Become a Wikipedian in 30 minutes
What will we do if Wikipedia falls to the type of AI-generated garbage that seems to be proliferating on the web? The number one thing you can do is learn to edit, and I will walk you through how to get started in only 30 minutes.
![A photo of Molly White smiling, embedded in a Wikipedia editing box.](/content/images/size/w1200/2024/02/maxresdefault.webp)
I was recently having a conversation on BlueSky about fears that Wikipedia could become overrun with AI-generated garbage. What if Wikipedia falls?
This all started with some posts by others: a post by someone who had seen a Wikipedia article that was citing an AI-generated "source" containing falsehoods, and another person fearing that there could be a general trend in that direction:
![](https://www.citationneeded.news/content/images/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-25-at-11.57.32-AM-1.png)
![](https://www.citationneeded.news/content/images/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-25-at-11.57.58-AM.png)
I posted:
![](https://www.citationneeded.news/content/images/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-25-at-10.11.14-AM.png)
As often happens when I encourage people to edit Wikipedia, I got some responses along the lines of "I tried to start editing once, but I got overwhelmed and gave up".
![](https://www.citationneeded.news/content/images/2024/02/wikipedia-confusing-comment.png)
I get comments like this all the time when I encourage people to edit: people are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of policies, the somewhat bureaucratic vibe of it all, or the fear that they might get reverted by a more experienced editor.
Let me try to help:
You can also read a transcript of the video.