It has to be said, they originally changed their stance due to the considerable editor pushback when they tried to introduce LLM summaries on the top of articles. So kudos to the editor community’s resistance! ✊
Just for more clarity: they workshoped for ideas on how to improve clarity and accessibility from some editors at an event. They did some small experiments, and they then developed a plan to trial some of them and presented the plan to a wider audience for feedback. After they got feedback they decided not to.
It’s not quite the editors pushing back on Wikipedia. Or rather, it’s not the “rebellion” people want to make it out to be.
It rubs me the wrong way when the process going how it should go gets cast as controversial and dramatic. Asking the community if you should do something and listening to them is how it’s supposed to go. It’s not resistance, it’s all of them being on the same team and talking.
Thanks for the reframe! From what I’ve seen in Village Pump comments at the time, editors (including me) were upset bc putting LLMs into Wikipedia articles seems like an idea so obviously clashing with Wikipedia’s values and strengths, that it was a shock to see it taken as far as it got before the wider backlash. (Also put into wider context, the whole world seemed to be jumping onto the LLM bandwagon at the time, so it was dismaying to see Wikipedia do the same.)
Does anyone like LLM summaries in pages? This seems like a better fit for a browser extension to generate a summary on demand instead of wasting resources generating it for everyone. Google’s documentation is absolutely littered with the mess.
An extremely measured and level-headed response. Kudos to Wikipedia for maintaining high standards.
It has to be said, they originally changed their stance due to the considerable editor pushback when they tried to introduce LLM summaries on the top of articles. So kudos to the editor community’s resistance! ✊
Just for more clarity: they workshoped for ideas on how to improve clarity and accessibility from some editors at an event. They did some small experiments, and they then developed a plan to trial some of them and presented the plan to a wider audience for feedback. After they got feedback they decided not to.
It’s not quite the editors pushing back on Wikipedia. Or rather, it’s not the “rebellion” people want to make it out to be.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Readers/2024_Reader_and_Donor_Experiences/Content_Discovery/Wikimania_2024,_"Written_by_AI"_How_do_editors_and_machines_collaborate_to_create_content
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Content_Discovery_Experiments/Simple_Article_Summaries
It rubs me the wrong way when the process going how it should go gets cast as controversial and dramatic. Asking the community if you should do something and listening to them is how it’s supposed to go. It’s not resistance, it’s all of them being on the same team and talking.
Thanks for the reframe! From what I’ve seen in Village Pump comments at the time, editors (including me) were upset bc putting LLMs into Wikipedia articles seems like an idea so obviously clashing with Wikipedia’s values and strengths, that it was a shock to see it taken as far as it got before the wider backlash. (Also put into wider context, the whole world seemed to be jumping onto the LLM bandwagon at the time, so it was dismaying to see Wikipedia do the same.)
Does anyone like LLM summaries in pages? This seems like a better fit for a browser extension to generate a summary on demand instead of wasting resources generating it for everyone. Google’s documentation is absolutely littered with the mess.
Good point. The real strength of Wikipedia truly lies in the editors .