Comment on Wikipedia Pauses AI-Generated Summaries After Editor Backlash

BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Even beyond that, the “complex” language they claim is confusing is the whole point of Wikipedia. Neutral, precise language that describes matters accurately for laymen. There are links to every unusual or complex related subject and even individual words in all the articles.

  I find it disturbing that a major share of the userbase is supposedly unable to process the information provided in this format, and needs it dumbed down even further. Wikipedia is already the summarized and simplified version of many topics.

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  • thedarkfly@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    There’s also a “simple english” Wikipedia: simple.wikipedia.org

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  • a4ng3l@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Ho come on it’s not that simple. Add to that the language barrier. And in general precise language and accuracy are not making knowledge more available to laymen. Laymen don’t have to vocabulary to start with, that’s pretty much the definition of being a layman.

    There is definitely value in dumbing down knowledge, that’s the point of education.

    Now using AI or pushing guidelines for editors to do it that’s entirely different discussion…

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    • OrganicMustard@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      The vocabulary is part of the knowledge. The concept goes with the word, that’s how human brains understand stuff mostly.

      You can click on the terms you don’t know to learn about them.

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      • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        You can click on the terms you don’t know to learn about them.

        This is what makes Wikipedia special. Not the fact that it is a giant encyclopedia, but that you can quickly and logically work your way through a complex subject at your pace and level of understanding. Reading about elements but don’t know what a proton is? Guess what, there’s a link right fucking there!

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    • kurwa@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      They have that already: simple.wikipedia.org

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• ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  A page detailing the the AI-generated summaries project, called “Simple Article Summaries,” explains that it was proposed after a discussion at Wikimedia’s 2024 conference, Wikimania, where “Wikimedians discussed ways that AI/machine-generated remixing of the already created content can be used to make Wikipedia more accessible and easier to learn from.” Editors who participated in the discussion thought that these summaries could improve the learning experience on Wikipedia, where some article summaries can be quite dense and filled with technical jargon, but that AI features needed to be cleared labeled as such and that users needed an easy to way to flag issues with “machine-generated/remixed content once it was published or generated automatically.”

  The intent was to make more uniform summaries, since some of them can still be inscrutable.
  Relying on a tool notorious for making significant errors isn’t the right way to do it, but it’s a real issue being examined.

  In thermochemistry, an exothermic reaction is a “reaction for which the overall standard enthalpy change ΔH⚬ is negative.”[1][2] Exothermic reactions usually release heat. The term is often confused with exergonic reaction, which IUPAC defines as “… a reaction for which the overall standard Gibbs energy change ΔG⚬ is negative.”[2] A strongly exothermic reaction will usually also be exergonic because ΔH⚬ makes a major contribution to ΔG⚬. Most of the spectacular chemical reactions that are demonstrated in classrooms are exothermic and exergonic. The opposite is an endothermic reaction, which usually takes up heat and is driven by an entropy increase in the system.

  This is a perfectly accurate summary, but it’s not entirely clear and has room for improvement.

  I’m guessing they were adding new summaries so that they could clearly label them and not remove the existing ones, not out of a desire to add even more summaries.

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  • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Wikimedians discussed ways that AI/machine-generated remixing of the already created content can be used to make Wikipedia more accessible and easier to learn from

    The entire mistake right there. Look no further. They saw a solution (LLMs) and started hunting for a problem.

    Had they done it the right way round there might have been some useful, though less flashy, outcome. I agree many article summaries are badly written. So why not experiment with an AI that flags those articles for review? Or even just organize a community drive to clean up article summaries?

    The questions are rhetorical of course. Like every GenAI peddler they don’t have an interest in the problem they purport to solve, they just want to play with or sell you this shiny toy that pretends really convincingly that it is clever.

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    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Fundamentally, I agree with you.

      The page being referenced

      Because the phrase “Wikipedians discussed ways that AI…” Is ambiguous I tracked down the page being referenced. It could mean they gathered with the intent to discuss that topic, or they discussed it as a result of considering the problem.

      The page gives me the impression that it’s not quite “we’re gonna use AI, figure it out”, but more that some people put together a presentation on how they felt AI could be used to address a broad problem, and then they workshopped more focused ways to use it towards that broad target.

      It would have been better if they had started with an actual concrete problem, brainstormed solutions, and then gone with one that fit, but they were at least starting with a problem domain that they thought it was a applicable to.

      Personally, the problems I’ve run into on Wikipedia are largely low traffic topics where the content is too much like someone copied a textbook into the page, or just awkward grammar and confusing sentences.
      This article quickly makes it clear that someone didn’t write it in an encyclopedia style from scratch.

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      • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Mathematics articles are the most obtuse I come across. I think the Venn diagram of good mathematicians and good science communicators is very close to non-intersecting.

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• then_three_more@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  some article summaries can be quite dense and filled with technical jargon, but that Al features needed to be cleared labeled as such and that users needed an easy to way to flag issues with "machine-generated/remixed content once it was published or generated automatically.

  I feel like if they feel that this is an issue generate the summary in the talk page and have the editors refine and approve it before publishing. Alternatively set an expectation that the article summaries are in plain English.

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  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    some article summaries can be quite dense

    Well yeah, that’s the point of a summary. If I want something in long form, I’ll read the article.

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    • then_three_more@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Which is why they’re looking to add a easy to reed short overview.

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• RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  And what about simple wikipedia?

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