Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Books

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Large swath of AI content

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Hi -- crossposting this here from the AI Cleanup project as it is most likely to reach subject matter experts here.

Over the last year or so, Bookleo made a lot of major revisions to book articles that are all but certainly AI-generated, given that one of their edits left in the chatbot response.

Compared to other en masse AI edits, this case is probaby high priority because literary authors.... uhhhhh, do not tend to like AI, and so the shitstorm potential if this escapes containment is greater than normal. Gnomingstuff (talk) 21:06, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Will take a deeper look later, but I randomly spot checked one addition (Special:diff/1245775804), and already found a fabricated citation:

Wirth-Cauchon, J. (2012). The Known World and the Literary Historiography of Slavery. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 53(2), 135-151.

Critique 53(2), 135-151 is an entirely different article (The End of the Road vs. End of the Road: The Perils of Adaptation), and an exact search of "The Known World and the Literary Historiography of Slavery" shows no results other than arwiki. ARandomName123 (talk)Ping me! 21:24, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yikes. This needs to be looked at. PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:30, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@ARandomName123, @PARAKANYAA, I'm just noticing this now, did either of you end up cleaning up this mess? -- asilvering (talk) 02:41, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Asilvering No I did not. I am afraid I do not have much experience in that kind of cleanup. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:45, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Asilvering: No, got distracted by another AI cleanup, but @NicheSports has cleaned up quite a lot of it (thanks!). There's some more discussion about what was done over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject AI Cleanup. ARandomName123 (talk)Ping me! 20:22, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Asilvering @ARandomName123 I've handled all of their edits back through Special:Diff/1279470867 and a handful before that. By my count there are about 30 articles left to handle, almost all of which are about books, plus another ~15 articles to which they only added infoboxes. The further back you go the harder it is to revert. I had to rewrite David Bitel due to extensive subsequent edits by other users. The past few weeks I've been focusing on patrolling the 1325 edit filter; I need to come back to this. NicheSports (talk) 22:00, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@NicheSports: Did up to Erasure (novel) (also did The Hemingses of Monticello which had hallucinated references). I believe one of their oldest large AI-written changes is Special:diff/1243667323. The ones prior to that seem to be mainly copyedits. Some seem a bit problematic, but not on the scale of the later edits. ARandomName123 (talk)Ping me! 03:20, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Books with missing cover

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Adding this again, because a LOT of progress has been made. @PARAKANYAA and others were involved here last time. With a lot of effort the category now has only 1896 listings of books with missing book cover images right now!!! This is the lowest it has probably been in YEARS. I'd love to see it get below 1,000 though because then that is a super manageable level which can be dealt with easily over time. That has always been my goal, just get it to be a reasonable and manageable level, not zero, but manageable. I think a few hundred to 1,000 is that level.

If anyone can help pitch in, especially on the books dated 1700 CE or OLDER, that would be greatly appreciated. Those are the hardest ones for me. Category:Books with missing cover Iljhgtn (talk) 20:06, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Down to 1856 now. Anyway able to help with this? Iljhgtn (talk) 05:19, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nearing 1800 I hope we can continue to push and soon be below 1800 in the list. There are some ancient tomes that I have issues with if anyone has any special interest in those old ones. Iljhgtn (talk) 14:37, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    One thought I had for the really old ones is, if you switch the manuscripts to use "infobox manuscript" instead of "infobox book", that will remove them from the "books with missing cover" maint category. It would also make it easier for the infobox to present the kind of information that's relevant to the manuscript instead of weird anachronistic "book" ones (ie manuscripts don't have publishers). ~ L 🌸 (talk) 20:05, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If you want to help with that I would be grateful. Iljhgtn (talk) 23:38, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    So found On Passions for example. What is the easiest or most straightforward way to convert the book infobox to manuscript infobox and just retain all of the content as is? I use the visual editor. Iljhgtn (talk) 01:35, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Works based on Nineteen Eighty-Four has been nominated for discussion

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Category:Works based on Nineteen Eighty-Four has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether it complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Pingnova (talk) 00:39, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fair Use covers

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I saw that in the article The Vendor of Sweets, the book cover used is a copyrighted one, and is used under 'fair use'.

Is there any workaround to this? If I have the book, can I upload its picture under CC-BY-SA?

I'm slightly confused about this. Kingsacrificer (talk) 19:17, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Even if you own the book, the copyright to the cover image still belongs to the original artist, according to whatever the copyright term is from where it was first made. It looks like it's from 1967, so there could be some edge cases here. If it was first published in the US in without an explicit copyright notice, it's public domain now and you can upload the image -- you can check the inner flap of the book and the copyright page to look for a notice. If there is a copyright notice, it won't become public domain until 2062 (meaning we can only use a "fair use" low-resolution image until then). This chart has the details for figuring out other US books' status. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 19:59, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are there any special restrictions on where to get the 'fair use' pictures from? Because they aren't always seen on the publisher's website. Kingsacrificer (talk) 20:06, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not that I'm aware of. I believe any source for the image is OK, though it's important to upload fair use files to the English Wikipedia directly, not the Wikimedia Commons. The Wikipedia:File upload wizard will steer you in the right direction. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 21:46, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I have been using it and have added cover images for 3 books. Will continue to work on the backlog. Kingsacrificer (talk) 08:45, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]