User:Fridawyx

Online Communities (UW COM481 Fall 2024)/Wikipedia Advising Report

Introduction

The rise of generative AI tools and Large Language Models (LLMs) could lead to the rapid creation of more high-quality educational content in Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). However, the big data messages collected by generative AI tools are likely to cause human editors to lose inspiration and new ideas, and instead relying more on the AI or consequently losing motivation for new ideas resulting in a demotivated community. There is also a risk of content quality issues, false or misinformation in AI creation. Therefore, in order to preserve the mission and values of the WMF, the participation and role of AI must be thoughtfully managed. I will offer advices related to community norms, editorial integrity, newcomer socialization, and content to balance the advantages of AI and WMF's commitment to human participation.

Developing Community Members' Skills in Managing and Assessing AI

With the rising importance of AI, the community may need to add training modules or policies on AI to help participating editors effectively manage, evaluate, and enhance AI contributions. It may be possible to introduce modules for evaluating and practicing examples of AI in newcomer orientation and training programs such as The Teahouse. Creating AI-specific learning resources enables contributors to understand, interact with, and critically evaluate AI-generated content. There could be specialized blocks similar to WikiEdu for AI tools and content training. Hiring experienced editors to write policies on AI content and guide newbies in evaluating AI content can help people perceive AI properly and adapt to the creation context with AI. Structured guidance helps understand the limitations and potential biases of AI, which can reduce unintentional misinformation and foster a responsible editorial community. With people's conscious control over AI and information correction, this approach improves both human capacity to use AI and the creativity that AI brings, and enhances community commitment.

Emphasize the importance of human creators and view AI as a tool

The value of Wikipedia community is not only in its content, but also in building shared knowledge, active communities, and people's connection and collaboration with each other. Therefore, WMF should position AI as a tool to support human editors, rather than as a replacement for people's innovative and creative roles. This balance prevents editors from feeling frustrated by the possibility of being replaced by AI, and also utilizes the tools of big data to get richer resources for content writing. AI-generated content should be complementary rather than a replacement for human contributions. WMF may introduce policies that assign AI to perform specific tasks, such as providing citable resources, summarizing large amounts of data, or making writing corrections such as grammar. This could reduce the repetition of the editing process and instead provide more inspiration or resources to enrich the community. Thus, people will see AI as a community support tool rather than destructive to creativity and content quality.

Addressing potential bias and quality in AI content

AI systems can easily reflect biases present in their training data, which may work against Wikipedia's goals of neutrality and inclusiveness. WMF can reduce the misinformation and bias in AI through training by the creators or the community, and review systems. WMF can design bias detection tools to help human editors quickly assess AI-generated content. For particularly sensitive or controversial topics, additional peer review panels could be created to examine AI contributions. This aligns with our class discussion of quality maintenance for default community, where additional monitoring is critical. In addition, reporting tools allow users to mark AI-generated content that may contain inaccuracies or biases.

Why those recommendations

The above recommendations for the introduction of generative AI tools at the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) should be taken seriously, as they are based on my insights gained from using and understanding many of the Wikipedia community's boards and functions, as well as discussions about multiple aspects of the community. These insights are not just based on superficial observations or arbitrary opinions. For example, I have observed how new users are integrated into the community through structures such as The Teahouse and Wikipedia Adventure. These programs emphasize the importance of understanding community norms and contributing responsibly. That led me to suggest that the WMF should offer AI-specific training modules for contributors, which would help editors cope with the complexity of AI-generated content. From my own experience of editing Wikipedia, in terms of content, it requires a lot of resources to enrich articles, and if AI can help to find matching resources it can save time and effort; in addition, the community's editing guidelines can also be used by AI to quickly solve some of the writing problems, such as more standardized or scholarly, citation formatting, and grammar. In addition, the pride from editing articles that are acknowledged by others cannot be replaced by utilizing AI productions. Humans should dominate the content creation process, which in turn promotes the motivation of contributors.

Conclusion

The application of AI tools to Wikipedia should be taken seriously, as they are about community engagement, editorial standards, and user motivation, which are at the core of the WMF's mission. By focusing on maintaining active collaboration on Wikipedia, maintaining high editorial standards, and promoting users' engagement, the WMF can ensure that the introduction of AI tools makes the Wikipedia community better.