Wikipedia

What hackers pick instead

• GrokipediaRecommended as a comprehensive, easy-to-correct alternative to Wikipedia. Most common caveat: critics call it ideologically biased and prone to errors.52recommend
• Local WikipediaShows Wikipedia articles near your location, which people enjoy for discovering local history. Critics say the radius is not really a half-hour walk and results are thin outside large English-speaking areas.45recommend
• Britannica11.orgA free, fast online version of the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica that people enjoy browsing and find nostalgic. Critics note search and rendering errors.14recommend
• WikidataA free, community-edited knowledge base of structured data linking entities like books, species and companies by shared identifiers, queryable with SPARQL. Coverage is uneven and varies by topic.13recommend
• WiktionaryPeople recommend Wiktionary for its broad coverage of word meanings and for being a quick, usually reliable answer to word questions. Critics say it is not always accurate, and some entries contradict each other.12recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 906 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Multi-language repository of basically all human knowledge that’s extremely resistant to government capture and contributed by volunteers totally transparently?

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia”

2. its value is still considerable, of course -- there are far more neutral things than controversial ones, and most of the articles about those are fine

   Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Academics have a duty to defend open knowledge systems like Wikipedia”

3. the fact-checking processes that go into validating articles written on wikipedia does more to unbias the articles than like, 90% of the news media

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Toxic Truth: How Wikipedia Poisons Global Knowledge”

4. It's a miracle that in a world where everything becomes a service, proprietary and cloud based, you can download a collective human knowledge

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “25 Years of Wikipedia”

5. I hesitate to use Wikipedia as a source given all the anti-Israel bias lately, but that particular section seems okay-ish for now

   Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Wikipedia row erupts as Jimmy Wales intervenes on 'Gaza genocide' page”

6. one of the more neutral point-of-view sources on the internet these days given its wide range of editors and consensus process

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Iran War Live Updates: U.S. and Iran Send Conflicting Signals on Peace Prospects”

7. I worry that people don't understand how important Wikipedia and Wikimedia are to not only a large percentage of the world

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder/co-founder – Jung and Naiv: Episode 792 [video]”

8. I think a large part of that is due to moderation actions being very public and open for discussion on the "talk" page.

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole”

9. the reason people treat Wikipedia as a valuable resource is exactly because it won't publish anything indiscriminately

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Odin, Wikipedia and Engagement Farming”

10. If you want population statistics or whatever, Wikipedia will tell you and link to the country's own official metrics.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Spotlighting the World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell”

11. by insisting on citing reliable sources, no original research, setting up a whole system of moderators and governance

    Recommends · Nov 2025

12. Wikipedia is a great resource and I use it a lot, but it is far from a complete solution for topics with any depth.

    Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “The Age of Reading Is Over”

13. it's not just a very valuable resource but also one of the great intellectual achievements of the last 100 years

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Big Tech's Anti-Labor Playbook Has Come for Wikipedia”

14. wikipedia just citing information from a supposedly reputable source seems to be wikipedia operating as intended

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “Show HN: Discover Wikipedia articles popular on Hacker News”

15. Wikipedia will win against a generic corporate encyclopedia on neutrality/oversight, but it'll lose badly on UX

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Wikipedia bans AI-generated content in its online encyclopedia”

16. There's more net value for us in Wikipedia than there is in ~a trillion dollars of the more vapid tech firms.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets”

17. Wikipedia is ideological. Even when the articles stick to the facts (which they often don't), editors will selectively omit inconvenient (but factually true) information to push their ideology.

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “25 Years of Wikipedia”

18. I find wikipedia is really vulnerable to Gell-Mann Amnesia where any article about a topic on which you are very familiar has blatantly incorrect information

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “Academics have a duty to defend open knowledge systems like Wikipedia”

19. Wikepedia, the most untrustworthy source ever, cases and cases of people who gained access to the article and completely changed it with fake information

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Show HN: Discover Wikipedia articles popular on Hacker News”

20. Wikipedia is an aggregate of "reliable sources" (read: left wing media outlets) and as such cannot be trusted as a source of fact in political matters.

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Trump Fake Electors Plot”

21. The Wikipedia pages on those specific topics (Ukraine, Gaza, BLM) is known to be have been manipulated by groups of editors acting in coordination

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “25 Years of Wikipedia”

22. Wikipedia is bogged down by administrators who are average Joes, often from the other side of the planet and with very little first-hand knowledge

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Russia Poisons Wikipedia”

23. Unqualified people have the power to tell experts who were there that their contributions are insignificant, wrong, or that details don't matter.

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “25 Years of Wikipedia”

24. State actors, company security departments, activists, etc influence and seemingly control the more meaningful/controversial Wikipedia sections.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters”

25. I constantly had to deal with obnoxious behaviour on there from administrators who kept enshittifying content and leaving me rude messages.

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “Blindsight (Watts Novel)”

26. it has many serious flaws (generally of the form that a small number of zealots can control the messaging on topics they are obsessed with

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act for now”

27. Wikipedia is a hopelessly compromised source, you shouldn't rely on it for anything where a left wing activist might have strong opinions

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M”

28. Every ongoing conflict and culture-war issue is a "contentious topic", which is Wikipedia code for "editors are at each others' throats"

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “25 Years of Wikipedia”

29. I was surprised to see the German Wikipedia had a couple of articles on Scottish history that were better than the English language one!

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “After 25 years, Wikipedia has proved that news doesn't need to look like news”

30. Wikipedia covers music very well. It often doesn't include the music itself, but there's a ton of great writing and history about music.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Music eases surgery and speeds recovery, study finds”

31. letting them be recongnized by contributing to open knowledge like wikipedia (vs closed private journals) is the counterbalance we need

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Academics have a duty to defend open knowledge systems like Wikipedia”

32. Most volunteers on Wikipedia do an excellent job, but sometimes the absence of traditional editorial structures shows its limitations.

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “CIA to Sunset the World Factbook”

33. Download a copy of Wikipedia locally, give the agent a way to search it and BOOM accurate information without an internet connection.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing”

34. the Wikipedia approach to help users find and collaborate on good content to make it even better or more comprehensive is preferable

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “I Just Want to Search”

35. Wikipedia and Mastodon have their problems, but at least there's not an obvious need for them to exploit their users to make money.

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Kamunity.com (.eu .se) European alternative to Reddit”

36. Obviously there is a bias. The question is whether it is a bias to honest citation of sources that are expected to be factual.

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Academics have a duty to defend open knowledge systems like Wikipedia”

37. It's very weird to assume good intentions or trustworthy info from Grokipedia but then hold up Wikipedia as "heavily poisoned"

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia”

38. They pay fair wages because they have enough scale where pestering for donations once a year is enough to justify their costs

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs”

39. Nobody is actually showing us why the problem they choose to highlight is significant enough to torpedo Wikipedia altogether

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Academics have a duty to defend open knowledge systems like Wikipedia”

40. If you use wikipedia as a starting point, and actually check reference material critically, it's invaluable in my opinion.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “25 Years of Wikipedia”