Is The Forum Software Turning AI Loose On Posts?
I have started to notice changes happening to some of my posts. I have seen words changed, like "kind" to "child". I have seen some words become capitalized where in English they wouldn't be. When I go back to the editing view (if the post hasn't been published) the text will be as written but in the Preview mode and when published these changes show up.
I had a chunk of one comment go missing. Maybe it was an operator error but it's hard realistically to see how.
"kind" <-> "child" sounds like a German translation kind of thing. Whatever, something has messed with some recent posts and it has the smell of AI.
Does anyone know about this?
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Haven't noticed it. Maybe your browser or a browser extension is trying to be "helpful"?
Not that I'm aware, nor that I installed on purpose. The latest instances were changing "cool!" to "cool cool" and changing "be able" to "beable". A single f"cool" without the exclamation point was left alone. I wonder if it isn't the Forum's Markdown converter since all the text reads correctly in the editor view.
Here is an example from today (on a different thread). Sasha replied to my post and asked a question
original comment -
@tomp Do you distinguish between syllogisms and arguments or is the separation an artefact of note creation?
I replied and Sasha'a posted comment got changed -
As it appears in my comment to this remark -
@Sascha said:
@tomp Do you distinctive between syllogisms and arguments or is separation the an artefact of note creation?
I count 4 changes to Sasha's text.
cool! That was a test. I don't see an AI interference.
Zettel GitHub. Zettel Wiki Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. PROBLEMS. Grooks, 1966. CC BY-SA 4.0.
I don't seem to get the same changes every time I type the same thing in a different comment. Only within the same comment during writing and editing it. But i haven't done much investigation.
I will try using my other browser but since the changes have happened between the edit and the rendered views, I'll be very surprised if I get a different result.
Nothing is running on the software side to produce this.
The quote thing could be a bug if it turns out that the quoted person edited their post removing 'the' from the sentence, but then the reply-quote tool picks up the original version with the typo 🤷♂️
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
How many tabs do you have open? If you have the same thread open in two different tabs, you have two edit fields with different versions of your edit. Maybe your browser mixes them up, when you send?
Test: Close all browser windows and tabs except one. Edit in this one tab only. Even better: close the browser completely, then open just one tab.
I only ever have the forum open in one tab. I may have found the problem, though. I usually use the Brave browser. It can translate pages. It also has an automatic page language detection ability but for some reason it doesn't always kick in. I had set it for automatic German -> English translation while I was looking at a lot of Luhmann's cards on the Luhmann archive site.
For mysterious reasons the browser was not automatically translating those pages. I ended up forgetting the setting. It should not have been activated for English pages but maybe somehow the translator translated some words to German and then back again. I can hardly imagine how that could happen but the results seem to show that it did.
I have turned off the translation setting. I am currently used the Vivaldi browser for this site and so far no problems.
Congrats, tomp! I should have guessed it when "kind" became "child" (which, in German, is "Kind"). But then, that was your initial guess, too, on August 17, so it seems.
How to zettel for stellar revelations? What a fantastic journey!
Yes, and having occasional words getting capitalized as well.
@tomp Not to send this post off in an entirely different direction, but I have been trying out the Brave browser as well. Haven't tried the Vivaldi browser. Any comments on how that works compared to Brave or to one of the more mainstream browsers?
They are both good. Brave is changing - mostly UI tweaks - faster than Vivaldi. Brave is based on Firefox, Vivaldi on Chrome. You can use NoScript and AdAware with Brave, Vivaldi has that kind of functionality built in. This means that Vivaldi doesn't require you to guess which sites' javascript to block, but it also doesn't give you any control over or insight into what's getting blocked and what isn't.
Brave claims to keep your information well-protected.
They are both good browsers. If you want good control over Javascript and ad blocking, or if you are averse to Chrome, I'd go with Brave. I prefer Brave over Firefox for UI and user info protection.
Otherwise, I prefer Vivaldi over Chrome because of script and ad blocking, better UI, and not being developed by Google (aside from the Chrome core engine). Both are available for most Linux distros too.
Brave and Vivaldi are both Chromium based I'm afraid.
Zen isn't
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
I> @ctietze said:
I'm sorry. I have been writing "Brave" all this time when I meant "Zen". Thank you. I did try Brave out for a while and must have had some kind of mind blip.
When I saw "Zen" I immediately searched for it, hoping to find and install a browser that would calm my computations. But Zen is only available on the Mac.
Correction: it is available for Windows.
Zettel GitHub. Zettel Wiki Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. PROBLEMS. Grooks, 1966. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Yeah, I thought Brave was based on Chrome. I like the browser, but wasn't keen about the Chrome connection.
I see that Zen is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux! Will try it out.
I run it on Linux Mint and EndeavourOS, as well as Windows 11. I don't have a Mac.
@tomp @ZettelDistraction I've been playing with Zen for an hour or so. I like the look and feel, but even more, I like that it is based on Firefox.
D'accord.