Wikinews:Water cooler/policy/archives/2023/May

AI-written articles?

What's the policy on using AI to write articles for Wikinews? --Ixfd64 (talk) 17:40, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

There isn't one right now, but considering this, which was "improved" (possibly written) by ChatGPT, and what happened to CNET, I don't think we should consider them. Heavy Water (talk) 17:59, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I think we should definitely consider them. Shutting down the conversation seems premature without weighing pros and cons. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:23, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

@Koavf I meant that in regards to reviewing, not discussing. Heavy Water (talk) 20:04, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Given what I have read about Bing's use of AI and Google's Bard, I don't think the technology is advanced enough. Therefore, I think we should discourage it for now. Obviously, there's little that can be done to prevent users from submitting such articles. The only hint that we had Pakistan reverses block on Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia was a draft written by AI, was the user name. The articles would obviously need a thorough review like all others. But if someone launched an AI on Wikinews, it could easily write hundreds of articles per day, completely overwhelming our reviewers. If such articles were constantly filled with errors and misstated facts, I would be inclined to block such an account as being disruptive. SVTCobra 21:08, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Since AI is already being used to do journalism tasks (and has been used to generate box score articles for years), we should probably have an actual conversation about its usage and utility here. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:57, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely, we can and should discuss. My point was, we can't discern if a submission was written by AI unless the account submitting the article discloses this information. Thus, there is no way to disallow it. We could have an official policy either allowing it or banning it, but if we can't tell if it is AI, what is the point? Either way, I would like to invite Gryllida to comment on this. Cheers, SVTCobra 18:34, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

This is disconcerting. SVTCobra 22:38, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

New categories

What's the current policy on creating new categories? I recently noticed there might be enough articles to justify ones for the World Food Programme (WFP), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and possibly Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Should these be created? CSJJ104 (talk) 23:05, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

If there are at least three articles with sufficient coverage of the subject of the category (this is vague) it can be created. Heavy Water (talk) 23:10, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

The current standard is three as HW mentioned. But we also do not want to become encyclopedic about it. In my opinion, we should avoid long category trees. This is because we include top-level and higher-level categories directly in the articles. Commons (and at some level Wikipedia) forces users/readers to click on the category to see what where it is. We have been preferring a more direct method. So an image of Los Angeles might just be in that category (well, in reality, Commons goes far deeper into dates, what is pictured, etc), but if Wikinews has an article from Los Angeles, we would have North America → United States → California → Los Angeles. I can't say I entirely agree with our approach, but there's no way in hell I am going to go back in history to fix our thousands of articles if we change.
That said, I don't think we should hunt our archives for topics/people who have three-to-five articles. When I create a new category, it is usually because I was writing a new article and found myself surprised we didn't have a category for whatever it was. I usually search for it and if there's a dozen or more, I'd probably create the category. At the same time, we should look forward. For example, if X country has elected a new president for a six-year term, we should probably create the category as soon as there are three articles about that person, anticipating there will be more.
From a pragmatic point of view, creating new categories simply based on topics/people found in the archives puts a burden on the administrators because they are the only ones who can change archived articles.
This was perhaps more of an essay than a direct reply to your question. Sorry about that. Cheers, SVTCobra 23:55, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback :) Similar to what @SVTCobra describes I've created Category:World Food Programme as that one did genuinely surprise me while I was editing UN Humanitarian chief seeks guarantees for humanitarian supplies, and seems to have many potential articles. I might come back to the others once there has been time for people to point out any mistakes I made with that category, rather than making more right now. CSJJ104 (talk) 00:18, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Another thing, try to create redirect pages for the name and alternate spellings. Cheers, SVTCobra 01:37, 5 May 2023 (UTC)