Hello, welcome to Tildes! I'm assuming you're associated with the website here (given that your account name is LostInBerlin posting about the website lostinberlin.com), can you share a bit more...
Exemplary
Hello, welcome to Tildes!
I'm assuming you're associated with the website here (given that your account name is LostInBerlin posting about the website lostinberlin.com), can you share a bit more about your involvement with the article and/or the site?
I feel a bit paranoid in our LLM-saturated world about the origin of this work, given that the site appears to be barely a month old, there are no author attributions (or names at all except for one person in the Impressum (Writers should be credited for their work!)), and all the article images appear to have the "madebyanAI" style to them, but I would be happy to be wrong if you could lend some insight into the project.
Even if this isn't AI (and it smells like AI writing to me too), it's very scattered and poorly written. As someone who has personal experience in the subject matter, as I moved from Berlin just a...
Even if this isn't AI (and it smells like AI writing to me too), it's very scattered and poorly written. As someone who has personal experience in the subject matter, as I moved from Berlin just a month ago after over a year of unsuccessfully hunting for a tech job as a qualified applicant, I also disagree on some of the contents, but I'm hesitant to put in that effort if it is just an AI-generated article, since I don't really want to spend my time discussing this topic with AI as opposed to another human user of Tildes (who, if they cared enough to write about this topic themselves, would presumably have similar experiences to me and could be an interesting perspective on how Berlin's market has changed over the past several years).
Also, even if this is a human-written article, it's kinda lame to have your first post on Tildes be a link to your own blog. Self-promotion is allowed on Tildes but not if it's the only way you participate (from the code of conduct, emphasis mine):
If you have your own site/project/channel/etc. that you'd like to share on Tildes, that's generally fine (in moderation), but it shouldn't be the primary reason that you post on the site. Tildes is a community, not a free advertising platform. Sharing your own content is welcome as long as you're involved in the community, but don't just treat Tildes as a source of an audience.
Thanks for your feedback. The articles are not written by AI. None of them are. If the tone feels a bit flat, that is because we try to avoid personal opinions as much as possible, even if that is...
Thanks for your feedback.
The articles are not written by AI. None of them are. If the tone feels a bit flat, that is because we try to avoid personal opinions as much as possible, even if that is not always perfect.
Yes, the site is new and we are building content for expats and non German speakers.
Most images are AI generated. This is intentional. We prefer to focus on the content and keep a simple and consistent visual style.
Everything is checked before publishing. We do not publish random personal rants or unverified content. The project is non commercial and there is no formal editorial team. Posts are signed as Team because everyone involved is a volunteer, even though internally we track who wrote what.
I really appreciate the feedback. It helps a lot to understand how the site is perceived.
And I was not trying to spam or promote anything. I was genuinely looking for this kind of input.
This will sound harsh, but if you're looking to build up a blog for a niche audience like English speakers in Berlin, then you need to do better reporting. The posted article doesn't offer any...
This will sound harsh, but if you're looking to build up a blog for a niche audience like English speakers in Berlin, then you need to do better reporting.
The posted article doesn't offer any insights at all. It just claims that London was supposed to stop mattering due to Brexit and Berlin could've stepped in, but didn't. The proposed cause of this is that Berlin start-ups don't care about marketing, making money, or working hard. There's no personal anecdotes, no interviews, no nothing. It's words on a page putting down a vague feeling, surrounded by AI generated images and offers to advertise on the site. For your core audience, it won't offer anything new. If this vague feeling matches reality, then people in Berlin working in the start-up space will already know this. For everyone else, reading this without personal experience, it doesn't offer anything personal to latch onto.
I don't want to accuse your text of being AI generated, because I like to believe that there's a person I'm addressing this criticism to. Even then, the post is indistuingishable from the million SEO blogs spewing out content that doesn't matter as much as the ads being shown around it.
I think there's a few discussion around the benefits of AI, and even a couple users here who believe that it has upsides, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone here that finds those upsides in generating articles.
I commend your desire to do something new and try how it goes. Tildes can be a harsh audience, so if you want to succeed here, you need to start with good text. AI images are going to detract from the text that is supposed to stand out.
I don’t want to be harsh or get into the content really, but I guess I’ll try to provide good faith constructive feedback: the writing is sort of not that good, not in like a “there’s no argument...
I don’t want to be harsh or get into the content really, but I guess I’ll try to provide good faith constructive feedback: the writing is sort of not that good, not in like a “there’s no argument or support” way, but in like a “that’s not a sentence way.”
Rents still reasonable by any European standard, a genuinely international crowd, a creative energy you could feel without quite being able to name it. Founders started arriving.
The first sentence isn’t a sentence, unless this is meant to be stream of consciousness. Maybe. The second sentence is the end of the first sentence (but probably not really because I think a semi-colon would be kk).
With rents still reasonable by any European standards, a genuinely international crowd, and a creative energy you could feel without quite being able to name it, founders started arriving (in Berlin); capital (followed).
I appreciate the effort you know, so I’m really just trying to offer constructive feedback.
Edit: There are plenty of ways to edit that paragraph to make it flow and be “correct.” This was just a hasty edit to demonstrate what I meant.
I'm an English-speaking migrant to Berlin, and this site looks like it has some overlap in content with the popular site AllAboutBerlin, though it also has articles in the curiosities section that...
I'm an English-speaking migrant to Berlin, and this site looks like it has some overlap in content with the popular site AllAboutBerlin, though it also has articles in the curiosities section that relate more to general interest than migration specifically.
I think AllAboutBerlin is an example of a particularly well put together website that combines thoroughly researched articles, glossary tooltips (often used for specific German documents), and sometimes graphics to help lay out things visually. It is also transparent about it's use of affiliate links, and has clear and well thought out content and advertising policies.
Nicholas Bouliane, who is the sole operator of AllAboutBerlin, has a great in-depth article on his website where he talks about his motivation for building the site, and how he goes about deciding what subject needs demystifying, how to research it, how to write about it, and how it can be presented so it's accessible to the user.
Given some of the criticisms here about LostInBerlin, I think it could be a great resource for these volunteer writers to understand a good approach for building content for a website, especially given the subject overlap.
I know AllAboutBerlin well; it is a perfect compendium of manuals. My project is meant to be something different: something that speaks about Berlin, the city, the lifestyle; not just how-tos or...
I know AllAboutBerlin well; it is a perfect compendium of manuals.
My project is meant to be something different: something that speaks about Berlin, the city, the lifestyle; not just how-tos or what steps are needed to do this.
Some practical guides have to be included, because they have to be! But it is not the core I am interested in publishing.
A bit like right now, as I am planning the "NightLife" category: it is Berlin, so I will have to include some mention of clubbing and techno music, but I will prefer to point in a different direction.
Rather than stating what list of steps are necessary for a purpose, I would like to talk about Berlin in such a way that a reader can understand the why, because they have understood the city, not just the how or the what.
Hi OP! Of course, as I said above, your site does have sections that are as you say - more information about culture, lifestyle, and things which are unique to the experience of living in Berlin....
Hi OP!
Of course, as I said above, your site does have sections that are as you say - more information about culture, lifestyle, and things which are unique to the experience of living in Berlin.
These are things that are not discussed by AllAboutBerlin for the most part.
That being said, the largest section of your site currently - 'Essentials' - contains much the same how-to's as AllAboutBerlin, as do the 'Job' and 'Housing' sections. This is why the comparison occurred to me.
The point I was trying to get across is more about the methodology you might consider for creating content going forward, and I think the linked article is a nice overview of one potential approach to writing for a site a little like your own.
I honestly don't want to go in a 'how-to' direction; there are plenty of websites out there, and AAB is one of the most practical. Smart people can simply navigate berlin.de and find all the...
I honestly don't want to go in a 'how-to' direction; there are plenty of websites out there, and AAB is one of the most practical. Smart people can simply navigate berlin.de and find all the information they want. Most of their articles are also available in English, and for those that aren't translated, they can just use a browser's integrated translation tool or an AI.
Moreover, even in articles like The Berlin Room Hunt, the focus is not on where to find room listings or which documents you need, but rather on the approach to WG culture.
My long-term vision is to become a magazine about Berlin, not a guide. I just thought that having a basic foundation of 15 to 20 posts about bureaucracy would be the easiest way to start.
However I am really grateful for every single word you all wrote here.
So I'm just skimming, and I agree with the others and will add that the language feels a bit too corporate. That's part of why I'm skimming it. The writing feels a bit stilted and not really...
So I'm just skimming, and I agree with the others and will add that the language feels a bit too corporate. That's part of why I'm skimming it. The writing feels a bit stilted and not really natural, so it doesn't manage to grab and hold my attention. It doesn't feel like it's targeting ordinary people, but people within an industry, if that makes sense.
It also doesn't really do a good job at getting across whatever point you had. It describes issues with the "Berlin startup hub" but... Well, it doesn't really go into what the hub is? That phrase is repeated enough to make it sound like some sort of organization or collective, but I'm assuming it's not some formal union of startup companies, but instead referring to multiple unconnected startups based in Berlin, and the general surrounding culture. I'm left not really understanding the real purpose of the article.
On a technical level, I think the structure of having a separate header for each paragraph ties into the stilted feeling, since that basically forces each paragraph to stand on its own to some degree rather than connect them together. I see this sort of structure primarily on listicles, or deep inside corporate sites on pages like "About Us" or their mission statement. While it can work for some subjects that can be broken into multiple, specific and informative points (namely the recycling system article), for others like this one or "Hidden Solitude in Berlin" that aren't meant to be lists, that forced structure really halts the flow and breaks the cohesion.
That's especially true for articles in the "Curiosities" category. Like, "The Ghost Stations in Berlin" sounds fascinating, but it gives barely any real information on them. Take the paragraph titled "Security measures at the ghost stations in Berlin" for instance. It describes riding a train that passes through a ghost station in a way that sounds like a personal anecdote, setting up a mental visual, but it doesn't refer to any specific station or even a specific memory. It gives zero information about the titular "security measures" beyond the sentence "These Berlin ghost stations were heavily secured to prevent escape attempts through the tunnels, which were seen as potential routes to the West." It's frustrating because the topic sounds intriguing, but I'd have to go to other sources to find actual information and details.
Seriously... please consider ditching the "every paragraph is a section" structure. You can still divide articles into sections, but the current setup really limits how you can convey your points and information. You're left with paragraphs that don't address the topic adequately due to condensing it to fit a single paragraph, and other paragraphs that are full of "fluff" to stretch it out because otherwise they would be a single sentence. Both add to the feeling that this is written by AI, or otherwise trying to fit some corporate-mandated template, and just overall makes it not that engaging.
Altogether, my main critique is that this article (and pretty much everything else I skimmed) doesn't flow that well on a technical level. Not wanting to inject your opinions into your writing is a good goal, but the current tone just doesn't feel like a human addressing a human, hence why people thought it was AI. You can write informative and neutral pieces while still sounding natural.
I think a key question to keep in mind as you write: if you'd found this article while searching for its subject, would you consider it a satisfying source of information? Or would you dismiss it and look at other articles?
One final point: you may want to ditch AI images as soon as possible. A lot of people are turned off by AI images in general for varying reasons, ranging from moral objections to it often being associated with slop and content farms. You say you use it to have consistent visuals and keep a focus on the content, but right now the content is a bit lacking, so the AI images just add to the feeling that there's no or minimal human involvement.
At bare minimum, you can definitely use actual photos for some of the articles. Seriously, I'd LOVE to see photos of actual Berlin ghost stations or the Stasi Secret Tunnel. I genuinely don't get why you used illustrations instead of photos for those since they're about specific physical locations.
@CannibalisticApple Oh, I really appreciate this analysis, and I personally agree with it. I prefer longer texts myself; I don't suffer from a short attention span, and I don't need short...
@CannibalisticApple
Oh, I really appreciate this analysis, and I personally agree with it. I prefer longer texts myself; I don't suffer from a short attention span, and I don't need short paragraphs or snappy sentences.
I don't know if selling your soul to the devil is the right thing to do, but it’s definitely necessary. I like to think that over time we’ll be able to provide different levels of quality for different audiences. However, to actually reach that target audience, I absolutely need visibility, which means clashing with the harsh reality of the status quo (SEO and indexing). Attention spans are already low, and the "wall of text" effect causes a massive bounce rate. So the stylistic choice, at least for now, is to deliver the message in a format that’s easily digestible for the masses. This is the only way to build that authority (fictional, really) that search engines love to reward so much.
This isn't my first rodeo: writing is my job, and it’s honestly disconcerting having to adapt to an audience whose attention span lasts anywhere from 3 to 5 seconds.
But going back to your feedback, which was spot on, so thanks again, you're right. The question I always ask myself when reading something I wrote, or that someone else on the team wrote, is: "Am I satisfied with what I just read?" I try to see if I actually answered a question, satisfied a curiosity, cleared up a doubt, and so on. Often the answer is no, but I realize that to truly do that, I’d probably need to write an essay for every single topic, not just an article.
On the other hand, I also ask myself: "Did I provide actual information?" And there, the answer is yes. I’m really glad to hear that you, for instance, felt compelled to go look up photos of the ghost stations, or the secret Stasi tunnel discovered 30 years after the fall of the wall. These light little articles might not satisfy every possible curiosity, but they did give you information, and that was exactly the goal I set for myself.
I'm truly grateful for your analysis, and for taking the time to hop around the site.
I get that we’re coming from different backgrounds, which obviously means we look at things through different lenses. But honestly, just because a text is grammatically correct doesn't mean it’s...
I get that we’re coming from different backgrounds, which obviously means we look at things through different lenses. But honestly, just because a text is grammatically correct doesn't mean it’s AI-generated. There are still people out there who know how to put a proper sentence together.
That said, I genuinely appreciate the feedback. The comment on the first paragraph actually made a lot of sense, so I went ahead and tweaked it a bit since it needed some polishing.
But since a few of you mentioned LLMs, I’m curious: how do you actually tell if a piece of writing is human or AI-generated just by reading it?
I actually ran a quick test with one of those online AI detectors, and the result was pretty funny: a text I wrote myself came back as 90% AI, while a paragraph written by Gemini was flagged as 87% human.
I’m really curious to know what makes you "make the call."
I don’t think it’s LLM, because it has subordinate clauses as (primary?) clauses, etc. LLMs write better, basically. To me it feels like an ESL / Englisch als Fremdsprache author trying to write...
I don’t think it’s LLM, because it has subordinate clauses as (primary?) clauses, etc. LLMs write better, basically. To me it feels like an ESL / Englisch als Fremdsprache author trying to write in corporate / „thought leader“ speak.
Given the consistent lack of definite articles in certain places, I’d guess Turkish but that’s a wild, unsubstantiated guess.
Humans are notoriously bad at detecting AI writing (as are those online AI detectors). I've come down in other threads on the side that I care more about the writing's quality than whether AI was...
Humans are notoriously bad at detecting AI writing (as are those online AI detectors). I've come down in other threads on the side that I care more about the writing's quality than whether AI was used to generate it, but the thing that gave me the impression that this article was possibly AI-generated was mostly the structure (gen AI tools like ChatGPT love this "short paragraph-long sections each covering a different facet of the topic with very little connective tissue" structure) and the generally bland corporate-y vibe to the language without a ton of practical examples or solid evidence. It gave the impression of AI writing mostly because of the style, not because the text was "grammatically correct" (in fact, it often wasn't). But as I said in my first comment, my bigger problems with the article were the weak writing regardless of whether AI was involved, as well as disagreeing with a lot of the content. The idea that it was AI-generated just discouraged me from leaving longer more in-depth critical comments here.
The origin of a piece doesn't really matter if it feels sloppy in the particular way that LLMs have now made ubiquitous. It's still bad, even if written by a human. Here's an example from your...
The origin of a piece doesn't really matter if it feels sloppy in the particular way that LLMs have now made ubiquitous. It's still bad, even if written by a human. Here's an example from your reply to this thread:
Most images are AI generated. This is intentional. We prefer to focus on the content and keep a simple and consistent visual style.
"This is intentional". Well I sure hope it is, otherwise I'd be concerned. But if you say something very obvious is intentional, we get the impression that you got caught red-handed and are now trying to save face by pretending it was intended to be obvious, when in fact it wasn't. This type of squirming is an extremely common, and frustrating, response from an LLM. The rest of the paragraph is equally hand-wavy. If you actually wanted a "simple and consistent" visual style, you would stay as far away from AI as possible. They are notoriously bad at both aspects.
If you'd like to sound human, just say you didn't have the budget to hire an artist.
(I know this is harsh, but if you're serious about what you're doing, you won't mind.)
Thanks for your feedback, Lia It is not a matter of budget, it is a matter of logic: a minimalist illustration has a cost that can be completely eliminated, especially if the intent is to...
Thanks for your feedback, Lia
It is not a matter of budget, it is a matter of logic: a minimalist illustration has a cost that can be completely eliminated, especially if the intent is to prioritize content over images.
I do not want the audience to come for the images, I want them to come for the content.
Anyway, I find these comments highly interesting, it is very productive to see things through outside eyes: everything seems clear to me because naturally I have the big picture; I know where I am starting from and I know where I want to go. Outside eyes help me understand if I am moving in the right direction or not, after all, the audience is the goal.
Hello, welcome to Tildes!
I'm assuming you're associated with the website here (given that your account name is
LostInBerlinposting about the websitelostinberlin.com), can you share a bit more about your involvement with the article and/or the site?I feel a bit paranoid in our LLM-saturated world about the origin of this work, given that the site appears to be barely a month old, there are no author attributions (or names at all except for one person in the Impressum (Writers should be credited for their work!)), and all the article images appear to have the "made by an AI" style to them, but I would be happy to be wrong if you could lend some insight into the project.
Even if this isn't AI (and it smells like AI writing to me too), it's very scattered and poorly written. As someone who has personal experience in the subject matter, as I moved from Berlin just a month ago after over a year of unsuccessfully hunting for a tech job as a qualified applicant, I also disagree on some of the contents, but I'm hesitant to put in that effort if it is just an AI-generated article, since I don't really want to spend my time discussing this topic with AI as opposed to another human user of Tildes (who, if they cared enough to write about this topic themselves, would presumably have similar experiences to me and could be an interesting perspective on how Berlin's market has changed over the past several years).
Also, even if this is a human-written article, it's kinda lame to have your first post on Tildes be a link to your own blog. Self-promotion is allowed on Tildes but not if it's the only way you participate (from the code of conduct, emphasis mine):
Thanks for your feedback.
The articles are not written by AI. None of them are. If the tone feels a bit flat, that is because we try to avoid personal opinions as much as possible, even if that is not always perfect.
Yes, the site is new and we are building content for expats and non German speakers.
Most images are AI generated. This is intentional. We prefer to focus on the content and keep a simple and consistent visual style.
Everything is checked before publishing. We do not publish random personal rants or unverified content. The project is non commercial and there is no formal editorial team. Posts are signed as Team because everyone involved is a volunteer, even though internally we track who wrote what.
I really appreciate the feedback. It helps a lot to understand how the site is perceived.
And I was not trying to spam or promote anything. I was genuinely looking for this kind of input.
This will sound harsh, but if you're looking to build up a blog for a niche audience like English speakers in Berlin, then you need to do better reporting.
The posted article doesn't offer any insights at all. It just claims that London was supposed to stop mattering due to Brexit and Berlin could've stepped in, but didn't. The proposed cause of this is that Berlin start-ups don't care about marketing, making money, or working hard. There's no personal anecdotes, no interviews, no nothing. It's words on a page putting down a vague feeling, surrounded by AI generated images and offers to advertise on the site. For your core audience, it won't offer anything new. If this vague feeling matches reality, then people in Berlin working in the start-up space will already know this. For everyone else, reading this without personal experience, it doesn't offer anything personal to latch onto.
I don't want to accuse your text of being AI generated, because I like to believe that there's a person I'm addressing this criticism to. Even then, the post is indistuingishable from the million SEO blogs spewing out content that doesn't matter as much as the ads being shown around it.
I think there's a few discussion around the benefits of AI, and even a couple users here who believe that it has upsides, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone here that finds those upsides in generating articles.
I commend your desire to do something new and try how it goes. Tildes can be a harsh audience, so if you want to succeed here, you need to start with good text. AI images are going to detract from the text that is supposed to stand out.
Good luck.
I don’t want to be harsh or get into the content really, but I guess I’ll try to provide good faith constructive feedback: the writing is sort of not that good, not in like a “there’s no argument or support” way, but in like a “that’s not a sentence way.”
The first sentence isn’t a sentence, unless this is meant to be stream of consciousness. Maybe. The second sentence is the end of the first sentence (but probably not really because I think a semi-colon would be kk).
I appreciate the effort you know, so I’m really just trying to offer constructive feedback.
Edit: There are plenty of ways to edit that paragraph to make it flow and be “correct.” This was just a hasty edit to demonstrate what I meant.
I agree with all of this as well. The sentences didn't flow very well.
if this is the case then I may return later when I have some free time and leave my more detailed thoughts on the article, then
CC @Hvv
It looks like there's some human involvement in this LLM written article.
I'm an English-speaking migrant to Berlin, and this site looks like it has some overlap in content with the popular site AllAboutBerlin, though it also has articles in the curiosities section that relate more to general interest than migration specifically.
I think AllAboutBerlin is an example of a particularly well put together website that combines thoroughly researched articles, glossary tooltips (often used for specific German documents), and sometimes graphics to help lay out things visually. It is also transparent about it's use of affiliate links, and has clear and well thought out content and advertising policies.
Nicholas Bouliane, who is the sole operator of AllAboutBerlin, has a great in-depth article on his website where he talks about his motivation for building the site, and how he goes about deciding what subject needs demystifying, how to research it, how to write about it, and how it can be presented so it's accessible to the user.
Given some of the criticisms here about LostInBerlin, I think it could be a great resource for these volunteer writers to understand a good approach for building content for a website, especially given the subject overlap.
I know AllAboutBerlin well; it is a perfect compendium of manuals.
My project is meant to be something different: something that speaks about Berlin, the city, the lifestyle; not just how-tos or what steps are needed to do this.
Some practical guides have to be included, because they have to be! But it is not the core I am interested in publishing.
A bit like right now, as I am planning the "NightLife" category: it is Berlin, so I will have to include some mention of clubbing and techno music, but I will prefer to point in a different direction.
Rather than stating what list of steps are necessary for a purpose, I would like to talk about Berlin in such a way that a reader can understand the why, because they have understood the city, not just the how or the what.
Hi OP!
Of course, as I said above, your site does have sections that are as you say - more information about culture, lifestyle, and things which are unique to the experience of living in Berlin.
These are things that are not discussed by AllAboutBerlin for the most part.
That being said, the largest section of your site currently - 'Essentials' - contains much the same how-to's as AllAboutBerlin, as do the 'Job' and 'Housing' sections. This is why the comparison occurred to me.
The point I was trying to get across is more about the methodology you might consider for creating content going forward, and I think the linked article is a nice overview of one potential approach to writing for a site a little like your own.
I honestly don't want to go in a 'how-to' direction; there are plenty of websites out there, and AAB is one of the most practical. Smart people can simply navigate berlin.de and find all the information they want. Most of their articles are also available in English, and for those that aren't translated, they can just use a browser's integrated translation tool or an AI.
Moreover, even in articles like The Berlin Room Hunt, the focus is not on where to find room listings or which documents you need, but rather on the approach to WG culture.
My long-term vision is to become a magazine about Berlin, not a guide. I just thought that having a basic foundation of 15 to 20 posts about bureaucracy would be the easiest way to start.
However I am really grateful for every single word you all wrote here.
So I'm just skimming, and I agree with the others and will add that the language feels a bit too corporate. That's part of why I'm skimming it. The writing feels a bit stilted and not really natural, so it doesn't manage to grab and hold my attention. It doesn't feel like it's targeting ordinary people, but people within an industry, if that makes sense.
It also doesn't really do a good job at getting across whatever point you had. It describes issues with the "Berlin startup hub" but... Well, it doesn't really go into what the hub is? That phrase is repeated enough to make it sound like some sort of organization or collective, but I'm assuming it's not some formal union of startup companies, but instead referring to multiple unconnected startups based in Berlin, and the general surrounding culture. I'm left not really understanding the real purpose of the article.
On a technical level, I think the structure of having a separate header for each paragraph ties into the stilted feeling, since that basically forces each paragraph to stand on its own to some degree rather than connect them together. I see this sort of structure primarily on listicles, or deep inside corporate sites on pages like "About Us" or their mission statement. While it can work for some subjects that can be broken into multiple, specific and informative points (namely the recycling system article), for others like this one or "Hidden Solitude in Berlin" that aren't meant to be lists, that forced structure really halts the flow and breaks the cohesion.
That's especially true for articles in the "Curiosities" category. Like, "The Ghost Stations in Berlin" sounds fascinating, but it gives barely any real information on them. Take the paragraph titled "Security measures at the ghost stations in Berlin" for instance. It describes riding a train that passes through a ghost station in a way that sounds like a personal anecdote, setting up a mental visual, but it doesn't refer to any specific station or even a specific memory. It gives zero information about the titular "security measures" beyond the sentence "These Berlin ghost stations were heavily secured to prevent escape attempts through the tunnels, which were seen as potential routes to the West." It's frustrating because the topic sounds intriguing, but I'd have to go to other sources to find actual information and details.
Seriously... please consider ditching the "every paragraph is a section" structure. You can still divide articles into sections, but the current setup really limits how you can convey your points and information. You're left with paragraphs that don't address the topic adequately due to condensing it to fit a single paragraph, and other paragraphs that are full of "fluff" to stretch it out because otherwise they would be a single sentence. Both add to the feeling that this is written by AI, or otherwise trying to fit some corporate-mandated template, and just overall makes it not that engaging.
Altogether, my main critique is that this article (and pretty much everything else I skimmed) doesn't flow that well on a technical level. Not wanting to inject your opinions into your writing is a good goal, but the current tone just doesn't feel like a human addressing a human, hence why people thought it was AI. You can write informative and neutral pieces while still sounding natural.
I think a key question to keep in mind as you write: if you'd found this article while searching for its subject, would you consider it a satisfying source of information? Or would you dismiss it and look at other articles?
One final point: you may want to ditch AI images as soon as possible. A lot of people are turned off by AI images in general for varying reasons, ranging from moral objections to it often being associated with slop and content farms. You say you use it to have consistent visuals and keep a focus on the content, but right now the content is a bit lacking, so the AI images just add to the feeling that there's no or minimal human involvement.
At bare minimum, you can definitely use actual photos for some of the articles. Seriously, I'd LOVE to see photos of actual Berlin ghost stations or the Stasi Secret Tunnel. I genuinely don't get why you used illustrations instead of photos for those since they're about specific physical locations.
@CannibalisticApple
Oh, I really appreciate this analysis, and I personally agree with it. I prefer longer texts myself; I don't suffer from a short attention span, and I don't need short paragraphs or snappy sentences.
I don't know if selling your soul to the devil is the right thing to do, but it’s definitely necessary. I like to think that over time we’ll be able to provide different levels of quality for different audiences. However, to actually reach that target audience, I absolutely need visibility, which means clashing with the harsh reality of the status quo (SEO and indexing). Attention spans are already low, and the "wall of text" effect causes a massive bounce rate. So the stylistic choice, at least for now, is to deliver the message in a format that’s easily digestible for the masses. This is the only way to build that authority (fictional, really) that search engines love to reward so much.
This isn't my first rodeo: writing is my job, and it’s honestly disconcerting having to adapt to an audience whose attention span lasts anywhere from 3 to 5 seconds.
But going back to your feedback, which was spot on, so thanks again, you're right. The question I always ask myself when reading something I wrote, or that someone else on the team wrote, is: "Am I satisfied with what I just read?" I try to see if I actually answered a question, satisfied a curiosity, cleared up a doubt, and so on. Often the answer is no, but I realize that to truly do that, I’d probably need to write an essay for every single topic, not just an article.
On the other hand, I also ask myself: "Did I provide actual information?" And there, the answer is yes. I’m really glad to hear that you, for instance, felt compelled to go look up photos of the ghost stations, or the secret Stasi tunnel discovered 30 years after the fall of the wall. These light little articles might not satisfy every possible curiosity, but they did give you information, and that was exactly the goal I set for myself.
I'm truly grateful for your analysis, and for taking the time to hop around the site.
I get that we’re coming from different backgrounds, which obviously means we look at things through different lenses. But honestly, just because a text is grammatically correct doesn't mean it’s AI-generated. There are still people out there who know how to put a proper sentence together.
That said, I genuinely appreciate the feedback. The comment on the first paragraph actually made a lot of sense, so I went ahead and tweaked it a bit since it needed some polishing.
But since a few of you mentioned LLMs, I’m curious: how do you actually tell if a piece of writing is human or AI-generated just by reading it?
I actually ran a quick test with one of those online AI detectors, and the result was pretty funny: a text I wrote myself came back as 90% AI, while a paragraph written by Gemini was flagged as 87% human.
I’m really curious to know what makes you "make the call."
I don’t think it’s LLM, because it has subordinate clauses as (primary?) clauses, etc. LLMs write better, basically. To me it feels like an ESL / Englisch als Fremdsprache author trying to write in corporate / „thought leader“ speak.
Given the consistent lack of definite articles in certain places, I’d guess Turkish but that’s a wild, unsubstantiated guess.
Humans are notoriously bad at detecting AI writing (as are those online AI detectors). I've come down in other threads on the side that I care more about the writing's quality than whether AI was used to generate it, but the thing that gave me the impression that this article was possibly AI-generated was mostly the structure (gen AI tools like ChatGPT love this "short paragraph-long sections each covering a different facet of the topic with very little connective tissue" structure) and the generally bland corporate-y vibe to the language without a ton of practical examples or solid evidence. It gave the impression of AI writing mostly because of the style, not because the text was "grammatically correct" (in fact, it often wasn't). But as I said in my first comment, my bigger problems with the article were the weak writing regardless of whether AI was involved, as well as disagreeing with a lot of the content. The idea that it was AI-generated just discouraged me from leaving longer more in-depth critical comments here.
The origin of a piece doesn't really matter if it feels sloppy in the particular way that LLMs have now made ubiquitous. It's still bad, even if written by a human. Here's an example from your reply to this thread:
"This is intentional". Well I sure hope it is, otherwise I'd be concerned. But if you say something very obvious is intentional, we get the impression that you got caught red-handed and are now trying to save face by pretending it was intended to be obvious, when in fact it wasn't. This type of squirming is an extremely common, and frustrating, response from an LLM. The rest of the paragraph is equally hand-wavy. If you actually wanted a "simple and consistent" visual style, you would stay as far away from AI as possible. They are notoriously bad at both aspects.
If you'd like to sound human, just say you didn't have the budget to hire an artist.
(I know this is harsh, but if you're serious about what you're doing, you won't mind.)
Thanks for your feedback, Lia
It is not a matter of budget, it is a matter of logic: a minimalist illustration has a cost that can be completely eliminated, especially if the intent is to prioritize content over images.
I do not want the audience to come for the images, I want them to come for the content.
Anyway, I find these comments highly interesting, it is very productive to see things through outside eyes: everything seems clear to me because naturally I have the big picture; I know where I am starting from and I know where I want to go. Outside eyes help me understand if I am moving in the right direction or not, after all, the audience is the goal.