{"slug": "wikipedia", "name": "Wikipedia", "category": "other", "category_name": "Other software", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 14, "warners": 2, "score": 4.114, "rising": -0.31, "first": "2025-11-30", "latest": "2026-10-23", "why": "when I typed the three words into Wikipedia\u2019s search, the TV show was the second search result.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 4, "compare": 3, "warn": 2}, "spark": [0, 0, 3, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "when I typed the three words into Wikipedia\u2019s search, the TV show was the second search result.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "wikipedia.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.wikipedia.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Wikipedia", "Wikipedia app"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 803385728, "item_id": 50211608, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50211608", "by": "tonymet", "date": "2026-10-23", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My Apple Watch Wikipedia app shows the local results and I use it to discreetly doomscroll", "excerpt": "I love these local articles. My Apple Watch Wikipedia app shows the local results and I use it to discreetly doomscroll when I\u2019m bored in meetings.", "context": "Apple Watch user", "use_case": "browsing nearby articles on watch", "switched_from": "", "story": "Local Wikipedia: Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you"}, {"id": 769104210, "item_id": 48069013, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48069013", "by": "babelfish", "date": "2026-05-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The Wikipedia \"map\" tab on the iOS app is also a great source", "excerpt": "I love both of these platforms. The Wikipedia \"map\" tab on the iOS app is also a great source of neat local oddities.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Roadside Attraction"}, {"id": 747545922, "item_id": 46721620, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46721620", "by": "sersi", "date": "2026-01-22", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I know plenty of people who binge wikipedia and learn new things through that.", "excerpt": "> Who opens an physical encyclopedia nowadays? I know plenty of people who binge wikipedia and learn new things through that. While Wikipedia is not always perfect, it's not like older printed encyclopaedia like Britannica were perfect either. You have a point with trusting AI, but I'm starting to see people around me realising that LLMs tend to be overconfident even when wrong and verifying the source instead of jus", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI Assistant"}, {"id": 746273249, "item_id": 46642078, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46642078", "by": "Anthony-G", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "when I typed the three words into Wikipedia\u2019s search, the TV show was the second search result.", "excerpt": "I hadn\u2019t heard of Grokipedia so based on the positive comments in this thread, I thought I\u2019d try it out \u2013 only to discover that its search feature sucks. I\u2019ve just finished watching a HBO TV show on Blu-Ray called \u201cThe Night of\u201d so I tried searching for it on Grokipedia. It failed to find an article about the TV series in the first 60 search results (regardless of whether I used double quotes or appended the words \u201cT", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "25 Years of Wikipedia"}, {"id": 746179184, "item_id": 46636199, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46636199", "by": "20k", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If I want to look something up, I always check out wikipedia first.", "excerpt": "If I want to look something up, I always check out wikipedia first. Its not always accurate, but its invariably a lot more accurate on most topics than random information across the web. Its also pretty easy to spot bad quality wiki articles once you get the gist of the site Its amazing that wikipedia exists - there've been multiple hardcore attempts to kill it over the years for profit, but its still managing to go", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "25 Years of Wikipedia"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 772654624, "item_id": 48290914, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48290914", "by": "vintermann", "date": "2026-05-27", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'm way too disgusted at the Wikipedia sausage making process for that.", "excerpt": "The alternative, is to \"do your own research\" yes. No matter how much they sneer at it, no matter how many people who say they do it suck at it. You have to put in work if you want to be well-informed about anything. There doesn't have to be an alternative to Wikipedia as a short-cut to being well informed on contentious topics, because there isn't a short cut, and the sooner people realize, the better. You can still", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Big Tech's Anti-Labor Playbook Has Come for Wikipedia"}, {"id": 764170768, "item_id": 47760673, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47760673", "by": "msla", "date": "2026-04-13", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "the Wikipedia app devs prevent you from opting out of sharing supposedly-anonymous data with their app", "excerpt": "Interestingly, the Wikipedia app devs prevent you from opting out of sharing supposedly-anonymous data with their app. Supposedly-anonymous because I think we all know how deanonymizing works by now, and how easy it is: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T356260 Just more push and pull on privacy, mostly pulling it away from you, it seems.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Android now stops you sharing your location in photos"}]}], "who": [{"by": "tonymet", "context": "Apple Watch user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50211608", "date": "2026-10-23"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["browsing nearby articles on watch"], "compared": [{"slug": "grokipedia", "name": "Grokipedia", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46632023", "title": "25 Years of Wikipedia", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50202285", "title": "Local Wikipedia: Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285592", "title": "Big Tech's Anti-Labor Playbook Has Come for Wikipedia", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48067764", "title": "Roadside Attraction", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47750669", "title": "Android now stops you sharing your location in photos", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366666", "title": "Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"compare": 1}, "2025-12": {"compare": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 2, "compare": 1}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-04": {"warn": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 803385728, "item_id": 50211608, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50211608", "by": "tonymet", "date": "2026-10-23", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My Apple Watch Wikipedia app shows the local results and I use it to discreetly doomscroll", "excerpt": "I love these local articles. My Apple Watch Wikipedia app shows the local results and I use it to discreetly doomscroll when I\u2019m bored in meetings.", "context": "Apple Watch user", "use_case": "browsing nearby articles on watch", "switched_from": "", "story": "Local Wikipedia: Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you"}, {"id": 772654624, "item_id": 48290914, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48290914", "by": "vintermann", "date": "2026-05-27", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'm way too disgusted at the Wikipedia sausage making process for that.", "excerpt": "The alternative, is to \"do your own research\" yes. No matter how much they sneer at it, no matter how many people who say they do it suck at it. You have to put in work if you want to be well-informed about anything. There doesn't have to be an alternative to Wikipedia as a short-cut to being well informed on contentious topics, because there isn't a short cut, and the sooner people realize, the better. You can still", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Big Tech's Anti-Labor Playbook Has Come for Wikipedia"}, {"id": 769104210, "item_id": 48069013, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48069013", "by": "babelfish", "date": "2026-05-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The Wikipedia \"map\" tab on the iOS app is also a great source", "excerpt": "I love both of these platforms. The Wikipedia \"map\" tab on the iOS app is also a great source of neat local oddities.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Roadside Attraction"}, {"id": 764170768, "item_id": 47760673, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47760673", "by": "msla", "date": "2026-04-13", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "the Wikipedia app devs prevent you from opting out of sharing supposedly-anonymous data with their app", "excerpt": "Interestingly, the Wikipedia app devs prevent you from opting out of sharing supposedly-anonymous data with their app. Supposedly-anonymous because I think we all know how deanonymizing works by now, and how easy it is: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T356260 Just more push and pull on privacy, mostly pulling it away from you, it seems.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Android now stops you sharing your location in photos"}, {"id": 757922993, "item_id": 47370187, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47370187", "by": "scottyah", "date": "2026-03-13", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "> \"grokipedia\" as idea So you can understand someone not liking something, but you cannot understand that person liking the idea of an alternative? What is the idea for you if not just an alternative to the established service with the undesired part changed?", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters"}, {"id": 753895201, "item_id": 47118450, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47118450", "by": "greggoB", "date": "2026-02-22", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "> not to mention the its bias is reason that Grokipedia came about in the first place. No, the reason is Musk didn't like that the Wikipedia article on him added the factual record of him doing a Nazi salute [0] [0] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/united-states/article/2025/01/23/musk-wikipedia-founder-in-row-over-how-to-describe-nazi-salute_6737328_133.html", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "An Unbothered Jimmy Wales Calls Grokipedia a 'Cartoon Imitation' of Wikipedia"}, {"id": 747545922, "item_id": 46721620, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46721620", "by": "sersi", "date": "2026-01-22", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I know plenty of people who binge wikipedia and learn new things through that.", "excerpt": "> Who opens an physical encyclopedia nowadays? I know plenty of people who binge wikipedia and learn new things through that. While Wikipedia is not always perfect, it's not like older printed encyclopaedia like Britannica were perfect either. You have a point with trusting AI, but I'm starting to see people around me realising that LLMs tend to be overconfident even when wrong and verifying the source instead of jus", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI Assistant"}, {"id": 746837072, "item_id": 46677317, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46677317", "by": "maxbaines", "date": "2026-01-19", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "This is hardly surprising given - New partnerships with tech companies support Wikipedia\u2019s sustainability. Which relies on Human content. https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2026/01/15/wikipedia-celebrates-25years/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Wikipedia: WikiProject AI Cleanup"}, {"id": 746273249, "item_id": 46642078, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46642078", "by": "Anthony-G", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "when I typed the three words into Wikipedia\u2019s search, the TV show was the second search result.", "excerpt": "I hadn\u2019t heard of Grokipedia so based on the positive comments in this thread, I thought I\u2019d try it out \u2013 only to discover that its search feature sucks. I\u2019ve just finished watching a HBO TV show on Blu-Ray called \u201cThe Night of\u201d so I tried searching for it on Grokipedia. It failed to find an article about the TV series in the first 60 search results (regardless of whether I used double quotes or appended the words \u201cT", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "25 Years of Wikipedia"}, {"id": 746210897, "item_id": 46638181, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46638181", "by": "f1shy", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I prefer the real encyclopedias. Britannica or other. The quality was so much better. For me would be hard to believe, anybody with actual experience using britannica can prefer wiki from the explanation quality pov. Of course the wiki has many advantages too. Before LLM I used it for helping with translation, for example. The direct links to web resources, etc. I like having both. I do certainly not want a world whe", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "25 Years of Wikipedia"}, {"id": 746184704, "item_id": 46636544, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46636544", "by": "DamnInteresting", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have been a fan of Wikipedia since I first learned about it", "excerpt": "I have been a fan of Wikipedia since I first learned about it, about six months after it launched. What a concept! Anyone can edit, citations are required, revisions are kept indefinitely. That's a recipe for building a clearinghouse of human knowledge with the power of iteration. But I am also a non-fiction researcher/writer, and I experience some problems caused by Wikipedia: 1) I like to dig deep into historical s", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "25 Years of Wikipedia"}, {"id": 746179184, "item_id": 46636199, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46636199", "by": "20k", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If I want to look something up, I always check out wikipedia first.", "excerpt": "If I want to look something up, I always check out wikipedia first. Its not always accurate, but its invariably a lot more accurate on most topics than random information across the web. Its also pretty easy to spot bad quality wiki articles once you get the gist of the site Its amazing that wikipedia exists - there've been multiple hardcore attempts to kill it over the years for profit, but its still managing to go", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "25 Years of Wikipedia"}, {"id": 741295104, "item_id": 46330944, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46330944", "by": "jcstk", "date": "2025-12-19", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "The free encyclopedia is an advertisement for a nonprofit", "excerpt": "The free encyclopedia is an advertisement for a nonprofit that does a lot of things: https://wikimediafoundation.org/what-we-do/. They manage costs of producing the encyclopedia by using volunteer labor. They operate a similar model as nature documentaries that drive donations for conservation and climate groups. These are all good things - still an advertisement.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Prepare for That Stupid World"}, {"id": 737648993, "item_id": 46103062, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46103062", "by": "kuba50", "date": "2025-11-30", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "The same applies to both wikipedia and grokpedia", "excerpt": "The problem is not whether you are impressed or not. The problem is in the assumption/story/belief that \"Intelligence\" is \"magic\" can be \"perfected\". It's not true. Philosophers have known it forever. And the AI hypestorm will remind everyone how over rated intelligence actually is. Intelligence can produce Socratic thought. It can also get Socrates killed. It can produce Aristotle and chase Aristotle out of the vill", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia"}]}