Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2023 November 8

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November 8

Excuse me

Some Wikis at Fandom are behaving strangely. It appears to be impossible for pages being loaded to get anything but a message saying "This page isn't responding" asking me to either wait or exit the page. I don't get such messages at Wikipedia. What's special about Wikipedia that makes me not get such messages at it?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:54, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Fandom wikis are not running on the same servers as Wikipedia, as they are a completely different company (although originally started by Jimmy Whales). Rmvandijk (talk) 07:40, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Probably Jimmy Wales. -- SGBailey (talk) 12:32, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Oops, I thought something was wrong when typing the name, so I changed it to the wrong one Rmvandijk (talk) 07:58, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

My experience with Fandom is that when the ads are broken, the entire web page hangs and doesn't load. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 11:56, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Scoring for Wikipedia type Articles Generated by LLM

Our research team is building a LLM-based system which can generate a full-length Wikipedia page for a given topic without the need for supplemental information (e.g., human written outlines, curated references, etc.). Besides automatic evaluation, we would like to have frequent wikipedia editors collaborate with scoring the articles and providing feedback. Our goal is only for educational research, and we are not intending to try to publish these LLM generated articles on Wikipedia. Our LLM will ideally generate Wikipedia style articles with citations, and different sub-points. We will be scoring the essay based on 1. Well Written, 2. Verifiable with no original research, 3. Broad in its coverage, and 4. Qualitative comments (The first three metrics for a Good Article + Qualitative comments). We would take a subset of our articles produced and score them by actual Wikipedia editors as a way to verify our scoring is within reason.

We will be providing monetary compensation for work provided. This was posted earlier, but now with next steps. We hope to begin the review process in a few weeks.

Link[1]https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfaivclenvs9pdnW7cFcsTyvYy-wSCR_Vr_oYzJx_2bm-ZAqA/viewform?usp=sf_link Terribilis11 (talk) 19:39, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

I'll take a look but I think the LLM approach is not yet ready for this, and I cringe at Wikipedia becoming even more bureaucratic than it already is, due to LLM confabulation (even from outside the project) making its way into articles. The missing parts are provenance of data, logical inference, causality, and some kind of world model that is more concrete than what is inherent in the LLM. I'm sure AI researchers have deeper thoughts about this than I do. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:6375 (talk) 22:56, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. We aren't intending for this product to be producing actual Wikipedia articles. Rather we believe Wikipedia's metrics are the most clear and are attempting to reach the same standard or at least see how it compares. Terribilis11 (talk) 01:25, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Cable TV in power outage

We get occasional power outages here and there are several TV addicts in the house who go berserk when that happens. It is Comcrap cable TV. We don't have an OTA TV receiver. I've always figured that even if we had backup power to run the TV set and cable box, something upstream of the cable box would also be knocked out without power. But I just saw an XFinity ad saying their new cable box had internal power for up to 4 hours. So does it seem likely that regular cable TV would keep working in the event that everything in the neighborhood except the in-residence stuff was powered off?

This isn't a question about receiving emergency info since we have a radio, and mobile internet and phones have so far worked during these power outages. The outages so far have been localized to within a few blocks, and haven't lasted more than a few hours. We're in a part of California that gets heat waves but no snowstorms or flooding. I'm not into TV myself and am always glad when it is shut off, so I haven't worried about this much in the past. Thanks. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:6375 (talk) 23:06, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Do you not get any broadcast terrestrial stations? It might not please your TV addicts only having a hundred or so stations, but at least they would have a moving image to stare at! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 23:38, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

At least in the US, to get broadcast terrestial TV these days, you need a special piece of hardware (RF receiver/converter) since it is no longer built into the TV set. We could get the receiver (it's not licenced or anything like that) but at the moment we don't have it. Most people don't bother with them if they have cable. The TV addicts here mostly want to watch cable news anyway. It rots the mind even more than sitcoms do, I guess. So I think it is cable or nothing. Thanks though. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:6375 (talk) 00:10, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Ah. Here in the UK all TVs I've seen (except Sky Glass) come with digital terrestrial "freeview". Apart from the BBC though, they are typically 5 minutes of adverts to 10 minutes of programmes. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 07:49, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

It depends on if the cable company still has power everywhere it needs it. We have our modem, cable box, and TV on some UPSs, and during the last hurricane here (September, I think), we lost power for 7 hours, but we still had TV until the UPS ran out. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:29, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

First, you can put your cable box and your television on a battery backup. Then, if you lose power, but the entire cable company infrastructure still has power to deliver a signal to you, you can process the signal and view it. Second, your claim that televisions do not have antenna connections is far fetched. Monitors do not have antenna connections. Televisions do. This is not a new claim though. I have had this exact conversation with many other people. They claim that their television has no place to plug in an antenna. Either they are using a monitor (not a television), or they have their cable box plugged into the antenna connection. That is the setup that the cable company prefers because it makes it annoying to unplug the cable box and plug in an antenna. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 12:22, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

My television has an antenna connection, but only an analogue receiver. There's no analogue signal available any more. There is over-the-air television available on the digital DVB-T standard, but I'd need a separate receiver for that. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:02, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Per Bubba73, definitely get yourself a decent UPS. Shantavira|^{feed me} 13:59, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Many cable companies offer voice over Internet phone (VoIP phone) for people who want to have the experience of a wired telephone without having to do business with one of the plain old telephone service companies. Also, those with cell phones may be unable to make actual cell phone calls from their homes in rural areas, and only be able to use them because of Wi-Fi calling. So in some areas the cable service is just as essential as telephone service. I don't know if the government regulates the VoIP phone infrastructure as strictly as it regulates plain old telephone service. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:01, 9 November 2023 (UTC)