Re: [TUHS] Re: Wikipedia anecdotes - LLM generalizations [was On the unreliability of LLM-based search results (was: Listing of early Unix source code from the Computer History Museum)
27 May
2025
27 May
'25
8:52 p.m.
From: Paul Winalski
Wikipedia quite rightly wants citations for stated
facts and this
practice goes a long way to prevent inaccuracies. But I recall one
instance where it actually caused the establishment of a factual error.
Not rare; this pattern was the subject of an XKCD strip, "Citogenesis":
https://xkcd.com/978/
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/978:_Citogenesis
The latter URL has a very similar story to the one you gave.
Noel
27 May
27 May
11:23 p.m.
New subject: [TUHS] Re: Wikipedia anecdotes - LLM generalizations [was On the unreliability of LLM-based search results (was: Listing of early Unix source code from the Computer History Museum)
On 5/27/25 16:52, Noel Chiappa wrote:
I had to go to considerable lengths to fix a misspelling of my
father's
first name in a short Wikipedia article about my mother (not written by
me!). The original article cited a newspaper engagement notice with the
misspelling. After some effort, I found another citation that identified
him sufficiently in context to use as a cite for his correct name.
Dan H.
From: Paul
Winalski
Wikipedia quite rightly wants citations for
stated facts and this
practice goes a long way to prevent inaccuracies. But I recall one
instance where it actually caused the establishment of a factual error.
Not rare; this pattern was the subject of an XKCD strip, "Citogenesis":
https://xkcd.com/978/
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/978:_Citogenesis
The latter URL has a very similar story to the one you gave.
Noel
9
days inactive
9
days old
1 comments
2 participants
participants (2)
-
Dan Halbert -
jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu