia among some scholars, citations to Wikipedia in academic journals appear to be increasing – even in high-impact publications in subject areas like the health sciences. As someone who's contributed to Wikipedia and seen how the sausage is made: that's stupid. Even Wikipedia itself considers wikis (including itself) to lack sufficient authority to be cited as a source. Such citations could be easily gamed (if you cite a particular change) or are useless (the content you cite may not be there in the future), and are obvious pathways to "citogenesis."

nradov

Something like Wikipedia is a wonderful idea in theory, but it's tough to defend when their policies allow factually incorrect content to remain just because it appears on a third-party source that the editors consider reliable. Most media sources contain a pretty high percentage of fake news and when this slop makes its way into Wikipedia that makes the problem even worse. Can we find a better solution?

consumer451

Of course it has faults, but so did the Library of Alexandria. However, can anyone argue that Wikipedia is not our best attempt at collective facts? Of course agreeing on collective facts is extremely messy. Show me a better attempt, please.

sublinear

I guess Larry Sanger was right all along about experts vs amateurs?

skyzoidbroczky

Defense of open knowledge will appear when they attack the monopoly of Elsevier and other publishers through innovative systems for peer-evaluated papers, not by trying to resuscitate the body of the spook-filled Wikipedia.

Wikipedianon

Wikipedia is existentially threatened by AI, which does the same thing but better. > most users of AI products do not click the links to Wikipedia, choosing instead to accept machine-generated outputs without further verification. If this practice continues, readership on Wikipedia will continue to decline. This is the same mechanism by which Wikipedia drained readers from news outlets and academic papers that it cites for information. I play the tiniest violin in the world for Wikipedia editors that now suffer from the same thing they did to the news media.

adsharma

What academics need to defend is wikipedia in latent space. Not walls of text that reflect the opinions of a few who have the time to edit that the rich and famous can optimize. That is why we are building latentpedia.org.

mmooss

Academics have a duty to make quality knowledge open. The difference between what is outside and inside the walled garden is astounding. They most of the truly valuable knowledge to themselves, and leave the public to feed on scraps, augmented by mountains of junk food, drowning in an ocean of sh-t (misinformation).

gerdesj

What on earth did we do before WP? I'm old enough to remember the olden days before WP existed and the practice of reading the news. I also remember the whispers and chatter outside of and around the 'papers. Those whispers etc would reinforce a later article. What is happening now with news ie top down dissemination of world events is not new but what is different today is the immediacy of commentary by the hoi poloi - you and me and who knows what from across the world ... and bots. I think we have to get to grips with the fact that an event happening within one corner of the world measuring an inch squared can rock up on the agenda of anyone, anywhere across the entire world.

4d4m

Downvote away, but: Academics have a duty to explain their years of inaction while their students have wilted and faltered as a direct result of academics not understanding how to to be effective in the real world in which their students are expected to be productive members. Those that cant, teach, and teach ridiculous fallacies they personally subscribe to. These people are too weak to stand up to their own bosses and boards. Are those the meek and weak we want teaching? Instead of real critical thinking they instilled a twisted sick worldview about social issues that have no connection to creating market value and being a good, supportive human that lifts all boats. They focus on things no businessperson would even consider engaging while missing the forest for the trees. Wikipedia is the last concern of this rapidly imploding rightthink crumbling empire, on its last legs from those whose families bore the ultimate cost to get their kid a degree that is increasingly worthless. I propose our leadership cut funding and fine any program in the US where a professor is not actively working in their field at a minimum part-time. These people are so out of touch it is literally sickening when you think of all the negative downstream effects. Citizens should demand better of their tax dollars - academia in its form today is a cancer that is holding back your youth from greatness and robbing our nation of the qualities that made it great, kneecapping our young talent for independent thought before they even figure out who they are.

mentalgear

Indeed, broadening what academic scores mean (past a citation number) and letting them be recongnized by contributing to open knowledge like wikipedia (vs closed private journals) is the counterbalance we need. > The fulfilment of ethical obligations to support knowledge communities, however, requires support from institutions of higher education. Currently, most academics are evaluated on their scholarly and research achievements, teaching performance, and service duties to their departments. Public service, like contributing to Wikipedia, goes largely unrecognised, if it is even counted at all. If academics are to fulfil their responsibilities to protect knowledge and knowledge communities, institutions must recognise efforts like contributing to Wikipedia and provide resources and support. Doing so may also help to address the public’s eroding trust in higher education itself, as a greater commitment to serving the public would reassert the role of universities as stewards of knowledge that exist to serve humanity – a role shared by Wikipedia.

thewanderer1983

As someone who is old enough to remember the start of Wikipedia. Academia originally had issue with wikipedia due to the lack of academic oversight and therefore didn't allow it in citation for academic work. Now they have to defend it?

phantomathkg

Defend Open Knowledge... Yet at the same time their CloudFront WAF decided to block IP coming from Singapore ISP... So much on defending open.

beambot

Great, then AI companies should divert 5% of revenue to sustain Wikipedia and researchers...

jadar

I’m old enough to remember when Wikipedia was not allowed to be cited in high school papers because it wasn’t a sufficiently authoritative source. How the turn tables…

AuthAuth

Wikipedia is being lost to ideological bias.

Levitz

I'm not sure if I'm confused or terrorized by the article. Concerns on Wikipedia dying because of a lack of editors, and that being due to AI ? Wikipedia's community often makes it very clear they don't want editors, and there's a whole lot of people who have actually tried to contribute who will tell you of the unjustifiable miserable time they had when wanting to do a good deed, that has been a considerable problem for I don't even know how many years now, why would I care about AI redirecting traffic possibly reducing the influx of editors when there's a far larger, more evident, long-standing problem? Promoting quoting Wikipedia as a source is madness. It begs circular logic. Citogenesis is already a considerable problem, can we not kick it into overdrive? Please? Wikipedia being at risk is one thing, but asking for a cancer to be spread upon academia, I'm sorry but we are not at a point in which reputation can be squandered like that. >Doing so may also help to address the public’s eroding trust in higher education itself, as a greater commitment to serving the public would reassert the role of universities as stewards of knowledge that exist to serve humanity – a role shared by Wikipedia. And there's even acknowledgement! But that somehow makes it worse because one of the main reasons academia has lost reputation is the same one that often gets called out on Wikipedia: political bias and agenda pushing. It's like there's a fire in a building and a huge stack of papers on another, in which a guy is playing with matches, and the argument is that we should move the fire from the former to the latter. I honestly think that if this sort of advice was listened to, the consequences would be terrible.

CommPhD

Were overworked and don't have a duty to do anything.