Talk:Freemasonry

GA Reassessment

Freemasonry

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Delisted. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:21, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

There are uncited statements in the article. There is an "unreliable sources" orange banner at the top of "Islam and Freemasonry" section. Is this still valid? Z1720 (talk) 02:31, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

It’s tricky… The sources cited in that section are reliable as primary sources for verifying what Islamic critics of Freemasonry claim about the fraternity… they are not reliable as secondary sources for saying that these claims are in any way accurate. Blueboar (talk) 16:55, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

In the absence of secondary sources relaying what they say, they shouldn't be included at all, per WP:DUEWEIGHT. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 17:14, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Suspected AI edits

Hi -- I've added the AI generated template here in regard to Hypersite's additions (which make up much of the length mentioned in the discussions above). While they have been edited somewhat, a lot of the original content, and its original tells of AI use remain, and so there may be hallucinations in the text as well as tonal issues. Gnomingstuff (talk) 12:12, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

@Hypersite: Which portions of this article were generated by a large language model? Jarble (talk) 01:28, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

I've clocked about 35mb of plaintext worth of LLM text chats across a few models at this point. To me it's very obvious:

Bulleted lists that make no concrete claims, are so abstract as to be meaningless, and do not cite any sources are a giveaway for AI slop on the internet.

However, the public AI text models are now perfectly capable of providing "references," but they will not necessarily reference them accurately or even at all ("phantom citations"). I went through many of the sources, but it's honestly too much work for me to confirm that this was written by AI.

This article is now unreadable imo. I would ask a wiki lord to remove Hypersite's slop drop to repair it.

Why can't an actual member of the freemasons write this piece? There's still a lot of them out there. They are happy to talk about their thing. Blotto Oblongato (talk) 09:28, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

I believe Masons have and continue to contribute to this article and discussion. I'm a Mason and over the years have made a couple of small corrections. However, it seems that the article as a whole has been tainted by AI slop, which is a real shame. I agree with the criticisms given above; the article as it is now is in far worse shape than when it was entirely human-written, errors notwithstanding. Mpaniello (talk) 15:38, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

I removed a lot of it but there is still work to do. Anything added by Hypersite is suspect. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:06, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

I'd suggest a complete rollback to before he started editing the article. Jahaza (talk) 19:11, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

That would be a year and a half ago and contain the contributors of dozens of editors. Would be this edit (they had a few before but none substantial). I do not think we are allowed to revert this much. PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:32, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

God, maybe we should. Rooting out what they did and didn't add is such a pain. And the November 2024 version is honestly substantially better than whatever we have now. PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:43, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Hmmm… Don’t think we should just revert back to 2024… although that may be a good baseline, some of material that was added since then is worth keeping. I will look at the section and sources and try to draft a revision this next weekend. Blueboar (talk) 12:51, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

The problem is they touched basically every section of the article. Even what other people adding is building off of them. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:12, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Does anyone have any plan on dealing with this? Because outside of reverting or deleting most article sections, not sure what we can do. PARAKANYAA (talk) 18:57, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

@PARAKANYAA,

I mean, y'all can do what I'm doing with Freemasonry in Cuba and rewrite the damn thing from square one, but not if you want to sleep good.

I think there should be some sort of team that works in shifts through the night and day, located in different time zones, that goes in and tag-teams LLM articles to rewrite them. One person can take the reins, and when they get tired, they can tap out and hand it off to someone else.

This team should just work on one article at a time. That's my suggestion. (I don't know if that already exists). Guylaen (talk) 03:31, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure how to interpret your opening statement. Does that mean you're responsible for introducing AI content to this article, or are you simply pointing it out? Mpaniello (talk) 15:41, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

@Gnomingstuff added a template that says that the article includes AI material. They did not add that material themselves. Jahaza (talk) 19:11, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Section about India

There is a section about India that contains simply a photo of the Asansol lodge. Should this section be scrapped or fleshed out? New to wikipedia, but thought its vital that something is done cause its a bit weird right now where the section simply just has one element of relevance. CapeCreeper2241 (talk) 09:06, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

I have taken it out for now. The entire history section needs a rewrite. Rather than breaking it down by country or region, we should probably break it down by century (or historical “eras”).

I would start with the origins of the fraternity in the British isles (the transition between operative and speculative)… then discuss how it was exported into continental Europe… then its expansion world wide during the colonial era… and finally outlining its current state. I envision something much less detailed… more of a historical summary”. For the country by country details we can link to various Freemasonry in X articles. Blueboar (talk) 10:55, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

Trade organisations?

User:SarekOfVulcan, you have reverted my edit asking for an explanation of the use of the term "these trade organisations" with the cryptic edit summary of "It says immediately before this". I do not see any mention of trade organisations until the words I tagged. Would you like to explain yourself, please? ~2026-32920-02 (talk) 10:23, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Lodges of operative masons (ie stonemasons) are mentioned in the previous paragraph. These are the trade organizations you are asking about. Blueboar (talk) 11:24, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Lodges and trade organisations are two different things. A lodge is a meeting place for masonic members, a trade organisation is a body funded by businesses to promote their industry.

Stonemasons are mentioned in the lede but not here in the body - the lede is supposed to summarise the body, and not go off and do its own thing

The article's History section needs to explain what it means by "these trade organisations" - what trade organisations? ~2026-32920-02 (talk) 21:32, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Ah… I think I may understand your confusion… The lead mentions “stonemasons”, while the history section mentions “operative masons”. These are two terms for the same profession (ie operative masons = stonemasons). I suppose we could clarify that terminology.

Second, when we use the phrase “trade organization” we are referring to any organization that, well, organizes a trade. In the Middle Ages, most trades formed such organizations… but there was no single term for them. Some were called “Guilds”… others were called “Companies”… and in the case of stonemasons, they were called Lodges. These organization did more than just promote their respective trade… they gave it structure. In the case of the stone masons, their lodges determined who was entitled to practice the trade (and perhaps more importantly, who wasn’t entitled to do so). They set prices and wages. They trained apprentices. They raised funds for charity. They celebrated religious holidays. In short, the lodge regulated every aspect of their lives. The lodge was not a place, it was an organization. Blueboar (talk) 12:00, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your more detailed reply. This is all very interesting, but to a casual reader trying to fathom the beginnings of freemasonry this article is confusing. An editor with subject knowledge needs to amend it so that it makes sense without the reader having to know what the context means from reading mason history elsewhere. That was the purpose of placing my template where I did. It was a recognised Wikipedia template that was reverted by a Wikipedia Administrator with a flippant comment and who did not return to this Talk Page after being mentioned. The issue remains unaddressed.

I notice that the article has a banner warning regarding AI slop. If WP does not lift its game I fear that people will no longer refer to it, and simply do an AI-provided search for info on their devices. It is easy enough to do, and WP will become at best just another source and at worst irrelevant.

I shall no longer discuss this matter as it is going nowhere, thanks for your time. Regards, ~2026-32920-02 (talk) 22:00, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

Happy to explain. I appreciate your comments. The reality is that this article could benefit from a major re-write. Unfortunately, we are all volunteers here - and have real life families and jobs that compete for our time. I’m sure we will get to it, but it may take a while. Blueboar (talk) 22:30, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

Which is facilitated by editors placing templates in an article until a rewrite can occur, however not this article it seems. ~2026-32920-02 (talk) 08:48, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Depends on the template and the specific situation. In this case, the template was removed because the tagged text was explained by the previous paragraph. The trade organizations in question were the lodges of operative stonemasons. Perhaps we can (and should) do a better job at explaining this, but it is explained. Blueboar (talk) 12:20, 2 July 2026 (UTC)