User talk:WhatamIdoing/Archive 23

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• User talk:Valjean#Hey...

   — The Transhumanist   02:57, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Oops. The link works now.    — The Transhumanist   19:09, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, which of those tools do you use?    — The Transhumanist   19:14, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

None. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:51, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Your essay is good and I want to publish it

I read User:WhatamIdoing/I am going to die and it was pretty good. Can I run it in the next Signpost issue? jp×g🗯️ 11:19, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

If you want, then I don't mind, @JPxG. The title is a bit shocking, so you might consider whether you want to change it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:08, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I like it and would encourage you to make it a formal essay with a nutshell, shortcuts, and categorization. Maybe even develop the lead a bit more. You can keep it as a personal essay, and thus retain full control, or you can make it an essay in mainspace. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:43, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

The main problem with making it a general essay is that we lose the connection to the "I" whose stats are given. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Then keep it in your userspace, but make it an official essay. That way more editors will discover it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:05, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

You forgot about our inevitable AGI progeny. One ought to be enough.    — The Transhumanist   20:16, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Well, heaven forfend we have a shocking title, people might actually read it ;^) jp×g🗯️ 22:06, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

We can add that to the list of risks you are undertaking.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:03, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

"Red is a color"

I didn't get to comment on that before the discussion was closed, but had some relevant (I think) thoughts:

It seems to me that "red is a colo[u]r" is absolutely verifiable, with only seconds of minimal effort. But maybe more importantly, "verifiable" doesn't mean "already verified", and people get these concepts confused very often, claiming that something simple isn't "verifiable" because a citation isn't present for it (inline or otherwise), or just reverting it without comment when a cite isn't already present for it, when it is actually easily and completely verifiable (either by 15 seconds on Google – what the end reader is apt to do – or by looking at the main WP article on whatever it is which already has the citation[s], which someone can copy-paste in a quick moment from one article to the other).

Just yesterday I saw someone revert a claim about Blade Runner on the grounds that it wasn't referenced, when the claim is the very first sentence, with citation, in the main article about the term in the claim. Just downright lazy and destructive. Someone made our article factually wrong because they wouldn't spend about the same amount of time it takes to do a revert and write a snarky summary instead to go to the other article and copy-paste an obvious citation from it.

Way too much of this is going on. Editors can get mired in gate-keeping an article in an "every claim must have an inline citation" manner, when policy doesn't actually require that, and it can be done to the detriment of the encyclopedia content. If someone is spending more effort on fighting with others about this than just fixing the claim with an easy citation, they are making a mistake. I understand the urge, since I'm a curmudgeon and I especially distrust IP editors, but just in the last couple of days questionable IP edits without sources have come across my watchlist, and I resisted the urge to reflexively revert, instead looked for a source for their claims, and found they were correct, so inserted citations for them. That urge when it comes up is often worth resisting.

But I'm not sure how to encourage more judgment in this regard, if that's even practical to do.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:21, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Very good points. It is often easy to find references for unsourced content that is legitimate, but sometimes not.

Per your point that "verifiable" doesn't mean "already verified", my inclusionist bent tells me we should be consistent, policy-wise, and expect/require that experienced editors provide/verify content that is likely to be challenged. We should not be lazy and expect others to do that for us. We, as experienced editors, should prove we aren't getting ideas for content from our own minds, from our own opinions, IOW that we are not performing OR. As the policy says, we do that by "providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution."

The policy says: "All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing..." The word that should be fixed is to change "verifiable" to "verified" (by editors). It would then read:

• "All content must be verified by the provision of an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports..."

Now, to make a cohesive statement, we rearrange the existing wording and combine it with the idea in the improved wording above, but without the need to write "verified" (because we are doing it):

• For any material that is likely to be challenged, the burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material. They must do this by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports..."

That wording would end the current détente that creates the existing ambiguity. There should be no doubt.

Newbies cannot be expected to understand this, so we should do it for them and add the sources, but if they aren't easy to find, we can either ask them where they got that idea or we can delete their addition.

Otherwise, editors who understand policy should not be in doubt. They should provide their sources, especially for controversial content. It would save a lot of wasted time on discussions. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:24, 5 November 2023 (UTC) Ping SMcCandlish

@SMcCandlish, the phenomenon of reverting uncited but accurate and verifiable text is real, and it is seen as a desirable behavior. In fact, the WMF's Editing team has been working on mw:Edit check, to prompt editors to add a source, and they've received at least two complaints this year from enwiki enforcers saying that this is a bad idea, because if newbies add sources, then it'll be harder to justify reverting them.

The wording of the policy is such that editors can, if they squint, they can pretend that "Red is a color" is not verifiable unless there is a little blue clicky number pointing to (e.g.) a dictionary definition. We have been afraid to change that, because we are afraid that it will be abused.

@Valjean, the policy already requires a citation for content whose verifiability is likely to be challenged. We don't need to change the policy to say that, because it already says that. It even uses the word must when doing so. I wish you could rest easy in the belief that when the policy says that an inline citation must be included for LIKELY material, that it actually means that this material at least "should" have a citation. I don't know if you noticed, but your proposal says that every single claim must have an inline citation, even if the claim is as simple as "Red is a color".

The changes I think we could make are:

• Declare that Wikipedia is not a collaborative project, so if you don't add a citation for "your" content yourself, nobody else can/will, so uncited but LIKELY information is an incurable defect (by anyone else) and must be removed as a policy violation (unless and until you personally add the citation because the burden is always on YOU NOT ME!!!1!!); or
• Explicitly declare the mirror of the requirement, namely that, whereas information that is a quotation, is already challenged, is LIKELY, or is contentious matter about a BLP is required to have an inline citation, information that is not a quotation, not already challenged, not LIKELY, and also not contentious matter about a BLP (e.g.,"Red is a color") is not required to have an inline citation.

(Verified is usually used to indicate that someone else read the cited source and agrees that the source says whatever the article says about the subject. A clearer statement would be "All content must be cited", assuming that you actually want all content to be cited, including things that editors will believe is unreasonable to challenge the verifiability of.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:15, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Without reading your last comment, I had reworded by comment, but ran into a couple edit conflicts, so read it again. It doesn't say what you imply. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:28, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

And an "All content must be cited to/verified by a source in the article" (inline or not) policy would be a truly massive change, and would result in a really large percentage of our content having to be deleted. That would produce probably a more end-user-reliable work, but at a very high utility cost, for missing articles and missing complete information in most articles that survived the purge. E.g., when I come here as a reader and put in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon [random example, and I'm assuming it has some uncited details in it, without actually checking], I expect (and happily find) all the basic info I'm looking for in in there. But if that article were denuded of cast, release-date, and other details in random places throughout it, on the dubious basis that because some of it didn't have a citation that those claims were probably lies, then my experience of WP as useful would be seriously harmed. The average reader isn't verifying our citations, but trusting that editors are doing so, adding more of them, and reverting the dubious in the interim, with most claims probably being more-or-less correct, especially when they are not saying something dubious. And this general operating model has served us very well, even if once in a while some nonsense, distortion, or hoax gets through. When this happens, it is almost always because of anonymous IP editors, and I would love to see them banned, but it will not happen in my lifetime probably. The other most common case is inveterate PoV pushers, and we need to take a much more proactive position in banning them instead of really, really reluctantly narrowly topic-banning them only to have them pull the same crap on a different topic. But that, too, will not change much in the foreseeable future because we apply AGF too broadly and wring our hands too much at the notion of losing an "editor", even when it's some clown who costs the project more than they contribute.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:41, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

@Valjean, I was talking about the proposal 'The word that should be fixed is to change "verifiable" to "verified"', such that the current rule (All content must be verifiable) becomes a requirement for 100%, zero-exceptions citation (All content must be verified).

Your second proposal ("For any material that is likely to be challenged, the burden to demonstrate verifiability...") requires fewer sources than the existing policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Does it? I don't think so. It's basically rewording what we already do and what the policy already says. I have never proposed "a requirement for 100%, zero-exceptions citation". I am uncomfortable with the current wording, hence my tweak below. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:53, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Edit conflict again...

With regard to "challenged", the current wording doesn't clue the reader into the fact it will be mentioned later:

• "All content must be verifiable. "The burden to demonstrate...."

We should change that to:

• "With few exceptions, all content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material. They must do this by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports..."

Then the fact that they are enumerated later makes sense. The reader is already primed to expect an explanation of those "few exceptions". -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:46, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

@Valjean, about these edit conflicts, do you see the Reply buttons on this page? If not, then I suggest going to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion and turning it on, because one of its many features is a magical ability to resolve nearly all edit conflicts. Note the "Visual" and "Source" tabs on its upper left corner, in case it doesn't default to the one that you prefer.

As for this proposal, the current rule is:

1. [stated] All content, without exception, must match whatever that was said in some reliable source(s) in the real world.
2. [stated] Most content (i.e., all content of the four enumerated types) must have a reliable source listed in the article.
3. [unstated] Some content (i.e., content that is not any of the four enumerated types; e.g., "Red is a color") is permitted but not required to have a reliable source listed in the article.

Is this the rule that you want to have? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't know of a "without exception" rule. Is that hyperbole?

I generally agree with the next two statements, unless there is some hidden trick there. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:54, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

That is not hyperbole. If you put content into an article that does not match whatever was said in a reliable source (a source, any source, anywhere in the world, whether that source is cited in the article or not), then you have committed the sin of original research.

The only reason you can write "Red is a color" in Wikipedia is because there exist sources (e.g., dictionaries) in the real world that say red is a color. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:23, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree. I just hadn't seen it expressed that way before.

It's a three-phased system, but with some exceptions:

1. The info must be mentioned in a RS somewhere (ergo, it's "verifiable").
2. Then the editor has the burden to demonstrate verifiability (ergo, to "verify" it).
3. That is done "by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution."

Note there is no hint of any exceptions there, and I think that's unfortunate. We know there are four named types of information that require an inline citation, but there are more than many more types of information. That's why I favor including mention of the exceptions. This wording covers that problem:

• Current: "All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution."
• Revised: "All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and, with some exceptions, that burden is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution." (bold change)

I think we're getting closer to an improvement. Do you see any problem with that wording? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:42, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

The editors who like to quote that sentence from BURDEN will be unhappy about it mentioning anything about exceptions.

As a practical matter, the grammar's off. It says that the burden is only sometimes satisfied by adding an inline citation. It doesn't move us towards a world in which we admit that 100% of content must be verifiable but only n% of content must be cited. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:04, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Before I answer, is there a typo above? Do you mean "but only" when you write "by only"?

BTW, my grammar is far from perfect. Although I'm a native speaker of American English, I have lived in six countries and speak two languages every day. That means I'm a bit "language confused" at times. I may, without realizing it, translate in my mind and thus carry over the syntax, grammar, or punctuation from one language into what I write in English, and what I write will thus contain errors. I really appreciate it when people catch such errors and bother to let me know. I also appreciate it when they just fix it, but I appreciate the opportunity to learn so I stop making that error. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:01, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

@Valjean, yes, that's what I meant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:04, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I fixed it. Now I'll respond. What would be the better way to get my point across? Where is the error in grammar? (Thanks so much for your patience with me!) -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:48, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

The grammar's the easier one. You've written:

(The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material,)

and,

(with some exceptions, that burden is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution).

The "exceptions" was in the second independent clause but has nothing to do with the satisfying the burden; the exceptions are about not having a burden in the first place. You probably wanted to write something like:

The burden to demonstrate verifiability – whenever that needs to be done – lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and that burden is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:09, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

@Valjean, I'd like to take you back to the bit that runs:

1. The info must be mentioned in a RS somewhere (ergo, it's "verifiable").
2. Then the editor has the burden to demonstrate verifiability (ergo, to "verify" it).

I think you skipped a step between these two (unless "then" is doing heavy duty). It looks a bit more like this:

Verifiability

Step 1	All material in articles must be verifiable in the real world, with absolutely no exceptions. This means that, if necessary, it is possible for an editor to find a reliable source to cite in the article.
Step 2	Material that is one of the four enumerated types (e.g., a quotation) must be cited in the article.	Material that is not one of the four enumerated types (e.g., "Red is a color") is permitted but not required to be cited in the article.

I would therefore make your list like this:

1. The info must be mentioned in a RS somewhere (ergo, it's "verifiable").
2. The info has been determined to be one of the four enumerated types.
3. Then the editor has the burden to demonstrate verifiability (ergo, to "verify" it).

Does that make sense? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Indeed! Very well parsed. BTW, I added what I think is a missing word. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:47, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Here's the tricky bit: Do you want to acknowledge the existence of the material that is not required to be cited? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:17, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Why would that be "tricky" for me? Sky is blue stuff doesn't need to be cited unless it is later challenged. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:37, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

If we publicly acknowledge that "some" material does not have to be cited, then we will see disputes over whether _____ is part of the "some" material. At the moment, it is possible to quote isolated lines from the policy to support a claim that a given bit of material must be cited, and it is not possible to quote a short, pithy line back that says that some material does not require citations.

It's possible that if we write, e.g., "All material must be verifiable; however, some of it does not require an inline citation", that we will weaken the righteous certainty of the editors who demand that others add sources to articles, and prompt the content creators to respond to a demand with "See? WP:V says that 'some of it does not require an inline citation', and this is part of that 'some'."

If that's an outcome you can live with, then I can suggest three possible changes offhand:

• [for BURDEN] All material must be verifiable, and most of it must also be cited.
• [First sentence] In the English Wikipedia, verifiability means other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source (e.g., by reading the cited source or by finding a new source if none is already cited).
• Add the definitions from the WP:Glossary for uncited and verifiable as a sidebox, and try for the bigger change in two years (=about how long it takes for a change in the written advice to get incorporated).

WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:06, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Nutshells

Current nutshell:

Proposed nutshell:

Changes are highlighted. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:05, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Quibble: 'That is done "by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution."' is only true of certain classes of claims (even if it covers most of them). We actually do permit "general references" (even if they are discouraged) and they are technically good enough for claims that don't fall into the enumerated categories of claims that require an inline citation. As for the nutshell rewrite, "Such material refers to" doesn't really parse, and more importantly the change loses a crucial point (perhaps the most crucial one). Maybe something like this instead: Readers must be able to check that any of the information within Wikipedia articles is not just made up. This means all material must be attributable to reliable, published sources. Additionally, nearly all material must be attributed to such sources with inline citations; this includes quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:32, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I believe that Valjean is aware of this; he just seems to believe that "nearly all material" is Wikipedia:Likely to be challenged. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:06, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Maybe that's true. I believe that everything but "sky is blue" stuff is likely to be challenged, and because of basic ignorance or cultural differences, sometimes even that is challenged and we then provide a reference, or even easier, a wikilink. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:41, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

RFC close at COVID-19 lab leak theory

It's a bit late but I just saw you it and wanted to say thanks for such a thorough and well thought out close. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:29, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the nice note. Since it's a hot-button subject, I thought that a thorough explanation would be a good idea. I didn't want anyone who felt like they were on the "losing" side to feel like it was just a knee-jerk dismissal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:41, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm glad it was well done. Otherwise, dramah would have ensued. On another note WAID, I could've sworn you were a sysop at some point. I am misremembering? Bon courage (talk) 13:17, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

You are misremembering. I have never endured RFA. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I can understand that, but you'd be fine. Bon courage (talk) 18:52, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Or not. I was at the WMF for ten years, which is a permanent taint. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:15, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

There is that, but you could spin it to your advantage in a poacher-turned-gamekeeper kind of way. Everybody loves you. Bon courage (talk) 19:27, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Love is a strong word, but you'd have my vote. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:46, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the compliments. I won't run. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:42, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

I came here to also comment that your closure was excellent. I am not surprised I was not the only one to notice. Great work, that was an intense close to tackle. (And I voted on the "loosing" side!). {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 22:26, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. Having someone who "lost" feel like I provided a decent explanation is the highest level of compliment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:29, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Barnstar

	You Got A Star! A barnstar, that is...
	For your contributions to the 2023 Bowdoin–Yarmouth shootings article. ★ The Green Star Collector ★ (talk) 14:10, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

An editor at a different Wikipedia told me in September that barnstars had become rare there. This sounded sad to me, so seeing this barnstar today made me doubly happy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Wikitravel for WP Tombstone tourist

Following your suggestion, I tried some editing on WikiVoyage. (Its been a few years since I contributed on that venue.) But it has a different editing protocol, so I wasn't to successful. I managed to make some changes to Wikivoyage Cemeteries. But I can't find a WikiVoyage page titled "Tombstone tourist". But I can't remember how to get a link between Tombstone tourist and the Wikivoyage Cemeteries page. (This is one of the joys of being a WikiGnome – there is challenge and learning combined.) – S. Rich (talk) 01:41, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Do you prefer the 2010 wikitext editor? If so, then try this link: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Cemeteries?action=submit I'm not sure what your prefs are, but that should open the old wikitext editor, and it will probably make that setting "stick". Go to voy:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-editor if you want to change the visual-vs-wikitext settings there.

If the cemeteries article is getting too big and you have more content that you'd like to add, then start a new page. Pull the templates/codes from top and bottom of the Cemeteries article or maybe from https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Funeral_travel?action=submit, but for the most part, it should be very simple. Once you've got the page created, the Wikidata step isn't difficult. Find the Wikidata item (e.g., by looking for the link to it on the Wikipedia page), scroll all the way to the bottom, and click the little edit button for the right sister project. It'll probably say "Wikivoyage (0 entries)" before you add yours. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:42, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Help me as usual, please

Hello @WhatamIdoing, I would like to continue being an admin on the Haitian Wikipedia. Can you support me getting contributors to vote on the "Kafe" page? Gilles2014 (talk) 20:07, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely! WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:38, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Edit counts

You wrote: "says on their talk page that "extremely low edit counts" is less than 500, a level of participation that applies to more than 99% of all registered editors. They did not tag editors in the top 1%."

I'm not going to revisit the argument that "registered editors" is a pointless metric vs editors who, you know, actually ever made even one edit. But I think that regardless of which baseline you take, it isn't appropriate for commenting on the participants at an RFC. The statistics on editors who long ago gave up or who joined and edited enthusiastically in the boom early years but faded away.

What you need is some metric that looks at all the edits being made today (or this week or other contemporary period) and examine how many edits each of those editors had when they made that edit. This should then be further refined by namespace, since I bet the "newbie" edit is typically first made directly to an article and less commonly to a talk page and rarely to a Wikipedia discussion like VP. That would give a fairer reflection on the question of "If a random person turns up here on a talk page to vote, what's the typical spread of edit-count I'd expect to see, assuming the vote wasn't canvassed offline?"

Alternatively, one could ask for some self reflection, and ask whether the earliest edits that editor made here, under a previous account deserved to be dismissed as suspicious on the basis that they were not very experienced. Or that it took them thirteen years to amass 500 edits. -- Colin°^Talk 08:50, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

That is the statistic for the editors that "actually ever made even one edit". See also Wikipedia:Request a query#Number of active high-volume editors for a number that I think will interest you more. If they aren't tired of me yet, we might be able to get an edit-count distribution for a given week (it'd have to be a full week, because editing patterns vary by week).

I am fully convinced that at least most (and possibly all) of the tagged comments appeared because they learned about the discussion off wiki. However, I'm separately and additionally concerned about creating a standard that says only one out of 500,000 internet users worldwide are allowed to contribute to this discussion. It is very difficult for highly active Wikipedia editors to remember that we are a tiny minority, and that the mass of editors aren't like us. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I thought last time we discussed this your "registered editors" was "accounts" rather than "people who have edited". Anyway, yes being canvassed is an issue. I'm not active on Twitter, just occasionally follow links people post, but it seems to be a site that brings people with conflicting views into awareness of each other, so they can re-post things they think are either hateful or stupid and attack or mock them (as well as posts they like). So I wonder what the effect of posting at e.g., some GCF's Twitter account that Wikipedia is having a poll about the definition of sex and whether that actually ends up on a whole lot of trans-activism Twitter accounts too. All it takes, surely, is for someone to re-post with "Look what those GCFs are up to now. Let's stop them." and the canvassing for the 'other side' is in effect too.

I think it would be interesting to know the spread for article and talk pages of how many participating editors are newbies, relative beginners, modestly competent, highly competent, tending towards wiki senility. -- Colin°^Talk 08:46, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

According to our newly expanded table, 0.75% of accounts that have completed an edited and 0.25% of all accounts that have registered (most of which never completed an edit) have made 500 edits.

So far, the off-wiki discussion seems to have brought it people who know something about non-human biology. I might wish that they had turned their attention towards publishers of biology textbooks instead of us (and I don't think it will change the outcome; it just makes it more lopsided). On the RFC overall, I feel like we've identified a problem with how we're explaining it. We need to be clearer about the difference between taking two existing, pre-divided groups and deciding which one's male (called "reproductive" in the RFC) vs trying to figure out which group an individual belongs to (called "multifactorial" in the RFC). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:35, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

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Maximum featured article size

hi @WhatamIdoing, thank you for estimating the lead lengths of featured articles! In 2023 the largest article promoted to featured might be 12,000 readable prose words [1]. Please may you calculate the largest promoted each year 2020-23, at the time of promotion, if it doesn't take too long or tell me who can? This might provide an idea on what the length guideline should be or it might just circulate back to the current guideline! Wikipedia_talk:Article_size#Summarising_evidence,_arguments_on_limits Tom B (talk) 18:25, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

As far as I know, the only way to do this is to open every article and count the words on the page. The Wikipedia:Prosesize gadget (towards the end of the first section of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets) will save you some time. Find the version on the day it was promoted (linked on the talk page), and then use Tools > Page size to get the count. For example, today's FA is Art Deco architecture of New York City, and Talk:Art Deco architecture of New York City says it was promoted on September 5, 2023, with a link to the correct version. Click that link, click on Page size, wait for a moment, and it spits out some statistics, including a line that says:

• Prose size (text only): 33 kB (5143 words) "readable prose size"

You would have to do that for each one in turn. I don't know of any automated way to do this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:40, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

thank you, yes this was the exact method i was using! So you simply did this manually, [2] righty ho. I'll look for shortcuts! Do you know anyone who might know please? Tom B (talk) 19:05, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that Wikipedia:Request a query can't handle this, so if you want a tediously large sample, then I think you would be best inquiring at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). You might leave a friendly "Please see" pointer to the VPT section at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard. You wouldn't really use a bot to do this, but the programming skills probably overlap. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:36, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

thank you. A Lot! Tom B (talk) 19:53, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

On the more general question, have you seen @ScottishFinnishRadish using the humorous "tomats" unit? It compares the length of a page/discussion to the length of The Old Man and the Sea, which is 26,531 words long. (SFR, we should create Template:Tomats to auto-calculate the length.) It came up in Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 187#Wikipedia:Article Size and consensus, among other places.

One of the general principles for article length is – presumably; I don't remember seeing this discussed explicitly – "Wikipedia articles should be encyclopedia articles, not books", so an "article" as long as a book would be inappropriate. "Must be significantly less than one tomats, else it has stopped being an article and started being a book" feels like a good rule to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Here's what Dr pda did a decade ago (many of the old beasts have been defeatured):

• User:Dr pda/Featured article statistics.

He had a script that calculated readable prose, but these were measured in KB back then ... after Dr pda retired, no one kept good data. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:14, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

¶ Pardon my barging in at the edges (periphery) of this discussion, but article length in general has been a very lively discussion/debate at both Talk:Manhattan and Talk:New York City/Archive 21, In the course of those debates. I've found that the easiest way to measure the kB count was to open History and see the most recent edit. [But you may already know a more efficient way of measuring an article's length.] I've used this method in a rather different context, when comparing New York City's length with that of comparable major world cities, such as London. @Tpbradbury, Nikkimaria, and SandyGeorgia: —— Shakescene (talk) 10:24, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Shakescene, That will get you KB (a frequent source of misunderstanding), but not readable prose in words, which is what we're after. To get the readable prose, you can follow the instructions to install Wikipedia:Prosesize. But since we're also after the readable prose from the promoted version of an FA, a script to look in articlehistory for the promoted version is also needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:31, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

The problem with KB is it measures the size of the wikitext. The same article, if you change whether it uses citation templates becomes "longer" or "shorter" in KB, even though it doesn't change the text at all. At the moment, Manhattan is 12,173 words long, and New York City is 14,569 words long according to Prosesize. That gadget is not perfect (e.g., fails completely on lists) but it's convenient and if it has some limitations, at least the folks who use it regularly know what those limitations are. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Nomination of Safetyism for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Safetyism, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.

The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Safetyism until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:01, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Underlinked tags

Hi, can I ask what your rationale is for placing this tag on some articles recently? They seem very adequately linked to me. I removed one of the tags before I realized you'd added at least a couple. I keep an eye on the underlinked articles category because, as a newcomer task, anything in there gets almost immediately deluged by well-meaning newbies who don't realize they should remove the tags when they're done, which very quickly results in massive overlinking. -- asilvering (talk) 18:58, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

@Asilvering, I tagged them because I think they're underlinked. The goal isn't a certain percentage of blue. The main goal is to link to articles that people might want to read, and the secondary goal is to link to terms that typical readers might not know the meaning of (so they can hover over the word and get a hint from the preview). If you take a look at the links I just added to the first paragraph of that article, which contains a lot of technical terminology (I know what Peyronie's disease is, but most people don't) in addition to links to highly relevant subjects (e.g., this is a sub-piece of a physical examination, so link back to Physical examination), you can see what I'm looking for. I suggest restoring the tag so that someone can do the same for the rest of the article.

BTW, if the community as a whole is concerned by newbies adding links to underlinked articles, then you should probably check that the Wikipedia:Growth Team features has mw:Growth/Personalized first day/Structured tasks/Add a link turned off locally. Otherwise, I think I'm not sure how (actual) newbies would find such articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:16, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

No, I think add a link is a very useful newcomer task. (It's actually the task I started on, as one of the first editors through the pilot of the newcomer homepage.) It's just that when articles are unnecessarily tagged with "underlinked" that it becomes a problem. Since you found so many words in the lead you'd prefer to have wikilinked, I'll happily accept your tagging here as "tagging editor genuinely does desire a great many more links", and I've restored the tag and won't touch the others. -- asilvering (talk) 19:34, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if you'd be interested in User:WhatamIdoing/I am going to die. I ask because if you think the task is very useful for new editors, and you believed that we need new editors, then it seems sort of self-sabotaging to reduce the number of opportunities for new editors to encounter that very useful task (e.g., by removing the tags from the articles). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:18, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm struggling to understand why you've said this in response to my comments. I was not being disingenuous or sarcastic. -- asilvering (talk) 21:36, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I didn't interpret them as sarcastic or as anything other than 100% sincere. What I'd like you to do is to think about these two pathways:

• We dump a lot articles in the underlinked category.
• An editor removes nearly all of them, because if they aren't removed, then newbies will add (more and more and more) links.
• Result: No overlinking, but also no newbies.

versus:

• We dump a lot articles in the underlinked category.
• Newbies successfully make their first edits.
  • And we have to clean up after them, because there are no meaningful tasks that newcomers can do perfectly.
• Result: More editors.

I agree that getting newcomers to remove the tag is a problem. But perhaps you'd be more effective at that if you check for whether the work has (supposedly) been done via this RecentChanges link, instead of looking at what's in the category. In an ideal world, we'd probably have a hundred articles in that category per day, so that we could get 50 new editors to try a potentially helpful task. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:03, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

This is a bizarre strawman proposition. Who is this editor removing nearly all of the articles in the underlinked category? It isn't me, nor will you see me advocating for that. If you find that person, feel free to engage them in this thought experiment. -- asilvering (talk) 22:14, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Editor experience invitation

Hi WhatamIdoing :) I'm looking for people to interview here. Feel free to pass if you're not interested. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 18:46, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Whatareyoudoing, WhatamIdoing?

Our BLP conversation has a weird cross-examiner vibe to it from my perspective. I feel like the info I'm providing is quite basic in nature, surely this is stuff we both know already with our combined >30 years of WP experience? What am I missing/where are you going with this? Not trying to be confrontational, I'm just confused. VQuakr (talk) 00:07, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Your !vote there says, if you will allow me to oversimplify, that BLP applies to dead people for an unknown length of time that cannot be determined by actual consensus because LOCALCON (which I wrote originally, BTW, so you may assume I'm familiar with its contents and history) says you can't overrule a policy with a local (i.e., non-representative) consensus.

I'm asking questions because I can't understand why you would take this approach. My basic question is: How the heck are editors supposed to figure out how long that length of time is? In one sentence, you have simultaneously rejected both Wikipedia's ordinary daily operation (i.e., ordinary editing without discussions + consensus-oriented discussions) and the specific proposal (i.e., actual consensus), and claimed that actual consensus is prohibited by a rule against fake consensus. What do you expect editors to do now? Just not edit the articles until the person has been dead for two years, because there's no way to figure out whether BLP still applies before then? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:33, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

A few things. First, it'd be more efficient if you had just said that rather than asking questions that in the fashion of a cross examiner, where we're clearly going somewhere but weren't clear as to exactly what you were driving at. Second, the policy already provides a loose length guideline, changes to which are not being considered per the letter of the RfC, of 0.5-2 years. Third, yes, I know you know this stuff, which is why your playing dumb on the talk page is so confounding to me. But as to "what the heck editors are supposed to do now" during that loosely-defined time period: be conservative, provide good sourcing for statements, and discuss proposed changes. Which are all excellent practices anywhere, not just on BLPs and BDPs. If our worst case is sourcing has to be excellent, then the stakes are quite low. I'm unsure where the "just not edit" rhetoric is coming from, is that just more playing dumb? VQuakr (talk) 00:43, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Either:

• the range of 0.5–2 years specified by the policy actually means "minimum of 2 years" (because during that range, editors should continue to apply the policy) or
• the entire range specified by the policy is real, and there must be some way of determining whether it is 0.5 years for this particular article.

Which do you pick?

NB that I don't actually care what the rule is. My interest is in having the policy accurately reflect reality and useful to editors. If the rule is that it applies for a full two years, then fine – but let's just say that, and not mislead people into thinking that normal rules could apply after six months. If the rule is that it applies for 6 months, then fine – but let's remove the stuff about it applying up to two years. If the rule is that it applies for a time period that is different for each article, then fine – but let's tell people how to figure out what the time period for that particular article is. I do not like gotcha rules; it's unfair to tell people "could be as short as six months" and then secretly enforce it for 24 months anyway, and it's unwiki to say "could be anything in this whole range" but not let the community decide which part of the range is best suited for the particular article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:55, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

It's the 2nd bullet point, obviously. It wasn't obvious what you were driving at since you seem to be fixating on a clause of the policy that's not the subject of the RfC? but not let the community decide which part of the range is best suited for the particular article. No one is proposing that AFAICT. VQuakr (talk) 02:39, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

The policy says "the policy can extend for an indeterminate period beyond the date of death". If it is possible for BDP to apply for less than 24 months – for it to apply, say, for 8 months and then stop applying – then who do you think determines when it stops applying? You have opposed stating that the determination is made by consensus. If the decision isn't made by consensus, then the community isn't deciding it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:49, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Ah ok, now I understand I believe (I do think you could have expressed this far more immediately and concisely, but water under the bridge). To my reading (and by context clues many others' readings) the clause "based on editorial consensus" is being interpreted to mean "BDP is optional, whether to follow it all can be decided locally". I am saying that following BLP is not optional when I say it is "not subject to local consensus". How best to follow (for example, how much time BDP should be applied in order to meet the "taking human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account" directive) is a matter for discussion. I don't think there's any reason to specifically say that, though, since that is the default condition. If you think it is important to specifically say that, let's find a different, unambiguous way to phrase it at least. VQuakr (talk) 07:16, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Which I what I assumed from the beginning, which takes me back to my original question:

You say BDP is "not subject to local consensus". How do you tell the difference between "a local consensus that this person has been dead for 8 months, and BLP rules no longer apply" and "a non-local consensus" that says exactly the same thing?

If it is possible for BDP to stop applying before 24 months, then there must be a way for editors to figure out whether that has happened. The proposal said "editorial consensus". You assumed that meant "local consensus". None of us want LOCALCON; all of us want true consensus. How do you tell the difference between the two? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:04, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm asking you this because we've got a problem. Back in the day, LOCALCON was fairly unimportant but pretty well understood: The handful of editors who write most of the articles about classical composers were not allowed to declare that the community-wide infobox rule ("neither encouraged nor discouraged") did not apply to articles (i.e., written by other editors) about classical composers.

We were looking at:

• a group of editors
• making decisions about groups of articles
• saying that the usual rules don't apply

For example:

• WikiProject Composers' self-selected participants
• deciding for all articles on their chosen subject
• that the usual rules about making article-by-article individual decisions about infoboxes do not apply, and specifically that nobody is allowed to put an infobox on "our" articles.

Today, we have editors who seem to think that any decision they disagree with is a local consensus, even when that decision explicitly affirms and complies with the written policy.

For example:

• The editors working on an article
• deciding for this one article that they are working on
• that the usual rules about BLPs (e.g., the policy's exemption from edit-warring rules for content that is sourced but the reverted deems the content "contentious" and the source "poor") for dead people ending somewhere between 6 and 24 months do apply, and specifically that we're going to identify the transition point as n months (with the chosen point needing to be within the policy-stated range).

This has not traditionally been considered a "local consensus"; this has traditionally been considered the ordinary and correct application of policy by editors working in a true consensus-oriented collaboration. But today we have editors, probably misled by the WP:UPPERCASE shortcut (because WP:Nobody reads the directions), who think that this is a "local" consensus.

If you support this approach, then I think your vote is misplaced. If you believe that BLP rules could end before 24 months (as the policy says) and you reject this method for figuring out when the subject transitions from BLP to normal rules, then please tell me how editors are supposed to make that determination (or who's supposed to, if it's not editors). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

* The editors working on an article....within the policy-stated range). Yup, we agree that looks good, healthy, normal editing, etc. What we (sort of) disagree on is whether that's the change that's under discussion, and therefore whether my !vote should be reconsidered. I think the locus of the issue is that we are interpreting an ambiguously-worded clause in the policy differently. When I read the policy can extend based on editorial consensus for an indeterminate period, I mentally apply "based on editorial consensus" to the policy, not the length of the extension. The length of the extension is of course subject to editorial consensus, which is the default condition so there's no need to explicitly say so. A local consensus (or any consensus, in the exceptional case of WP:BLP) cannot decide that a given BLP is not subject to the policy WP:BLP at all (a position that I think we agree upon). VQuakr (talk) 20:15, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

It may not be the best way to phrase it. I'm not actually thrilled with the existing wording (e.g., "for people who have recently died, in which case the policy can extend based for an indeterminate period beyond the date of death" – the policy isn't "extending"; it's "still being applied").

How do you expect editors to figure out when BLP stops applying, and how do you communicate that to other editors?

(Of course consensus can decide that a given BLP is not subject to BLP; for example, we decide all the time that a given business is too big to count as BLP.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:10, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

How do you expect editors to figure out when BLP stops applying, and how do you communicate that to other editors? Via discussion on the talk page. An article on a business was never a BLP. VQuakr (talk) 18:05, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Is "a discussion on the talk page" a "local consensus"?

(According to WP:BLPGROUP, when a business [or other group of people] is "very small", then BLP applies.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:10, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Happy Holiday!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2024!

Hello WhatamIdoing, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2024. Happy editing, Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you

Dear WhatamIdoing

Thank you for having me involved in the enriching discussions at User talk:Darcyisverycute/Archive 1#Draft and elsewhere on wikiproject medicine. It's been on my mind for some time, being involved in that wikiproject really felt like I was doing something impactful and gave me a sense of community that seems so fleeting for me. I wish I had the energy to be more involved at the time, as do now that I still hardly have the energy for much of anything... but I hope I can participate in nuanced discussions like that in the future. Something about getting pinged and ask to participate in those discussions was special to me. Not that I mean that as a request like canvassing or something, but just that I hope I'll come back to it and try to engage in those things again when I can find it in myself. Darcyisverycute (talk) 23:43, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for this note. But we have important things to talk about: Which Darcy? I assume your username refers to Mr. Darcy. The book is best, of course, but I've seen Pride and Prejudice (1995 TV series) and Pride and Prejudice (1940 film). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Goodness, I'm not sure how to reply to that >_< I'm actually not sure why my name is Darcy. I agree it's likely to do with pride and prejudice, and now that you've mentioned it, I think I'll try reading the book and maybe watching that 1940s movie too, it's been too many years for me to not know. And too long since I've read a good romance novel. Darcyisverycute (talk) 01:13, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your essay

December songs

my story today

... now also in the Signpost! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:41, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

My story today is about Michael Robinson, - it's an honour to have known him. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:36, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Today, I have a special story to tell, of the works of a musician born 300 years ago. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:23, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

This is the same thing that brought Aafi here. You have very eloquently put your thoughts, @WhatamIdoing. Thanks for this. I recently encountered that AfC reviewing has become more of a witch-hunting culture, on this encyclopedia. A new editor created an article on a professor meeting WP:NACADEMIC#6, and it was declined twice (within minutes) for pretty much very obscure reasons when there was an open-way to offer more help. Your essay resonates very well. Thank you again, and Yes, I am going to die. ─ The Aafī (talk) 18:23, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind note. I hope that you have a long and happy life. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I also came here to say that I appreciated your essay. Happy to see it in the Signpost. /Julle (talk) 20:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Note

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1191291497

If know by chance, i followed patterns of many clubs without websites having few social links added. Suddenly how to claim which is more official and should it be moved completely...most probably depends on editors mood as here. You edited some linking articles so might know more, appreciate. 93.140.194.58 (talk) 17:33, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The rules are pretty simple:

• There should normally be only one WP:ELOFFICIAL link.
• Any link that's been contested stays out of the article, unless and until you have written proof (usually via a simple discussion on the article's talk page) that other editors want it re-added.

If you need help beyond that, then I suggest asking at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

A solstice greeting

❄️ Happy holidays! ❄️

Hi WhatamIdoing! I'd like to wish you a splendid solstice season as we wrap up the year. Here is an artwork, made individually for you, to celebrate. Your work, both at the foundation and as a volunteer, has been invaluable. Take care, and thanks for all you do to make Wikipedia better!

Cheers,
{{u|Sdkb}} ^talk

Solstice Celebration for WhatamIdoing, 2023, DALL·E 3.

(View full series)

Note: The vibes are winter solsticey. If you're in the southern hemisphere, oops, apologies.

{{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:10, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

~ ~ ~ Merry Christmas! ~ ~ ~

Hello WhatamIdoing: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, --Dustfreeworld (talk) 16:44, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

CITV split

I have started a debate at Talk:CITV about whether former programming should be split into a separate article called List of programmes broadcast by CITV. Dwanyewest (talk) 14:25, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

A barnstar for you !

		The Philosophy Barnstar
		Thanks for always making extremely wise, and sometimes unusually clever, decisions regarding matters on Wikipedia. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 07:49, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the barnstar. What a nice thing to see at the start of my day. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:34, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Season’s greetings

It has been a privilege to play with you all that decade at WMF. Hopefully not sinking soon. Enjoy 2024.

HNY PerfektesChaos (talk) 13:25, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Hello, @PerfektesChaos, we had some good times, didn't we? I hope that you have a good year, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:58, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Making VisualEditor the default for anonymous and new editor contribs

This is so blindly obvious but as I don't get why this is so controversial on Wikipedia. Like, why do people here think that editing the complicated wikitext is somehow "better" than using VE from the beginning? Please, enlighten me on this. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:13, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that most editors believe that it's actually better. You do hear some people saying that, and worse – years ago, maybe in 2014, an editor here said that the visual editor was a terrible concept precisely because if people weren't willing and able to figure out wikitext, then he didn't think they were smart enough to be editors – but I don't think that it's typical.

Here's a question for you: What do you think "making it the default" would mean? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I think that default here means that when the new editor press "edit" for the first time, it would show up the VisualEditor instead of the source editor. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:31, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

When logged-out editors make their first edit, they click the [Edit] button and see a big dialog box with two buttons:

• (white) "Switch to the visual editor", or
• (blue) "Start editing".

It opens the 2010 wikitext editor in the background at the same time. (The 2010 WTE is slightly faster to open for most people, although the difference is not material for editors with average desktop/laptop devices who are opening pages of average length/complexity.)

Getting the Editing team (pinging @ESanders (WMF)) just to switch the blue and white buttons would probably not be difficult. It's maybe an hour's work, if the only thing being done is switching which button goes where. Getting it to auto-open directly in the visual editor, without asking the user to choose, would require design work, user research, and generally the whole ball of wax – months of work.

I just went through RecentChanges for new editors for the last tenth of the day. There were 550 edits total. Here are the numbers:

• 225 in the 2010 wikitext editor
• 194 in the desktop visual editor
• 74 edits in the mobile wikitext editor
• 57 in the mobile visual editor

That's 24% on the mobile site and 76% on the desktop site. It's 46% in VisualEditor (mobile+desktop) and 54% in a wikitext editor (mobile+desktop). I'm not sure whether moving from "about half and half" to "probably about half and half" is important. What do you think?

WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:21, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I think that you're right. I wasn't aware that there is a dialog for switching to VE editor. I think my concerns are invalid here. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 18:25, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

You only see the dialog on your first edit, so it's hardly surprising that people forget about it after making tens of thousands of edits. :-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Hey there - how are you doing

Hey there. I've been away from wikipedia from a bit with work - getting funding and a little personal stuff. Just like to say it's been really good working (or should that be arguing) with you during the pandemic and I consider you one of the most reasonable people that I interacted with during the whole pandemic even amongst my friends, who include doctors, maths PhDs, people with modelling PhDs who work in Pharma, and doctors who look after the elderly.

Also I think that you were instrumental in effective editing on COVID during the pandemic and wikipedia has done a better job than the entirity of the rest of information ecosystem during the pandemic in terms of sourcing etc.

I was thinking of emailing you to chat about some stuff. Particularly things that may have gone down with fact checkers in the UK if you were keen - but noticed that you weren't emailable - apart from at WMF which you seem to have left in september.

However, I would also understanding if you didn't want to email me. Anyway - hit me up here if you'd like to email a bit off site.

Sincerely, Talpedia

P.S I'd also like to say the interacting with wikipedia has in many ways been defining in my "academic" experience and that the benefits I have found due to what I've done in the pandemic have been highly useful for my career, and the arguments here have given me - in my opinion transferable skills that I use elsewhere. I remember my first edits on wikipedia and how I was rather angry at the time and how you brought me into WP:MED. I also rememebr however... assertive I was in certain conversations - I know that lots of people on wikipedia have more extreme forms of assertiveness, and I don't necessarily see this as avoidable - but I'd like to thank you for being so reasonable in such a stressful time - I am also aware that I may have puyshed a psychotherapist off of wikipedia in my first interaction when they only wanted to help me.

Talpedia 12:55, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words. Special:EmailUser/WhatamIdoing should work for anyone who has an e-mail address attached to their account. Feel free to send me a note. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:34, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

About the style of argument: Some years ago, my then-boss at the WMF said to me that I argued like I was from the English Wikipedia, and I don't think it was intended as a compliment. The clear and logical aspect is fine, but for all our talk about collaboration and finding compromises, we have a tendency towards immovable and unbending positions.

IMO this works out okay if people feel secure: I will insist on X, the decision will be Y, we all know that I still want X, and I will (assuming it's my job) make all reasonable efforts to make Y happen (or at least not interfere, if implementation is someone else's job). I prefer this to the environment in which staff want X and the boss, who wants Y, is so insecure that he wants them to tell him that Y is truly the best choice and can neither bear the thought that you don't agree with him, nor believe that anyone could work diligently and faithfully towards implementing his decision unless they Believed In™ his choice deep in their hearts.

Fortunately, I never reported to anyone with this problem, and with some of my most successful collaborations, it became one of our ground rules: If it's your decision, then you are allowed to make the wrong decision. I won't pretend to you that I think it's the right decision, but I will make your decision work as best I can. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:20, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

This generalises extremely well to all human dynamics, where it is typically framed as "I support you in your choices even if I disagree with them." Folly Mox (talk) 12:55, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

That sounds similar to this. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 09:25, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Disagree and commit is the business jargon for it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Then, how can, or when will, people feel secure? --Dustfreeworld (talk) 11:04, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

By growing up? Or by having people who are already emotionally mature? Management training programs talk a lot about the importance of psychological safety for high-performing teams, but a necessary precondition for that is to have managers who aren't personally offended by disagreement.

In individual cases, it helps if both people are not only trustworthy, but recognize that the other person is trustworthy. Imagine that your boss is synthesizing information from multiple employees. Maybe yours says strongly "yes", but the others all – unbeknownst to you– say strongly "no". If your boss is making the right decision based on all the facts and circumstances, then the decision will presumably be "no". If you can't see beyond your own narrow niche, it will be hard to trust your boss. I imagine that researchers whose clinical trials produce unusual results also have the same feeling when the meta-analysis points the other direction: How could it be "no", when my own trial said "yes"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:17, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

When I asked that question, I was thinking more about organisational, governmental (or between Gov and its people) or maybe national level. Though your explanation about individual cases is very thought-provoking too. But ... editors are people, so just being emotionally mature may not be enough.. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 16:39, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

As a side note, do we have Disagree (and then change one’s mind) and commit? Or, do we have Disagree and commit, but then later disagree again? --Dustfreeworld (talk) 16:42, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think we do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:34, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

We DO. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 10:30, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

"Underlinked"

Hey, WhatamIdoing, happy new year. I have a question for you, about this edit--sure, links, but that's actually the least of the problems with that article, which I actually redirected yesterday cause it's terrible and it's not likely a notable topic. The effect of that tag seems to be that it shows up in a list of suggested edits for new editors, which in turn seems to be the easiest way for new editors, including paid editors and socks, to rack up enough edits to get autoconfirmed, and as the history shows most of those edits are just really useless. I would like to urge you to be more sparing with that tag. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 16:53, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Drmies, without engaging in the "useless edits for new users help them build experience" bit, just as a point of information, Template:Underlinked will not facilitate this behaviour as soon as Growth roll out the algorithm-based version of the links Newcomer Task on en.wp, the last project still using the template-based version. Instead, almost all articles will be eligible for this task, minus any either transcluding templates or in categories (can't remember) that the community configures to exclude. Respectfully, Folly Mox (talk) 17:13, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I am going to die one of these days, remember? I actually want new editors to rack up some edits. If they can start that process through edits that you deem "mostly useless" rather than "actively harmful", then so much the better. I think that having them learn to edit on unimportant or weak articles is better than having them work in high-profile, popular, or well-written articles. Having them add links to an article that they hardly make any worse is better than having them get yelled at for screwing up an article that's already pretty good. If they notice some of the other tags, or notice some of the untagged other problems, and try to fix those, then that would be great.

I think there is some personal preference around the number of links. Some editors would like to see a lot of links, some would like to see few links, and most of us believe that our view is in the middle, even when we're not. I'd love to have some solid statistics on, e.g., the typical number of links per sentence/word count in FAs on the day of their promotion. I did this manually about a year ago for the leads only in a few dozen FAs, and found that it was about 1.5 links per sentence or one link per 16 words. I would expect the proportion of links across the whole article to be less than that, for any article much longer than a typical FA lead (which is around 250 to 400 words long).

I'm curious about the algorithm being used for the newcomers' task. My list of candidates is WPMED-tagged articles with a word count between 150 to 2000 according to the Prosesize gadget, that have 0, 1, or 2 links (in paragraphs; e.g., excluding all the links in lists, tables, refs, etc.). It's not reliable, with a few percent (mostly lists) being inappropriately identified as being underlinked when they're fine.

I'm also trying not to overload the category, because multiple editors review the articles in that cat manually each day to pull the tags off when they seem 'done', and I don't want them to have to check 100 articles to find the 10 that are ready to remove. (There are 17 articles in the cat this morning, so I don't expect to be adding any new ones today.) One thing I like about the Growth team's calculation is that it should reduce the effort needed to de-tag articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:55, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, the technical stuff is a little bit scattered and possibly outdated. :wikitech:Add Link § High-level summary has some interesting implementation details, and meta:Machine learning models/Proposed/add-a-link model is basically a better summary of meta:Research:Link recommendation model for add-a-link structured task. I looked at several phab tasks for any mathsy bits of algorithm, and didn't understand them, but phab:tag/add-link gives an impression of current status, and a release date is coming. Folly Mox (talk) 01:50, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I should clarify that the phab tasks I didn't understand also did not seem to contain mathsy bits. They may be in there somewhere. The code is public, of course, but none of us in this thread want to read that answer. Folly Mox (talk) 01:52, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Those pages don't seem to talk about how the article is selected. Instead, they seem to talk about how individual words/phrases are selected. The old/current version appears to say "Hey, here's an article. You could add some links to it." The new version appears to say "I see that George Washington is mentioned in this article. Shall we make that a link to George Washington?"

@Trizek (WMF), do you have a help page/section somewhere about how pages get selected for this? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

For the old version, it is only based on templates.

For the new version, the algorithm does the magic, based on the potential relevancy of a link. In short, what you describe, plus a way to check on the context to determine if the link should go to the president or the named train.

We also check where the term we plan to link is. We won't create a link in the Reflist section or in an infobox, for instance. And to avoid "paid editors and socks, to rack up enough edits to get autoconfirmed" as @Drmies worries about, the community can limit the number of articles each user can add link to each day (default being 25). Of course, we mustn't forget that WhatamIdoing is going to die, like all of us, and we should not close the door to promising users; socks and paid editors, like vandals, are a minority.

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:04, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF), how is the "source-page" selected? That page says the "source-page" is "input", but it does not say anything else about it. Are the source-pages found in Category:All articles with too few wikilinks or through some other method? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:34, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

When a user selects a given topic, we take articles that have less links in compared to the page length. But there is also a little bit of randomness so that users won't just edit stubs or walls of black text. You can find more on T301096#8388234. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 19:53, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I can't follow the technical details; Folly Mox's comments go right over my head. What I do know is that these edits add up to a whole lot of work, and if we're quantifying everything, then have we figured out how many GAs come out of those edits, and over what kind of time period? Plus, wikilinking is such low-hanging and unpalatable fruit. Trizek, for autoconfirmed they only need what, ten or a dozen or so. If, like me, you spend a lot of time looking at drafts or at COI articles in main space, you'll understand that this is actually a big problem. Drmies (talk) 15:22, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@Drmies, when you say that these edits add up to a whole lot of work, what exactly do you mean? If a newbie adds a link, is that more work for you than if the newbie, say, changes the spelling of a word or the phrasing of a sentence? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:18, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

It's not just the newbies, of course, but those new editors have a tendency to link needlessly. Wikilinking is overrated, IMO: I see more overlinked than underlinked articles. Correcting a typo (if they change it correctly) or some grammar, that would be a useful edit: these are not, usually. Moreover, those articles tend to have a dozen or more similar edits in a row by different editors, including reverts, and it can be a lot to sift through, separating the wheat from the chaff. Drmies (talk) 17:26, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Different editors have different preferences for the ideal number of links in an article. I would expect some variation (an overview of a highly technical subject probably needs more links than an article about a familiar everyday subject or an article that is mostly a plot summary), but what would you describe your basic idea of the right number of links as? One per sentence? One per paragraph? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

The issue isn't how many links should be in an article--it's about multiple links to the same article, sometimes in the same sentence, and the linking of commonly understood terms, the definition of MOS:OVERLINK that new users don't understand. I first encountered this issue late last year, when I noticed scores of new pop-up accounts overlinking articles, then realized that they were responding to newly applied underlink templates. Their intent may be constructive, but imagine this: if we could apply a template that noted a dearth of Oxford commas in an article, what do you think would happen next? Unlike poorly referenced, COI or POV issues, underlinking is not a major concern to an article's integrity. WhatamIdoing, when you drive-by template an article for being underlinked, do you return to see what happens almost immediately thereafter? I'm not cherrypicking, but here are some examples from earlier today: [3] mental illness=mental illness in Ancient Rome?; [4]; [5]; [6]; [7]; [8]; [9]; [10]; [11]; [12]; [13]; [14]; [15] we need links to 'public' and 'air'? Invariably, it's new users who answer the call, and their linking is generally indiscriminate because they're unfamiliar with guidelines and manual of style. For a while I ran the fool's errand of leaving messages at some of their pages--most said thank you and continued. In several cases they were blocked, or articles had to be protected. Unfortunately, the results tend to be disruptive. 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 19:10, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I haven’t followed the discussion. I agreed that “ Having them add links to an article that they hardly make any worse is better than having them get yelled at for screwing up an article that's already pretty good”. But when newbies reading or answering “the call”, it’s important that they are reminded with a simple note, e.g., “ Do not link everyday words understood by most readers.” plus a link to MOS:OVERLINK (if they aren’t now). This won’t solve all the problems, but should help with most. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 01:28, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I did try that, Dustfreeworld, and found several problems. Many, if not most of the new accounts, ignored notices even after being informed of the MOS guidelines. In some cases, this was probably because they weren't proficient in English, and linking seemed like the easiest way to get started here without proficiency (as an example, irrelevant links like the above example of 'mental illness in Ancient Rome' as a link to mental illness). The new accounts tended to go radio silent quickly, which make them look like disposable, test accounts, though some were actually just working up a number of edits prior to their real agenda (promotional or creating an article with good intent). Finally, new accounts descended upon some articles in such numbers that at a certain point, leaving messages with all was an exercise in futility. For example, the late November, early December floods at Free Beer at U.N.C.L.E.. The upshot for many was that anywhere from a 25% to all of their edits were not constructive. My conclusion, fair or otherwise, was that using an underlinked template as a gateway for new editors did not improve articles overall and was not the best way to get them started at Wikipedia. 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 02:53, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree that underlinking isn't a major threat to an article's integrity. Instead, it is a significant threat to the readers' understanding.

The instructions are: "Add links between articles: Make words from one article link to another article" and "Adding links is the easiest way to edit. Links help readers move between articles to learn more quickly.", with a link to Help:Introduction to editing with VisualEditor/3 labeled "Learn more".

When you click the assignment, there is a series of tips offered:

• Links between Wikipedia articles allow readers to click on something they want to learn more about. They help people navigate easily to other Wikipedia articles.
• All you need to do is add one or two links to make a difference. You don't need to work on the entire article. You also don't need to have any special knowledge about the topic.
• Follow these guidelines when adding links:
  • Link concepts that a reader might want to learn more about.
  • Only link to the first time that word or phrase occurs in the article.
  • Don't link to common words, years, or dates.
• Once you see somewhere to add a link, click "Edit" to get started. Then highlight the word or phrase want to make into a link.
• Click the "Link" button and choose the Wikipedia article from the list to which it should link.
• Either add more links, or go ahead and click "Publish changes…" to publish your edit! Learn more about adding links

WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:53, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, Too long didn’t read (WP:TLDR) ... --Dustfreeworld (talk) 18:10, 18 January 2024 (UTC); 03:34, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Unreferenced backlog drive

The drive I've mentioned in the PROD RFC is now online: Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/February 2024. I know that you somewhat opposed to my backlog drive idea (as this drive only addresses 3k/130k articles in the backlog), but I hope it will be a starting point of a sourcing community if you will, and to be that's much more important than the number of articles this drive addresses. Together, we can accelerate the trend. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:00, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to it. I'm skeptical of it being the only thing we need to do, but I think this could be one piece of the puzzle. I think that limiting the test run to a subset is a great idea.

Are you setting up a dashboard on Outreach? It can auto-detect how many refs each person adds to the identified list of articles. See https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Wikipedia/WikiProject_Medicine_reference_campaign_2023/students/overview for an example. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:01, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

That dashboard is interesting. I don't think it is really applicable to the event because that ref counter counts a lot of things, not just the mere addition and removal of refs cause a student somehow managed to remove -1346 or add 2855 refs... I probably need to test it out before I use it in the next drive. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 06:09, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, this particular one isn't students. If you look at the work Bon courage does in patrolling articles, I think you'll have no trouble figuring out how he managed to revert the addition of 3.6 bad refs per day last year. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:33, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Poisoned Candy Myths

Hi, thanks for all your great edits. I recently made a change to the lede in an article that you have made many contributions to ... and I hope I didn't step on your toes. Poisoned candy myths specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Poisoned_candy_myths&oldid=694214532

You had summarized previous text into a much better version, but I think that the holdover statement "No cases of strangers killing or permanently injuring children this way have been proven." was too absolute, and also did not state any time-frame, etc. Someone eventually added a citation, but it was not to an authoritative site. I put a note on the talk page about the edit. BTW, I agree that this issue is more a myth, than a fact. I just think that an encyclopedic article should not include statements that may not be verifiable, or that may become inaccurate at some time in the future. If you would rather address my concerns in another way, I'd will be happy to defer to your experience on this article. Thanks.  • Bobsd •  (talk) 19:05, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, @Bobsd. However, it's not appropriate for Wikipedia editors to cast doubt on statements made in reliable sources. Reliable sources don't have to prove their claims to our satisfaction, and a lot of POV pushing over the years has come under the heading of "But the source didn't convince me personally!" This statement is WP:DUE because all the reliable sources that address this question say exactly the same thing. Our own skepticism (surely there could have been just one or two little murders that somehow got overlooked?) is not enough to overcome the clear, direct, and uniform statements by reliable sources. We call them reliable sources because we are supposed to rely on them, not because we're supposed to question whether their research was actually good enough to convince us.

If you'd like to read more about this subject, then I suggest starting with https://www.google.com/books/edition/Threatened_Children/8VIg9STL-wUC (written by the foremost scholar in the field, published by university press – this is exactly the kind of source preferred by Wikipedia:Reliable sources). If you search for "Joel Best" halloween at https://www.soc.udel.edu/news-and-events/in-the-media you'll also find a lot of recent sources. There is an update on his original book in this book, which brings it up to 2019. You can see his own summary (and attempt to reduce the number of interview requests he gets each October) at https://www.joelbest.net/halloween-sadism The bottom line is that, despite serious scholarly work and decades of media promotion, there are still zero deaths. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:39, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Okay, I'm fine with that. I did not realize that reason.com was a reliable source. The particular cited page was very short and did not point to any external research, and I guess the "Trust me: No one has ever poisoned a stranger's kid with Halloween candy." pushed my buttons. In retrospect I should have researched that, or raised the issue on the talk page first. In general I think that https://www.google.com/books/edition/Threatened_Children/8VIg9STL-wUC would be a much better citation, and thanks for providing the link.

On a personal note, I have to remember that I am no longer acting as a software quality engineer, reviewing specs and requirements for DoD projects. You would not believe the lack of forethought that is found in many critical designs. I was looking forward to retiring in 2021, and spending more time on WP, but the level of random edits, and crazies out there drives me nuts. I think WP would be better served if new articles were left to flourish by getting all inputs, but at some point, they slowly get locked down to more senior editors and maybe eventually need peer reviews before changes are made. Many articles are stellar under the current system, but even then, charges are made with little regard for revision control, etc. Anyway, that's my particular mindset. I read some of your great essays and advice and I congratulate you on your obvious patience contributing 112K edits !!!

Thank you for the very polite response to my concerns.  • Bobsd •  (talk) 23:12, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

The way we treat newcomers is a real problem. When we started, it felt a little more open. I made mistakes, but nobody ever yelled at me about them. Now I hear that newcomers' first edits are a wall of semi-automated rejection messages, and not necessarily accurately applied ones, either.

With your DOD background, do you happen to have an interest in military history? Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history is a group of editors that works together on that subject area, and they seem to be a pretty steady, low-drama kind of group. If you checked out their talk page, you might be able to find something interesting to do, with folks who would have your back.

I don't know if you'll think this is scary or if it'll make you proud of your accomplishments, but you are already in Wikipedia's top 1% by edit count. I encourage you to keep at it, because we need editors like you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:20, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Please cease. If you continue to oppose the Cabal, you may be eliminated from existence as punishment for your thoughtcrime. 

(jk) vghfr 00:24, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:There is no cabal, so naturally it is a violation of cabal regulations to mention the cabal in writing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:08, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Less jargon.

Just to say I very much like this edit to V. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:48, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I hope it (or something like it) will stick. I don't remember us having as much confusion about what OR means a decade ago, but it's pretty common now. Among other things, I've heard claims during the last year or so that all uncited content is OR, and that it's a violation of OR to cite peer-reviewed journal articles that describe original research (some academic journals label the types of things they publish. It's helpful if they add a heading like like "Letters" or "Editorials", but some of them proudly declare descriptions of new studies to be "Original Research" – which it is! But occasionally an editor misunderstands and thinks that WP:OR prohibits us from citing those sources). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:01, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

It's good as just a general improvement. As with any group Wikipedia has its own terminology and what is meant by the term here may be different from how it is used elsewhere (original research, vandalism, verification). Wikipedia can have a steep learning curve, and clarifying some of the language in the various policies and guidelines would help that.
That it's a violation to use sources that contain original research is one I've seen a few times. As to saying uncited content is OR, there will always be some who try and find justification for their preferred habits. Whether that incorrectly claiming it's OR, misusing ONUS, or stonewalling new content from an article, they will find a reason to impose their own ideas. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 02:16, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm in favor of editors doing The Right Thing™, whatever they believe that is. I only ask them to use the correct wikijargon when they're talking about it. :-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:38, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the graph at Affordable housing

I also copied it to Affordable housing in the United States. I'm just letting you this know in case you didn't know that the AhinUS article existed. Thanks again! ---Avatar317^(talk) 06:40, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for working on those articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:58, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Cups of coffee

Regarding this edit: not sure if I'm missing something—did you mean to write that the company sold 200 billion cups of coffee? isaacl (talk) 23:12, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

No, my numbers are wrong. Thanks for the note. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

WP all articles

Hi @WhatamIdoing, I really like what you did in Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Lists of pages/Articles. Could you please help me on how to do the Petscan query for WP Classical music? I tried but wasn't successful...

If you know an alternative to watch recent changes to all the articles of a WP I would also be happy to hear it. Looks like there were some tools that helped with that but they are all broken now. Thank you very much in advance. -- Gor1995 𝄞 10:02, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

@Gor1995, have you tried to create a new "pile" at https://pagepile.toolforge.org/ ? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:41, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for answering @WhatamIdoing. I have absolutely no idea how to use this, and could not find any manual or help page... I only managed to create this pile? but i'm pretty sure i'm doing it wrong... Creating a pile will give me a list of all the articles, or i'm supposed to use the pile as a source for Petscan? As you can see it's my first time using this kind of tools... Thanks in advance -- Gor1995 𝄞 00:09, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I think PagePile is an alternative to Petscan (and is less likely to time out). I've never used it before. We might have to ask for help at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:37, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

@Gor1995, it's possible that if you just asked at that village pump, someone would make the list for you. That wouldn't be so useful if you wanted to update it regularly, but it would get you started. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:38, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Oops, sorry, I forgot to reply. Thanks for your answer! I ended up finding a way to do it through Quarry. Looks like a very powerful and effective tool, even though I've only tried basic stuff. -- Gor1995 𝄞 09:17, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

I hope you like it, WAID. :-) --Dustfreeworld (talk) 16:09, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! I am fond of cookies. :-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:44, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Parsing bug

Re: this diff, what did you input that caused it go wrong? Can you reproduce it? ESanders (WMF) (talk) 14:06, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

@ESanders (WMF), try this:

1. Type and italicize the book title in the Reply tool's visual mode: The Sun is Really Big
2. Then add the visible/nowiki'd link indications (I type two square brackets and Escape the dialog box). You should see two (visible) opening square brackets, the italicized title, and two closing square brackets, with no actual link.
3. Get the red link ''The Sun is Really Big'' when you should get <nowiki>[[</nowiki>The Sun is Really Big<nowiki>]]</nowiki>

WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:55, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

New pages patrol invitation

Hello, WhatamIdoing. The new pages patrol team is currently struggling to keep up with the influx of new articles and redirects needing review. We could use a few extra hands to help. I believe that someone with your activity and experience is very likely to meet the guidelines for granting. Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time, but it requires a strong understanding of Wikipedia’s CSD policy and notability guidelines. Kindly read the tutorial before making your decision, and feel free to post on the project talk page with questions. If patrolling new pages is something you'd be willing to help out with, please consider applying here. Thank you for your consideration. We hope to see you around!

Thanks, Hey man im josh (talk) 19:47, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

No, thanks. I stopped patrolling articles when it started being a hat to collect instead of an activity that anyone can do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:03, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

BIASED

This edit showed up on my watchlist. I get that it is acceptable to have (or use) only biased sources, and that demanding unbiased sources isn't a requirement and may be unachievable in practice. But you go further and seem to say that having two highly biased sources is more useful than one presumably neutral source that notes the disagreement. Can you explain why that is?

Further, is two sufficient? Surely the last paragraph of WP:YESPOV, where you merely have a source by Simon Wiesenthal and a source by David Irving leaves you entirely ill equipped to judge the prominence of each viewpoint. That in order to do that bit, you either need a comprehensive collection of the literature on that matter, or a source operating at a higher level than mere personal viewpoints. And why would Wikipedians be any better at achieving an unbiased description of opposing views, sourced to the adherents of those views separately, than a reliable publication that aims to do that for us? -- Colin°^Talk 09:03, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Two may not be sufficient, if there are more than two sides to a dispute. However, there are only two sides possible in the 1985 World Series.

The quotation comes from an editorial in The New Yorker about a proposal from a school board to remove books from school libraries on various grounds. One of the criteria they proposed was "Are both sides of controversial issues presented with fairness?" White's response was, in part:

"An author so little moved by a controversy that he can present both sides fairly is not likely to burn any holes in the paper. We think the way for school children to get both sides of a controversy is to read several books on the subject, not one. In other words we think the Board should strive for a well-balanced library, not a well-balanced book. The greatest books are heavily slanted, by the nature of greatness."

(He then evaluates the school board's own writing style according to a proposed standard that involved the "building of good language habits" by reading only suitably well-written works.)

The idea of authors being ineffective when they attempt to present both sides with equal fairness is not unique to White, and his expression has been a touchstone for explaining it. The 1969 Crucial Issues in Education quotes this line, as a sort of apology, and expands on it as an editorial principle for the anthology: "Rather, each chapter presents claims and counterclaims, assertions and denials, proofs and disproofs, conflicting values and rival hypotheses. Such an approach may tend to unsettle the immature mind—sometimes to the point of confusion and bewilderment—but it also unsettles the habit of dismissing great issues in terms of verbal generalities and stereotypes." A review of said anthology disagrees that the anthology met its goal ("There are no holes burned in [his] pages.  He is overly cautious about stepping on toes and therefore tends to undercut the controversy he hopes to dramatize" [16]), but the principle itself seems uncontested.

Wikipedia editors of relatively little skill may be better off with a bland textbook that reduces complex subjects to soundbites or that gives equal validity to potentially unequal sides. But I think many times they will learn more from reading impassioned argument for something followed by a determined argument against it, rather than a single "unbiased" source that just shrugs its shoulders and says "Well, different people have different ideas". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I wasn't talking about the number of sides in a dispute, but about the extent of one's reading. A single source arguing for X and a single source arguing for Y will not inform an editor about the relative importance of either side, which YESPOV requires we figure out. Changing the text to "sources that.." would fix this.

I'm not sure that arguments for readers (at school or university) to have access to a publications promoting a wide spectrum of beliefs, including discredited ones and fringe ones, is entirely applicable to general advice for editors selecting sources for articles. Beliefs we would call fringe on Wikipedia exist in large numbers in bookshops, and libraries would not censor them for being "silly" in the minds of the librarian. We don't expect or even advise editors to read Irving or Wakefield's works, yet I would expect a university library to have them. I wouldn't expect or even advise editors writing about medical therapy to read a book on the power of prayer, yet I have no problem with a Christian being able to read such a book in their library should they wish to.

The alternative to reading polemics from opposing side is not necessarily a bland textbook that oversimplifies a complex dispute, or one that incorrectly gives equal validity to potentially unequal sides. And I think you underestimate the skill needed to balance sides if one only read from the extremes, from writers who burn holes in the paper. Sure, passion can make for a great word. It can also make for a crap work that misleads the reader, misses out unhelpful facts, cherry picks studies. The two sides aren't necessarily written the same way. For example, a standard book on baby care may mention all the vaccines one should take one's baby for, and how they help prevent terrible diseases and that they are safe. It won't bother the reader with trying to prove this, even though it could cite all the many studies and studies of studies. Whereas the antivax leaflet will mention the "studies" of kids getting autism or dying after vaccination. I think balancing those two, if that's all one had, would step into OR territory.

But I can't help wondering why so dismissive of a work that discusses both sides with appropriate fairness? Isn't that what we're trying to achieve with Wikipedia. Why is that something that could only be worth reading as a tertiary source, rather than a valuable secondary source? -- Colin°^Talk 19:05, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree that single source from any POV may not be enough (e.g., if there are different ideas from within a broad viewpoint).

I agree that we are trying to take a variety of sources and turn them into something that discussed both sides with appropriate fairness.

I disagree that a well-written source, arguing powerfully for one side is necessarily "extreme". I have read some powerful arguments in favor of universal literacy, and I have read some weak ones, but I have read no extreme ones.

I am doubtful that reading a source that provides a given author's (or committee's) effort to balance all the viewpoints will be as informative to a Wikipedia editor as reading multiple authors' effort to persuade them that their side is right. One might read a summary of a controversial point and come away with distorted ideas that prevent you from seeing why the adherents hold that viewpoint. If you read something from an adherent, you might not have a full picture of the viewpoint, but you're less likely to have a wrong picture of their view.

For example: Towards the end of the pandemic lockdowns, I read a story about a woman who opposed mask mandates. She thought the mandates infringed too much on her personal liberty, so she decided not to go anywhere or do anything that would require her to wear a mask. I might think her choice was silly, but politely following the law is not extreme.

IMO an editor who read her views directly would know more about that particular set of values and motivations than someone who read a summary of opposition to mask mandates ("politics" and "misinformation" and "conspiracy theories"), followed by a summary of support for mask mandates ("science" and "public health"). Summaries tend towards generalities, soundbites, and stereotypes. Something gets lost in that process, and – here is where the Wikipedia editor appears – that loss can make us write worse encyclopedia articles. It can make us be self-righteous about mask mandates, make us miss the fear behind vaccine hesitancy, and make us be unsympathetic to people who are struggling with poorly explained and misdiagnosed chronic illness. It can make us measure feminism according to women's bank accounts instead of their happiness, prayer according to medical outcomes instead of spiritual ones, education according to economic output instead of personal growth, and cultures according to their freedoms instead of the virtues and vices they produce. Because, of course, that "unbiased" summary isn't guaranteed to be unbiased, and unlike the honest persuasive piece, its biases may not be so obvious. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:20, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Your last bit is verging on the righting-great-wrongs territory. That if reliable publications that are neutrally summarising conflicted opinions are doing a really terrible job ("distorted ideas", "generalities", "soundbites", "stereotypes") then this is something random Wikipedians should fix by going to the sources and balancing and summarising it with greater talent and ability than people who studied journalism at university or worked for years at a news source founded on principles of impartiality.

I agree with you that it can be important to read the publications of adherents in order to understand that viewpoint. That's one of the things that perplexed me about some of the gender-critical feminism discussions, where editors insisted on banning using their material as a source even for what they believed, and insisted that only publications hostile to GCF could be cited. Yes, I think you're then going to get a "distorted" view of what they believe. But that doesn't mean I haven't encountered accurate descriptions of what they believe written by people trying very hard to be neutral.

You mention universal literacy, which isn't really an argument I've read about. But I'm sure that some topics have people disagreeing and both sides are all grown up about it, respectfully disagree, can see that the other side are rational people who just happen to take a different approach, etc, etc. And there, the source material on all sides could be great. I suspect then that writing Wikipedia articles on those might be easier. Whereas quite a lot of conflicts that cause editor problems on Wikipedia have one or even both sides behaving really badly. Where one or both side is thoroughly engaged in dishonest writing, cherry picking, exaggeration or cover-up. Mostly, what happens isn't that an editor takes these turds and polishes them into something magical, but that they splat them onto the page and go to war with other editors. Maybe the material gets removed or its worst bits chopped off. But we may also end up retaining stuff that is dishonest, cherry picked and unfair. And instead of the fair balance being within that article, we achieve balance by writing dishonest, cherry picked and unfair things about the other side on another article. -- Colin°^Talk 11:47, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

• If a reliable source is doing a terrible job, it is not likely to be "neutrally summarising" the subject. The concern here is that editors might assume that they source is unbiased when it's not.
• I don't think editors should reject reliable secondary sources. I only say here that editors should also not reject "biased" sources. We should sometimes use both. IMO we would benefit from editors reading both even if they only cite secondary sources. Reading multiple biased primaries might help editors figure out whether the seemingly neutral secondary is actually neutral, and it might help them figure out what they've missed or misunderstood in the secondary source.
• To use your gender-related example, I think that the simplest solution is to delete the whole lot and ban anyone who tries to write about it for the next decade. But among plausible approaches that actually comply with our educational mission, I think that editors who strongly hold a particular position should Wikipedia:Write for the enemy. Those promoting complete acceptance and integration of trans women should add some content about the other view; perhaps they could tolerate adding the fact that nearly everyone believes rape victims deserve society's support, even to the extent of letting them decide whether they can tolerate being in the same room as a person who had a penis at birth. Perhaps they would even be willing to cite it to a somewhat "anti-trans" author. Those promoting rejection of trans folks should add content about the other view, and perhaps they could manage to add the fact that polite behavior does not include making guesses about or comments on total strangers' genitals, and citing that to a somewhat "pro-trans" source. If they manage to read something good (=logical and well written, not that they necessarily agree with) from the loyal opposition, maybe they would be less likely to misrepresent their opponents' actual views, especially if their notion of their opponents' actual views is coming from a source that is superficially neutral but which is biased.

Speaking of which, I think I saw someone claiming on wiki a while ago that The New York Times, which has usually objected to as being WP:BIASED in a progressive direction, should be banned from gender-related subjects because they're overly credulous about ROGD and desistance. I notice that they recently published a source saying things like the landmark Danish study included only trans kids with no comorbidities and who had been asking to transition since a very young age, so the results don't really apply to a kid with autism and severe anxiety who started asking to transition right after noticing that puberty was underway. I assume that will be the source of disputes. (This is a weird subject area to watch. In most subjects, editors want to emphasize that Further research is needed. Here, we claim total certainty about everything.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:01, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

You are probably referring to As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do. Which is an opinion piece that contains things like "Trans activists have fought hard to suppress any discussion of rapid onset gender dysphoria, despite evidence that the condition is real." and "While professional associations say there is a lack of quality research on rapid onset gender dysphoria, several researchers have documented the phenomenon, and many health care providers have seen evidence of it in their practices." We wouldn't use such an opinion piece for facts. Does it affect their editorial policy and standard reporting?

That's a topic I think where both sides write really crap sources. The papers in trans journals about "TERFs" are often just hateful opinion pieces not any better than you'd find in a right-wing newspaper writing for the other side, and I don't understand why we elevate those as an authoritative source for wikivoice. Neither side wants to admit the lack of proper science. Nobody is writing for the enemy, especially not the pro-trans editors who view the other side as an extremist fringe group no more worthy of consideration than white supremacists and nazis. In the UK, people taking that kind of attitude, whether at university or other employers, have landed their employers in legal trouble.

I agree with you that exposing yourself to strong personal views on either side can be helpful, partly so that as you say you can spot when someone is succeeding in being (or at least trying to be) neutral and fair as a secondary. I think on that trans subject there is little neutral secondary material, and we should probably say a lot lot less than we do. Certainly we should take a scythe to the title tattle both sides want to push about each other. The only authors who want to touch the subject are those with an opinion who are willing to die on a hill.

Hannah Barnes's Time to Think book is an example I think of someone trying really hard to achieve BBC principles of fairness and objectivity and neutrality. It isn't perfect. The story is so so unhelpful to the pro-trans side that the book and author are lumped in with the hateful TERFs. And the author is a little too credible when interviewing some of their sources. But the various GC journalists who love the book amuse me because it is more pro-trans than they would want, and I guess they conveniently ignore those bits. Another journalist, Libby Brooks, the Guardian's Scotland correspondent, has been covering the various trans issues in Scottish politics with I think a good journalistic attitude, reporting the facts and the sides and not pushing their opinions down the reader's throats.

As you say, perhaps it is only possible to see people trying to be neutral, if you have read the opinionated works of activists on either side. But I would still say our readers would be better off if we generally aimed to use those neutral secondary sources. The language of opinionated more-primary works can be utterly hostile and quite specific to their side, and require a lot of work to neutralise. And sometimes we don't have sources for both sides of a story. We have one side with a story full of half truths and misleading disproportionate outrage. And the other side doesn't mention it at all. And neutral sources don't mention it at all. But because that first side is a newspaper generally regarded as a reliable source, that story gets pushed into an article. I think this is where WEIGHT has problems, because you can't weigh silence and decide we should be silent too. -- Colin°^Talk 10:08, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

XKCD

Today's XKCD rang bells with me. But you are the only person I know who fixes up Wikipedia to support aspects of an argument they are involved in! Good to know the sum of human knowledge is being expanded a little from such arguments. Btw, is there a reason you didn't link to the InterentArchive for those pages? Is that a copyvio? -- Colin°^Talk 13:19, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

I prefer to think of it as "documenting what we've learned some place useful". ;-)

I don't know whether it's a copyvio, but I didn't think that a link would be especially helpful to readers (assuming any of them tried to look it up, which I doubt). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Comment

Hello, WhatamIdoing,

Earlier today, you left a message on User talk:טבעת for the editor. However, this isn't a valid username for an existing editor, there is no editor with this name. So, I'm not sure who you were trying to contact but because it's a User page for a nonexistent editor so it's been speedy deleted. I don't know if this comment helps but I wanted to let you know that the message went unseen except by patrollers like me. Take care, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:03, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I found the full username. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:39, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Invitation to join New pages patrol

Hello WhatamIdoing!

• The New Pages Patrol is currently struggling to keep up with the influx of new articles needing review. We could use a few extra hands to help.
• We think that someone with your activity and experience is very likely to meet the guidelines for granting.
• Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time, but it requires a strong understanding of Wikipedia’s CSD policy and notability guidelines.
• Kindly read the tutorial before making your decision, and feel free to post on the project talk page with questions.
• If patrolling new pages is something you'd be willing to help out with, please consider applying here.

Thank you for your consideration. We hope to see you around!

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:21, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

MPGuy2824, I've received more than enough of these messages. This is the second one this month. Where's your group's exclusion list? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:35, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: The exclusion list is at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Coordination/List of users already invited, which you're actually already on. It appears there was a mistake and five users were re-invited a second time. For what it's worth, my invite above was a direct invitation as opposed to a mass invitation like this one. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:07, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Josh. It can be difficult to manage these lists. No harm done in the end. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:14, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm just relieved it was only 5 consider ~400 invites were sent out! Hey man im josh (talk) 17:32, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that was lucky. (Though I imagine that a re-invitation once every five years or so might not be taken as entirely unfriendly.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:37, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Didn't mean to bug folks repeatedly. We'll investigate what went wrong and how to fix it in the future. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 01:10, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

No worries. You're already set up to do the right thing, and occasional mistakes happen. It probably won't happen again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:27, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

subst bug

It looks like T4700. An ominously low task number I'm afraid. ESanders (WMF) (talk) 15:47, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. That sounds like what I was thinking of. I assume that MediaWiki will get re-architected before this one gets fixed. Fortunately, it doesn't come up very often. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:28, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Consensus / no-consensus?

I'm interested in the close at Talk:Ehlers–Danlos syndrome#Requested move 3 February 2024 by User:Bait30. There were two aspects to the requested move: the upper/lower case of the second word and whether it should be plural. Several participants only commented on the former. I count your comment (that both singular and plural are "acceptable") as being explicitly not caring which. SchreiberBike also didn't feel able to decide between singular or plural. That leaves the opening poster MarydaleEd, Cinderella157 and SMcCandlish with support for singular and Firefangledfeathers and myself with support for plural. SMcCandlish's rationale for his support was based on Google Scholar searches across all time, which failed WP:NAMECHANGES and it is unfortunate he didn't return to update his comments in light of more recent literature searches, though probably it would have remained the same.#

Anyway, surely 3:2 is the definition of both low participation and no consensus. Or does a majority of one out of merely five expressed opinions mean "consensus" on Wikipedia? And do the four participants who didn't feel strongly or confident enough to have an opinion on the change from plural to singular count at all? Shouldn't "meh" or "don't care which" or "don't know which" vote count somewhat towards inertia?

I'm not asking Bait30 to redo their close. We can see if the plural form takes off more in future, though likely such analysis would need to target "articles about the syndromes as a whole" sources rather than "articles that happen to mention a patient with X" which is what we got a lot of and will naturally feature the singular. I'm more interested in what both of you think is the definition of a consensus compelling enough to require change. -- Colin°^Talk 12:42, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

There were 13 people (including the closer) in that discussion. Seven (including the nom and someone who explicitly refused to express a preference) commented on the plural/singular question. I don't think that's "low participation". I suspect that's average participation for an RM, or maybe even high participation.

Including the nom and the abstention, the vote count would be 4:2:1, with at least one on each of the two sides being relatively indifferent, and at least two of the pro-singular voters being strongly attached to their preferred result. We officially say that "strength of argument" matters, but in practice, "strength of emotions" matters, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:11, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm not seeing where you get 4 from? -- Colin°^Talk 16:29, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I think I miscounted. The editors commenting at all were the OP, me, FFF, you, Cinderella157, SMcCandlish (and SchreiberBike for the abstention). That's seven editors.

I probably should have placed myself in plural, though mine is just a "don't bother moving it" vote. I placed SMcCandlish in singular despite him not caring much either, along with the OP and Cinderella157. If we count me as plural, then it's 3:3:1 (an even split) and if we count me as abstention then it's 3:2:2 in favor of plural, on a straight vote count – but not in terms of strength of emotions. The plural supporters tend towards "Meh, it's okay like it is", and two of the editors preferring the singular are strongly in favor of their preference. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:42, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes I counted yours as neutral but I agree one could argue that you made the case the status quo was "acceptable" and didn't at all argue that it needed changed, which counts as one vote for retaining the plural. I guess Cinderella157 only counted as a strong argument because I argued with them and they dug in. The OP's passion for discrediting the consortium doesn't have any weight wrt our naming policy. It is a shame that most comments were on the entirely non-controversial case change (See Zentomologist's comment at 23:00, 25 September 2017 about Doc James making a typo by putting it in upper case). And don't Zentomologist and Doc James opinions count for anything?

My comment on five votes being low participation is still a statistic fact. That move requests are frequently under-commented doesn't magically make such under-powered votes a good indication of consensus. For example, that many medical journal papers are on case reports or on trials of "pilot" size don't magically make case reports or "the five people who tried our diet for four weeks lost some weight" a strong argument. -- Colin°^Talk 16:58, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Google determined years ago that they needed four people to interview a candidate. Any more than that didn't change the decision. Are Google's interviews underpowered?

AIUI statistical power isn't primarily about the raw number. Five is statistically powerful in some situations and useless in others. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:56, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah but I'm sure Google's interview teams are hand picked to bring their expertise into the equation, so number of participants becomes pretty irrelevant. And interviewing is a lengthy expensive process where adding people quickly brings up costs. We on the other hand are free and ignorant. The views of five people who've never read anything about the article topic before? The point is, nobody at Google would claim they appoint staff based on the consensus of Google employees, whereas we kid ourselves decisions are made by consensus. Very likely each one of the four interviewers can voice a concern that kills the candidate dead, so it isn't even what we'd consider a consensus of four. If HR reject the candidate, it doesn't matter how good they were at the manhole cover question. -- Colin°^Talk 18:13, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I see you put the rule-of-four on your user page. I think "Do we really think that we normally need more editors to answer a question about an article than a business needs to decide whether to hire a job seeker" is comparing apples with oranges. The interview process is all about rejection by experts. Anyone in the process says no, the candidate is dropped. Everyone in the process is an expert in their area. Whereas doing a RFC has much more in common with "We went down to the shopping mall and asked people their opinion". Nobody would be impressed if you said you had the opinions of four people, one of whom held his so strongly, we had to get security to take him away and leave us alone. Or consider any other crowsourced opinion site like restuarant/activity or shopping or movie/book reviews. Nobody would be happy with just the opinions of four random people on the internet about whether the latest Marvel movie was a dud. Whereas you might just read one review by The Guardian film critic and her authority and experience would convince you. -- Colin°^Talk 18:48, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't know how it works elsewhere, but the typical corporate interview in the US involves a superficial screening chat with a professional ("This job requires you to work every fourth weekend. Are you willing and able to do that?"), followed by interviews with the direct manager and a few of your future teammates. A bigger interview process would have you meet with your future manager's own boss and a potential co-worker from a related team or department. None of the decisions are made by specially trained people, although the managers may have received a couple of hours' training in legal requirements or the corporate process. In fact, historically, so little training has been provided in most companies that many of my co-workers over the years, across multiple organizations, have gotten more interview training from me than from all of their previous employers put together.

Interviewers are almost never experts in interviewing and are often not experts in anything. Most of them have a stake in the outcome (because nobody wants a jerk for a teammate), which is a difference from randomly selected editors. On the other hand, as shocking as it sounds, it is literally true that you and I are world-leading experts in certain Wikipedia policies and guidelines. There are 8,000,000,000 people in the world, and you would not be able to find 80 other people in the world who know MEDMOS and MEDRS as well as we do – maybe not even eight. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:28, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

That's not the kind of expert I was meaning. And there's lots of different kinds of interviewing some of which require the candidate to have few particular skills (supermarket till operator, car park attendant). Probably the hardest is interviewing someone for a job they don't have experience of, but could well pick up. The easiest may be jobs that are in such short supply of highly skilled labour. Want a job as a GP? Relevant qualifications (admittedly, big hurdle)? Check. Only one head? Check. Happy to work in the room with no window? Check. Job's yours. Your Google example is going to need a fair number of bright young things who know where to stick the curly braces and are happy to work long in to the evening if you supply pizza, which isn't the hardest test in the world. To be honest, Google's interview practice is more notable for the stupid things they used to do, than for what actually is a great interview practice. I agree few people get good "interview training".

Generally speaking, surely most job hires are done on the basis of one interview. There is a stake in the outcome but also it is usually relatively easy to back out of a bad decision, at least in the first few weeks. I think really you need a different example, and it might be that there really is nothing like Wikipedia. P&G expertise only take us so far. There wouldn't be a need to discuss and weigh consensus if one person citing P&G #43 was entirely conclusive and convincing. It isn't as simple as "Oh, I have a medical article decision, I'll go ask WAID and everyone will be entirely happy with their decision". -- Colin°^Talk 20:25, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I'll go ask WAID and everyone will be entirely happy with their decision – Let's hope that they don't. I prefer having a couple of people look at any significant question, rather than just me.

OTOH, when the question is about what MEDRS means, or what MEDMOS intends, I find that very few editors persist in believing that I don't know what I'm talking about. They may heartily and vociferously disagree with the guideline (and they're welcome to; without visible disagreement, those guidelines will never improve), but they don't generally conclude that I'm feeding them bad advice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:41, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I came across If chatbots can ace job interviews for us, maybe it’s time to scrap this ordeal by Martha Gill (I was scrolling through their other articles). Ignore the title. Made me think though that the argument that says "We only need 'n' people to judge a process" is predicated on the idea that that judgement is sound, which for interviews is a deeply suspect position to take. Google themselves admit that many of their hires failed to get in on previous applications to Google simply due to "timing". Which is probably partly true but also a euphemism for "your previous interviewers also had entirely random opinions, and you got lucky this time".

I recall working on a WLM one year and after the community produced a longlist, the WPUK engaged four judges to make the final decision. Each of them were to supply their own shortlist of 10 best photos. There was essentially no commonality among the 10 photos. I forget the exact number but we ended up with something like 36 photos and the top three could not have been guessed from what commonality there was.

In England and Wales, a magistrates court can be heard by a single judge or by two or three magistrates. The crown court would involve a jury to assess guilt (12 people) but the judge decides the sentence.

The Classic FM Hall of Fame is an annual vote to decide the top 300 classical music pieces. Last year had 96,000 voters. The top three, you can see from the article, don't change much and even the top ten are fairly consistent. Which one might expect given that most of the pieces are very old, and just the odd couple of movie soundtracks get in at times. But possibly also there's pressure to vote similarly to everyone else (did last year) or that the popular tracks get played to death on Classic FM so end up being even more well known.

Then there's Brexit which was decided by 33 million votes. And polls since then consistently show regret over that decision.

So my conclusion is there is no best number for how many people one needs to make a decision. One can make the case for having a single wise judge and one can make the case for the wisdom of the crowd. Neither process is immune from making stupid choices and all the psychology of people's opinion on their choices show a hugely inflated sense of self wisdom. Similarly I don't think one can make a general statement how how many is enough for Wiki decisions. Our editing and community model tends towards the wisdom of the crowds rather than choosing a limited number of wise heads to make decisions for us (the exception would be something like arbcom). We don't even officially merit admins as wiser than any other editor to make content decisions. Probably a better test would be to examine individual discussions and decide if there was consensus or not, which is what we're supposed to be doing, rather than come up with a figure like 4 is enough or 12 is enough. If we don't have consensus, it doesn't really matter if it was 4 or 12. We have no process on Wikipedia of giving a wise head a golden vote. -- Colin°^Talk 10:32, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that 'timing' is a euphemism for random interviewer opinions. A few years back, my team interviewed four people (hundreds of applications, dozens of screening phone calls, four full interviews) and found three excellent candidates. We were, in that instance, able to scrounge up the money to hire all three (two for my team and one into a different job for a different team – all three are still at the WMF), but if we had been working with a typical budget environment, two of them wouldn't have been hired merely due to timing: they happened to apply at the same time as other excellent candidates, at a time when the money wasn't available. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:13, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

I did say it was "probably partly true". And I'm not saying the process doesn't have any value. Do you think your process was so rigorous that you could train another team to select from those same hundreds of applicants or even from the same dozens of phone-screen candidates and arrive at the same four interviewees? If you think about it, it is a choice situation quite unlike anything I can think of on Wikipedia that reaches RFC. Can you imagine an RFC with hundreds of choices? Decision making processes with a huge choice like job candidate selection or WLM photos are similar in that the best hope one can expect is that the final selections are good, are reasonable in their justification, and that the terrible ones are reliably excluded. But expecting 1st, 2nd, 3rd to be what anyone else would pick as 1st, 2nd, 3rd is unrealistic. RFCs generally involve only a few choices and only one outcome.

I think with interviews you are comparing apples and oranges, and my bigger point is the the world is full of decision making situations where humanity has decided all sorts of numbers for how many people are required. The closest we come to a rule is probably that the more authoritative a person is or group of people are, the fewer we think are needed to make that choice. -- Colin°^Talk 17:37, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

In that particular instance, I think we could replicate the results, or at least have substantial overlap. I agree that different numbers are useful for different purposes. I think the main difference between the usual "we need a large number to be sure that we have a statistically representative sample" and the Google example is that the goal isn't to be statistically representative. Our goal is to make the right decision as efficiently as possible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Btw, you may be interested in this phenomenon:

• Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Персеид (метеор).jpg Support, Support, Support, Oppose, Oppose, Oppose.
• Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:SAARC Fountain 01.jpg Support, Support, Support, Support, Oppose, Oppose, Oppose, Oppose.
• Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Pedestrian overpass in Colatina.jpg Support, Support, Support, Support, Oppose, Weak Support, Oppose, Oppose, Oppose, (Withdrawn). --

It is quite common. Obviously it afflicts voting where the existing votes and the authority of those voters can influence subsequent votes. With an FPC nomination, there's an assumption the picture must be great, otherwise someone wouldn't have nominated it. So a default is to agree and like it too. But then someone comes along and points out some flaw. And everyone else gains the courage to notice this flaw too or voice their own criticisms. The Commons Photo Challenge was designed to prevent such, by keeping the votes hidden. POTY also hides existing votes, though you can find them. We are social animals, hugely influenced by our peers and our superiors. It isn't just numbers. -- Colin°^Talk 20:44, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I would like some day to know more more about the influence of the first vote. One sees "Support, Support, Support, Oppose, Support, Support, Support, Support" fairly often, and sometimes the disagreeing response comes from an influential community member. There's a marketing approach (in the real world) that says when you make an announcement, you should quietly schedule a few favorable responses, so that people will get the idea that "everybody" agrees. This can be obviously scripted (I announce my departure; my boss immediately posts a sweet note after it) or deceptively arranged to appear spontaneous (I tell my favorite beta testers that we plan to announce the new shiny toy on social media at exactly 9:00 a.m. next Tuesday morning, and ask them if they would post "their honest comments" for the benefit of others in "our community" – but I've pre-selected them on the basis of knowing that they love the new shiny toy). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:49, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Speaking about pictures still, that rogue Oppose vote, even if made by "an influential community member" is sometimes not influential on this nomination because everyone can see that either they are being their usual contrarian self, or they have some issue with the nominator or whatever. Mostly when I've seen a random oppose that isn't repeated, it is because the vote is especially picky and doesn't represent community views on what standard is required. Whereas the SSSOOO pattern usually results in a reaction of "so, were all the initial voters blind or did they not even look at it in any detail?". And there are a handful of "reviewers" who I think just follow the Flickr/social-medial model of liking things your friends said or did, and who never ever oppose. So they like pretty much whatever comes along, unless it got nominated while they were asleep and a fatal oppose arrived first. I don't know if there are similar patterns for Wikipedia discussions. -- Colin°^Talk 09:51, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Coming back to the original RM. We claim we do everything by consensus on Wikipedia? Do we? And yet there we had a 2:3 or 3:3 vote. There was discussion but it certainly didn't move anyone towards a consensus opinion. Most respondents left their vote and didn't engage further. I get that counting strength-of-feeling or even just vote counting might indicate a slight leaning that would be enough for someone to call it one way and that to be accepted. But I just think we shouldn't be using that word "consensus" in that case. By any dictionary or Wikipedia:What is consensus? definition, we didn't achieve a consensus. So is there another word we should use? -- Colin°^Talk 09:51, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kim Bruning used to talk about "the wiki way", and I think it's an important way of understanding consensus. The goal is to figure out what will stick. This is sometimes different from what editors will publicly endorse. I think in this case we have arrived at an answer that nobody will edit war to remove. That's consensus, I think. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:01, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't disagree it is a decision making process and one that hopefully leads to a decision that sticks. I just think calling that decision "consensus" is ridiculous. Like if a group of friends wanted to go out for a meal. Bob wanted Chinese. Alice wanted Italian. Carol wanted Indian. They went with Chinese because Bob always makes such a fuss when he doesn't get his way. If the group of friends can live with that then fine, but they didn't have a consensus about where to eat: they had a consensus that letting Bob gets his way was solution to their meal conflict. So, we might have consensus that five people, entirely split by what they wanted, with nobody persuading anyone to change position, can be resolved by picking whichever side made the most fuss. That's just consensus about the process, not the decision. -- Colin°^Talk 08:45, 26 February 2024 (UTC) -- Colin°^Talk 08:45, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Is it? If they agreed to get Chinese, isn't that agreement? Consent for ignoble reasons is still consent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

It's a different agreement. Consider your recent RFA about "what to do when there's no consensus". We have two (sometimes) competing policies to either reject the insertion of proposed material or to restore to the status quo before dispute. We have consensus on Wikipedia that those solutions may be used. But nobody can say "There was consensus to restore the status quo before dispute" That would be a dishonest description of what the consensus was. We say, "there was no consensus about the merit of the change, so we restored to the status quo before dispute". Just like the above group had a rule that "If there's no consensus, go with what Bob wanted, otherwise he'll make the evening unpleasant". What happened in the EDS debate wasn't a consensus about whether the term should be plural. It was invoking our rules about what to do when there isn't consensus. One of which is we pretend that those who argued most passionately must have had the consensus, which is a lie we tell ourselves, or simply those who had one more vote than the other group, even for something like 3:2, must have had the consensus, which is another lie we tell ourselves. Fine we can kid ourselves that our process is consensus-based, but let's not confuse a consensus about what to do when there isn't a consensus with actual consensus. It is very important to record that "we had no consensus". -- 10:51, 27 February 2024 (UTC) Colin°^Talk 10:51, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Boot (medicine)#Merger discussion is turning into a good example of where having more than a handful of editors would help. It has generated options rather than resolving them. -- Colin°^Talk 13:11, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm really happy about that discussion. We seem to be able to understand why the other editor's view is correct (you're right: if British English uses 'walking boots' to describe hiking boots, then we shouldn't use that name for a medical device; that title should probably be used a dab page), and we seem to be finding alternatives. I think Orthopedic boot is a winning suggestion, and it wouldn't have been mentioned if we had tried voting on the original ideas. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Bearing in mind the confusion over your wishes in the discussion that started this topic, maybe you should clarify your position in the boot discussion. You've still got a clear !vote for merge to walking boot which would need struck if you now agree that wouldn't be appropriate. And maybe also mention your idea that walking boot become a dab page, because my suggestion currently is that it simply redirect to hiking boot. I wouldn't oppose it being a dab if "walking boot" is a common US term for it, just that my British English hasn't heard it called that. -- Colin°^Talk 12:05, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

RfCs as "heavyweight"

Another editor mentioned RfCs as a heavyweight process and mentioned you by name. That characterization of the process surprised me a little bit; is that something you've written about somewhere that I can review? VQuakr (talk) 22:13, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

@VQuakr, I've not written an essays on the subject (though I did write the FAQ at the top of WT:RFC). We've discussed this tension at WT:RFC many times. We need the process to be used enough, but not too much; to be taken seriously, but not too seriously; etc. I'd start by searching the archives for the word 'binding' if you want to find a few of the discussions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:32, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Makes sense. The value dilutes if it is overused, but I'd imagine we generally want people seeking solutions to impasses. To your knowledge has there been any concerted effort to track RfC metrics such as number of respondents, % that receive formal closure, proportion that are open question/multiple choice/yes no decisions? VQuakr (talk) 01:49, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

No, and I'd love to have any of these numbers, if anyone feels like assembling them. I think the hardest part will be making a list of all of the (archived) RFCs. The bot lists the discussion with a unique id number, and then removes that later, so even if it's still on the original talk page, the links are all broken.

Because of the Yapperbot outage from mid-December 2023 through mid-February 2024, the data from those two months will be particularly interesting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:14, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't want to streisand the issue

so I'm saying this here instead of there: can't out somebody who edits under their real name. Levivich (talk) 01:25, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Dubious–discuss? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:35, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

That wasn't outing that was off-wiki harassment (looking up the other editor's phone number and calling them). Levivich (talk) 01:40, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Warning editors that you're watching their (alleged) off-wiki actions is the kind of creepy behavior that policy discourages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:11, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Policy also discourages (alleged) COI editing... Any (alleged) lying about said COI editing... And (alleged) gaslighting your fellow editors... Nothing wrong with watching off-wiki actions if they are related to on-wiki disruption. I believe policy also discourages using OUTING as a cudgel to cover up legitimate concerns, especially when no actual outing has occurred. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:15, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

It is my impression that Nothing wrong with watching off-wiki actions if they are related to on-wiki disruption has some limits, particularly when the person you're watching has been a productive member of the community for several years instead of a throwaway account created by a spammer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:22, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, its a shame they seem to be willing to throw that all away. I didn't make them edit topics they had a conflict of interest with. I didn't make them lie about it. I didn't make them cover up the lie. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:27, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Sure albeit a different section of the policy, but I didn't read the comment as warning editors that they're watching their off-wiki actions. Levivich (talk) 02:21, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure how else one would be able to report on-wiki that someone changed an off-wiki page during the last few minutes, if you hadn't checked the off-wiki page at least twice in the last few minutes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:23, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Presumably that person would have double checked before asking the COI question... And then again after being told something which they knew wasn't true. I'm not watching their off-wiki actions in a larger sense, I've never looked at anything beyond the linked-in a few times. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:31, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back, I had a look at the discussion. I agree with WAID's concerns. For me, the creepy aspect comes from

• Mentioning an off-wiki page dedicated to that person and their identity/life (vs some random website they happen to edit)
• Noting that you were so closely monitoring that page such that you could spot edits made minutes ago, which could be viewed as a little obsessed.
• The person in question is female.
• You got personal in a discussion everyone else was keeping general.
• The forum was "Village pump (miscellaneous)", which suggests a casualness towards engaging in this sort of thing.

I don't think that forum was the correct place to directly challenge an individual about their real life, which is something that needs done sensitively rather than to score points in a debate. I wonder if it could be blanked. Even if you think it is within the rules, that sort of thing encourages others to think it is perfectly ok to go creep around the real life details of other editors. -- Colin°^Talk 10:42, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

I see the remark has been redacted by an admin. Perhaps best if this section is now blanked but I'll leave that to WAID or Levivic to decide. -- Colin°^Talk 15:30, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Found this gem of an appeal

Though you might get a kick out of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:212.219.149.203#this_is_an_appeal_you_lovely_boys_:)_and_girls!_!!!!!!!!!!!! vghfr (✉ Talk) (✏ Contribs) 13:54, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Um, that's... wow. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:54, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

It's even funnier considering that the old title of that section used to be "this is an appeal you dipshots!!!!!!!!!!!!" vghfr (✉ Talk) (✏ Contribs) 16:56, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I really want to know what the IP thought he'd accomplish. Manchester Airport isn't semi'd, so vandalizing that would be feasible. I wonder if we'll find the IP address in the AbuseFilter logs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:18, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

By the way, do you have any idea what's going on over at ANI with the topic ban stuff right now? comments keep disappearing and reappearing. vghfr (✉ Talk) (✏ Contribs) 17:23, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Probably difficulties over edit conflicts. @Pigsonthewing, would you check this diff? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:07, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Already discussed on my talk page; seems to be an issue affecting multiple editors. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:36, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

High-traffic pages have always had this problem. Editors who use the Reply tool a lot almost never get an edit conflict, so the possibility may be less obvious to them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I feel like on those types of pages it should commit both edits vghfr (✉ Talk) (✏ Contribs) 20:26, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Plain old wikitext can't. It can't figure out the difference between "I'm making a legitimate edit to existing content" and "I accidentally overwrote someone else's comments". Imagine, e.g., if someone blanked a bit of vandalism, and also added a comment that says "I'm removing some vandalism". The wikitext system can't tell the difference between that an accidental blanking. The way that we handle discussion is deeply strange, and this is one of the consequences. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

That's bizzare. vghfr (✉ Talk) (✏ Contribs) 01:25, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Help

This person removed my CSD notice from both their user page and their talk page, under the reason "spam." What am I supposed to do now? vghfr (✉ Talk) (✏ Contribs) 20:49, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

nevermind someone fixed it while I was typing this vghfr (✉ Talk) (✏ Contribs) 20:51, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Bates method

I noticed your edit here. That may indeed be an unreliable medical source. But what about the sources which are cited to state unequivically in the first sentence that the Bates method is ineffective? Those sources are Quackwatch and a book from nearly 70 years ago. Forget any previous discussion where someone argued that the Bates method might sometimes be effective because of X, Y, or Z, but there wasn't a valid source which explicitly supported that idea. The question is, what is the actual affirmative basis for summarily and unequivically stating that the Bates method is ineffective?

If "ineffective" is ever removed from the first sentence, I think "potentially dangerous" can go also. While that part is true, it is rather redundant, since potential risks are already discussed in the lead section. 196.223.13.86 (talk) 22:13, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

The item I tagged has nothing to do with the Bates method itself. I'm curious about whether physically pressing on your eyeballs actually increases the risk of glaucoma. I have not yet found any satisfactory sources about it.

I think the article will always indicate that it's a bad idea to risk Photokeratitis. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Possible long-term risks of pressing on the eyeball are probably something that there's no way to know with any certainty, because how would you even test that?

As for risks of looking at the sun, no one suggested that that be removed from the article or even the intro. The point was that, if "ineffective" is ever removed (perhaps due to a lack of a good source unequivocally stating that), that would make the first sentence a bit awkward unless "potentially dangerous" was removed also, which it could be, since the intro already mentions risks. 172.58.147.41 (talk) 16:22, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that would make the first sentence awkward ("____ is a potentially dangerous method of _____" is a natural enough sentence). Additionally, I don't think the word "ineffective" will be removed from the first sentence, due to the lack of a good source unequivocally stating that it is actually effective. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:12, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you ...

story · music · places

... for your support, stories + vacation pics in return -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:36, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Bach music for Easter! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:27, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Knowledge and information

@Bon courage and @Dustfreeworld, the first thing I'd like to say is that I like both of you, so I hope you'll find your way to liking each other, too.

Let's talk here about that sub-thread on knowledge and information. I don't think we have any good essays on WP:Knowledge, but the distinction can be important to some editors. Generally, I've seen editors respond to the idea of information as including facts (including facts about opinions) that may be too trivial or detailed for (their conception of) Wikipedia. Knowledge, on the other hand, is usually the thing these editors want; it is bigger and grander. However, we also specify in various places that we are looking for the sum of all human knowledge, and for accepted knowledge, which suggests that there are kinds of knowledge that are too detailed or trivial for Wikipedia, or that are too un-accepted (either because they're wrong or because they're right but the relevant experts are still evaluating the claims).

What (if anything) do you think is important about this distinction? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:24, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Found another ocean to boil WAID?

WP:Knowledge might be good to have. I think it's unusual for people to know the distinction between information and knowledge; I know I didn't until I found myself knocking around with ontologists. Without answering any more just yet I'd say the kind of knowledge Wikipedia is looking for is bound up with what's distinctively found in WP:SECONDARY sources, and the limits of the knowledge Wikipedia wants are bound up with WP:FRINGE and WP:ECREE. Bon courage (talk) 17:40, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

We seem to be doing well enough with boiling oceans already. I thought I'd just take this little thimble and patiently empty one or two of them on to the beach. Maybe if I stick with it long enough, I'll find a pretty piece of sea glass under all this water. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your invitation to this discussion WAID. Tired for now. May come back later. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 18:26, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

“I hope you'll find your way to liking each other.” I’ve tried my best already .. but seems in vain :-( Suggestions welcome ... --Dustfreeworld (talk) 10:53, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry that the two of you haven't yet discovered each other's value.

At RSN last week, I posted an evaluation of a disputed source like this:

• Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38085369/
• Type per WP:MEDPRI: It's a secondary source (specifically, a systematic review).
• WP:MEDSCI: Archives of Dermatological Research is a peer-reviewed medical journal published by Springer that ranks in the top 10% according to Scopus. There is No magic number for impact factors, but at 3.0, theirs is certainly respectable. It is also a relevant journal (dermatology) for the subject ("Evaluation of curcumin for dermatologic conditions").
• WP:MEDASSESS: It's a systematic review, and MEDASSESS says "editors should rely on high-level evidence, such as systematic reviews".
• WP:MEDDATE: It was published a couple of months ago, well within the ideal of 5 years.
• WP:MEDINVITRO: It does not rely on pre-clinical/non-human research.
• WP:MEDINDY: No reason to believe the study authors are hoping to become millionaires or otherwise have a conflict of interest.
• WP:MEDBIAS: No reason to be concerned about a systematic review being biased.

Overall conclusion: This first source meets the MEDRS ideal.

I wonder whether that format (or something like it) would be handy for talking about sources.

This PubMed search shows a couple hundred potentially useful sources for Brain health and pollution. There are probably several good books on the subject as well. @Blueboar has been saying for years that the fastest way through some sourcing disputes is to WP:Let the Wookiee win. If he wants to see a MEDRS-ideal source, then add one. Most experienced editors will give up at that point, and if they don't, then you might discover their real objections. Sourcing complaints are often a proxy for a different problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I think that is a good template for evaluating sources. And pollution and brain health (not 'neuroplasticity') is a good article topic. Bon courage (talk) 18:24, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I've been wondering whether it'd be useful to provide it, maybe not as a template, but as a quick copy/paste option.

BTW, please look at WT:MEDRS, where we are wondering whether MEDBIAS needs to exist (i.e., separately from the usual rules at NPOV, COI, etc.). It's a relic of our 2016ish attempts to create a MEDDUE. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:50, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

“If he wants to see a MEDRS-ideal source, then add one.“

What if “he wants to see 12 MEDRS-ideal sources at one time?” And the content removed has stood for years not challenged? Further, with outright removal (no tagging), late comers will never be able to see / help improve those content.

Aside, if there’s a “proxy for a different problem”, shouldn’t they be encouraged to elaborate in ES or bring it to talk directly first? (Instead of “lies to children”, etc.) --Dustfreeworld (talk) 21:45, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Or a couple of MEDRS-ideal sources, repeated 12 times in an article. I'm not saying this is brilliant collaboration; I'm saying that it'd be faster to find and add the sources than to argue about whether the sources need to be found.

Yes, it would be ideal if editors fully understood and acknowledged all of their concerns up front. However, sometimes that's not practical, either.

I have no love for old content. Medical content that stood for years is often out of date. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:20, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Disagree. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 18:15, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Tell me more. Which part(s) do you disagree about? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:18, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Done. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 19:43, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

A cake for you!

	This is a cake for you, WAID. I hope you like it. :-) --Dustfreeworld (talk) 11:45, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! It's quite the appropriate theme – needles, buttons, and thread to go with the thimble I have above. (I wonder what kind of cake is underneath the fondant?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

• [17]

--Dustfreeworld (talk) 19:46, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

RfCs

I know you're a connoisseur of repeated/quickfire/overlapping RfCs. You might want to observe what's happening at Talk:Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is you want more evidence for your folder ...‎ Bon courage (talk) 06:50, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

That's the kind of page that makes me think about deleting all BLPs, even though I consider the article to be a public service.

The first RFC is just over a week old. This is the earliest point at which I'd consider someone gently asking the OP if they'd like to voluntarily end the RFC (=remove the tag). If the answer has been arrived at and accepted, then there's no point in continuing to list it on the central pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

O yeah, I wouldn't recommend editing the article. At all! Bon courage (talk) 16:31, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Another thought about the "rise of the RfC" – is it connected at all to the advent of ECP? In this article anyway it seems like a way to recruit/allow input from editors without that permission, to try to influence content ... Bon courage (talk) 08:32, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

If WP:ARBECR applied (it's a contentious topic, but I don't think that it's also ARBECR; however, I could easily be wrong), then non-ECP editors wouldn't be allowed to participate in the discussions, either.

We ran a lot of voting-oriented RFCs in the early days of the pandemic, and I think that my have given some (then-) newer editors a different idea of what RFCs are for, and how much you should invest in ordinary discussions before starting one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I must say I am completely confused about what the extended-confirmed permission means wrt participation in ECP topics. I thought the 'no standing to contribute in any way' proviso was just for Israel/Palestine. I don't suppose it is spelled out anywhere. Yeah I remember those COVID RfCs; bad times! Bon courage (talk) 16:52, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

The rules are spelled out at ARBECR, and it applies to several geopolitical disputes (e.g., WP:GS/KURD and WP:GS/AA), but I don't think we have an organized list of them. You might be interested in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Enforcing ECR for article creators, which is apparently an attempt to say, out of one side of our mouth, that admins should delete all new articles created by non-ECP editors in restricted areas because "banned means banned" and it's bad for people to break the rules, and also, with the other side of our mouth, to tell admins not to delete these same articles when they seem to have been created in good faith, because deleting good content created in good faith obviously breaks another rule.

Not everyone finds it easy to balance conflicting values. There's probably a name for that, and, if so, there should be a Wikipedia article about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

April music

story · music · places

I like to see Appalachian Spring on the Main page today (not by me, just interested and reviewed), and I also made it my story. How do you like the compromise in the composer's infobox? - How do you like the statue (look up places)? - I was undecided so show three versions ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:51, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

The statue is of Hildegard of Bingen, and as it happens, her Physica is on the Main page today, and Marian Anderson as my top story (by NBC, 1939), and below (on my talk) three people with raised arms, - and the place is the cherry blossom in Frauenstein. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:46, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

plum tree blossom for Kalevi Kiviniemi in the snow - see my talk --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:18, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you

		The Good Heart Barnstar
		For your unaffected goodwill, calming demeanor, and knack for connecting with the human behind every account and edit. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 16:37, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:49, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

A cupcake for you!

I hope you like it :-) --Dustfreeworld (talk) 02:11, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. Virtual sugar is my favorite kind. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

A Dobos torte for you!

User:Villaida (talk) has given you a Dobos torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it. To give a Dobos torte and spread the WikiLove, just place {{subst:Dobos Torte}} on someone else's talkpage, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

--Villaida (talk) 15:34, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. I have made New Orleans-style Doberge cake before, but never the original inspiration. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:17, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Reminder to vote now to select members of the first U4C

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to other languages.

Dear Wikimedian,

You are receiving this message because you previously participated in the UCoC process.

This is a reminder that the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) ends on May 9, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 23:10, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:AN/I

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. wound theology◈ 20:20, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you  !

		The Invisible Barnstar
		Thanks for always making significant and helpful contributions to the project, but having kept to the background without seeking recognition or reward for your work. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 06:48, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Question re Global Account Information

I don't know if you are the right person to as this question to, but I also don't know who is. I apologise in advance if it isn't you I should be asking and hope you can tell me where is the right place to do so if not.

I was reading WhatamIdoing/I am going to die, which was very encouraging for someone feeling super jaded about wikipedia. It led me to global account information where I looked myself up and it says I started editing in 2014. But if I go to my contributions page it shows I sarted in 2005, which is in fact the case. Any idea why this is so? Morgan Leigh | Talk 05:45, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

It's a consequence of the Wikipedia:Unified login system. When we created our accounts, you had to create accounts separately at every wiki. Eventually that changed, but for us old hands, the date in the centralized system is the date that centralization started for us, rather than the date our first account was created. Special:CentralAuth/WhatamIdoing says my date was 2011; that's a centralization date. The local log says 2006, which is when I created my account here.

BTW, there are a few people whose accounts are so old that the account creation isn't visible in the local log. These are usually from 2001 (when Wikipedia was running a different type of software altogether). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:25, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for that information. Morgan Leigh | Talk 05:31, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

You're welcome. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:50, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Mail

I have disabled mail, and I do not want to get mails. If you do this again, I will seriously think about either leaving Wikipedia or raising a stink about you. --Hob Gadling (talk) 19:35, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

It sounds like you need to check your settings. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:40, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

May music

story · music · places

Today's story mentions a concert I loved to hear (DYK) and a piece I loved to sing in choir, 150 years old (OTD). - Thank you for your voice of reason in the MoS discussion! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:06, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

29 May 1913: The Rite of Spring - today's story, actually something I saw at that place in a revival. - Do you remember the infobox discussion 100 years after the premiere, often mentioned in the arbcase? - Today a user who returned after several years said that nothing changed. Would you agree? I wouldn't ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:44, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

DYK RFC

Given your helpful guidance earlier, I thought I would get your thought on Wikipedia talk:Did you know#RFC on DYK and BLP policy. The RFC has not progressed as productively as I would have liked under Question 2, and seems like the RFC has only been successful at identifying an area of controversy with two camps viewing things very differently. I'm really not sure how to proceed here. Moving on to questions 3 and 4 seems tenuous given the lack of meaningful engagement with question 2. I could move onto proposals... but I am not sure that's wise either. I'm not really sure what to do from this point. Any thought would be appreciated. Thanks.4meter4 (talk) 20:31, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Sometimes, the best realistic outcome is identifying the two opposing camps.

What I suggest for right now is waiting. The RFC has only been open a week. People are actively replying. I suggest that you leave it alone for a few days. Try letting other people talk, while staying silent yourself. You may find that the same points get made, without you having to make any of them.

When you come back to the discussion later, try to be encouraging and curious. @Toughpigs often said we should try to "Imagine a world in which the other person is not wrong". You don't have to pretend they're right, but try to understand their view as not 100% wrong. Perhaps they had a particular situation in mind? Perhaps they were thinking of a recent trend and not the longer view that you were thinking of? Perhaps they have a different idea about what "negative" means? There are all sorts of ways in which the other person could be providing useful information to you, if you can understand what they're thinking of. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:52, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

My reply to your comment

I decided to reply to you here, because I really do not want to continue discussing over there, but yet I felt you deserved that I reply to your comment. Imagine that the encyclopedia is read by someone that knows nothing about the election and doesn't trust the Wikipedia editors—after all, we are nobody. Wikipedia says "Wacko Smith says Trump won. (We say) Trump lost" - the part "We say" is not explicit, but that is what is understood by the person. We use and cite reliable sources, but what the person knows about the sources might be limited. Providing more information, more context, etc. makes the person less dependent on us and more able to make his own judgment. The principle says "not taking sides", but it is not to be taken in the sense that we do not affirm it, because that is irrelevant (or, better, it should be considered irrelevant). What counts is the information we provide. Do not engage (as if it was dependent on you), but describe (making it dependent on the readers). Dominic Mayers (talk) 04:25, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Have you seen Wikipedia:Let the reader decide? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:33, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

No, but I went to read it. There is something I did not like in that essay, but could not easily put my finger on it. So, I apologize for the changes I made to this post. Finally, I think it is the whole idea of letting the readers decide that I do not like. In particular, it can be interpreted to mean do not affirm a statement as a fact, because it's the reader that must decide. I prefer not to see this as a main goal. Instead, we must simply understand that it is a fact that providing information allows the readers to make a judgment and, if we are realistic about how some readers trust little Wikipedia, we accept that it's the way it will often happen. It's more like saying: let us face it, we have to provide info so that the readers can actually know something. If we just say "Trump lost" and give a source that the readers do not even know, that is not so useful. Why should the readers trust Wikipedia? OK, I admit that there is some trust in Wikipedia, but it is good to write in a way that does not rely too much on that trust. Anyway, that's my way to explain do not engage but describe. Here describe means provide information. Dominic Mayers (talk) 06:10, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I wondered whether you were familiar with that page because I think that other editors are, and I feel like they are reacting to your comments as if you have gone much further in the direction of that page than you really have.

The problem with "Wacko Smith says Trump won. (We say) Trump lost" is that it's not always obvious that "Wacko Smith" is a minority viewpoint, especially if you're not in the relevant culture. Providing that information doesn't help the reader make a judgement. Providing that information often confuses readers and makes them believe that this fact is a matter of personal opinion. Consider "Surgery cures many cancers, but <name you don't recognize> prefers dietary interventions." These are not of equal value, and you have no idea whether that name is reputable or a quack.

For issues of opinion or viewpoint, we often want something like "Deontologists say X, but consequentialists say Y, and utilitarianists say Z". What we often get is "Kant said X, Machiavelli said Y, and Mill said Z".

For issues of fact, we often want just "Trump lost". Only in certain contexts would we want to expand on that, to add that some people didn't believe that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:39, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

When I say that little info is the problem, this includes it's not always obvious that "Wacko Smith" is a minority ... and every thing you wrote in the same paragraph. I might disagree with the next two paragraphs. Providing little info can be as much a problem in the case of opinions than in the case of facts. You seem to say that, in the case of facts, it is important to provide little info. You cannot really mean that, certainly not in the case of relevant encyclopedic information about the fact. You might mean that it is hard to see how an extra info of the kind "Wacko Smith says Trump won" does not favour fringe theories. This is why I feel these examples that present dilemmas such as including "Wacko Smith says Trump won" or not are not realistic. These are false dilemmas. we have to consider all the different ways to manage the fact that "Wacko Smith says Trump won". Perhaps most readers have already read Wacko Smith. Managing that in a proper context can be useful to remove a confusion. The same general principle applies here. Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:04, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

For the Trump example, the fact that some people don't believe Biden won the election is almost never relevant. It would be appropriate to mention in articles that are directly related, like Election denial movement in the United States, but not in most articles that happen to mention Biden being president. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

When it is understood that "not taking sides" requires "describing" instead of "engaging" and that "describing" means providing information, we can understand why people who worry about fringe theories are kind of concerned when we explain the neutral point of view. My mistake has been to enter into this problem and participate in it instead of explaining that all of this (not taking sides, describing instead of engaging, reliable sources, relevancy, etc.) converge toward the same goal. A unified understanding of "provide-info" and "reject-info" principles is needed and NPOV contains the "provide-info" principles whereas relevancy, NOR and V are "reject-info" principles. In that light, what I tried to explain, is that we cannot get this unified understanding without accepting that the solution often requires that we think out of the box, instead of focalizing on false dilemmas. That is NOT a way to refute the "reject-info" principles, but a way to place them in that unified understanding. Only the NPOV policy, not V or NOR, contains provide-info principles. For a proper balance, it should clearly explain them. Dominic Mayers (talk) 19:46, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:Editing policy also leans towards the "provide-info" side. I'm not sure that NPOV is all about "provide-info". Some parts of it are "reject-info", too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:13, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Sure, NPOV now contains reject-info. This is what happened in 2005 with due weight and in 2006 or later with reliable sources. I never said that NPOV is only about include-info, of course not. On the contrary, I am saying that it is the only policy (among the basic content policies) that has include-info principles but, since 2005, they only get removed and less explained. The only justification provided, to my knowledge, is that these inclusion principles can be used to include fringe theories. The reject-info principles are not the issue. The issue is that we do not have a balanced unified understanding of the two sides, but instead a removal of the include-info side. For example, there is no mention anymore that including the arguments is a good way to achieve the neutral point of view. In 2005, this was emphasized right at the start. It's not there anymore. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:56, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

If you want to argue original intent, then you might want to read nostalgia:Neutral point of view. It argues for including the facts that some people believe things, but not to say that they're correct.

If you want a more fundamental principle, I think that "include-info" is in tension with the idea that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It is not possible to include everything and still produce an encyclopedic (e.g., concise) summary of the subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:53, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Referring to history as nostalgia is not a good attitude. Understanding our history is very useful to understand where we are and how we can move forward. The second part of your comment ignores that providing info is useful to achieve neutrality or, worst, it claims that this cannot be the case because an encyclopedia should not provide all info of the well accepted common sense requirement that an encyclopedia should not provide all info. I do not think we need to pursue that discussion. Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my comments. Dominic Mayers (talk) 01:17, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

nostalgia.wikipedia.org is the name of the website that lets you see how things were in Wikipedia's early days. I didn't choose the name.

I don't think that an encyclopedia should provide "all info". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:59, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

I understood all of that. Have a good day ! Dominic Mayers (talk) 08:14, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Just to add that looking at your talk page I noticed the appreciation that your essay "I will die..." received. I think it is deserved. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:59, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. It seems to resonate with some editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:13, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Reiki

"Level 3" practitioners are certified to be able to project their abilities backwards through time, and will therefore ask payment for your state of health up to this point in your life (which would have been worse without their intervention), as well as a reasonable continued monthly payment, because you never know. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:25, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång, do you have good sources for that? That seems very much like the sort of thing Quackwatch would mention, and I don't see anything remotely like that in their main page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:02, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Sooo... did you fail to grasp that I was in The Onion-mode or am I failing to grasp that you are too? I was attempting sarcastic humor, there is no source. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:30, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I was inspired by ""Level 2" practitioners alternatively may offer their services at a distance with no skin contact." which made me think "Ah, reiki by texting." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:33, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I assumed you were serious. I'm not familiar with this modality, and a "new patient fee" is something I can easily imagine someone charging. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:42, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Text-only communication, what can you do. Also, this kind of communication failure is a grand tradition of it's own: The_Onion#Taken_seriously. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:53, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:26, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång:, LMFAO! I caught it immediately. It's good I wasn't drinking something at the time. Good one. The absurdity of this stuff is mindblowing. The criticisms are on point, and actually more gentle than reiki deserves. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:01, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

The idea of "intention" determining the success of the treatment is similar to homeopathy, where the intent supposedly targets the treatment. The "water" or whatever that has been diluted, has been in contact with myriad substances, includes the pee and poo of thousands of people over millennia, yet it is only the one substance deliberately intended for the treatment (a duck's liver?) that has an effect, not the poo and pee. Here's something I once wrote:

The Memory of Water: Homeopathic Musings

Does homeopathic water "remember" its origins? That's what is claimed! I've done a little thinking about the implications of this idea.

A lot of it has been through the gastrointestinal tracts of a lot of people. Thereafter a lot of toilets and sewage treatment plants, before finally ending up as pure, distilled water, ready to be brainwashed into forgetting its past. First then is it prepared to selectively remember only its contact with the active, healing substances it was brought into contact with for a short time in the apothecary's lab.

Is homeopathic water actually reincarnated piss? Can a regression therapist help it remember its past lives? What tales could it tell? Of course it probably will remember passing through a famous historical person and actually being in a royal toilet! Homeopathic water isn't just ordinary water. It comes with a royal pedigree.

Does the longer passage time for men than for women (men therefore succuss the water looonger than women ..... ;-) result in accounts from reincarnated piss of its origins from famous men, more frequently than from famous women? (I'm assuming that more succussing results in longer and better memory-retention.)

But what happens if the water has amnesia? If it has a defective memory function, how will it then be able to remember its contact with a healing substance? Again, it'll need to go into therapy. Maybe then the regression therapist can help it recall its birth and other traumatic experiences. Can water be psychotic or neurotic? Maybe psychotherapy is what's needed. Can water have split or multiple personalities? We're really getting in deep water here!

This all sounds quite hypothetical. If, if, if.... Like Roger Whittaker sings, "If's an illusion". Just like homeopathy. And illusions can be powerful things. Just like faith, they can move mountains - mountains of money!

It's been said that there's more between heaven and earth than meets the eye. Maybe. But most of it is free fantasy. And when free fantasy gets run through the alt. med. spinning wheel, it becomes an elaborate, sometimes enticingly beautiful fabric, which can be sold. It's no longer free. Now fantasy costs! And since nobody in their right mind would dream of paying for fantasy, their cognitive dissonance plays them a trick. They excuse themselves for doing something so dumb, with the rationalization: "It worked for me. That's proof enough".

Another singer, Enya, has recorded a great CD called "The Memory of Trees". Maybe she should record one called "The Memory of Water".... ;-)

We need to get Bill Cosby & Jerry Seinfeld to work up a series of homeopathic jokes!

Sorry folks, but sometimes I just have a hard time keeping a straight face when thinking about homeopathy.... ;-) It just proves that even totally nonsensical and illogical ideas can get swallowed by otherwise intelligent people. Intelligence is not always an effective vaccine against foolishness!

The acid test of the ability, or lack of it, to experience cognitive dissonance, is homeopathy. On the condition that the way it works is known (by its own definitions), anyone that can believe in homeopathy is, by definition, very seriously illogical. They are most likely immune to logical arguments regarding other forms of quackery. (But try discussing their financial affairs, and they can suddenly become very logical! Especially if they can turn a quick buck.)

The above are some of my own homeopathic "insights" from the previous millennium (I DO understand how homeopathy works! That's why I'm just a little sarcastic). -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:11, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Visual Editor issues

Perhaps this is your expertise. I'm wondering if it's something on my end or if it's Wiki side. Can you duplicate what I am experiencing? I can't access the references within pop up menu when I'm in visual edit. Just started experiencing this today. Wikipedia:Teahouse#Can_not_access_sources_from_pop-up_while_in_visual_editing_mode. Thank you Graywalls (talk) 21:36, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

WMF misleading the Guardian

I know you've left WMF, but is it pointless to try doing anything about a gross WMF mis-statement misleading the Guardian -Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Women_in_Red#Wikiesfera_and_other_Wikimedia_gender_gap_projects_on_Guardian ? Johnbod (talk) 12:54, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Comms is likely already on it. They monitor anything that mentions Wikipedia, and I'm sure that would come up, but in addition, I'm pretty sure that that department has a long-time eswiki editor who would notice and care about that particular point.

I have heard over the years that the number of corrections they request is larger than the number of corrections that get published. If the publishers decide that people will just glork the "of biographies only" context, then they (the publisher) won't bother. Also, I just clicked Special:Random button 10 times at eswiki, and came up with three BLP women (and only two men), so it's (just barely) possible that it's correct. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:49, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, a) it really isn't possible it's correct, b) the Guardian claim doesn't specify Spanish, and links to the WMF page as a ref, which doesn't either. Nor does the Humanwiki source. They can at least change the WMF page, but I don't share your faith that they will even spot the issue. Johnbod (talk) 16:25, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your note - I emailed WMF press direct, so we shall see (or not). Johnbod (talk) 14:04, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

June music

story · music · places

Today's story is about the TFA, by sadly missed Vami_IV. In my support in 2018, I hoped to do justice to Schloss Köthen next - which I finally began today. For more related thoughts and music, look on my talk for 1 June. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:12, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Franz Kafka died 100 years ago OTD, hence the story. I uploaded a few pics from the visit of Graham87. - I read your advice above, and tried to apply it to Gustav Mahler (talk), but it doesn't work. I tried to explain exactly what I see differently. Can you help, perhaps. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:52, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Today is "the day" for James Joyce, also for Bach's fourth chorale cantata (and why does it come before the third?) - the new pics have a mammal I had to look up. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:45, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

New pics of food and flowers come with the story of Noye's Fludde (premiered on 18 June), written by Brian Boulton. I nominated Éric Tappy because he died, and it needs support today! I nominated another women for GA in the Women in Green June run, - review welcome, and more noms planned. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:05, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

A review was started, and no other articles became ready for a nom. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:32, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

hi

WAID I was wondering if you wouldn't mind chiming in[18],thanks Ozzie--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:41, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Jeffrey Leiden Updates

Hi Whatamidoing. I hope you are well. I see that you have an interest in medical issues by your participation in Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Participants#Active_participants. Therefore, I am hoping you might like to take a look at what I believe is a straightforward edit request I posted at Talk:Jeffrey_Leiden#Updates. Jeffrey Leiden is the executive chairman of Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Another editor has already implemented the last bullet point of four in total, and has said he is not going to implement the rest, but he does "not oppose if other editors make them." If you think the remaining edits are reasonable, would you kindly implement them? Thanks so much, JohnDatVertex (talk) 14:26, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I really have very little interest in burnishing the articles about CEOs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:06, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, the ping worked, but

Can't really tell what this diff is -- I did some kind of formatting error and you are fixing it? If so, thanks 😁 jp×g🗯️ 01:35, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Scam publisher

Just some quick background on this revert. Ed-Tech Press / Scientific E-Resources is a scam publisher that has wholesale copied our articles with zero attribution. Luckily, they published mostly before the grand days of AI/LLM rewording, so the copied text is pretty clear. That particular page you're linking to was copied from our article at Germ theory of disease somewhere around 2018 (see here). Really sorry for the inconvenience, that's a really deceptive publisher. Sam Kuru (talk) 11:50, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, @Kuru! I always appreciate you keeping an eye out for that publisher. I wonder if we could set up a Special:AbuseFilter for that string, with a 'warn' setting? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:54, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

@Kuru, I've suggested a filter at Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested/Archive_21#Warn about a Wikipedia mirror. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:43, 7 July 2024 (UTC)