Consumer Rights Wiki:AI usage policy
When writing or editing articles on the Consumer Rights Wiki, it is inevitable that the question of in what ways AI can, or should, be used in the creation of articles will arise. It is also inevitable, regardless of Wiki policy, that users will utilise AI in their contributions. This article seeks to explore the general principles you should keep in mind when approaching the use of AI, specific actions you should take, or avoid, when using AI, as well as the moderation approach towards 'AI slop' found on the Wiki.
General principles
Maintain the appearance, respectability, and professionalism of the Wiki. It is important to ask yourself whether your use of AI is likely to improve or reduce the quality of your work, or the quality of the article you are editing. If you struggle with grammar, or the article you are editing is written extremely poorly, then it is likely that the use of AI may result in an improvement over the alternative. Conversely, if the writing already present is clearly of a high quality, then you should be careful to avoid unnecessary changes to the work of others.
If content is written in such a way that it is obvious to a casual reader that it has been written by AI, and contains many of the common tropes of AI writing, then you should expect a quick reversion of your edits by other users.
Specific actions
Do
- Ensure that the writing style complies with wiki guidelines. If you cannot guide the AI towards this end, then you must do it yourself to ensure that a user does not open the Wiki, scan over an article, and discount it as AI slop. Providing wiki policy documents to the model as part of the context can help with this, but it does not ensure that the output will be fitting.
- Read the style guide and other Wiki policy documents so you can easily and quickly identify mistakes made.
- Guide the AI such that it helps you, rather than you being lead by it. You should be making the judgement calls on what goes into an article, not an AI.
Don't
- See AI as an excuse to put in less effort – if you can use it to improve your contributions and achieve more with your time, then that's fine, but do not expect to be able to casually overhaul an article without putting the effort in to ensure accuracy.
- Copy and paste without thinking or checking the output.
- Fail to follow the checklist below when finalising your edits.
Obligatory checklist for any content written with AI assistance
- Use the 'view changes' feature within the source editor to check whether any parts of a page have been inadvertently changed.
- Use preview features to check for obvious formatting errors.
- Examine the content of every link or reference found using AI to ensure it is being used appropriately.
- Check the text once, twice, and thrice to ensure that no stupid errors or incorrect information has been included.
Swift reversions are to be expected if errors are spotted which could have been prevented by adherence to this checklist
Moderation approach
It is appropriate for Wiki users to adopt a 'revert on sight' approach to edits where the use of AI has obviously resulted in a degradation of article quality. Examples of times when this approach should be taken include:
- Edits which are heavily incorrectly formatted, looking more like a listicle than a wiki article.
- Edits with obvious artefacts which come from the copying and pasting of AI output into the Wiki. Return characters are an obvious sign of this.
- References with fabricated or broken links, or which do not support the points they are cited to support.
As with any low quality edit which contributes new information, it is preferable to improve an AI edit which is flawed but useful than to simply revert it, but reversion is a valid option (especially on mature articles).
In cases where a user's AI slop edits are so careless and frequent as to be tantamount to vandalism, a ban will be considered.
Common signs of AI writing
- Excessive use of emdashes (—)
- Overuse of common 'indicator' words such as crucial, essential, or critical
- Overuse of bolding or bulletpoints
- A generally 'fluffy' and non human-like writing style, often including an unnecessary number of similes and other comparatives
This being said, be careful not to be overzealous when approaching articles which seem like edge-cases. An emdash or two is not the end of the world, and they're a major part of the writing style of Wikipedia, so expect to see people using them. At the end of the day, the quality of the writing is the most important thing – if it reads like a low-quality listicle, that's a very good sign that there has been excessive AI usage.