Author | Lightnews

Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 3d

Musk had talked about "rewrit[ing] Wikipedia" last month already (as we also mentioned twice in the Signpost en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... ). So, not sure where this "called it" comes from.
Besides, it's also the approach taken previously by Conservapedia, Citizendium (initially), Ruwiki etc.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-10-20/In the media - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 3d

Funny that they removed "harassment campaign" from the first sentence, but left it in the URL grokipedia.com/page/Gamerga...

Gamergate

Gamergate was a grassroots online campaign launched in August 2014 to demand accountability and ethical reforms in video game journalism, ignited by a detailed blog post from programmer Eron Gjoni acc...

grokipedia.com

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 3d

This seems to confound using Wikipedia for training LLMs with the direct, attributed republication or adaption of Wikipedia content, which has been going on for almost a quarter century: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... ("Thousands of 'mirror sites' exist that republish content from Wikipedia")

Wikipedia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 7d

All good (I wasn't there, although I did spend a bit of time helping to cover it in our little community newsletter en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... ). Hope you're well too!

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-10-20/In the media - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 7d

In a quick scan of the paper, I don't see anything about the funding or organizing of conferences, workshops and the like. Would you consider these possible avenues of influence in this area too?

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 7d

The author is on here too 😉 bsky.app/profile/mano...

Manoel Horta Ribeiro @manoelhortaribeiro.bsky.social · Feb 16

In a new blog post, I argue we must be more critical in evaluating research on “algorithmic amplification.” Otherwise, we risk rediscovering that algorithms do not exist in a vacuum. We're better off doing other things!

doomscrollingbabel.manoel.xyz/p/does-tikto...

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 7d

I'm aware of the timing. It's more about your sources seemingly including none of the several Wikimedians at the event who apparently had at least some knowledge of the issue.
If you or another journalist had broken that story, that might also have relieved SFR of the burden of breaking the ANPDP.

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 8d

Like many Wikimedians, I generally appreciate how your reporting is better informed than others thanks to your connections with (parts of) the Wikipedia community. Can't help noticing though that here you missed a major angle of the story that was revealed yesterday: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 8d

As a longtime Wikimedian, I still remember you being seen as an ally of the free knowledge movement; you even used to be on the WMF advisory board.

Very sad to see you have joined the anti-fair-use bandwagon and engage in full-throated advocacy for the business interests of the copyright industry.

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 11d

Helping researchers secure their future @pessimistsarc.bsky.social spot

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 12d

They fixed this one too in the current version (but the Wayback Machine confirms your screenshot: web.archive.org/web/20251016... )

web.archive.org

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 12d

In case anyone wants to check further, the earliest snapshot on the Internet Archive is web.archive.org/web/20251016... (unlike arXiv, agidefinition.ai doesn't preserve a revision history...)

web.archive.org

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 12d

Don't forget banner donation revenues, which might even be more affected than volunteer edits per the (quite preliminary) findings from one of the aforementioned papers: meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Researc...
Could create some interesting and so far unexamined WMF-community dynamics and possible COIs

Research:Newsletter/2025/March - Meta-Wiki

meta.wikimedia.org

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 12d

Not very surprising. But I'm quite curious how WMF determined causality: "We believe that these declines reflect the impact of generative AI and social media".
This can be quite difficult; I covered several papers that tried to do that (for earlier timespans) at
meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Researc...?

Research:Newsletter/2025/March - Meta-Wiki

meta.wikimedia.org

Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 13d

Maybe you are right about this particular model, but this Boston Dynamics video with some very similar tricks is from 2021: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4D...

Atlas | Partners in Parkour

YouTube video by Boston Dynamics

www.youtube.com

Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 14d

"said in a blog post" - why is there no link? diff.wikimedia.org/2025/10/17/n...
What's @404media.co's policy on linking online sources that an article is quoting from at length?
A bit ironic in an piece that basically raises the alarm about search engines and chatbots failing to provide such links

New User Trends on Wikipedia

Isiwal, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons In March, the Wikimedia Foundation shared about the global trends that are impacting our movement. These trends have continued to shape not only the Wikim…

diff.wikimedia.org

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 17d

Umm, your quote omits the preceding "And let me remind us all", re an earlier paragraph relating this to concrete facts:
"if you read the system card, you also see its signs of situational awareness have jumped ..."
You may prefer different terms to describe these facts, but it's an empirical claim.

Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 17d

Apropos this - half a year later, what's your overall sense about whether and how much this incident has helped increase the reach and/or reputation of Signal?

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 17d

Done, thanks in advance!
However, you should also consider posting a freely accessible version. This journal allows you to do that for the "Accepted Manuscript" version (on a personal webpage, no embargo - see the link for "Integrative And Comparative Biology" at academic.oup.com/pages/open-r... )

Accepted manuscript embargo periods

Oxford University Press journals operate a range of self-archiving policies, allowing authors to make a version of their article available on their own websites

academic.oup.com

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 17d

Since you care about effective science communication and public outreach:
Is there a non-paywalled version of your paper? (Your publisher charges USD $44.00 for short-term access: academic.oup.com/icb/article-... )

Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky

Synopsis. Social media has become widely used by the scientific community for a variety of professional uses, including networking and public outreach. For

academic.oup.com

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 23d

So about 0.3%? (Given that according to bsky.jazco.dev/stats there are between 600,000 and 700,000 daily posters currently)

Atlas - Engagement-Based Social Graph for Bluesky by Jaz (jaz.bsky.social)

bsky.jazco.dev

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 24d

Thankfully we still have text, a medium in which fake information remains very difficult to create, which is why can trust anything written by anybody on the Internet without checking sources or such

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 27d

So you're saying mechanical looms were initially unopposed...? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite...

Luddite - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 27d

Hold on, you're just trying to trick us to go on this woke accessible "X" site to get indoctrinated with DEI (I hear the owner is an immigrant who got into a big fight with President Trump earlier this year)

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Tilman Bayer @tilmanbayer.bsky.social · 28d

Yes, see also bsky.app/profile/pfra...

Paul Frazee @pfrazee.com · 29d

There's the substance of the signal issue, and then there's the pattern of behavior that jay was responding to -- the constant, _constant_ off topic responses that make this tedious.

On the substance, it's really just that the guy didn't violate the ToS. I'm sorry, that's just it

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