User talk:WhatamIdoing/Sandbox

About encyclopedic tone

Be boring

• Use an expository writing style. Encyclopedia articles describe their subjects, report classifications, list facts, and put information in an informative context for the reader. They do this by using plain and direct language.
• Just state generally accepted facts (according to mainstream views) without a lot of folderol about the specific source. The information about the source belongs in the citation, not in the article. Don't clutter up your article by blathering on about the credentials for an excellent source. Do not introduce facts with prefatory statements like, "In 2006, Dr I.M. Portant, president of Snob B. College of Medicine published a paper in the Journal of Peer-Reviewed Scientific Papers." Your text should not normally duplicate information present in your ref.
  • If a good source is enormously important to the world, then write a Wikipedia article about the source, and link to that article -- preferably in the ref.
  • Do not try to sell your source to the reader by dressing up the source's credentials. The reader already assumes that you are using the best possible sources of information. (If you're not, then get a better source!)
  • Helping the source become famous, or publicizing people you respect or admire is not a good reason to turn a Wikipedia article into a publicity machine for the source. Inventions and discoveries, for example, are usually presented very plainly: "The gene for ____ causes jellyfish to glow." Outside of a history section about the gene's discovery, it's not necessary to name the scientists that identified the gene, their employers, their funders, their managers, or their bottlewashers, because all the important information is already present in your ref.
  • The only good reason to include details about a specific source in the text of the article is to indicate that the information represents a minority view or the personal opinion of a single expert. So you write, "The Flat Earth Society believes the earth is flat", but just use a plain statement for the widely accepted fact, "The earth is more or less round."
• Avoid persuasive language. Wikipedia's purpose is to collect (the current state of) human knowledge. We're not trying to convince anyone of anything. Wikipedia is WP:NOT advertising/promotion/public awareness/anything else. We're not here to save lives, improve the environment, or change the world.
• Wikipedia is WP:NOT#HOWTO. Assume that your subject arrived at the article by clicking Special:Randompage and is not trying to solve any real-world problem other than how to write a five-page essay for school.

Simple errors

• Use a formal, businesslike tone. Do not use slang. Do not use fanciful analogies. Do not entertain the reader.
• Use a dispassionate tone. Encyclopedia articles do not tug on the heart strings. They are not emotional or prejudiced. The reader should not be able to guess from the final product whether your personal view of any aspect of the subject is "pro", "anti" or something else.
• Use an impersonal tone. Do not share anecdotes. Do not focus on individuals (unless the article is specifically about that individual). Write about the subject in general: do not write about one person's (or one group's) experience of the subject.
• Write in the third person. Do not address the reader. "We" are not telling "you" anything. The words I, we, and you should almost never appear in an encyclopedia article.

Omit the needless

Omit needless words

Show respect for the reader's time and attention by writing concisely. Read WP:WTA.

Omit trivial details

Present the important facts, plainly and concisely, but omit unnecessary supporting details. For example, very few statements of fact require the inclusion of supporting details like these:

• Who said what to whom
• On what date he or she said it
• The location of the speaker
• The official job titles of the participants (or the full names of the participants, if they were acting in their official capacity)
• The clothing they were wearing at the time
• The name of the publication or the journalist that first reported it
• How many people overheard it
• How many times it was broadcast in which countries
• What various opinion polls indicated about the comment
• How the opinion polls were conducted
• Who paid for the opinion polls
• How many people responded to each opinion poll

Trivial information should be routinely omitted.

Avoid unnecessary examples

In general, a well-written description of a thing should obviate the need for examples of that thing. Examples, when given, should be thoughtfully chosen and limited to the fewest number possible to convey the important information.

Include important information

• When writing the first sentence, do not assume that the reader knows anything about the subject. State the obvious. Is this article about a person, a place, a thing, an idea, or an action?
• Provide the context for the reader. Why is this specific subject important? Is this subject the biggest, oldest, hottest, driest (etc) in its class? How does it relate to similar people, places, things or ideas?

interaction between outsourced thinking section and communication disorders section

@WhatamIdoing Arrived from the related RfC page, had questions, felt they were too tangential for that page, hope it's okay to use your sandbox talk page!

Just wondering, how would you want to balance the slightly blurred lines between the outsourced thinking/"Don't use large language models to generate talk page comments" section an the 'you are permitted to use LLMs as an assistive device' section? Once you get past disabilities like dyslexia, and start interacting with disabilities or disorders that limit people's abilities to coherently write large sections of text or interact with others, I can't personally figure out where this sandbox puts the line between "getting an LLM to organize your ideas" and "having the LLM come up with your own ideas".

For an example, I have alexithymia - and then let's say I edit warred and got blocked for it, and am now being asked to write an unblock request. Okay, well, the next thing I'm going to think is that the unblocks admin wants to hear me state what my emotions are and how I'm going to deal with them. The problem is that I, of course, have a lot of trouble doing that - I know I feel bad about edit warring (because I do have emotions, after all, I just can't describe them easily), then, as I'm struggling to put that into socially-appropriate words, I read that this hypothetical guideline, telling me I may use an LLM to help me communicate - and I think great! I tell it to "write me a Wikipedia unblock request for edit warring, saying I feel bad" and it tells me to put I understand that I was blocked for edit warring, and I accept responsibility for my actions. I did not handle the disagreement properly and continued reverting instead of seeking consensus on the talk page. I feel genuinely bad about this and recognize that my behavior was disruptive to the editing process. I now understand Wikipedia’s policies on edit warring and the importance of discussion, consensus, and dispute resolution. Is that outsourcing my thinking? From my hypothetical and slightly stressed perspective no, it's writing what I feel, only better, and I'm using the assistive device carveout, and hence all clear. But do you believe the unblocks admin will see it that way?

This is distinct from me arguing that LLMs make good assistive devices in these cases (I don't) - what really matters is somebody thinking that the LLM makes a good assistive device, reading the guide, seeing it tells them that this sort of use is OK, and therefore using them. When I was a middle schooler, my father worked as a SPED teacher. I practically lived in his office and saw a lot of kids and parents with a wide variety of communication disorders. Even putting aside that there exist people in this world who think an aide answering their kid's test questions for them should be a reasonable accommodation, that experience leaves me feeling fairly confident in saying that yes, there will be people with communication disorders, not just "dyslexia or ADHD and I need spellcheck" or "I have fine motor control issues or nerve issues and need to use a high quality speech to text model which bills itself as AI to write", but who will go "It is incredibly difficult for me to keep my brain on task enough to write large sections of coherent text, but the Wikipedia page about my brother says he was born in Los Angeles when actually we were born in Riverside, California - I need to fix it". Again, this is distinct from me arguing that the LLM makes a good assistive device in these cases- while you and I are going to be fine with the new editor writing "sam was born in riverside, make ExampleUser stop writing la", it is entirely reasonable for somebody who isn't a good writer and has been told that since childhood that they aren't a good writer because of their disability to outsource that writing to ChaptGPT- and, again, from their perspective these are their own arguments, they didn't outsource thinking, so this guideline says it's okay. But from the experienced Wikipedian's perspective, I'm pretty sure the answer is going to be "that's outsourcing your opinion, don't do it again or I'll block you", and this guideline says that's okay because the other editor shouldn't be outsourcing their thinking and they're not just pointing out an error in an article, they're calling for sanctions on another editor!

Whereabouts do you envision the line between "your own text" and "outsourced thinking" to be, and where do you think it will end up in practice? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 23:05, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

@GreenLipstickLesbian, thanks for this comment. I agree with you, but I think there are problems that are more fundamental and higher incidence than your scenario (which I also accept as a problem).

Let's say that the LLM user has dyslexia to a significant level. They use an LLM. Irritable editors won't know they have dyslexia, so they'll treat them as a rule breaker. The dyslexic user may not know that this is (i.e., would be) a permitted exemption. The irritable editor has no incentive to mention the exemption. What will those conversations look like? Are we taking due care for the user's medical privacy? Is a meta-discussion about the user's needs likely to make the world a better place?

Let's say that the LLM user doesn't have dyslexia. In fact, let's say that the user is a UPE scammer. They use an LLM because it's cheaper than the alternatives. Irritable editors will (correctly) treat them as a rule breaker. But, unlike our innocent first editor, they know all the rules, so they claim to have dyslexia. What's the community member supposed to do now?

I don't think there is an easy solution here. If we ban LLMs, we'll trip innocent newbies and exclude people with disabilities (which may be a WP:UCOC violation). If we don't, then we'll lose the human connection that IMO build Wikipedia. If we ban LLMs with reasonable exceptions, bad actors will behave (even more) badly. This is more or less a good, fast, and cheap problem: We cannot have perfection, so which problem do we choose? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:19, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

@GreenLipstickLesbian, I am thinking about the problem of unblocking again. We seem to be asking for a certain amount of emotional engagement. That's not easy for everyone, and it's not necessarily relevant, even in a pre-LLM world. None of us want blocking admins to be like a parent who yells at their kids until the kid cries, and then thinks that they've done a good job because crying means comprehension and agreement. I still think that we should move away from that model. But we do need some reason to think that the editor might not instantly re-offend. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:01, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

What to do next?

Hi @WhatamIdoing, any intent to submit the next LLM guideline proposal? Athanelar's proposal will likely be rejected, and your sandbox version gathered a lot of support, so it may be worth a try, especially if you can improve it further. Alenoach (talk) 05:22, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

@Alenoach, I think it's too soon to be thinking about that. If I were going to redirect the community's attention towards something important right now, it would be towards the Wikipedia:Archive.today guidance problems.

If you're interested in pursuing this, here are two things I suggest considering:

• Is the right answer is to make this an official {{guideline}}, or could an essay be good enough?
• How would this interact with WP:AITALK guideline? (For example, it could replace it.)

WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:51, 2 March 2026 (UTC)