User talk:Jimbo Wales

Saw this CBC article this morning. I think certain types of automatic tasks already align with what would be approved as a bot, but I'm a bit concerned about the chatbot comment. Detail is scarce, so I was wondering if you could elaborate? I know more than most that not everything someone says in an interview always makes it in. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 12:05, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, I really doubt we would ever use a chatbot so I'm not sure where that came from.

Since it's lumped with a comment I made about our search experience, I can explain what I did say and how I think that large language model technology could be useful to us in that context.

Our current search is pretty basic in the sense of just being about keywords. These days, people expect to be able to ask a question and have the search engine understand what's being asked. I just asked our search box: "why do ducks fly south for winter?" First link Goose - then Leafie, A Hen into the Wild. Then Mallard. The overall point is that the search engine pretty much fails to be very useful.

But I'm sure the answer to that question is conveniently answered in Wikipedia.

So now I just asked a very recently released open source model (qwen-3.5:27b) "What Wikipedia articles would best answer the question "Why do ducks fly south for winter?" It is a "thinking model" so first it writes out a bunch of stuff the end user doesn't need to see where it chews on the question. Then it answers with these 3 articles (and a bunch of blah blah blah that I don't trust enough to show end users because it's AI generated but it's actually probably pretty ok. And it then gives Bird migration, Duck, Flyway, Mallard, and Overwintering. That's actually pretty good.

It isn't hard to imagine another step here as well - for each article, ask the model to find the most helpful sentence(s) from the article to answer the question, and then of course double check to make sure that's actually the sentence in the article and then include it in the search results page.

This is just a quick test with a model that isn't fine-tuned on Wikipedia content nor designed for this job. I selected it mainly because I happened to have it handy today as I'm testing it for my own purposes.

You can put me firmly in the camp of those who say that we should not be giving AI-generated text to readers. But I'm definitely not in the camp of those who think there's no use for the technology as well.

I also see a lot of opportunities in assisting editors and in that case, where editors are using a tool for a specific job, I think that it could be ok to have the AI give some text particularly text that's not intended for any sort of copy/paste into Wikipedia. Let me give an example of this at all.

It is very common for links to go 404-not-found for whatever reason. We should fix those. In some cases, a website has just badly moved things around and it's possible to find the original source. In other cases, the original source is gone from the web. But also in many cases, the particular source to support a claim in the article isn't necessarily unique. So imagine a tool which finds 404 links in Wikipedia, reads the article to see what claim is being supported (used to require human intelligence, now not so much), and then uses a search tool to look for plausible replacements. It then shows the context of the citation, highlighting the claim that needs a source, and quotes from the source something that it thinks is a good replacement. It could give an explanation in it's own words why it thinks the quote in the source supports the statement in question. (That's what I mean by text that is not intended for any sort of copy/paste.)

Would a tool like that be useful? It sounds useful to me.

I hope that's helpful! Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:00, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I appreciate the clarification. There's been several times where the community has strongly pushed back against anything AI-related, so I wanted to make sure the chatbot comment wasn't hinting at the next kerfuffle. Good to know that there's not much for me to be concerned about. What you're saying about search reminds me of some of the stuff I've seen at Village Pump (WMF). Not sure who is in charge of what, but I do know that there are people thinking about how search can be improved. Plausible replacements for dead links sounds like an interesting idea to me personally, but I think it'd be really important to try and design it in a way that doesn't lead to humans just blindly trusting its output given AI hallucination and all. Something that really concerns me about the future of knowledge is how many fake citations have been flourishing in the age of AI. Some interesting reading about that can be found here. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 18:46, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm with you. At least in terms of web links, it's not that hard to test if they are real or not (no AI needed really). For books, obviously, that's a more complicated thing but even there it's generally at least plausible to *confirm* that an ISBN, author, and title are real. We shouldn't trust that an AI will be right that a book says what is claimed obviously. Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:50, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I think maybe it's easier when one knows how the tools they are using work behind the scenes. The hallucinated claims can also come from hallucinated titles that sound plausible, as this lawyer discovered. I think it'd be easier to verify live links exist because someone can at least click it and see if it goes anywhere? Books might be more iffy because it might give you an ISBN that exists but does not match a fake title or any other number of errors. I'm not as much of a techie as you, though. Maybe there'd be some way of accounting for all this and how the average person might interact with whatever is designed. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 14:03, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Well I think you're broadly right here. Links relatively easy. Books, more iffy. But I'm thinking that such tools are for editors, not the general public, and probably will start to happen whether the WMF pursues any of it or not. I mean, writing a bot to suggest replacement links is just about within *my* technical abilities and I'm not really a great programmer at all. So just as people have written and used bots for years, this is likely to be a tool in their arsenal.

And... that's probably the best approach. A handful of experienced techie Wikipedians carefully testing a bot with community feedback and oversight before rolling it out to others is something with a long history. I am old so I remember rambot and User:Ram-man - one of the earliest examples. Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:15, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I owned one of these:. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:24, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I think you underestimate how magical even basic programming skills look to someone who doesn't have any. 😅 I know basic MediaWiki markup and that's it. It's good to know that what I'm saying sounds about right, though. I try to listen to people who know what they're talking about and ask questions. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 16:20, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I assume you've heard of mw:Readers/Information Retrieval, then, because it sounds like exactly what you're describing. — Qwerfjkltalk 14:37, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that's definitely what I was thinking of when I've heard about how the foundation was working to improve search. Thanks for the exact link. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 16:17, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Editors are obstinately pushing pornographic hooks at DYK. For instance yesterday the hook "... that Savannah Bond (pictured) sold cosmetics before entering the adult film industry? " ran and now "... that Jenna Meek once made Sophie Tea's breasts go viral?" is about to run. Personally I find these hooks in poor taste. Apparently these hooks do well view wise and several editors have figured this out and continue to run them. What are your thoughts? 781h (talk) 06:54, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Apparently, per Talk:Jenna Meek, the second hook won't run because reactions to the first. As a principle, I see no WP-reason why articles like Savannah Bond should be excluded from the DYK-process, and that hook looks reasonable to me. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:15, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Whatever the merits or lack of of the second hook, it is not pornographic. CMD (talk) 10:29, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Technically, Wikipedia is not censored. So we can cover anything (and should cover every reliably covered thing) in DYK. Also, the second one is not at all similar to the Bond one. 🚂ThatTrainGuy1945 ^{Peep peep!} 03:19, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

"Wikipedia is not censored" is true. Wikipedians exercise thoughtful editorial judgment in the interest of serving the needs of the general public with a high quality encyclopedia is also true. What does that imply for DYK hooks? Well, it isn't definitive but there are definitely better and worse choices for the hook. That doesn't really constitute a firm opinion, but those are my thoughts which I think are probably pretty uncontroversial.Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:27, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

To be honest despite the number of people who shout WP:NOTCENSORED ad nauseam in these situations, I think it's irrelevant here. We aren't talking about deleting articles or information, we're simply talking about where to place it. Black Kite (talk) 15:26, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

True. And I don't see what's "pornographic" about those hooks. Drmies (talk) 15:30, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

More at Talk:Main_Page#Visibility_of_adult_industry. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:02, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm sure you've heard people say "everything is already written". Well, it's not. I just wrote the stroller article, which somehow did not exist in 2026. It's a stub, but it's much better than nothing. :) Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 01:39, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Baby_transport#Wheeled_transport_methods, I like that, sounds very Wikipedian. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 05:23, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that section exists, and it needs considerable work. I need to head to sleep but I hope to expand the stroller article soonish. There's a lot that can be said about various types, "bougie" strollers, etc. But I'm really surprised no one took such "low hanging fruit" before now, as I usually hear it described. I often find that a lot of articles we have that are somewhat parenting related tend to be in poor shape, though. There's always so much to do. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 05:33, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm pleased to notice that the Baby transport article mentions Battleship Potemkin. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:30, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Baby transport#Strollers appears to be longer / more detailed. Might make sense to redirect Stroller to that. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:13, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Most of that detail is unreferenced text. I often think a well-referenced stub is better than that. I strongly object to the idea of redirecting it back, there's a lot that can be written about strollers and the fact that no one has tried to write a separate article about it before now is genuinely shocking to me. It's like if we didn't have an article for fork but had one on kitchen utensils. I think sometimes people kneejerk to merge genuinely notable subjects more than nessecary. There's several disadvantages to that. One is that our redirects only work internally and almost never show up in search engines. No one is looking up "baby transport" when they're thinking about buying a stroller, which is an almost universal parenting item, at least in North America. The second disadvantage is that it can make articles easily become unwieldy and requiring splits if someone does choose to try and give the subject the coverage it deserves. I don't think the average new editor is going to understand the nuances of how to request page deletion and do page splits etc. I've also seen people remove content that is "too detailed" in broader article subjects. The third is that just because something is short doesn't mean it's bad. I like short and sweet articles that are exactly what I'm looking for and I don't have to scroll down paragraphs of tangentially related content to find what I want, especially on my phone. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:03, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Having two spots for the same content isn't ideal. Results in duplicate work and duplicate maintenance effort. If I encountered this in the NPP queue, I'd probably delete the unsourced material in Baby transport#Strollers, replace it with the content from stroller, then WP:BLAR stroller to Baby transport#Strollers. There's nothing wrong with WP:SPINOUTs, and that should indeed be done once a section of a broad article gets big enough to warrant it. Not a big deal though. I'll leave things as is. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:36, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I think that might be a big deal if that's your standard approach. That seems somewhat bitey, especially since most new editors won't know how to object to such a change. At least drafified articles can still be easily resubmitted. I think it's one thing to be merging content that doesn't meet GNG and quite another to be imposing preferences on what articles should be. It's very confusing how differently people will approach this. I've seen multiple redirects be deleted at RfD where we have coverage of the subject in question precisely because people want to encourage article creation. I don't think it's fair to send mixed messages to people. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 21:37, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

While the number of en.wiki articles increases every year and so it is clear there is lots left to write, we do our editors a disservice to equate 'article exits' with 'written'. Our overall article text has also steadily increased over time, which is a better proxy as "everything" includes writing about existing topics as well as writing new ones. Lots of stubs out there for example, which do actually have the potential to be significantly developed. CMD (talk) 07:55, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Yep, there's so many articles that technically exist but are in poor shape. It's why I keep track of articles I improve on my content subpage as well. Some of the numerous examples I could give off the top of my head as subjects that need work are baby fever, baby jumpers, and growth landmarks. Back labor is a good short article but so much more could be said about that subject. I did a lot of work on the pregnancy article over the past year. It didn't use to explain that you don't just magically get pregnant (sex or assisted reproductive technology is required), that Rhesus disease exists, etc. And then even in a general sense, our backlogs are huge. There's literally thousands of completely unreferenced articles. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:11, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

There may be some editors working on the unreferenced article category, it comes up every now and then. Not sure if it is tracked over time. CMD (talk) 14:05, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Regarding your last point, according to a sample of Wikipedia articles I took, there is likely around 500,000 articles without inline citations. Some of these have non-inline citations, but I don't even think that is the majority of those 500,000 articles and even if it was, inline citations are just better than a non-inline citation except in a rare few cases. ✶Quxyz✶ (talk) 14:10, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

The reference desks have an oft cited essay WP:WHAAOE but see some exceptions: Draft:Euromissile Crisis recently which was a little surprising. FloridaArmy is constantly turning out 19th century biography and topics—some gems there whenever i look at their list. fiveby(zero) 14:26, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

"Only slight hyperbole!" Wikipedia has expanded nearly three-fold since that was written. ✶Quxyz✶ (talk) 14:30, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I find I often have the opposite problem of being pleasantly surprised that things I want to read about aren't things I have to write. There's literally hundreds of articles that haven't been written yet on my mental to-do list. It's a lot of work trying to do that, improve articles on a neglected topic area, do all the reading I like to do for fun, try to improve WMF-community relations, be an admin, etc. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 14:36, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Please go write Eugene Pick, Tom Quick (Indian Slayer) and Tom Tiger for me will ya, i'm too lazy. Will get you lots of sources tho. There should be some kind of "Nonexistent" to "Featured" article project, would be fun finding the topics if someone else would actually write them. fiveby(zero) 14:52, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

There is: the Four Award. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:12, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

We have the WP:26 for '26 project going on right now which shows quite ably how there is much left to create (and even expand). CMD (talk) 02:16, 18 March 2026 (UTC)