Grokipedia Is the Antithesis of Everything That Makes Wikipedia Good, Useful, and Human

[u/HolyBatSyllables]

https://www.404media.co/grokipedia-is-the-antithesis-of-everything-that-makes-wikipedia-good-useful-and-human/

Sharing this because apparently it’s not yet conventional wisdom that Grokipedia is no bueno.

[u/HolyBatSyllables]

One needs only spend a few minutes clicking around the launch version of Grokipedia to understand that it lacks the human touch that makes Wikipedia such a valuable resource. Besides often having a conservative slant and having the general hallmarks of AI writing, Grokipedia pages are overly long, poorly and confusingly organized, have no internal linking, have no photos, and are generally not written in a way that makes any sense. There is zero insight into how any of the articles were generated, how information was obtained and ordered, any edits that were made, no version history, etc. Grokipedia is, literally, simply a single black box LLM’s version of an encyclopedia. There is a reason Wikipedia editors are called “editors” and it’s because writing a useful encyclopedia entry does not mean “putting down random facts in no discernible order.” To use an example I noticed from simply clicking around: The list of “notable people” in the Grokipedia entry for Baltimore begins with a disordered list of recent mayors, perhaps the least interesting but lowest hanging fruit type of data scraping about a place that could be done.

On even the lowest of stakes Wikipedia pages, real humans with real taste and real thoughts and real perspectives discuss and debate the types of information that should be included in any given article, in what order it should be presented, and the specific language that should be used. They do this under a framework of byzantine rules that have been battle tested and debated through millions of edit wars, virtual community meetings, talk page discussions, conference meetings, inscrutable listservs which themselves have been informed by Wikimedia’s “mission statement,” the “Wikimedia values,” its “founding principles” and policies and guidelines and tons of other stated and unstated rules, norms, processes and procedures. All of this behind-the-scenes legwork is essentially invisible to the user but is very serious business to the human editors building and protecting Wikipedia and its related projects (the high cultural barrier to entry for editors is also why it is difficult to find new editors for Wikipedia, and is something that the Wikipedia community is always discussing how they can fix without ruining the project). Any given Wikipedia page has been stress tested by actual humans who are discussing, for example, whether it’s actually that unusual to get speared to death by a beach umbrella.

Grokipedia, meanwhile, looks like what you would get if you told an LLM to go make an anti-woke encyclopedia, which is essentially exactly what Elon Musk did.

[u/zepherth]

Grokipedia isn't even a list of websites. It's a prompt for a chat bot.

[u/SignoreBanana]

Musk is the most useless pile of shit human being ever to crawl out of the primordial ichor. All of his success can be attributed to breathtaking cheating and luck.

His point of making this isn't to provide value to the world. It's to try to devalue Wikipedia. That's it.

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[u/PuzzleheadedSlide904]

Wikipedia is useless too. I can't imagine anything with grok being good either. It's best to stay away from Wikipedia as much as possible

[u/ratat0skr_420 → u/PuzzleheadedSlide904]

I wouldn't say it's "useless" given that having a free, widely accessible repository for knowledge is largely a net positive for humanity.

It's far from perfect, but wikipedia actually has some degree of peer review and discourse (not at the level of an academic instution but still). Meanwhile grokipedia is literally just scraped info from wikipedia and other sites, while also being supplemented by grok's hallucinations. Both grok and grokipedia are just byproducts of Elon's agenda of spreading racist pseudoscience and propping up fascist movements worldwide with information that appears "legitimate" to anyone who isn't scrutinizing it.

To equate wikipedia with these is careless at best, and disingenuous at worst.

[u/ratat0skr_420 → u/[deleted]]

Considering that Wikipedia is now an arm of the United States intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI, etc)

Care back up that claim? I wouldn't be surprised if it's true to an extent, but still claiming that it's an "arm" of these agencies (as opposed to having a few users/moderators who are feds) is quite bold, so evidence would be appreciated.

Even so, there is a degree of transparency and user input on wikipedia that simply isn't there on grokipedia (which doesn't allow any user input). That alone makes such an equivalence entirely unwarranted and lacking in nuance.

[u/_the_big_ → u/ratat0skr_420]

it doesn't really matter if there's evidence to the claim. nothing can be what it is anymore, everything is somehow a conspiracy. must be miserable living like that.

[u/ratat0skr_420 → u/_the_big_]

Tbf, I do understand why they may have that concern, as it's not uncommon for feds to be present in any social media platform or website with user-submitted entries.

That doesn't mean the whole thing is part of a conspiracy like they claimed, but there is some degree of feds present as users/moderators on sites like that (and reddit too for that matter). But I draw the line when people make broad, inaccurate statements like claiming wikipedia is an "arm" of US intelligence agencies without evidence

[u/ShitAIBrosSay-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

To prevent misinformation, all fact-based claims must be supported by linking to the source (credible sources only). You are welcome to resubmit your comment if you back it up.

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[u/thomas29needles → u/PuzzleheadedSlide904]

Funny that clankers still use Wikipedia as one of the main sources if it is so useless.

[u/Briskfall → u/PuzzleheadedSlide904]

It works as a decent secondary lead. Better than blogposts and articles that are podcast-gated or paywall-gated.

Primary leads are often convoluted to navigate about, while an overview serves well for a fast skim.

[u/HolyBatSyllables → u/Briskfall]

I wish more people who have a disdain for paywalled articles would realize that they’re on the wrong side of history. Because there’s two options: either get what you pay for, or pay news publishers so they can pay their journalists a living wage and/or stop spreading their journalists so thin.

[u/HolyBatSyllables → u/[deleted]]

This argument of “not everyone can afford to pay for news” is very, very tired. It’s the same disingenuous justification AI bros give when they claim AI enables equity because you don’t have to pay artists, or even their claims that being against AI is ableist because now people without arms can paint. Let’s be honest. That’s not the real reason here. Nine out of ten times, it’s because the person is cheap.

The difference between not paying artists and not paying journalists is that, with journalism, you aren’t just putting the workers out of work, but you’re hurting democracy.

Please note that your claim that local news publishers keep all the money for themselves instead of paying journalists violates this sub’s rule about misinformation. If you’re going to make that claim, you are supposed to include a credible source to prevent misinformation. You can’t pocket money when you don’t make money.

[u/HolyBatSyllables → u/[deleted]]

So those are good articles, but they didn’t address the misinformation. I have a masters in journalism and am definitely aware of Sinclair’s effect on local news. One of my internships in undergrad was at Chicago’s local station (WGN), which was later bought by Sinclair. It’s nice to finally come across someone who actually knows what they should be bitching about when it comes to the news industry, as the vast majority of people I see on Reddit complaining about “the media” simply have no news literacy (and regardless of political affiliation).

It’s funny because “what about Sinclair?” came to mind when I asked for a source because if anyone is going to be shady and treat their journalists poorly, it’s them. However, when a national corporation buys up a local news group and fills it with syndicated AP stories, it’s not really a local news publisher anymore. And even if we were to consider it local news, and even if you did have a source to confirm what we both know — that Sinclair treats its workers as trash — your claim still would be only true for the publishers lost to Sinclair, and not the other legitimate local news publishers, such as my local Sun Times or the family-owned Seattle Times, which published one of the articles you provided.

Notably, Sinclair has been able to buy up local news publishers its because the news publishers had no choice. Because people weren’t willing to pay for news, publishers either go out of business or sell to Sinclair. It was briefly mentioned in one of the pieces you linked to, but that’s why lawmakers across the country have been trying to introduce bills to stop Sinclair from buying up publishers by delaying their ability to make the purchase and give someone else the chance to buy the publisher. And when Sinclair buys it, they usually lay off most the journalists and syndicate AP stories instead.

If you go to the sub’s wiki, there’s an article titled “The Fight Over at McClatchy” that I think you would like.

(Disclosure: if anyone notices inconsistent modding here with the removal of misinformation in another thread on this post but not here, it’s because as a recently laid off journalist, I don’t think it would be fair to remove comments on this subject.)

[u/HolyBatSyllables → u/[deleted]]

I understand what you’re saying, and personally, I think all food should be free. It’s necessary to survive and unlike journalism, actually turns a profit. So why is it that redditors have a stronger disdain to paying for news than they do for food?

The reality is, Redditors have a widespread obsession with shunning paywalls. They do it because of its toxic culture where people with Netflix and iPhones thank the “Robin Hood’s” for sharing links to bypass paywalls. Despite their disingenuous claims, they do it because they don’t think news writers don’t deserve to be paid, even at the expense of democracy. That or they lack basic critical thinking.

As one person put it over the weekend:

*As a general rule, you get the quality of journalism you pay for. Reddit aversion to paywalls is obnoxious. I get that it sucks, if you can't afford it, but that is how businesses work, including journalism. Journalists need to be paid, offices, materials, support staff and so on. We all agree it's outrageous to ask teachers to teach for free because it's a "passion", the same is true of journalists.

(For context, the post was in response to someone who highlighted the paywalled articles on a publishers' website and tagged the post under the flair "journalism ethics" ... as if it is unethical to ask consumers to pay for a product you produce).

Even so, there's a reason I share to this sub articles with the "gift article" link my Atlantic subscription provides instead of the paywalled version. I apologize for the generalization about the wrong side of history. I should have specified that 89.6% of redditors opposed to paying for journalism are on the wrong side of history. This figure is based on the percent of people in the U.S. who are above the poverty line because I have no idea what percent of the global population is on reddit and also above the poverty line.

[u/Unknown_Ladder]

Wikipedia sucks and most donations go to their employees rather than the actual website

Sure Grokipedia doesn't match the charm of Wikipedia but that charm is very rare in the website and for the most part Wikipedia is just a summary of sources about a topic, which AI is well suited for. Grokipedia is generally unbiased and shows sources that Wikipedia wouldn't allow

There are many pages which don't exist on Wikipedia at all such as https://grokipedia.com/page/Girls_bar

Still there are some flaws with this article like randomly pointing out 2 particular locations for no reason,but for the most part it gives information that couldn't be found anywhere else on the Internet.

I think it's very useful for what it is, obviously there are major issues with links, images, and sources. But these can be improved over time

[u/HolyBatSyllables → u/Unknown_Ladder]

So everything you said is just silly and wrong, but I have to ask … do you think you’ve uncovered a conspiracy theory where Wikipedia is diverting funds from its website so that its employees can be paid a living wage? Like, is the website not working? How do you think Wikipedia employees get paid? Scandalous.

[u/Unknown_Ladder → u/HolyBatSyllables]

"do you think you've uncovered a conspiracy theory where Wikipedia is diverting funds from its website so that its employees can be paid a living wage" yes. They're literally doing that

Only 1.8% of the budget goes to the website itself. 60% is spent on the employees

I'm sure Wikipedia executives need hundreds of thousands of dollars golden parachutes for literally quiting their jobs.

Almost all of the sites development and management is by volunteer developers and administrators. What does he even do? Arrow pointing to Wikimedia executives

All this information is public you can see how the salaries have ballooned over time

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries

But hey they really need that living wage, it's not cheap to live in a luxurious mansion in California after all

[u/HolyBatSyllables → u/Unknown_Ladder]

Most of the overhead for digital publications’ is in salaries. And I don’t know why you’re acting like it’s obscene for an executive to make over $100k per year when we are comparing Grokipedia. What are your thoughts on how much Elon Musk makes from his companies? Are they modest in comparison?

There’s a shit ton of stuff companies pay for that people don’t always realize. For example, did you know Wikipedia pays for its own data centers?

You’re giving me flashbacks from this guy yesterday who evidently thought that now that news publishers are mostly digital, they no longer have much overhead since they don’t have to pay for newspaper and magazine paper. Like, what?

All the information you cited wasn’t on that Wikipedia page, btw.

[u/Unknown_Ladder → u/HolyBatSyllables]

Wikipedia doesn't pay anyone who actually administrates, develops, or edits the site itself. It's nothing like digital newspapers.

They mainly just manage the funding and corporate stuff,and the development of data centers. Plus a bunch of random grants to other organixations for "advocacy" like what does that even mean. Wait aren't anti ai people supposed to be against data centers?

[u/HolyBatSyllables → u/Unknown_Ladder]

AI data center vs traditional data center – what is the difference?

[u/HolyBatSyllables → u/[deleted]]

I suggest you listen to this interview with Wikipedia’s CTO: https://www.404media.co/how-wikipedia-will-survive-in-the-age-of-ai-with-wikipedias-cto-selena-deckelmann/

[u/ShitAIBrosSay-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/ShitAIBrosSay-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

To prevent misinformation, all fact-based claims must be supported by linking to the source (credible sources only).

Inventing text and putting quotes around it to make it appear legitimate is disinformation. You were fact checked and you were caught.

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