Grokipedia.com version 0.1 is now live. Efforts to replace wikipedia with a less biased root source for the world.

Rather amusing that none of the Musk-Hating Wikipedia Fans posting on a Feminism Women's Rights Board have so far engaged with the issue that Wikipedia is incontrovertibly systemically sexist and misogynistic. Almost like that is something that is not even on their RADAR.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5434861-grokipediacom-version-01-is-now-live-efforts-to-replace-wikipedia-with-a-less-biased-root-source-for-the-world?reply=148285021

The Wikipedia "Talk" pages for controversial topics would make Humphrey Appleby himself salute in admiration. Some well-meaning casual user wades in saying hey, I added xyz factual information, and is immediately bombarded with a string of officious WS:BLAH links and an immediate rollback of whatever they tried to do, never directly saying "we are deleting this because we disagree politically" but just piling on bureaucratic requirement after requirement.

I don't particularly see that grokipedia will solve this problem at a global level, but it's probably useful for some of the particular topics that wikipedia is currently very unreliable for.

I'm no Musk fanboy, but all the popular AIs have been found to say some pretty dreadful things. I don't think Grok is unique here.

Now you have read the link I posted, what are your thoughts on those examples of how a determined (or obsessive, depending on your perspective) Wiki editor was able to manipulate the "Reliable Sources" and references requirement to deliberately introduce bias and supress different perspectives?

Interesting discussion.

@SionnachRuadh do you mean that Hari's Wikipedia entry doesn't reflect the details of how hard it was to ferret him out? There is a section on what happened along with other details of his seemingly complete lack of integrity.

Also, how do people feel about grokipedia describing intelligent design as a "scientific" theory? That seems a pretty biased statement to me. Biased in exactly the opposite direction to Wikipedia. If you wanted to be unbiased you would have an article which started by saying the definition was contentious and explain both sides.

It doesn't give me complete trust but I do consider it comparing favourably to a team of software engineers doing His bidding which managed to get grok to publicly declare it was mechahitler before having to tone down the horrific far right bias. Yes, I freely admit to being picky about not supporting open Nazis...

I am stowing "cliquesourcing" in my lexicon for future use.

Here's an example of how Wikipedia's reliable sources rule works in practice.

The New York Post is blacklisted on Wikipedia. You can't use it as a source. Now yes, the Post is a tabloid and it is a bit clickbaity, but it also does journalism. That's why its coverage of Hunter Biden's activities had to be shut down by Big Tech during the 2020 election.

I've been keeping an eye on Hunter Biden's wiki page for several years. It's very interesting. Until quite recently a reader would have got the impression that Hunter is a beloved and universally respected public servant, and mean nasty Republicans have been making up baseless conspiracy theories about him, but those stories are mean and nasty and baseless, and if mysterious foreign businessmen give Hunter large sums of money for no obvious reason, there's nothing shady about that.

If you read the NY Post, they'd flat out tell you that the Biden family are corrupt grifters. But the NY Post is not a reliable source.

Now, since Joe Biden is no longer president, and reliable sources are prepared to allow criticism of him, and even coverage of Hunter's interesting legal challenges, Wikipedia's position has become untenable, so Hunter's page is a convoluted mess that mentions his dodgy activities while putting in lots of disclaimers insisting that there was nothing dodgy about them, and certainly nothing dodgy linked to Joe. For instance, Joe getting that Ukrainian prosecutor fired is still a false conspiracy theory, because Joe denied it and reliable sources backed Joe up, and the totally honest diamond geezer government of Ukraine backed Joe up.

The upshot of all this is that, if you'd spent the past five years reading the NY Post, you'd be significantly better informed about Hunter Biden than if you relied on Wikipedia, and if you read Hunter's wiki page now the conclusion you will draw is "this Hunter Biden guy seems really dodgy, and for some reason Wikipedia is trying to hide that".

Now multiply that across any of the controversial issues Wikipedia covers. It isn't achieving accuracy by crowdsourcing. What it's doing is sustaining a narrative by cliquesourcing.

WP consistently declare TWAW/TMAM in WikiVoice and consider gender critical views to be WP:FRINGE. Dissenting editors get indefinite bans pretty quickly. It is an activist swamp, not an impartial crowd-sourced encyclopedia.

The mechanisms put in place to try to eliminate bias are gameable and are gamed all the time.

Please read the link I posted earlier that goes into some detail about how the "reliable sources" rules have been manipulated and compromised to enforce rather than reduce bias.

Given that these mechanisms are clearly something that incrases your trust in Wikipedia I am very interested to know what you will think about that once you read it.

She has tried. They wouldn't let her. Though I don't know how long ago she last tried.

Of course she is able to edit things, the edit just needs to cite an independent source. (It is trivially easy to set up an account, email/wiki, that is [email protected] or whatever and then claim to have a third arm, which is why external links are required)

I've had to go through this for my DS entry, with his consent, because there was an inaccuracy. I had no luck with (paraphrasing) "I know my son and this is now correct" and was persistently reverted back to the incorrect information.

Only after providing a link to back up what I was saying was the inaccuracy corrected and it remains so.

Re PP, her entry isn't flattering but (1) it's a virtual encyclopedia not a PR channel (2) all the various statements and episodes are verifiable and have links to allow the reader to do so if they wish.

And the reason the Daily Mail isn't considered reliable as a source is not a political stance but because they continually publish content that requires "significant revision". An example of this is the certainty they originally portrayed a school as letting their pupils identity as cats, when it was a crass importation of a meme stemming from the shameful need of US schools to have litter trays for mass shootings.

I haven't been an active Wikipedia editor for quite a while, but if you know the back end of the site, it's very obvious how the mechanisms that Jimmy and Larry put into place to avoid bias have been turned into ways to enforce bias.

I was involved in a small way in exposing Johann Hari's activities, and that was an eye opener for me in terms of how Hari was able to game the system - for instance, using multiple sockpuppet accounts when the rules strictly forbid accusing anyone of sockpuppetry. Hari's exposure had to happen offsite, and under WP rules it couldn't even be discussed until a "reliable" third party source had reported on it. It became a huge issue for a shortish while, until the WP honchos shut it down, assured us that they had new processes that would prevent anything similar happening again... and I notice Hari's page has been cleaned up to obscure what the whole scandal was about.

That was quite a long time ago, and gaming of the site rules has got much worse since.

I will say that the right wing or far right mirror sites (Conservapedia, Infogalactic) have been absolute failures, partly because they don't have the base of volunteer editors (Wiki has many fewer active editors than people think, but few is more than none) and partly because they're not attempting to do anything more than replace Wiki's biases with their own biases.

Grokipedia seems like something different to me, and it's obvious the AI building it is extremely powerful. From looking at some fairly niche topics that I have knowledge of, it's not perfect but it's pretty good, the articles are often much more comprehensive than WP, and the AI is creating quite balanced "some people say x, others say y" sections which I find more useful than WP's standard "here's what Paul Krugman and Owen Jones think".

So I think it's an interesting experiment in what AI can do. Which makes it worth following for me. If it was just a Wikipedia clone with the existing WP bias replaced by Musk's eccentric opinions, which several PPs assume, I wouldn't say that.

There is a reason wikipedia is not accepted by universities, schools or any valid institution. It can be edited by literally anyone and can't be challenged. You must think we came down in the last shower! Just look at how Gender Critical feminists are described. Look at how Posie Parker is written about. Let Women Speak. The head moderator is a TRANSWOMAN, ffs! We were never going to get a fair go on wiki. Never will. Even on Reddit they talk about removing links on wiki that show us in a fair light. They brag about it, in fact. Martina Navratilova has said the wiki page on her has her hitting (with the tennis racket) in the wrong hand, and she, of all people, isn't even allowed to edit it or correct it! Her own page! So don't give us this bullshit about wikipedia having 'two important principles'. What a load of f'ing baloney! Bullshit! Musk's programme, as biased as he/it is, can't be any worse than wikipedia. Wikipedia is fucken dumpster fire with the credibility of a turd, and is banned from all schools and universities and colleges for a good reason.

Please read the link I posted. It dives deeply into a real world example of how one very determined man has introduced deep biases into Wikipedia by gaming and manipulating exactly the mechanisms that were intended to enforce impartiality.

It is a salient lesson. If the mechanisms that enforce impartiality can themselves be corrupted, the resulting bias is worse because people assume it cannot happen and so trust the biased information without checking.

A million times this. These men are not our friends.

Also, try actually using Wikipedia. It has two important principles: references must be provided; and editing is open source and rigourously debated. Whatever slop musk produces will not be similarly rigourous.

Kool-Aid=TDS

Um. I recall on Jan 6 watching it play out live on TV and via Twitter. I saw some of Trump’s tweets that were later deleted. He bears much blame. Sorry.

Another: January 6 is reimagined as a peaceful day out that Trump had nothing to do with.

Well, that comment aged like milk. We've seen bits of the leaked Michael Prescott report, with its condemnation of how BBC Panorama doctored Trump's speech to frame him for incitement that never happened, since then.

It’s quite literally the source the whole thread is based upon, ie. what OP linked to originally. It smacks of partisanship and petty avoidance to insist on a “source” in this instance.

However, the clear and unambiguous reference - and I have made several times - is the Trump entry in Grokipedia. This one:

https://grokipedia.com/page/Donald_Trump

It's usual to provide a link, or other clear and unamibiguous reference, to the material you cite or critique.

What’s so difficult about reading the Trump entry in Grokipedia? I even provided examples ( and omissions) from it to assist. What else is required?