this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
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I don't know if this is an acceptable format for a submission here, but here it goes anyway:

Wikimedia Foundation has been developing an LLM that would produce simplified Wikipedia article summaries, as described here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Content_Discovery_Experiments/Simple_Article_Summaries

We would like to provide article summaries, which would simplify the content of the articles. This will make content more readable and accessible, and thus easier to discover and learn from. This part of the project focuses only on displaying the summaries. A future experiment will study ways of editing and adjusting this content.

Currently, much of the encyclopedic quality content is long-form and thus difficult to parse quickly. In addition, it is written at a reading level much higher than that of the average adult. Projects that simplify content, such as Simple English Wikipedia or Basque Txikipedia, are designed to address some of these issues. They do this by having editors manually create simpler versions of articles. However, these projects have so far had very limited success - they are only available in a few languages and have been difficult to scale. In addition, they ask editors to rewrite content that they have already written. This can feel very repetitive.

In our previous research (Content Simplification), we have identified two needs:

  • The need for readers to quickly get an overview of a given article or page
  • The need for this overview to be written in language the reader can understand

Etc., you should check the full text yourself. There's a brief video showing how it might look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8JB7q7SZc

This hasn't been met with warm reactions, the comments on the respective talk page have questioned the purposefulness of the tool (shouldn't the introductory paragraphs do the same job already?), and some other complaints have been provided as well:

Taking a quote from the page for the usability study:

"Most readers in the US can comfortably read at a grade 5 level,[CN] yet most Wikipedia articles are written in language that requires a grade 9 or higher reading level."

Also stated on the same page, the study only had 8 participants, most of which did not speak English as their first language. AI skepticism was low among them, with one even mentioning they 'use AI for everything'. I sincerely doubt this is a representative sample and the fact this project is still going while being based on such shoddy data is shocking to me. Especially considering that the current Qualtrics survey seems to be more about how to best implement such a feature as opposed to the question of whether or not it should be implemented in the first place. I don't think AI-generated content has a place on Wikipedia. The Morrison Man (talk) 23:19, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

The survey the user mentions is this one: https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1XiNLmcNJxPeMqq and true enough it pretty much takes for granted that the summaries will be added, there's no judgment of their actual quality, and they're only asking for people's feedback on how they should be presented. I filled it out and couldn't even find the space to say that e.g. the summary they show is written almost insultingly, like it's meant for particularly dumb children, and I couldn't even tell whether it is accurate because they just scroll around in the video.

Very extensive discussion is going on at the Village Pump (en.wiki).

The comments are also overwhelmingly negative, some of them pointing out that the summary doesn't summarise the article properly ("Perhaps the AI is hallucinating, or perhaps it's drawing from other sources like any widespread llm. What it definitely doesn't seem to be doing is taking existing article text and simplifying it." - user CMD). A few comments acknowlegde potential benefits of the summaries, though with a significantly different approach to using them:

I'm glad that WMF is thinking about a solution of a key problem on Wikipedia: most of our technical articles are way too difficult. My experience with AI summaries on Wikiwand is that it is useful, but too often produces misinformation not present in the article it "summarises". Any information shown to readers should be greenlit by editors in advance, for each individual article. Maybe we can use it as inspiration for writing articles appropriate for our broad audience. β€”Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:30, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

One of the reasons many prefer chatGPT to Wikipedia is that too large a share of our technical articles are way way too difficult for the intended audience. And we need those readers, so they can become future editors. Ideally, we would fix this ourselves, but my impression is that we usually make articles more difficult, not easier, when they go through GAN and FAC. As a second-best solution, we might try this as long as we have good safeguards in place. β€”Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:32, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

Finally, some comments are problematising the whole situation with WMF working behind the actual wikis' backs:

This is a prime reason I tried to formulate my statement on WP:VPWMF#Statement proposed by berchanhimez requesting that we be informed "early and often" of new developments. We shouldn't be finding out about this a week or two before a test, and we should have the opportunity to inform the WMF if we would approve such a test before they put their effort into making one happen. I think this is a clear example of needing to make a statement like that to the WMF that we do not approve of things being developed in virtual secret (having to go to Meta or MediaWikiWiki to find out about them) and we want to be informed sooner rather than later. I invite anyone who shares concerns over the timeline of this to review my (and others') statements there and contribute to them if they feel so inclined. I know the wording of mine is quite long and probably less than ideal - I have no problem if others make edits to the wording or flow of it to improve it.

Oh, and to be blunt, I do not support testing this publicly without significantly more editor input from the local wikis involved - whether that's an opt-in logged-in test for people who want it, or what. Regards, -bɜ:Κ³kΙ™nhΙͺmez | me | talk to me! 22:55, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

Again, I recommend reading the whole discussion yourself.

EDIT: WMF has announced they're putting this on hold after the negative reaction from the editors' community. ("we’ll pause the launch of the experiment so that we can focus on this discussion first and determine next steps together")

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[–] cotlovan@lemm.ee 6 points 6 days ago

Who exactly asked for this? Wikipedia isn't publicly traded, they aren't a for profit company, why are they trying to shove Ai into people's faces?

For those few who wanted it, there are dozens of bots who can summarize the (already kinda small) Wikipedia articles

[–] sandflavoured@lemm.ee 5 points 6 days ago

My immediate thought is that the purpose of an encyclopaedia is to have a more-or-less comprehensive overview of some topic of interest. The reader should be able to look through the page index to find the section they care about and read that section.

Its purpose is not to rapidly teach anyone anything in full.

It seems like a poor fit as an application for LLMs

fucking disgusting. no place should have ai but especially not an encyclopedia.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 168 points 1 week ago (5 children)

If they add AI they better not ask me for any money ever again.

[–] 6nk06@sh.itjust.works 60 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Or moderators. Why would they need those people when the AI can fix everything for free and even improve articles?

[–] Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Right! I can’t wait to hear about all the new historical events!

I wonder if anyone witnessed the burning of the Library of Alexandria and felt a similar sense of despair for the future of knowledge.

[–] arrow74@lemm.ee 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can download a copy of Wikipedia in full today before they turn it to shit.

Unlike the people in Alexandria, you can spend less that $20 and 20 minutes to download the whole thing and preserve it yourself

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[–] Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works 119 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Wikipedia articles already have lead in summaries.

Fuck right off with this

A future experiment will study ways of editing and adjusting this content.

[–] MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca 33 points 1 week ago (5 children)

A lot of them for the small articles and stubs are written very technically and don't provide an explanation for complex subjects if you aren't already familiar with it. Then you have to read 4 subjects down just to figure out the jargon for what they're saying

[–] Takapapatapaka@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago

I agree, having experienced this especially on mathematics pages. But on the other hand, from my experience, the whole article is very technical in those cases : I'm not sure making a summary would help, and im not sure you can provide a summary both correct and easily understandable in those cases.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Math articles are the worst. They always jump right into calculus and stuff. I usually have to hope there's a simple English article for those!

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[–] doctortofu@reddthat.com 75 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (9 children)

Et tu, Wikipedia?

My god, why does every damn piece of text suddenly need to be summarized by AI? It's completely insane to me. I want to read articles, not their summaries in 3 bullet points. I want to read books, not cliff notes, I want to read what people write to me in their emails instead of AI slop. Not everything needs to be a fucking summary!

It seriously feels like the whole damn world is going crazy, which means it's probably me... :(

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 12 points 1 week ago

It's not you.

"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." Krishnamurti

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[–] RaoulDook@lemmy.world 50 points 1 week ago (8 children)

If people use AI to summarize passages of written words to be simpler for those with poor reading skills to be able to more easily comprehend the words, then how are those readers going to improve their poor reading skills?

Dumbing things down with AI isn't going to make people smarter I bet. This seems like accelerating into Idiocracy

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

[...] then how are those readers going to improve their poor reading skills?

By becoming interested in improving their poor reading skills. You won't make people become interested in that by having everything available only in complex language, it's just going to make them skip over your content. Otherwise there shouldn't be people with poor reading skills, since complex language is already everywhere in life.

[–] RaoulDook@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Nope. Reading skills are improved by being challenged by complex language, and the effort required to learn new words to comprehend it. If the reader is interested in the content, they aren't going to skip it. Dumbing things down only leads to dumbing things down.

For example, look at all the iPad kids who can't use a computer for shit. Kids who grew up with computers HAD to learn the more complex interface of computers to be able to do the cool things they wanted to do on the computer. Now they don't because they don't have to. Therefore if you get everything dumbed down to 5th Grade reading level, that's where the common denominator will settle. Overcoming that apathy requires a challenge to be a barrier to entry.

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[–] markovs_gun@lemmy.world 39 points 1 week ago

Wikipedia articles are already quite simplified down overviews for most topics. I really don't like the direction of the world where people are reading summaries of summaries and mistaking that for knowledge. The only time I have ever found AI summaries useful is for complex legal documents and low-importance articles where it is clear the author's main goal was SEO rather than concise and clear information transfer.

[–] ace_garp@lemmy.world 35 points 1 week ago

These LLM-page-summaries need to be contained and linked, completely separately, in something like llm.wikipedia.org or ai.wikipedia.org.

In a possible future case, that a few LLM hallucinations have been uncovered in these summaries, it would cast doubts about the accuracy of all page content in the project.

Keep the generated-summaries visibly distinct from user created content.

[–] coolmojo@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Is this the same WiliMedia Foundation who was complaining about AI scrapers in April?

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 43 points 1 week ago (1 children)

IIRC, they weren’t trying to stop themβ€”they were trying to get the scrapers to pull the content in a more efficient format that would reduce the overhead on their web servers.

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can literally just download all of Wikipedia in one go from one URL. They would rather people just do that instead of crawling their entire website because that puts a huge load on their servers.

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ah, but the clueless code monkeys, script kiddies and C-levels who are responsible for writing the AI companies' processing code only know how to scrape from someone else's website. They can't even ask their (respective) company's AI for help because it hasn't been trained yet. (Not that Wikipedia's content will necessarily help).

They're not even capable of taking the ZIP file and hosting the contents on localhost to allow the scraper code they got working to operate on something it understands.

So hammer Wikipedia they must, because it's the limit of their competence.

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[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

TIL: Wikipedia uses complex language.

It might just be me, but I find articles written on Wikipedia much more easier to read than shit sometimes people write or speak to me. Sometimes it is incomprehensible garbage, or without much sense.

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You've clearly never tried to use Wikipedia to help with your math homework

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

I never did any homework unless absolutely necessary.

Now I understand that I should have done it, because I am not good at learning shit in classrooms where there is bunch of people who distract me and I don't learn anything that way. Only many years later I found out that for most things it's best for me to study alone.

That said, you are most probably right, because I have opened some math-related Wikipedia articles at some point, and they were pretty incomprehensible to me.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It really depends on what you're looking at. The history section of some random town? Absolutely bog-standard prose. I'm probably missing lots of implications as I'm no historian but at least I understand what's going on. The article on asymmetric relations? Good luck getting your mathematical literacy from wikipedia all the maths articles require you to already have it, and that's one of the easier ones. It's a fucking trivial concept, it has a glaringly obvious example... which is mentioned, even as first example, but by that time most people's eyes have glazed over. "Asymmetric relations are a generalisation of the idea that if a < b, then it is necessarily false that a > b: If it is true that Bob is taller than Tom, then it is false that Tom is taller than Bob." Put that in the header.

Or let's take Big O notation. Short overview, formal definition, examples... not practical, but theoretical, then infinitesimal asymptotics, which is deep into the weeds. You know what that article actually needs? After the short overview, have an intuitive/hand-wavy definition, then two well explained "find an entry in a telephone book", examples, two different algorithms: O(n) (naive) and O(log n) (divide and conquer), to demonstrate the kind of differences the notation is supposed to highlight. Then, with the basics out of the way, one to demonstrate that the notation doesn't care about multiplicative factors, what it (deliberately) sweeps under the rug. Short blurb about why that's warranted in practice. Then, directly afterwards, the "orders of common functions" table but make sure to have examples that people actually might be acquainted with. Then talk about amortisation, and how you don't always use hash tables "because they're O(1) and trees are not". Then get into the formal stuff, that is, the current article.

And, no, LLMs will be of absolutely no help doing that. What wikipedia needs is a didactics task force giving specialist editors a slap on the wrist because xkcd 2501.

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[–] vermaterc@lemmy.ml 29 points 1 week ago

I'm ok with auto generated content, but only if it is clearly separated from human generated content, can be disabled at any time and writing main articles with AI is forbidden

[–] KnitWit@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago

Never thought I’d cancel my recurring donation for them, but just sent the email. I hope they change their mind on this, but as I told them, I will not support this.

[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Hell nah, I am never donating to Wikipedia if they go AI.

[–] bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 week ago

Guess they're going to double down on the donation campaign considering the cost involved with ai

[–] deathbird@mander.xyz 18 points 1 week ago

This is not the medicine for curing what ails Wikipedia, but when all anyone is selling is a hammer....

[–] Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you can't make people smarter, make text dumber.

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[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 week ago (7 children)

There's a core problem that many Wikipedia articles are hard for a layperson to read and understand. The statement about reading level is one way to express this.

The Simple version of articles shows humans can produce readable text. But there aren't enough Simple articles, and the Simple articles are often incomplete.

I don't think AI should be solely trusted with summarization/translation, but it might have a place in the editing cycle.

[–] perviouslyiner@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

It didn't help when any page which could be rewritten with mathematical notation was rewritten as mathematical notation.

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[–] Deflated0ne@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago
[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 week ago

The big issue I see here isn't the proposed solution, it's the public image of doing something the tech bro billionaires are pushing hard right now.

It looks a bit like choosing the other side of the class war from their contributors.

Wikipedia, in particular, may not be able to afford that negatvie image, right now.

I could welcome this kind of tool later, but their timing sucks.

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