Framed that way, I certainly agree… though I the guideline proposal by @jeremyruston didn’t strike me as inflexible. Still, if it strikes you that way — and I do value all the energy and initiative you bring to the community, @TW_Tones — I wonder whether there are ways to help nudge us all toward being on the same page here.
First, let’s see whether we all agree that there’s a world of difference between these:
- Cases where @TW_Tones, or anyone else, structures a post around taking LLM output (clearly flagged as such) seriously — to which some people respond by scrolling past the GPT output to look for any original commentary, or by giving up on the thread, slightly put off by the impression of being asked to listen to a blabbering automaton.
- Cases in which someone posts, “Try this:” or “Here, I made this:” and then pastes LLM output, unmarked.
Most of my comments so far have been about type 2, which seems less difficult to fix, since demanding attribution cannot be misconstrued as shutting down content. Now we’re turning to type 1.
It seems that the “waste of my time” reaction to explicitly excerpted LLM output (when it is clearly marked as such) happens when such output is swimming along in the very same content-stream as posts in which people are muddling through things in their own words/attempts at code (with or without excerpted code, attributed to other human authors, as needed — or conceivably an LLM-generated snippet when it’s just serving as the focus of a technical question).
So: What about having a category for threads that attempt to mine LLM for TiddlyWiki-related value? Even there, certain norms make sense (such as making it clear what content is pasted from LLM and what’s not). But it would be an “enter-at-your-own-risk” area for those who are rubbed the wrong way by having LLM-output taken seriously as substantive content.
We currently have a post category “cafe” that encourages people to post social or silly stuff that would otherwise irritate folks for being off-topic. We see “cafe” and know if we open this thread, we may find free-association, bad puns, personality quirks, music we might like or hate, etc. I imagine a new category that is not “Discussion” (all human voices here) and not “Cafe” category (humans but without any seriousness filter), but something like an “LLM in the room” category.
If there’s such a neighborhood here for such threads, then @Scott_Sauyet and @jeremyruston — and I myself, at least in most moods — can steer clear without seeming to shut down LLM-engaged posts “inflexibly”. Folks who find it worthwhile to read such stuff may have adventures that they find entirely agreeable, but without the risk of the rest of us feeling that we’re at a dinner party being re-introduced to that one narcissistic cousin who must be tuned out to retain our sanity. And who knows, perhaps someone who hangs out in the “LLM-welcome room” will learn amazing stuff that they can then share, with the rest of us, in their own words?
