News and notes
Wikimania submissions deadline looms, Russian government after our lucky charms, AI woes nix CNET from RS slate
Wikimania 2023 will be held on 16–19 August 2023 in Singapore. If you'd like to host a session, hands-on workshop, discussion, performance, lightning talk ... the Wikimania wiki will accept program submissions until 28 March 2023, 23:59 AoE. The conference will have a hybrid format, so speakers can submit proposals for in-person or virtual sessions.
There are 11 tracks to submit your proposal to:
- Community Initiatives
- Education
- Equity, Inclusion, and Community Health
- ESEAP (East, South East Asia, and the Pacific) Region
- GLAM, Heritage, and Culture
- Governance
- Legal, Advocacy, and Risks
- Open Data
- Research, Science, and Medicine
- Technology
- Wild Ideas
For further information about Wikimania 2023 and the submissions process see:
- Be part of the Wikimania 2023 program! (Wikimedia Foundation Diff post)
- Explanation of questions asked on the Submission form
- Wikimania 2023 FAQ
Community submissions to date can be viewed here. – AK, r
Court date in Russia
The Wikimedia Foundation will have another court date in Russia on 6 April. The Russian authorities complain that the Wikimedia Foundation has failed to remove misleading information about Russian military operations in Ukraine from Wikipedia. The Signpost has reported on many previous instances of similar interactions with state actors over the years, with the Russian government taking a harsher stance recently.
CNET deemed unreliable due to AI use
The technology website CNET was recently found by consensus to be no longer a reliable source for material published since November 2022, in part due to its publishing content created with some sort of "AI" (presumably a large language model) beginning circa that date. Consensus was not reached for reliability between October 2020, when the outlet was purchased by a new owner and editorial standards changed, and November 2022.
The website was founded in 1994 and described by The Verge as "once a high-flying powerhouse of tech reporting". According to The Verge, the content came from some thing called "Wordsmith", by a company called "Automated Insights" (see, "AI", get it?) and was published without attribution or acknowledgement of the source.
According to Signpost research, CNET is used as a source in as many as 10,000 articles or more, including Apple Inc., Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and Wikipedia. It is not known at this time how many of these are using CNET articles from after its expiration date.
In January, CNET published a new policy saying they had "changed the byline for articles compiled with the AI engine ... clearly say[ing] the story was created in part with our AI engine" and "moved the disclosure so you don't need to hover over the byline to see it", dutifully following the Signpost's example of doing this in August of last year.
Is this the beginning of a trend? – B
Brief notes
- New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator, Aoidh.
- Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects reached milestones this week: Khmer Wikipedia reached 10,000 articles, and Madurese Wikipedia reached 1,000 articles.
- Annual reports: West Bengal Wikimedians User Group, Wikimedia Community User Group Guinée Conakry.
- Global bans: PlanespotterA320 (see Request for Comment on Meta-Wiki; the user was an administrator on Uzbek Wikipedia and had made over 150,000 edits on Wikimedia Commons).
- Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Voting, followed by Offensive backfield. Please be bold in helping improve these articles!
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