My #Wikipedia request for comment just closed, finally banning #AI content in articles!
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My #Wikipedia request for comment just closed, finally banning #AI content in articles! "The use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited"
Kudos to all who participated in writing the guideline (especially Kowal2701) and the whole WikiProject AI Cleanup team, this was very much a group effort!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models/RfC
@quarknova Oh thank gods I was terrified about this.
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@quarknova Oh thank gods I was terrified about this.
@quarknova thank you and everyone else who helped for getting this passed.
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My #Wikipedia request for comment just closed, finally banning #AI content in articles! "The use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited"
Kudos to all who participated in writing the guideline (especially Kowal2701) and the whole WikiProject AI Cleanup team, this was very much a group effort!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models/RfC
@quarknova Wikipedia continues to demonstrate that humanity can just decide to create something wonderful, but it takes real dedication to protect that beauty from those who would take advantage. Thank you for your hard work safeguarding this bastion of collaboration.
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My #Wikipedia request for comment just closed, finally banning #AI content in articles! "The use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited"
Kudos to all who participated in writing the guideline (especially Kowal2701) and the whole WikiProject AI Cleanup team, this was very much a group effort!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models/RfC
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My #Wikipedia request for comment just closed, finally banning #AI content in articles! "The use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited"
Kudos to all who participated in writing the guideline (especially Kowal2701) and the whole WikiProject AI Cleanup team, this was very much a group effort!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models/RfC
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My #Wikipedia request for comment just closed, finally banning #AI content in articles! "The use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited"
Kudos to all who participated in writing the guideline (especially Kowal2701) and the whole WikiProject AI Cleanup team, this was very much a group effort!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models/RfC
@quarknova I think that unfortunately, this policy is exactly what big tech wants - fresh training knowledge and training data from humans, which the tech companies are free to remix into new public domain works that are not protected by share-alike.
With this policy, Wikipedia demands that humans work for the bots for free, and the humans can't even take advantage of the bots to work against the theft of the commons.
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My #Wikipedia request for comment just closed, finally banning #AI content in articles! "The use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited"
Kudos to all who participated in writing the guideline (especially Kowal2701) and the whole WikiProject AI Cleanup team, this was very much a group effort!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models/RfC
@quarknova oh well done, and thank you.!
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My #Wikipedia request for comment just closed, finally banning #AI content in articles! "The use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited"
Kudos to all who participated in writing the guideline (especially Kowal2701) and the whole WikiProject AI Cleanup team, this was very much a group effort!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models/RfC
@quarknova @robpike I am not sure that this will work out.
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@quarknova I think that unfortunately, this policy is exactly what big tech wants - fresh training knowledge and training data from humans, which the tech companies are free to remix into new public domain works that are not protected by share-alike.
With this policy, Wikipedia demands that humans work for the bots for free, and the humans can't even take advantage of the bots to work against the theft of the commons.
@yoasif @quarknova You have no idea what you're talking about. There is no way for humans to "take advantage of the bots to work against the theft of the commons". Slop-spewing bots cannot magically create new knowledge of the real world. All they can do is remix things that were already written and scooped up into their training set to make something that sounds plausible but that has no provenance.
Yes, malevolent capitalists will continue to scrape and attempt to enclose the commons. We fight them and continue to maintain the things we need and that nourish us. We don't destroy our own treasures to keep them from copying.
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@yoasif @quarknova You have no idea what you're talking about. There is no way for humans to "take advantage of the bots to work against the theft of the commons". Slop-spewing bots cannot magically create new knowledge of the real world. All they can do is remix things that were already written and scooped up into their training set to make something that sounds plausible but that has no provenance.
Yes, malevolent capitalists will continue to scrape and attempt to enclose the commons. We fight them and continue to maintain the things we need and that nourish us. We don't destroy our own treasures to keep them from copying.
@dalias @quarknova I don't actually believe that the bots can generate knowledge, but that is what we are told.
The lie is revealed with the demand for real human knowledge.
It isn't "malevolent capitalists" -- it is Wikipedia that has sold out its community: https://www.avclub.com/wikipedia-ai-partnerships-meta-amazon-microsoft
If it is good for the goose, why isn't good enough for the gander?
More precisely, why continue to contribute to Wikipedia when they have preemptively sold out the commons?
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@quarknova I would say that the battle was lost when Wikipedia allowed big tech to buy access to copyleft content without needing to share alike.
Your new policy simply enforces "fresh meat" for the models, without any requirement for reciprocity back to the commons.
Wikipedians then, are signing up to work for free to feed the models, while people downstream from the models can use their labor entirely for free without giving back.
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My #Wikipedia request for comment just closed, finally banning #AI content in articles! "The use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited"
Kudos to all who participated in writing the guideline (especially Kowal2701) and the whole WikiProject AI Cleanup team, this was very much a group effort!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models/RfC
@quarknova yes!!



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@dalias @quarknova I don't actually believe that the bots can generate knowledge, but that is what we are told.
The lie is revealed with the demand for real human knowledge.
It isn't "malevolent capitalists" -- it is Wikipedia that has sold out its community: https://www.avclub.com/wikipedia-ai-partnerships-meta-amazon-microsoft
If it is good for the goose, why isn't good enough for the gander?
More precisely, why continue to contribute to Wikipedia when they have preemptively sold out the commons?
@yoasif @quarknova That was a mistake, for complex reasons. But it doesn't justify burning down commons that you don't have the means to replicate outside of the organization at present.
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My #Wikipedia request for comment just closed, finally banning #AI content in articles! "The use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited"
Kudos to all who participated in writing the guideline (especially Kowal2701) and the whole WikiProject AI Cleanup team, this was very much a group effort!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models/RfC
@quarknova yay

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@yoasif @quarknova That was a mistake, for complex reasons. But it doesn't justify burning down commons that you don't have the means to replicate outside of the organization at present.
@dalias @quarknova I mean, forks could exist.
Forks wouldn't have a deal for big tech to opt out of share-alike, so we could conceivably see better stewards for this repository of knowledge than the Jimmy Wales crew.
As it is, contributing directly to Wikipedia constitutes a tacit acknowledgement of a rejection of the license that your contributions are nominally contributed under; Wikipedia has opted you out, even if you haven't.
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My #Wikipedia request for comment just closed, finally banning #AI content in articles! "The use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited"
Kudos to all who participated in writing the guideline (especially Kowal2701) and the whole WikiProject AI Cleanup team, this was very much a group effort!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models/RfC
@quarknova@wikis.world Thank you.
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@dalias @quarknova I mean, forks could exist.
Forks wouldn't have a deal for big tech to opt out of share-alike, so we could conceivably see better stewards for this repository of knowledge than the Jimmy Wales crew.
As it is, contributing directly to Wikipedia constitutes a tacit acknowledgement of a rejection of the license that your contributions are nominally contributed under; Wikipedia has opted you out, even if you haven't.
@yoasif @quarknova Even if you don't want to contribute to Wikipedia for these reasons (completely legitimate), you should want it not to be burned to the ground by LLM slop in the absence of any viable fork to replace it. The policy banning LLM slop benefits us all by preserving a commons that was built before the very unfortunately and shortsighted choice the org made.
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My #Wikipedia request for comment just closed, finally banning #AI content in articles! "The use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited"
Kudos to all who participated in writing the guideline (especially Kowal2701) and the whole WikiProject AI Cleanup team, this was very much a group effort!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models/RfC
@quarknova thank you, too!
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@yoasif @quarknova Even if you don't want to contribute to Wikipedia for these reasons (completely legitimate), you should want it not to be burned to the ground by LLM slop in the absence of any viable fork to replace it. The policy banning LLM slop benefits us all by preserving a commons that was built before the very unfortunately and shortsighted choice the org made.
@dalias @quarknova I agree - I am simply trying to make people aware of the fact that your contributions are no longer protected by share-alike when contributing to Wikipedia, since Wikipedia has opted you out.
If you don't think your contributions should be helping drive the slop that we all bemoan, it is probably a good idea to not continue to fund it for free.
Big Tech can hire people to edit a Wikipedia-like corpus that could conceivably better than Wikipedia; they've got the money.
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@dalias @quarknova I agree - I am simply trying to make people aware of the fact that your contributions are no longer protected by share-alike when contributing to Wikipedia, since Wikipedia has opted you out.
If you don't think your contributions should be helping drive the slop that we all bemoan, it is probably a good idea to not continue to fund it for free.
Big Tech can hire people to edit a Wikipedia-like corpus that could conceivably better than Wikipedia; they've got the money.
@dalias @quarknova I don't agree that the commons is preserved, FWIW - I think continuing to contribute acknowledges that your contributions are given as a kind of dual-license - share-alike for the commons, proprietary (and paid for) for big tech.
Downstream from that, since the license is ignored when the trained LLMs output the contributions as public domain, you have preserved the contribution in a very different way than intended -- kind of a monkey paw effect.