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Molly WhiteHave you ever wanted to start editing #Wikipedia, but got overwhelmed or felt like you didn't know where to start? Every time I encourage people to start editing, I hear that, so I'm trying to help.
YouTube
this was inspired by some conversations on bluesky, where people have been concerned that #Wikipedia might become overwhelmed by AI-generated #enshittification. https://bsky.app/profile/molly.wiki/post/3km4ejpq7kt2s
if that worries you too, the number one thing you can do is learn how to edit.
Pax Ahimsa GethenOutstanding work as always. Thanks so much for including a full transcript!
world's worst goth@molly0xfff This is an excellent transcript. Video only would've been a barrier to me finally signing up and wholly auto-generated, difficult to decipher content might have as well. I appreciate all the work they went into this. Thank you!
Paul van Gulick@molly0xfff
Thanks for this video. It motivated me to finally start editing. My strategy for now is whenever I look up an entry, which is often, now I also look for a Citation Needed. I'm up to all of two edits so far, but hey, it's better than the zero edits I've done until now. Thanks again :-)
Thanks for this video. It motivated me to finally start editing. My strategy for now is whenever I look up an entry, which is often, now I also look for a Citation Needed. I'm up to all of two edits so far, but hey, it's better than the zero edits I've done until now. Thanks again :-)
Anthony Sorace@molly0xfff Is there an explicit policy governing AI-generated content?
@a no policy (yet, i imagine there will be before too long), but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Large_language_models gives an overview of the general approach towards it
C.Suthorn 
There is a policy regarding generated images at commons.
Wikipedia is Shangri-La.
moved@molly0xfff Last time I tried to edit, it got shot down by someone who'd taken up lordship of that particular niche. That + similar tales I've heard is not very encouraging.
@givemefoxes @gme that is frustrating, i'm sorry that was your experience :/ we definitely have a ways to go when it comes to being welcoming to newbies, but i'm always happy to help out if someone's running into that issue. if you ever want to try again, feel free to reach out.
Abraxas3d@molly0xfff @givemefoxes @gme retail customer service can’t keep up with the demand. It is not a sustainable solution for you or the potential community. It’s incredibly obvious you care about this, are an expert, and are in a position to do some good. We desperately need wonderful people like you to address the underlying issues.
Rihards Olups@molly0xfff @givemefoxes @[email protected] “Notability requirement” has been the weirdest one for me. A page about a band I created (created the page, not band; not involved with the band in any way) got deleted, and somebody tried long and hard to delete the page about Zabbix.
BarryP@givemefoxes @molly0xfff There was someone - the late British journalist Simon Hoggart, I think, whose year of birth was wrong on Wikipedia. So he corrected it, more than once, as every time he corrected it, someone who thought they knew better, changed it back to the wrong year.
@vandyke4ad @givemefoxes This happens once in a while because Wikipedia 1) relies on secondary sources which themselves sometimes have errors, and 2) typically doesn't formally verify that an editor is a specific individual. It can be frustrating, but usually can be resolved pretty easily.
@givemefoxes @molly0xfff same here. The weirdo turf wars (and math/signal theory articles where the author is obviously showing off and making it as obscure as possible) were such a huge turn off that I stopped trying.
Before that, I wanted to say that if you keep hearing from people how overwhelming and unpleasant the experience of editing is, that there’s a more fundamental problem that teaching people the mechanics of editing.
It’s a culture thing.
@abraxas3d @givemefoxes 100% agree there's a major culture thing that we really need to work on (and many of us are!). but i do think there are multiple things at play that we need to tackle, including helping with mechanics
@molly0xfff @givemefoxes strongly concur, and did not intend to present an either or.
Gravity GrinchSame here, I also ran into that issue. Don't know how it is possible to be an expert for some topic who can contribute valuable parts but is not allowed to cite their own papers/works as sources at the same time. I could think of workarounds to add those contents anyway, but why should I have to cheat in the first place?!
Sabrina 🇺🇦🇹🇼🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️@molly0xfff @givemefoxes The same thing happened to me. After two or three attempts, I just gave up.
Jon@molly0xfff I have several pages that I keep on my wiki watchlist. 99% of the edits other people make have been factual and reasonably accurate. Then there was a sudden spurt of edits that were very clearly AI generated and didn't add anything to the page, just reworded the section and added dubious claims. I reverted them with a note about being suspicious of lazy use of AI and other people felt the need to call me out for being anti-AI and ignored that the edits were simply poor quality. 🤦♂️
Andrei Kucharavy@molly0xfff I've been having an edit there and back on the LLM page to pin the origin of the name and the definition of the size, that most researchers agreed on as of mid-2022.
It's been now edited back ~ 3 times to praise Transformer, Google, and OpenAI.
It's been now edited back ~ 3 times to praise Transformer, Google, and OpenAI.
@andrei_chiffa at that point it's best to bring it to the talk page for discussion rather than editing back and forth
@molly0xfff did that, got encouraged to post by the same editor who reverted the edits; came back to ask what happened the first time without knowing who reverted it; got suggested to add more; edits got reverted a second time. Checked a 3rd time to see if it was not an error; still got reverted.
@andrei_chiffa got a link?
💡𝚂𝗆𝖺𝗋𝗍𝗆𝖺𝗇 𝙰𝗉𝗉𝗌📱@molly0xfff @andrei_chiffa
Came here to make a similar comment, not because I've experienced it, but because I have seen it so many times. Once I NEARLY started, then decided I didn't want to have it backed out by someone. Instead I wrote a Mastodon thread - contains textbook references (should be enough to convince anyone what I said is correct) and can't be backed out by anyone else 🙂 https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/110897908266416158 If anyone wants to reference it (or the references in it) to correct wiki feel free
Came here to make a similar comment, not because I've experienced it, but because I have seen it so many times. Once I NEARLY started, then decided I didn't want to have it backed out by someone. Instead I wrote a Mastodon thread - contains textbook references (should be enough to convince anyone what I said is correct) and can't be backed out by anyone else 🙂 https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/110897908266416158 If anyone wants to reference it (or the references in it) to correct wiki feel free
💡𝚂𝗆𝖺𝗋𝗍𝗆𝖺𝗇 𝙰𝗉𝗉𝗌📱 (@[email protected])
1/3 #MathsMonday Order of operations thread index #Mathematics #Maths #Math Introduction https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/110807192608472798 1 The Distributive Law #DontForgetDistribution https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/110819283738912144 2 Terms #MathsIsNeverAmbiguous https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/110846452267056791 3 Factorising<->The Distributive Law https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/110886637077371439 4 implicit multiplication, mnemonics https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/110925761375035558 5 1917 (i) - Left Associativity https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/110965810374299599 6 1917 (ii) - Lennes' letter (Terms and operators) https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/111005247356655843 ...
Here is the talk page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Large_language_model#Source_of_the_term_and_disambiguiation
(andrei.chiffa is me, Dancing Philosopher is the editor)
Here is the diff of the part I added:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Large_language_model&diff=1164830127&oldid=1164685868
Here is the diff where "Dancing Philosopher" removed it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Large_language_model&diff=1167234405&oldid=1167118942
Failing to mention AI2 and ELMo both shifts the credit to Google and OpenAI and erases the reason all early LLMs had muppet names; whereas the Stochastic Parrots erasure hides the true scope of issues with LLMs beyond AGI.
@molly0xfff And whitewashes / browashes the field of LLM security and safety, because neither @timnitGebru, nor @emilymbender fit the narrative.
Daedalous Eros@molly0xfff Another thing that can be done: copy the contents of pages that you care about, this way there's a reliable fall back if someone tries to use AI to fuck it up. Web archival is more important than ever before.
@daedalousilios FWIW there are a lot of ongoing, regular backups of all Wikipedia content to various sources like archive.org, so if someone doesn't have the capacity to do backups themselves that's okay. More on backups at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download
@molly0xfff That's very comforting to know! This entire thread gives me comfort that this is the one, sacred relic of the internet that will be preserved as long as there's even a few dedicated hands that care to do so.
Yuki "neige d'aout" Hazuki 葉月膤 ❄️ 🏳️⚧️@daedalousilios @molly0xfff Also: Wikipedia saves the history of every page (save for a few cases like deleted pages and copyright infrigement), so it does pretty much act as its own Internet Archive right from its own interface!
Sashin@molly0xfff Literally just watched your half an hour video on becoming a Wikipedian today!
Wendy M. Grossman@molly0xfff Best to start by fixing typos. :)
Sky Leite@wendyg @molly0xfff My favorites are fixing typos, rewording paragraphs to better convey meaning, and adding hyperlinks. They’re all activities that require just enough investment to be fun, but not enough to feel like actual research. It lets me do a couple small improvements in one article and move on to the next. Feels good.
Christo@molly0xfff Bookmarked to view later.
I just wanted to say how much I appreciate the work you do on your blog, your transparency, and also your Wikipedia enablement.
I always learn something from your posts and blogs, and then there's the added bonus of your sense of humor.
Please keep doing you.
Peder Landsverk 
@molly0xfff Awesome! Helping people get started with difficult but important stuff like this, you are doing the world a great favor 🙏
Carl Heath@molly0xfff great video Molly, now you got me interested in trying this out. :)
Konfetti 🎉🐳@molly0xfff
I tried, but my first article (about a woman) was deleted just half an hour after creation because some of the admin wasn't able to see relevance. Afterwards there was a massive and ugly discussion (I didn't really involve myself) which really put me off. (In the end the article was restored)
I tried, but my first article (about a woman) was deleted just half an hour after creation because some of the admin wasn't able to see relevance. Afterwards there was a massive and ugly discussion (I didn't really involve myself) which really put me off. (In the end the article was restored)
@Konfettispaghetti sorry that happened 😞 we have a long way to go on some things.
Erin Brown-John@Konfettispaghetti @molly0xfff This was my experience too.
@molly0xfff
@eebeejay
Sorry that happened to you as well.
And sad it's obviously not a rare incident.
@eebeejay
Sorry that happened to you as well.
And sad it's obviously not a rare incident.
@Konfettispaghetti Out of curiosity, which article is it? Not because I want to seek the drama, but it must be an interesting subject :p
Max_well 
@molly0xfff Right now 10 admin of the french Wikipedia are "indefinitely" blocking trans editors because there were vocals about trans issue *on a trans issue sondage*.
It does not entice to help
It does not entice to help
TzafrirI don't know the details here. But in Wikipedia you have to interact with people of various opinions and you are not always right. Sometimes being overly-vocal is not a good idea. Generally you should be able to get along with other editors (but likewise those other editors should be able to get along with you).
techcutie 
@tzafrir @Max_well @molly0xfff
> you have to interact with people of various opinions and you are not always right.
Silencing a marginalized community is not an opinion.
Philip McGrath@molly0xfff I’ve been editing (very sporadically) since 2005, and this inspired me to try the visual editor!
@LiberalArtist took a while for me to get used to it at first (boo, hiss, change is bad!) but I really like it these days.
Public Health is for Everyone@molly0xfff love thisss thank youuuu
Nyx Phoenix@molly0xfff last time (years ago) we signed up for wikipedia, we got accused of having multiple accounts or knowing too much about the process for this to be our first account, and proceeded to never really contribute again under threat of ban 🦋
@molly0xfff I’ve made lots of minor edits but the articles I’ve written and put significant effort into have mostly been deleted without warning without any way to appeal the decision.
@eebeejay there are ways to appeal, or get a copy of the article back so you can keep working on it! i'm happy to help you with it if you want.
@molly0xfff Thanks for the offer! It was years ago now so I’m finished with that project. But glad to know there’s an appeals process! At the time I was told my article was not recoverable and there was nowhere to argue my case.
Peter Jakobs ⛵@molly0xfff it really stands and falls with the first editor you encounter. If they are supportive and help you with good guidance and a welcoming attitude, it'll be a great experience.
Sadly, at least some local wikipedia groups are not that much concerned with welcoming new editors but with imposing the rules.
Sadly, at least some local wikipedia groups are not that much concerned with welcoming new editors but with imposing the rules.
@pjakobs agreed. i think it also helps if new editors don't see a revert as an admonishment, but rather as a "something was wrong here, please try to fix it and try again". because of the volume of new edits, sometimes experienced editors have to revert problematic edits rather than fix them each individually.
@molly0xfff absolutely. I have, in a different contrext, recieved the best possible guidance and mentorship when I first submitted a larger bit of code to an upstream project.
There was no "no, that's wrong" or "this is not the standard we expect here" but clear guidance and support. I guess wikipedia is more difficult in this regard for the simple reason that not only it has to deal with quality and style but also with the question of if the edit is factual and correct.
There was no "no, that's wrong" or "this is not the standard we expect here" but clear guidance and support. I guess wikipedia is more difficult in this regard for the simple reason that not only it has to deal with quality and style but also with the question of if the edit is factual and correct.
zvavybir 
@molly0xfff I thought this video wouldn't help me, given that I already edit (very :( ) occasionally, but it did! Thanks a lot!
toolbear#🪧@molly0xfff one of my favorite people just got favoriter. This is nice, Molly 🫶