We can call wikipedia content facts by consensus. It's hard to say the same for LLMs since the input is not curated for accuracy, even though the wikipedia content is a subset of the entire training corpus.
In short, the curation is the key differentiator between the two.
> Even if you are sure something is true, it must have been previously published in a reliable source before you can add it. If reliable sources disagree with each other, then maintain a neutral point of view and present what the various sources say, giving each side its due weight.
Wikipedia cares that its contents are taken from reliable sources, which can be independently verified. Not all news media are reliable sources, and in fact academic papers and journals and published books are generally more reliable than news media.
Does Wikipedia actually require a consensus? I could swear I’ve seen articles with “controversy” sections. I think they just require some at least minimally respectable sources…
As far as actual truth… that seems beyond their ability to evaluate.
Wikipedia just requires that all mainstream views are represented proportionate to how widely they are held. As an aside, controversy sections are discouraged because they tend to give too much weight to the controversies.
This is all of written history. Nobody is still around to verify what really happened. There’s archeological evidence in some cases but that is subject to interpretation, and in most cases very few people have actually seen it firsthand. The only facts are those that can be proven by scientific experiments or logical inference from other facts.
I don’t think that’s really a non-sequitur, but I guess it depends on what’s meant by facts in your epistemology.