Question about AI-assisted gardening reference posts

Hi, I’m considering posting a small series of practical gardening reference posts here and wanted to check that the format is acceptable first.

The material would be researched and drafted primarily with AI, then source-checked against sources such as EPA, RHS, and university-extension guidance and reviewed before posting. I would clearly disclose the AI assistance and would not present the material as personal gardening experience or expertise.

The thread itself would contain the useful information, with one main post and probably two substantive follow-up updates. There would initially be no affiliate links, paid offer, or promotional funnel.

Would that format be acceptable under Permies’ current AI and publishing rules? If so, is there a preferred disclosure format or forum for this kind of practical reference content?

AI is still inaccurate when it comes to gardening, so it might help to do some independent fact checking. It also has the problem that it's basically the new google, anyone can ask ai and the type of people who participate in forums come here for the real human expierence.  

This is doubly so with gardening as each individual garden has a different set of factors from climate, weather, soil, gardening style, time available.... ai likes to talk in universal truths or indistinct possibility.   It's not yet at a place where it can provide information equal or better than personal expierence.

AI content is best if it's less than 20% of the post. More than that can get caught in the spam filer.  Better quality would be to use ai as a spring board then share your personal expierence.

I wonder if it would work to post asking how the generally accepted advice could be improved by applying permaculture principles to it? Using it as a springboard for something better seems much more appropriate than just posting generic stuff and then hoping to sneak affiliate links in, which feels icky to me. What on earth are you hoping to promote if you have no personal experience? And of course whatever you post would have to meet organic standards as a bare minimum.

Are you hoping to actually start your own garden? Can you share pictures? I'm sure there are plenty of people here who can help you make that move from the standard AI researched advice to something that actually works.

Is "home" your real last name?

Learning and knowledge is a hobby of mine.

I really dislike AI as it takes away from that.

I want to do my own research and experiments as a learning tool.

Request:  I would find it helpful if permies had an AI policy to reference for questions like these, could that maybe be in the works?

G Freden wrote:Request:  I would find it helpful if permies had an AI policy to reference for questions like these, could that maybe be in the works?

There are very very good reasons why we don't say.

Partly
https://permies.com/t/260395/clear-vague

Partly 36 dozen other reasons.

We have only one rule on permies that everyone agrees to upon sign up,  and even that is squishy and subjective.   All the rest are guidelines and even more squishy and vague.  Because it works.

G Freden wrote:Request:  I would find it helpful if permies had an AI policy to reference for questions like these, could that maybe be in the works?

At the present moment, no reliable LLM detector exists.

Js Home wrote: I would clearly disclose the AI assistance and would not present the material as personal gardening experience or expertise.

The thread itself would contain the useful information, with one main post and probably two substantive follow-up updates. There would initially be no affiliate links, paid offer, or promotional funnel.

I can't say for certain as I have only been around here for a year or two but my perception, from time spent here, would be that these forums may be the worst possible candidate for this type of material.

I think most folks, including myself, come here for personal permaculture experience/advise from others and to also share our own experiences in success and failure.

Using AI to help you get an outline together to share you experiences could be a helpful use of the technology but the parts I highlighted in your post do not seem to indicate that is the purpose.

Please clarify if I am incorrect on what I read.

People come to forums because they value personal expierence over anything google or ai or books or...can give us.

Everyone knows how to google or ai a question, so we are getting to a place where there's not any point doing it for them (unless they specifically ask).  People are tired of it.  It feels a bit rude like saying "you are too stupid to ai, so i did it for you" witout adding personal experiences or observations.   Like the Let Me Google That For You thing people used to do. It was cool in 1998, but got real old by 1999.

Ai heavy posts are usually ignored on forums and other human to human platforms.   Probably more so here than other places as the ecological and social baggage makes ai less attractive.

That said, each person will have a unique relationship with ai.  Some people find it a useful tool and posts that use ai as a jumping off point and then have a lot of human, real world, stuff do pretty well.  From my personal observations, 20% ai is about the max before one starts to sound like an ai/google mummy.