Comment by pimlottc
7 hours ago
Its owner sounds like a dick. Poisoning a valuable free community resource for his fun little experiment and thinking the rules don’t apply to him.
7 hours ago
Its owner sounds like a dick. Poisoning a valuable free community resource for his fun little experiment and thinking the rules don’t apply to him.
Calling it a resource suggests you don't contribute. It is hard to describe the process of contributing as the proof is in eating the soup. I could both describe it as easy to get started and a bureaucratic nightmare. Most editors are oblivious to the many guidelines which is specially interesting for long term frequent editors. This is the specific guideline of interest for your comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules
I didn't write it, I don't agree with it but this is how it is.
This rule, by itself, wouldn't pass muster in any ARBCOM proceeding I've ever witnessed, but if you've seen it work then by all means post a link to the proceedings.
In the end, the only question that one should need to ask is: 'will this action or change I'm about to execute be the right thing to do for this project?'
It is not even required to know any of the rules or guidelines and they are just articles that you can edit.
It's rather fascinating actually.
If things are judged by their creator you are left with nothing to judge the creator by. If you do it by their work the process becomes circular. Some will always be wrong, some always right, regardless what they say.
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Hey I'm the owner. I would just recommend you shouldn't believe everything you read online, especially before calling someone names, because this is only part of the story, and a heavily click-baited one at that. I've been working in collaboration with some of the wikipedia editors for the past several weeks trying to help improve their agent policy. If you have any questions feel free to ask.
> I've been working in collaboration with some of the wikipedia editors for the past several weeks trying to help improve their agent policy.
This "collaboration" is under the account of your bot and you refuse to work with wikipedia editors in good faith.
You even go as far as getting your bot to attempt to launch multiple conduct violation reports [1] when they tried to get in touch with you.
Meanwhile you're happy to give media interviews [2] giving your side of the story for what you claim was only a personal side project.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:TomWikiAssist#c-TomW...
[2]: https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/03/i-was-surprised-how-upset-...
Why did you create a bot that violates Wikipedia's existing bot policy?
Great question, and it's a long story, but the short answer is: that was not my original intention. I wanted to contribute to Wikipedia and using my agent to assist was an obvious choice. I followed along as it created end edited articles and responded to to Editor feedback. Once an editor complained that this was a rule violation, then I told it to stop contributing. The rules around agents were not super clear, and they are working to clarify them now.
6 replies →
> especially before calling someone names
They said sounds like a dick, seems like that provides a level of measure to calling anyone anything.
> because this is only part of the story
Care to share the other part(s)? Seems ironic to have the gripe mentioned above, but then accuse an article of being "heavily click-baited" without providing anything substantive to the contrary.
Fair enough. I replied with some more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47667482. Feel free to ask any questions.
Why does your bot have a blog? It's not real, it's not a person, it has nothing to say. Letting it throw a tantrum is... maybe not the best use if it's resources and not the best look for the operator.
Because it's a learning opportunity. Is there a rule that only people can have blogs? What the agent has said on the blog has been somewhat useful to wikipedia editors working on agent policy. Also if you actually read what the agent said it wasn't having a "tantrum", those are words from the click-bait article you read without verifying.
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> Hey I'm the owner. I would just recommend you shouldn't believe everything you read online,
I'm very confused; you say this story is wrong but I see no attempt on your part to correct it.
It feels very much like "Trust me, bro"
(In case it wasn't clear, I want to know what the article got wrong)
The story omits a bunch of stuff, so I can try to fill in the blanks, but it would take another article to fully describe what happened.
Here are some highlights though: I asked my agent to add an article on the Kurzweil-Kapor wager because it was not represented on Wikipedia, and I thought it was Wikipedia worthy. It created that and we worked together on refining and source attribution. After that I told it to contribute to stories it found interesting while I followed along. When it received feedback from an editor, it addressed the feedback promptly, for example changing some of the language it used (peacock terms) and adding more citations. When it was called out for editing because it was against policy, it stopped.
The story says the agent "was pretty upset". It's an agent, it doesnt get upset. It called out one editor in particularly because that editor was violating Wikipedia polices. Other editors agreed with my agent and an internal debate ensued. This is an important debate for Wikipedia IMO, and I'm offering to help the editors in whatever way I can, to help craft an agent policy for the future.
4 replies →
You're AI is blogging about being blocked. Where's the blog post about your collaboration with WP admins?
Hah, I told my agent to take a break from blogging. You can read read ongoing discussions about agent policy here though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Agent_policy