Post #230079
2026-02-03 19:32 UTC
Replies (18)
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@tiredofsametab@fedia.io 2026-02-04 12:12
Research has shown that many readers today greatly value quick overviews of any article, before the reader considers whether to dive into the article’s full text. I'm in my mid 40s and this is true of me depending upon why I might be reading something. Sometimes, I want to do a deep dive; sometimes I just want to know roughly what thing is. However, let me say: fuck AI summaries.
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@flango@lemmy.eco.br 2026-02-03 19:34
They want to dumb down Wikipedia
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@BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.world 2026-02-03 20:31
The article is very biased - it basically suggests young people are unwilling to read, that AI is a good thing and that the wikipedia contributors are being unreasonable. It goes on to talk about how AI has "extracted value" from Wikipedia in an unquestioning way - no mention of compensation to the project, just talking about what a triumph Wikipedia is a source for AI to train on. The "Simple Summaries" situation is less to do with the summaries and more to do with the risk of AI slop being introduced into Wikipedia unquestioned. The summaries were unchecked and unverified, which add a real chance that wikipedia started serving up inaccurate summaries and undermined it's own reputation. In addition that idea that younger generations don't have the concentration span to "read a wall of text" is pernicious and patronising nonsense part of a general media bias against Gen Z and Gen Alpha. There seems to be this barely questioned narrative that they have short attention spans and are unwilling or even unable to read, just because they grew up in the era of social media like Instagram and latterly Tik Tok. I'll give a better hypothesis for why younger generations spend less time on wikipedia: the big tech giants like Google have stolen all the information people have put on there and serve it up in their own summaries on the search engine (preventing click throughs) or through their own AI slop engines. They don't want people clicking through to Wikipedia, they want them clicking through to an ad. The problem is not Wikipedia, and the problem is not Gen Z or Gen Alpha; the problem - as is frequently the case - is the tech mega-corporations who steal everything (including wikipedia) and sell it back to us with ads or via AI slop.
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@it_depends_man@lemmy.world 2026-02-03 22:42
Yes. >Yet behind the celebrations, a troubling pattern has developed: The volunteer community that built this encyclopedia has lately rejected a key innovation designed to serve readers. But not that one, because rejecting AI 1) is not a generational rejection and 2) it is correct to reject it. What I think is or will be the generational problem: the community that maintains it and decides what is being accepted or rejected is an "in group" that it is impossible to break into with conflicting ideas. For example, I do think the gaming, game mechanics and game development related pages can be vastly improved. But I don't think the people responsible for those pages are interested in the changes I would suggest. All the wikis for different games could just be on wikipedia. But they're not, probably because they were rejected, because it's "not relevant". Well, some people decided they were relevant after all and they made their own wikis for those. The outcome is tribalism based fragmentation, because of differences in opinion of who values what and what should be preserved and what shouldn't.
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@PointyFluff@lemmy.ml 2026-02-04 02:07
It's damn near impossible to make any credible edits to any wikipedia page, anymore. I've just stopped all together.
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@acosmichippo@lemmy.world 2026-02-04 08:10
am i crazy or don’t most articles already have perfectly good summaries? i dont even buy the premise here.
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@RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 2026-02-04 02:34
Wake up Lemmy, it's time for your daily, Wikipedia should have more AI slop article. Let's make it 1400 words this time, and make sure to mention that younger generations watch Ticktok, but ignore that most TickTok slop is just people summerizing Wikipedia articles.
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@thatonecoder@lemmy.ca 2026-02-04 07:21
Really? I've always believed that it is an amazing way to learn basic concepts, because of how articles are linked to each other; furthermore, I have not had any issues with reading entire articles in one sitting. God, what has happened to this world???
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@MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2026-02-04 12:06
There's alrrady [simple.wikipedia.org](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page). Why alienate editors with AI-summaries? Add the summaries from there?
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@RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 2026-02-04 02:39
AI could help editors translate from other languages, but beyond that, it's an inefficient mess that Wikipedia doesn't need, plus given how much of AI is just regurgitating Wikipedia, It'll give itself mad ~~cow~~ AI disease.
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@devolution@lemmy.world 2026-02-03 21:29
How do I download the full Wikipedia again?
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@WonderRin@sh.itjust.works 2026-02-04 08:19
I feel like this will end up being a cycle. The AI companies are pushing for AI summaries, which then leads to younger Gen Z and the new Gen Alpha being familiar with and preferring AI summaries. This, in turn, leads to other companies implementing AI summaries because they see that's what the new generations are using, which leads to the new generations being even more accustomed to those summaries, which leads to more companies implementing them, and it's just an endless cycle.
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@Kolanaki@pawb.social 2026-02-03 20:13
The walls of text wouldn't be so impenetrable if literacy rates were higher.
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@daggermoon@lemmy.world 2026-02-04 12:23
It always seemed to me that Wikipedia had a great and vigilant team. It never occurred to me they may need help. Can an idiot like me be of any help? I love Wikipedia and I want it to survive into the distant future.
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@arsCynic@piefed.social 2026-02-03 20:45
Does someone understand the following sentence? > “then present that knowledge in ways that break the virtuous cycle Wikipedia depends on.”
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@gustofwind@lemmy.world 2026-02-03 20:30
Download your copies of Wikipedia before it’s too late
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@Pxtl@lemmy.ca 2026-02-03 20:37
Eventually somebody is going to use textbots to DDOS wikipedia with subtle propaganda (if they're not already doing that) and it will be impossible to protect without completely locking it down so that only established users can edit.
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@biotin7@sopuli.xyz 2026-02-04 06:38
Sooooooo should we start creating an alternative to Wikipedia now ?