Below, we (1) flag the most important upgrades the Mech Interp page still needs, (2) list other alignment / EA topics that are currently stubs or red-links, and (3) share quick heuristics for editing without tripping Wikipedia’s notability or neutrality rules.
but so far as I can see the text that actually follows doesn’t do (1) at all, does kinda do (2) though e.g. I don’t think it’s accurate to describe Wikipedia’s “Less Wrong” article as a stub, and does give advice on editing Wikipedia but doesn’t do the specific things claimed under (3) at all.
I think (3) is pretty important here. If a lot of people reading this go off to edit Wikipedia to make it say more about AI alignment, or make it say nicer things about Less Wrong, or the like, then (a) many of those people may be violating Wikipedia’s rules designed to avoid distortion from edits-by-interested-parties and (b) even if they aren’t it may well look that way, and in either case the end result could be the opposite of what those new Wikipedia editors are hoping for.
I’m glad that the post’s first paragraph is now more consistent with the rest of it, but it does feel like it might need more on the old #3 to avoid the failure mode where a bunch of enthusiastic LessWrongers descend on Wikipedia, edit it in ways that existing Wikipedia editors disapprove of, and get blowback that ends up making things worse. At the very least it seems like there should be links to specific sets of rules that it would be easy to fall foul of, things like WP:COI and WP:NOTE and WP:RS.
The opening paragraph says
but so far as I can see the text that actually follows doesn’t do (1) at all, does kinda do (2) though e.g. I don’t think it’s accurate to describe Wikipedia’s “Less Wrong” article as a stub, and does give advice on editing Wikipedia but doesn’t do the specific things claimed under (3) at all.
I think (3) is pretty important here. If a lot of people reading this go off to edit Wikipedia to make it say more about AI alignment, or make it say nicer things about Less Wrong, or the like, then (a) many of those people may be violating Wikipedia’s rules designed to avoid distortion from edits-by-interested-parties and (b) even if they aren’t it may well look that way, and in either case the end result could be the opposite of what those new Wikipedia editors are hoping for.
Good call—that was from an earlier version of this post.
I’m glad that the post’s first paragraph is now more consistent with the rest of it, but it does feel like it might need more on the old #3 to avoid the failure mode where a bunch of enthusiastic LessWrongers descend on Wikipedia, edit it in ways that existing Wikipedia editors disapprove of, and get blowback that ends up making things worse. At the very least it seems like there should be links to specific sets of rules that it would be easy to fall foul of, things like WP:COI and WP:NOTE and WP:RS.
Good call! Linking the relevant pages.