JBW

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What do "we" do about AI

I have just come across a self publicist using AI (0.9 probability) to generate their draft autobiograohy, rejected the draft and tagged it for CSD. I have to use a custom rationale, because I am not sure we cover it. See Draft:Thierry Rayer. Do you know if we have formulated a policy about this, both for the article/draft and the dieters editors! using it to generate such things? 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 21:46, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

G11 is certainly pragmatic 👍 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 22:02, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

@Timtrent: This is a difficult type of situation, because it sort of skirts around various policies without crashing straight into any of them. Depressingly often I find myself obliged to decline speedy deletion requests for pages which obviously should be deleted, because they just don't fit any of the criteria. The draft has been edited, making it less blatantly promotional than when it was first created, and it avoided any of the blatantly promotional language which one sees in many self-promotional articles, but I still think it had enough of an overall promotional character to justify speedy deletion. I don't think there's any policy about AI generated content, but there's certainly a guideline or essay or something discouraging it. Unfortunately I can't find it now; it isn't WP:AI. Personally I'm against having a policy about it, because the more policies we have the more confusing things get, especially for good faith new editors; the more things there are for editors to wikilawyer about the detailed wording of the policies; the more difficult it becomes to deal with things which without a specific policy would be obviously not OK but which clearly aren't covered by the policy because the editors who made the policy didn't anticipate them, and so on. (See my comment above beginning "Depressingly often I find...") I long for the days when the whole corpus of Wikipedia policies was on one page, which would fit on about two screens full. ...sigh... (That was before my time on Wikipedia, but even when I started out, the body of policies and guidelines was substantially smaller than it is now, and I really don't think we are any better off for the change.) JBW (talk) 22:18, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia's ever expanding policies are evidence that we appear to love tying ourselves up in red tape! We even named a level in our hierarchy 'bureaucrats'! I predict we will become ever more rule and regulation bound until all we do is discuss rules and regulations... until a rule is made against doing that.

As a side note I have no idea how anyone can choose to put themselves through today's RFA! 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 22:24, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

"I don't think there's any policy about AI generated content, but there's certainly a guideline or essay or something discouraging it. Unfortunately I can't find it now; it isn't WP:AI."

Do you mean WP:LLM? Skywatcher68 (talk) 13:28, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

@Skywatcher68 and Timtrent: Yes, that's the one I had in mind. Thanks. JBW (talk) 15:04, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

@Timtrent: You could cite WP:DRAFTREASON#2: "The article consists of machine-generated text, such as ... the output of a large language model". WP:DRAFT isn't policy but there is some desire for it to become a guideline. This being a reason to draftify, it also functions as a reason to keep something as a draft until the problem is solved. —Alalch E. 15:22, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
	Thank you Sir! JBW - - SilverBullet X (talk) 20:13, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Apology to JBW

Dear JBW i really want to apologize for my behaviour here on wikipedia earlier this year. I promise to not add nonsense edits to wikipedia ever again. I hope you can accept this apology and that it follows what is allowed on a talk page furthermore i will remain mostly inactive. 90.214.152.236 (talk) 12:08, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Restoring broken links to pages

Good evening,

tou have reversed my editing where references are dead links and lead to nowhere.

please do not do this in future as you are reverting edits that are completely genuine and objectively correct. KeithHaynes63 (talk) 22:29, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

@KeithHaynes63: (1) I apologise for my edit summary, which only mentioned notability, but in fact other considerations were perhaps more relevant. (2) One of the references which you removed was attached to the statement "Picture Frame Seduction split up, then reformed in 1999", and checking the reference confirmed that the cited source does indeed support that statement. In your edit summary when you removed that reference, you said that the cited source only had a passing mention of the subject of the article; that may be true, but since the mention was a reliable source for a statement in the article, and no other source for that statement is there, removing the reference was a mistake. You may be making the mistake of confusing the use of references to establish notability (where brief passing mentions are of no use) and the use of references for verifying article content, where the criterion is supporting that content, no matter how briefly. (3) Although removing dead references in articles on the face of it seems an obvious thing to do, in fact it is not always helpful. A dead reference may serve to indicate where there was a source for information in the past, even if it is no longer available, and sometimes it may help an editor to find another source, or in some cases the same source, if it has been moved to another URL, or if it is still where it was but there was a mistake in the reference. Very often marking a reference as dead is more helpful than removing it. JBW (talk) 13:03, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Ok thanks for the clarification KeithHaynes63 (talk) 20:36, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

COI issue at Gettysburg College

Hi, JB. Various IPs registered to the college have been removing a sourced statement regarding the swim team as being fake news. The statement, "In September, 2024 the school faced controversy as a black member of the men's swimming team had a racial slur forcibly carved into his chest by teammates," could use admin input regarding its inclusion; mind stopping by when you get a chance?   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 15:00, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

@Skywatcher68: I've partially blocked the /24 range from editing the article for a month. It would probably be OK to do so for much longer, as there's no legitimate reason for anyone using those IP addresses to ever edit the article, in light of WP:COI, but I decided to settle for a month. I've also semi-protected the article for a couple of days, just in case of jumping to another IP address. Personally I'm not convinced that the material should be in the article, being about one incident, but that's obviously an editorial decision, not an admin issue, and I have no intention of getting involved. However, if it is to be in the article then I certainly agree with your taking it out of the lead. JBW (talk) 18:31, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Draft:Chief Warrant Officer of the Army

Draft:Chief Warrant Officer of the Army, I created this page as an update and name change to the Army Staff Senior Warrant Officer. I work directly for the chief Warrant Officer of the Army and would like to know how to make sure the page is restored or how you recommend me going forward in creating a page that will not be deleted. I took out the link to the page that was said to be copyrighted. This was an article my boss did and was given a PDF to share. I uploaded it to the link provided. I understand this was not liked by Wiki and removed that article. Thank you. Goldengeoai 14:47, 22 September 2024 (UTC) Goldengeoai (talk) 17:36, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

@Goldengeoai: The reason for the deletion is that most of the content of the draft was copied from an article in "Newsliner". As far as I am concerned, I don't have any other objection to the content of the draft, and I see no reason why an article on the subject shouldn't be created. Newsliner says "Original Newsliner articles may be reproduced providing credit is given to USAWOA". As far as I can see, you didn't give such credit, but that is not a big deal, because it would be easy enough to rectify the omission by adding an attribution. However, it isn't quite that simple. When you post anything to Wikipedia you give permission for it to be reused, in whole or in part, either as it is or modified in any way whatsoever, for any purpose, subject to credit being given. "Original Newsliner articles may be reproduced" is not the same as "Original Newsliner articles may be republished with whatever changes anyone would like to make, even if those changes drastically change the meaning". It may be that the people responsible for publishing the Newsliner for USAWOA would not object to reuse under such broad licensing terms, but Wikipedia policy doesn't allow me to assume that is so. You may be able to get permission for reuse of the Newsliner article under sufficiently open licensing terms, as described at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials, but you may find it simpler to just rewrite the draft in your own words, avoiding copying any of the original. Whichever of those two routes you follow, you should be careful to make sure you follow the guideline on conflict of interest. JBW (talk) 19:33, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

@Goldengeoai: After posting my message above, I realised that you sent me a message about this on 22 September, and I failed to reply. I apologise for that oversight. JBW (talk) 19:35, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Crickettestruns

We overlapped at handling the UAA report on Crickettestruns (talk · contribs) - the sandbox was definitely promotional but where's the promotion in the username? Cabayi (talk) 08:47, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Meh. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 08:49, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

@Cabayi: There was a link "cricket test runs" in the page, and clicking it took me to a promotional web page. I didn't notice that "cricket test runs" was not actually the name of the linked web page, but just text that the editor had added to the link in the Wikipedia page. Evidently I acted too hastily. Thanks for calling my attention to the mistake. JBW (talk) 08:57, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing. Cabayi (talk) 09:02, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

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Administrators' newsletter – October 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2024).

Administrator changes

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• Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
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