On the element14 Community, we have always been proud of the knowledge-sharing and intelligence of our members. The ability to answer questions, share projects and express your creativity, ingenuity and knowledge is a strong part of what makes this Community valuable to each other and for it to be a resource that can be relied upon with a welcoming attitude and behaviour.
With the advent of tools such as ChatGPT from OpenAI, and the availability of LLM more people have powerful tools at their disposal that have the potential and opportunity to enhance the knowledge that they can share and distribute, unfortunately, this also means that such tools and utilities can provide a low hanging fruit for low-quality contributions, ones that do not come from experience, are not peer-reviewed and can result in either confusing or dangerous outcomes.
The element14 Community staff are seeing an increase in content posted to the Community that is not "genuine", as in, they have not been produced by the person posting the content to the site directly, and the content is not being cited or referenced as being from or created by a third party or from ChatGPT or an LLM, it is entirely possible to now link to ChatGPT conversations as a source.
We deem this as being deceptive, and potentially spam. We would expect viewers and members of the element14 Community to be able to trust the content that is posted to the site as 'de facto' if not simply someone's opinion. We share a similar stance to StackOverflow who have recently posted their 'gpt-policy' - though we accept that there may be cases where you need to discuss ChatGPT and LLMs, we definitely do not see it as acceptable to create Design Challenges entries, Project14 or RoadTests & Reviews entries or content as being created by an LLM or OpenAI's ChatGPT or similar. This also goes for any content submitted by members to competitions or similar, and the list posted here is not exhaustive.
Here is StackOverflow's GPT Policy that we will also be considering and following, with the element14 Community staff having the final decision on any actions:
"This Help Center article provides insight and rationale on our policy regarding the usage of GPT and ChatGPT on Stack Overflow. While this is the position of Stack Overflow staff, it’s meant to support the prior work done by moderators (namely, the temporary policy issued to ban contributions by ChatGPT).
Stack Overflow is a community built upon trust. The community trusts that users are submitting answers that reflect what they actually know to be accurate and that they and their peers have the knowledge and skill set to verify and validate those answers. The system relies on users to verify and validate contributions by other users with the tools we offer, including responsible use of upvotes and downvotes. Currently, contributions generated by GPT most often do not meet these standards and therefore are not contributing to a trustworthy environment. This trust is broken when users copy and paste information into answers without validating that the answer provided by GPT is correct, ensuring that the sources used in the answer are properly cited (a service GPT does not provide), and verifying that the answer provided by GPT clearly and concisely answers the question asked.
The objective nature of the content on Stack Overflow means that if any part of an answer is wrong, then the answer is objectively wrong. In order for Stack Overflow to maintain a strong standard as a reliable source for correct and verified information, such answers must be edited or replaced. However, because GPT is good enough to convince users of the site that the answer holds merit, signals the community typically use to determine the legitimacy of their peers’ contributions frequently fail to detect severe issues with GPT-generated answers. As a result, information that is objectively wrong makes its way onto the site. In its current state, GPT risks breaking readers’ trust that our site provides answers written by subject-matter experts.
Moderators are empowered (at their discretion) to issue immediate suspensions of up to 30 days to users who are copying and pasting GPT content onto the site, with or without prior notice or warning."
It is difficult and near impossible to determine whether or not the content has been created using an LLM in combination with a tool such as ChatGPT, so while members can report content as 'abusive' or as 'spam' to moderation, the content will still be reviewed on a case by case basis by element14 Community staff.
If you have any questions or comments about this post in particular then you can directly message cstanton .
