Projects like Wikipedia never have meaningful competition, because the social dynamics invariably converge to a single platform eating everything else.

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adventured 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Wikipedia is already dead, they just don't know it yet. They'll get Stackoverflowed.

The LLMs have already guaranteed their zombie end. The HN crowd will be comically delusional about it right up to the point where Wikimedia struggles to keep the lights on and has to fire 90% of its staff. There is no scenario where that outcome is avoided (some prominent billionaire will step in with a check as they get really desperate, but it won't change anything fundamental, likely a Sergey Brin type figure).

The LLMs will do to Wikipedia, what Wikipedia & Co. did to the physical encyclopedia business.

You don't have to entirely wipe out Wikipedia's traffic base to collapse Wikimedia. They have no financial strength what-so-ever, they burn everything they intake. Their de facto collapse will be extremely rapid and is coming soon. Watch for the rumbles in 2026-2027.

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empiko 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Wikipedia is not even in the game you are describing here. Wikipedia does not need billions of users clicking on ads to convince investors in yet another seed. They are an encyclopedia, and if fewer people will visit, they will still be an encyclopedia. Their costs are probably very strongly correlated with their number of visitors.

	▲	6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
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	▲	zahlman 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		SO was supposed to be much the same, though. I guess you really do have to get directly funded by users for the model to work.
	▲	6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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threetonesun 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If we kill all the platforms where content for training LLMs comes from, what do LLMs train on?

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InsideOutSanta 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This. I'm really bothered by the almost cruel glee with which a lot of people respond to SO's downfall. Yeah, the moderation was needlessly aggressive. But it was successful at creating a huge repository of text-based knowledge which benefited LLMs greatly. If SO is gone, where will this come from for future programming languages, libraries, and tools?

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jrmg 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This always feels to me like, an elephant in the room.

I’d love to read a knowledgeable roundup of current thought on this. I have a hard time understanding how, with the web becoming a morass of SEO and AI slop - with really no effort being put into to keeping it accurate - we’ll be able to train LLMs to the level we do today in the future.

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rvnx 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Newspapers, scientific papers and soon, real-world interactions.

News is the main feed of new data and that can be an infinite incremental source of new information

	▲	threetonesun 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You talk about news here like it's some irrefutable ether LLMs can tap into. Also I'd think newspapers and scientific papers cover extremely little of what the average person uses an LLM to search for.

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InsideOutSanta 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most people went to SO because they had to for their job. Most people go to Wikipedia because they want to, for curiosity and learning.

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shuntress 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

LLMs will use Wikipedia the same way humans use it