Jump to content

Wikipedia:The AI mark of shame

This page contains material which is considered humorous. It may also contain advice.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If you use new technology to build a house, the inspector (probably a Luddite or a NIMBY) may issue a general warning alleging that it may be in poor condition. If you ask the inspector to point out concrete features that need to be renovated to ensure your house adheres to OSHA regulations, they may tell you to just blow it up and rebuild it the old-fashioned way.

If you use writing assistance tools such as ChatGPT or even Grammarly to organize your thoughts and improve your text for formatting and clarity, your work may be branded with the AI mark of shame, which generally comes in the following forms:

This is because text produced or refined with the assistance of such tools often exhibits stylistic characteristics that can be used as an excuse to discredit you, no matter how much effort you put into ensuring adherence to Wikipedia's standards on neutrality and verifiability. If you make a request to be pointed to specific passages so you can improve them to address quality concerns, you may be told that the overall "pattern" of your writing is what makes it appear unfit for Wikipedia.

Instead of helping you fix your content or understand why your draft got declined, some editors would rather focus on beating you over the head about how you shouldn't use a writing assistance tool to edit Wikipedia, even if you aren't proficient in English or Wiki syntax — or you just so happen to write in a clear and polished manner at a pace that no one can keep up with.

In fact, if your own comments appear too polished, they might be collapsed, further damaging your credibility in the process. If you try to demonstrate that your comments reflect your thoughts by degrading your spelling or grammar in ways that a language model usually wouldn't, that will only backfire, as it would reinforce general impressions and subjective interpretations of your usual writing style.

Removing the mark

[edit]

Once an article you've expanded has been tagged as containing AI-generated content, the banner cannot be removed unless your contributions are removed alongside it. If you want your work to be kept, you will have to rewrite it "in your own words" — i.e. without the assistance of your writing tools. This is part of a conspiracy by rouge admins to purge Wikipedia of verified content under the guise of "cleanup", insinuating that well-organized content is 'messy'.

See also

[edit]

Notes

[edit]