> kids were pushed to use AI for homework, now it is disallowed and frowned upon. In short mixed messaging.

in the early 2000s in california universities you'd get marked down for citing wikipedia. so the good souls told everyone "see the number in brackets[2] after what you're trying to cite the article for? just click that then click the archive.org or whatever link there, then cite that."

Now? i think wiki is considered a valid source? or has it flopped back to being "unreliable"?

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sheept 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not that it's unreliable, it's just lazy research. Wikipedia, like all encyclopedias, is a tertiary source, but ideally your essay should be a mix of primary and secondary sources, while Wikipedia discourages original research and prefers only secondary sources. Wikipedia itself recommends against citing it as research[0] for this reason.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia

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kaliqt 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Laziness should never be the issue.

The issue is that Wikipedia can be wrong and you’d only know that by going to the source (or lack thereof), or checking other sources.

	▲	pqtyw 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		All secondary sources can be just as wrong, while standards of course might differ being published doesn't prove much on its own. Also of course in many/most non theoretical fields you find plenty of conflicting sources so relying on a "consensus" based high quality encyclopaedia article seems like a more reliable approach if you are new to the field and don't really understand what you are reading.

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ValentineC 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think Wikipedia's still considered unreliable, but the question that should be asked is whether the author even read the source in "the number in brackets" to ensure that it's even backed properly.

Just like how people should use AI for research, I guess.

	▲	genewitch 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		When i comment that i've researched using AI this way, it short circuits the brain of the listener/viewer and suddenly my sources aren't valid. a bing or google or wiki search to get the primary or secondary sources are okay, but if i use chat.deepseek.com instead, suddenly it isn't okay.