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University professor, circa 2010 : You can’t trust Wikipedia. You cannot use it for your essay.
University professor, circa 2025 : Here are powerpoint sildes on how to use ChatGPT to do your essay.
Personal conclusion: the only problem with Wikipedia was that it was not corporately owned and that it had no marketing budget.
@ploum @MonniauxD I'm a university professor and I know a lot of other university professors and nobody is doing this in 2025. and most of us have encouraged use of wikipedia all along.
@regehr @ploum @MonniauxD As a current university student, I have professors who are doing both of these things simultaneously in 2025. I have even had multiple professors who have made use of AI mandatory for an assignment. To those, I've become quite fond of citing Hicks et al, "ChatGPT is bullshit" to express my derision of the requirement, because I have no chill.
@regehr My experience as a student is quite different. @ploum @MonniauxD
@regehr @ploum @MonniauxD I got a lot of 'be sceptical with Wikipedia, but have a look at the list is sources as a starting point'.
@ploum il faut qu'on sorte du mythe des profs d'université surdoués qui seraient forcément immunisés au marketing et aux idées reçues
@ploum Our university has a diametral policy. LLM-generated content gets 0 points and lecturers ask a lot of "why did you do this?" questions.
@swaldman @ploum @cstross it's a mixed bag in the University I am at. Certainly, I am still allowed to ban people from using them in my course... but yes, there's some management push for "incorporating GenAI" here too. I have had some surprised reactions to my pointing people at published research that is contrary to what mgmt desires to be true.
@ploum this isn’t even an exaggeration. I went back to school and had many professors tell me to use AI in my work.
@ploum I genuinely still don't get this, how such a vast majority of educators encouraging the use of such a damaging tool but were never okay with wikipedia for absolutely no reason!! At least I was never given an actual reason why wikipedia wasn't an acceptable source, idk about you guys
@agasramirez @ploum well that makes a lot of sense, I think that's a very sensible thing to tell students honestly. That's the way we should learn it, not asking an ai bot, specially with all the information we have about the damage they cause
@Em0nM4stodon @ploum @vmstan I have used Wikipedia with teens to teach them how to summarise because texts in textbooks are too dry. It's a good resource if we use it well.
@ploum Also, 15 years passed during which the project has matured massively
@ploum when my students use Wikipedia, my rule is, “did you read to the end?” A few have platformed problematic ppl/stuff because they don’t get tot he “controversy” section.
@ploum Yep, I recall a college librarian lecturing us on Wikipedia; ok to use as a starting point, not considered accurate enough to use as a source.
@ploum I remember good comments about wikipedia around 2005 at my university.
@ploum
I pay a tiny donation to Wikipedia every month, it adds up of course but I do it because it's good
@ploum c'est aussi ce qu'écrivait @MonniauxD sur son blog #mediapart
I consider quoting ChatGPT as equivalent as quoting google. You can't even properly cite it because the result can be different if other people look at it.
@ploum @Em0nM4stodon
Me in 2010 (and now): do not cite Wikipedia. Use it as a first source, then follow its citations and cite the original papers.
Me in 2025: If you use a generative AI, you are denying yourself the education you are here for. It will hallucinate and make you look like an idiot. Don't use it until you know what it will get wrong and can correct it.
@ploum @ploum this doesn't seem fair tbh, in school we were taught you shouldn't quote wikipedia directly and instead check the source it cites and see if there are ones that contradict it
That just seems like good advice on how to do research not a conspiracy by corporate interests, with you on using AI being a ridiculous solution though
@ploum
All of the below were wikipedia "facts"
Robbie Williams eats domestic pets in pubs for money.
David Beckham was a Chinese goalkeeper in the 18th century.
Sergey Brin's dating Jimmy Wales, and dead.
Tony Blair worships Hitler.
The Duchess of Cornwall's Christian name is Cow-miller.
John Seigenthaler helped assassinate John and Robert Kennedy.
TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh published a new version of the Kama Sutra.
So nothing to do with corporate entities. It's to do with being wrong.
@ploum my conclusion: professors only hate something if it is made by a person and prefer it made by either companies or ai
@ploum I think this is partially a result of educational inflation hitting hard in the past years.
When I was in high school I would reference Wikipedia in essays and have teachers say "I'll accept it, but just know that in university they won't because that's more serious". Now I hear it's the same to bachelor's students about both Wikipedia and ChatGPT, saying it's okay but they can't expect to get away with it in master's studies.
I have taught myself a lot by reading wikipedia for fun.
their math articles are decently accurate.
@ploum I was always taught to check the references on Wikipedia.
@ploum Musk hates Wikipedia. He is now threatening to sue the unpaid, volunteer editors for libel because he doesn't like what they say about his companies. The editors have started using sock-puppet accounts just to continue doing their job.
@ploum well maybe a universoty professor is not a good example, maybe ordinary person or secondary professor \(˚_˚)/
2018: corporate email is now outsourced to the clown
@ploum I'm a professor, and we hate AI and are absolutely 100% against students' using it to do their work for them. We are being encouraged to teach them that as it evolves AI might have productive uses (helping with topic invention if you're struggling to find your initial idea, for instance), but asking it to "use it to do your essay" isn't one of them. We were encouraged to do the same thing with Wikipedia and other general reference sources too.
@ploum How very true! After comparing some entities in the same subject from Wikipedia & Brittanica and/or Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, I never go to wiki, it’s just beyond the point. GPP chat appears to be a sure way to ‘dissolve’ the knowledge efficiently subverting the very idea as distinctly hunan and personal, integral to one’s mind. It obliterates the value of knowledge as such. Well, it’s my personal perspective.
@ploum
And we did not use MS software to make it popular 
@ploum teachers today are saying you can't trust wikipedia because anyone can edit it, however, a piece of software literally putting random words together can actually help you
@ploum I haven’t met a single professor suggesting chat GPT for essays, in fact every single one I know (including myself) considers it plagiarism and a waste of time. I go out of my way to show my students how unreliable it is and how it will just waste their time. I’m not saying no professor is doing this, I just don’t think it’s widespread.
@ploum And as for Wikipedia, I don’t allow my students to cite it, but I do recognize it’s a great way to get an introductory take on a topic, so I don’t discourage them from reading it, but I do tell them to check out the sources themselves.
@ploum Wikipedia wasn't good in many areas when it started out. There were inaccuracies in many fields and some truly stunning biases that reflected who was editing it and their priorities. It has gotten a lot better because of the relentless work of editors. Still, students in college can consult reference sources but cannot cite them because they have to cite and credit the scholars who did the research, not the editors who summarize it. Plenty of us resist AI despite immense pressure.
the giant wikipedia staff and bot team dedicated to making sure vandalism doesn't occur:
the barely moderated chatbot that prefers making stuff up whenever it doesn't know something:
@ploum I remember our teachers at school telling us not to use Wikipedia for research because 'anyone can edit it' but had no problem with us using any other random website we found on Google.
And we wonder why so much of the population aren't good at processing information.
