DuckDuckGo is pretty much useless now. The overwhelming majority of links it throws at me for any search are just the most obvious AI slop. This is a dark time for the internet.
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Try asking your local librarians about local history.
1: You'll absolutely make their day by asking.
2: They'll be able to direct you to real, verifiable sources.
And if you've got the ambition, you can use that new information to fix some of the crap on the Wikipedia page, helping others who might not be as perceptive of AI slop as you are.
That sounds like Elon musk's shitty project to rewrite Wikipedia using grok.
It's basically just the facts from Wikipedia plus right wing talking points and AI hallucinations.
It even has a shitty name to it
Ughhh...
Adding that domain to my DNS block list right now.
Definitely add a comment saying it's an unacceptable source, if there's a comment feature. It might even be the case that they had real sources and then an Elon fanatic gutted it out to grokify the page.
Information about my own local area's history is like... gappy, or when not gappy, very inaccessible? They have a dedicated city history archive in the city library but don't upload any of it to a digital location. We're left with fan historical sites, which are relying on very non-juicy sources to paint the picture of our local neighbourhoods.
So though I know this is pre-LLM documentation, it is a really crappy qnd fake sounding narrative full of people's speculation with very little sourcing.
It's stuff like that which actually got me to care about and understand the historical method, more so than learning about it in high school.
Oh and when I say neighbourhoods I mean places that were villages before being assumed into the greater city, not just suburbs laid down in the last 230 years or so.
Dude I just had the same experience yesterday. Wanted to know a bit about the folklore of my place and I guess it was kind of right when cross referencing but it just fucking sucks.
Wikipedia has been abused for literal decades. People will just make up sources to cite and hope nobody notices. That's why the first thing they teach you (or taught, not been in school for a while), is to never use wikipedia as a source. Local libraries, local newspapers and, funny enough, pubs (always some old guy who knows everything and will have books n shit). Check those places out.
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