AI translated articles swapped sources or added unsourced sentences with no explanation, while others added paragraphs sourced from completely unrelated material.

[bweller@mstdn.social]

@404mediaco wtaf? no AI slop in wikipedia please

[bigrobpage@urbanists.social]

@404mediaco can we all stop pretending this crap is ready to be useful?

[disisdeguey@expressional.social]

@404mediaco Wait, #StupidAI in #Wikipedia????
No no,no,noooo.

[photo55@mastodon.social]

@404mediaco how do they do with back-translations, reversing from their translation to compare with the original?

This is a huge scam.

[theorangetheme@en.osm.town]

@404mediaco Where's Mozilla to tell me it's fine and actually I should just shut up and like this?

[ferrix@mastodon.online]

@404mediaco it's ok if you read to the end they learned their lesson: they will now ask another LLM to check the first one. What are the odds that *two* make-things-up machines will both make things up?

[steve@social.coop]

@404mediaco I'm a translator, and I've tested AI. When it's good, it's quite good. When it's bad, it gaps out clauses, adds random words, flips the meaning of sentences, and makes paragraphs incomprehensible.

[hannorein@mastodon.social]

@404mediaco is there an easy to use frozen pre-AI version of Wikipedia?

[sunflowerinrain@mastodon.online]

@404mediaco
I'm horrified, and considered cancelling the monthly donation to #Wikimedia with an explanation of why.

#Wikipedia has been a main source of information which I've trusted because of dedicated human editors. If "AI" has infested it, where's the trust?

[ozzelot@mstdn.social]

@hannorein
It seems there is. https://ideatrash.net/2025/10/how-to-have-wikipedia-including-pre-ai-versions-locally-and-even-in-your-pocket.html
@404mediaco

[guenther@chaos.social]

@404mediaco That organization also plagiarized its name. The Open Knowledge Foundation (@okfde) is a legitimate and well-established NGO doing open data related work. Calling themselves "Open Knowledge Association" to flood Wikipedia with slop is an attack on the OKF's good reputation.

[guenther@chaos.social]

@sunflowerinrain As the article says, Wikipedia is actively discussing on how to prevent this. The slop articles are produced by a different organization. Though I couldn't find where *they* get their funding from, it appears it's not Wikipedia's money that's spent on slop here. They just have to deal with the fallout of those "contributions".

@404mediaco

[hannorein@mastodon.social]

@ozzelot @404mediaco Cool. Thanks!

[sunflowerinrain@mastodon.online]

@guenther @404mediaco
I hope the discussions work. My first, angry, reaction was to want Wikipedia to block/ban them immediately.