User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 188

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Rules of Wikipedia were violated for the good of Russian murderers

Hello Jimbo. Supporters of Russian murderers (Ukraine) block users without any reason (fake reasons). Please take action vs them! They must restore deleted edits. The situation is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dmitry_Medvedev&action=history (Dmitry Medvedev). - Rome12345 (talk) 21:57, 30 April 2015 (UTC).

This was dealt with here, but Need1521 simply refuses to get the point. This sock puppet was blocked earlier here. Please block this sock. Valenciano (talk) 22:01, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

He's blocked.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 22:14, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

• Nice to meet you! Thank you for the protection to our Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev! I say thanks on behalf of a lot citizens of Russia and on behalf of our government (in some meaning, because Im simple man). Crimea became Russian on legal grounds. If somebody very bad man - this can be said about Obama and Harper (their Europenian team also)! Putin once said: Russia can not lose any war (history knows). And even on English Wikipedia, Medvedev and Putin are winners in battle of edits. Putin is number one: http://www.forbes.com/profile/vladimir-putin/ (says the Forbes). He stronger of any Obama. Thank you else time Jimbo! - Black2255 (talk) 21:10, 1 May 2015 (UTC).

Yeah, you tell 'em Blacko! World politics has come such a long way since 1984, hasn't it. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:20, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure being number 1 in powerful people is always a good thing. The trouble is dictators tend to get to that position, having all powerful leaders doesn't help democracy particularly.

Something I've always wondered: why does Vladimir Putin have 39 pictures of him in it, many in "heroic" poses? Isn't that a bit excessive? --Jules (Mrjulesd) 14:00, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Are the 36 pictures of George W. Bush in our biography of him also excessive? AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:06, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Can't you just leave those two alone?! It's obvious they had something really special and beautiful going on. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:04, 2 May 2015 (UTC) (... if that really was them, of course... )

Yeah I think you're right, a special relationship is blooming. Needs a caption like "make love not nuclear war" or something... --Jules (Mrjulesd) 01:42, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

• Somebody here has ill head (Need1521 was against Medvedev). Black2255 - a defender of Medvedev. Stranger2552 (talk) 21:33, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Disaster relief donations

Jimbo,

Wikipedia is increasingly the go-to source of information in times of global disasters.

I think it is appropriate, and not in conflict with the goals of Wikipedia, to provide limited external links to appropriate organizations where people can donate to relief efforts.

I realise the importance of keeping external links to a minimum, but I do feel that this is an important special case.

Complications include knowing the appropriate sites - being especially careful to avoid scams. It can be difficult to know the best organizations, especially globally, to give. But I'm confident that the vast majority of us accept that organizations such as UNICEF, Red Cross, CARE, and so on are internationally accepted as being legitimate. Also I can imagine potential arguments over disasters that relate to political incidents (wars, and so forth).

But surely, in the interests of doing good, we can come to a consensus that helping readers who wish donate to countries in desperate need, following earthquakes and suchlike, is a Good Thing.

Perhaps it is something that Wikimedia Foundation could help with - by providing a way to put a single 'Donations' link (perhaps) on such articles, directing users appropriately - possibly via a WMF page listing some of the most major international relief organization links. Thus perhaps it is something that could be driven by the power of Jimbo?

I know the issue isn't totally straight-forward, but it could make a tremendous difference, if we can make it easy for readers to give a little, in times of global disasters.

For reference only, for clarity - and not wishing to debate my own edits - I'll mention that I tried adding links to the 2015 Nepal earthquake, which were removed [2]. But I'd like us to discuss the issue in general terms, for future articles - not that specific case

I feel that if - God forbid - there was a large-scale emergency in the USA, people (here) would push for this more strongly.

Thanks for your consideration. 88.104.18.134 (talk) 18:18, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

See User:Wavelength/About society/Ethical options.—Wavelength (talk) 18:55, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

There are around 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the USA alone.[3] Making an exception for UNICEF etc is well meaning, but it might annoy the smaller charities.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 18:57, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

It might; and that may be unavoidable. But they're probably equally annoyed about the links given by websites such as CNN, the BBC, Reddit, Google, etc.

I don't think that's a good enough reason to do nothing. We could maybe come to an agreement about which to use through consensus - or, it could be driven by WMF? It might be possible to make a policy or something, to use in general for such cases.

I actually believe that such a link fits within 'encyclopaedic value'. My feeling is that a fair proportion of people reading about a current e.g. Earthquake would find a link to make a donation useful.

It's radically different from what we'd usually call a 'spam link' - it's more like the allowable official external links in company/org articles. I know there is no truly 'official' place to donate, but quibbling over that seems pedantic in comparison with the potential for good.

I know their could be contention over more minor charities, but surely few of us object to people wanting to give a little via e.g. Medicines Sans Frontiers or OXFAM? In fact, I doubt other charities would mind either; I suspect they'd welcome people giving via any method, not just their own. 88.104.18.134 (talk) 19:14, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

This seems like a dangerous slippery slope here. Is there really anyone who is going to go to the Wikipedia article trying to find information for how to donate? --B (talk) 19:39, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

If I Google "Nepal Earthquake" I am bombarded with several different advertisements from various charitable organizations who want me to donate, information on charities isn't hard to find if people are looking for it. Wikipedia is not a place to promote specific charities over others. Winner 42 Talk to me! 19:45, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia deals with the 'slippery slope' problem in the EL section of other articles through discussion and consensus on what is a reasonable number of links to help the reader without becoming excessive. I see no reason that can't work for disaster-relief donations.88.104.18.134 (talk) 20:34, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Someone reading about this Earthquake may well find a link useful. I don't think that the fact they can find it elsewhere is a fair argument in accord with any policy or guideline.

In addition, the links you find elsewhere may well include scams - unofficial sites where donations will never reach their intended targets. Wikipedia has the opportunity to only provide links which are genuine, internationally-recognized, and trustworthy. 88.104.18.134 (talk) 20:34, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't agree with that and I don't think Wikipedia ought to be in the business of advocating for things. I didn't agree with it when Wikipedia openly campaigned for its preferred public policy in Protests against SOPA and PIPA#Wikimedia community and I don't agree with it now. There are lots of worthwhile causes and lots of causes not so worthwhile. How do you pick which ones Wikipedia should openly advocate for? Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the War in Darfur. Should Wikipedia advocate for them too? Category:2015 disasters and its subcategories have lots of entries. Which of them are worth Wikipedia's advocacy and which are not? --B (talk) 22:47, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't see this as advocacy any more than providing a link to the website of articles about a museum, a movie, a political organization, a company, or anything else. We are not making a choice about the worthiness of donating - merely providing the information for those that might wish to donate.

With regards Darfur, I mentioned political incidents in my original comments. I am not saying this will be an easy decision in every case, but I believe in the power of discussion and consensus to sort out such issues. Worthwhile things are often not so easy.

I doubt anyone here is objecting to the principle of people donating to aid relief in the recent Earthquake; the question is about whether Wikipedia can make that a little easier for them, by providing a link. I don't think that such a link is in conflict with the goals of Wikipedia.88.104.18.134 (talk) 23:16, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

'Unarchived' just once, to give a little more time, hoping for a response. 88.104.18.134 (talk) 00:20, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

See "Humanitarian response to the 2015 Nepal earthquake".—Wavelength (talk) 00:46, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

I favor including an external link to a notable charity's website in our article about that charity, which is our standard practice. I oppose including such links anywhere else, such as in an article about an earthquake. Wikipedia editors do not have the competence to judge that this particular group of ten charities deserve a link, and those other 20 or 30 charies are unworthy of a link (or a donation). There are organizations with websites that specialize in evaluating charities. Leave that work to them. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 00:51, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

I think it is reasonable to note that the UN has launched an emergency appeal UN Appeal and also an external link to the UN appeal website UNOCHA Nepal website would be entirely appropriate. Linking to the United Nations does not open the door to including links to any old charity website. --_nonsense ferret 01:55, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

There's also a practical consideration: very few websites can handle the load of traffic that we throw at them, even just by adding a link. Don't underestimate the crushing power of traffic from Wikipedia. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 09:18, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Since we are likely to consider doing this so rarely, would it be ever such a lot of effort for WMF to reach out to the UN as a courtesy beforehand to get their preferred link for this purpose? This would resolve any worries about capacity I'm sure. Building our relationship with these organisations can only be a good thing --_nonsense ferret 23:03, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

The need you're trying to address is actually quite large even by Wikipedia standards. According to The Washington Post, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has an outstanding appeal for $18.67 billion in funds, of which donors have contributed $3.27 billion, i.e. less than 20%. This is much, much larger than what Wikipedia pulls in with its yearly banner campaign. In order for Wikipedia to make a serious dent, it would need to multiply its force through some kind of political action, i.e. mobilizing readers to write to their governments and call for greater funding of humanitarian causes. However, such an effort would not be uncontentious, since some of us have unaddressed issues of homelessness, poverty and violence in our own countries and may be reluctant to risk scarce funds being lost to obstructive customs, corrupt officials and outright theft by terrorists. In the meanwhile, there is no reason why any article about a disaster cannot say "The UN,^[1] and Oxfam,^[2] have put out an urgent appeal for aid", linking to both organizations as simple citations. These (and many others) are reliable sources. It may not be as prominent as an external link at the end, but the use of ELs is severely bureaucratized by this point, and their position after the references section means that much of the time I don't notice them at all anyway. I think simply treating calls for donations as routine data and leaving it to editor discretion to cite them as primary sources may be the most productive approach that will actually fly, though I could be wrong. Wnt (talk) 13:03, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Please remember, I asked about putting an external link to donation/appeals on articles about large-scale natural disasters such as Earthquakes.

Philippe, "few websites can handle the load of traffic" - has that ever been a consideration in deciding whether to add an external link on an article? And do you really think a charity will object to getting too many people donating?

Wnt, I don't think that's an appropriate use of references - they're not being used as sources. I read [[WP:ELRC], and notice it says external links can include "websites that are specifically devoted to the topic" - which would cover some types of donation website, but not all. 22:33, 3 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.18.134 (talk)

I won't argue against using external links to note these sites, but merely note I find it frustrating. There are people who love to just go through and take them out. There is similar obstructivism regarding primary sources, but not as often, and I put a higher priority on opposing it in general. When the secondary sources about the topic mention some primary source - whether it is an author's website, a call for donations, an original paper documenting a scientific discovery, a controversial "tweet", or a beheading video - I always think it's important to cite it directly so that a reader can readily evaluate whatever it is. After all, for readers like me, much of the time we are only using the Wikipedia article as a path to find the original source. Wnt (talk) 00:38, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Sure, I agree. But I think it would be a 'good thing' if - for articles like the one about the current earthquake crisis in Nepal - we could have a limited number (even just 1) external link to 'Donate'. I think that would be useful to readers, and I think it is acceptable within the goals of Wikipedia. That's all.

My reason for asking Jimbo was, I'd like us to maybe come up with a policy/guideline, an agreement, so that that could happen.

Cullen above pointed out, there's "organizations with websites that specialize in evaluating charities" - great, so why can't we use those to decide which to permit?

User B pointed out there's lots of disasters (Category:2015 disasters) including political issues - OK, so can't we limit it to 'natural disasters' or something?

I think this is worthwhile, I hope we can work through the problems and come to an agreement.88.104.18.134 (talk) 03:33, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

As the wise old man of wikipedia - or anyway the old man of wikipedia - I'll just point out that there was a massive and very interesting discussion around this when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans nearly 10 years ago. Lots of websites (more than normal) were running special advertisements for the Red Cross and similar. But it was concluded (and as I recall, as I argued) that this was a pretty bad case of US-centrism. But what came out of the discussion was the idea that doing ad hoc appeals in emergencies was fraught with complications and difficulties and if it is even possible at all, some reasonable process must exist for it to be fair.

But a lot has happened since then, including "strikes" against bad legislation in several Wikipedia languages including Italian, English, and Russian, with mostly successful results. These were organized in relatively short order and while nothing is ever quite 100%, the community in general seems quite happy with the result.

I have always said that we are more than just a highly technical effort - Wikipedia is a moral statement about the kind of world we would like to live in. I see room for action in this kind of situation, but rather than having this conversation at the moment of emergency, where all the usual complexities tend to weigh against action of any kind, I'd rather see us have a more focussed and serious conversation about how we ought to use our invisible and unused power to put things on the global agenda in a major way.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:58, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good. When and where? 88.104.18.134 (talk) 02:38, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

I have started Wikipedia:Global agenda "for setting out policies and guidelines related to Wikipedia and the use of its power and influence for addressing global issues" [revised: "for setting out a plan for using the power of Wikipedia to address global challenges"]. However, Wikipedians vary widely in their beliefs and values, with various areas of overlap. Therefore, there could be many resignations by Wikipedians in protest, if details are not decided carefully. Also, it should be noted that some Wikipedians may choose to abstain from political issues.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:43, 5 May 2015 (UTC) and 22:33, 5 May 2015 (UTC) and 03:37, 6 May 2015 (UTC) and 13:15, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Should I put something there about the above - donations for earthquakes? Or on the talk page? 88.104.23.173 (talk) 17:36, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Global agenda has been nominated for deletion, and your comments are welcome at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Global agenda. If the result of that discussion is a decision to keep or move the page, then you can comment on the talk page.

—Wavelength (talk) 23:57, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I've commented there, but it seems like it may be deleted; if it is, perhaps there's somewhere else we can discuss at least the original part of this idea? Ie an external 'donation' link in an earthquake article? 88.104.21.226 (talk) 13:40, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

How long does that discussion last for anyway? 88.104.22.30 (talk) 23:37, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion process#Early closure says:

In general, deletion discussions should remain open for at least seven days to allow interested editors adequate time to participate. However, under certain circumstances, discussions may be closed prior to the seven-day timeframe.

Closers should apply good judgment before speedily closing a discussion, since often it is best to allow the discussion to continue for the entirety of the seven-day period.

Wikipedia#Deletion process#Closing discussions says:

Discussions are usually closed after seven days. If there is a lack of comments, or the action to take is unclear, the discussion may be relisted for an additional seven days. Usually, both closing and relisting are administrator actions.

—Wavelength (talk) 00:05, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Funds Dissemination Committee

Regarding the banner I've been seeing, that says The Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee advises on how millions of WMF funds are spent. Click here to participate in the election of its members. With a bit of digging, I found m:Grants:APG/Funds Dissemination Committee, which is a subpage of m:Grants:APG, so I assume that this committee advises on Individual Engagement, Project and Event, and Annual Plan Grants. None of these, as best as I can determine, are directly related to maintaining and improving the content and infrastructure of the English Wikipedia (and I'm unclear on the extent that these grants are even indirectly related to that). These grants don't seem that relevant to me, and I find it difficult to even begin to make an informed decision on how to vote. What I feel that I can make an informed decision on, it doesn't seem like there is any vehicle for voting on who decides that. That's frustrating to me. Wbm1058 (talk) 03:20, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Most of the programs and grants that are funded pertain directly to content (including outreach, etc). But a good example of a direct result you can see is Wikidata which was constructed as a project of Wikimedia Deutschland – which in turns get a fair chunk of its financing from the Foundation. — Coren ^(talk) 14:18, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm neither a defender nor an advocate of the FDC process - I'm an observer and I see things I like and things I don't like. The only real comment I have here is to respond to Wbm1058's specific inquiry about "English Wikipedia" - just to point out that it seems unwise for the FDC or the Foundation generally to elevate English Wikipedia in funding considerations. Give it due consideration of course, but we aren't a dot-com following the ad revenues, so the next million readers in Southeast Asia (to pick a region) should be just as important as the next million readers in English speaking countries.

As to the broader question of process and voting and all that, I'm all ears about how it could be improved, since I believe it certainly could.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:50, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Paid editing question

So, there's a user named @Chrisabraham: who is a paid editor for clients such as well known Scientologist Michael Doven and the controversial corporation Chick-Fil-A. Chris is open about his affliations and seems like an all around great guy. Trouble is, on some of the articles that Chris has worked on there are signs of paid editing by people who aren't as open and friendly. For example, on American Association for Clinical Chemistry, there's a new user @Mopolen1884: who has recently added a bit of puffery. On Lab Tests Online, an article created by Chris for the same client, @Random Mesh: cut and pasted whole paragraphs from a press release produced by one Molly Polen. (Random Mesh has also engaged in some hamfisted damage control on Genaro García Luna along with other obvious paid editor accounts.)

Since the American Association for Clinical Chemistry is Chris Abraham's client, is it reasonable to ask him about this activity? His clients pay him to ensure that their articles are neutral and abide by Wikipedia's standards. If other paid editors or employees of his clients make the article less than neutral, does Chris Abraham have responsibility as a Wikipedia editor to ensure that they remain balanced? Puupyreed (talk) 17:24, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

• Hello this is ChrisAbraham and I walked away from all that stuff. I tried to do it well but I really don't know how to get into line properly so, for the time being, I have tried to take a break from even knowing how to do this stuff. Every since I got the schooling, I have lost the Wikipedia clients (for obvious reasons) and have returned to my world of social media marketing and blogger outreach. I'll see if there's any way I can help, if you tell me the way I can best help as being a paid editor on Wikipedia seems to be a catch 22. Between a rock and a hard place. I understand how I have been painted and so forth and I am sorry that any of this has happened. When it comes to Wikipedia, I am honestly scared of my own shadow. Chrisabraham (talk) 17:37, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

I would nominate the Lab Tests Online article for deletion an the basis that it is advertising and is a service with no other notability. As short as the AACC article is, it is full of marketing-type wording and could use scissors taken to it. Words like promote, prestigious, and leading are red flags here. Nyth63 18:09, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, it AACC's and Lab Tests Online's defense, Lab Tests Online is a free online resource without advertising that's sort of a de facto free encyclopedia for lab tests and medical conditions, so either way, they're a sound and a good organization and I am sorry that my involvement in any way put a blemish on them in any way. I don't think either page deserves deletion but that decision is surely not up to me at all. Chrisabraham (talk) 18:23, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

• • That's not completely true. I actually was friends with Frank Burns (colonel) and know that he died on December 10, 2003, but since I no longer have editing privileges, and because I can't find an Obituaries Notice about his death, I just added it to Talk:Frank Burns (colonel) to let someone else pick it up. I really don't know if I should make direct edits any more, at least for a while, at least until I sort out best practices and how to build back up the trust of the community. Is that the proper way of working with the Frank Burns (colonel) page. Heck, it wasn't even me who created the page, though I did create the The Meta Network page a long time ago, in tribute, hoping it would become sort of a Stone Soup story, where lots of TMN members would join in to add to it. Yeah, that rarely if ever happens like that, does it? Chrisabraham (talk) 18:15, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Interesting story. Chris, I only know you from this conversation but as the original poster said, you seem like "an all around great guy". I wonder what you think of the "bright line rule" regarding COI editing - my view is that it saves people an enormous amount of potential heartache and respects the community's independence and neutrality. For me the idea that anyone is paid by the subject of an article to "ensure that their articles are neutral and abide by Wikipedia's standards" is highly unlikely, and the example presented here may help to illustrate why. If an above board paid advocate (not abiding, sadly, by the bright line rule) is confronted with edits which appear to be highly biased in favor of the client, what happens if the paid advocate reverts to a less flatting truth? Let's particularly consider the case where for any number of reasons (neglect, plausible but misleading sourcing) the bad edit is likely to stand if the paid advocate does nothing. I find the whole thing just a massive detour down the wrong path in life.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:46, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for getting to this so quickly. I appreciate it. Knowing all of this, how can I contribute moving forward? I feel like I am now in a bit of a mine field of my own making. What guidance can you give me? What should I do? Chrisabraham (talk) 22:55, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Chris, basically just disclose that you have a direct financial connection wherever there is one, and in those cases propose improvements on the Talk page of the article that are neutrally written and well-sourced. IMO the original post was less about Chris, who obviously had no ill-intent and has expressed no interest in continuing, as it was about the behavior of his former clients.

Lab Tests Online looks fine, but I would remove this sentence,"the leading scientific society for clinical laboratory science" which has a very WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim about an organization being the leader in their field cited to a primary source. The article is far too focused on their products and services, rather than material that is more historical in nature, but that would take more work to fix.

On a side-note, you may have an interest in the Social media marketing page. It's filled with marketing jargon and advocacy for the benefits of social media marketing. Our marketing-related pages are really under-serviced and I got the impression that you have a relevant background. Also of relevance is History_of_public_relations#Social_and_digital, which I wrote. CorporateM (Talk) 16:48, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Holy crap! I can do that? I would love to help improve all of the pages about things I am expert. Do I need to suggest in the TALK or can I actually make changes as long as I am 10000% hobbyist and not sponsored? Chrisabraham (talk) 17:37, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Well obviously if you don't have a conflict of interest you can edit like any other editor who has no COI. Coretheapple (talk) 18:06, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

The key thing is this: if you are editing on a topic, any topic, with which you have a potential conflict of interest, make a note of the fact on the talk page. Commit no spam, ever. Stick to uncontroversial, sourced content. And invite a Wikipedian with no financial connection to review your work. Carrite (talk) 18:07, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes, I have been a member of Wikipedia since almost the beginning. However, when you're in marketing for over a decade, and not science, my concept of what I think sounds like promotional rubbish and yours is different. That said, the concept of COI is clear as the Hungarian nose on my face so I will measure for COI thrice from now on and cut only once (and even then, mention my concerns on the talk page). Just because I've been on Wikipedia for a DECADE doesn't mean that I have ever put in my 10,000 hours. So, here's to starting. Thanks, everyone. Chrisabraham (talk) 19:00, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

@Chrisabraham: Sorry, I responded to your question before checking your contributions and finding that you created your account ten years ago, so obviously you are cognizant of the COI guideline and that COI editors can edit as they wish on subjects about which they have no COI. That being the case, what do you want to know? Coretheapple (talk) 18:43, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

What is your hobbies Jimbo

Hi Jimbo! Which sources tell about your hobbies (newspapers and magazines) ? About (music - cinema and so on).Thank you! - 95.27.105.181 (talk) 20:52, 4 May 2015 (UTC).

Jimbo's musical taste can be sourced to his one-time DJ gig. His family hobby of flying in presidential helicopters can be sourced to Zig Zag Zine. One publicly-available document indicated that Jimbo's 2009 expenditure on "periodicals/books/tapes/CDs" was $1,000 per month, but that document is not likely appropriate to post here. (See case # 09-011014-FD-12, if you're that interested.) - 2600:1002:B027:7E22:1C29:4062:5DC2:7E0A (talk) 21:37, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

• Thank you very much! - 95.29.145.149 (talk) 22:39, 4 May 2015 (UTC).
• I seem to recall reading somewhere that Jimbo enjoys singing in the rain but I can not verify. Probably picked it up from some entertainment-tonite-type blog. . Buster Seven Talk 14:49, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

This question was also asked on 8 March 2015 by 95.29.140.223. At the time, Jimbo said that he would soon be appearing on Desert Island Discs.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:07, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

M. Wales, perhaps have a look at far-reaching

…general observation on the way in which information is cited at WP (settling on the first available, even-if-not-reliable source, rather than working to provide truly reliable, encyclopedic sources), [4], where the case is of citing population data from a self-published blog-type web source, rather than doing the work to source the original governmental data. With regard, Le Prof 71.239.87.100 (talk) 16:16, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Why don't you get an account? It will provide you with more privacy and a stable identity for longer term building of reputation.

I agree with you (and everyone, as far as I can see) that sourcing original governmental data is better than sourcing to a secondary source. In this case, it seems that the website being sourced is that of a respectable historical authority for a local place, rather than a random "self-published blog-type web source", but even so original sources would be preferable. At the same time, Wikipedia is always in a state of flux and improvement - we don't ask that things be perfect from the start - rather, we get started as best we can, and improve from there. Unless there are serious issues at stake - biographies of living people comes to mind, as does information about medicine - we can be relaxed about sourcing uncontroversial information in a suboptimal way for a while. Having the suboptimal source, and having a conversation about it, is a good thing, whereas if we had nothing at all to start with, we'd likely not even have the conversation.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:46, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, you're right Jimmy on " respectable historical authority for a local place, rather than a random "self-published blog-type web source", this IP is causing a nuisance with the Skagen article which Ipigott and myself promoted to GA.This is supposed to be more than a start though, it's a good article. So is Skagen painters. It's a minor town in Denmark which is never going to have English language sources primarily for population. It uses the local historical society resource which should be about as reliable as you can get for this and is most certainly not a blog. We found what we could, if detailed central government data actually existed for this part of Denmark back centuries then we'd use it, as it is, it seems this is actually based on local government census details anyway. This person won't let it rest, I don't think advising him to create an account is a good idea, unless he drops it and decides to do something constructive.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:50, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Le Prof already has an account (User:Leprof 7272). Must not be logged in. Dustin (talk) 21:52, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

"settling on the first available, even-if-not-reliable source, rather than working to provide truly reliable, encyclopedic sources". Rubbish, have you even counted how many decent book sources the article uses alone, and this is just a small Danish town with just 8,000 people. Far better researched to reliable resources than 98% of articles actually.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:58, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Debate regarding our newer "Due weight NPOV policy"

Hi Jimbo,

There is an ongoing discussion over at at our NPOV talk page, that I think might interest you. It is about the importance of Neutrality and Balance vs: Proper Weighting based on the proportion of Reliable Sources. Thanks, Scott P. (talk) 18:06, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Global agenda

Wikipedia:Global agenda has been nominated for deletion, and your comments are welcome at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Global agenda.
—Wavelength (talk) 16:40, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipediocracy says "Jump!"; Wikipedia asks "How high?"

All right, it's a troll. Move along. Carrite (talk) 18:54, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Gregory Kohs seems to be pulling people's strings again. In January, Wikipediocracy published a blog post called "Unpaid Advocacy on Wikipedia". It was an attack on admin @Neelix:, who is also one of the most prolific and polite editors around. That blog post called for the deletion of Neelix's article Stephen Charlie's prostitution of a child and now someone has started a deletion discussion for it. It looks like Wikipediocracy members are trying to influence the vote by arguing with anyone who votes to keep the article. Something needs to be done about this. Puupyreed (talk) 18:54, 6 May 2015 (UTC) Wikipediocracy is a cancer - it's dominated by trolls, griefers, egotists, banned editors with a grudge and washed-up malcontents who spend their time dripping poison into Wikipedia. That said, while they are wrong most of the time, they are admittedly not always wrong. This might be one of those rare occasions. Prioryman (talk) 21:06, 6 May 2015 (UTC) I don't know, I think WPO was right on the money with their exposé of the Gibraltar spamming of the Wikipedia mainpage, for example. There have been and continue to be details first published there of editing abuses and dysfunctionalities — problems that are later rectified. So go ahead with the ad hominem attacks, I suppose, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Carrite (talk) 23:20, 6 May 2015 (UTC) P.S. Welcome to Wikipedia, Puupyreed, nice that you found Jimbo's talk page with your very first edit! In my experience, the WP regulars who hate WPO the most (and are also among its most voracious readers) are the ones whose shady editing have been exposed by WPO. You can tell they've been caught by WPO by the ad hominem attacks they make on WPO's members. To be fair, however, using ad hominem, strawman, and other logical fallacies is a common tactic shared equally among most Wikipedia kool-aid drinkers, not just the ones editing dirty. Cla68 (talk) 23:51, 6 May 2015 (UTC) Lets not forget Prioryman that Wikipedia also has its fair amount of trolls and griefers as well, some of whom are among the admins and Arbistocracy. WPO can be full of bullshit and fire but occasionally they do make some good points. I also agree with Carrite that they frequently seem to break the news on problems within the project (Wifione, Gibraltar, etc.). Its sometimes hard to wade through the bile, but I think its a necessary evil.HanselnGretel (talk) 02:18, 7 May 2015 (UTC) (sock of banned user) Is there any evidence that WPC "frequently" "break the news"? Dates, please? Or it is just a case of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? Staszek Lem (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 02:24, 7 May 2015 (UTC) (inserting) Simply read Wikipediocracy. Plenty of dates there. Writegeist (talk) 15:24, 7 May 2015 (UTC) P.S. I am the guilty of the AfD in question, and I want to express Puupyreed my sincere gratitude for Streisand effect. I was wondering WTH suddenly... Staszek Lem (talk) 02:31, 7 May 2015 (UTC) I have been known to cruise WPO from time to time looking for junk articles and categories, and biographies in need of suppression or correction. A number of the principals are pretty obnoxious, and the level of stupid commentary can get thick. But an enterprise such as this needs criticism, even if it isn't always fair. And really, the sentiment that "they attack me because I'm doing my job well" is never a good place to be. Mangoe (talk) 11:07, 7 May 2015 (UTC) "Unpaid advocacy" means editors writing about what they want to write about. The alternative does not seem nearly so desirable. When Wikipediocracy complains about "unpaid advocacy", it boils down to them not wanting editors to write about this or that, and most often that is something to do with sex. But I have to say - trashing someone because he is associated with the Salvation Army and wants to improve awareness of human trafficking issues, because that's something "sexual" - that's a new low. It smells like the David Cameron style of politics, aristocratic tin gods who want to censor your casual web browsing while the right of the powerful to molest kids at will remains the last and only right in Britain. Bullies aren't notable for telling the truth, so it's worth being clear that according to his userpage, Neelix has not left the project, but is on a wikibreak until next week; he remains an admin in good standing; and his userpage is protected because various IPs, including one starting 2601:, posted crap like this suggesting that his interest in activist Tara Teng, who calls herself an abolitionist because she wants to free women who are held in a state of slavery, is some kind of "stalking of a child beauty queen". A reason why people object to Wikipediocracy is because they have repeatedly engaged in this sort of attack on good editors, deliberately misrepresenting and distorting every fact. This kind of mindless cyberbullying is a cancer to which all those who do not want unaccountable people in power at the core of some mob telling them what they can edit. I don't know what their agenda is, but whatever it is, it finds no objection to our running yet another Square Enix ad on the front page a few days ago (we've done it at least every six months since 2005 or so) and then they use their prize cannon, OTHERSTUFFDOESN'TEXIST, to trash good volunteer work. I still don't have any idea of the truth about human trafficking. After the backdoor passage of the SAVE Act recently (an amendment with serious free speech issues which may or may not have been addressed by last-minute changes, I'm not sure), I saw reference to [5] which argues that many of the numbers bandied about are massively inflated. God I hope so. But work on articles like the one mentioned here is useful, because even one case like this is too many, and by putting these markers on the ground we help those serious about researching the issue start to get a handle on it. Wnt (talk) 11:09, 7 May 2015 (UTC) You might want to actually read the WPO blog post in question before commenting on it. --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 11:59, 7 May 2015 (UTC) The cancerous nature of WPO in general hasn't been challenged, but of that specific blog post, which bits would you hold up as a good use of electrons? Andy Dingley (talk) 13:52, 7 May 2015 (UTC) Thank you Wnt. I'm glad someone here has the clarity of mind to see Wikipediocracy for what it really is. This kind of mindless cyberbully is literally the worst kind of cancer. Puupyreed (talk) 15:39, 7 May 2015 (UTC) Wikipediocracy is "literally the worst kind of cancer"? Um, no. Even inflated rhetoric needs some sense of proportion. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:10, 7 May 2015 (UTC) Since this discussion was obviously started for the purpose of publicizing that website, I am sure a good laugh was had by all. Coretheapple (talk) 13:12, 7 May 2015 (UTC) Spamming Jimbo's talk page is the one thing they do best. Resolute 14:39, 7 May 2015 (UTC) I think you meant to say "the one thing we do best". JoeSperrazza (talk) 15:06, 7 May 2015 (UTC) Wikipediocracy is nothing more or less than a message board with a blog attached. Pretending that it is a monolithic group is patently absurd. For what it's worth, this thread is indeed probably a troll. Since we have no accountability for the starting of new or multiple accounts, we'll probably never know if it is a pro- or anti- person getting their giggles. Carrite (talk) 16:06, 7 May 2015 (UTC) If a pro- and an anti-person meet, would they annihilate each other? Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:11, 7 May 2015 (UTC) Well yeah, a message board, though I find the hivemind on that site being a great deal worse than anything here. I have to say, particularly given the outing taking place/attempted/threatened there, that the fact that a checkuser is an administrator of that site, who has on occasion edited Wikipediocracy in flagrant violation of the COI guideline, makes me absolutely disgusted. One of these days that's going to blow up in Wikipedia's face, and I will have no sympathy. Coretheapple (talk) 16:16, 7 May 2015 (UTC) Until that happens, WO will remain one of the most influential forces in pointing out and fixing Wikipedia's problems, and remain a net positive to the encyclopedia. KonveyorBelt 17:12, 7 May 2015 (UTC) Yes pigs will fly before any action is taken against the checkuser who administers an outing site and occasionally violates COI rules to edit its Wiki article. She can get away with it because of the very administrator abuse that Wikipediocracy users are always railing against. Unless they benefit from it, in which case an abusive administrator suddenly becomes a "straight shooter." This is a point of hypocrisy that is one of the underlying issues that keeps coming up. I think that without that "H factor," and the sort of general double-talk that comes from its defenders and participants, that site would be viewed more favorably. Coretheapple (talk) 17:35, 7 May 2015 (UTC) (e-c)"influential"..."net positive"... Wow... That's sad that someone believes that. I'm sure that's what school teachers and administrators say about the bullies at their schools, too. And then BANG! a kid shoots up the school or takes their own life. Sad, it's only a matter of time before someone does that because of the bullying on Wikipedia or Wikipediocracy. I am not ashamed to say there have been times I came VERY close to doing that myself from the ignorant, just plain evil, words said willy-nilly here with no consequences. I wonder if the time comes what Mr. Wales and the Board's reaction will be to the first casualty. Does the WMF have the funds to fight an unlawful death lawsuit from an estate of considerable wealth? Given that I and others have warned more than a hundred times that this is bound to happen from the bullying allowed to continue, there can be an expectation that the average person should have foreseen there was a problem to fix and by not fixing that problem a death that was foreseeable should have been prevented, thereby making the WMF responsible. Given that no one could possibly know the age of an editor, many cyber bullying laws could be used on Wikipedia or Wikipediocracy should a minor take their life due to wiki-stalking, harrassment, or bullying. I see Wikipediocracy as being even more vulnerable to a lawsuit given its format and vitriol that drips off every page, and they having less resources to fight with. Unfortunately the worst bullies on here will laugh at this post or roll their eyes, those that due are the ones we ALL must watch and not allow to be a part of this Community. There is no room in a collaborative effort for an individual who does not have common human decency and emotions. If you don't see a problem- YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.Camelbinky (talk) 17:42, 7 May 2015 (UTC) Strange, then, that it was Wikipediocracy that was at the forefront of highlighting certain editors (a number now banned) who were using Wikipedia to harrass, stalk or even groom editors who were minors. Wikipedia has been shown to be unable to police its own a number of times now. Black Kite (talk) 18:01, 7 May 2015 (UTC) Camelbinky, if I understand you, you are saying that you have come close to killing yourself because of what people have said to you on Wikipedia. For your own safety (and possibly the safety of others), you should be immediately and indefinitely blocked. The WMF should contact the local authorities so that you can get the help that you need. Puupyreed (talk) 18:38, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

In case anyone cares

User talk:Jimbo which was a redirect to this page (and easier to type in quickly to get here) has been deleted because it was moved without leaving a redirect behind. In case anyone cares to rectify this, if it even matters.Camelbinky (talk) 21:27, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Scalhotrod has reinstated the redirect. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:20, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate User:Scalhotrod doing that, even though it wasn't hard to do I didn't want to do it myself in case there was some sort of arcane rule or reason behind not having the redirect left behind when the page was moved and then some one come along and berate me.Camelbinky (talk) 17:24, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Can someone do a check user for me?

Can someone find out who the user is who made the sock User:Henry Bellagnome in an attempt to out me? Please. All that has been done is to block the sock puppet, which it still exists and the name is a trademark so it needs to be completely deleted instead of making it look like it's legit and only blocked for "abuse of editing privileges". I want the user behind the sock to be brought to light for the coward he/she is, and if an admin to be de-sysoped. Oh and given the comments at Wikipediocracy I see User:Carrite and User:Drmies are up to their normal bullying over there and outing me, I wouldn't be surprised if Drmies is involved and tried to cover up by being the one to block the sockpuppet given his/her comment at Wikipediocracy. Don't know why this stuff is allowed and Wikipedia admins are allowed to do such crap off-site. I don't even edit much anymore, can someone make my account disappear please? I'm done. Wikipedia doesn't want to do shit about bullies and allows admins to be dicks, I don't want to be involved. Mr. Wales I admire what you've created, I hope you get more involved and take some action in the future, but I respect your decisions to give up control, unfortunately you've got a bunch of jerks. Camelbinky (talk) 02:48, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't know if I should haul you to AN/I or just jump in at AN/I in the thread already running about you. I don't know your real life identity, nor do I give a fuck, nor do I out people. I will thank you for redacting your bad faith accusation against me immediately. Also: Drmies doesn't even post at WPO and is a critic of the critics. Take a break from editing, you seem overwrought. But first, I want that redaction or I will be seeing you at AN/I. —Tim Davenport, Corvallis, OR /// Carrite (talk) 04:51, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

You'd think a man close to 50 years old would know better than to be such a bully.Camelbinky (talk) 20:08, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm 53, actually. And not a bully. You, however, need to check out Exodus 20:16. (I'm still waiting for that redaction.) Carrite (talk) 04:08, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Never mind, I'll just throw a couple diffs on the pile. Carrite (talk) 05:20, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Good grief. I checked both and found no socks. I wasn't the only checkuser to check the first sock, and nobody found anything. Both are behind a broad IPv6 range, and checking that range didn't show up much. Feel free to ask for a second opinion. From what I know, @Drmies: isn't active on Wikipediocracy, and has had his own 'fans' there who've made disparaging comments about him. However, he doesn't seem to be too annoyed by that - Alison ^❤ 06:29, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Who hasn't had something negative written about them on sites like that? Do you honestly think Jimbo can do anything about what is said on there?♦ Dr. Blofeld 07:30, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

WP:BADSITES is dead as dead can be, and has resisted multiple attempts to resurrect it over the years. Only right, too, if you respect freedom on the internet - Alison ^❤ 07:42, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

WP:BADSITES may be dead but that doesn't mean that bad sites are any less bad. Way to go, Wikipediocracy, for demonstrating once again that you're basically a gang of rabid shitweasels. Prioryman (talk) 07:45, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

He's right about one thing; there are a bunch of jerks running around the place here. Sadly, his ire is misguided. In this case, it's most likely two Vigilant (talk · contribs) socks whom he blames on poor Drmies and then you show up out of the woodwork to endorse his smearing of an entire website based on the actions of one or two. The irony is palpable - Alison ^❤ 08:09, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Wait--Camelbinky really though I was posting on Wikipediocracy? Whoa. Camelbinky. I though you wuz smarter than that. Thank you Alison/❤: I'm always tickled when you say my name. Drmies (talk) 13:41, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

• Drmies, I believe that's called "Echo". — Crisco 1492 (talk) 14:19, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Cambelbinky, I'm surprised you haven't heard of the Streisand effect. No one would have connected you to this troll if you hadn't loudly announced that it was an attempt to "out" you. You made this into a bigger deal that the bellagnome account ever could. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:03, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, because I wouldn't have given this a second thought if it weren't for the Drmies and Carrite accusation. Probably not a good idea to draw a map Camelbinky.--Mark Miller (talk) 23:33, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

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"Milibandits deface Cameron Wikipedia page with 'vote Labour' vandalism"

This news story confirms the view that IP editors and new user accounts should not be allowed to edit templates, or upload new versions of images used in articles. This is a known loophole that can be used to get around semi-protection or even full protection. At the very least, this type of edit should have pending changes for IP accounts or user accounts less than 28 days old. The nonsense edits occurred here, resulting in this effect. Time to block this loophole.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 15:49, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

• Yep. Drmies (talk) 16:46, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
• Nay. The templates involved were UK political templates on the day before an election. Admins should have known they were at risk. There's no justification in locking up however many thousands (millions?) of little templates and infoboxes and crap that are associated with all the articles on Wikipedia, just because the biggest vandal magnet on the site got pinged for a few minutes. Even if a news story was created about it. Wnt (talk) 16:58, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Predicting which of dozens of templates used on each of dozens of articles that might be popular on any given day seems like an impossible task to me. Deli nk (talk) 17:01, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
    • Wnt seems to think that us admins sit around all day reading the papers trying to figure out what might need protection when. We've had these discussions before, and some of the admins who were locking down templates were deemed triggerhappy--but the damage one can do with one simple tweak to a template is immediate, widespread, often very visible, and sometimes difficult to repair. I mean, I've found vandalism in templates within templates within templates, and it takes me forever to figure out what's going on. Drmies (talk) 17:11, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

It is just too easy for vandals to do this. It happened over at Jennifer Lawrence, with the difficulty being compounded because the image was on Commons. The policy on protection does not allow for pre-emptive strikes, but pending changes would remove most of the scope for this type of nonsense. As usual, the media has made a bigger deal of this than it was. All of the edits were reverted within a few minutes, but by then there were screen grabs on Twitter, Facebook etc.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 17:08, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I understand that the difficulty of the task means that some cases will be missed. But I don't think that is a serious problem, because I think it is better to try to cheaply keep vandalism at a reasonably low level than to try to end all possibility of vandalism at great cost. The way I see it, a case like this is a "shot across the bow", reminding people that Wikipedia is what people make it. Our articles weren't carved on stone tablets and handed to Moses. Hopefully the disruption caused in those few minutes is balanced by the reminder it creates that people should evaluate what they read skeptically. The situation with Lawrence was more unfortunate, but still, those images were all over the Internet, and Wikipedia's brief lapse didn't contribute much to the problem. The true cure to the problem where she is concerned is not actually better Wikipedia administration, but a society-wide resolve to end the discrimination against women based on whether private images involving them have been leaked. Wnt (talk) 18:28, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

The most concerning thing about this is that so many people did not obey it.

In all seriousness, though, wouldn't a more proportionate approach than locking all templates be to look at a software fix? Is there a legitimate reason why templates need the capability to replace all the content of an article and recolour the page? Formerip (talk) 18:10, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

To what extent do anonymous ip numbers productively edit templates at all? The main justification for anon editing is that it provides an easy path to join the community - you don't even have to log in to make a change. There are downsides to this, of course: we know that while overall anon editors add more positive than negative, their overall productiveness (in terms of making good edits of any kind) is lower than experienced community members. It seems likely that there are cases (templates being one of them) where the cost of eliminating super easy anon contribution is relatively low, with the benefit being relatively high in terms of ameliorating quality issues and perception of quality issues.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:12, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&hideliu=1&namespace=10 ©Geni (talk) 20:34, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I see IP editors productively editing templates that are subject to frequent changes like team rosters. [6] --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:37, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, "overall anon editors add more positive than negative" - I suspect because most of those productive ones are the editors fed up with the politics of Wikipedia and who have either temporarily, or permanently, given up their Wikipedia user accounts for an easier and more anonymous life! But, of course, that's just one of those subjective guesses that we'd never be able or even allowed to prove. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:52, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

• But how many of these IP editors would get accounts if they had to? And would it lead to an overall increase in standards? Those are the questions I think are most interesting, and worthy of study at least. Statistics imply that people with accounts tend to have greater pride in their contributions. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 23:02, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

This is just my impression but I think some editors alternate editing with the user accounts and periods of time when they edit as IPs. Probably a lot of editors who have "Retired" across their Talk Page come back to do little edits, logged out. As an active editor, it's inevitable you have conflicts, small or big, with other users. Some choose to stalk your contributions. It can be a relief to be rid of the baggage and just focus on editing and not be involved in skirmishes or politics. This is not the same as socking as these users use one or the other account but not both simultaneously. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:21, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

MfD nominations

Hi Jimbo, I just wanted to inform you that User:Jimbo Wales/Facebook/Wdefcon and 8 other pages in your userspace (none of which were created or edited by you) have been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Jimbo Wales/Facebook/Wdefcon and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of the pages during the discussion and you may delete them yourself under CSD U1, if you don't want them yourself. Thank you. 103.6.156.167 (talk) 14:10, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

RfC on COI for practitioners of alternative medicine

See Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#RfC_on_COI_for_alt-med_practitioners Jytdog (talk) 16:58, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

What people reading this would have been doing 1,000 years ago

Michelle Beissel from Angouleme, France has started a hashtag series about old encyclopedia quirks on Google+ 209.210.168.146 (talk) 23:44, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Who is giving Russavia access to the OTRS wiki?

two banned editors doing their usual thing, plus some folks unintentionally feeding the trolls
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
File:Philippe (WMF) - Downplay.jpg Jimmy, it's pretty easy to ignore the hundreds of sockpuppets that Russavia has created since being globally banned, but now it has become clear that someone is giving him OTRS wiki access. One of his socks uploaded a screenshot of a comment WMF employee Philippe Beaudette made there. There's a discussion on Commons about another upload that has already been deleted because "its description contained potentially libelous content". Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. ILovePinkFloyd (talk) 14:44, 11 May 2015 (UTC) Access to the OTRS wiki is wide open, so much so that when some of the obvious "controversial" people at Commons circulate information from it it raises no eyebrows whatsoever. One of them even openly refuses to not redistribute it, as (not having signed up for legit access to OTRS) they don't then feel bound by the privacy aspects of it. As for asking Commons people to follow instructions / orders / simple good advice from WMF, then The Independence Of Teh Commons!! over-rules everything, even allowing the stalking of other editors. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:50, 11 May 2015 (UTC) Pardon my ignorant question, but what is OTRS? Nyth63 15:01, 11 May 2015 (UTC) @Nyth83: WP:OTRS. --NeilN talk to me 15:04, 11 May 2015 (UTC) Ah, that explain a lot. Thanks. Nyth63 15:14, 11 May 2015 (UTC) I hope you will get a better idea about what is going on in Commons by reading this. In that quoted PM, he clearly stated that he and his friends are watching OTRS wiki. But what more disappointing is neither Commons admins, nor WMF authorities are willing to interfere and defend people working hard to keep Commons alive. One Commons CU mentioned in his/her talk page that she will not touch Russavia cases because he/she had attacked on and off wiki earlier only because he/she took actions against him. This is the situation of every volunteers in Commons. Upon this realization, I resigned from OTRS and stop doing all maintenance jobs. Why should I waste my time and energy if WMF has no interest in protecting the legitimate community? Jee 02:48, 12 May 2015 (UTC) Jkadavoor this is Russavia. You "resigned" from OTRS, because you published a private conversation on Commons between you and I, which also included private correspondence between myself and a photographer which was forwarded to OTRS. You broke the number one rule of OTRS -- you released private information of a client. You can spin this as much as you want, but you fucked up big time in your push to demonise me. If you didn't "resign", it was assured that you would have been pushed. Stop talking shit! 1.122.198.141 (talk) 05:44, 12 May 2015 (UTC) Look! Up in the sky! It's SuperTroll! Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:55, 12 May 2015 (UTC) I wish I was up in the sky Cullen328. But it's hard to soar like an eagle when you are surrounded by turkeys. 1.122.198.141 (talk) 06:17, 12 May 2015 (UTC) Perhaps you might start your own website, for eagles only. And see how that goes. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:21, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Stable Wikipedia?

I recently returned as an editor, as practically everyone knows, and I have started looking at the suite of philosophy articles. They are all in need of attention, and it is beyond any single person’s abilities to put them all right. It’s partly because there aren’t enough editors with even an elementary education in philosophy. I think it’s also because philosophy, more than any other subject, is considered as a subject that anyone can edit on. The reality is that competence is required here just as in mathematics or astrophysics, but no one has been told this. If you look at the talk page of the article on Free will, you will get a headache. See also the complaint here about the article Socrates. No professional philosophers (who have deadlines on papers and whose contributions to Wikipedia have no CV value) will want to build any sandcastles on the shore here. Astonishingly, it was an early featured article in 2004 so, contrary to the theory of Wikipedia, entropy is increasing.

I am not the first person to suggest this, but why not have a system where specialist writers can develop an article in a the traditional way, i.e. not everyone can edit, the product will to be a defined format and with a defined target readership, no forest of citations but with proper peer review, and in a separate area. Then 'release' the stable article using a link at the top of the current article. That way it does not interfere with the current editorial system of 'anyone can edit', and it gives Wikipedia readers the choice of the stable peer reviewed version versus the current version. By default, the current version would be the one the reader would see, although the link to the stable version would be prominent. Perhaps you could get readers to vote on which version they preferred.

Before anyone objects that 'Nupedia tried this and it didn't work', I will point them to the excellent Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy, which is a rough contemporary of Wikipedia, and which has successfully grown into more than 2,000 excellent articles. I am not saying that Wikipedia articles should look like that, because SEP target readership is not the general public, I am merely saying a traditional approach is viable. Also, Nupedia and Wikipedia never properly merged as a two-track system, even though this approach has been successfully used in traditional encyclopedias for centuries. I.e. be broad in many places, be deep where it matters. Commonly this is done by 'flagship articles', namely which cover a single vital subject in some depth. Free will is a level 3 article, and it should not be in the mess that it clearly is.

Could the WMF support such an initiative? Who could I approach? Peter Damian (talk) 07:57, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

It is always a mistake to look to WMF as a potential savior in matters of content; that's going to come from the community. It will take you a while to get reintegrated, to establish a reputation for high competence, to find others with competence in the subject matter, and to collectively figure out what are and are not problems. My suggestion would be to write, write, and write some more — not about "big" topics like Free will, which will always be contentious and which will likely always attract crank perspectives and controversy, but about topics farther off the beaten path. This doesn't only apply to philosophy, it is equally true for history or politics or what have you: don't waste time or effort on huge and controversial topics, which will always be contentious and tainted by POV-pushers, do serious work on the edges.

As for the idea of creating a means of more or less "locking the thread" once a certain level of completeness and excellence is achieved, that is likely to be a highly controversial change proposal and will take every molecule of political capital that can be mustered. Take some time to build some. best, —Tim /// Carrite (talk) 12:51, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Peter, what is the name of the fallacy where inferences are drawn from a single datum as anecdote, e.g., "contrary to the theory of Wikipedia, entropy is increasing," as opposed to a statistically sound survey? Why don't you just make improvements and defend them like every other editor, instead of trying to exclude others the moment you get re-included? EllenCT (talk) 14:33, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@Ellen no one will be excluded. The idea is to have two separate (possibly competing) tracks. The default version will be the standard ‘anyone can edit’ version. On a ‘statistically sound survey’ I have done more work than this one example but I agree: if the WMF has any commitment to quality, it should be commissioning work like this. I also have a table here comparing the Nupedia style approach of the SEP with the corresponding version in Wikipedia. Peter Damian (talk) 17:04, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, be careful that your abduction is not affected by confirmation bias. I have a feeling you would be just as well served to simply make ordinary improvements and then create a custom watchlist query (like this one I use to keep an eye on econ article changes) to help you and your colleagues maintain quality over time. EllenCT (talk) 20:44, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

And @Tim again, why do you suggest not writing on flagship articles, i.e. vital articles? Why can't Wikipedia compete with leviathans like SEP? Peter Damian (talk) 17:22, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@Peter Damian -The Wikipedia model simply does not work well for large, contentious topics. There are multitudes of changes that come and go, with POV pushers galore fighting over the content. Experts should contribute where they have expertise and leave the half-educated anonymous warriorism of "big" topics for others to get worked up over. Carrite (talk) 18:02, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia is the encyclopedia everyone can edit. You're looking for a different project. When you go to McDonald's, do you order foie gras? Townlake (talk) 17:24, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

No, but it would be nice to have a restaurant next door at the same price, and where you could see if the food was better :) Peter Damian (talk) 18:04, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

I can and do see some reason to maybe make some articles on major topics, which get a lot of dubious edits, under some form of semi-protection or pending changes. These would include major topical articles in any number of fields. However, for that to happen, I also think it would be reasonable, and probably required by the community, to have several things happen first. I also tend to think that "pending changes" would probably be preferable of the two options.

1) To the greatest degree possible, establish and bring to a sufficient level of quality the basic spinout articles, which would include all those articles which have a clear "Main article" heading relating to them in the parent article. The level of quality aimed at would probably be the point at which it is clear what subtopics are covered in that spinout, and which aren't. This could probably extend to those spinout articles which themselves have further spinout articles, presumably under the same circumstances.

2) As a condition of the above, check to see what all the requisite spinout articles would be. This would, presumably, be done by consulting reference works of some sort directly relating to whichever article is being spunout.

3) Have some sort of template automatically appear in the edit box indicating that (ideally) the article should only be edited to reflect updates in information already contained in it, or improvement of references, or general housekeeping, but not to add additional information. The template might go on to say something like "please add additional information first to one of the spinout articles" and seek to include the new content only after that spinout is developed to a fairly NPOV level regarding that content.

Now, this would, of course, all be dependent on ensuring that the basic main article is already at a reasonable level of quality. That would probably best be achieved by consulting the most directly relevant recent reference sources. But it might, maybe, theoretically, be workable at some point. It would, however, probably need to have some way to establish at least the three conditions above as easily workable first. John Carter (talk) 17:53, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

John I am not sure we are talking about the same thing. I am suggesting that the main (current) 'anyone can edit' article stays exactly as it is, i.e. anyone can edit it. However, at the top of the article there will be a 'stable article' button that the interested reader can press, and see the stable version. There could also be another button that diff'd to the main version. This would not be intrusive on the way Wikipedia currently operates, and it would provide a better experience for the reader, because they have more choice. And it would not be an exercise in 'exclusion' as one person suggested above. Quite the opposite: everyone could edit the main page, as before. Peter Damian (talk) 18:02, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Such is already more or less available on the article talk pages though, at least for any article which has ever been at a good level like GA or so. And, for some articles in particular, it would probably be a mistake to use such a function. Such an example might be if the last "stable version" of the article on the Catholic Church was written when John Paul II was pope and talked about him in that capacity. And there would be some reasonable question as to determining who would determine when an article is "stable." So, for instance, would an academic in physics who just doesn't like a new theory in his field be able to tag the article with whatever idea he doesn't like as the last "stable" version? And, if the last "stable" version weren't that good in general, would it be "stable"? I can and do see some advantage to, maybe, trying to get the "topical" editors in any field together to get the main topical articles in that field up to a reasonable level of quality, at least in terms of content, maybe less so in referencing or grammar or whatever. But you would still need to develop a specific list of criteria for what is and is not a stable version, and have some sort of review process to finalize it. That's kinda the way it works here. I'd like to see it, and I could certainly see adding some sort of template icon to the article page with maybe a file cabinet icon or something which would link to the last "stable version" as determined through review. But I know from experience with Biography A-Class review finding such people willing to do that sort of thing to the degree that would be required here is difficult at best on its own. John Carter (talk) 18:15, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

I must say that en.Wikipedia as it stands does have severe problems. I do also edit within de.Wikipedia and must say it runs far more stable and smooth. It is only after a certain number of edits, that have been checked by already registered editors, any new editor can edit articles “freely” in de.Wikipedia. This would put an end to somewhat dubious and explicit IP-edits and would allow new editors to undergo a certain learning curve. This process would not mean edits by unregistered editors are turned down they just have to be given a clear. In recent years we battle each other with guidelines which in the long run hampers us to work on content. A certain quality control to what edit makes it to the eyes of the one seeking information might not be a bad idea. In effect this would mean to put ALL articles under WP:PCPP.--Catflap08 (talk) 18:33, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't want all articles to be under pending changes, given the ridiculous number of stubs we have here. But I could agree that, as a possibility, any article rated at "C" class or better which doesn't have any quality tags might, not unreasonably, be subject to pending changes. The one question I can see to this would be finding out just how many pages that would mean on a regular basis, and consequently how much of the time of the average senior editor capable of approving pending changes would be devoted to reviewing such changes on a regular basis. If the average admin or senior editor had to spend, on average, two hours a day going through pending changes still not approved or rejected on articles on his watch list, I tend to think that enthusiasm for wikipedia would very likely drop pretty damn fast. John Carter (talk) 19:02, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

All I am saying is to maybe use existing protecting levels to allow for things to quiet down and concentrate on what we all came her in the first place – maybe a six months test run. Having said what I said is with my own experience on subjects anything else but uncontroversial. --Catflap08 (talk) 19:18, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Peter, your "stable version" is evidently intended to exclude unhelpful "improvements" by Randy from Boise, but do you envisage the "stable version" as permanently forked and diverging from the "open editing" version? If not, how do they keep in touch, so that real improvements to one feed in to the other?

Also, where do you find the specialised writers? Who decides who is, or is not, qualified, and on what basis? In specialist fields where there are competing views and factions, how do we avoid one faction getting control of the selection process, so that the specialist panel reflects their POV? Even if philosophy is a field where there is such general consensus that the specialist panel would have no serious disagreements, there are not many fields like that. Consider the process of selecting the specialist writer panels for alternative medicine, Israel/Palestine, Gamergate, Scientology... JohnCD (talk) 20:13, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Let's avoid any talk of "stable" versions, which brings back all the chaotic debate around pending changes: the idea here seems to instead be "reviewed permalinks". I think there's a good case for it as an improvement on our existing article assessment system. Why don't we have the ability to review particular revisions and mark them as meeting certain quality levels? I'm imagining in particular a lightweight system where newer revisions of good/featured articles could be marked as still meeting the criteria—or, perhaps, as needing a bit of polishing for maintenance—based on the diff from the last reviewed version. I think the idea's worth exploring. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 20:15, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

I think the problems indicated above would continue with this quicker system though. I can and do see it as being really useful to have more people involved in GA and FA and the like, and would love to see enough such people to make the processes ones which could have a kind of automatic review every six months, for instance. But questions of how to deal with such GA/FA articles on broad subjects which have significant changes in their subtopics, even if not within the main topic, are going to present problems. I remember Nishidani once asking whether we theoretically would have to update an article on the publication of every new encyclopedia which might mention it. I think the answer would have to be, unfortunately, "yes". And this would include encyclopedias on topics which are tangentially related to the main topic in some way. An example might be the status of housecats as housepets in some Asian country, particularly if there are some sort of recent governmental changes in same. Getting more people who have at least decent access to reference works in GA and FA review would help a lot, and I would love to see that happen. I'm personally, at least, trying to make it easier for people to find relevant reference works, which is sometimes one of the big problems. I like the idea, but I think we are probably at least a bit away from having the structure in place, both in terms of number of involved good editors and access to relevant sources to make implementation of anything soon problematic. John Carter (talk) 20:40, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

---

Nihiltres has it absolutely right. Reviewed permalinks. John CD raises all the obvious problems about editorial governance. Regarding contributors, I can't speak for any subject apart from philosophy, but I know many of the specialist editors from the old days i.e. pre-2007 and I think they could be coaxed back if they could be persuaded there would be minimal 'Randy' problems. Editorial governance would be one to think carefully about. There could only be one 'reviewed permalink', to avoid the problem of forking permalinks. I will be away a bit, but thanks for the useful comments. Peter Damian (talk) 21:16, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@Peter Damian: It's an interesting idea, but I suspect that using the existing Wikipedia mechanisms, while exhausting and sometimes fruitless, may be the only way to deal with the issues that you describe. The problem is that many editors who can barely tie their own shoes view themselves as supremely competent, and that administrators are often not that much better. Coretheapple (talk) 15:37, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, can a Wikipedia compete with the Stanford authored control system? I don't think it is set up for that - and don't see it happening. However, what is already doable and useful to Wiki readers is to link to the Stanford article in the external links section of the Wiki article - that would seem to better serve whatever function there is of a locked un-bylined, anon reviewed, wiki-article (for a similar type resource on a different type of article that is often also linked in WP external sections see [7] from the University of Virginia, all with a named academic editor; there are no doubt more such useful types to link to on most important (and even some arcane) topics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alanscottwalker (talk • contribs) 18:33, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

I tend to agree. I doubt we will ever be able to compete directly with the Stanford or the Macmillan/Gale Encyclopedia of Philosophy or any of the other leading reference works in their fields. What we can probably do better than them, however, is cover content to a greater depth than they do. They, probably even the Stanford, have some space limitations, we don't. We could generate theoretically full-length FAs on every work by every author in the field. I doubt any of the print encyclopedias could. So, while it is still the case in a lot of content of a global nature that our thematic overview articles either kind of suck or in some cases don't even exist yet, we can probably do a much better job of covering at length the individual works of philosophers, and possibly probably their lives, particularly if they were ever notable for anything other than philosophy, and the like. We also, at least theoretically, can probably host all the older PD encyclopedias or reference works of a broadly philosophical nature over at commons or wikisource, possibly with the sections or chapters fully transcribed for easier use and downloading. I think I started adding all the old philosophy encyclopedias that were still included as relevant in the 1980s Sheehy guide to reference to the Bibliography of encyclopedias pages, and that older material, even if some of it is outdated through better manuscripts being found or better biographies written, is also something that the Stanford probably doesn't now and never will have. John Carter (talk) 19:09, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. Wikipedia has always been better at the more obscure articles, which often aren't covered elsewhere, but once the "lesser" articles are covered then it becomes easier to write the bigger articles. The problem with articles in the more respected encyclopedias is that they're written by one expert, who will have a particular point of view. I could, for instance, point to several Oxford Dictionary of National Biography articles where the WP version is superior to the ODNB's offering. Eric Corbett 19:49, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

You have a good point regarding the obviously separate "minor" articles. I guess I should specificy that what I meant by minor articles might be something like Historiography of the concept of free will or History of study of free will or something like that, along with individual books by individual experts in the field. Particularly for really complicated articles, those might be easier to write than the main ones, because of the sheer amount which could be included in the main article and all the related WEIGHT problems. And I for one have no reservations about saying that I'm not sure any single print reference source is necessarily better than ours, by and large, unless other sources have specifically said that about their content. So, for instance, the SEP apparently doesn't have a separate article on the City of God (book). We would clearly be in a position to be able to provide articles of that type, possibly better than their own, which in that case isn't a separate article yet. Personally, I've always favored finding the longest reference article possible on a topic to use as a starting point, and given the frankly incredible number of extant reference works/encyclopedias out there, many in the PD, we could be in a position to use the information from them to provide a much broader range of coverage than the SEP does. John Carter (talk) 16:00, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• Nupedia ain't the example where it was tried and failed. Veropedia and Citizendium are the examples where it was tried and failed. As must as free will being an FA is held up as an example of entropy increasing, take a look at it - it wouldn't have a snowball in a gasoline suit in hell's chance of being an FA today. Quality has increased so much from 2004 that our best content then is hum-drum today. It's true we do a pretty bad job at a lot of the "highest-level" articles. They're harder to write than the biography of one person or sum-such. Which isn't to say a "stable versions" isn't worth trying. But it's worth being familiar with the previous attempts that have failed before re-inventing the wheel (to be optimistic, or squaring the circle, to be pessimistic). WilyD 08:59, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
  • My point was that Free will has got worse since 2004 not because standards have increased, but because it has actually got worse.Peter Damian (talk) 14:56, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
  • On Veropedia and Citizendium, sure it can be argued that they failed. But my opening point was that SEP and also the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy have succeeded. Peter Damian (talk) 14:58, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
    • I understood the opening point you were trying to make, but it's wrong. Free Will hasn't actually gotten worse. The grade has gone down, but because the standards are much higher. Sure, I got an A+ in grade 3 math, and an A- in 2nd year undergraduate vector calculus, but that doesn't mean I got worse at math as I got older (I did get worse at math as I got older, of course, but not until I after I stopped doing coursework during my Ph.D.)
    • Veropedia (and I think Citizendium) are defunct. So, I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue they didn't fail. SEP, IEP, Scholarpedia are essentially traditional encyclopaedias put on the internet, they're not exactly role models for Wikipedia - . Veropedia & Citizendium are the appropriate role models (or perhaps, warnings) for us because they started with Wikipedia and aimed to do the kind of thing you're proposing. SEP, IEP, Scholarpedia ... well, looking at the design of Formula 1 cars is a bad way to figure out how to make your horse go faster. WilyD 09:48, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
      • Veropedia and Citizendium tried to do everything at once, and failed. What's wrong with a two-speed approach. Develop quality flagship articles slowly, using more traditional methods (which we agree can work), without disturbing the processes where Wikipedia has been incredibly successful? Also, please trust me, Free will has got much worse. Peter Damian (talk) 18:21, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
        • It's hard to trust you that it's gotten much worse when I can compare the two myself and see that that's not true. Citizendium & Scholarpedia's decisions to both restart with no content and severely restrict the editor base necessarily meant they were going to grow a lot slower. It's my impression that the people jumping in didn't really appreciate that, that there's an impression among editors here that the highly-active regulars are generating most of the content, so it'd be easy to siphon off enough content creation. Veropedia didn't actually try to do very much, and mostly fell out because Wikipedia was first to market, so you're only going to poach the readership if you can offer a much superior product in their eyes, which it didn't. Of course, advertising might've helped - if we linked Scholarpedia articles at the top of pages, which is more or less what you're suggesting, they'd have more visibility. (Or perhaps there's some other purpose, but if SEP is already doing this well, why duplicate their efforts?) WilyD 08:21, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

A counterexample, in part The article English language has long been protected from edits by persons other than autoconfirmed registered users. It is a top 500 article in terms of page views. Even at that, it was a dog of an article for years, failing GA review and receiving a very thorough peer review that was then ignored for years. I've developed an interest in elevating article quality of high-page-view articles, and on 30 November 2014, I visited the article talk page of English language to propose raising that article up to good article status. I then relentlessly asked each editor committing edits to that article to mention sources for the edits, and repeatedly asked on the article talk page about what sources would be good for improving the article. As soon as the focus turned from unsupported personal opinions to verifiable information from sources, many formerly hotly edit-warred issues were resolved. As the March 2015 Core contest began, Maunus (the peer reviewer of the article years earlier) decided to join Erutuon (an editor who was beginning detailed updates of the phonology section of the article by then) to fix the whole article from top to bottom. I too joined in on fixing three formerly contentious sections of the article, and English language passed good article review a few weeks ago. It can be done. Editors have to agree with one another to rely on reliable sources to fix articles. I made multiple trips to my friendly local university library to check out books to have at hand in my home office as I fixed English language. Anyone who can circulate books from a good library could do the same. A few editors in agreement that good sources matter can make a huge difference in an article that has lain fallow for many years. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 13:59, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Depends on what you mean by "can be done." Have controlled identity and recognized experts author and publicly sign articles? Have recognized experts publicly review, edit, and pass articles? Or, have "people on the internet" "do good" and say, "yah, good" to each-other, whomever each-other is. The later is already done, but it's not a counter-example process to Stanford's. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:39, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• I think that you may find that one advantage of the decline in editing is that articles are less subject to entropy than when you were last editing. My experience is that good text with lots of references is actually pretty stable (and most articles are far too stable, ie never improved). Some maintenance is of course necessary, & having other editors helping with this makes a big difference. Johnbod (talk) 14:59, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

• I think we are also, particularly with the GA and FA reviewers, getting better at finding out not just what "people on the internet" think, but people on the internet who have some idea of the material in recent reference sources and have compared our content to them think. Granted, there aren't many reference sources on Taylor Swift to compare things to, and there are a lot of topics and subtopics that fall in the same general field, but for those which are significant enough and, well, old enough to have been discussed at some length in recent reference sources, the GA and FA candidates, and at least a few others that get any sort of review, get at least that attention. I wish there were more of it, of course, but it is at least getting better a little in some areas. John Carter (talk) 15:07, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Comment

Thanks to everyone for the interesting and thought provoking comments above. I note Jimmy hasn't commented yet, but I hope he will, as I am quoting him below.

• "Veropedia and Citizendium are the examples where it was tried and failed". I am not sure what 'it' is here. I was on the ground when Citizendium started (I don't know about Veropedia) the reason it failed, at least for my specialism, was it couldn’t attract enough experts. I worked with Peter King for a bit, but then he had some kind of spat with Larry, I left because he left, and as far as I know it never recovered. Incidentally the Citizendium article Free will, which is very bad, was written by exactly the same person who is now intent on entropizing the Wikipedia article of the same name.
• "looking at the design of Formula 1 cars is a bad way to figure out how to make your horse go faster." I suppose 'Formula 1' is meant to be SEP, with Wikipedia the 'horse'? Why so? This document explains the SEP funding model, which (if I have read it correctly) uses a tiny $200,000 per annum, mostly to cover costs of a small editorial board. By contrast, Wikipedia raises tens of millions, potentially hundreds of millions, per annum. Wikipedia already has the potential to be Formula 1. How did SEP attract suitable volunteers?
  • The actual contributors are not paid, but my impression is that Zalta (managing editor) is passionately dedicated to building relationships and partnerships with specialist contributors, and by attracting a critical mass of such contributors and thus creating a reputation for SEP, he was able to attract others. "Academics are snobs, almost without exception and whether they admit it or not. If our goal is to be the only intellectually respectable encyclopedia on the web, then we must cater for that snobbery whether we like it or not and whether it's right or not. Otherwise, the experts we so desperately need simply will not feel inclined to write for us." [Michael Kulikowski, Nupedia mailing list Aug 25 10:12:00 2000]
  • With Jimmy concurring: "Maybe we could install the wiki under a totally different brand name, and just let people who sign up for Nupedia aware that lots of Nupedians tend to hang out there. That way, we separate the wiki from the Nupedia brand name. It is very important to all of us who have an emotional stake in Nupedia that we not harm the reputation of Nupedia. Nupedia, in my mind, _stands for something_ -- quality in an age of declining standards, openness in an age of mad scrambling for proprietariness." [Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 18:38:11 -0600 From: Jimmy Wales jwales@aristotle.bomis.com]
  • Why shouldn't some of the massive Wikipedia budget be used to employ someone like Zalta? A qualified managing editor for a subject, or small group of subjects, whose job would be to manage the 'flagship article' process? This is how it is actually done in traditional encyclopedias – employ a small number of specialists to write a small number of vital articles, with the rest of the work written by generalists.
  • Can volunteers work with paid employees? Let me quote Jimmy again. "I recently became a Red Cross volunteer. In the Red Cross, volunteers and paid employees work side-by-side doing the same jobs. They need paid employees to ensure a certain level of reliability and consistency. They need volunteers to magnify their efforts beyond the level of what cash donations can provide" [8] Suppose the WMF chose to divert some of its annual budget to employ 10 managing editors of the quality of Zalta. That would cost $2m, based on those figures. Is that very much?
• "what is already doable and useful to Wiki readers is to link to the Stanford article in the external links section of the Wiki article". Three reasons against
  • It's a cop out, on the lines of 'formula 1' versus 'horse'.
  • Linking to the SEP article loses what is most valuable about the wiki, namely the efficient dynamic linking. Why can't we combine the effectiveness of the traditional peer review process with what is best about the wiki?
  • The SEP target audience is not suitable for Wikipedia, in my view. Nearly all of the articles are too difficult for the kind of general readership that is attracted to Wikipedia.
• The Free Will article is not getting worse because the standards have risen, it is simply getting worse, even by the original standards. (I also think that the change in standards, such as excessive citation, does not necessarily mean 'better'.

Peter Damian (talk) 17:38, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

You implied that you have some statistical evidence that your recommendation has not been affected by confirmation bias. I'm not convinced and would like to see it, please. EllenCT (talk) 21:34, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure I said that. I said on your talk page that I have 'collected' material on the subject of article degradation. I also mentioned the EPIC study on Wikipedia quality, which I believe was flawed, and I linked to an article by John McIntyre in the The Baltimore Sun. (I am the medievalist that John is referring to). I have not yet published the paper he refers to ("Critique of the Epic/Oxford University pilot study into the comparative accuracy and quality of Wikipedia") but happy to send you a draft. Selection bias is difficult to avoid, but one idea I had was to take every article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and compare it qualitywise with the corresponding article in Wikipedia, if there is one. I made a start here. Far from complete, but surely you will agree that starting with the letter 'a' and wording through in alphabetic order is a sure way to avoid bias regarding the articles selected. However, comparing for quality is inherently subjective, and I plead 'expert judgment' in this case. I have a reasonable amount of published work, and have been submitted to the rigours of independent review many times.

Regarding article degradation, this is a separate subject from article quality. I have studied this effect informally, with nothing like statistical rigour, but my general conclusion is that when articles in my specialism improve, it is always because someone with clear expertise (sometimes a small group) takes clear interest and ownership of the article. This guy did a lot of the FA work in philosophy in the early days of Wikipedia, but he has since left, sadly. I have not encountered a single instance of the emergence phenomenon where a crowd of random editors possessing no individual expertise in philosophy is transformed into an emergent superintelligence capable of writing better than your average associate prof. That just doesn't happen. And a lot of the articles are simply unreconstructed versions of Britannica 1911. That was the problem with the EPIC study. In one instance, they unknowingly compared the modern Britannica version of the Anselm article with the Wikipedia copy of the Britannica 1911. Peter Damian (talk) 10:24, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

User:Nihiltres, regarding "Why don't we have the ability to review particular revisions and mark them as meeting certain quality levels?" About a year ago a few editors worked Dengue fever up to a good level of quality and submitted it to a journal for peer review. This is the revision that passed peer review and was published in the journal, and here is the diff showing the few changes that have since been made to that article - mainly removing the abstract and conclusions, incorporating the results of a recent review article, and simplifying some of the language.

I think this is what you're talking about. To be really useful we need to make a couple of pretty simple changes.

1. There should be a prominent badge or something at the top of the current version of Dengue fever pointing the reader to the version that has passed peer review.
2. There should be a prominent link to the "diff."
3. The diff should have all the wiki-markup removed - the reader is presented with only the differences in the actual article text - so they can easily see how the article has evolved since peer review.

First, what do you think about my 1, 2 & 3? Second, if you think we should be able to link our readers to a well-presented, easy-to-read diff of the reviewed vs. current versions, would you join Peter and me in asking the WMF to make that possible?

Peter, can you point me to a description of the SEP's peer review/quality monitoring process? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:25, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

There is a description here of the editorial process. The structure of their editorial board is here. All peer review processes look pretty much alike, however. Stuff like:

• The review should be critical and objective
• Check for plagiarism.
• Does the article adhere to the project's standards?
  • Does it adhere to style guidelines, in terms of structure, length etc.
• Content – no original research
• Is it appropriate for target audience? E.g. Would the article be of interest to readers?
• Does the summary reflect the contents of the article?
• All significant claims adequately sourced?
• Recommendations – reject, accept with minor changes, accept with major changes, accept as seen

It would be reasonably simple to draft some review guidelines for the different class of article proposed. Peter Damian (talk) 17:07, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Anthony: the dengue fever article is a good example, especially the icon at the top of the article. I'm hesitant to jump to support because the conversation has again drifted, in the direction of expert review. I'm thinking that a level of prominence that would work well would be something visible but unobtrusive, like we already have on pending changes pages where the latest changes have been reviewed (i.e. without the giant blue noticebar that unreviewed changes provoke). Make it too prominent, and the focus of the implementation discussion won't be on the benefit of the review system, but instead on the effective privileging of certain contributions (especially given the rest of this discussion) and the colour of the bikeshed style of the notice.

Point 3 is nontrivial, and IMHO not worth the effort—unless you really want the feature stuck in development for years like VisualEditor. Let's ignore it for now—it's not strictly necessary.

The core issue I see this addressing is "article entropy". If an article hits good or featured status, we don't have a strong mechanic for maintenance of that status—and a lightweight system for reviewing articles now and then relative to their successful GAN or FAC (and then later, relative to their last lightweight review). It could probably also be extended to cover lesser quality levels as well, but no need to get lost in speculation.

Since the conversation has in particular drifted to expert involvement: I think a better review system would be helpful for that, since even without explicit privileging of expert contributions, a better review system implicitly favours those contributors since they're likely to be involved in the review process. Besides, it's more politically viable. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 14:59, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Addendum: Regarding points 1 & 2: I absolutely agree that we should make available a link to the reviewed permalink and a link to the diff with the current version—I just got hung up on the "prominent" wording. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 15:04, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Nihiltres, would you add your name to a request (when the time comes) to the WMF for a "nice" diff feature. Meaning: presently, when the reader clicks on the Dengue fever diff they get that appalling unreadable scramble of highlighted wikitext/markup. Would you support the WMF making a feature consisting of a diff that only displays the article text without any of the wiki markup, so the average reader can see at a glance what has changed between the two versions? The average reader will look at the present diff and see nothing in that scramble of markup. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:13, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

While I'd support the request, I think it's low-priority. In this context in particular, if articles were reviewed periodically, there should be few enough differences from the last reviewed version that diffs should usually be fairly readable even without such a feature. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 18:30, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

True. I'll ping you if/when we request it. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:13, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

WMF strategy

The current strategy of the Wikimedia Foundation seems to be acceptance of the emergence that I referred to above. Recruit more editors by making it really really easy to edit, and Wikipedia will return to the old state of Eden that made it so successful in the first place. Tens of millions of dollars have been devoted to projects to achieve this. I'm sure a number of people would question the assumptions behind this, my question is whether there has been any research to back this up. Do we have a means of sampling and assessing articles for quality? Is it possible to determine the factors that make some articles good, or to improve, and the factors that make some articles bad, or to degrade? In particular, is there any evidence to support the idea of emergence, or is it as I suspect, that good articles are good because they are written by a small number of people with the right skills?

The whole strategy would depend on the result. If my intuition is correct, then the WMF should help the community to keep such editors. I referred to one such editor above, who I know personally, who has since left. I know many others in my field of specialism who might return if editing conditions could be made better, and the environment more welcoming. What about those famous editors who have remained, but have caused disruption by incivility? Are they a problem? Could they be helped to contribute positively in other ways? These are all areas that the WMF should be working on, in my view. Peter Damian (talk) 11:26, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Has it occurred to you that your suggestion would be better suited to matters more controversial than philosophy? For example, the practical matter of whether income inequality inhibits economic growth, which it does. The secondary literature has been entirely conclusive on the matter for multiple decades, but it is in the interest of wealthy sociopaths to convince people that the opposite of the truth on the matter is true. This leads to massive COI editing by propaganda victims too lazy to check the secondary sources but who somehow believe they are right anyway, and causes them to join the homeopaths and every other anti-WP:SECONDARY source movement, degrading the encyclopedia far more than any 1911 description of utility or niche aesthetics possibly could. EllenCT (talk) 19:01, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Probably, but I don't have any expertise in the subject of income inequality. On whether philosophy is controversial, take a look at the bitter dispute raging here, which has had the effect of driving many competent editors away. Peter Damian (talk) 19:52, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

There is a wider issue in respect of the evolution of wikipedia. Philosophy is controversial as a subject, but we can use sources to get a balanced view. One problem that seems to be increasing is the enthusiastic editor who trawls the internet for quotes and then undertakes to write a first year under graduate essay using the sources they find interesting. In the case of Free Will we have that with someone doing this as a retirement hobby and thus with boundless energy and time. Historically Wikipedia worked well with purely behavioural constraints, but that is becoming more difficult. "A plague on both your houses" attitudes when things go to ANI means that its often easier to give into persistent or ill-informed editing or just give up. Something that has happened on Philosophy articles. It may be that a better option to to look again at the issue of someone who persistently makes changes without any other editor agreeing (opposition may be solo as some of these articles are lonely) and carries out interminable edits on the talk page if they don't get their way. It might be better to have a few senior admins with the authority to quickly screen cases rather than force the rest of us to put together long ANI cases. Wikipedia needs to evolve and maybe we need a non-linear change at this time. ----Snowded ^TALK 22:41, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

We get starry-eyed sophomore and retirement hobby-horse projects in applied econ, too. It can be frustrating, but the usual community response seems great compared to starting over from scratch with the editorial production models which appear to work worse at scale. But if authorities are going to be considering paying for editing, the WikiEd Foundation would make a whole lot more sense than the Wikimedia Foundation, for a host of legal, procedural, COI separation and convenience issues. If you play your cards right, you can summon classes full of opposing sophomores who answer to faculty instead of their whims. EllenCT (talk) 22:56, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

@Peter: I don't have any insights regarding how to protect articles and editors from degradation, but I had a quick glance at Talk:Free will. There is a serious problem there, and in case you are not aware, it is a well-known editor who reveals a particularly dark side of Wikipedia because the community has no way to protect itself from well-intentioned and knowledgeable people who can and do argue any point forever and ever. That editor was sanctioned by arbcom yet manages to find other topics where he can grind down those who maintain articles. My advice is to ignore him—just revert his edits "per talk" and post a message on the talk page once per week to say that the arguments have been dealt with before. Trying to engage will not work. Johnuniq (talk) 23:49, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes I am familiar with the situation. The problem is that he has successfully driven away a number of good editors. It's not enough to ignore him. Peter Damian (talk) 05:10, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Emereo Publishing

Just curious, given that Emereo Publishing mirror our articles in a similar way to General Books LLC etc, has their promise actually resulted in funds being donated to WMF? - Sitush (talk) 22:49, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't know anything about this at all and I'm not really the right person to ask.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:48, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I guess I need to find someone on the financials side of WMF. - Sitush (talk) 14:11, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Heads up, more Russavia

"Mem'ries, / Light the corners of my mind / Misty water-colored memories / Of the way we were..." Carrite (talk) 20:14, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Apparently, Russavia has an account on DeviantArt. We should be wary incase he tries to upload any of his "work" to Commons (or anything else from there, for that matter). Dogbert (talk) 18:50, 13 May 2015 (UTC) This is troubling. I'll be sure to try and spread the word over there. Soldier of the Empire (talk) 18:54, 13 May 2015 (UTC) DogbertYDS, Soldier of the Empire: I am curious as to why a banned user having an account on a site which has nothing to do with Wikimedia is troubling. Do you think that when someone is banned from Wikimedia they have to leave the internet? Do you think that once someone is banned from Wikipedia they're banned from life? Regarding the uploads there, I don't see anything which would be within the scope of Commons, and nor do I see a free licence. Perhaps you should stop worrying about Russavia and go edit an article. -mattbuck (Talk) 20:11, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Auto-archiving seems to be shut down on this page

Yes? Carrite (talk) 13:30, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't know. It does seem a bit long.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:05, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

The section "Rules of Wikipedia were violated for the good of Russian murderers" above has no contributions since 3 May but it is still here. The page is supposed to be auto archived every 1-2 days, so this is a puzzle. There has not been any archiving since this edit by User:ClueBot III on 4 May. I've left a message at User talk:ClueBot Commons as this needs to be looked into.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:21, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

This is happening on my own talk page as well. The bot does seem to be able to archive other pages but for some reason it's skipping certain pages (like this one). We can always briefly switch over to Lowercase sigmabot III in the meantime. --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 11:55, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

• Hopefully Cluebot will pick up it's slack soon, but in the meantime, I've used Technical 13's (Original by Equazcion) OneClickArchiver (Original) script to clean up the page for now. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 13:23, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Is there any reason you archived a thread where the most recent contribution was this morning?Peter Damian (talk) 18:47, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Put another way, please stop archiving threads as that close as recently as within 24 hours. Ideally, just wait for the bot to be fixed. Failing that, follow the same rules that were followed by the bot. Thanks. JoeSperrazza (talk) 22:14, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
    • @Peter Damian and JoeSperrazza: I apologize I overlooked that post. The bot's inactive rule on this page is |algo = old(1d) (1 day) for lowercase sigmabot III/Technical 13's (Original by Equazcion) OneClickArchiver (Original) script and |age=36 (36 hours) for Clubot III. The most recent post I saw skimming through that section was Peter Damian's post from 9 May 2015, last Saturday (5 days ago), which most certainly fell well above both of those. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 04:02, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

It's been raised on ClueBot NG's talk page.--5 albert square (talk) 17:01, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

March 2015 participation numbers

The Very Active Editors count for March is up in the usual place LINK. The sky is still not falling, the number of Very Active Editors (100+ edits) was sitting at 3,310 at En-WP in March 2015, compared to 3,134 for the same month in the previous year — an increase of 5.6%. Across all projects combined the same-month increase was 4.6%. En-WP participation is very close to the levels for March 2012 and 2013, with the 2014 decline after a couple years of stability starting to look like an anomaly.

The other key metric as a measure of Wikipedia's health, Average Number of New Articles Per Day (LINK) is similarly up, 856 per day on En-WP for March 2015. This again is an increase over the 2014 total, about 4.5% in this case. In short, whatever rocked the boat in 2014 seems to have been a temporary thing.

It is unfortunate that there isn't a useful series for total number of edits or total number of non-automated edits, but we can't have everything... All the same, the word remains: stable. Carrite (talk) 23:09, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Likely Culprit. Buster Seven Talk 14:23, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

(ec)Thinking that "Average Number of New Articles Per Day" is a "measure of Wikipedia's health" is badly mistaken, imo. The emphasis on new articles is part of Wikipedia's sickness; we should be moving to improving the articles we already have, many of which have seen virtually no change in text (as opposed to fiddling with templates etc) for over 10 years now, and are just as poor now as in those far-off days. Johnbod (talk) 14:25, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. "New" doesn't necessarily mean "good". It would be interesting to know the number of new articles created minus the number of articles that are speedily deleted within a week to get a true measure of how en-Wikipedia is growing in terms of volume. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 14:51, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

I concur that a "net new articles" number would be best, deducting deletions of all sorts. I will defend Average Number of New Articles Per Day as a key metric of WP health, however, as it is a proxy for the general level of participation in the project by "drive by" editors — the big percentage of WP participants who just drop in an article or two and then get on with their lives. To my mind this is the second most important subset of Wikipedia participants on the content side, after the "core volunteers" who turn in 100+ edits every month. Admittedly, many of the new articles are poor and many are rightfully deleted, but it does measure WP participation of these "drive bys" effectively, I strongly suspect. Carrite (talk) 15:04, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

The Wikistats number IS a net new articles number. It is derived from counting articles in the database dump. Any articles that were deleted prior to the database dump being generated are not counted. So to count as a new article in March (for example), an article had to have been created in March and not have been deleted by the time the database dump ran in mid April. The result is that reported new articles are limited to only those that have survived for at least a little while (typically a few weeks). Something that is speedy deleted within a few days of creation won't be counted as a new article for the purpose of the Wikistats listing. Dragons flight (talk) 18:04, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Note on my comment above: turning "drive by" editors into "core volunteers" is the essential task for us in building our editing base, I think. We know that edit-a-thons are very ineffective in creating core volunteers — at best they create small sets of drive-by editors who are focused on a single theme. Core editors start as casual participants who get serious, I believe. No casual editors = very bad news for our future, so lots of new starts is good, even if the average quality of these starts is poor... Carrite (talk) 15:15, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

That's only a relatively small part of my point. Most new articles that stay are now on minute topics that get tiny views, while the old articles on major topics can remain astonishingly bad for years and years. Wikipedia doesn't really need to be bigger; it very badly needs to be better. Little of the editing going on these days is adressing that. Johnbod (talk) 15:10, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm gearing up today to write a new piece on a former Oregon Speaker of the House of Representatives, two term State Senator, judge, and head of the Board of Regents of one of our major state universities, which shows as a redlink. So don't think for a minute that we're within 100 miles of being "done" in terms of quantity. That said: I totally agree that we need to take general quality up a notch or three. Carrite (talk) 15:15, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

(ec)I agree with User:Carrite, we're nowhere near "done" on new content. We are more than a few million articles short just on the topic of living things. Every species of animal, plant, fungus, bacteria, pond-scum, etc., is by definition notable (because the act of defining a species creates at the very least one reliable source for an article about it). The "problem" with driveby newbies is that they often write about non-notable pop culture topics (the proverbial garage band or minor league athlete) - precious few newbies start editing in the topic areas where we are clearly still lacking. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:51, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Need does a lot of lifting here. Wikipedia needs a base of active volunteers to maintain it's existing quality and quantity. It needs a base of active volunteers if the existing quality and/or quantity are to be expanded. We might like it to be bigger or of higher per-article quality (which are probably not things that are at war with one another, but rather, complementary), but it's quite clear that it's already very successful. If volunteer effort was fungible, it would make sense to play bigger against better, but it's pretty clear that's not true (and indeed, the rising quality, and the rising difficulty in being able to write new articles has made it harder to get involved, making it harder to increase the quality of core articles ... something only experienced editors can usually do; they need to get that experience on peripheral articles). Pick a random article (random article gives me this) and compare it to ten years ago (oops, I only get five). Yeah, there are a lot of articles that need a lot of work. But we won't fix it by pulling up the drawbridge and chasing everyone off. WilyD 15:48, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree, Johnbod. There are certain topical areas of Wikipedia that are mediocre at best but as they involve social/cultural issues, I have refrained from giving them an overhaul because I anticipate a huge pushback on ideological grounds and I don't want to spend the bulk of my editing time arguing on article talk pages and probably getting pulled into dispute resolution areas. I realize discussion is a necessary and important part of the process, but I've been involved in conflict areas before and it can drain all of ones enjoyment out of editing. I feel a bit guilty spending time on more mundane editing tasks and maybe one day I'll collect the necessary source material to go in and update these articles. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:52, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

This conversation brings to mind Charles Holland Duell, the United States Commissioner of Patents in 1889. He is famous for purportedly saying "Everything that can be invented has been invented." He was of course way off base. The number of un-written articles cannot be measured. Newbies edit what they know--their semi-famous Aunt Martha, their High School, town, whatever. And then they grow. This place has no foreseeable end. Every article is in a state of waiting for some editor to tweak it into improvement. Random Article editing is very rewarding...moreso than random article arguing. . Buster Seven Talk 17:35, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

All this sort of comes around to the thread that Peter Damian started a couple weeks ago, expressing a wish that there was an ability to lock down articles once they were more or less excellent. Anything popular or controversial tends to fall into disjointed disrepair, as never-ending waves of changes are made by editors of various intentions and capabilities. The arguing over content is an enormous drain on time and very unfun unless people are into fighting for the sake of fighting. See, for example: Gamergate controversy. Fortunately this is a small fraction of total content but it is definitely a factor in why articles on "big" topics can be crappy. I'm not sure what the answer is. There is definitely a flaw in the WP model around the articles of controversial or very popular topics. Carrite (talk) 22:35, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 May 2015

• Foundation elections: Board candidates share their views with the Signpost

• News and notes: Swedish Wikimedia chapter organizes simultaneous Wikidata contests

• Traffic report: Round Two

• In the media: Grant Shapps story continues

• Op-ed: What made Wikipedia lose its reputation?

• Featured content: Four first-time featured article writers lead the way

• Read this Signpost in full
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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:42, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

We appear to dominate Google results for medical conditions, signs and symptoms

We need a bigger sample to be certain, but it appears to be the case. I took a sample of 40 of our 30-odd thousand medical articles and checked where they rank in Google searches. We were first in 24 searches, second in 11, and third, fifth, seventh, eighth and ninth in the other five. User:Anthonyhcole/Google rank of WPMED pages --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:54, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole: - And? NickCT (talk) 14:14, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

(ec)That is much less the case for big topics, and most observers believe that the google algorhythm changed to specifically downrate WP on medical searches about 18 months ago. Research papers on medicine on Wikipedia routinely quote a paper, from 2009 I think, saying that WP often tops search engine results, but for common conditions, where there are many other good sites, this is no longer true (and researchers should stop citing it). Try searching for any common cancer; often WP is not even on the first page, even with an exact match of search term to our page title. For obscure topics, with far less competition, your results are probably about right. Johnbod (talk) 14:20, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I agree 100% with that, John. In my experience, over the last 5 years or so the big topic Wikipedia articles have been sliding in the ranking. I'm relieved to see that trend. Google appears to be taking reliability into account in its rankings - when there is a reasonable alternative to Wikipedia. Do you know if any research has been done relating page views to Google ranking? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:02, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure that Wikipedia should be the first search engine ranking. Organizations associated with specific medical conditions (ALS, depression, CF, breast cancer, etc.) probably have more specific and updated information because they are more focused on particular diseases or symptoms. WP can do a good job but some of these associations have researchers devoted to the subjects. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 14:58, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. But often the information available is either rather too simple, when patient-oriented, or too complicated, when written for medical professionals. WP can, on a good day, provide a useful view between those extremes, which people can turn to when they have exhausted other sites. Most people look at a number of sites, as is known for most areas of web-searches, and was confirmed by the research I did when Wikipedian in Residence at Cancer Research UK (forthcoming, I hope). Johnbod (talk) 15:05, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Wow, I look forward to hearing about your research, Johnbod! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:54, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Although not specifically related to medicine, this article may be of interest to readers of this section. It says that in the UK, Wikipedia is on the first page of Google results for 99% of searches of nouns. Everymorning talk 11:15, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

The mainstream media has covered this in the past, eg here and here. It isn't surprising that the Wikipedia article is often at the top of the list of search engine results, for example here with "cancer" on Google UK. As long as readers follow the general disclaimer and take professional medical advice, there is no real problem here.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 11:26, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Al-Shabaab-ISIS support inside Wikipedia?

AS done with user:Lineagegeek last May 8 in ([9]), allow us to inform you about this investigation on how Wikipedia could be used in order to get support -and/or find help- for muslim propaganda & fanatism on Al-Shabaab/ISIS terrorism. Thanks anyway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.154.60 (talk) 15:18, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I saw one admin get harassing messages saying he was responsible for making Wikipedia too Muslim and then a few days later, there were messages from a different user saying because he is a Christian, he is anti-Muslim. I think there are enough checks and balances and editors working in this area to eliminate propaganda and fanaticism on any number of topics. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:25, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Oh no! ISIS is invading Wikipedia. Quickly people....... man the guns! Thanks for the vigilance IP.

But seriously, Liz is right. Fanatical muslim propaganda is probably not one of the more pernicious kinds of propaganda on WP. NickCT (talk) 14:21, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Self or company promotion is a much more insidious kind of propaganda, NickCT, because it can easily occur on articles that are on very few editors' watchlists and so it goes unnoticed for long periods of time. Meanwhile, the more controversial articles, like those that concern the OP, are heavily watched and propaganda is unlikely to last very long before it is noticed, discussed and corrected. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 14:33, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

You are right again Liz. So wise.

Perhaps I'm being a little slow here, but what is "OP"? NickCT (talk) 14:37, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Original Poster, that is, the person who began this thread.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:26, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry, message board lingo. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:42, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Ah! Got it. NickCT (talk) 15:48, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

I think some people are going too far to "prevent propaganda" at the expense of the educational mission. See this thread. Wnt (talk) 17:18, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

And... someone struck it already. [10] Wnt (talk) 11:43, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

From the Engrish fires....

Seems like Engrish.com came up with this gem. Enjoy :) — Rickyrab. ^{Yada yada yada} 14:36, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Stir-fried seems like an appropriate Wiki concept - certainly better than half-baked - but why pimientos? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:01, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Best comment from the thread on that page: "The Japanese eat minke whales and the Chinese eat Jimmy Wales." Mmm, crunchy! Prioryman (talk) 19:43, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Magna Carta (An Embroidery)

"One Wikipedia entry you can't update", according to the Londonist [1]

There were some nice pictures from the unveiling party for Magna Carta (An Embroidery) that you posted to Twitter.

Any chance of adding them to the images on Commons in the category c:Category:Magna Carta (An Embroidery)?

It would be nice to be able to give a sense of scale of the whole work, which I understand is quite spectacular.

Thanks, Jheald (talk) 18:54, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

What would have been better is if Mr. Wales had refused to be involved as a protest to the fact that Mr. Snowden and Mr. Assange were involved.Camelbinky (talk) 19:14, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

I think you should leave my boys alone, Mr Binky. If that IS your name... Harold Bellagnome (talk) 21:50, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

I'll ask Cornelia to ask if the official photographers from the library would be willing to upload - I'm sure those would be much nicer than my shadowy quick cellphone pictures.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:01, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Idea for Improvement

Hello Jimbo,

Complaints about how rule-breakers are dealt with on Wikipedia a dime-a-dozen, and probably most are frivolous are not big deals. I certainly would be desensitized if I had to hear them as often as I have seen you have. However, I think that every once in a while a case pops up which can be a learning experience on how to improve procedures on Wikipedia.

In order to prevent future situations where particularly interested admins friendly towards some parties and/or disliking of other parties in a case from making a vested ruling—in a recent egregious example, not even willing to discuss any of the actual evidence brought before them—perhaps each person accused should never have the same admin rule on cases pertaining to that person more than once. There are over a thousand admins, so it is not like there would be any exhaustion of novel admins to hear cases. For sure, previous ruling admins should be allowed to give their advisory statement just like everybody else, since their previous experiences are almost always still valuable contextual information.

We are all human, and we all have previous experiences which bias us one way or another away from objectivity. I think this would be a dead-simple, automated way of improving the case decision process on Wikipedia.

So what do you think of the idea?

Thank you for your time! 108.52.24.214 (talk) 17:41, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, how do you propose that we apply this principle to IP accounts that have no significant editing history, and who may well be established users editing under cover of anonymity in order to hide their own prior involvement? AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:53, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

IP editors fall into one of two categories: static IP and dynamic IP. If it's a static IP, then the above rule should hold to minimize bias, which is just as much applicable to any named account. The case of dynamic IP is more debatable, but the way I see it, I don't think there would be any issue with exhausting novel admins to decide cases given how many billions of dynamic IP addresses there are. It would still work ok.

As for other issues of hidden accounts, I see WP:CHECKUSER as an underutilized tool, which if applied more liberally (perhaps should be mandatory in situations where no other specific account can be fingered specifically as being the master of the sock) would prevent what I think is an epidemic of prejudicial and incorrect bans applied for socking. There is already a tool to figure it out, why should it even be a guessing game or a matter worth wasting time debating about? Bigotry against IP users who represent the majority of Wikipedia's content creators *of course* ideally shouldn't exist anyway, however I think having clearer answers about socking and such would go a long way towards combating that unfortunate discrimination. It's sad to see so many instances of admins not investigating IP user complaints of other rule-breakers simply because they don't have an account here. 108.52.24.214 (talk) 18:50, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

References

For privacy reasons though, CheckUser cannot link IPs to accounts. If an IP is accused of sockpuppetry, the decision on whether or not they are guilty of this has to be based on their behaviour.--5 albert square (talk) 19:33, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

This is quite the tangent from the original posting with the "no same ruling admin twice" proposal, but I think this is something else worth discussing further. All of Wikipedia's information is supposed to be based on public articles and publications, it's not like Wikileaks or something where there are leakers that require confidentially of IP addresses for their protection. I think not having privacy on Wikipedia under suspicious circumstances isn't the worse trade-off, and look at it this way: Damage is *already* being caused by innocent users incorrectly accused of being a sock from ever participating in the Wikimedia project ever again, whereas the privacy issue is only a risk. I think that's already sufficient reasoning to revise policy, but I'll add a controversial contention into the mix: I think most agree that for most cases, the damage caused by false positives incorrectly banning contributors usually outweigh the benefits of removing sock accounts which wouldn't already be banned outright anyway for bad behavior. There aren't too many cases that come to mind where this trade-off seems worthwhile in light of the powerful tools for deciding this question we could potentially use. 108.52.24.214 (talk) 00:23, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

You've no idea how many such cases there might be. I know at least one person who would be writing FAs right now, if it wasn't for the way everyone here assumes any IP who knows there way around is "obviously fishy, must be guilty of something" - despite policies saying otherwise.

I suspect there's a *lot* of people put off by the prevalant 'all IPs are guilty' attitude. And I also know that, instantly, many people reading this will assume I'm "avoiding scrutiny" and probably evading a block or banned or something. (I'm not, FWIW) 88.104.21.80 (talk) 23:27, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I wish there was better accountability such that this kind of unfair discrimination didn't happen. Look, the major op-ed in the most recent The Signpost newsletter is "What made Wikipedia lose its reputation?" It has a good coverage of the horrid treatment of non-elite Wikipedia editors; importantly, since "New Wikipeida editor" is pretty much synonymous with "IP editor", the IP discrimination issue does a lot of damage in driving away new users, not just the established ones you mention. The way rule-breaking is handled seems to be on a lot of peoples' minds, and I am at least giving it an honest attempt to do my part to suggest possible solutions. The op-ed touches on so many important concerns, I would be interested to hear :Jimbo_Wales' take on it. I might post a new section heading on his talk page for it to bring it to his attention, if he missed it in the most recent Signpost. 108.52.24.214 (talk) 14:38, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

References

I totally agree. I can't explain clearer than saying, the "Up it's own arse" nature of Wikipedia is its biggest problem. By far.

I used to edit a lot. I did it for fun, friends, and a feeling of 'adding to human knowledge' - I still get a kick out of knowing 1000s of people per day read stuff-wot-I-wrote. (Good, true, referenced stuff. But still, it's nice).

I love the principles of this project, but I detest the insipid 'power-struggles', the admins (and want-to-be-admins) doing their best to stomp on trolls - because, by doing so, they'll +EXP in this silly game.

I totally appreciate the extraordinary efforts that many volunteers make to stop the bad stuff, But for me, now, the trolls are winning - more babies are being thrown out than bathwater.

It simply isn't fun to be here any more, so I am not here other than commenting here. Not 'active'

I think that either a) it'll sort itself out (unlikely), or b) it'll disappear up its own rectum when the last-remaining admin blocks the 2nd last. 88.104.21.80 (talk) 18:22, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

ClueBot III not archiving your talk page

Hi Jimbo,

I thought that you may appreciate an update on this.

I've had an email from one of ClueBot's admins tonight regarding this, it looks as if WP:API changed again leading to a load of PHP errors for the bot so it hasn't been able to archive some talk pages. One of ClueBot's admins is now looking into it - hopefully not be too long before ClueBot III is back archiving your talk page.

Thanks @Rich Smith: for your assistance with this :)--5 albert square (talk) 00:31, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikiproject Cross-language Editing and Learning Exchange

Wikipedia:Wikiproject Cross-language Editing and Learning Exchange is a new WikiProject for combining two activities: (1) editing Wikipedia, and (2) learning another language.
—Wavelength (talk) 16:22, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Query

Dear Mr. Wales,

I am writing to ask for your opinion. An article was written about an award winning, published author and posted on your site for a little over a year. On Tuesday of last week editors decided to delete it. What ensued was a passionate discussion which the writer of the article did not handle well. The article writer was able to show that there are numerous European and US peer reviewed references and books that cite this author’s work and that a text book of hers, which was published by a prominent publisher in the US, has been translated into multiple languages and is used in several countries. The article was deleted on Friday morning.

Since then, the same editors are going through the site and deleting references that other international users have made to this author. An international user, who appears to be from Brazil, has apparently also questioned these deletions. The editors seem to have decided that because 1 of this author’s 4 books are self-published the other works are without merit. Is this “fair” both to the author as well as to her international readers. If international Wikipedia users cite an American author’s work, how can Wikipedia editors say the author is not known internationally? There appears to be evidence that this author is read in Europe, Asia, and South America.

Deleted reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Church_of_St._Alphonsus_Liguori,_Rome&action=history

Link to US text book published by Jones and Bartlett http://www.jblearning.com/catalog/9780763778545/

Link to translation of text book published by EGC Medical Publishers Jakarta, Indonesia http://mabastore.com/buku-asma-panduan-penatalaksanaan-klinis.html

Translations of this textbook have also been published in Japanese and Russian by other medical publishers. Numerous other books and peer reviewed articles that quote and reference this author in English, French, German, and Spanish have been identified including several provided by the article author which the editors did not consider. The editors also made several decisions and comments without checking the facts. For example an editor said: “8. Medscape/WebMd isn't even a journal, doesn't apply under Criteria 8. MedGenMed isn't a leading academic journal, it's just an online journal. Besides, she was never the editor of either of them.”

A quick search revealed that the author was an editor in the areas that were listed in the article for both these publications. MedGenMed has been indexed in MEDLINE since 2000 and managed in accordance with the standards of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). I cannot comment on their academic ranking. It is in PubMed and a viable peer reviewed journal according to the National Library of Medicine.

MedGenMED - Pulmonary Medicine Margaret A. Clark, RN, RRT-NPS http://www.medscape.com/viewpublication/21547_about1

Margaret A. Clark, RN, RRT-NPS, MS Editorial Director, Medscape Allergy & Clinical Immunology Medscape Pulmonary Medicine https://www.medscape.com/public/bios/bio-margaretclark

The point was also raised, though not skillfully, that the editors made the decision to apply Wiki academic criteria to this individual as the basis for the deletion. The article never claimed she was an academic. It stated that she was a writer and editor with a national and international reputation in multiple highly specialized areas. Being quoted in major sources such as the Oxford Shakespeare and referenced in EU medical guidelines is perhaps more notable because this author does not appear to have a major faculty position. But that is an opinion and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this. Thank you for your time.StudentQuery (talk) 17:03, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

If it is your opinion that the article was improperly deleted, you can request deletion review. If it is your claim that editors are disruptively deleting references to other books by the author, there are forums for that concern. Since this is the only edit that you have made from this account, I can't guess what article was deleted or what author is being campaigned against. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:43, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

StudentQuery, the relevant AfD is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Margaret Varnell Clark. There is no need to repeat the arguments and links all over again on this page. Voceditenore (talk) 17:43, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

(ec) I have read the deletion debate WP:Articles for deletion/Margaret Varnell Clark. Every experienced editor familiar with our notability standards for academics recommended deleting the article. The only support for keeping the article came from brand new accounts clearly recruited off-Wikipedia, who consistently assumed bad faith of the experienced editors. The consensus was crystal clear, and in my opinion, entirely correct. Sadly, feelings were hurt in the give and take, and the nominator apologized for losing their temper at one point. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 17:47, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Ok the consensus was that the author is not notable as an academic. According to Wikipedia benchmarks the books are. The book notability guidance says “The book has been the subject[1] of two or more non-trivial[2] published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself” http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(books) The editor who started the deletion process said they had found 8 of these sources in Google Scholar for the first book.

The writer of the article provided additional references for the others. Should they have created a page for each book? Or one page under the author?

And how should they have handled the Shakespearean work? It looks like there are 30 + independent references from what the writer provided. (I did not check those.) Should that be a separate page?

What would have been the best way to do this? Thanks StudentQuery (talk) 20:07, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

A check of the Shakespeare citations showed that there are in excess of 30 independent references that quote, or cite the works. Several like this book name the author outright and discuss her work. (Page 39 “Tribute should be paid, as far as this goes, to the production of King Lear by Richard Eyre in 1977 at the Royal National Theatre which, as Margaret Varnell points out in "King Lear:…”)

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780761848936/Shakespeare%27s-Spiral-Tracing-the-Snail-in-King-Lear-and-Renaissance-Painting

The three areas in which she is most often quoted are: King Lear, Richard III, and Shakespeare on Film. This raises the same questions as above. How should this have been presented? Should it be 3 separate pages about these 3 areas of work? If the author is not an academic, but the works are notable, how should it be handled? Thank you for your time.StudentQuery (talk) 14:59, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Writing books doesn't make a person notable. People (in reliable sources) writing (substantially) about the person does. Is there 'significant coverage in reliable sources' about this person? It doesn't seem so.

People quoting books doesn't really make the book notable. People writing in detail about the book does. Things like the snippet "as Margaret Varnell points out" doesn't constitute significant coverage.

Is there 'significant coverage in reliable sources' about those books? I'm not sure, but I can't see it so far.

Apologies if that isn't what you wanted to hear; but I hope it makes things clearer. 88.104.21.80 (talk) 21:50, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Please no need for apologies. It is not a matter of what I want to hear. I am trying to understand the criteria and how they are applied. If I am reading the deletion discussion correctly. Book reviews and third party discussions about the author’s works were thrown out by the previous editors in favor of high numbers of google scholar citations. The previous editors called the reviews and recommendations promotional pieces and did not allow them.

Apparently, there are many. Claitor's Law Books and Publishing, who is not her publisher, featured her Louisiana Irish book as their top pick over books that they themselves published. Here is the conclusion from their 2 ½ page write up that is exclusively of her work: “Clark is a New Orleans native, and her research shows how the Irish shaped the city of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana, and the American South. I’ve read many books and papers on the Irish, but none of these matches the documentation that this author has put into her book. This book is available at major booksellers or online for $13.95. It should be in all major Louisiana library collections.”

From professional journals: Carter, Edward. Book Review: Asthma: A Clinician's Guide. Margaret Varnell Clark MS RN RRT-NPS. Sudbury, Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett. 2011. Soft cover, 174 pages. Respiratory Care April 1, 2011 vol. 56 no. 4 538-539.

There are many others instances of people reviewing and discussing her books. John Folse apparently did a TV show about the Irish in Louisiana and discussed her book at length. The author was not there, yet the editors said it was promotional. There are others, I won’t fill this space up with lists and links.

What are the criteria? Every time a benchmark is presented, it is then discounted.

Benchmarks presented so far: Verifiable 3rd party publications: Yes. Books and several hundred publications both peer reviewed and in the popular media. Not good enough. There must be Google scholar citations. There are 70 or 80. Not good enough. Must be discussed in the 3rd party work not just referenced by it. Ok, there are 30+ examples of that. Not good enough. Must be about the authors work itself – ok there are examples above. How many of these types of references are needed? Are there any other benchmarks?

I suppose the scientist in me wants to see a logical, linear evaluation process. These are the standards, they are verifiable, objective, and measurable. The subject meets them or they do not. I do appreciate the discussion and help in understanding all this. Thank you. StudentQuery (talk) 11:51, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

I am DMRRT, the original author of the article. I am going to make one statement here and then I am done. For whatever reason my article was singled out for deletion. The first contact I received from the editor was “my only warning” (bolded) and threatened to block me. I am sorry, I did get emotional and was frantically trying to comply and provide the references they were asking for. They asked me to show that Miss Clark was 1. A published author (3rd party) 2. Cited in google scholar and 3.Her works were more than referenced, they were used by other readers and discussed.

As I look at other authors on the site, this is not asked of them. I don’t know why it is of Miss Clark? I want to make sure it is understood. My article said she was a writer and editor. I did not claim she was an academic. And have never made that claim.

The article was deleted. The editors then deleted all other references to Miss Clark and I am under investigation for being a sock puppet. It has been made very clear that because I am not a regular Wikipedia user I am automatically guilty, my motives are automatically questioned, and there is no chance that there will ever be an article about this very worthy and deserving author on Wikipedia. DMRRT (talk) 16:52, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

• The above user DMRRT (talk · contribs) has now been blocked for abusing multiple accounts, following this SPI. 81.168.78.73 (talk) 14:19, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Blocked sock. StudentQuery, please refer to Wikipedia:Appealing a block. Creating a new account to avoid the block is not going the help.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
StudentQuery: I was also blocked as a sock puppet of DMRRT. Though I am not and no one asked me if I were. They also admit that they did not check. Please see below. Wikipedia: There is a problem here. Not sure if it is with anyone who discusses this author or if it is with someone discussing the way this has been handled. I expect this account will be blocked soon as well. • Deskana, did you also check StudentQuery (talk · contribs)? See my comment directly above this one? Voceditenore (talk) 06:38, 20 May 2015 (UTC) • @Voceditenore: That account did not show up in the checks, and there's little point checking it directly as it's already blocked. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 06:40, 20 May 2015 (UTC) StQuery2 (talk) 19:36, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

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New User Intro

Hello Jimmy/Mr. Wales/Jimbo

Just wanted to introduce myself to you here. Hope to meet you tonight at the Israel Wikimedia reception. From my Page:

I'm an old fan and freelance net promoter of Wikipedia, but I'm just now starting to Edit. Been meaning to for a long time; now motivated by Jimmy (Mr. Wales?) being awarded the Dan David Prize last night (congrats!).

I also did my first edit in your wiki article. Pending inclusion since it's semi-protected and I'm new. Knowadiz (talk) 05:23, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Welcome! Yes, come up and say hi tonight if you can!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:03, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Nice article on it here. I see Hagit Meishar-Tal is missing an article. She should meet GNG, a summary in a book here. Can somebody start it?♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:54, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Can somebody do me a favour and list 10 articles they wanted translated from Hebrew wikipedia into English and try to get some people to start them while this is going on, I think it would be a good thing. As part of the WP:Intertranswiki project, I will put 10 Israel articles up on a given subject. Perhaps Yoninah or Cliftonian or somebody else seeing this can pick a topic and list 10 articles like Israeli scholars or something? Obviously the idea is to translate initially and then improve upon it with adequate sourcing and additional content.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:03, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Israel is not my area of expertise—I just live there. But I'm flattered that you thought of me. Please let me know if there's any other way I can help out. —  Cliftonian (talk)  11:20, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Jimbo, I missed the Wikimedia reception. Couldn't access the address link. Went to the roundtable event early, thinking it was there - it wasn't. Stayed for that, though. You left fast before I could introduce myself. I wrote you a letter and brought it to the hotel. Did you get it? Knowadiz (talk) 13:12, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

..... Don't know if this is the right way to add to a talk section, but here goes. Dr. Blofeld - do you want this for now while Jimbo is here, or long term? Maybe I can help later. Cliftonian - I'll look for you there tonight! Jimbo - thanks for the response and invite. Looking forward to it. Hope you're surviving the heat wave here. Knowadiz (talk) 13:11, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, 10 articles asap which can be a focus during whatever wiki meeting you're having which is going to generate some interest and encourage people to get involved in Hebrew translation. 10 Israeli scholars would be ideal. Can you identify 10 articles on Israeli scholars you want started which have articles on Hebrew wikipedia or are missing?♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:41, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

@Knowadiz: I'm afraid I won't be there tonight because I have work (I am not affiliated to Wikimedia Israel and wasn't aware of this event until today). But I hope we will meet another time. In the meantime please feel free to message me on my talk page if you ever need a hand with anything. Good luck! :) John, aka —  Cliftonian (talk)  15:02, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

@Knowadiz: Are you not interested in Hebrew translation into English either? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:22, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Dr. Blofeld - I am interested, at least to suggest to you some articles to translate. I saw your User Page - should I contact you about it there? Pretty impressive bunch of WikiWork you've done. Knowadiz (talk) 13:12, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

@Knowadiz:, Yes,on the talk page of the project. If you could let the others at Wikimedia Israel and who are interested in improving coverage about Wikipedia:WikiProject Intertranswiki/Hebrew missing articles can be identified.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:50, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Jimbo, please HELP, your Page admins are...

Hey Jimbo,

I do not want to disturb you, I know you are really busy but I think your Wikipedia Admins aren't the cleverest.

Please take a look at this Talk about my article Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mister Miau#Mister Miau

The problem is that I just said that my partner and I are working with sony together and the Admin Ritchie333 (User:Ritchie333) directly thought I were sharing my Wiki account with my partner, just because I said "We are working with sony..". I didn't go deeper into the story, thats why I said yes I did that, bla bla...

I don't get it why he thought that I was sharing my account. They could at least check my IPs. Sometime I were not logged into my account while I was answering to their messages. I think it makes them fun to delete, block or ban users-/articles. They just want to push their stats, you should forbid that.

Please help me out. It's two statboosting-addicted admins against me. The other admin is User:Joseph2302. He immediately said "delete and block user", also just for boosting his stats

Please HELP ME JIMMY!

Thank you very much.

Best, Alex — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gtrpb (talk • contribs) 14:44, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, and never claimed to be- I also redacted the comments that you should be blocked as promo-only account, since it's not my job to decide. Also, as I mentioned, the article is promotional, which is why it should be deleted. Joseph2302 (talk) 14:53, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Also the word "we" had an implication that multiple users could have been using the account.

@Ritchie333: They're complaining about you here. Joseph2302 (talk) 14:54, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Alex, there was clearly a misunderstanding regarding your use of 'we', but beyond that, I can't see anything problematic with the AfD discussion – they are certainly correct in stating that you have a conflict of interest. And the article fails to demonstrate that the subject meets our notability guidelines – which require evidence of significant coverage in third party reliable sources – making deletion more or less inevitable. I suggest that rather than wasting your time making silly claims about 'statboosting-addicted admins' (nobody gives a toss about such 'stats' here) you go back to running your record label. If it is successful enough, I'm sure someone without a conflict of interest will get around to writing an article on it eventually. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:02, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

@Gtrpb: Woah, slow down. I said "if", because other admins come down like a ton of bricks for account sharing. But you say you're not, and I believe you're not. The article was originally scheduled to be deleted per WP:CSD#A7, but I decided the claim to be affiliated with Sony was worth investigating further, so opened a full deletion debate. Now, I'm struggling to prove it. If I could have proved it with reliable sources, I'd have done that and there wouldn't even be a deletion debate (though I might have had a word with the CSD tagger about searching for sources). If somebody else can supply the proof, the debate will hopefully be closed as "keep" or "merge" and all will be well. Otherwise, you'll need to wait until the label has a hit record – that should do the trick. Jimbo doesn't get involved in day to day content stuff anymore, so I don't think he'll be able to offer any further advice, but you never know. PS: I can't see IP addresses; for that you need a administrator with the "checkuser" right, and they can only confirm account matches, never reveal IPs. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:06, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that being 'affiliated with Sony' establishes notability – notability isn't inherited. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:17, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

That's kinda why I started the AfD :-P Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:22, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply guys. @Ritchie: I was just wondering, because you have an Admin statics on your Wiki Profile. That seems like you're proud of the actions you're doing. Anyways. Let's delete it, add +1 to your stats and everyone is happy.(Y) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gtrpb (talk • contribs) 20:31, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

regarding kapu caste

There is so much Of wrong information about KAPU(caste). please change it otherwise it sends a wrong information for the future,which spoils the whole community.kindly check it — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.51.89.127 (talk) 09:04, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top.
The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). 81.168.78.73 (talk) 10:52, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Caste articles are sort of a special case. They notoriously tend to get filled up with, um, inadequately sourced information. In fact that page is semi-protected, and if you look at Talk:Kapu (caste), you will see that virtually every proposed edit has been rejected because no source was provided. So, the proper approach is to propose an edit on the talk page and be sure to provide at least one reliable source that supports it. Looie496 (talk) 13:16, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Quixotic plea

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Wikipediholism test. Thanks. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 06:31, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Shared IPs

another tedious piece of block evasion
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Jimbo, Jpgordon wants to introduce a new rule that shared IPs should be blocked because some users do not edit Wikipedia and therefore do not read the talkpage. What's your view? 78.145.19.110 (talk) 17:58, 3 June 2015 (UTC) Where's your evidence? Can I question whether you know what you're talking about? Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi 19:09, 3 June 2015 (UTC) You only gave the IP two minutes to reply. It was easy enough to find on Jpgordon's contribs: unblock|reason=This is a public computer in a library. Thousands of people use it so sending these messages is a waste of time because nobody reads them.|decline=All the more reason to keep the IP blocked. 151.224.136.14 (talk) 20:17, 3 June 2015 (UTC) If you are talking about this user: User_talk:156.61.250.250#May_2015, then your comment is a misrepresentation of events. The IP has a long history of vandalism and blocks. Using increasing duration of blocks is entirely appropriate from long-term disruptive sources, and is supported by the blocking policy. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:27, 3 June 2015 (UTC) This is of course just the same anon editor block-evading again, just like in another thread yesterday. How stupid does he think we all are, pretending he's somebody else by talking about himself in the third person all the time? Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:19, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Feel free to weigh in on the Workshop page where Arbitrators and the community hash out issues

Oh wait. Arbcom skipped that part and went straight to the Star Chamber after being requested to comment on the workshop a month ago. I've never seen that. Do we need a recall for a body that is supposed to represent the collegial atmosphere of community consensus? Maybe a Godhead needs to step up and reiterate why we are here. Arbcom serves the community/encyclopedia, not the other way around. --DHeyward (talk) 07:21, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@DHeyward: As a drafting arbitrator, that was generally poor. The workshop is often ill utilized or not utilized. It should have been more heavily utilized. I have only done my best to yield the best outcome of this particular case. My ears are open to your concerns, I'm willing to make changes on them. I am bothered by the fact you have felt the need to talk to Jimbo about our lack of reflecting of community consensus, especially given the concern/weight I've already given community comments that came after the PD posting. The community itself didn't well utilize the workshop in this particular case, and I'm very willing to modify the PD based upon community concerns. So imperfect? Yes. A star chamber? Far from it. I've welcomed comments on the talk page, I've read your comments, and I am considering them. I've reviewed several cases, and in another recent case Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/OccultZone_and_others/Workshop there isn't much workshop usage either (from arbitrators). From the community however, input was extensive. Compare this to ampol 2, where there was only one thing put forth by the community, and I can see why this seems to be out of the blue. But given we are where we are (and I remind all individuals they are welcome to make workshop additions), we can take input at this stage. NativeForeigner ^Talk 08:15, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

If you'd like I'd be amenable to moving the PD as it stands to take comments in a format similar to the Workshop phase. Also thank you for your comments on the talk of the PD. NativeForeigner ^Talk 08:18, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

User:NativeForeigner what is a typical amount of participation by the committee during the workshop? Hell in a Bucket (talk) 12:43, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@NativeForeigner:My concern has been that we've asked for ArbCom's mind on the topic for a month. There's been no complaints about MONGO either before or after and then out of the blue, within a day, we have a broadly construed topic ban as the first sanction with half the passing committee voting for it. I requested ArbCom at least post something to the Workshop a month ago. The speed from PD posting to voting was very quick and I apologize if this seems heavy handed by me, but you can imagine how discouraging it is to have over a month delay and then suddenly within one day, half the committee has proposed and voted for a topic ban on one of the most prolific editors. MONGO isn't Eric or even Ubikwit. I posted his edit counts on the PD talk page. People that are interested in his edits generally don't have lingering disputes because he moves on. This is why that even those with evidence have already moved on. It seems the process suddenly jumped to lightspeed with solutions not supporting a resolution of a problem. I came here because it is watched and the process looked like it was spiraling out of control with very broad implications on political articles and very little community input. This, I hope, has led to a more deliberative process and slowed the rush to topic ban a 10 year editor with nary a block since 2008. My proposal is for ArbCom to focus on crafting better DS for AE as that appears to be where ArbCom wants these issues resolved (and is part of the PD) and not feel the need to sanction an editor to make those changes or a point. --DHeyward (talk) 14:45, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@DHeyward: I"m not particularly happy with what we proposed. I would hope it's reasonably proportionate to evidence (we were striving for that), but the evidencep rovided wans't representative of the case request. Part of what delayed the case so long as a feeling among me and an initial codrafter that the evidence wasn't really representative of hte problem this case was established to fix. I would also hope it's somewhat slowed it down. Although I hope this isn't a minority opinion, I"ve never been opposed to changing PDs once posted, although as you've alluded to it's much better to get these things ironed out in the earlier stages. NativeForeigner ^Talk 17:58, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@Hell in a Bucket: Depends, but it can be quite limited. I went through quite a few cases, and workshop is generally only touched by a few arbs, almost always drafting, and broader participation would almsot certainly be a good thing. NativeForeigner ^Talk 17:58, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@NativeForeigner: For the cases where the evidence doesn't match the case presented, I would hope that ArbCom would feel free to punt it, especially if the case was crated by Arbcom. If I go to a restaurant and order steak, I don't think anybody would reasonably expect me to accept tuna casserole instead and pay for steak just because I ordered steak. It would be perfectly reasonable to reject the tuna casserole after ordering steak. I realize Arbcom split this case out and instead of a specific and a general case, they got two specific cases (one is very weak). AP2 is Tuna Casserole, not steak. It would not be out of line to conclude that the evidence isn't broadly topical behaviors but rather the onesy/twosy complaints normally handled elsewhere and ArbCom should decline it. The problem is that only one case was brought to Arbitration and when it was split by ArbCom, the community followed the case they filed, not the case called AP2 created by ArbCom. I understand what ArbCom was attempting and it would have worked if the community had an AP2 dispute to resolve instead of just editor complaints. None of it will matter as the 2016 election cycle will quickly escalate disputes and, so far, I see nothing proposed that anticipates that issue. I made a couple proposals but they may be too wordy and difficult. I like some sort of "Writing for the enemy" type of broad sanction but enforcement and interpretation would be difficult. It's still not too late to punt it back or make broader AE sanctions instead of specific editor sanctions. --DHeyward (talk) 18:28, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I've seen this be an issue in the current Lightbreather arb case too. I've seen a few editors myself included ping the arbs with questions and no response period. We are not worthy it would seem to be addressed by the committee although I do note that NF has answered some questions here. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 12:25, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Groups of Living People

Are groups of people entitled to any of the same consideration that we are careful to afford individuals when they are accused of serious wrongdoing? Chrisrus (talk) 23:00, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

What are you talking about in terms of scale? A group of say 15 individuals, or say a group of tens of thousands to billions of people constituting a religion? Monty₈₄₅ 23:02, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

• Per WP:BLPGROUP (bolding for emphasis):

Legal persons and groups
This policy does not normally apply to material about corporations, companies, or other entities regarded as legal persons, though any such material must be written in accordance with other content policies. The extent to which the BLP policy applies to edits about groups is complex and must be judged on a case-by-case basis. A harmful statement about a small group or organization comes closer to being a BLP problem than a similar statement about a larger group; and when the group is very small, it may be impossible to draw a distinction between the group and the individuals that make up the group. When in doubt, make sure you are using high-quality sources.

--Mark Miller (talk) 23:15, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for this! It's very helpful.

Anyone who could expand a bit upon the sorts of things implied by saying that it must be judged on a case-by-case basis is invited to do so below.

To me, it seems it should depend mostly on whether someone might be harmed by what we write.

For example, If the overall impression on a naive reader is that Elbownians are bad people, a reader might become afraid and act accordingly upon learning that a person is Elbownian. Chrisrus (talk) 23:48, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Actually it would be closer to how easily you can differentiate a person from the group. Small groups and organizations it can be impossible to define away from their individual members. In which case comments on the organization/group is no different than comments on the individual. --Kyohyi (talk) 18:33, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

That seems quite true. If we're talking about Joe's Tackle Shop, it's much closer to say that an accusation about the shop is an accusation about Joe. So the part about the size of the organization stems from the more general principle of how differentiated the wrongdoing is from the individuals are from the group. If we say pass along accusations against the National People's Party, which let's say is a large and powerful group, or say for example McFood Megacorp, readers are less likely to assume that anyone whose ever been a member also stands so accused. What we have to bear in mind when passing along accusations against groups is Chrisrus (talk) 16:47, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Topic Shift

You can just say "Gamergate", you know. Trying to talk in vague generalities when you're specifically thinking of a specific group is useless when it comes to a policy that quite literally says "case by case basis". Parabolist (talk) 00:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

No, I've seen many such cases in the past. Take NXIVM, for example. Chrisrus (talk) 00:36, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Is this a new end-run to try to make Gamergate controversy into the pro-Gamergate propaganda piece that you seem to want it to be? We now have to come up with a "BLP lite" for groups of people? No longer can we refer to Stormfront as a hate group, because its members might get sads?--Jorm (talk) 01:12, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

These accusations are not warranted, amount to a clear WP:ASSUMEGOODFAITH violation, are less than WP:CIVIL, and should be withdrawn. I do not want any article to be "propaganda" of any kind. This is a good faith question, one that occurred to me while working on that article, but was not about that per se but groups in general and applies to countless articles, including several I work on. It is not part of some nefarious scheme that warrants your disrupting what could have been a nice, productive discussion by shifting the topic to GamerGate without inserting a section break. Chrisrus (talk) 04:17, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

The comments by Jorm are entirely warranted because the pro-Gamergate crowd has been determined for many months to insert BLP violating attacks on women in gaming and computing into this encyclopedia, and many experienced editors have had to devote enormous amounts of work to defending the encyclopedia against this organized campaign of harassment. Be very careful about aiding and abetting this vile campaign. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:36, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

If anyone violates any BLP guidelines, there are proper ways of reacting that don't necessitate repeated violations of some of the most important pillars of Wikipedia. Chrisrus (talk) 06:09, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes sir ree Bob, you are correct. We definitely need to take into account that the most important aspect of Wikipedia is writing an encyclopedia that reflects what the reliable sources say and take efforts to prevent outside troll campaigns from disrupting us from that task. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:46, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Seems like a pretty basic question to ask and one could certainly see why BLP could be complex in this case. Saying that there is a "vile campaign" to intentionally insert BLP violations is just drama-mongering; it prevents thoughtful discussion and contributes to a hostile environment. CorporateM (Talk) 06:21, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I believe that the objective facts of the matter support my comment. Take a look at the massive number of libelous and defamatory edits which have had to be rev-deled since this whole thing started. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:34, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

All the drama mongering has been by the gamergaters. As Cullen says, their attempts to abuse Wikipedia for their own purposes has reuslted in a prodigious expenditure of time and effort by Wikipedians, many of whom have been attacked for it both here and in the cesspits in which gamrgaters collude. As to their attacks on women, vile is putting it mildly. A perfect storm of arrogance, unwarranted feelings of entitlement and spite. And frankly it is difficult not to conclude that a large number of these people are mainly jealous of people who are more socially and sexually successful than they are. Guy (Help!) 13:41, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

This is how we portray them on Wikipedia. However, it must be clear that this portrayal is simply a fair summary of the available WP:RSes, and not the result of bias on the part of Wikipedians who hate them. It should be clear that we've gone out of our way to ensure that they have been treated fairly, because that page has enough press about it to warrent an article of it's own. Chrisrus (talk) 15:30, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

This was settled yesterday (after 20,000 words and a month of tedious discussion) at WT:NPOV; there's no point in rehashing it here. Wikipedia cannot and should not ignore the sources in order to encourage its use to punish Gamergate targets or to harass women in software. MarkBernstein (talk) 18:04, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't think anyone hates them. Some of us do view their actions as contemptible though. That's OK because the sources do as well: it's no worse than despising the actions of the Ferguson PD. Guy (Help!) 20:40, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Reading this over, I think now it's important to clarify that the "accusations" I was calling "unwarranted" near the top where those against me here in this thread that I, personally, were part of any campaign to inject propaganda of any kind into any article. If you read this over, it seems that some might have thought that I was saying that the accusations against GamerGate were unwarranted. I was not. Please scan this over again and see what I mean. Chrisrus (talk) 16:47, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

OccultZone and Sock-puppetry

In November 2014, a Request for Comments was opened, asking whether Ayurveda should be categorized as Pseudoscience. In December 2014, I closed it, concluding, based on multiple arguments, that it should not be. On 4 June 2015 I was asked to review my close; it was observed that multiple !votes were those of accounts that were just found to be sockpuppets of User:OccultZone. I have cancelled my close of the RFC, and have posted notice of the closure reversal to WP:AN. The sockpuppetry had been going on for at least six months, and the full extent of the damage done by the sockpuppetry is not known. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:05, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I would suggest that the WMF should take this case as a basis for a more general assessment of the impact of sock-puppetry. This appears to be an extraordinary case as to its extent (and the extent to which the puppet-master was posing as an active fighter of sock-puppets), but it may or may not be unique. Can the WMF please open an inquiry, based on but not limited to this case, into the extent and impact of large-scale sock-puppetry, in particular by editors who appear to be active if controversial members of the community? (Many puppet-masters are obvious. This one was not obviously a duck). Robert McClenon (talk) 03:05, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I think you will find that the history behind this particular farm goes back much further than has been officially revealed/discovered - I could certainly name some likely earlier accounts and someone else has already spotted another that is not blocked. However, I don't see how a WMF assessment is going to make any difference. We are limited in what we can do because of the privacy concerns that surround CU and deconstructing the efforts of long-term farms is, well, a long-term job: aside from common sense cases such as the one you mention, it pretty much relies on the natural process of verification, neutrality and formation of consensus here, ie: their efforts will be challenged and overturned eventually. - Sitush (talk) 03:25, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

What the WMF could and should do is actually enforce the sections of our privacy policy that void it in the event of vandalism and similar behaviour. Our checkuser policy is ridiculously constrained in ways that defend the people attacking the site while not contributing to protecting the privacy of legitimate editors.—Kww(talk) 04:38, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

If Kww is saying that serious violations of our Terms of Use, such as vandalism or sock-puppetry, should void the privacy guarantee so as to permit the WMF to provide information about the villain, I agree. There have been other cases in which malicious violators of the Terms of Use have hid behind the privacy policy, knowing that the rules that they dishonored would protect them. The rules should go both ways. The WMF should play by its own rules for people who play by its rules. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:27, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree that something more needs to be done to combat sockpuppeting; many editors with nefarious agendas go to extraordinary lengths to subvert detection and the community does not have extraordinary tools to fight back mostly due to privacy concerns. I also find myself wondering how many new editors have been blocked at SPI that were not actually socks, and how many socks have never been detected.

Are there ways to improve sock detection that do not - or only minimally - sacrifice the privacy of our users? CorporateM (Talk) 06:39, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Random observation: I've noticed that some editors who were later blocked as sockpuppets or having sockpuppets were, at the same time, zealous filers of SPIs against other editors. This isn't just about OZ's recent behavior or any particular editor, I'm referencing what I've seen when looking into why some otherwise solid editors in years past (back to 2005) who were sock hunters were later found to have sock accounts.

I don't understand the temptation to create sock accounts but it was apparent to me that there were productive editors (and even admins) who couldn't resist creating additional, undisclosed accounts. These accounts were not always used for nefarious purposes but that element is not usually a big consideration when the original account is blocked. My point is that socking is a far from an uncommon practice, even among seemingly productive editors. But why sockpuppeteers would file so many complaints against other editors for having socks, that requires more psychological understanding of human behavior than I currently possess. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 11:06, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

"No-one is more scared of a thief than a thief" is a well-known meme from time immemorial. Alternately, call it projection - a standard Freudian defence mechanism. In any case, it's a pretty well known phenomenon. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:40, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I mostly agree with Liz and Cas Liber. Thieves can be terrified of other thieves, and sock-masters can be terrified of sock-masters. In this case, OZ's hatred of sock-masters was a tragic flaw. It sent him on a crusade against sock-puppetry that wound up with his filing a boomerang Request for Arbitration that exposed his own sock-puppetry. Looking at the case with detachment, it is just terribly sad, and illustrates something psychological. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:27, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

• I've never understood (though I'm sure someone's about to explain again) what's wrong with a simple program that automatically notifies to a CU user - without the need for human intervention - accounts operated by the same IP (or narrow range) within a finite period (say one month). Privacy is not an issue; false positives can be checked; it won't catch all, but so what?. DeCausa (talk) 06:50, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I have brought this up before and was shut down by arguments that it was analogous to NSA spying and big brother. That doesn't seem reasonable to me. I think ways could be found to dramatically improve sock detection, while having a minimal impact on privacy, using anonymous data. CorporateM (Talk) 10:33, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

CheckUser is not for fishing expeditions. Guy (Help!) 11:02, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

And that's the problem we need to fix, Guy. That's a habit we've gotten into, not a moral imperative, and it makes it excessively easy to sock.—Kww(talk) 14:04, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I's not a "fishing expedition". It's an automated notification, unprompted by any human, that the same IP is using two accounts at the same time. DeCausa (talk) 14:08, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

While I agree with you that conceptually this would be a good idea, don't underestimate the effort required to make it useful. By the time things like libraries, highly dynamic ranges like cell phones and similar complexities were taken into a account, it would be man-years of effort to produce a tool with a sufficiently low false-positive rate to be useful. Going a bit more manual (i.e., a tool an admin could point at page or talk page and have it say that there's a likelihood that a checkuser would find something without revealing the exact reason why to the admin running the tool) would be more achievable. The first, and simplest, step would simply be to encourage checkusers to publicize the IP addresses used by sockpuppeteers instead of the "decline to link" mantra.—Kww(talk) 14:43, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion if something like this was to be done it'd need to be in the software core and handled by the WMF themselves as a Terms of Use issue. For example, we could implement a model where a user has one unique and private "real person" account that they can then use to create any number of, differently named, public "screen name" accounts. I'm not suggesting the "real person" account enables the identification of the person in real life, rather that it allows legitimate socks to be created.

On enwiki the use of multiple screen name accounts without disclosure of the link between them would not be allowed per our policies - exactly as today. Other projects may allow it, that's up to them. Then with the TOU allowing only one "real person" account per person, the WMF could police this in two ways: Firstly the software could detect probable misuse by automatically checking for use of multiple "real person" accounts operating off a single IP and UA. The WMF can investigate to determine if their TOU have been breached and take whatever action they want. Secondly, having detected an illegitimate "screen name" sock on wiki, an editor could report the account to the WMF (similar to the "report a fake account" on Facebook) and allow them to enforce the TOU if there are multiple "real person" accounts.

How does this help? It enables us to enlist the core software to make it much more difficult to create socks because new "real person" accounts can be analysed on creation without any need for CU fishing by us. It would significantly cut down the global spambot problem too. It would enable all "screen name" socks, even if they are inactive and stale (so no CU data) to be blocked by blocking the single "real person" account. So no more old sleeper accounts coming back to haunt us. In the worst cases it allows the WMF to take action to enforce Wikimedia wide bans.

All of this is, however, ill thought out spur of the moment stuff so might be full of holes! Just trying to spark a debate. QuiteUnusual (talk) 13:25, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Actually, we can do a lot more to detect sockpuppetry without compromising privacy. Keep the same rules that allow on those with CU permission to investigate possible socking in the same limited situations, but give them more info than the IP address provides. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has developed a proof-of-concept tool called panopticlick ( https://panopticlick.eff.org/ ) which shows that in some situations you can not only tell that two users have the same IP address, but also that same User Agent, HTTP_ACCEPT Headers, Browser Plugins, Screen Size and Color Depth, etc. There is a technical paper on the technique at [ https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf ]. If I ever reach an actual WMF engineer with my page weight proposal I might as a followup try suggesting a better sockdetector algorithm. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:15, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Eh? CU already gets user agent info - they've said as much in the past - and likely a whole lot more. And you are relying usually on the potential sock being detected by someone who is not a CU in order to activate the CU request. That is where the problem lies, believe me. I experience socking pretty much on a weekly basis because a lot of my work here involves people from a particularly corrupt and divided country region, who generally do not seem to understand or to care as long as they get their way. (This is not to tar all Indians - or Pakistanis, for that matter - with the same brush.) - Sitush (talk) 14:23, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

While not the easiest thing in the world to find, you can find the exact set of information available through the checkuser tool. There are even screenshots of how its displayed to them. Monty₈₄₅ 14:57, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I see at least two major problems associated with a scheme that generates automatic notifications whenever two (or more) users share an IP address. The first is the issue of false positives. It would create a massive extra load on the Checkusers (or whomever would receive these notifications) because of the innocent and unknowing IP overlaps: editors who happen to attend the same school or university; who have used the same public library; who have connected to the same public transit hotspot; who share the same ISP; who work for the same employer. Either the noise is overwhelming, or nobody bothers to look at the data.

The second is the related privacy concern. If neither User:A nor User:B are doing anything wrong, it isn't Wikipedia's business to draw attention to and record the fact that they attend the same school, or visit the same coffee shop, or work in the same office building, or use the same library, or live in the same city. We know for a fact that Wikipedia's and Wikimedia's various 'private' mailing list archives have leaked (in who or in part) from time to time, and there's no credible argument that it will never happen again. Collecting information means that, eventually, we will be leaking information.

As an admin, I have occasionally been subjected to harrassment and (fortunately not-very-credible) threats of harm over the years. I generally haven't sweated them much, but I would be much more concerned about my own privacy and safety if I knew there were a full-time monitoring program designed to systematically link me (and implicitly, my geographic location, and possibly my off-wiki name, and employer, and so forth) to other users when I'm at home, at work, in transit, at school. I would seriously rethink my participation in this project if a continuous, universal fishing expedition were created. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:05, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I have to second this concern. There has been enough eff ups of who's been granted privileges including checkuser and oversight. The check and balance is that trustworthy people don't run the tool and look at the data unless necessary and it becomes easier to spot abuses by the logs of who ran the tool. Automating it so the checkuser operator gets the data on a silver platter and doesn' tneed to lift a finger and it will be abused with no clear record of who abused it. The only thing automated should be a report to the audit committee when checkuser is run and who ran it. Think about all the connections that could be made such as wikipedians that live together or wikipedians that took holiday at the same hotel. We've already seen what happens when a registered user missteps and edits as an IP and groups of self-righteous editors report the editor for "stealing" from their employer (or taxpayers when it resolves to government - or shamelessly reporting to the press to further their personal political views). Automated runs could potentially develop information that is used for extortion or worse (e.g. automated checkuser places UserX and UserY IP at same residence and followup reveals husband/wife editors. automated checkuser places UserX and UserZ at a hotel IP for holiday. ). No way is that ever a good idea to automatically generate and send that data in any type of unaccountable way. If, for some reason, a checkuser did try to extort something, it should be a straight line path to whoever generated it and had it. It can't be vague and unaccountable. The selling point for creating an account has always been that it's nobody's business to know where an editor is editing from. Automated checkuser turns that maxim on its head. --DHeyward (talk) 07:41, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I feel compelled to point out that the information that DHeyward and TenOfAllTrades are so concerned about is collected, collated, and sold on a continuous basis by Doubleclick and Google (a company that has the added advantage of being able to read gullible people's email and providing DNS service for a huge percentage of the world). Sadly, if the WMF won't provide the capability to track socks well, I would bet that I could buy it from Google.—Kww(talk) 15:41, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I've never had google call me to verify that another account sharing my IP is really me or someone else - and withholding access until answered and verified status. I could care less less what information WMF collects. It just needs to be tracked who is doing it and audited to make sure it's not abused. That's more policy driven by WMFs terms of use and underlying advantage of editing with an account vs IP. It's very incongruent to have a secure access goal so everyone can access WP securely and anonymously while also automating identification. We shouldn't be doing anything that thwarts anonymous access. --DHeyward (talk) 17:06, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I've never understood why people think that there's a right to be anonymous in public.—Kww(talk) 17:42, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Err... you're looking pretty anon yerself atm! _Fortuna ^{Imperatrix Mundi} 17:46, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

You obviously didn't look at my user page.—Kww(talk) 18:03, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Of course I did. It just told me call yourself Kevin Wayne Williams. _Fortuna ^{Imperatrix Mundi} 18:15, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

There isn't a right. There's no right to a computer or education or books either. There's also countries where it's illegal to access Wikipedia or certain versions or languages or hosts or protocols. We purposely support anonymity to allow information to be accessible. In general we try to make it as accessible as possible and that means we risk sockpuppets (which only threatens our internal processes) for anonymity - and everything helps encourage the flow of information (which supports our goal of a free encyclopedia accessible to everyone). To the extent we can make access as risk-free as possible, we should. We certainly don't want to generate or retain information that might be used against people in any way that's not accountable. Even things like how long to keep records not required by law should have a policy (i.e. we keep versions forever but access information need not be kept forever). --DHeyward (talk) 21:39, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

• Ultimately, there will never be a perfect technical solution to the problem. Automated lists of users sharing the same IP would create so many false positives of unrelated people editing from shared IPs, or through NATs that it would be largely useless. The practice of checkusers requiring behavioral evidence helps reduce those false positives. We could expand the scope of the information available to checkusers, but all your doing is raising the bar of technical sophistication that a sockmaster must pass to avoid detection. If a sockmaster is sufficiently sophisticated to avoid all the current ways of linking, it would require little more to go the rest of the way. Even if we don't publicize the details on-wiki, the code base is public for all to see, and there is nothing stopping someone from reviewing the code to find the info they need to evade scrutiny (though the info is currently available on at least one public wiki anyway). Short of requiring real world identification to the WMF, and retaining at least the editors name (names are not retained for those that have identified under current process, and the identification requirement seems to be on the way out even for those roles currently subject to it), there is no way of stopping sophisticated sock puppetry. There is no way a wide-scale identification (with retention of info) requirement, even of administrator and higher privileged accounts, would fly with the community. Ultimately we will just need to use the tools we have, combined with behavioral evidence, and do the best we can to keep socking to tolerable levels. Monty₈₄₅ 15:12, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, as they say. Most of our sockpuppeteers aren't technical wizards, and arguing that wizards could still get past the defenses isn't a good reason to not improve our defenses at all. Certainly it becomes an arms race at some point, but even that has its merits: show me a user that has gone to substantial effort to obfuscate the source of his access, and I will show you a user that should be blocked on the basis of that alone.—Kww(talk) 15:40, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Agree about not allowing imperfections to prevent incremental progress. I think we can accept that improving sock detection would most likely involve making sacrifices in other areas - the question is whether the tradeoff is worthwhile and how to marginalize the drawbacks.

Regarding @TenOfAllTrades: point, I think a balance could be found. Say the automated notification only triggered if multiple logged-in accounts edited the same page from the same device/computer (not just the same IP). Even at a public library, it's extremely unlikely that multiple people would use the same PC to edit the same article from a logged-in account in the same browser. The false positives could be as low as 1%.

Rather than file thousands of automated SPIs, the notification could be as simple as a Talk page template to alert editors involved in the page of a possible problem. My guess is that it would have fewer false positives than we already have with current processes.

CorporateM (Talk) 17:48, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

RFCs are not supposed to be decided by vote counting, only the arguments made should count. Perhaps we should change the RFC system into a two step system. In the first step one elects an RFC closer, here the candidate with the most votes will be elected. The RFC closer will then simply be the judge who hears all the arguments and then makes the decision that is best for Wikipedia. Count Iblis (talk) 21:12, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I think that is the core issue here. Number of active editors will never be numerically superior to vandals, sockpuppets, meatpuppets, editors with a COI and new editors who do not yet understand Wikipedia's policies. If numbers start factoring into determining consensus in such a major way, we are probably screwed. In fact, closing RfCs/AfDs on vote counting alone incentivises sockpuppetry, canvassing and other ways of gaming the system. I believe our policies are already robust enough to deal with this. Both WP:Consensus and WP:RFC make it pretty clear that counting votes is not an approporiate method of determining the outcome of discussions. I haven't looked at the whole Ayurveda RfC yet, but if Robert McClenon had evalutated the arguments more qualitatively he wouldn't have needed to reverse his decision now. Amitrochates (talk) 22:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

No. I did evaluate the arguments qualitatively. I found the argument of the sock-puppets to be a sound argument, that Ayurveda preceded modern science by at least a millennium, so that it was neither science nor pseudoscience, and that other editors found that argument persuasive. I stand by my original closure. However, that doesn't change the fact that the argument process was, in fact, fatally flawed by sock-puppetry. It isn't just a matter of counting votes, but it shouldn't be a matter of allowing the closer to cast a supervote. It isn't as simple as either extreme would suggest. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:31, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

As is so often the case here, at User talk: Jimbo Wales, a "reform" is being proposed with no thought as to the issues of implementing it. An editor proposes a two-step RFC closure process, involving first voting for the closer and then letting the closer cast a supervote. Would every RFC have a two-stage closure? How long would closures take with the extra step? Or would designated closers be elected for a period of time? How does that differ from the often-proposed, always declined idea (as not the Wikipedia way) to elect editorial boards? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:43, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Vandal's dream

There is an automatic spell/grammar checker in editing Wikipedia that changes words. My experience is that it creates a lot of mistakes by automatically changing from intended words to nonsense words without my permission. It's like institutionalized vandalism. The spell/grammar checker part is fine, but changing the word without my permission is terrible because when it changes to the wrong word, I often don't notice until after I save the edit. I either have to go over the edit and change it, if I notice the mistake, or in the case of it making a mistake in an edit summary which isn't changeable, just have to live with the nonsense in the summary. --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:11, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Many oddities are attributed to Wikipedia but are really in web browsers or other software. Your web browser may be doing questionable spell-checking. I suggest that you go to Village pump (technical) and ask them for advice. Give detailed information on the operating system (e.g., Windows 8, Mac OS X) and web browser (e.g., IE 11, Firefox 32) and ask them whether you can disable the spell-correction feature. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:42, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. It's probably the automatic spell correction system of my OS. I'll look into disabling it. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

It's better than predictive text messaging - one funeral parlour worker sent out invitations which ended up being worded "We will be having mortician for dinner" and wondered why nobody turned up. 151.224.136.14 (talk) 09:46, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Long lost family found me on Wikipedia.

Long story short, my dad's family lost contact with us many years ago (almost 40 years) and recently saw my articles on Hawaiian history here at Wikipedia and were able to contact me the other day. I have been actively looking for them for years. Planning a get together this weekend to catch up and for everyone to visit with dad.

So, to you Jimmy, to Larry as well as everyone else who kept Wikipedia thriving, interesting and a favorite destination of millions for so long...thank you, mahalo nui loa. --Mark Miller (talk) 23:47, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Here is a link to wikt:mahalo nui loa.—Wavelength (talk) 23:51, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

What a great story, Mark! Have a wonderful weekend with your family. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:22, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

• Good thing you went the real name route instead of using the handle User:SurferBird5389, eh? Have a great weekend... —Tim /// Carrite (talk) 16:15, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

• Oh wow so happy to hear =) Hope you guys have some fun times now. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:18, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

What a cool story!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:21, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I occasionally used to pick up stories like this via OTRS. It makes the whole thing seem worthwhile. Guy (Help!) 21:48, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Very cool! On a somewhat related note, page watchers may be interested in participating in this discussion about the possibility of a Wikimedia genealogy project. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 21:56, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Genealogy#WeRelate (version of 22:27, 15 May 2015).

—Wavelength (talk) 15:09, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, a very emotional visit but truly wonderful. I was wrong though....dad had actually not seen his youngest sister since she was twelve and that was almost 55 years ago. My grandmother had 11 children and I never got to know any of my aunties or uncles. Dad, being the oldest had attended Kamehameha Schools, then joined the US Airforce at a very young age, serving in the Korean War just after marrying my mom. I only met my grandmother twice. Once when I was 10 and then when she moved to the mainland US about 8 years later.

During todays visit we discussed Hawaiian History, genealogy, the Hawaiian Royal Family, as well as many things my own siblings were completely unaware of...as was I until I put my Wikipedia hat on to look into the names I began uncovering. I know Wikipedia uses a Hawaiian word in its title. While I often remind people of this fact, it really wasn't until this instance that I realized that Wikipedia has played a vital part of my Hawaiian life and family. It really was Wikipedia that brought my dad's sister to his side at a time he most needed it. I can never impart, explain or put into any text how much that means to me and my family. But I truly thank everyone for the place to be a part of. Whether we want to admit it...we are all kind of like family. Also...thank you to User: Dennis Brown for encouraging me to stay at a time when I felt inclined to depart from Wikipedia. If I had....this would never have happened. Any way...I am still in a fog of "wow"....--Mark Miller (talk) 06:18, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Enjoy the journey Mark. And for the record, Wikipedia is a better place since you decided to stay. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:32, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Regarding Wikimania_2012#/media/File:Wikimania_2012_Group_Photograph-0001a.jpg

Hello Jimbo, I don't mean to be rude or picky but this picture seems to look a bit odd when you zoom in on it, and I was wondering if some people have been pasted in. Thanks, Rubbish computer 22:17, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Rubbish computer, I think that you are probably seeing distortion caused by use of a wide angle lens. The distortion is greater near the edge of the image. See Perspective distortion (photography) for a detailed explanation. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 22:53, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Rubbish computer 22:54, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Elsevier's article and sharing policy

"In the last two weeks, over 1,600 individuals and organizations from 52 countries around the world have signed a statement opposing Elsevier’s new article sharing and hosting policy, underscoring that many in the scholarly community do not support the new policy.

The policy imposes unacceptably long embargo periods for making articles available, the vast majority of which range from 12 months to 4 years after publication. It also requires researchers to apply licenses that restrict the full re-use of articles."

This statement from COAR (Confederation of Open Access Repositories] explains some of the changes proposed by Elsevier. Is this something you/WMF/community could support? Peter Damian (talk) 06:44, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I very strongly support this. They've not been in touch to ask me to make a statement, and I had never heard of this particular policy change.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:07, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Regarding Elsevier you may also be interested in this statement, in which scientists who are fed up with Elsevier's policies pledge not to publish and/or referee and/or do editorial work for Elsevier. (Disclosure, I am a signatory). Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:14, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Peter Damian (talk) 19:04, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #3—2015

Did you know?

When you click on a link to an article, you now see more information:

The link tool has been re-designed:

There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools, as well as fixing many bugs and changing some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.

Recent improvements

Auto-fill features for citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-auto⧽, ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-manual⧽, or ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-reuse⧽). The cite button is now labeled with the word "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "⧼Citoid-citeFromIDDialog-lookup-button⧽", for the submit button.

The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and/or appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector (T98085).  

The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425).

Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "⧼visualeditor-dialog-transclusion-add-param⧽" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696). The team added a new property for TemplateData, "Example", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter (T53049).

The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.

The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug.
• If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
• If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 June 2015

• News and notes: Three new community-elected trustees announced, incumbents out

• Blog: How Wikipedia covered Caitlyn Jenner’s transition

• Discussion report: The deprecation of Persondata; RfA – A broken process; Complaints from users on Swedish Wikipedia

• Featured content: It's not over till the fat man sings

• Technology report: Things are getting SPDYier

• Special report: Towards "Health Information for All": Medical content on Wikipedia received 6.5 billion page views in 2013

• In the media: Anonymous Australian editing targets football player, shooting victim

• Traffic report: A rather ordinary week

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• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:14, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikiwand (website)

In my online search for the meaning(s) of the Ukrainian expression "КЗ КОР", I discovered http://www.wikiwand.com/uk/Нейрохірургія, and then http://www.wikiwand.com. At this time, Wikiwand is not listed at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/Vwxyz.
—Wavelength (talk) 04:00, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

email

Hi, Walse. I am a Korean Wikipedian. I heard you come to South Korea on June 11th. I sent a message to jwaleswikia.com. Please, read it. --Mineralsab (talk) 04:34, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

U.S. State Department Proposed restrictions on information related to firearms

This proposed rule by the U.S. State Department to the federal register may (or may not, IANAL) have implications for WP. Title is International Traffic in Arms: Revisions to Definitions of Defense Services, Technical Data, and Public Domain; Definition of Product of Fundamental Research; Electronic Transmission and Storage of Technical Data; and Related Definitions. The "Electronic Transmission and Storage of Technical Data" caught my attention. Wikipedia contains a lot of specific technical detail related to firearms and ammunition. It's updated regularly. Here's an example of technical data on wikipedia - 5.56×45mm NATO#Cartridge dimensions. This is public domain but it's not clear that future, technical updates would be. I think you probably remember when certain encryption algorithms were considered "munitions" and this kind of information restriction rarely works (I think it's a reaction to the 3D printer firearm). I didn't know if you were aware of this proposal or not and how it might affect Wikipedia. --DHeyward (talk) 07:32, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I presume this was a result of the Genies (Putting Back In The Bottle) Act of 2015? Guy (Help!) 08:15, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

The streisand effect: Its not just an internet phenomena, its now official US state department policy! --Guy Macon (talk) 08:49, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the word 'firearms' seems not to appear in the document linked. The "technical data" referred to might of course sometimes refer to firearms - but there is nothing obvious to suggest that is the intended target. The "defense article" data it seems to be aimed at keeping under wraps isn't entirely clear (possibly intentionally), but it actually mentions data concerning military aircraft, along with "technical data that arises during, or results from, fundamental research". The sort of stuff one would expect any semi-competent military-industrial complex to want to keep to itself (and judging from past history, fail to do so). Which is not of course to suggest that such regulations aren't capable of misuse, or simple scope-creep, but I don't think the document can quite be read as evidence that the men in the black helicopters are coming for your guns just yet... AndyTheGrump (talk) 09:12, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I am just going to leave this here... --Guy Macon (talk) 09:46, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump Firearms are category I munitions. Ammunition is category III (22 CFR 121.1) . This (the document provided) is only changes (things that aren't changing retain their meaning) proposed to the federal register. As I said, IANAL but ITAR has taken off in the last few years. Black helicopters are definitely on the list :).--DHeyward (talk) 14:14, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I think there are zero implications for Wikipedia. It is impossible in the United States to restrict private discussion and publication of such things. Of course it is entirely possible for them to have rule-making for their own internal publication policies as well as to negotiate with various contractors as to what their policies may be. But for us, no, they can't stop us from publishing such stuff. First Amendment and all that. Even in some interesting gray areas of classified information there are generally no direct implications for us since we require reliable sources anyway. If someone wants to illegal leak documents, they'll want to do it somewhere else. (But of course, once they do, we have the absolute right to write about it.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:56, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. The 3D printer model of a firearm was taken down through ITAR. They are suing to put it back up. [11]. --DHeyward (talk) 14:14, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

While blatantly unconstitutional, the proposed regulatory change would make Wikipedia subject to $1 Million fines per offense (who ever was responsible would be facing 20 years in prison). This is not just an internal governmental policy, this is a regulation that is actually used to prosecute people and companies for releasing covered information, regardless of where they got it from, and the change would very much apply to Wikipedia. If your in the US and edit firearms related articles, you could be charged with a felony if the change goes through. You may win in court, but it could ruin your life in the meantime. Talk about a chilling effect. Monty₈₄₅ 15:12, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm not aware of prosecutions but the 3D printer gun instructions was a "comply or else" directive. It's an odd interpretation of ITAR since a $50k 4-axis CNC machine has plenty of public domain code to make firearms (and the AK can be stamped out with even cheaper machines). The 3D printer gun is not going to be a firearm used by terrorist countries or rebellious factions as it can only shoot 3 or 4 rounds before breaking. The concern was that it might end up in the hand of ordinary people for a relatively cheap price (not by U.S. standards, but black market standards) and that level of control was not the purpose of ITAR. Anyway, ITAR signoff requirements have exploded in the last few years in electronics. 3D printers and their associated microchips are not munitions (at least I am told they are not by the lawyers). But the code that runs on them is apparently subject to ITAR for now. --DHeyward (talk) 16:27, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

The current regulations have an exception basically for anything published openly. The 3d printer case should fall into that exception, and they know it but wont admit it. So they are now changing the regulation so that publishing online doesn't count as publishing, and is treated the same as if you sent a private email containing the information directly to a foreign country. Monty₈₄₅ 16:32, 8 June 2015 (UTC)