This is an archive of past discussions with User:Jimbo Wales. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Latest comment: 9 years ago39 comments15 people in discussion
Suppose an editor's behavior creates a strong suspicion of paid editing but the editor denies it. What is the appropriate action? How can the Terms of Use be brought into play? None of our help or policy pages really explains this in a useful way, as far as I can tell. (I have two specific situations in mind.) Looie496 (talk) 11:33, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
No, but that's not really the point. The Terms of Use don't really mean anything if they don't add anything to our existing policies. My question is what additional tools they give us. Looie496 (talk) 12:38, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
They don't really add anything on-wiki, where paid advocacy has long been forbidden by numerous policies. They make it easier for the office to tell agencies to knock it off and follow through on such requests. WilyD15:40, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
@Looie496: The office, by which I assume you mean the WMF, is unlikely to do much of anything concerning any individual paid editing situation or suspect. It has to be enormous, and I believe that the most the WMF has ever done is yell. I could be mistaken, as I haven't paid that close attention, but I don't believe the WMF has actually taken legal action against violators of its paid editing TOU. That is one of the weakest and most half-hearted areas of endeavor on Wikipedia. In any given situation, it is probably the last thing to look for and the hardest thing to prove. If an editor is POV-pushing, that is usually enough. That doesn't mean that prohibiting paid editing is futile or insane or contrary to the Four Freedoms or whatever the paid editing apologists are saying, but that the TOU is really most useful as a device to justify action by the WMF, if it ever chooses to do so in serious situations. Coretheapple (talk) 21:16, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
I think the appropriate response is for Looie to spend the rest of his days on Wikipedia stalking the edits of the suspected paid editor. Keep badgering them about why they made a particular edit X, or whether they believe edit Y is truly neutral. It becomes Looie's permanent volunteer job to make the suspected paid editor's activity on Wikipedia completely miserable. Meanwhile, the German Wikipedia welcomes corporate-affiliated editors to directly interact openly on their Wikipedia articles, while Jimbo has his Bright Line Rule for the English Wikipedia while he jets from place to place taking 5-figure payments for little 45-minute keynote speeches. This has been the operating plan since about October 2006. I'm surprised it's taken Looie nine years to catch on to it. - 2600:1002:B01B:2A03:F9C3:ED8C:2CA7:B96D (talk) 12:34, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
I don't want to spend the rest of my days stalking the edits of the suspected paid editor. I want to offload that job on somebody who has better tools. Looie496 (talk) 12:38, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
Staking an another editor and badgering them about something is WP:HARASSMENT, regardless of why it is done. Trying to get someone to reveal details of their real life that they do not want to is WP:OUTING. If you have no evidence that this editor is breaking the terms of use, and they have denied doing so, why are you pursuing it? If their contributions to the encyclopaedia are neutral, based on reliable sources and do not add undue weight to an article, then what benefit would taking any action have? Thryduulf (talk) 13:38, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
Glad to have you say that - but when you were emailed actual evidence of harassment in the past - you did precisely nada. When you saw harassment by an "anonymous IP" you did precisely nada. When you actually do something, I shall suffer a cardiac arrest. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:06, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
If discussion on the user's talk page doesn't reach a resolution, you can raise the matter at WP:COIN, but be mindful that outing is still not allowed. Rhoark (talk) 13:43, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
Out of interest, if you could email me the details privately, I'd enjoy looking into the situation as a learning experience. Mr 2600 is obviously being unhelpful in this discussion, and while I disagree with most of the other answers, they at least express a defensible perspective.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:15, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
@Looie496: do keep us updated. Given the "community's" witless attitude toward this issue (mainly because the "community" in discussions like this, though not this particular discussion, tends to be dominated by paid editors and their tools) I'm not holding my breath. Coretheapple (talk) 15:41, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
There is nothing "witless" about this — the community has spoken that they value anonymity over identification and accountability and WMF has spoken that they prefer wide open horizons for IP editing and account creation over some sort of substantive registration process. It's patently obvious to all but a small handful that if A and B are true, C is impossible — C being effective identification and permanent removal of paid COI editors. At that point the question is whether such editing is to be regulated and supervised through a rational set of policies or driven underground where regulation and supervision is impossible. That's where we sit. Carrite (talk) 18:52, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
we sit having proven my point with the usual red herrings, black-and-white scenario-fallacies, nonexistent "community speaking" and other blah blah. Coretheapple (talk) 19:10, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
All right, tough guy, you start the first RFA, requiring registration to edit and limiting individuals to one account each. We can work on making that stringent via WMF once En-WP voices its approval. Go for it, I'll back your effort in word and deed. Either that or admit that you're just chattering like an angry squirrel and that my read of political reality on this matter is accurate. Carrite (talk) 15:27, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
Oh there's no question that the political reality is that your point of the view, the "let's propose something that will be immediately and overwhelmingly shot down and do nothing else" point of view, is dominant whenever the subject comes up, which again proves my point. Speaking of paid editing, I really have to pay you to continue to come on these talk pages and blah-blah to confirm my position on this, and the futility of depending on a community of Carrites to deal with a reputational issue that really doesn't affect most editors. Coretheapple (talk) 18:24, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
Hey, I'm happy to toss ya a life preserver as a freebie. Please do get out of the deep end of the pool, however, your flailing about is scaring the other patrons. Carrite (talk) 12:22, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
Free work is the least I've come to expect from anyone who devotes time and energy, without compensation, to helping other people make money by leeching off Wikipedia. Coretheapple (talk) 13:08, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
I just noticed the reference to Kazakhstan offered by the IP. This discussion follows so closely the usual "paid editing discussion script" its instructive. (Propose unworkable solutions and say that's the only way to address paid editing; sScream "Kazakhstan!") Same cast of characters: the paid editing fanatics, the paid editing apologists, Mr. 2600/2100. Jimbo expressing useless moral support.
I can't emphasize too much, and I want Carrite to pay attention to this as he always seems to ignore this, fanatical as my view is on paid editing, it has been my position for some time that paid editing is a reputational problem for Jimbo and a financial issue for Mr. 2001, and really only a source of recreational amusement to the rest of us unless we are anxious to volunteer to help commercial and private interests (Wikipedia's founder and paid editing mills). Let them slug it out. Please note this diff from my user page, indicating that this has been a long-held position on my part. Coretheapple (talk) 21:06, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
I think the answer to that question is "less than you'd like it to be." Similarly, I surmise that the answer to this question: "To what extent does paid editing hurt Wikipedia's reputation?" is "More than its founder wants it to be." As you see, this is ultimately an issue between you and your ilk and Jimbo, which is why I don't go berserk when I see your posts here, even though you were perma-blocked from Wikipedia. Jimbo apparently used to feel that paid editing was a big deal, but now he feels that Wikipedia can deal with it, push it off into a corner, off by Kazakhstan if you will. So while I find the practice dreadful, I see no point in getting upset by it. Likewise, I think that if you focus on your day job and less on this hobby, you would be a happier person. Just my two cents. Coretheapple (talk) 21:36, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
Venturing a guess, I would suppose that Mr 2001 pulls down an annual salary from the Very Large, Very Rich corporation for which he works that is in the low six figures and that he makes for paid editing on Wikipedia something in the middle four figures. And I suppose that he would still continue to take paid editing gigs if he were making virtually zero just because he's all-in as a matter of principle at this point and he's not gonna be bullied or bluffed away. That's the kind of guy he is (and I do like him a lot, actually). You also might be interested to learn, Mr. Core, that Mr. 2001 in real life really, really doesn't like the looks of his paid editing prospects if the hardline registration suggestions I make above were put into place. That's one thing the paid editors who use multiple socks can't deal with — tightly restricted registration. But, hey, you just keep trying to do an end run around the community and keep us posted how that is working out for ya... Carrite (talk) 12:30, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I am sure the gravy train would eagerly embrace any approach to the paid editing plague such as the ones you keep bringing up, since they have no chance of being enacted. Rest assured that I've given up a long time ago trying to influence the "community" to bail out what is essentially a Jimbo/WMF problem. I've waxed eloquent on that point in this very discussion, indeed in my comments directly above. However, I am pleased that you have ignored it (again, I owe you money for being my interlocutor) so that I can cheerfully repeat: the onus is upon those most directly involved to do the end-running that indeed is required so that a "community of Carrites" does not harm their franchise. But it is not the "Coreetheapple franchise." It is the "Jimbo franchise." You are free to ignore this again, so that I can repeat it. Coretheapple (talk) 14:16, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm not surprised to hear that Mr. 2601 only makes about $5,000/year on his paid editing, who would actually be satisfied with the work this guy does? OTOH, is sounds extremely strange that this person would spend the last eight years editing Wikipedia after he was banned to uphold the principal of "free hidden advertising in encyclopedias". It's just weird that somebody would have such a principal. Does anybody know what philosophical, ethical or religious traditions this comes from? It obviously has no basis in the US legal tradition of Freedom of Speech - commercial speech can be highly regulated in the US, and trying to apply an outside commercial venture's "freedom of speech" to what is a legally private forum is totally off-base. In short, does Mr. 2601 have any justification for trying to force his commercial advertisements down Wikipedia's throat? Smallbones(smalltalk)15:10, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
Your verb tense is wrong — I haven't asked Mr 2001 about his financials and am playing Mr 2601's guessing game since Mr Core would not. Smallbones, Mr 2001 keeping after it for 8 years because he tried to do the right thing, was treated miserably for his efforts, and has harbored a grudge ever since is no more difficult to understand than is the behavior of the anti-paid editing crew continuing to fight the good fight (or tilt at windmills) in the face of compelling evidence that their battle is inevitably a losing one. It's all about fighting out of principle. No need to be flippant about these things. Carrite (talk) 15:54, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
There is every reason to be flippant about these things, and I'll be happy to enumerate them for you. First, as I've indicated above, paid editing is fundamentally a reputational issue for the project as a whole and for Jimbo personally. Everyone else are essentially bystanders, involved purely out of curiosity and personal interest. Thus the very fact that we are having this conversation, while Jimbo, the only nonblocked edidtor with a personal interest, is only sporadically involved, is something of a hoot. Secondly, playing along with Mr. 2600's pretense that he is a different person than Mr. 2001 is certainly ridicule-worthy. Thirdly, there is something indeed quite amusing about a paid editor taking a "principled" stance on his "right" to exploit Wikipedia's business model for personal profit. Fourthly, it is doubly amusing to hear someone like you say that doing so is "the right thing." Right by whose standards of morality? P.T. Barnum's? Dracula's? Coretheapple (talk) 16:46, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
@Looie496: - please email me your suspicions and details. Details that are inappropriate to share on-wiki are usually fine to share with admins off-wiki and if my own research and assessment agrees with yours, I'll block them for you or enforce an existing ban depending on the circumstances. I also note with interest that I've personally violated WP:OUTING w/r/t paid editing at least a dozen times, including at ANI and in arb pages - and in a way that Cooley, LLP actually quoted in a cease and desist letter to those involved. Kevin Gorman (talk) 17:46, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
It took me awhile to get the gist of @Carrite:'s "Your verb tense is wrong." Do you mean that Mr. 2001 no longer does paid editing? Why doesn't he take the advertisement off his page then? And why would he continue to harass folks about it? You are describing a completely irrational person. He hides advertising in a non-profit encyclopedia. He deceives people about his identity while here and has an obsession about attacking Jimmy Wales on this page. But he doesn't do any paid editing? his harassment come totally from principle? I'll ask again, what principle? Have you ever run into anything like this "principle" in any field of human endeavor in history? Smallbones(smalltalk)17:45, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
You're assuming that I'm right about GK's financials and I haven't talked to him ("I'm not surprised to hear..." vs. "I would not be surprised to hear..."). Still, he's lurking and hey, GK, I'll lay $5 of those $10 you owe me that my orders of magnitude guessed above are correct. (See, a bet where you don't have any risk — how cool is that? Of course, if I lose I will blab, so you might want to consider whether you wanna cash that chip...) Don't make GK out to be a huge player in the paid editing debate, he's a small "pop and pop" fetid basement type of operation in a high-stakes game. Your real enemies are elsewhere. I respect the fact that GK has taken unfairness and went all-in with it for so long. He's made mistakes in the process, but he is basically a good dude and standing up to bullying is always commendable. Not to say he's not a troll from time to time, but I reckon that's his compensation for time spent. You need to focus your attention elsewhere, Smallbones. Carrite (talk) 00:35, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
I'll focus my attention wherever I want, thank you. He is not just "a troll from time to time" - every time I see him here he is trolling. He's been banned for 8 years, Doesn't he know when he is not welcome. He harasses me on my talkpage. He violates the terms-of-use. And Carrite says "well he only does a little paid editing".
User:Hell in a Bucket has removed the above and other material that he considers contentious. I've reinserted the above - I see no reason for anybody to consider it to be contentious. Smallbones(smalltalk)15:18, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
Smallbones, you wonder why that particular paid editor keeps visiting your Talk page (when you've asked him not to), and he says it's because you keep spreading lies about him elsewhere, especially on Jimbo's Talk page, where he does have a limited, traditional right-of-response. Well, here is one of those examples. You keep saying that the paid editing of MyWikiBiz constitutes "advertisement". His work is actually quite "encyclopedic", according to the standards, guidelines, and policies of Wikipedia, save only for the new "Terms of Use" rules that are regularly disobeyed by some of the Wikimedia Foundation's top donors, anyway. So, think about this -- if you stop lying about his content being "advertising" (which, if it were, it would get fairly promptly deleted, anyhow, so what would be the point), he will likely stop dropping by your Talk page to point out what a liar you are.
Carrite, the 2015 paid editing tab is actually in the high three-figures, and the income unrelated to paid editing is in the top 6% of US households for 2015. So, since you thought the paid editing was in the thousands, you are off by an order of magnitude (correct?), so now I only owe you $5, not $10. Go Green! Go White! - Mister 2001:558:1400:10:DDD:F877:1CF7:CE3D (talk) 14:01, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
Dang, anonymous MSU fan — nailed the income but overshot the estimate on paid advertising revenue by a factor of 5 or 6. You win money for nothing, which was pretty much what that Ducks covering at the last minute was. Tip of the hat to you. Carrite (talk) 20:56, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
As I understand it, we'll hear from from the ACLU next week, and a decision will be made soon as to next steps. This sort of thing is unfortunate, of course, but depending on the exact details (I am not a lawyer) a successful appeal is always a possibility. Given what we know from the Snowden documents, the Judge is wrong. Unfortunately, it may take 25 years (when things will be routinely declassified) to prove it definitively. WMF blog post has more details.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:09, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales I see you removed this without comment, but in all seriousness you now have a judge essentially stating that the arguments you have been the public face of aren't credible. Instead of continuing to push the same discredited commentary as you have above, why don't you push the WMF to look at other solutions. Here's a suggestion; if you and the WMF are so deftly afraid of the NSA bogeyman, why don't you simply move the WMF servers out of the US? Problem solved. 101.186.127.22 (talk) 04:31, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
This strikes me as a freedom of navigation exercise. No matter what the law says, the more powerful pushes out the weaker, until that is new law. So a judge might have ordered the Guantanamo force feeding videos to be released in 2014; but what happens is that the government releases the ones they want, on the schedule they say, and the lawyers who sued them and the judge that gave the order have to learn to become part of the apparatus keeping their contents hidden from the public. You didn't see them last year, won't see them this year ... maybe they'll be declassified when the full version of the Bay of Pigs report comes out, or when U.S. warships patrol through the Great wall of sand.
Meanwhile, if the courts didn't dare look into this, we should scarcely be surprised. Constitutions were written by people - how long did we really think the dead words of dead men would safeguard our defenses? As on the South China Sea, it is now a matter of tactics and, above all, numbers. If, say, Wikipedia Zero allows someone in a distant country to view a cached version of a page at his local phone company, how is the NSA going to find out? If conversations are actually carried out with effective encryption, and if we simply don't ask for or keep the most useful kinds of personal data in the first place, how much are they going to get anywhere? While moving the main server is one part of this tactics, a better question might be whether we can eliminate the need for central servers and administration entirely. Simply having a central server in a different country will not help if they are in a relationship with the NSA, and how many aren't? Wnt (talk) 14:12, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
Moving the servers outside of the U.S. would do nothing. The NSA's spying involves them tapping the Internet backbone that physically exists in the United States. It doesn't matter where the endpoints of the traffic are. And, the NSA is enormously helped in this by the fact that the majority of Internet traffic passes through the U.S. (Hey, remember, the Internet started as a U.S. Department of Defense research project.) --71.119.131.184 (talk) 20:05, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
However much it was too much. Regardless of one's opinion on NSA etc. it is not WMF's remit to be a pawn in the EFF++ game. We could perhaps develop robust technologies to encourage and assist editors and readers who wish to maintain their privacy. (And HTTPS everywhere is not it.) All the best: RichFarmbrough, 01:10, 27 October 2015 (UTC).
"Pawn" seems like an odd choice of wording, since it usually connotes an entity who is being unknowingly manipulated. Since the WMF had to explicitly sign on to the lawsuit, and has actively supported it in the public media, it seems to me that "ally" would be more accurate. One can certainly argue that the WMF should or should not be involving itself in such things, which is a separate issue. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 20:05, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
Nice of Gamaliel to offer a wholly independent editorial on Gamergate. It's not like he's involved in the article at all, is he? Jimbo why don't you write an editorial on how Jimbo Wales looks next? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.170.47.206 (talk) 23:37, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
COI topic ban appeal
Latest comment: 9 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
I have been topic banned from discussions relating to COI "broadly construed, as documented at ANI. Can I appeal that ban here? I have made some edits this week regarding some inadequately disclosed FCOI (Financial Conflict of Interest) issues that were not being addressed by anyone else. We've got users who keep directly substantively editing articles where they have a disclosed FCOI despite multiple warnings. I'd like to be able to address these problems, but I must stop doing so because of the topic ban. Our policy (WP:COI) is that "All editors are expected to follow United States law on undisclosed advertising, which is described by the Federal Trade Commission at Endorsement Guidelines and Dot Com Disclosures." but I am being prevented from making that better known. I appeal to Jimbo to lift the ban. Certainly there has been combative behavior regarding inadequately disclosed FCOI from those who support the ban (including me) and from those oppose the ban (including some users who oppose it because they have a FCOI). The reasons for the ban have been portrayed (inaccurately) as my refusing to get the point that, e.g. editing articles despite a FCOI is not banned. A lot of the finger pointing was done by those who are friendly to those who continue to flood wikipedia with promotional and uncritical content on behalf of interests with deep pockets. --Elvey(t•c)22:49, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
Jimbo has no special power to over-turn community consensus. After six months of abiding by the editing restriction you can appeal to the community. As it stands you haven't' even attempt to respect the community's consensus on your ban. Give up the stick and move on. You've had a chance, now it is time to move on.--Adam in MOTalk23:12, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
You can always email them to a willing user who is willing to look into them (I am, in limited circumstances, so feel free to email me if you have indisputable proof). Mdann52 (talk) 12:54, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
RfC: administrator election reform
Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The 2015 Medal of Honor winner "William Henry Johnson" is listed under "Henry Lincoln Johnson". His name was never "Henry Lincoln Johnson". Before the 2015 Medal of Honor investigation, he was conflated with another person by that name. The MoH committee found 1,300 pages of documents that all use the name "William Henry Johnson" or "Henry Johnson". The reasons given for keeping the erroneous name is the precedence that it has been this way for 10 years in Wikipedia and that it represents WP:COMMONNAME, even though it is not the most common name. You can see the GHits on the talk page. The name "Henry Lincoln Johnson" comes from a family that thought they were related to him and publicized that he deserved the MoH, but as the MoH committee discovered, they were not related. He deserves to be remembered by his own name, and not an erroneous name assigned to him out of ignorance. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:01, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
Hey, veracity is not something that is won and lost in a debate of half a dozen people on an on obscure talk page. I have behind me on a bookshelf Chad L. Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era. (University of North Carolina Press, 2010). We are talking about a very top level academic source. There are two names listed in the index, "Henry Johnson" (pp. 124-127, 216-217, 289) and Henry Lincoln Johnson (pp. 220, 387 fn. 122). The first of these is a nationally famous figure, the subject of the WP article. Two different people. Richard Norton is quite correct on this issue and the title of that article needs to be changed. This is not a belly bumping contest or a political war. Stand aside Only in death... Carrite (talk) 18:23, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
Also this. I am a huge supporter of COMMONNAME. Common name of this individual, clear from the text of the Williams book, was "Henry Johnson." That might need to be disambiguated somehow. Certainly the current title is incorrect. Carrite (talk) 18:25, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
Alphabet soup. We're in the middle of a BRD with lots of AGF and we'll see if IAR trumps a recent RfM, or something like that. A few new faces offering opinions would be welcomed, I think. Carrite (talk) 20:40, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
This has proven to be an absolutely fascinating case, in which even American National Biography has managed to conflate the two names of two individuals. There are no such thing as "reliable sources," there is only "correct" and "incorrect." There's probably actually an academic journal article here on how a Congressional Medal of Honor (2015) winner who was nationally famous in his day managed to be misnamed in so many places by so many people... It turns out that individual no. 2 is also Wiki-notable; a good biography for me to write as soon as the naming discussion ends. Carrite (talk) 14:08, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
Herman A. Johnson and his children lobbied for the MoH for Henry Johnson in the 1990s, and Herman and his children were responsible for the error. He thought that the MoH winner was the same person as his father, which was incorrect, even though his lobbying was successful in securing the honor for Henry. All the first person accounts published after WWI use the correct name. In the 1990s the Lincoln name is used in interviews with Herman and his family. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 14:35, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
Bans
Latest comment: 9 years ago43 comments20 people in discussion
To be clear this specific question is almost certainly related to Eric Corbett's ongoing arbcom topic bans related to civility and issues of the gendergap. Oiyarbepsy: to get a reasonable answer, providing context is a really good idea. Kevin Gorman (talk) 07:17, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
Ignoring the true point behind Oiyarbepsy's question, it would be nice if Jimbo would clarify this in a more general sense. Jimbo has largely relied on others to moderate his talk page for him, and he only makes this difficult for them by allowing a near free-for-all, with the moderators needing to interpret "near" for themselves. GorillaWarfare(talk)07:35, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
Oiyarbepsy removed all six of EC's posts, of which only two allegedly violated his arbcom restrictions. And of the two, even the blocking admin (a former arb) did not remove. Even when the specific arbcom remedy included allowance to remove. IHTS (talk) 08:12, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
Eric Corbett is deeply unwelcome here. I generally support the idea that if people have a problem, they should be able to approach me here without getting into trouble for "canvassing" and the like. But there are limits, and we are not required to have unlimited patience for people who are not prepared to behave in an appropriate manner. I acknowledge the difficulty that GorillaWarfare identifies and the main thing about it is that no one is going to get into trouble for removing trolling from my user page. As another example, anything from "Mr. 2001" should be deleted immediately - he's not here to build an encyclopedia, he's here to wage his nearly 10 year obsessive campaign against me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:17, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
Are you here to build an encyclopaedia then? What was the last article you expanded or improved for the benefit of the project? CassiantoTalk20:57, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
There are many ways to contribute constructively to the project. I am 100% sure that I'm doing my job responsibly and with good humor.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:37, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
That is understandable. Still, if anyone wants to remove them, I won't complain and will defend that action as being consistent with maintaining this page as a useful forum.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:34, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm a bit surprised to see my username here and I should thank Coretheapple for digging out the diff that made the result of that ArbCom decision inevitable. But I have no complaints about going through the ArbCom process. About the only thing that really surprised me was that nobody actually accused me of violating any of Wikipedia's rules. I don't think that should be allowed - the folks who request such cases should get a short-term ban for trying to drag people through the mud. As far as me trying to keep some modicum of order on this page, well it is just not my job and may not even be possible. But I do remove comments by trolls and banned editors, as well as from people explicitly disinvited by Jimmy, if I feel that they are trying to discourage others from participating here (via their trolling). I generally do not remove comments once they have been responded to, but that is not a hard and fast rule. I'll remove all the comments below that have been made by folks who have been explicitly disinvited above. Smallbones(smalltalk)15:50, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
Jimbo...it's understandable that Corbett is not welcome on your talk page, we all get that now I think. It would, however be wise to not let links to libel printed in a magazine which names him and is full of inaccuracies also stand posted here. It's unfortunate that some editors were interviewed for that piece while others were not, which makes it not only lousy investigative journalism, but bad science as well.--MONGO20:49, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
MONGO, this talk page has a high level of activity. Given people's real life schedules and Wales relying on informal moderators to manage the discussions, I'm not sure who is responsible for maintaining a pristine environment. As least since I've been editing, this talk page is a messy place where all sorts of crazy comments and personal appeals are posted. LizRead!Talk!21:23, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
Let me be clear that I do not hold Jimbo responsible for not monitoring his page 24/7...but if someone is going to post such things that libel an editor who uses their real name, well, maybe I'm guilty too for not hatting the thing.--MONGO01:58, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
Exactly, Liz. Which is why it should be deactivated. The thing is an embarrassment, despite Jimbo thinking it is (or may be?) a "useful forum". It is useful to no-one but cranks, misanthropes, publicity-seekers and acolytes. - Sitush (talk) 21:30, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
(removed comment by Sitush again - You've been told above (as well as last year) that you are not welcome here.) Please re-read Jimbo's comment above "Please go away then" That should be clear enough for anybody. Smallbones(smalltalk)17:20, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
Removed comment from Sitush again. This time it was reinserted by @Hell in a Bucket:. H, please read above where Jimmy says "if anyone wants to remove them, I won't complain and will defend that action as being consistent with maintaining this page as a useful forum.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:34, 27 October 2015 (UTC)" That should be easy enough for anybody to understand. If you don't like my removals, please take it yourself to ANI. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:51, 28 October 2015 (UTC) Note immediately below HIAB added it back again. Smallbones(smalltalk)19:38, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
(added back: let Jimbo do his own dirty work of censorship and deflection). No - that is your usual deflection from the point being made. As for your remark in this section that I am 100% sure that I'm doing my job responsibly and with good humor, well, the only thing I am 99% sure of is the utter arrogance of anyone who is 100% sure of anything they do. Complete certainty, with no allowance for doubt, is a fatal flaw. - Sitush (talk) 07:22, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
If Eric believes that The Atlantic has libeled him, that is Eric’s affair; the offices of The Atlantic and the US District Court for Washington DC are thataway ⇒. None of that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether Wikipedia may link to this revered publication. MarkBernstein (talk) 22:01, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
So if falsehoods about you are linked here then that would also be okay? How okay would they be if you were also defacto banned from commenting here about them?--MONGO02:08, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
I admit the double negative confused me but no, I don't think so. Recently, here and elsewhere Mark's spoken of The Atlantic's impeccable reputation yet not long ago he suggested journalists were no better than Culinary Assembly Engineers. I wondered what motivated his change of heart (and whether I should be swayed most by his previous opinion or recent opinion.) 83.170.111.152 (talk) 01:28, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
I see. So you're just trolling, since Mark said no such thing. Neither implying working at McD's was bad, nor that being a journalist was the same thing. Most especially, he stated nothing about the Atlantic in that piece you linked to. So please, stop trolling here and grow up. Dave Dial (talk) 01:40, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
If you're going to paraphrase my arguments, kindly get them right. In that talk, I'm pointing out that journalism is a job or a trade, not a profession. That happens to be true, though many forget it. In the fuller discussion published in Genre, I pointed out the class distinction between newspaper reporters, who were typically high school graduates, and magazine writers, many of whom had gone on to college. This, too, is nearly forgotten; there was a great gulf fixed between Damon Runyan and Dottie Parker. There were always exceptions, like New Yorker editor Harold Ross, or hat Hemingway boy. You could perhaps make an argument that Tarbell and the rest f the muckraker crew were establishing a profession when they tried to buy out Colliers, but that's not the route US journalism took. Now, please crawl back not your hole, or try t find a better gotcha at Gamergate HQ -- and next time, dear banned editor, have the guts Eric Corbett showed and edit under (one of) your accounts. MarkBernstein (talk) 02:29, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
That was my first reaction when the subject came up. But he is using his real name, which puts things in a different category, I thought. I don't see why he can't put his "side of the story" on his own user page. Coretheapple (talk) 22:37, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
He can't put “his side of the story” on Wikipedia because Wikipedia Is Not A Web Host. You know that! If he wants to publish a rebuttal to The Atlantic, he could submit it to The Atlantic. If they won’t take it Harper’s, The New Yorker, Wired, The New Republic, The Nation, and Esquire are all still in business. MarkBernstein (talk) 23:40, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
I understand that, and this involves an area in which I have scant acquaintance and no involvement. I just think that given all the circumstances, a bit of slack should be cut in his direction for BLP reasons. That's all. If he abuses it, then that's another story. Coretheapple (talk) 20:34, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
Howdy JW. Would you clarify as to who you don't want posting on your talkpage & who you've authorized to delete such unwanted posts? GoodDay (talk) 20:25, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
No editor is obliged to provide a "blacklist" of people he doesn't want on a user talk page. He's made his wishes clear about a couple of people. The question is whether volunteers should comply with those wishes if it means being dragged through arbcom. Coretheapple (talk) 17:49, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Enfranchising voters in arbcom elections
Latest comment: 9 years ago16 comments10 people in discussion
I'm dropping a pointer to this discussion here for a couple of reasons. As one: Jimbo is both the creator of arbcom, and still recognized in many arbcom policies (i.e. this) as having authority to involve himself directly with arbcom decisions. As another: Jimbo has repeatedly requested that his page not be subject to the general outlines of WP:CANVASSING, and most other highly watched places I could notify I would be instantly accused of canvassing if I notified.
I've started a discussion and strawpoll here about whether or not I can appropriately exercise my administrative abilities to send out a massmessage neutrally notifying recently active eligible voters in the upcoming arbcom elections that they are eligible to vote, along with a brief description of what arbcom does (taken from arbcom's own description,) and the type of decisions they can make. I started the discussion because it perturbs me that 2014's arbcom tranche saw only 60% of the voters of 2013's arbcom tranche, and a total of 600 voters or so despite the fact that many more are eligible.
I believe that many voters within the electorate that arbcom has set for itself are completely unaware that they are able to vote despite being many of them having a vested interest in the direction Arbcom goes, and novel perspectives to contribute both in voting and in questioning candidates. (e.g., the person who rapidly popped up in initial discussions about this - with over 50k edits - who was unaware they could vote.)
Discussion is welcome in either place, but for the sake of whatever admin ends up closing my AN thread, I would request that anyone with significant comments or who wants to voice an opinion in what is pretty much a strawpoll on whether or not a neutral massmessage to inform eligible voters they are eligible to vote would be an appropriate administrative action comment or !vote here rather than on this talk page. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:06, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
What exact mechanism are you thinking of using? I strongly support improving notification of elections, not just at the time of the election, but also in the run up to election so that interested parties have time to do their homework and research the candidates. I'm not sure that mass messaging is the best tool - a site notice to all logged in editors is surely easier and more appropriate?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:40, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
We already use a site notice to all logged in users, but discussions both on my talk page and in private have brought up that (a) a lot of people just ignore sitenotices out of habit or have turned them off, and (b) the site notice doesn't make it clear to at least an insignificant portion of those eligible to vote that they are in fact eligible to vote (among other things, a content contributor with more than 50,000 edits stated that the banners had not made them aware they were eligible to vote - yet surely someone with that many edits has a strong potential interest in the direction arbcom heads.) Massmessage is quite easy to use - my proposal at AN is to send out a massmessage to all voters who are eligible to vote by the already identified standards who have been active in the last three months (so that I don't accidentally wake up people who have been inactive for years.) I have exact verbiage there, but my thought is to send out a short, factual, neutrally worded paragraph immediately after candidate nominations have ended (as the Q&A phase begins) from a secondary account that is neutrally named (so that there's not an impression that I am personally pushing people to vote in one direction or another - since any admin can grant +massmessage and +confirmed to another account, a newly created alternate won't be an issue.)
The notices we have in place certainly get the attention of a lot of people, but 2014's voter turnout was 60% that of 2013's - no other editor metric fell like that. If a massmessage draws in any additional chunk of eligible voters who are interested in participating in the election process, I think it's worth it, given how poor recent voter turnout has been. This should be doable with the admin toolset I already have, without need for anything like WMF tech time. Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:02, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
There seems to be only upside potential here. It's effective, it's free, it addresses a problem of decreasing voter turnout, and it may improve participation in a democratic election process. Thank you, Kevin Gorman, for this most sensible proposal. — Cirt (talk) 03:37, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
Kevin - you need to establish why people aren't voting. I'd suspect people are sick to the back teeth of the staggering incompetence of the Arbitration Committee in recent years, the people who don't edit but who arbitrate (just what is AGK doing on ArbCom, other than hat collecting) or the people like GorillaWarfare who seem to be hell bent on dragging the community into disrepute. The last 2 or 3 years have left so much mess that it's only the egotistical who will now stand, so the candidate pool itself is desperately poor. The rationale and sensible people, assuming they've not seen sense and fucked off completely (the sensible option) wouldn't want to sit on ArbCom. So maybe it's the case that people don't want to choose the least worst candidates - maybe we need to start by getting some good candidates to stand this year, and that might attract voters. Nick (talk) 12:09, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
@Nick: - I was very tempted to suggest you take your "sensible option" :-o but your truly sensible option of encouraging editors to nominate themselves as candidates for ArbCom is absolutely wonderful. I wish I'd thought of the idea myself. Smallbones(smalltalk)14:59, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
@Smallbones: sarcasm is unbecoming. You know precisely what I mean, get out there, find people who would make good arbitrators and encourage them to stand. There needs to be a big pool of candidates and the community needs to be more engaged in the process. Nick (talk) 16:39, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
@Nick: Sorry, but if we eliminate humor than this page would be impossible to deal with. Yes, yes - let's get a big pool of candidates. "Let a thousand flowers bloom." Smallbones(smalltalk)16:50, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
A notification to editors that they are eligible to vote might also prompt long-term editors and admins to consider candidacy. There doesn't seem to be a downside here to additional publicity for ArbCom elections. LizRead!Talk!17:24, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
I tend to think Nick is substantially correct. I've voted in the last few elections, and often end up picking the "least worst" of a very thin field. If you want voters, give them candidates they feel good and confident voting for. That, in turn, should help raise the reputation of ARBCOM and attract better candidates. Intothatdarkness18:41, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
Knowing that this is a probably offbeat proposal, what if we made it the case that in effect, all individuals meeting basic qualifications set in advance were, in some way, eligible candidates in some form of primary election, and have a predetermined number of candidates, including the top votegetters who do not withdraw their candidacy, be the final candidates in the later final election? I grant that it would complicate and lengthen the process, but in at least the early stages "Draft (X)" movements tend to increase voter turnout in other elections. John Carter (talk) 21:11, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
I wholeheartedly agree that we also need to expand our candidate pool, and am working on ideas regarding how to encourage that as well. The lack in ideal candidates willing to stand for arbcom is a separate problem from the fact that we have editors with over fifty thousand edits literally unaware they could vote. Both problems need to be addressed, but the fact that one proposal doesn't address both problems isn't a reason to go against it. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:27, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
Absolutely - I just don't want people who realise they can vote turning up and thinking "Wow - even though I can vote, I don't actually want to vote for any of these people". Do we have metrics on how many people view the election pages and perhaps the candidates pages in particular v. how many votes are cast, or could we generate that sort of data this year ? I would be interested to know if we've got lots of people going off to look at the candidates, thinking they're all really rubbish and not voting or if a big percentage of those who review the candidates go on to vote. Nick (talk) 06:08, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
The problem isn't that the candidates are rubbish, but that the voting material is rubbish. A lot of one-off questions about very specific issues, no clear statements of principle, no matrix of which decisions from the previous year a candidate agrees with or wants to revisit, not even a matrix of which incumbent candidates supported or dissented from those decisions. It is very hard for people to decide which way to vote to get the most sensible decision-makers. Wnt (talk) 18:06, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
Less news about Wikipedia
Latest comment: 9 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
My view is that Wikipedia doesn't wish it's readers "Happy New Year" , "Merry Christmas" or other local and religious festivals as Google does according to the users Geographic Location. This won't be breach of privacy as only the reader can see the banner. Past one year, most headlines about Google was "Google Doodle" which celebrates the birth anniversary of Socialists, Artists, Writers, Scientists, Architects, Inventors, Philanthropists who are not in public memory. Wikipedia's main page featured article celebrates articles which considered written correctly, whether the subject has any popularity among readers is ignored. Due to this a The Human Centipede and The Bus Uncle will appear on main page, not Raiders of the Lost Ark, Florence Nightingale and Alexander Fleming.
Making assumptions about users' religions sounds like the express lane to trouble (imagine if there are any Christians left in Syria and somehow they managed to get a connection and see a banner here reminding them about Ramadan...). It's not really part of the educational mission. Featuring On This Day or other items during major holidays accomplishes the same thing with less potential for offense, and it is more educational to present these items to readers who aren't familiar with the religions. Wnt (talk) 11:08, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
Putting something on the mainpage will get it seen by large numbers of people who weren't necessarily looking for that specific information. How we choose what we show is important, and there are various competing ideas as to how we should choose. Raiders of the Lost Ark was a very popular film and a priority to those who think we should prioritise our efforts to things that the public are searching for. But to those who care more about core encyclopaedic topics it is a popular culture article barely worthy of inclusion. This could lead to endless arguments as to what goes on the mainpage, our current compromise of posting Featured articles and various other articles that meet certain standards is a compromise solution, but crucially a compromise where anyone can promote their favoured types of mainpage content, but by bringing articles up to mainpage quality not by arguing as to what should or should not be on the mainpage. This has the added advantage of being an incentive for many of our article writers as often they want their work to be read. ϢereSpielChequers11:35, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
I think things have gone badly wrong with the featuring of commercial products. Yes, I understand even important works of literature are commercial products. But when we have recent video game releases constantly appearing on the front page, when we have whole WikiProjects dedicated to specific companies to get their work featured, that's as crooked as it gets. Even if we ration the number of video game articles appearing, that's still as crooked as it gets, because whoever decides which has a chance to make a lot of money also. I have in the past advocated a strict approach - we could simply disqualify all companies and company products, by which I mean, branded products, copyrighted products, and patented products. We'd only feature works of literature in the public domain, for example, or companies gone defunct without successor. Maybe certain freeware, but that could get dicey fast. Problem is, I don't seem to get people agreeing. But could we at least agree not to feature commercial products with a large, active advertising budget behind them, in some flimsy effort to protect the site from the worst of it? Wnt (talk) 13:03, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
It won't all be crooked, there are fans of many commercial products especially Films, Music and TV programs. But I see the case for some sort of wait or quota. I think it would be an interesting RFC, but you need to assume Good Faith of the fans amongst the writers. ϢereSpielChequers19:15, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
VisualEditor News #5—2015
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
You can use the visual editor on smartphones and tablets.
Click the pencil icon to open the editor for a page. Inside that, use the gear menu in the upper right corner to "Switch to visual editing".
The editing button will remember which editing environment you used last time, and give you the same one next time. The desktop site will be switching to a system similar to this one in the coming months.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has fixed many bugs, added new features, and made some small design changes. They post weekly status reports on mediawiki.org. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for languages like Japanese and Arabic, making it easier to edit on mobile devices, and providing rich-media tools for formulæ, charts, galleries and uploading.
Recent improvements
Educational features: The first time you use the visual editor, it now draws your attention to the Link and ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽ tools. When you click on the tools, it explains why you should use them. (T108620) Alongside this, the welcome message for new users has been simplified to make editing more welcoming. (T112354) More in-software educational features are planned.
Links: It is now easier to understand when you are adding text to a link and when you are typing plain text next to it. (T74108, T91285) The editor now fully supports ISBN, PMID or RFC numbers. (T109498, T110347, T63558) These "magic links" use a custom link editing tool.
Uploads: Registered editors can now upload images and other media to Commons while editing. Click the new tab in the "Insert Images and media" tool. You will be guided through the process without having to leave your edit. At the end, the image will be inserted. This tool is limited to one file at a time, owned by the user, and licensed under Commons's standard license. For more complex situations, the tool links to more advanced upload tools. You can also drag the image into the editor. This will be available in the wikitext editor later.
Mobile: Previously, the visual editor was available on the mobile Wikipedia site only on tablets. Now, editors can use the visual editor on any size of device. (T85630) Edit conflicts were previously broken on the mobile website. Edit conflicts can now be resolved in both wikitext and visual editors. (T111894) Sometimes templates and similar items could not be deleted on the mobile website. Selecting them caused the on-screen keyboard to hide with some browsers. Now there is a new "Delete" button, so that these things can be removed if the keyboard hides. (T62110) You can also edit table cells in mobile now.
Rich editing tools: You can now add and edit sheetmusic in the visual editor. (T112925) There are separate tabs for advanced options, such as MIDI and Ogg audio files. (T114227 and T113354) When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. It is also possible to edit some types of graphs; adding new ones, and support for new types, will be coming.
On the English Wikipedia, the visual editor is now automatically available to anyone who creates an account. The preference switch was moved to the normal location, under Special:Preferences.
Future changes
You will soon be able to switch from the wikitext to the visual editor after you start editing. (T49779) Previously, you could only switch from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. Bi-directional switching will make possible a single edit tab. (T102398) This project will combine the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab, similar to the system already used on the mobile website. The "Edit" tab will open whichever editing environment you used last time.
Can you read and type in Korean or Japanese? Language engineer David Chan needs people who know which tools people use to type in some languages. If you speak Japanese or Korean, you can help him test support for these languages. Please see the instructions at mw:VisualEditor/IME Testing#What to test if you can help, and report it on Phabricator (Korean - Japanese) or on Wikipedia (Korean - Japanese).
The weekly task triage meetings are open to volunteers. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the main VisualEditor project with the bug.
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
[5]: In the midst of hyping up their "heavy investments" in fancy-dancy RankBrain AI, Google says: In experiments, the company found that turning off this feature “would be as damaging to users as forgetting to serve half the pages on Wikipedia,” Corrado said.
Fair point. I was actually apologising for calling Cassianto Corbett's slavering lickspittle, but I could have used euphemisms, pronouns and contractions when discussing the other word. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 23:51, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
Apologies rarely, if ever, work on Wikipedia, but the way that sentence reads, I wouldn't expect User:Cassianto to be particularly satisfied with how this one is going. :) Wnt (talk) 16:05, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Anthonyhcole, Wnt is right; your "apology", if at all genuine, lost any kind of credence as it was posted here and without any kind of acknowledgement to me. If you meant the apology, you'd have posted it to my talk page (or at least mentioned me in your post). Its wording was also ambiguous and skirted around the issue. In fact, I didn't have a clue what you were talking about. CassiantoTalk16:58, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Then why did you do it? Oh, of course, we know why; it was to try and keep the "Eric is evil" dramah alive. Unfortunatley for you, you've made yourself look like a complete idiot. CassiantoTalk13:31, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for explaining my motives, User:Cassianto. Just to elaborate on that, though: I recalled that Jimmy was hoping that this could be a page where we could come together and have sometimes difficult discussions on contentious topics in a respectful and constructive environment. Then I reflected on the way I treated you above, and realised I'm part of the problem, and felt a bit ashamed. Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:15, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Jimmy hoped for nothing of the sort. If he did he would allow the likes of Sitush and Eric to post here without the fear of being told not to. CassiantoTalk18:00, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
"The C Word" - can anyone read that and not think of the word? I understand if young children are listening who might repeat the word in embarrassing circumstances, but the idea that a word is so bad that it cannot be mentioned in writing is a little foreign to me.
Well, the word, which is offensive to many women and men, is repeated 40 times on this talk page and I didn't want to make it 41. Can you imagine a racial or ethnic slur term being used 40 times and how hurtful that might be? It would probably be immediately rev'deleted and the editor blocked. LizRead!Talk!08:44, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
In the context of the current Arbcom case, or commentary upon it, it seems like fair use. By the same token, anyone using it as an insult against another Wikipedian, male or female, in the aftermath of the case should be dealt with harshly. Carrite (talk) 15:28, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
I don't think it is right to bait and switch, to start with "feminism" and use it as an excuse to accomplish some other end, i.e. censoring speech. When people see feminism abused that way - whether in "GamerGate" related issues or here - the reaction is to become hostile toward feminism, and indeed toward women. But I have to ask - is FEMEN pro-censorship? Were The Vagina Monologues pro-censorship? No. Some people here are just using women as human shields.
Equality between the sexes means that it is pretty much equivalent to call someone "dick" or "cunt". Maybe there are a few nuances in the terms more apparent to the discerning British, but fortunately I lack such aesthetic sensitivity in my vulgarity. As a practical matter, in view of ongoing controversy, it would perhaps be wisest to try to use the opposite-sex epithet where feasible, to help restore the balance of nature as it were; long term though, we really shouldn't be expecting scatology to literally describe the subject. Wnt (talk) 16:04, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
The key word in my sentence above is insult. I think you may fail to appreciate the baggage that the word "cunt" has to an American woman. Quoting myself: "It's the last word a battered woman hears screamed at her as her abuser slugs her in the face." There is a deep degree of violence attached to the word. Calling somebody a "prick" or a "pussy" isn't in any way comparable. Carrite (talk) 17:15, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
While the situation of a battered woman may be heart-wrenching, it can't be the grounds for our policy. After all, there are many situations in which we can picture someone could have a PTSD-like reaction. The U.S. and other countries have many soldiers back from the war who have heard "Allah u akbar" shouted as their comrades lay blown apart from explosives, but that doesn't mean that we should make a specific rule against editors using the phrase, even if they were to do so obnoxiously after winning some article content RFC they should have lost. You could spend all day and night coming up with things that might be specifically offensive to some people, but it's not a productive way to administer the site. You know the whole point of making some ruling against this word wouldn't be to go after the people who are being unambiguously sexist harassers, but as a sort of IDF-like tactic of declaring a buffer zone and attacking the bystanders in it in order to look tougher. Wnt (talk) 18:06, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Any Wikipedian slinging the words "nigger" or "wog" or "kike" as an insult would get the quick Block-o-Rama and there would be zero people complaining. I would argue that "cunt" is an insult word with very similar negative force to American women and anyone slinging that term as an insult had better be ready for a similar reaction, whether or not that was their original intent. Editors from the UK/Oz/NZ should be explicitly apprised of this fact in a policy document — and Administrators should enforce it. There need not be 1500 "banned words and phrases," this one is fundamental. Carrite (talk) 23:35, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
@Carrite: Maybe I've been too antisocial, but I feel like the sexist usage is exaggerated here. Idiots might shout that every once in a while, but more often I remember guys saying "she's a cunt" to each other meaning that "she is extremely attractive", and more to the point, the few times I remember hearing it shouted I think it was men as often as women referred to. Those racist terms, well, people rarely use them in a non-racial context, whereas this one people will use in all kinds of ways. Wnt (talk) 18:32, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
(e/c) No. This is part of what got the pedia into this. If responsible Wikipedians (including especially all administrators) see someone claiming a right to use epithets and insults against others on Wikipedia, they should universally say: 'No, just no. That's not the way we expect to do discussion.' Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:16, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
To be clear, we're all on the same page that people being insulting toward other editors are generally doing a disservice, distracting from important issues and spreading rancor; but the specific language used isn't what's important with that. We also recognize that Wikipedia gets heated and a certain background level of insult is unavoidable. There is also a continuum between directly insulting an editor and using words impersonally - indeed, we have a number of backwaters like WP:ITN and WP:RFA for description of which (in aggregate) our entire cultural patrimony of invective sometimes may seem inadequate. Wnt (talk) 18:11, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
The specific language used is not important? That makes little sense. It is through specific language, in such a written medium, that it is done. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:34, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Indeed. A sexist rant of the type you worry about may use the letter "u" a few times. But does that mean we need a special policy on the use of "u"s, and should criminalize comments that contain an unuusual number of them? No. The intent to attack contributors and drive them off the project is what we find fault with, not its particular expression, and that is true whether we are speaking of letters or of words. Wnt (talk) 22:32, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
No. One cannot separate expression from intent. It is expression that we use to see intent. As for sexist rant, that has nothing to do with my comments. We already have specific policy, it is comments like yours above, "it would perhaps be wisest to try to use the opposite-sex epithet", that reject that policy. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:20, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Hmmm, this discussion between us about how to use words may not have much chance, considering that we seem to be failing to communicate. Wnt (talk) 23:29, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Oh, it's clear you don't like epithets. What's not so clear is what you expect admins to do about that. I don't know if you are saying that admins should go after everyone who uses epithets, and indeed, everyone who opposes your position that they shouldn't be used. But administrative action, like money, or hatred, is a scarce and precious resource that shouldn't be spent willy-nilly. Wikipedia is already overdrawn -- an international reputation for bureaucracy and conflict, a declining editor base. ArbCom and admins are overtaxed with cases of trying to figure out how to interpret the special rules they've come up with to punish previous infractions. And still we haven't stopped actual women from actually being harassed! Wnt (talk) 12:02, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
I have stated what I expect. Read my first comment. It's not my position, it's this websites. If one does not like it, they are free to pursue their personal agenda elsewhere, just not here. But you already said you are anti-epithet in your second comment to me, which just goes to show how foolish your first comment was and is. You don't want poor behavior, discourage it and do not suggest people have a right to do it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:41, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
@Alanscottwalker: Ah - that may be the core fallacy here. You imagine that we need to abolish people's right to do something to discourage it. But nothing could be more counterproductive. Consider drug prohibition, which has catapulted a dozen different obscure and generally unappealing substances to nation-wide and enduring popularity. Contrast the war on tobacco - which was highly successful when it was just a surgeon general commenting on pictures of tarred lungs, and stopped working once it was diverted into smoking bans and taxes. Every time a thing is banned, its pursuit is ennobled, while legitimate and well-deserved criticism is reduced to an expression of slavish conformity. The only defense against that is to stick to banning things which are not merely undesirable, but clearly intolerable, which is to say here, to focus on the actual offenses committed against editors rather than the use of this word or that. Wnt (talk) 17:58, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
As is plain, there is no such right. So no, there is no abolishing of a right, either. Your continued misstatements that it's a right to mistreat people on this site is just false. And as anyone who has been on the internet knows such a false claimed privilege causes more mistreatment, leading to more mistreatment, and more mistreatment. Don't wring-hands about mistreatament, while encouraging it and making false claims to privilege it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:00, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Halloween cheer!
Latest comment: 9 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Send Halloween cheer by adding {{subst:Happy Halloween}} to user talk pages with a friendly message.
use of substantially unaltered "public domain" text where there is a small line for attribution
Latest comment: 9 years ago20 comments11 people in discussion
I know Wikipedia justified using wholesale copying of the 1911 EB as being "legal" in its early days - but should we now leave that behind and stop new articles from substantially being unaltered copies of "public domain" works where the "attribution" is a small line at the end of the article and the material is actually readily available from online sources without needing the "public domain source" and we actually expect the wording by editors to no longer be simple verbatim copying from old books which are out of copyright? I only recently began to find out how many articles are found by Coren's bot - and the number is amazing, as is the practice of editors using nice chunks of material from "public domain" works and thinking that the attribution line is sufficient to claim they wrote the article. I can understand, perhaps, doing some of that where other sources are not easily found, but where other sources are easily found, I fear I think it lazy at best, and, by current standards which require rewriting of material whether in or out of copyright, plagiarism at worst. Other opinions, now that Wikipedia is used as a source by readers who might not notice the tiny line of attribution? Collect (talk) 12:32, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
I concur with this. I ran into an administrator pulling this stunt just a year or two ago and it absolutely blew my mind. There should actually be a Wikiproject to start liquidating all the EB 1911 article extracts with a view to their total elimination. Carrite (talk) 15:23, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Can someone explain the problem? Something is better than nothing - that's what people thought before, and I don't see what's changed. Updating these articles may be a good opportunity, but it isn't obligatory. Wnt (talk) 15:48, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Legally, no attribution line at all is required. On the other hand we at Wikipedia require the use of citations, and I would try to get editors to use those instead of complaining that something is wrong with copying from PD-texts.CFCF 💌📧18:49, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Is "legally" the only criterion Wikipedia should use? By the way, I have essentially re-written a few such articles as it appears finding online sources is a lot easier now than it was ten years ago. I decided I was not up to the overall Herculean task of fixing them all - thus the post here. What I specifically find troubling is current editors resorting to this lazy means of article creation. Are you suggesting that we should put our blinders on to this all-too-prevalent current practice? Collect (talk) 19:09, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Isn't the whole idea of Wikipedia built on the idea of Open Knowledge, which enables reuse? Of course PD texts need to meed the same criteria as original texts, with respect to sourcing, NPOV, and other policies. And of course they should be properly attributed. But there is no reason to reject available resources just because they are not original. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:14, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for notifying me of this discussion. </s> Given that your complaints on Wikipedia are usually frustratingly vague, I have no idea if you are speaking solely about me or not. For some months, I have been importing public domain obituaries of Yale University alumni who meet WP:GNG but have yet to be written about. Each one is marked with a template clearly indicating its copyright status and origin. I make zero claims of authorship, I do not include these articles in lists of my creations in my userspace, I do not submit them to DYK as I regularly do for new articles I write, etc., so it is inappropriate and inaccurate to casually libel me as a plagiarist.
I may not write the articles from scratch, but I do a lot of work integrating them into the encyclopedia, like establishing links with relevant articles, creating Wikidata entries, supplementing the public domain material with other relevant information I do write myself (such as the big paragraph in the middle of Alexander MacWhorter III). I feel this adds to the project here just as much as anything else: bot created articles, images taken from the public domain, etc. I do not see why taking the time to create original articles would be that much of an improvement. Your version of the article George Goodyear is not really that much different from my public domain version so your effort hasn't really translated into much of an improvement for the encyclopedia, other than to satisfy a desire for purity and originality.
It's easy to say that I'm "lazy" because I don't want to write an article on an obscure 19th century state legislator from scratch. But volunteer time is a finite resource, and volunteers are going to write about what they want to write about. In fifteen years, no one wrote about that obscure 19th century state legislator, and they probably wouldn't have in another fifteen. Given the choice of topics to write a new article from scratch, I will pick something else that interests me more. But I'm willing to take the time to do this, which is quicker and easier. Given that after fifteen years of random article creation we still have gaps in the encyclopedia, we need to stop imagining they will all be filled in the same way we always have done things. We are not going to tighten up the GNG - given that those who advocate this have in the past been labeled "deletionists" and likened to book burners - so if we want a comprehensive encyclopedia with five million articles, we are going to have to reevaluate the ways we create and maintain them with the finite volunteer resources we have. I don't see any reason why the public life of 19th century America can't be comprehensively covered as the 21st is here. But while the 21st is created by current interest and easy availability of sources, 19th century material does not have those advantages, so what I'm doing is a very small way of addressing the systemic recentist bias of the encyclopedia. Gamaliel (talk) 20:46, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
I have found a number of editors - you at least attribute the source. Others don't. My problem is that we often can avoid using a blanket use of a single "public domain" source by simply looking on the internet for better sources. And I daresay I demur that using multiple reliable sources is not an improvement over using a single "public domain" compendium. And if the issue is that of "time" then we should not bother with Arbitration cases about editors actually using quotes from sources in footnotes, should we? I admittedly only have reached double digits in "articles created" but I do not think "5 million articles created" is all that much better than "5 million hamburgers sold" - it is the utility of the articles which counts, not sheer quantity, in my own personal opinion. Warm regards, Collect (talk) 21:08, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm glad I'm not the one who is plagiarizing then. :D I get what you are saying about quality over quantity, but I don't see how original text is automatically better any more than a user-taken photograph is automatically better than a public domain image. For me, it comes down to this. I'm not going to write original articles about these people, but I think i do a good job of integrating these public domain bios and it fills gaps in the encyclopedia that otherwise will likely go unfilled. Gamaliel (talk) 21:12, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
@Collect: If you have a way in hand that is easier to create articles, you can try to sell other editors on the idea, and maybe they'll do it. But provided the articles are acceptable at all, which is to say, they are GNG-able topics and based on a source, then it is certainly useful to create them. Having a draft based on one source gets us halfway to having a draft that merges the information from two. In Henry Ford's day, people were arguing that you have to have a master mechanic make a car rather than having some guy at the head of the line tightening the first screw... they didn't prevail. Wikipedia has it better than Ford, though, because when you're selling your product for free you don't have to wait until it is even a tenth finished before you start selling. Wnt (talk) 22:22, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Principle One is easy: Use modern English (your own words) rather than whatever style was used in the "public domain" material which is unchanged with the excuse that it is "legal" to simply cut and paste as long as the original is "out of copyright." A huge percentage of material is "out of copyright" but editors manage to keep from simple cut and paste in a great many of them.
Frankly, we could simply import thousands of major books by using bots to "create" articles - but is that a worthwhile mode of operation? Or is it simply laziness incarnate to call oneself an "editor" when your job is "cut and paste" without a scintilla of original effort? I have noticed that I can find added sources in less than 10 minutes - surely one should not claim to "create" an article by a ten-second cut and past when I do not even think my ten minutes is a "big deal." How do others feel about claiming to "create" articles by doing the ten second "slam bam, thank you Wikipedia" routine? Collect (talk) 23:24, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
Could you link a couple examples that come to mind? It's hard to debate the merits of something one is not familiar with. Thanks. LizRead!Talk!23:59, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
You could track my spoor -- I do not believe it is proper to accuse editors of "plagiarism" in this venue. For seeing how quickly I have come up with articles recently, I can point to my own articles at Act on petition which was about as easy as cribbing the EB1911 article (deceased), Charles S. Strong where the initial skeleton took about 10 minutes of searches, John W. Curry, Éditions Gründ, Gordon Grant (artist), Boston Society of Civil Engineers etc. Research for the skeletons of those articles was fast as a rule (Strong is interesting as he was an incredible person with very little "paper trail"). With the tools at our disposal, it is hardly a major task to actually do more than crib a "public domain" source. Collect (talk) 00:17, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Why are you focused on who gets "credit" for what? If the end result is a benefit to the encyclopedia, then who cares? Like they say on Reddit, it's just internet points. Gamaliel (talk) 14:48, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Personally i don't have a problem with such use of public domain or compatibly licensed text, provided that it is clearly and properly attributed. Would it be better to paraphrase the PD text? sometimes yes, sometimes no, and even when it would be better, would it be enough better to justify the effort involved? Editor time and effort is not an unlimited resource. Would it be better to construct a truly original text, using the pD text as a source along with other sources? Often it would, but use of the PD text may well be better than nothing, if those are the effective choices. When the old text fails NPOV or other policies, that is a separate issue. I think a case-by-case approch, not a general condemnation, is needed on this issue. DES(talk)01:07, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
I agree with DESiegel above. In some cases, like some of the articles in the old Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, those sources are still considered maybe the best things ever written on their subjects. Why ignore them or try to improve the best thing ever written? However, many of the articles in the older reference works will also be covered in other PD reference sources. Most of the pages I've started at Category:WikiProject libraries contain at least some works with multiple extant PD reference works still thought to be useful out there about those topics. It would certainly be possible to try to cobble together at least some of our articles by using them all, and, if so desired, compare more recent reference sources on the same topics and use the old ones to source material which has remained largely unchanged. Personally, I think that might be one of the best ways to start building missing articles important enough to be covered in several of those sources. John Carter (talk) 01:38, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 October 2015
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 9 years ago8 comments6 people in discussion
I saw you post this on Facebook in the context of [6]. Seems notable, hopefully one of the many watchers here will help stub it (I don't have time ATM). Oh, and I am also curious if discussion on this page can lead to something clearly positive like content creation, for a change. Cheers, --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here04:07, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
The draft bill is being released today at 12:30pm UK time, as I understand it (10 minutes from now). Clearly many journalists have an advance copy. Not sure if the raw text is online yet, but if someone finds it, please share the link here so that several of us can start reading through it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:21, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
Its executive summary (aka advert for the bill) is troubling.
The actual draft bill appears to allow for a broad range of information gathering not limited by prior warrant, including sufficient information required to be held by "communication service providers" at all levels - "Clause 69 sets out that communications service providers overseas that handle 186 communications data of UK citizens are also covered by the provisions set out in Part 3 of the Bill." and " Subsections (1) and (2) set out that employee from a communications service provider should 181 not disclose any information about a request from a relevant public authority for communications data to a customer, without prior permission from the relevant public authority." catenated suggest that Wikipedia, which likely falls into the undefined group of "communication service providers" (using the normal sense of the word - including any provider allowing people to message other people whether or not it is "email" and where the bill specifically includes "social media" as an example where the "email information" must be retained) where the bill is concerned could be affected.
The advert seems to not note "Subsection (9) specifies the communications data that can be retained by what it can be used to 189 identify. For example, communications data can be retained if it may be used to identify, or could assist in identifying, ‘the sender or recipient of a communication (whether or not a person)’. Such communications data would include phone numbers, email addresses and source IP addresses. " The intent is clearly not to track what a person simply "looks at" on the Internet, but to determine all that a person actually does on the Internet, and not limited to "actual emails." It parses the intent by saying "They could be used, for example, to demonstrate a certain device had accessed an online communications service but they would not be able to be used to identify what the individual did on that service" which is on its face disingenuous - if a person knows a person was on, say, Wikipedia, at a precise time and the material typed at that time from that IP address, then they quite effectively know precisely what a person was "doing."
Some of the rhetoric by the bill's supporters is unreal - or at least, it beckons back to forgotten ages of fascism. "There should be no area of cyberspace which is a haven for those who seek to harm us to plot, poison minds and peddle hatred under the radar.", says Theresa May.[7] I would think this ought to mean there's no space for people like her, because who the hell cares what happens to a country like that? They talk about pedophiles - they were talking about pedophiles ever since BAE bankrolled the Internet Watch Foundation to put their "black boxes" watching British communications as an allegedly voluntary feel-good measure. In truth what David Cameron means when he says "let's not have a situation where we give terrorists, criminals, child abductors, safe spaces to communicate" is "let's not... give criminals safe spaces to communicate", where "criminals" in turn means anyone whose beliefs he decides are poisonous. It's easy to see why al-Sisi is his bosom buddy nowadays.
These things, people can say they're not our direct concern. We're supposed to be neutral. Perhaps we should be neutral - Britain is a country, ISIS is a country, fair's fair, no need to cheer for one side or the other in that conflict. But the first source there warns that the bill allows the British government to start hacking quite indiscriminately, and that is Wikipedia's concern. From the topmost link: "A targeted equipment interference warrant is a warrant that authorises the person to whom it is addressed to secure interference with any equipment for the purpose of... " That is spelled out in detail in section 83: "Equipment belonging to, used by or in the possession of a particular person or organisation", "Equipment that is being, or may be being used, for the purposes of a particular activity or activities of a particular description". So if anybody in Syria has ever left a message read by somebody else in Syria, that justifies a hacking raid on any data stored in WMF machines. The question I still have is, does it also justify them hacking the site Javascript or hidden features in multimedia formats in order to pass on infections to people who read Wikipedia articles, whether on behalf of British thought police or those of allies like Egypt? Wnt (talk) 18:04, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
[8][9][10][11][12][13] The Irish Examiner quotes May: "They would only be able to make a request for the purpose of determining whether someone had accessed a communications website, an illegal website or to resolve an IP address where it is necessary and proportionate to do so" Note that these records of website access are NOT subject to warrant, but can be initiated by police (though not local police) and various other entities. Judicial review is (a) pro forma and (b) can be avoided entirely by claiming an "urgent" case.
A practical aspect is that people from Britain were saying before that it was illegal for them to look at various things, e.g. "terrorist propaganda". Now that they know that literally one click could put them on an actual enforcement list, I imagine the hysteria level about such links will go up. There will be pressure for us to take any "bad" website out of our references on the sole basis that their government has banned it, and is serious about punishing them for clicking on it. We must not give into this. Routing innocent Wikipedia readers to sites that put them on a purge list may be an act of terrorism, but if so, it is one that is badly needed. One could morally excuse a drone strike on that building from V for Vendetta if it could actually produce regime change on that sorry island.
It is also worth noting from The Guardian: "the Home Office says it will not be able to enforce obligations in court on American internet firms.... The government is to try to negotiate a new treaty with the US for voluntary cooperation on data sharing." It is rare that we get a warning of the bad things to come. Wnt (talk) 13:40, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
As a member of "that sorry island" and as someone who is totally against this ridiculous bill and who didn't vote for the shambles of a government we currently are saddled with, I'd rather you didn't refer to Britain as "sorry" or advocate drone strikes against us. Its bloody rude is what that is. And as for this: " Routing innocent Wikipedia readers to sites that put them on a purge list may be an act of terrorism, but if so, it is one that is badly needed." Dude, I mean, come on. Man Over-bored (talk) 17:20, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
Perhaps my rhetoric was overboard - but my refusal to delete links because they are banned in Britain is not an exaggeration. Describe that as you will. Wnt (talk) 18:37, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
Allegra Versace
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Candidates for ArbCom needed - let a thousand flowers bloom
Latest comment: 9 years ago19 comments12 people in discussion
Starting November 8 candidates may nominate themselves for a two-year term in the forthcoming ArbCom election. See Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015 for details. Given the controversy within the Wikipedia community that is often seen on this page, I think it's time that people step up to the plate and see what the community says about their positions. I'd love to see a wide range of candidates. If you'd like to see more on this, you might read Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-10-28/Op-ed
There's never been any rule against non-admins on ArbCom. That seems like a good way to go IMHO. I'd much rather have an arb who is not completely familiar with all the rules, but promises to follow them, than an arb who knows the rules, but doesn't follow them. Smallbones(smalltalk)22:52, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
There's no rule against non-admins on ArbCom but every arbitrator has to verify their identity with WMF so one can not be anonymous. Also, since arbitrators are given checkuser and oversight tools, there is concern among some voters that non-admins haven't gone through an RfA and been "vetted" to ensure they will be able to handle privacy concerns. But, this isn't said to say, "No" to you, just that there will be some hurdles. LizRead!Talk!23:02, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
More accurately the concern of the WMF is that OS/CU is not given to someone who has not undergone a vetting process like that to become an administrator. Managing to be voted onto Arbcom would certainly qualify under that criteria. Largely irrelevent anyway since Arbcom itself hands out CU/OS to whoever they want regardless of policy/process in place. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:02, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
Well, GoodDay, you would likely be a good Arbitrator among a helpful group but might get burn-out quickly, and I think people who like to talk, for hours on end, would be more happy there, and less likely to be frustrated by the ultra-slow progress and complified ways to say "no" to improvements. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:04, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm still waiting for a candidate to run on a platform of 'no backroom discussions', sadly any of the editors who also think too much of Arbcom's deliberations are behind closed doors are too intelligent to even run. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:42, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
@Jusdafax, Arbcom elections are an annual reminder that our most trusted editors have tended to already become admins, given the choice the community elects arbs from among the admins who stand, non admins have sometimes come close, but the clear pattern is that the community elects admins as arbs. Also, while other experience can also count, a big part of the arbcom workload is in dealing with things like contentious blocks and unblocks. If a candidate has served as an admin you can look at the blocking and unblocking they've done and decide for yourself whether they have shown sufficiently good judgment to be an arb. There are more opportunities for admins to demonstrate many of the qualities that we look for in arbs than there are for non admins. There is also the issue that if you do things out of order and get heavily involved in things like the drama boards before becoming an admin you risk getting opposes simply for your number of edits or even percentage of edits to particular boards or namespaces, (experienced !voters and particularly admins tend to know that stats are not a substitute for actually looking at edits, but it is a sadly common mistake for newer voters). Hence my suggestion that anyone thinking of standing for arbcom consider going for admin first. ϢereSpielChequers17:46, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
I don't see any reason to discourage non-admins. Sometimes admins take themselves much too seriously and think that they run things around here. That very definitely was not the original intention - admins are here to serve, not tell editors what to do. I was surprised to hear about the "vetting" that admins get at RfA - you have to admit that some really terrible decisions are made during that process. One admin (now globally banned) who spent considerable time on this page harassing Jimbo comes to mind. To an ordinary editor like myself, admins can also come across as very aggressive at times, and they have messed quite a few things up on ArbCom. I'll suggest that that any admin who wants to discourage non-admins from running for ArbCom just trust the editor's own knowledge of his or her qualifications to run. Or the admin could look up the rule, and just say "that's not my call." Smallbones(smalltalk)18:46, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
Ultimately, what is under the candidate's control is the decision to run for ArbCom and how they address the questions directed to them. I think WereSpielChequers was pointing out the likely critical view of voters who look over candidates, not implying that a non-admin wouldn't make a good arbitrator. It's up to the community to determine who will be the next arbitrators and, in that sense, every editor has the same one vote to cast for each candidate, regardless if they are an admin or non-admin. LizRead!Talk!19:24, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
That's exactly it - let the voters decide. A non-admin who submits his or her candidacy is not taking anything away from anybody else, is not in any way hurting anybody else. As i said, sometimes I think admins take themselves too seriously. The voters will decide if being an admin is a "requirement" in their eyes. It might even be the case that some voters think that being an admin is a negative factor. Let the voters decide. There's no point in discouraging editors from running for ArbCom. Smallbones(smalltalk)19:35, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
So far the voters have decided not to elect any non admin candidates to Arbcom, for some adminship is a requirement, for others there hasn't yet been a non admin candidate who made their top 8 or 9. Close to 40% including me voted for a non admin candidate last year. I hope no one misinterprets my advice of "run for RFA first" as only people who are already admins can become Arbs. I think there is a good chance that one day a candidate will become an arb before they become an admin, and would confidently predict that one of the successful candidates in 2016 or 2017 is not yet an admin. But my advice to anyone planning to stand for arbcom is to become an admin first. ϢereSpielChequers21:36, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
Having been on Arbcom I can guarantee there's nothing in it that requires someone to be an admin before they get elected. So, anyone who thinks they can do a good job should feel free to stand. Particularly the various people who think Arbcom does a bad job or doesn't reflect their views - the elections are your chance to put your money where your mouth is by putting your name forward. -- Euryalus (talk) 07:16, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Notability?
Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Is a person who has "competed in the Olympics" who is currently "presumed notable" per the Olympic guideline, actually notable when the BLP is substantially nugatory towards him and towards other living Ugandan athletes? Joe Atuhaire? Collect (talk) 12:38, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hello
I am trying to edit "aerospace engineering" page but the captcha triggers everytime even if i write the right version. Nobody is answering, could you please help me? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Diyetisyenece (talk • contribs) 13:03, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Hi Diyetisyenece, would you mind trying again? I've made a small change that should fix your capcha problem. ϢereSpielChequers13:23, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Proposed deletion of Aria Giovanni
Latest comment: 9 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion
Fails PORNBIO and the GNG. No awards, only nominations. Only independent reliable sourcing is a passing mention in an article about her onetime husband.
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.
It is informative to look at the article Jimbo himself created way back in 2001. He wrote: "Aria Giovanni is a famous model who was Penthouse Pet of the month in September 2001". The use of the word "famous" is suprising and there are no sources offered to support these statements. He also says that she "appeared on Bomis posing with clothes on for a Ferrari giveaway contest". How times have changed. Protopone primigena (talk) 22:08, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Hullaballoo Wolfowitz was correct to notify Jimbo, since Jimbo himself created this pornstar biography way back in November, 2001. Yes, our standards have changed dramatically since then. These days, creating an article about a model appearing on your own girlie website, Bomis, with an edit summary of "(I wonder if google will like this page)", would certainly be frowned upon. Cullen328Let's discuss it06:46, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 04 November 2015
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 9 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion
Jimbo, I'm not sure if you're aware this Wikiproject exists, so I just wanted to bring it to your attention. It's essentially a project that fosters community-driven improvement on one article over a week - generally really important topics that shockingly still have underwhelming articles after all these years. The aim is two-fold: to encourage newbies to enter the project by working with some established editors, and to push important articles up to GA/FA. A co-founder, I have personally contributed by working alongside some Wikimedia people to post statuses out into social media (Twitter/Google+/Facebook) to spread the word via engaging and witty tags. We have had various successful improvements so far, and there areatleastfour other-language Wikipedias that have followed in our footsteps and created TAFI Wikiprojects of their own. For a time, we were even on the main page! (Just below the DYK section). We're chugging along after 2.5 years, and are always looking for fresh blood, and interesting ideas to improve our innerworkings. Please stop by if you have the chance, and perhaps nominate an article or two if you find any doosies.--Coin945 (talk) 10:38, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
The wp:TAFI project (with list: "WP:Articles_for_improvement") has addressed one of the key reasons why Wikipedia was failing the audience: not enough indepth coverage about mainstream subjects, outside the typical popstars or current TV or films. So the solution is to prioritize efforts to expand major subjects, and improve the existing pages within each mainstream subject. We have millions of pages of minor, rare topics to distract the editor efforts, and so sorting out priorities is crucial to expanding coverage of the mainstream topics, many of which have been awkward stubs for years. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:42, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
Thank you so much for your support and endorsement @Wikid77:. When we began this endevour, it astounded me how easy it was to find really obvious core topics that had sad articles, and we have seen such great improvement, but there is always more work to be done, and always more people to inform of our existence. Do you have any ideas (or contacts, resources etc.) to help our Wikiproject become more successful?--Coin945 (talk) 16:09, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
I think the key idea is to just remember the issue as the big problem of covering mainstream topics by a relatively small group of people, as an ongoing struggle, in essence writing the real encyclopedia within Wikipedia, rather than updating the wp:data hoarding pages of sports records, endless television episodes, or "Who's Who" in thousands of categories. It is very difficult to focus on the long-term mainstream topics, despite the distractions of all the short-lived, trendy topics. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:13, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
More...@Coin945: I did remember another important tactic to update mainstream pages: each person can edit almost twice as much by postponing changes during an edit-war or hacking of pages; because many mainstream pages tend to have frequent pageviews, there is a high risk of interference with some other users. The hacking can be bizarre, as often someone might revert all changes because they think a "comma splice" was inserted or the new sources had one "wrong page number" or otherwise want to fight about the so-called "dodgey" changes. Of course, a long debate discussion could ensue, back-and-forth, for hours, but I find if I wait to redo the changes a few days later, then the other users have chilled or no longer care about the "hideous" comma placement or whatever minutia. This intense problem of user interference is often high due to the well-deserved popularity of important mainstream pages, unlike the copy-editing of thousands of neglected rare pages which few dispute. Compare the near-double productivity by just delaying updates to disputed pages, and there is also a peace-of-mind benefit to avoiding prolonged disputes with people who want to revert 50 changes because of a comma opinion. Hence, working on "Wikipedia is 10% information and 90% deformation". -Wikid77 (talk) 00:55, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
Not to diminish working with new users: In my comments above, I did not want to undervalue the potential for working with new users, as to improve mainstream pages in this case. In many cases, a new user might be misguided as hacking pages but could quickly "learn the ropes" to edit pages in more-constructive ways. Also, some people who are most difficult have been hacking WP pages for years, off-and-on, perhaps under several different usernames. However, I would encourage broader training for new users, such as also expanding rare pages where there would be less risk of disputes among users, because there is also a great need to edit the millions of rare pages which have significant value when treated as a bundle of information read, as a collection of related pages, as often as some mainstream pages. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:52, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
Nadavara
Latest comment: 9 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion
This page (Nadavara) is addressing the Nadavara of Uttara Kannada as Nador. There are 35,000 Nadavaras live in Uttara Kannada and outside of Uttara Kannad. The school living certificate or birth certificate of every Nadavara person mentions the caste name as Hindu Nadavara and not as Nador. Nador is in a way an abusive name. The individual who has posted the new Nadavra page has removed the old page of Nadavaras of Uttara Kannada. The new page is very brief and mentions the Nadavar as Nador of Ankola. In any way can you ask this person not to include his original research and additionally remove the words "Nadors of Uttara Kannada" from the current Nadavara page to avoid any further complications. (Sikanjal (talk) 20:07, 7 November 2015 (UTC)Sikanjal)
I don't know anything about this specific issue, but it sounds like it's good to raise it for wider attention. Perhaps others can tell you of the best place to raise the issue (assuming you've already raised it on the talk page of the article.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:41, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
"Superprotect was introduced by the Wikimedia Foundation to resolve a product development disagreement. We have not used it for resolving a dispute since. Consequently, today we are removing Superprotect from Wikimedia servers.
"Without Superprotect, a symbolic point of tension is resolved. However, we still have the underlying problem of disagreement and consequent delays at the product deployment phase. We need to become better software partners, work together towards better products, and ship better features faster. The collaboration between the WMF and the communities depends on mutual trust and constructive criticism. We need to improve Wikimedia mechanisms to build consensus, include more voices, and resolve disputes.
"There is a first draft of an updated Product Development Process that will guide the work of the WMF Engineering and Product teams. It stresses the need for community feedback throughout the process, but particularly in the early phases of development. More feedback earlier on will allow us to incorporate community-driven improvements and address potential controversy while plans and software are most flexible.
"We welcome the feedback of technical and non-technical contributors. Check the Q&A for details."
(EC)The award was announced in January, so it's not really news, but the presentation ceremony will be Wednesday 25 November with Phoebe Ayers, Lodewijk Gelauff and Adele Vrana accepting the award. It's good to see somebody new accepting awards! (sorry Jimbo, but it really is!)
My first thought after reading this (and figuring out how I would spend my part of the prize money) was about how apt the text on the prize is to our ideals. "diverse are the gifts of men of genius and many are the different kinds of ages. let each one reveal the scope of his competence and let no one be envious of another who in keeping with his own ability and style tries to make a useful contribution to the education of all." If we could live up to that we'd deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, but we've obviously got a long way to go. Congrats to all Wikipedians! Smallbones(smalltalk)14:39, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
As of Monday, 02 December 2024, 00:48 (UTC), The English Wikipedia has 48,348,121 registered users, 121,250 active editors, and 848 administrators. Together we have made 1,255,918,343 edits, created 61,943,392 pages of all kinds and created 6,918,510 articles.
One reason is that the word "rubbish" used as you are using it is a Britishism, so millions of editors wouldn't have even considered it. But I think we are getting off-topic here. :) Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:00, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Only Americans in a bit of an understatement, considering that the U.S. population is higher than all the others you listed combined. Dustin(talk)01:54, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
I am not being paid to serve as keynote speaker. Why do you ask? Oh, I see by looking at your contribution history that this is just trolling. Have a nice day.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:00, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm disappointed that you would characterize this as "just trolling". Telenor is in hot water right now, with its former CEO (your ceremonial handshake partner) being investigated for bribery and corruption related to buying wireless licenses in Uzbekistan. He's been dismissed from Telenor and all subsidiaries, and he was even denied 2015 bonus payments that were due him. Had you been accepting payment from Telenor, that wouldn't present very good optics. Baksaas' trouble has the potential to be a fairly big scandal (especially considering how many identifiable Telenor employees have been very recently polishing Wikipedia to enhance Telenor's reputation), but if you want to brush it under the rug, so be it. That's always your prerogative. - Checking the checkers (talk) 01:44, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
I once gave a speech at Volkswagen. Got paid for it too. May have even had a photo with the CEO, although I don't remember. I'm also notable for being involved in an industry which relies on software. Quick, someone better draw a venn diagram suggesting in some vague way that their scandal somehow my fault or that I'm in some way corrupt.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:49, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
I'd have asked for a groovy 60s Volkswagen Camper instead of money to speak for Volkswagen! Some comic relief is required here, this talk page is so serious.... If only we lived in a world where everybody was nice to one another!♦ Dr. Blofeld10:59, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
Didn't you get the memo, Dr. B? All the not-nice people are to be banned from Wikipedia by the nice people and will henceforth have to sock-puppet. Мир и дружба!!!Carrite (talk) 16:32, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
American copyright slider
Latest comment: 9 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
For those of you who have a hard time keeping track of the copyright status of written material published in the USA, a correspondent has pointed me towards THIS pretty simple slider. It has been released under Creative Commons Non-Commercial license and maybe one of our copyright peeps can make it a part of Wikipedia. Carrite (talk) 16:42, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
Unfortunately, it is too simple to be accurate. It ignores the case of works published after 1922 that would be in the public domain due to lack of copyright notice, or due to non-renewal, but where at least one of the authors is not a US national, or the work was published simultaneously in a non-US country. In these cases the copyright may have been restored in accord with the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, which the slider fails to mention even in its notes. DES(talk)01:23, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Despite the omission, it's an interesting concept, and would be helpful if corrected. If nothing else, it highlights the complication of copyright. Notice that, of the 10 options on the right, only to have a definitive declaration. Every one of the other eight items which covers almost everything, have a qualifier requiring more in-depth review. Perhaps one of our copyright experts (@Moonriddengirl:) would be interested in reaching out to help them improve it although I would urge pushing for a better license. The noncommercial aspect makes it problematic for Wikipedia.--S Philbrick(Talk)15:04, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Latest comment: 9 years ago27 comments15 people in discussion
Wikimandia, you have been saying your piece about this matter at ANI (multiple times) and in Neelix's ArbCom case. I don't see how further discussion on Jimbo's talk page will accomplish anything further since this case has already had a high profile. This page should not just be another forum for complaints. Everyone else weighing in here wants to let ArbCom deal with this situation. LizRead!Talk!19:18, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
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.
Are you aware of this situation? Are you aware Commons now has not only the category "Hogtied women," but subcategories "Nude or partially nude hogtied women," "Topless hogtied women" and "Nude hogtied women"? If not, you should be. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Neelix/Evidence. Considering the known gender disparity at Wikipedia, it has not been reassuring for me (as a female) to see the lack of sanctions so far. —МандичкаYO 😜 00:25, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
There's a wide consensus that this editing was not acceptable. Please note that Neelix has resigned today as an administrator, has been community-restricted from creating any more redirects, and is well aware from extensive community discussion that he needs to change his editing behavior if and when he returns from his current wikibreak. The most problematic redirects have been deleted and many others are being reviewed. The Commons categories need to be addressed on that site but they will hopefully be cleaned up also. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:57, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
I know he resigned, because the arbitration committee declined to do so (!) despite the evidence in front of them that included abuse of admin tools and that he had been blocked for doing the same redirect insanity in the past. Resigning is all he has done since announcing his feelings were too hurt to help clean up his mess. Apparently some people think that's the end of it because he "appears to acknoledge (sic) that there was a contention with respect" to his behavior and that "clouds do exisist (sic)." (Clouds! They exist!) If a non-admin had done what he had done, can you imagine what would have happened? There would be no such easy dismissal for a non-admin, since we don't have the option of resigning with no further explanation and getting showered in praise for doing so. Btw Commons is even more of a nightmare to clean up. Almost 2,000 categories this year. Now Wikicommons users have to take time to evaluate the usefulness of categories like "Nude or partially nude kneeling women wearing high-heeled shoes." Oh yay. —МандичкаYO 😜 02:42, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
I have to agree with the outrage. A non-admin would have been banned instantly. We have developed a caste system in Wikipedia. Jusdafax03:12, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
Arbcom refused to do an out of process desysop but choose to proceed with a case. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind the result would have been a desysop.
By taking the time to log in and resign, Neelix simplified matters, the "praise" was simple thanking him for that. This came after being vilified for a week on ANI, which many editors seemingly taking pains to wikilink the offensive redirects so we could all see how offensive they work. (See WP:Widget).
The redirects went undetected because the administrator set of rights includes autopatrolled, so the pages would not appear on new pages. A new editor would have been detected much sooner.
The quality of a community is not how it idolizes heroes but how it treats those who have erred. The nature of the activity does not indicate trolling so much as a significant lack of judgement -- who would intentionally subject themselves to the week Neelix has had? NE Ent03:21, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
Autopatrolled is not a perfect system, I have had to revoke it from a couple of editors who were creating unreferenced BLPs. But it is a necessary system both because we don't have the resources not to target our efforts, and we need to protect article creators from newpage patrollers. The fact that occasionally one of the thousands of editors with this right needs to lose it doesn't alter that the right needs to exist. But most importantly, Newpage patrol focusses on articles and defaults to ignoring redirects. That's a sensible and pragmatic response to the risks we face. We target most of our attention on higher risk things such as new articles from new editors, the fact that occasionally a lower risk event happens doesn't mean that we are wrong to target high risk activities. ϢereSpielChequers05:48, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
Mandichka, what Neelix did was wrong, but our response should be thoughtful, not reactionary. First, could we adjust Wikipedia's software settings so that pages created by editors (and admins) with the autopatrol right aren't marked as patrolled? We should make sure at least two editors see every page that's being created: the creator and somebody else. Second, we should make sure Neelix can get through this situation with dignity intact. Even when we site ban an editor, we are courteous to them as they leave. I have seen comments suggesting that it's appropriate to ridicule Neelix. I disagree. Treating sanctioned editors badly only pushes them to be more disruptive or vindictive. That benefits nobody. JehochmanTalk04:42, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
Getting rid of the autopatrolled right would not guarantee that all new redirects were seen by someone other than their creator, it might actually reduce atention on redirects in general. Unless we greatly increased our team of new page patrollers, shifting the focus onto pages created by editors who are currently autopatrolled would mean less attention on high risk new pages such as articles by new editors. If your concern is redirects by autopatrolled editors then you would need to change the system both to end autopatrolled and to not default to filtering out redirects. You'd then need a lot more patrollers. ϢereSpielChequers06:09, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
It is entirely appropriate to engage in frank assessment of administrator/editor misconduct without descending to ridicule. The first is necessary while the second is childish and wrong. Cullen328Let's discuss it05:59, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
I said people offwiki have a right to ridicule editors (particularly admins) who act in various ridiculous manners, such as engaging in clear COI editing or creating 10k redirects with the word titty. This is free speech. I made that point to say mocking does not equal harassment. If people offwiki discover a cluster of articles that are not only absurd in their overdetail but are embarrassing to the subject because of their obsessive nature, I say let them fix them if they want. What occurred with bans being handed out right and left for editors who were not violating any rules (such as indeffing an editor who had merely made two random, minor, helpful edits) IMO is completely damaging to the project. I feel the denial of responsibility from you and the other admin who participated in that is very troubling. Everything that's been uncovered so far needs to brought to the attention of higher ups at WP. —МандичкаYO 😜 15:00, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
Are you aware Commons now has not only the category "Hogtied women," but subcategories "Nude or partially nude hogtied women," "Topless hogtied women" and "Nude hogtied women"?
Yes Мандичка, we're very aware Commons has such categories. It's because of people like you who complain if a category has naked people in it, and surprise surprise, now you complain that we don't put those naked people in the parent category!
Excuse me? I have NO PROBLEM with nudity at Commons and I've never ever complained about it. EVER. What I've complained about are useless subcategories that fetishize the subject based on trivial details such as whether their legs and mouths are open and if they're wearing high heels. Mattbuck until you find a single time I've complained because I saw a nude photo on Commons, you should withdraw your "people like you" accusation against me as it violates WP:NPA. —МандичкаYO 😜 15:00, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, apology accepted. I want it to be clear I am not offended by the content and have no problem with nudity (whether in photos, art, or even pornography) at Commons, as long as it's categorized in a neutral fashion that does not exploit the subject. —МандичкаYO 😜 15:06, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
Drawing a line under this
I made sure to comment positively on Neelix's resignation as I was one of the people who advised him to do so. Neelix claims he created these redirects and categories in good faith and I'm willing to believe him on that. Can I remind people that this individual has nearly quarter of a million edits across the projects. On top of that, the poor actions were in our meta space - with respect to commons, I'd argue that the images are the problem, not the categories. They may fall under commons scope and commons may allow them, but that's why I spend almost no time at commons - I have a low opinion of the project. But to blame the person who categorised these images is akin to shooting the messenger. Closer to home, redirects are commonly regarded as cheap and not as visible to readers, they're generally allowed to be poorer quality than article titles. His typos were "plausible". We're not talking about 80k - that's the total number of articles and redirects he's ever created. When I looked into it myself, I found something closer to 3,000 inappropriate redirects. Still significant, but I'd rather we were talking about accurate numbers. Overall, I can see why Neelix thought all these categories and redirects would be fine. They weren't. Of course they weren't. He was told that in no uncertain terms at ANI and stopped and apologised. However, the outrage machine's wheels had started turning... ANI was subject to pile on, with more and more unpleasant comments. Arbcom, the committee designed to be slow and level headed jumped on the bandwagon to desysop him, outside of their own process. When their heads cooled, they opened a case instead. Thankfully Neelix heeded my (and probably others) advice and resigned. ANI put forward a topic ban on creating pages. What is achieved by pushing this further? This editor has fallen from grace despite years of hard work for the projects. I'm not saying it's not deserved, but I do think it's time to draw a line under the matter and move on. WormTT(talk) 11:15, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
HE DID NOT create these redirects in good faith. Let's be clear: He KNEW making these redirects were wrong. He was banned for it in 2010 and when he was unblocked he specifically referred to it as an "error."[16] He did not argue he was being helpful or they should be allowed, but plainly indicated he knew it was incorrect. So please, why do you think when he went back to doing it it was in good faith? I'm not quite sure what he's done for the project that makes you think we should be in his gratitude. All his "GA" and Featured articles are promoting his personal interests. And that's not to mention other incidents that clearly call his integrity into question.[17] And I have no problem with some of the images themselves, but putting them into trivial sex fetish categories is not acceptable. Why anyone is feeling sorry for Neelix is beyond me. I feel sorry for editors who will end up working thousands of hours to undo the damage he's done. The reason why many people are bringing this up is because it reflects the overall cancer at Wikipedia. —МандичкаYO 😜 15:00, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
What exactly has he been subject to? Having what he was up to exposed? Again, he indicated back in 2010 he knew that was a violation of the rules. I don't think I've seen a remark about him that has gotten anyone in trouble for violating NPA - what has he been subject to? He was asked over and over to help fix this and he declined. Have you actually looked at the whole thing that has been uncovered, including his walled garden of problematic articles and advocacy? This is not good faith editing. —МандичкаYO 😜 15:27, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
He has been subject to intense scrutiny. Years of work have been called into question. Mass over exaggerations of the scale of the problem (e.g. "Admin creates 80K useless (many breast-related) redirects") - those numbers don't add up. I don't agree that the majority of his redirects were useless, let alone all of them. But don't let facts get in your way. He's guilty and deserves to be punished. Of course, apologising and resigning the bit, along with a topic ban and blog posts about him that's not enough. Let's complain on Jimbo's page to get him to do something more. WormTT(talk) 15:32, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I do declare years of work not in good faith when it is apparent a significant focus of this work was contrary to the guidelines of Wikipedia concerning notability and advocacy, and overall harmful to the project. How do you support your statement that the thousands of redirects (I've seen 80,000 and 50,000) were good faith when he was aware they were violating the rules? Yes, the majority of his redirects were useless, as often they consisted of things such as punctuation, pluralization and articles like "the" etc that are totally irrelevant to search engines. He even invented words that do not exist to use as redirects.[18] This is redirect spam to pump up edit count, and once again, he knew it was wrong! Additionally he only apologized here after it became apparent he was in serious trouble, and he has most definitely not apologized for Commons. I saw nothing of contrition or regret in his resignation, just that he had been advised to do so. Considering the majority of his infractions have nothing to do with misuse of admin tools, how does resigning his adminship make a difference? What would be the consequences for a non-admin who did the same exact thing? —МандичкаYO 😜 16:31, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
I'd like to ask everybody to end this. Neelix made some awful mistakes, he's been punished. There's work to do to fix the mistakes, but essentially it is all over. We should thank everybody involved in bringing the problems to light, and, I hope, act with kindness now toward everybody involved. Smallbones(smalltalk)17:20, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
It's not been done and fixed. The arb case is currently open, so it's dishonest for someone to close this topic and say "arb case is closed." I didn't pay attention to the conspiracy theorists before but wow, this really does look like a cover-up when someone does that. —МандичкаYO 😜 18:10, 13 November 2015 (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.
The Signpost: 11 November 2015
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Consider larger samples and automated counts: When Jimbo has had time to respond to these article-quality tests, he has noted the need for much larger samples, such as 1,000 pages (or 10,000 pages) in the test suite. Also, be sure to observe tests for randomness, when picking the set of pages, because the inclusion of those 3 Digimon pages among "100 pages at random" seems highly non-random and would greatly skew the conclusions about how many pages among 100 would become redirects 10 years later. I know the large-pageset tests are extremely tedious: I have used many sets of 30,000 or more pages to conclude that IP address users edited 27% as many times as registered users. However, smaller page-sets can still show details of how pages could be modified, but not give credible numbers of percentages or other related counts. The use of the Central Limit Theorem for sample size needs to be adjusted depending on the rareness of the qualities noted among the population of 5 million articles. Find some automated ways to compare perhaps 10,000 articles 10 years later. For example, count the inclusions of cite templates/modules: as with {{cite_web}}'s Module:Citation/CS1 in 2.6 million pages among 5 million articles plus talk-pages in November 2015. Anyway, I think Jimbo appreciates these types of quality checks, even if too busy to discuss the details. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:15, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
I doubt that we have too much use for sample sizes over 1,000. Sure if something is really rare and you want to look for how it's changing then larger sample sizes would be nice, but it's hard for me to think of any examples. OK, how about we want to check whether articles with "connected contributor templates" (or any other article attribute) are below 1% of all articles. Then I get a standard error of 0.3% for n=1000 (somebody should check my work); meaning that anything outside the range of 1.9%-0.1% (1 to 19 examples of the template in 1,000 articles) would be inconsistent with a 1% rate for this template. Do we really need to be anymore accurate than this? Give me an example of a reasonable research topic, and I'll bet that I can think of a better way to adress the issue than by increasing the sample size to 4,000 - which is what it would take to reduce the standard error by half. Smallbones(smalltalk)21:35, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Random is not the same as readership: I think the reason a random sample of 1,000 pages seems too small (to track quality-level improvements) is because the focus on quality likely concerns the popular pages, rather than details in rare stubs about 350,000 villages around the world. If the 1,000 pages could be selected to also have 200+ pageviews per month, then a sample of 1,000 rather than 10,000 pages might seem more representative of the quality issues. By comparison, a political poll is typically among 1,001 registered voters (or other select group), rather than 1,001 random people in society, because the voter registration is a key limiting factor, not unlike minimum pageviews as pages which people actually read. For years, Wikipedia's Special:Random page would randomly select a village in Poland as a likely page, even though we do not expect typical readers to lament the text quality about 67,000 villages in Poland. Perhaps run a sample of 10,000 pages and count the percentage of rare stub pages (rare video games, villages, bureaucrats, minor athletes, etc.). -Wikid77 (talk) 20:54, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Carnildo. So much of the world is short termist, by wikipedia standards this is a true pitch drip test. I hope you continue it for many decades to come. As for 3% of the original sample being Digimon, the myth circa 2006 was that far more than 3% of the pedia was of that nature. ϢereSpielChequers23:58, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
@Carnildo: - Yes, thank you very much for this. I hope you saw my attempt at something similar at User:Smallbones/Article quality prelim, but of course it only went 2 years back. For others interested in article quality improvement tests, I'll (humbly) suggest you look at Carnildos work and my own, and maybe look around at Category:Random Pages Tests.
I would love to do something like this with a larger sample size, say 500 articles, but that would take a few editors working together. Some folks objected that very few of the articles I sampled were rated above "start", but that's what you get from a random sample! I have found a way to do a stratified sample so that including 100 (total) of FA, GA, A, B, and C articles is possible. We should be able to get a lot of info via bots, but I'm not a bot programmer myself - anybody able to help here? 500 articles would make a nice symbolic sample size, as it is 0.01% of 5 million. If anybody wants to pitch in, please contact me on my talk page. Maybe we could do it during the 1st week of January. Smallbones(smalltalk)18:48, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
I just found the time to read all this, and the linked analysis. I think this sort of thing is incredibly important and I thank Carnildo for doing it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:40, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
More ArbCom Candidates needed
Latest comment: 9 years ago47 comments21 people in discussion
Self-nominations for positions on the ArbCom Committee (see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015/Candidates) have been going on since Sunday and will continue until November 17. So far there are 10 declared candidates for the 9 open positions, so we'll have at least some choice, but more candidates are needed.
It's not unusual at this early stage, but IMHO a couple of the current candidates would have great difficulty getting elected (perhaps are even unelectable), so the need for more candidates is even higher than the 10 candidates for 9 positions numbers suggest. I'm very happy to report that 5 or 6 candidates have come out strongly in favor of taking action against bullying. (That's preliminary of course - we'll see how they answer all the questions posed). Smallbones(smalltalk)18:23, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
While I'll likely write a voters' guide, let's just say that I have the greatest sympathy for those folks who know that they don't have the time or patience to serve on ArbCom. Somebody has to step up to the plate with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th inning in the 7th game of the World Series. But I'm destined to remain in the minor leagues. Smallbones(smalltalk)20:55, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm personally baffled as to how ArbCom will have any effect on the bullying, harassment, and paranoia that seems to be so engrained in the Wikipedia community. I see the community driving away this site's main resource, writers, in droves. And what remains are deletionists, sockpuppet avengers, and vandal fighters. Not only are those three demands a primarily negative aspect of the site, it's the bare minimum to keep this site going. This is a slow, but trickling losing proposition. Big, positive changes are what's needed here... that the community will accept. Sigh. --MurderByDeadcopy"bang!"00:15, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Why not? It'd be very interesting to see what sort of job ArbCom's greatest critics make of arbitrating. I'd even go so far as to suggest that should not all places be filled, Jimmy coopt some of the greatest critics onto the committee. Would that result in deadlock? Or would realpolitik kick in and editors be forced to cooperate? Roger Daviestalk07:44, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
I suppose it's something of an honor for the senior sitting arb to suggest that I am one of ArbCom's "greatest critics," but I don't see that at all. I have made 3 criticisms of ArbCom in the past, to the best of my recollection.
That the 2014-2015 ArbComs have really messed up the cases involving bullying of women. They just lacked the moral courage IMHO to step forward and say "this is wrong, we have to take strong action here." That's the only thing I care about in this election.
That ArbCom and admins in general have almost always failed to stop hidden advertising on Wikipedia per WP:NOT. I did my utmost to work through the Wikipedia system to change this, then helped to pass the paid editor disclosure rule via the Terms of Use change. When ArbCom chose to say that the ToU were *not* Wikipedia policy in the Wifione case this year, I brought this to your attention and was amazed when you chose to ignore it.
Something comparatively minor, that I haven't been very loud about. Last year I was dragged before ArbCom for reverting a banned editor, something specifically allowed by WP:BANREVERT. While ArbCom did not sanction me for this, I was stunned that the case took a full month and nobody actually accused me of breaking any rule. It would be much easier for people to defend themselves if it was required that accusers actually state what rule they think was broken. That ought to be changed. Smallbones(smalltalk)17:55, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Smallbones I'm troubled by your remark about lacking moral courage. Is there any evidence for this or it is speculation of your part? Could it not also be that the committee itself echoes the very differing views held by the community on bullying and incivility, and were unable to find consensus? Perhaps too it might be that the cases simply weren't framed as bullying in the first place? To take GamerGate as an example, it's all very well saying that this was about gender when, in fact, in 33,000 words of public GamerGate evidence, the word "gender" is mentioned once. And in the 8,900 words of private evidence, it is also mentioned once, in a quote. Roger Daviestalk14:06, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
So if it were gridlocked by discordant voices, what would ArbCom do to break their own intractable disputes? Ban one another on the sly through proxies? Call for the establishment of a new MegaCom to resolve internal matters that ArbCom could not settle themselves? One does wonder. Carrite (talk) 13:04, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
We'd do what we're doing right now wrt AUSC. Nothing. For my money, what we do need more of, in terms of candidates, are people who are willing to accept compromises. SalvioLet's talk about it!14:23, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
My block log (which includes a 1-year siteban) disqualifies me from running. Besides, I'm against revealing my off-Wikipedia identity. GoodDay (talk) 06:21, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Disqualified is a strong term, I'm sure you are allowed to run. You have been block free for well over a year, people have made admin on similar gaps since their last block. As for identification, I think it is privately to the WMF it doesn't have to be public. ϢereSpielChequers10:21, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Smallbones What action should arbitrators take against bullies with blogs, bullies with extensive press contacts, and bullies with fan clubs of bullies? And how best should we protect arbitrators from themselves being bullied? On- and off-wiki? Roger Daviestalk11:54, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
First, I believe in freedom of speech, so no action against editors who speak to the press is appropriate. I was surprised that some editors suggested that re: the recent article in The Atlantic. Blogs are about the same, unless they are encouraging physical violence in which case you should probably contact the police and the WMF. Bullies with fan clubs of bullies on Wikipedia? - I'd suggest just banning the 1st bully and trying to ignore the rest. Again if any real threats of violence occur, contact the police and WMF. Smallbones(smalltalk)18:53, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
@Roger Davies: I don't mean to hijack this conversation, but can't let this pass without asking: to what extent would you say bullying has/has had on ArbCom, ultimately? I didn't realize it was happening at the ArbCom level, not to the degree that would inspire you to mention it here, anyway. This is pretty serious, in my opinion, and underscores Wuerzele's remarks at the GMO PD talk page about a possible "capture" of the Arbs. petrarchan47คุก21:12, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
@Petrarchan47: The biggest impact of attempted bullying on arbitrators long term is burn out. It is one of the main reasons why some arbitrators resign early. The nature of the bullying varies consderably: from flash mobs with torches and pitchforks, to phone calls in the middle of the night. It is not exactly a secret either; it has been discussed, sometimes extensively, on wikipedia for years. In response to the stuff about "capturing", Wikipedia has vocal advocates for all sorts of POVs. Some mainstream, others less. Typically, in cases, ArbCom charts its own course, which invariably leads to allegations of favouritism or bias from both warring parties. It's the way it always has been, the way it is, and the way it will probably always be. Roger Daviestalk21:34, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, Roger. I'm watching the bullying/hounding of one Arb taking place on a couple of other pages as we speak. I'm no longer under the illusion that the Arbs are somehow protected from the same forces that drive lowly editors away, from the forces that indeed control article content in certain areas of intere$t. So it appears that the co-founder is right about trolls. petrarchan47คุก22:09, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
Although it certainly doesn't solve the problem of arbs being subject to offsite bullying in general, candidates who have previously experienced significant offsite bullying are probably more likely to be resilient to it than most others, and an arbcom that as a whole takes a strong stance against on-site bullying of all editors - including arbitrators - would probably mitigate the on-site component to bullying. I've seen a few situations in the last year where editors have directed vicious invective against members of the arbitration committee without having action taken against them for it. My impression in these situations has been arbs have been hesitant to take action against even the most vicious invective directed against members of the arbitration committee for fear of appearing to just want to silence their own critics - but some of this stuff has been of a level that no volunteer should reasonably expected to put up with. I wouldn't suggest punishing personal attacks against arbs worse than against others (and in fact probably do support lighter punishment,) but at some point they should certainly be acted on. Offsite bullying is harder to deal with, although I would note that multiple sites that have tended to facilitate such things in the past have been much more hesitant to do in the recent past due to changes in their ToU, or just some of their mods being fundamentally decent people. (I mean, there's harsher speculation about issues involving my health on Wikipedia than there is in any public section of WPO. I do think that arbcom candidates should be ready to deal with their actions being discussed in the press - even when I was an editor and not yet an admin many of my content choices (sometimes even in situations where I'd only made a single edit to a topic) where picked up on by MSM outlets without them notifying me ahead of time. If an arb disagrees with an outlet's characterization of their behavior, most outlets are quite receptive to printing counterpoints (at least brief ones,) especially when they come from someone in some position of authority, such as an individual arb. Kevin Gorman (talk) 17:24, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
I believe Smallbones feels that the answer to what ails Arbcom is that all incoming members should be female. At least that is what he told a cheering crowd in Washington, DC at WikiCon, maybe that statement was just for effect. Of course, in my opinion this doesn't really solve any of the inherent difficulties of which you speak. (See, if he ran for ArbCom we could ask him these and other things...) Carrite (talk) 12:49, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
In the Signpost I stated my position "They don’t need to all be women, although that would send a loud and clear message to all concerned. They don’t need to all be feminists. All they need is to be committed to stopping the bullying." In my 1-minute comment in DC, I was trying to convey that women needed to do more than complain - they need to find candidates and vote. I think almost everybody has gotten that message. Smallbones(smalltalk)18:31, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
I'd absolutely run as part of a slate. Oh, wait, slates are banned, aren't they? No wonder the result is such a mess... No sane person would want to be part of the ridiculously dysfunctional institution that has emerged, and it takes 8 votes to fix it — with basically zero reformers on board now. The lowly state of the institution is ultimately the responsibility of the sitting committee, which has absolutely run the franchise into the ground. It is getting to the point where only nihilism makes sense: ArbCom needs to be blown up and started over. Voting NO for everybody and leaving more than half the seats unfilled might send a message. It has been suggested elsewhere... Carrite (talk) 13:33, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Carrite: What makes you think "slates" are banned? They are not, as far as I know. You don't get bracketed on the ballot, but you can identify yourself as part of a group. Some people don't like people running as a group, perhaps enough people feel that way to make it unlikely that a "slate" or any of its members would get elected, but it is not "banned." Neutron (talk) 21:33, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
I feel the same way about my own WP work. Unfortunately, we have a system in which writers write, copyeditors edit, administrators administrate, and it takes a lawyer or a lunatic to want to serve on ArbCom. And there sure as hell aren't enough lawyers... Carrite (talk) 13:56, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
In agreement with Euryalus. If yas don't have problems with giving over personal info to WMF? then by all means run for Arbcom. GoodDay (talk) 13:30, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
For the most part, it's not WMF I'm afraid of. If I were on arbcom, and pissed someone off? I'm all but certain that people would be knocking on my door, irl, or calling my employer. And that's happened to sitting arbs, in the past. I don't think the WMF would abuse my identity - it's wikipedians I don't trust. Which is a shame, as I'm tempted to take a crack at it. UltraExactZZSaid~ Did14:57, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Yep. (The WMF is nothing to be afraid of, characterized--from my point of view--mostly by inactivity.) And some of those Wikipedians are Legion, literally--I got two masters of extensive sock farms harassing me. Drmies (talk) 15:37, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
IMHO, the editors who've been the most vocal in their criticism of Arbcom, should (themselves) be running for Arbcom. They've talked the talk, now it's time for them to walk the walk. Complaining won't solves anything. Take the bull by horns & just do it, folks. GoodDay (talk) 13:50, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
It's all about politics and counting votes. Nothing good is going to come from the next ArbCom. Nothing. I've got an encyclopedia to help write. Carrite (talk) 14:01, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
As others suggested above, the best thing to do right now is to vote against all candidates. Voting in new faces has never helped to address the ArbCom's fundamental problems. I would be willing to vote for a candidate who makes a firm pledge to conduct all deliberations on-wiki, but everyone else gets an automatic no vote. Everyking (talk) 20:50, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Undoubtedly. Confidential information must be kept confidential. But the ArbCom could conduct the overwhelming majority of its business out in the open without compromising anyone's privacy. So why not? Everyking (talk) 23:37, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Yes. I haven't been an arb, but ArbCom is where to go with information that simply needs to be kept secret--in some cases, for the benefit of the editor one is charging with certain misdeeds. Drmies (talk) 21:16, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
I agree, but deliberations can be in public except for confidential information that can be reviewed in "executive session" so to speak. The problem is that otherwise people have no idea how arbcom reaches its decisions in these cases. Sometimes they seem totally arbitrary. Coretheapple (talk) 17:36, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
Evereyking I have gone as far down that route as I feel I can. Perhaps you can persuade other candidates to adopt the same undertakings. All the best: RichFarmbrough, 01:31, 14 November 2015 (UTC).
If Smallbones is concerned with bullying, their first step should be to stop acting like a bully [19]. WP:BANREVERT says to remove comments, and if Smallbones was simply removing edits by those-who-have-sorta-talkpage-banned-by-Jimbo -- preferrably with a neutral edit summary --I'd be supportive. Rather, they replace the comments with statements in the form of "Removed comment by Naughty, signed Smallbones(smalltalk)," which reads like grandstanding "Look at me removing comments from him, who is bad person, inferior to us enlightened folk!" nonsense. NE Ent14:39, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
When a troll who had twice previously been told by Jimmy to stay off this page, responds to Jimmy's "Please go away, then" by accusing Jimmy of "utter arrogance", then I think spelling it out to the troll was necessary. The troll then went to my talk page twice and then to ArbCom for further clarification. I think he understands now. Smallbones(smalltalk)16:13, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
Agree. I've been on a break lately but still managed to get an IP death threat for reverting vandalism. Sometimes you can just walk away, other times you can't. Sometimes, the bully, as a calculated atrocious prick, choses their words before walking the ferrets, and avoid bans that IPs would be struck down for. No use pretending WP or ArbCom has it worked out, they don't. But there's also no point pretending WP, like the rest of the web, isn't changing. Time is on the side of those who want a fairer volunteer workspace. AnonNep (talk) 16:52, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
... oh wow. I never knew about the Xeer, and is indeed remarkably parallel in its conceptual framework to what seems to have naturally (and independently) evolved on Wikipedia (and most other projects). I need to dig into what research has been done on the history and evolution of that system to learn more about it. — Coren(talk)14:06, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
Do the Xeer make it up as they go along while being accountable to nobody yet complaining they are only volunteers? If so, I agree. —МандичкаYO 😜 17:57, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
Larry Sanger is always right. "Is Wikipdia an asylum? and mob rule?": well if you read WP:PITCHFORKS enough it certainly starts to resemble one, with mobs taking pot shots at one annother. But it's a very serious asylum, and I'd imagine an actual asylum to be more fun. "Run by the inmates" well yes, except when the men in white coats (the WMF) turn up with "office actions" which of course doesn't please the mob/asylum inmates much.
I think at this point, with 200+ projects and 5M English articles, it's probably not possible to turn the ship around without accompanying damage. You get this large and you work on incremental changes not radical restructuring. LizRead!Talk!17:46, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Meh...I have a feeling if the next couple of ArbCom creations continue to be ineffective and unable(or unwilling) to implement common sense, basic workplace/volunteer measures to make sure that the project is more than just another version of Usenet/IRC etc., the Foundation will probably be forced to start hiring an oversight committee. They can still call it ArbCom or whatnot, but it may be a version with paid WMF staff overseeing the issues. Or maybe with a 15 member ArbCom they can use 6-7 elected members and 7-8 paid staff. I doubt they allow the project to continue to devolve into some type of mob rule BBS board. Dave Dial (talk) 17:57, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
But while the English Wikipedia is the largest, it's just one of 200+ projects that fall under the Wikimedia banner. What sort of precedence would it set for the WMF to pour money into one project and not the others? I think this is why most money goes towards technical improvements (which may or may not be improvements!) because they can be deployed across multiple projects, there is less favoritism. It seems like so often, editors think that the English Wikipedia=WMF when the WMF have larger concerns than the relative success of one project even if it is the flagship one. Plus, since recent stats show an increase in active editors over 2014 numbers, they might not even believe there are problems here. I mean, there have been much tougher times than the present day in Wikipedia's history. LizRead!Talk!00:35, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
What percentage of donated funds come from the banners and such on enwp? Surely if we're talking fair the funds breakdown should somewhat mirror the fund raising? 71.11.1.204 (talk) 17:35, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
@DD2K: To go from Usenet to Facebook, from IRC to Twitter -- that is not a step forward but a step far, far backward. The only thing to recommend it is that a handful of good manipulators made themselves a lot of money. But Wikipedia does need to take the lesson that anarchism's main vulnerability is its extraordinary rigidity. Usenet went a long time without introducing obvious mechanisms to improve performance like enabling servers to implement client-directed screening for excessive crossposts, bleeding users all the way. Wikipedia can't neglect development that allows users more control - most notably, it should go toward a more Usenet-like model that allows there to be more than one "latest correct version" of an article, leaving the user to pick whose authority and whose rules determine which that version is. If Wikipedia could shatter the political and financial force of this centralized power, it could get out from under the resource curse that leads people here to endless warfare. Wnt (talk) 17:49, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
That is backwards to me. Without control, it's anarchy. There are already too many children and such making decisions for this project. Using Usenet and IRC as successful endeavors seems like a sure blueprint for failure. I have seen too many children and child-like members of ArbCom making immature and reckless decisions, but using procedure and legal-like languages to make it as if there is strong basis for these decisions. Despite the fact that we are often left with no real solutions, just more of the same old same old with another case. Just put a new number at the end and try again. I left the Usenet, IRC and message board culture to get away from that type of atmosphere. Wikipedia goals and guidelines seem be a worthwhile attempt to establish something the World needs. If people want a social networking, trolling/lulz type atmosphere, perhaps we should either change the scope of this project, or those people should find a new place. Smh... Dave Dial (talk) 19:37, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Not only do the inmates run this joint, they built and own it... You don't have to be crazy to be a Wikipedian, but it does make it less painful. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:01, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Response to your email
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 9 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion
According to Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 51#Yearly appeal (posted by PRL42), some users are receiving an email asking for a donation. The problem is that (apparently) the email has a donation link which appears to go to wikimedia.com, but which actually links to links.wikimedia.mkt4477.com. Some email clients flag such an email as a possible scam, and phab:T114010 indicates that some recipients of the email are concerned, so various fixes are being considered. Are emails with tracking links really necessary? Johnuniq (talk) 22:14, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that it is not the inclusion of tracking links per se that is the problem. It is the fact that the text for one of the links is a URL ("https://donate.wikimedia.org"). This is, of course, a signature for phishing scams - although there are obviously legitimate reasons for doing this. The problem could be rectified in moments by simply changing the text that shows as a URL to say something like 'Click here to donate'. PRL42 (talk) 07:57, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with the details of the decision making on this, but there are a lot of really obvious reasons to use tracking links for A/B testing. One of the core goals of the fundraiser is to raise funds with a minimum of intrusion - so emails that work better are obviously desirable. Emails with usability problems, or messages that don't appeal to donors, are not good as they force us to run more banners, or make do with less money.
Obviously, if they are being done in a way that causes people to fear a scam, that is bad. I've never heard of 'mktr4477.com' but if I see a link with text that says 'donate.wikimedia.org' and I hover over it and see 'mktr4477.com' I'm going to worry - and I'm hoping that my email client will worry too, and warn me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:44, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
It should be now clear that this news requires immediate and high-scale action from our community. I would urge everyone to please do everything they can as citizens of their respective countries -- particularly the US and European Union countries -- to raise awareness of Bassel's urgent situation. Write and call your Congressmen, Members of Parliament, Members of European Parliament, and ask them to intervene and speak up. A press release from the Wikimedia Foundation would also be helpful, at the very least. odder (talk) 20:26, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Hmmm, what kind of satellite or other pictures of Adra Prison can you get? What other information about the place? Can you add them to the article? If it would be an improvement, could Wikipedia commission some private satellite images of the facility and surrounds, or get some donated to CC-licensing? Note that I, of course, am not suggesting that we take any intentional step to help Jaysh al-Islam succeed in liberating the facility with a third try, as that would probably be illegal ... I just think that human rights advocates reading our articles would like to get a really good view of that awful place. :) Wnt (talk) 23:17, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Who decides which political or humanitarian causes the Wikimedia Foundation supports and which is does not? If the Wikimedia Foundation supports one side of a political struggle, will it be seen as a neutral source of information on that issue? Protopone primigena (talk) 23:36, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
That's two very separate matters. Unlike the Foundation, article content is governed by our policies and guidelines. Articles take no side in conflicts, but they do document the sides. If the due weight in reliable sources leans towards one side, then the article will do the same. That's how NPOV works. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:16, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
Do you think that the editors of Wikipedia can make that distinction if the Foundation endorses a position? And do you think that the reading public will make that distinction? Protopone primigena (talk) 04:01, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
Of course. Besides that, the public and 99.9% of editors haven't a clue about the positions of the Foundation. Editors just focus on polices and guidelines and write content. Any editor who tries to make improperly biased edits will get called on it by other editors, and if they persist, they may get blocked. Your fears are unfounded. -- BullRangifer (talk) 04:33, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
The Signpost: 18 November 2015
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 9 years ago14 comments11 people in discussion
In the vein of the long-running urban legend about Lincoln and Kennedy's lives being similar to each other, [21] I have decided to compile some similarities between Mr. Wales' life, and that of John Oliver (comedian).
They were both the oldest of four children, and they both had at least one educator parent. [22] (Oliver had two, but Wales had one, his mother). [23]
Oliver, who is British, is married to Kate Norley, an American woman, while Wales, who is American, is married to Kate Garvey, a British woman. Note also that their wives both have the same first name.
Oliver was born in the UK but now lives in America. Wales was born in America but now lives in the UK.
Of course these are all coincidences, but it's still interesting, at least to me. I hope the other readers of this page, particularly Wales himself, will agree. Everymorning(talk)00:42, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
The Kennedy-Lincoln thing is not exactly an urban legend. Snopes chops the list down into the component parts and shows why each one by itself is not so remarkable, and also shows that a few of them are either probably incorrect or at least questionable. But if you take the main items that are unquestionably true, together, the odds that all these things would be true is not great. Two men, first elected President exactly 100 years apart, were assassinated on the same day of the week and both replaced by men named Johnson - the only Johnsons ever to become president. I think there is a "wow" factor right there, even forgetting about everything else. (And I personally would add the theater-warehouse warehouse-theater thing to the list, though as Snopes points out, that is somewhat a matter of interpretation.) I am not suggesting that this is any more than a series of coincidences, but it is a highly unlikely series of coincidences. As for John Oliver and Jimbo Wales, I'll leave that for other historians to deal with. I'd be more impressed if their wives had a name a little less common than "Kate". Neutron (talk) 19:45, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
There is a problem with the concept "highly unlikely series of coincidences". Consider a golfer who hits a ball which lands in the middle of a fairway. When the golf ball lands it touches one individual blade of grass before any other -- maybe just a nanosecond sooner, but one blade gets touched first. What are the odds that the ball would first touch that one blade of grass instead of any other? Millions to one. But does that mean that the ball landing involves any highly unlikely coincidences? No, because it was certain to hit a blade of grass. Likewise with Kennedy-Lincoln. Same day of the week could have been same day of the month, same hour of the day, same minute, same weather, undertaker with the same last name -- the list of possible coincidences that didn't happen goes on and on. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:27, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
I agree completely, which is why I think of this as a harmless bit of enjoyable fun. I suspect if you try, it's pretty easy to find remarkable coincidences in a fair number of cases.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:49, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Kind of disturbing that you would compare two people that were assassinated to two living people. Kind of fatalistic. Future Prince of Wales married a Kate as well. At least they are still alive. Now if both had stalkers named "John Wilkes Harvey Oswald," I think you;d have something. --DHeyward (talk) 00:16, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
When I met the Duke of Cambridge at a meeting about his charity (I suggested that he back a Wiki Loves Monuments global photo competition on conservation, but nothing came of it unfortunately), I mentioned that he uses "Wales" as his surname in his military career, and so in a way his wife is Kate Wales, like mine. It's not actually correct, of course, not least of which because my wife doesn't go by "Kate Wales" but it was fun to say. But... John Oliver is alive, so I'm not bothered by the parallel drawing.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:49, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Both Jimbo Wales and John Oliver have ten letters in their names.
Both Jimbo Wales and John Oliver wear glasses
Both have a connection to two other people with a strong connection; Wales helped found an encyclopedia which has Kennedy as an entry, Oliver played a character named Booth Wilkes John.
Fun as such comparisons always are, you could probably pick two people assassinated and find any number of coincedences. For example, I looked to see if there are any things which John Lennon and JFK have in common. Nothing obvious came up in terms of dates but, apart from sharing the same name
JFK was elected president in 1960. The Beatles formed in 1960.
Both had fathers of Irish origin who had maritime connections. JFK's dad was first chair of the maritime commission, Lennon's was a merchant seaman.
Lennon was murdered by a guy from Texas, JFK was killed in Texas.
Both assassins were southerners known by their 3 names.
Both were concerned with civil rights and opposed politically by Richard Nixon (Tricky Dicky tried to have Lennon deported.)
JFK's dad worked for Roosevelt, Lennon died in Roosevelt hospital.
Now that Wikimedians have changed the world, such that every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge, we should probably start describing bigger dreams, hopes and ambitions. What's our most radical conception of our organization and community — 20, 50, 100 years from today?
Some first thoughts, based on the current vision:
Our work benefits the entire planet - maybe the whole multiverse - not just humans.
We don't just share knowledge.
We practice what others only preach - freedom, responsibility, duty, service, compassion - better than any other country-size organization, anywhere, ever.
We are building a new transnational, transracial, transpolitial, transreligical, transeverything world, and we don't even know it.
Let's not use cliches like "imagine a world"
We'll be working on our original vision for centuries. Surely you don't think we have anything close to the sum of all human knowledge in Wikipedia? Consider one example. There are about 65,000 named streams in Pennsylvania, but only about 800 articles on Pennsylvania streams. The situation is worse with hills, lakes, swamps, protected areas, and features in other states. Hundreds of thousands or millions of chemicals, asteroids, species, and settlements do not have articles yet. At least a hundred thousand historical figures are probably missing from Wikipedia. See this, which estimates that 104,000,000 articles are needed to cover the sum of all human knowledge. We are only 5% of the way there. In fact, I think that the page I linked to is conservative: I would estimate 150-200,000,000. And the number of notable topics grows every day. So, yeah, no need to worry about a new vision for decades, if not centuries. --Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 12:52, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
What we really need is not more slogans, but strategies that keep Wikipedia healthy and longterm viable, that save Wikipedia from deteriorating, overstretching, failing. --Atlasowa (talk) 14:38, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Latest comment: 9 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion
I wanted to start this discussion with a comparison. Wikipedia would not publish rumors about Charlie Sheen being HIV positive, so why would it publish rumors about Bassel Khartabil being sentenced to death, I was going to ask. But then I looked at the history of Charlie Sheen's entry and saw that editors had indeed added rumors that Sheen was going to announce that he was HIV positive. It was added and removed several times before the television appearance confirming his HIV status. I know that it is a very imperfect comparison, but why is it not ok to include widely reported rumors about Sheen, but it is ok to include weakly sourced rumors about Khartabil? Protopone primigena (talk) 23:32, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
The collective "Wikipedia" does not make and is not capable of making editorial decisions about what is included in individual articles. Instead, the group of editors interested in each individual article decide that through consensus, which should be based on our policies and guidelines. Your question makes it clear that you are an editor interested in the Sheen and Khartabil articles. Boldly edit to remove content that you believe violates BLP policy. If reverted, discuss on the article's talk pages. I see no discussion of your concerns at Talk:Bassel Khartabil. Cullen328Let's discuss it05:01, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
I have no real interest in either Khartabil or Sheen. I was drawn to the former by the "Bassel Khartabil sentenced to death" discussion here on Jimbo's page. I picked Sheen only as a comparative example because of the recent news. Based on what I read in WP:BLP, I don't think either rumor should have been included in the article, but the discussion here of Khartabil suggests that editors may be have difficulty maintaining neutrality in light of his tragic situation. As for Sheen, why would I bother removing such a statement if I have no reason to believe that it won't be put back within hours? I'm sure we both have better things to do than watch Charlie Sheen's Wikipedia article in case fans want to include what anonymous sources say about the number of sex partners he has had in the past 4 years. Protopone primigena (talk) 16:39, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
As this is an entirely voluntary encyclopedia building project, you can decide for yourself whether you have better things to do than deal with BLP violations on this encyclopedia. I routinely put problematic BLPs on my watch list, and try to protect them. I encourage all responsible editors to do the same. Cullen328Let's discuss it07:33, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Generally, this is not an ideal page for dealing with this sort of issue. If you post to WP:BLPN you will find a group of editors and administrators who are very much interested in identifying and removing BLP violations. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:18, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
Well, the issue is a general one about including rumors in biographies. I thought that posting here might prompt some discussion, but I seem to have been wrong. Nevermind. Protopone primigena (talk) 17:05, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
ArbCom elections now open
Latest comment: 9 years ago9 comments6 people in discussion
And if anybody wants a pretty much opposite rationale to that proffered by Smallbones, be sure to check out User:Carrite/ACE2015. All other voters' guides are also linked to from the top of the page. (Was that little unpaid COI campaign ad really necessary, Smallbones?) Carrite (talk) 07:09, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Voting turnout seems to be extremely high this year. I see about 470 votes so far in less than 1 day. Last year only had about 600 voters total over the whole voting period. I'm confident that the high turnout will benefit those candidates who are against the bullying that goes on here, i.e. those who are sometimes derisively called "safe-spacers" (is that the term you use, Carrite?)
Regarding the turnout. I was digging through the history of Template:Centralized discussion, and if you look specifically during the voting phase of ACE2014, the 2014 elections were never publicized on the centralized discussion template. They were, however, publicized on the template the year before. It's possible that editors skimped on the election simply because they didn't realize it was going on... or maybe I need a Self-trout because that's what happened to me. This year, new publicity methods were implemented, including the mass message that you see below, and there was a small consensus for a Central Notice banner, but I don't think that was ever implemented. Mz7 (talk) 03:51, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Does WP:BURO mean that some people more equal than others?
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
C ВП:НЕБЮРОКРАТИЯ ознакомьтесь. За больно частое напирание на "нелегитимность" (а не содержательную некорректность) каких-то решений и в бессрочку недолго угодить. MaxBioHazard 17:47, 23 ноября 2015 (UTC)
Read WP:BURO. Those who often complain to the "legitimacy" (not meaningful incorrectness) of any decisions might quickly get permanent ban. MaxBioHazard 17:47, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
(the threat was written by a person who have good friends and so more equal than others to advocate of breaking rules by other more equal persons)
I have gone as far down that route as I feel I can. Perhaps you can persuade other candidates to adopt the same undertakings. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:31, 14 November 2015 (UTC).
Self-trout because that's what happened to me. This year, new publicity methods were implemented, including the mass message that you see below, and there was a small consensus for a Central Notice banner, but I don't think that was ever implemented. Mz7 (talk) 03:51, 24 November 2015 (UTC)