Wikipedia’s editors and readers have a dangerous generational gap.

David Gerard

RE: https://mastodon.social/@ieeespectrum/116059551433682789

> The volunteer community that built this encyclopedia has lately rejected a key innovation designed to serve readers.

this specifically means: they rejected covering WIkipedia in AI slop. This means a generational gap apparently. ok mate

d@nny disc@ mc²

@ieeespectrum ieee is what's washed up

arestelle

@davidgerard caring about facts is being stuck in the past, got it

It is so weird that Wikipedia is a rare bastion of truth and journalism now

Anthony

What's with the scaremongering AI shilling here, @ieeespectrum@mastodon.social?

Also, "generational gap"? Are you going to tell us next that millennials eat too much avocado toast?

#AI #AIHype #AIShill #OldManYellsAtCloud

Jared White (ResistanceNet ✊)

@ieeespectrum Um, wow this is bad. Slopaganda in the guise of a hit piece against Wikipedia is unethical dross on multiple levels. Shame on you for publishing this.

Anthony

They're going to tell us next that millennials eat too much avocado toast and that's why they still live in apartments and don't appreciate AI. Or something.

CC: @ieeespectrum@mastodon.social

mtc_uk

@davidgerard @ieeespectrum
Welp, fuck IEEE Spectrum, I guess.

The Orange Theme

@ieeespectrum Fuck off with the slopaganda.

d@nny disc@ mc²

@abucci @ieeespectrum i haven't forgiven them for their hit piece on louis pouzin and the OSI where the author cackled over IBM's ability to distort and break down the international collaboration. https://spectrum.ieee.org/osi-the-internet-that-wasnt they are a fundamentally immoral institution

Grumble 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇬🇱

@ieeespectrum As an IEEE member for 26 years, I'm embarrassed and saddened by the Spectrum editors publishing this half-ass hit piece against Wikipedia.

Do better, folks. Your decision to publish this brings no credit upon yourselves or to our organization. Maybe stick closer to topics like electronics.

Matthew

@ieeespectrum

“Giving users agency over Wikipedia’s rules, as I’ve discovered in some of my own studies of Wikipedia, can lead an institution away ultimately from the needs of those the institution serves.”

Holy shit, this sentence got away from you. Did you even read it?

d@nny disc@ mc²

@abucci @ieeespectrum IBM and the Holocaust was not yet published at the time

Lina

@davidgerard @ieeespectrum
the fucking gall of evoking Elinor Ostrom's work (a lazy misreading of it, even) to suggest that Wikipedia should allow walled garden-erecting, anti-commons monopolists to poison Wikipedia with slop. absolutely, insultingly absurd. no notes.

[object Object]

@davidgerard there’s nothing the kids crave more than LinkedIn-style chatbot slop pushed into one of the last usable websites by a professional engineering organization from 1963 they can’t afford to join

Janne Upla

@davidgerard
The author really needs to get in the fucking sea.

"But the volunteer base is aging. A 2010 study found the average Wikipedia contributor was in their mid-twenties; today, many of those same editors are now in their forties or fifties."

MarjorieR

@davidgerard come on IEEE, leave Wikipedia alone: if you dont like the truth then you can just go and use an already existing 100% private enterprise AI slop-ipidia; Elon Musk's very own Grokipedia (no I won't link to it).

generic holiday season brib

@zzt @davidgerard

Gen Z and Gen Alpha readers are accustomed to TikTok, YouTube, and mobile-first visual media.

Ah, I love sweeping generalisations over how (il)literate young people are.

Tell me you don't know the youth of today without telling me you don't know the youth of today

mivox is exhausted :ri:

@ieeespectrum Counterpoint: It serves younger readers best by not allowing AI to fill it with garbage and lies.

Jeroen Bosman

@davidgerard although I agree on keeping AI out, I do think the article is a bit more nuanced.

[object Object]

@sitcom_nemesis @davidgerard I’m imagining the hell wikipedia they’re proposing, where the dreadful generative voice used for TikTok conspiracy videos narrates a slop video extruded from a prompt like “make a 2 minute video from this text” followed by the now-inaccessible last human-written version of the Wikipedia article for the topic at hand

this is hurting my head