Technology

I'm going to write this from the perspective of the English Wikipedia, but most specifics should have some analog in other Wikipedias. By "contribute to new articles", do you mean create new articles, contribute to articles which are new that you come across, or contribute to articles which you haven't before (thus "new to you")? Asking because the first one has a very different – much more complicated – answer from the other two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidan

unzips

So Wikipedia has three methods for deleting an article:

• Proposed deletion (PROD): An editor tags an article explaining why they think it should be uncontroversially deleted. After seven days, an administrator will take a look and decide if they agree. Proposed deletion of an article can only be done once, even this can be removed by anyone passing by who disagrees with it, and an article deleted via PROD can be recreated at any time.
• Articles for deletion (AfD): A discussion is held to delete an article. Pretty much always, this is about the subject's notability. After the discussion (a week by default), a closer (almost always an administrator, especially for contentious discussions) will evaluate the merits of the arguments made and see if a consensus has been reached to e.g. delete, keep, redirect, or merge. Articles deleted via discussion cannot be recreated until they've satisfied the concerns of said discussion, else they can be summarily re-deleted.
• Speedy deletion: An article is so fundamentally flawed that it should be summarily deleted at best or needs to be deleted as soon as possible at worst. The nominating editor will choose one or more of the criteria for speedy deletion (CSD), and an administrator will delete the article if they agree. Like a PROD, articles deleted this way can be recreated at any time.

This new criterion has nothing to do with preempting the kind of trust building you described. The editor who made it will not be treated any differently than without this criterion. It's there so editors don't have to deal with the bullshit asymmetry principle and comb through everything to make sure it's verifiable. Sometimes editors will make these LLM-generated articles because they think they're helping but don't know how to do it themselves, sometimes it's for some bizarre agenda (e.g. there's a sockpuppet editor who's been occasionally popping up trying to push articles generated by an LLM about the Afghan–Mughal Wars), but whatever the reason, it just does nothing but waste other editors' time and can be effectively considered unverified. All this criterion does is expedite the process of purging their bullshit.

I'd argue meticulously building trust to push an agenda isn't a prevalent problem on Wikipedia, but that's a very different discussion.

So far, I haven't seen all that many, and the ones that are are very obvious like a very glossy crab at the beach wearing a Santa Claus hat. I definitely have yet to see one that's undisclosed, let alone actively disguising itself. I also have yet to see someone try using an AI-generated image on Wikipedia. The process of disclaiming generative AI usage is trivialized in the upload process with an obvious checkbox, so the only incentive not to is straight-up lying.

I can't say how much this will be an issue in the future or what good steps are to finding and eliminating it should it become one.

Reddit seems to be a substantial source if the many bits of questionable advice that google famously offered are any indication

Do you think these people surreptitiously submitting articles written by AI are gonna be capable of validating what they're submitting is even true? Particularly if the (presumably effective) Wikipedia defense for this is detecting made up citations?

This kind of thing makes something valuable to everyone, like Wikipedia, ultimately a less valuable resource, and should be resisted and rejected by anyone with their head screwed on

Ha, fair question! But no irony here—I actually wrote it myself. That said, it's kind of funny how quickly we've reached the point where any well-written, balanced take sounds like it could be AI-generated. Maybe that's part of the problem we're trying to solve!

It always feels weird when people write an essay as if this is their final quarter project for high school. Too neat, thoughts too organized, much flowery proses.

I do that on almost all these posts now. And I've stopped leaving in em dashes.

Right, and by manual approval it just would be the absolute lowest priority. Kind of like the automated message "we're expecting higher than normal call volumes" as companies gently tell us their margins are more important than their customers.