Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2013-07-31

Comments

The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2013-07-31. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Race and politics case closes (1,629 bytes · 💬)

User:Okeyes (also known as user:Ironholds)'s comments on WP:IRC were discussed by the Christian Science Monitor.

A few of Oliver Keyes's WP:IRC comments were discussed by a leading newspaper, which also quoted Sue Gardner, in a discussion of on-line misogyny:

• Murphy, Dan (1 August 2013). "In UK, rising chorus of outrage over online misogyny: Recent events in Britain draw more attention to endemic hostility towards women online". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 1 August 2013.

Keyes uses the accounts User:Ironholds and User:Okeyes (WMF). Kiefer.Wolfowitz 06:57, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

• In relation to Tea Party movement, I think you guys might have overlooked this proposal, which the committee is currently voting on. It would supersede the current proposed decision. AGK [•] 13:16, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

News and notes: Gearing up for Wikimania 2013 (3,104 bytes · 💬)

• I wonder if too, the article on the missing Gavin Hopley murder is actually a self fulfilling prophesy much as the article suggests the deletion was. After all, the fact that there is an article from a reputable source discussing the murder so long after could in fact show ongoing notability of the event. Miyagawa (talk) 17:30, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikimania advertising

The Wikimania page looks once more like something from Formula One. I'd rather Wikimania stayed faithful to what is usually claimed to be part of the essential spirit of Wikipedia: No advertising. No government funding. Some of these sponsorship deals (2012 page) are very much from a different world than Wikipedia. Example quote:

• Diamond level: $40,000
• Our three Diamond sponsors will receive the naming rights to the attendee party, opening night reception, or the Unconference. Diamond sponsors will also receive:
• Large banner and acknowledgement during sponsored event.
• 5 VIP tickets and full conference passes
• Full-page ad in the program
• Name & logo prominent on conference website and slideshow prior to the start of plenary sessions
• Promotional items in attendee bag
• Other considerations negotiable

Naming rights for attendee parties ("Come to the Ask.com party!") and the like are the sorts of sponsorship terms you'd expect for a PGA Golf Tournament, not from a volunteer-driven encyclopedia claiming to offer the public neutral articles on these selfsame sponsors. (For reference, $40,000 is less than 0.1% of the WMF's annual revenue.) Andreas JN466 17:56, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

I share some of Jayen466's concerns on sponsorship. --NaBUru38 (talk) 12:48, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

If you're going to have an expensive annual conference like Wikimania, the money needs to come from somewhere. A fair chunk of the funding has apparently come from sponsors this year, but sponsors don't usually hand out bags of money "for free". For what it's worth, I don't think that the amount of advertising sponsorship is excessive at all. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:22, 4 August 2013 (UTC).

The way I read the article, the WMF funds most of the conference anyway, and advertisers at most "top up" the funding. The Foundation took something like $50 million this year in revenue. It's well within the Foundation's means to pay for Wikimania outright, rather than turning it into a billboard. Andreas JN466 12:37, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Op-ed: The VisualEditor Beta and the path to change (8,661 bytes · 💬)

• I participated in the call to test VE before rolling it out to a wider group of editors. I do want to commend the developers for an outstanding degree of responsiveness to a wide range of concerns compiled in the utmost of haste. Bugs were corrected and suggestions implemented in a manner that exemplifies collaboration. I would not be satisfied intrinsically if I did not proffer these public kudos—well deserved. :) John Cline (talk) 04:59, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

• As alluded to in the op-ed, we've now changed the configuration of the beta in the following ways: 1) "Edit source" is the primary option for both page-level and section-level editing. The animation for section edit links has been removed. 2) The VisualEditor "Edit" tab has a ^beta indicator on the tab, as do the section edit links. 3) When clicking the "Edit^beta" link for the first time, users get a clear informational message informing them about the beta status of the software, suggesting review of changes, encouraging feedback, and advising on how to return to wikitext editing. 4) The "Edit source" tab is consistently labeled across namespaces to support muscle memory and reduce confusion between tabs. See Wikipedia:VisualEditor/August 2013 update for full background and rationale for these changes. Users who've disabled VisualEditor via the "Temporarily disable VisualEditor while it is in beta" option should not see any change to their experience.
  This is in response to the feedback we've received, and we hope we can agree on it as a reasonable way forward that adds appropriate caveats and makes it abundantly clear that VisualEditor is beta software, while maintaining a reasonable and representative level of beta usage as we improve it.--Eloquence* 05:46, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

• Being a Signpost editor I should probably shut up. However, as someone who has occasionally been very critical of WMF engineering and product development, this time I want to congratulate the personnel who have worked hard to develop this major improvement. Already I'm hearing anecdotal evidence that editor-training sessions have been able to engage new editors and make bigger strides with them because the complexities of wikisyntax are no longer getting in the way at the initial stage.

  The storm of negativity from established editors is hard to believe, and makes me suspect that there's an attitude abroad that "if I had to do it the hard way, so should you". Established editors have two buttons to push: one for the status quo edit-box, and one for VE. Apparently this is disorienting and offensive, so it's simple ... please just don't push the VE button by mistake. And while you're at it, your continued helpful feedback to the engineers would be appreciated.

  A big thank-you to WMF engineers and any supporting volunteers; please keep up your very good work on this critical project. Tony (talk) 07:57, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

  To be fair, it was really easy to hit the wrong button by mistake, so long as it appeared in the same relative location as the Edit button on talk pages &c. Powers ^T 19:08, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

• With the edit buttons switched in position and the usual edit button not needing me to scroll over it before it pops up I am much happier. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:30, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
• Readers of this op-ed should be aware that there is an ongoing RfC regarding VE. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:12, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
• Erik, congratulations on getting the VisualEditor™ out on schedule. Just out of curiosity, do you or anyone else have bonuses dependent on VisualEditor™'s roll-out? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 17:27, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
  • No, WMF doesn't offer bonuses. There's only a historical exception I can think of: Sue received two bonuses early in her time with WMF; see wmf:Form 2009 Questions and Answers. In case you're interested, my own compensation as well as that of other key staff is disclosed annually in the organization's form 990 tax return which is conveniently published on the WMF site; see the 11-12 tax return, for example.--Eloquence* 18:37, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
• This is a useful insight into the VE development philosophy and challenges. Thanks for publishing it. - Pointillist (talk) 11:38, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
• I think that the visual editor is far from complete. So I don't use it. If other editors like it, good for them, we are all happy. --NaBUru38 (talk) 13:49, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
• Mediawiki is designed from the ground up with serialized text manipulation in mind. It's a very simple model and has pros and cons for that reason. Wikipedia has flourished in part because of that simplicity, a fact too often ignored. The problem is that we are now starting to demand features that do not easily fit into this serialized, text-based model; hence comments about the difficulties with the VisualEditor and "about how and whether certain features can even be supported with markup (e.g. annotations, real-time collaboration)". I have no doubt that if a new Mediawiki-like project were designed today from the ground up with a WYSIWYG-editor and real-time collaboration in mind, it would be an efficient, well-designed beautiful project. But we need to respect the design limitations of Mediawiki and be careful not to flex it too far. There's a chance if we keep bolting on "modern" features we are going to end-up with a Frankenstein-like beast that's sub-optimal from a design perspective for both text-based manipulation and real-time manipulation. Already I would say that new fundamental dichotomy in editing has made the project somewhat more complex to understand for both new and old users. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:55, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
• I find this op-ed and comments quite depressing, as they reflect a very technical culture and view of the world. Surely these changes should be communicated in plain English to a non-technical userbase who won't understand the technical terminology used here, but love to write and know how how to use a word processor and simple blogging websites. I've been registered on Wikipedia for 5 years now and would have loved to be a regular contributor to many articles over the years, but in fact have a very low edit count because I can't cope with the technical complexity of using Wikipedia. That a Director of the Wikipedia Foundation chose to write a high level communication that seems to have been written for an IT development project audience instead of people who are passionate about editing an encyclopedia reflects that there is a long way to go in changing the culture of Wikipedia. Savlonn (talk) 09:29, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
• A WYSIWYG editor was one of the first things I thought the project needed when I joined. Thanks for sharing the challenges involved so we can appreciate the 'monumentousness' of the release. I do think VE wouldn't have received such bad press had it been clearly labelled "beta" on the edit button to start with. But nevertheless, thanks to the project team for daring to break eggs to make this "omelette". The op-ed exposes one of the greatest banes to my editing experiences – the perpetual nested templates. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 06:38, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Recent research: Napoleon, Michael Jackson and Srebrenica across cultures, 90% of Wikipedia better than Britannica, WikiSym preview (1,470 bytes · 💬)

Barnstars

• Please see the book Punished by Rewards (ISBN 0618001816; ISBN 978-0618001811) by Alfie Kohn.
  

—Wavelength (talk) 15:47, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

• >>The authors' analysis of the data is problematic; at one point they contradict themselves, noting that "[One of the observed phenomena] could indicate, however, that the community is closing up after all" although later their conclusion states "Our conclusion is that it cannot be claimed with certainty that the Polish Wikipedia community is closing up.".<< How is this a contradiction? It looks simply like the authors first make a hypothesis and then later come to the conclusion that it was false. --MF-W 23:36, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
  • There are no hypotheses stated in the paper, and the contradictory claims are not addressed in any way.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 17:02, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
    • How can a sentence saying "abc could indicate that xyz" not be a hypothesis? --MF-W 00:58, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Traffic report: Bouncing Baby Brouhaha (2,432 bytes · 💬)

I find it incredible that William, Elizabeth, Kate, Charles, and Diana are all on this list, and yet the royal whelp himself isn't. — Richard BB 06:16, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

See: WP:TOP25. Serendi^podous 07:11, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Still, it's a bit odd that the reason his relatives are all in the top 10 is because of his birth, and yet he's lower down at #16. — Richard BB 07:38, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Note that the article Prince George of Cambridge (368,049 views) also appears in the WP:5000 under its previous titles: Son of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (234,539 views) and Child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (119,854 views). Summing all these gives a total of 722,442 views, enough to move the royal baby up to 3rd place. the wub "?!" 10:47, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

That makes a lot more sense. Yes, I had all of those articles at one point on my watchlist, and the numerous page moves would certainly have dented its traffic. — Richard BB 11:29, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

The word "monarchism" with a capital letter, praise of the British monarch… No ideology (including monarchism and patriotism) is an excuse to WP:NPOV violations. --Синкретик (talk) 11:19, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

• Prince William is not a "baby-daddy". That is slang for a man who is technically a father, but is not involved with the child or mother Urban Dictionary maclean (talk) 05:22, 9 August 2013 (UTC)