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Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2019-10-31

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2019-10-31. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: October actions (4,279 bytes · 💬)

  • Odd that my rather short comment needed to be [...]'d. The complete quote adds what I consider to be useful context, and was as follows: "That was a controversial tagging, which was edit warred over last month. It had died down and was quiet for quite a while, and then someone re-added it just to cause more drama. An arb or CU is still able to tag it if they think there’s a benefit to that. But now no more drive by shit stirring can happen." [1] --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:27, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Wow, Floquenbeam. Thank you for assuming good faith and asking me about my edit when you had an issue with it. I certainly appreciate your candor in your apt descriptions of the issue at hand in your edit summaries. Your efforts to protect the wiki are certainly appreciated. For what it's worth, I had the exact same thought that GoodDay had when I replaced the tag on the page, which I thought I adequately explained in my edit summary in the first place. The banning policy clearly states Banned editors' user and user talk pages should be updated with a notice of the ban, linking to any applicable discussion or decision-making pages. The purpose of this notice is to announce the ban to editors encountering the banned editor's edits. We need to stop putting unblockables on a pedestal. OhKayeSierra (talk) 01:33, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
  • FWIW, the tagging should be re-added to Eric Corbett's page & then protected. I had an indef tag on my userpage for the 13-months I was banned. I was against EC's banning, but he is currently banned & so he (like myself & others were before) should have his userpage so tagged. GoodDay (talk) 18:09, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Why does "This case is further complicated by reports in Haaretz and other news sources that Icewhiz was responsible for the exposure of a 15 year old hoax on Wikipedia about a fake Nazi extermination camp." make things more complicated? It's not like he was blocked for a lack of competence, indeed he had massive pluses and was a significant benefit to me when I joined the Community. It's the off-wiki negatives that led to ARBCOM's action, not a weighing of positives vs negatives. Nosebagbear (talk) 18:11, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Collins dictionary says "complicated" means "difficult to analyze, understand, explain, etc." I find that fitting for this personality and the many stories related to them. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:19, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
  • I think it should have been possible to include 'Bureacrat' among the rights that DeltaQuad requested to be removed. As one of the hardest rights to obtain, it would have been worth a mention, particularly where Amanda only passed RfB barely 8 month ago. She will be missed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:56, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
    • It is implicitly mentioned as part of other advanced permissions including oversighter, although that is indeed somewhat vague. It may have been written that way because she requested desysop on enwiki, and the removal of everything else (including crat) on Meta, so there are two diffs and two explanations for each request. Perhaps the links to the diffs should mention that one was made on enwiki and the other on Meta, rather than both saying "at her own request". —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 17:35, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Community view: Observations from the mainland (7,009 bytes · 💬)

Yet the WMF's policies are more responsible for denying access to China than the Chinese government is. One example is the "IP block exempt" user flag. Only with this flag can someone use a proxy (VPN) to access Wikipedia. Since all language versions of Wikipedia are blocked in China, proxies are the only way to read or edit Wikipedia. All mainland Chinese Wikimedians must have this flag, and it has to be added by admins on a case-by-case basis. But the WMF removed local checkuser rights on the Chinese Wikipedia, which has since increased stewards' workloads on Meta, making the "IP block exempt" problem even worse for us.

It's rare for me to defend the WMF, but let me just point out how illogical this statement is. Who denied access to all language versions of Wikipedia in China? The Chinese government, not the WMF. If Wikipedia were not blocked in China, why would there be a need for Chinese editors to use proxies or VPNs in order to access or edit Wikipedia? feminist (talk) 17:01, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Yan on this. Unless the WMF is openly trying to challenge the Chinese gvt and form a political party inside China and try to ″overthrow″ the current commie rule, it should pragmatically adapt to the situation. The fact is that the way the internet in China is run is a big political decision and the WMF has *very* little, or better said, **any** say over that topic. That decision is, and will be, taken elsewhere. So playing blame games makes no sense. On the other hand, if the WMF wants to keep it's feet to the fire and deliver on the slogan under which Wikipedia was created, and as (wiki)editors we all want that, then it should adapt. Be pragmatic. Listen to Yan and the advice of the mainland community how to improve the projects' cause under the given circumstances. If it doesn't, the ultimate result will be the exclusion of 1/5 of the entire world population from Wikipedia/free content/knowledge. And that's for the birds. --Ivan VA (talk) 17:43, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
@Ivan VA: I hate speaking on this matter, but such removal of CU rights gets its roots from actions from pro-WMCUG members/WMCUG members themselves (Read the August view written by me and some other members within the community). And more sarcastically, the whole removal of local checkuser rights came to effect when he, Techyan, applied for Checkusership. Yet I was supportive of him at his application for Adminship. The main reason for me to openly oppose his adminship came after himself not explaining controversial actions multiple times and stayed offline for a few months without explaining the reason of offline right after he failed his application for checkusership. This is when WMCUG started to become more hostile against me.
And until this moment I have not counted historical offensiveness by them against the recognized (but seems to lack on-time reports recently) User Group in China, the Taiwan Affiliate, and the HK User Group off-site. No one force one to do so but explaining the democratic process within the movement seems to fail to a group of people lead by nationalists and hostility against others engraved in their roots. Yes, it is purely bad people driving out the good ones, much like the Croatian Wikipedia at its current state. 100% fancy politics. Also, the division of the Mainland Community stems from the same Shanghai bi-weekly meetup that the view is talking about.--1233 ( T / C） 07:53, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
@1233: Didn't know that there is (much) more to the story. I can relate to the croatian wiki comparison if that is really the case with the mainland community. --Ivan VA (talk) 15:46, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
  • We pay for our own VPNs; we pay for our own meetups; but we've received nothing from the WMF's US$100 million annual budget. ... A law came into effect in China in 2017, barring foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including the WMF, from carrying out activities in China. @Techyan: How do you propose the WMF fund your efforts to access the encyclopedia when it is banned from operating in China? Wouldn't that lead to a whole lot of trouble? -Indy beetle (talk) 00:44, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
I've never known the WMF to fund any meetups anywhere - leastways none that I have been to. They won't hand out any money to the communities if they can avoid it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:45, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
@Kudpung: They do. Every local Wikimedia branch sends annually financial plans to the (global) Wikimedia etc. My local branch (Serbia) has a few full-time employees and all sorts of other stuff. --Ivan VA (talk) 15:46, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
Ivan_VA, so to what extent do you defray the attendees' costs? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:35, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
@Kudpung: The WMF does fund meet-ups and topic-specific conferences, for example the Wikipedia for Peace events and the upcoming LGBT user group conference in Austria. Kaldari (talk) 16:11, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
@Kaldari: - how many WMF employees will be attending those events? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:18, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
I honestly don't know, but probably very few since none of them are happening in the US. Kaldari (talk) 16:37, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
@Kudpung: When it comes to events, i think they pay for the train/bus tickets and fuel bills for the wikipedians who come to the meeting point (usually it's Belgrade, coz that's the branches' headquarters), and ofc the programme of the event itself (food and stuff, idk.). Perhaps also for the hotel bill for the people who stay for the night (and are not from Belgrade). But there have also been conferences in the countryside lasting for a few days..all cost covered. As an example, a few weeks ago there was a big Conference of wikimedians form Central and Eastern Europe in Belgrade. U can look after it in the galleries here. So, Wikimedia really does support meetings and conferences financially. If u're just wondering about that specific branch of founded activities (coz, as i sad, there are much more). --Ivan VA (talk) 17:33, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Essay: Wikipedia is in the real world (1,116 bytes · 💬)

  • Wikipedia being open to all, if you work on building the encyclopedia for any length of time you may attract your own personal stalker who considers pretty much everything you write to be a personal affront and who considers it their sacred duty to "expose" the person they fixate on. It's really quite pathetic, but for some reason they just can't quite seem to figure out why no one else sees their actions as heroic. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:52, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
  • > "The whole world can hear you, including your wife/husband/significant other, your children, your boss, your neighbors, spy agencies, the police, investigative reporters, Rush Limbaugh, Stephen Colbert, The New York Times, and the pope."
    Actually, the pope doesn't use internet. Koopinator (talk) 15:23, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Gallery: Wiki Loves Broadcast (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-10-31/Gallery

In focus: The BBC looks at Chinese government editing (3,713 bytes · 💬)

  • As probably the most active editor in English Wikipedia on China-related topics, I have to say this TV program seems like yet another clueless media report about Wikipedia. Throughout my decade of editing career on English Wikipedia, I've yet to see any evidence of concerted pro-China editing and most China-related disputes do not end in China's favour. Pro-China POV pushers certainly exist, just as from any major country, but they're usually quickly reverted and do not return. If China were truly serious about manipulating Wikipedia, I'd expect to see tons of new editors on top articles such as Xi Jinping, Jiang Zemin, etc., which is definitely not the case. -Zanhe (talk) 23:49, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
    @Zanhe: I think there's an element of sensationalism to the story as reported by Click. When I realised that the "editorial tug of war that...caused the state of Taiwan to constantly blink in and out of existence over the course of a single day" was really a minor 11-minute affair, I was quite disappointed in the BBC. At the same time, they claim to have identified almost 1,600 contentious edits to 22 "politically sensitive" articles (though sadly they did not identify to which articles or language Wikipedia they belonged). The journal articles, the comments from the academics, and the statements from the Taiwanese community are all a cause for concern about a growing political trend in China and the desire for the government to tell its side of things. I think it's something we should be on the lookout for. -Indy beetle (talk) 00:39, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
    I'd add that the concerns raised by BBC are not limited to the English Wikipedia. While the Chinese government may not have been so successful at POV pushing on enwiki, it doesn't mean their efforts are necessarily futile in other language versions, most notably the Chinese Wikipedia. And yes, state-sponsored editing is not limited to China, but that doesn't make it right. feminist (talk) 12:18, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
  • I found this puzzling: "some [editors] have told us that their personal information has been sprayed [released] ...". Given that Wikipedia doesn't keep any personal information other than an email address (optional) for an editor, it's not obvious how numerous editors would have their real-life identities exposed. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:28, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
    • I believe they just mean outing or doxxing. Smallbones(smalltalk) 05:25, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
      • Doxxing, especially when you realize those are previous event organizers, where their identity can be easily identified.--1233 ( T / C） 10:16, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
  • I do not understand how this the state's actions. I have many Chinese friends in real life and online. This is a real position that they hold. So to sum it up to state-led action by the propaganda department is ridiculous. 50.126.105.22 (talk) 04:31, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

In the media: How to use or abuse Wikipedia for fun or profit (17,561 bytes · 💬)

  • The Warsaw story goes to show the accuracy of the Wikipedia globe logo with its hollow top (and rumored large hole on the logo's 'dark side') - that eventually the correct data surfaces. And "Why isn't our famous logo on mobile pages?" enquiring minds ask and revert. Randy Kryn (talk) 18:11, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
Story tells ARBCOM banned the guy who corrected it. It ist awful Wikipedia presented Holocaust denial for long time. Gunter888 (talk) 18:15, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
Of course it's not something that should have happened, but for the media to "catch" a major Wikipedia mistake shows, on the other hand, that the encyclopedia is so reliable that one blemish glaringly stands out amongst the fine editing and accuracy of the projects' millions of pages. Randy Kryn (talk) 18:25, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
I think such errors are more common; just recently I removed claims about World War II starting at bombing of Wielun (present in high profile articles like [2]), or battle of Westerplatte, plus inflated casualties counts and some other errors in those articles and several others. A lot of articles, mostly, but not only, from early years of Wikipedia, are still underreferenced, and I sure tens of thousands of such errors remain to be fixed. Setting the ludicrous conspiracy story aside (never attribute malice to simple stupidity, or in wiki case, simple lack of experience among most editors who, particularly 10-15 years ago, had trouble distinguishing reliable from unreliable sources), the story is right that such errors, in this and other topics, may be more common. I mean, KLW camp is a footnote in Holocaust history, but just look at Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - that's a big topic yet there is a lot of unreferenced content to verify, and some dubious references. In 2013 Poeticbent got Treblinka extermination camp to GA status, and several others users (Dianaa, Khazar2) got Auschwitz concentration camp to GA around the same time, but most other articles are still C-class or so. Who knows what kind of errors lurk int he ghetto uprising, or in Majdanek concentration camp, or Chełmno extermination camp. Even The Holocaust in Poland is just C/B class, as is The Holocaust itself. Like everything else in Wikipedia, this area (be it Polish-Jewish history or The Holocaust) desperately needs active editors, but unfortunately, the most active editor in this area, Poeticbent, had given up and retired (see User:Poeticbent for his goodbye essay, already linked in the piece here anyway). Until we learn to treasure such editors and help them instead of letting them be harassed into retirement, the ratio of 1% good/featured articles to 99% poorly referenced ones where fringe theories or worse may lurk, will remain. This a big problem for Wikipedia ([3], free mirror at Library Genesis).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:15, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Haaretz writes:

In another case that shows how Trzcinska’s work supplied revisionists with the citations they needed, an editor called “Poeticbent” insinuated the 200,000 death toll figure from the Warsaw article to the one about Nazi crimes against the Polish nation. The claim was attributed to a press release from the IPN, which in turn quoted the “Association of the Committee for the Construction of the Monument to the Victims of the KL Warschau Extermination Camp,” a local group that is a proponent of Trzcinska’s book – the same dubious source repackaged as a legitimate reference.

and:

A famous example of Polish violence against Jews is the July 1941 pogrom at Radzilow. There, local Poles rounded up hundreds of their Jewish neighbors, barricaded them in a barn and set it on fire. However, the article Tylman wrote, with the help of some IPN sources, claimed that these Jews were in fact killed by Nazi Einsatzgruppen paramilitary forces. The error persisted in English on Wikipedia for over a decade. The same edit also indirectly denied the most notorious case of Polish violence against Jews – the massacre at Jedwabne, also in July 1941. Though the historical truth is that Poles were behind the killing of more than 300 Jews, in Poeticbent’s falsified version, it was claimed that the Nazis used “similar methods” in Radzilow as they did Jedwabne – an indirect denial of Polish complicity in both massacres.

Writing on Piotrus too:

That was the case in the article on the Nowy Sacz Ghetto, where the two reworked the article together so that almost half of it would focus on Holocaust rescue. The two also “rescued” the articles for the Sosnowiec Ghetto and the Radom Ghetto.

Newspaper ist direct.Gunter888 (talk) 07:38, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Newspaper "ist" full of errors. "Reworked" is a funny way of saying "wrote". Because for example article on Radom Ghetto was created, from scratch, by me in 2009 ([4]), as was Sosnowiec Ghetto ([5]); on Nowy Sącz Ghetto by Poeticbent in 2016 ([6]). Spinning stories is unfortunate, but facts are facts. I and Poeticbent created (not "reworked") and wrote most of the content in those articles, using reliable sources (for example my Radom Ghetto article in 2009 was primarily based on Yad Vashem's web page and Sosnowiec Ghetto on a book published by Syracuse University Press), and we also DYKed them (ex. Template:Did you know nominations/Nowy Sącz Ghetto) in our efforts to educate the world about the tragedy of The Holocaust. As I said, it is sad when instead of "thank you for your hard work", editors are faced with harassment, libel and slander. PS. Thank you for your ~20 edit to English Wikipedia.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:48, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Will someone please ban "Gunter888" as the obvious Icewhiz sock that he is, thanks. 199.247.44.10 (talk) 04:10, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

  • This is such an awesome and informative issue! Really enjoyed reading some of the articles; thought-provoking too! DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 08:00, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
  • [EC] Some comments on the "fake Nazi death camp in Warsaw" story:
  • Signpost says that Maria Trzcińska's hypothesis "about the camp being an extermination camp that targeted non-Jewish Poles was officially discredited in 2007." That year the historian Bogusław Kopka published a book under the aegis of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), which is described by Christian Davies in his London Review of Books article as "a state body with prosecutorial powers established after the fall of communism to conduct research, administer state archives and adjudicate on important historical debates." The Haaretz article quotes Professor Jan Grabowski's opinion on the book: it "completely blew Trzcinska’s theory out of the water." In his LRB article, Davies uses much more careful language: Kopka "criticised Trzcińska’s thesis and estimated the number of victims of Gęsiówka at twenty thousand." Davies then goes on to describe the meticulous work carried out by Zygmunt Walkowski on behalf of the IPN, which lasted for seven years and was completed in 2017 and which, among other things, "demolished Trzcińska’s thesis about the Józef Bem Street tunnel." In light of that, I would say that the Signpost statement that Trzcińska's hypothesis "was officially discredited in 2007" is, at best, misleading.
  • Signpost: "Icewhiz reported to Haaretz that they investigated the claims in the Wikipedia article after they read a May 2019 article by Christian Davies in [the] London Review of Books which mentioned 'Wikipedia entries amended'." It's clear from the KL Warsaw article's talkpage and the KL Warschau conspiracy theory user-space page that Icewhiz's attention was directed to the mainspace article by Davies's LRB article. However, the Haaretz article doesn't explicitly make that connection and nor does Icewhiz's user-space page say that he stated such to Haaretz. A bit bizarrely, Haaretz describes Davies's article as "brief", implying a lack of length and detail which it does not have.
  • Signpost: "They have now been banned indefinitely for off-wiki harassment pertaining to the Antisemitism in Poland content dispute, see Arbitration report." The Arbitration Committee announcement stated that it had "received convincing evidence that Icewhiz has engaged in off-wiki harassment of multiple editors", but it did not say that that harassment "pertained" to the Antisemitism in Poland case. Having seen the harassment, I can say that, although that may have been true of some of it, it was not true of all.
  • It's worth reading the history of the KL Warsaw article given on Poeticbent's userpage.

    ←   ZScarpia   14:19, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

  • I don't know what "officially discredited" means, but I do know there were materials available at least as early as 2003 that cast serious doubt on her invention.
  • PB's piece is mostly off-topic - most of it is dedicated to tracing one false claim in external sources - and the rest doesn't really contradict any of the main points made in the Haaretz piece... François Robere (talk) 22:28, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Framing is important (I concur that it is hard to be sure when this was "officially discredited"). The 2003 sources (IPN press releases and some German article that AFAIK had no impact since it was in German) can be said to have cast it in doubt (IPN); I don't read German so I have no comments on what that article might have said. Whether the 2007 source is the one that 'officially discredited it' or did this only happen in 2017, I am honestly not prepared to say without looking at specific quotes that I think nobody actually brought to the talk pages that I recall. This is something that would be good to clarify in the article; again, I suggest that people with access to those sources provide direct quotations on talk. The crucial take way from this is that when the article was created on English in 2004, her theory wasn't widely discredited, and to imply, as Haaretz did, that the editor who created it acted in bad faith or to blame him for missing a press release/foreign language article that he might have not even speak is very unfair. And no editor can be blamed for not correcting the issues in 2007 or 2017, since we can't expect that every published book or article are read by Wikipedian(s) or motivate them to fact check our content. Which is my issue with Blatman's piece, which blames Wikipedia - yeah, sorry, our fault for not having enough volunteers to fact check 99% of our content...
  • As for PB essay, I personally find it quite relevant to this entire issue. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:34, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
  • I don't read that as an accusation of the original poster, and I certainly don't think that he's alone to blame (but then, you already know my opinion).
  • Quotes were already provided in several of the talk pages that discuss this. The IPN wrote in 2003, after an 18 month investigation, that they couldn't find any evidence to support any of her claims ("but will continue looking"). This certainly places Tr's theory in deep WP:FRINGE territory (which outside of Wikipedia was pushed as a full-fledged conspiracy theory by various individuals).
  • Google Scholar has been around since 2004. Google Translate has been around 2006. Let's raise our standards, shall we? François Robere (talk) 13:01, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Raising standards is fine, but foreign language sources are tough to find. Or are you suggesting that one should google translate the query into various languages, and then translate the list of search results to see if any might be relevant? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:15, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Why would you need to translate the query? Any book review will give the book's and author's name in the original. François Robere (talk) 13:17, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
  • The point is you cannot expect people to find works about a topic in other languages that they search in. For example, maybe there are some good works about KLW in French or Spanish, but we don't know about them since we didn't search for them in those languages. Or did you? Can you confirm that there are no works about KLW in those languages? How about Chinese? Or Swahili? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:56, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
  • The banality of point-of-view pushing: I suspect WP:NOENG would have been applied to opposing viewpoints, but gone out of the window for "highly reliable" supporting sources.     ←   ZScarpia   12:59, 5 November 2019 (UTC)


  • A follow-up opinion piece mentionioning the KL Warsaw camp:
Haaretz - Daniel Blatman - Israel, it's time to call off the anti-Polish hunt, 18 October 2019: "If there is a guilty side regarding the lie of the annihilation by gas in the Warsaw concentration camp – it's Wikipedia, not Poland."
    ←   ZScarpia   12:40, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
This is included in the write-up.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 15:53, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Interview: Carl Miller on Wikipedia Wars (4,649 bytes · 💬)

  • Scary stuff. I have long wondered, we are several thousand passionate amateurs with excellent protection against most of the enemies of Wikipedia's neutrality, but that's because most of them are stupid. What if a hundred smart, organized people make a concerted, persistent, subtle, carefully planned campaign over a run of years? Jim.henderson (talk) 20:30, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
    • I think you've got Miller's argument exactly right. Now just throw in "and why wouldn't they do it?" Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:10, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
      • This story is focused on political manipulation of Wikipedia but there are other types. Jim.henderson's 'what if...' has already happened. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:23, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
      • @Smallbones - To which I respond, "and who says they aren't already?" I'd look to the Israel/Palestine area first, Eastern Europe second... Carrite (talk) 17:05, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
        • @Carrite - I won't disagree. While I don't know much about the Israel/Palestine area, I'd look at Russia first. There are some incredibly ham fisted articles about current events involving Russia, e.g. International recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia a 200,000k article that is only arguably notable and could easily be written in one paragraph. Somebody must have decided to turn the propaganda spigots on, and just forgot to turn them off. (that's the most likely explanation I can come up with anyway for the length and number of pageviews and pagewatchers for this article, see [7]) - others may have a simpler explanation. The much more important Assassination of Boris Nemtsov (see [8]) has some even more obvious problems, which are just very difficult to mention on-wiki.
Miller has mentioned his suspicions on this type of thing in His New Statesman article linked to in the second question.
The contribution of Miller and the BBC broadcast IMHO is that this type of work hasn't been taken to the mainstream highly-reliable popular press before, and that he gathered a good deal of evidence for his thesis. Some Wikipedians might look at the very broad "accusations" and the somewhat limited data provided and say - "more evidence needed". But in the mainstream highly-reliable popular press, the amount of data provided is very high, even unprecedented. Non-Wikipedians will be more easily be convinced than Wikipedians will be. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:58, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
    • The easiest & most effective way to subvert Wikipedia's neutrality would be not to change Wikipedia directly, but to contaminate the sources we use. Want a given company to look good? Put pressure on the news media reporting & any books published about it. Without reliable sources, rumors about unsavory practices remain rumors, which policy dictates we cannot cite, or even refer to. (It's why American newspapers historically have run few investigative articles on car dealerships. Not because they are all honest & bend over backwards to make the customer happy: they buy a lot of advertising space in local papers, & thus exert a lot of power over editorial content either directly or indirectly.) -- llywrch (talk) 23:28, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
      • Yes. By brainwashing the public you easily get hundreds of "meatpuppets". It's easy to see with any sufficiently large corporate interest. Nemo 15:18, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
        • I'm referring to information manipulation, which is not brainwashing. -- llywrch (talk) 20:53, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
  • See WP:DISINFORMATION -- GreenC 02:43, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

News from the WMF: Welcome to Wikipedia! Here's what we're doing to help you stick around (2,472 bytes · 💬)

  • "Someone signing up to edit a Wikipedia page ..." falls at the first hurdle, given that "anyone can edit" without signing up to anything. Dr Horncastle (talk) 22:54, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Eh... Most IP editors I see are purely casual, either fixing random mistakes or being a vandal. Most people who want to become active, serious contributors I've seen sign up for an account. From AnUnnamedUser (open talk page) 03:09, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Curiouser and curiouser: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/author/dan-fost/ - is this person a WMF employee or not? So why is he writing for the WMF? Freelance editor maybe, but possibly not 'free'. I've already expressed my concern for the way The Signpost offers a free platform for the WMF just to pad out the content of our ever thinning magazine. This article doesn't even address what is probably the average Signpost reader. Better, IMO, would be a synthesis of the WMF's 'news' by Signpost staff especially with news from the ever spinning turntable of WMF staff, new big donations, and the lack of transparency of where the money goes. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:11, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
  • WMF tells us how interested they are in freshly-arrived free labor for their $35M annual enterprise. Obviously, WMF needs new editors with no expectations and ignorant of SanFran's grift despite the fact that new editors make n00b mistakes annoying everyone else. Those older editors aren't valued by WMF because long-term editors form opinions and think they deserve a say in matters. The only editor retention that happens here is editor-enacted. Chris Troutman (talk) 18:19, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
  • We usually delete promotional garbage from paid writers. This doesn't belong on Wikipedia. SilkTork (talk) 08:52, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month? (1,278 bytes · 💬)

  • Dr. Yale Rosen, a pathologist, agreed to donate his entire collection of approximately 2000 pathology images to Wikimedia Commons.
Stuff like this genuinely makes me happy. Images from professionals should be encouraged more, particularly in science as many articles are left imageless. Thanks for the donation, Dr Yale Rosen! Willbb234Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 22:26, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
  • A page like this about what made me happy makes me happy. This should become a regular feature on this newsletter. werldwayd (talk) 22:27, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Hi Werldwayd, thanks for your comment. You may want to click the "Previous 'On the bright side'" link at the bottom left of this article. Best wishes, ↠Pine (✉) 08:21, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Recent research: Research at Wikimania 2019: More communication doesn't make editors more productive; Tor users doing good work; harmful content rare on English Wikipedia (7,296 bytes · 💬)

Regarding the one in every 200 pageviews leading to a citation ref click, that's surprisingly low given the editor-side emphasis on WP:RS. It would be good to see more students being explicitly taught information literacy and best practices specifically for reading Wikipedia. The nearest reader-side resources I know of within Wikipedia are Help:Wikipedia:_The_Missing_Manual/Appendixes/Reader's_guide_to_Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Research_help don't really cover the relevant topics e.g. why and how to check the references. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 01:33, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

"All Talk" flaws

This study may have measured the wrong things. The goal was assumed to be "productivity" as defined by article contributions, but there was no theoretical justification given for this decision. Currently, the best model for what we want to see happen for newcomers is that their first edits aren't reverted, and that the editors stick around and stay active for a long time. See meta:Research:New_editors'_first_session_and_retention. Adamw (talk) 13:39, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Adamw:, I'm one of the authors of that study. Thank you so much for taking a look at our work and for your comments. We chose to focus on "productivity" based on theories about the relationship between communication and productivity in teams and organizations. Your suggestion to look at how much newcomers were reverted is certainly an interesting question and one that we could answer with a relatively simple extension of our analysis. Looking at newcomer retention is also a good idea, but it would be more complicated because it may not mesh nicely with the statistical method we used.
By the way, we will publish the data and code in the near future here [9] (at the moment there is nothing at that link, but someday soon there will be). It would be exciting to see community members take that up to answer their own questions that we didn't answer. Groceryheist (talk) 04:14, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Characterizing Reader Behavior on Wikipedia

Anyone else notice the striking statistic that over 1/3rd of English Wikipedia readers are not native English speakers? I'm a native English speaker and have a hard time reading a lot of our articles (due to the high prevalence of jargon, overly complex run-on sentences, and mangled grammar). Perhaps we should make more of an effort to make our articles readable rather than trying (poorly) to make them sound academic and erudite. Kaldari (talk) 15:30, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

That's a good point. There has also been quite a bit of research on readability of Wikipedia articles (most of it based on automated readability scores; it might be interesting to run actual reading comprehension tests where a reader is asked questions about information they should be able to derive from an article).
Regards, HaeB (talk) 20:20, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Image for Wikidata item

Is there a particular point in using an image that shows only women to illustrate the Wikidata item about knowledge graphs? I don't want to make any assumptions here, other than that it seems obvious that someone (singular or plural) made the decision and had reasons for it. – Athaenara ✉ 19:15, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Apologies if I've misunderstood the point you were getting at, but I'm not sure I see the problem with the image. If the worry is that slide 9 in that presentation wasn't appropriate, if they had used the diagram that has both male and female examples (slide 21), the images would have been very small. If the worry is that it over-prioritises depictions of women, this month's Signpost included images of 9 men and 9 women (excluding crowd photos and excluding traffic report, which were more male-biased), so I don't think women have been over-represented. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 00:18, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
I don't see any role for "worry" in this. Aside from that, do I understand you correctly as having meant that any of the other available images would have been too small? – Athaenara ✉ 05:50, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
I apologise if I came across as combative. Speaking to the original question, I think that the particular point of using that image was to illustrate the overall content of the presentation in a single picture, and the slide chosen is the best one to achieve that. It is a simple image, it's relatively large, it summarises a key concept discussed in the presentation. The fact that it depicts three women is an added benefit. I'd agree with your original post that probably its inclusion in the article is the result of a decision. That's only my opinion on the image, but I've no other guesses as to why it was used or why any other image would have been better. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 06:00, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
As a woman myself, with long-time interests in mathematics, science, and literature, I do not see why it is "an added benefit" that the image "depicts three women". When I think of Nobel laureates I think of emblematic greats like Ernest Rutherford or William Faulkner and wouldn't for a moment expect that images of recent winners who happen to be women should be placed at the forefront. – Athaenara ✉ 09:18, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
T.Shafee is correct that I picked this particular slide from the deck for the summary here because it seemed the best to visually illustrate the paper's main topic. ("Everybody who was awarded the Nobel Prize has a nobel prize ID")
Akorenchkin, the researcher who uploaded the slide deck, could probably speak to why he and his coauthors chose these particular three examples (Strickland, Curie, Arnold), but my hunch would be that they had recent controversies in mind.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 09:34, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
@HaeB: Thank you for bringing some of the Wikipedia-specific context to light, I appreciate that. – Athaenara ✉ 10:14, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Special report: “Catch and Kill” on Wikipedia: Paid editing and the suppression of material on alleged sexual abuse (11,383 bytes · 💬)

  • seriously? Every edit would need to be approved by an editor? Well Mr. Sussman, that's one way to ensure that nothing would ever get done. Not Wilkins (talk) 16:30, 31 October 2019 (UTC)NotWilkinsNot Wilkins (talk) 16:30, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Regarding Ashley Feinberg's HuffPo article, it is also noteworthy that on Talk:Axios_(website) (a discussion page that has seen 99 edits by Sussman so far), Sussman stated in May that Feinberg's "accusations are the subject of an upcoming libel claim [by himself] against HuffPo". Feinberg's piece remains online and Sussman's demand that the Wikipedia article on Axios should not cite it was rejected by other editors in an RfC. Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:39, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Sussman, given the length of backlog of flagged revisions on de-wiki (which is just the first 100 edits), could you explain how on Earth your method would work? Nosebagbear (talk) 17:56, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
This suggestion was made in light of the BBC's recent investigation into the Chinese government possibly secretly editing Wikipedia at large scale using coordinated teams of editors [10], allegations of Russian government trolls allegedly using Wikipedia to influence Brexit [11], and known instances of political operatives using Wikipedia to smear opponents. This is the same problem facing Facebook, Twitter and YouTube -- only a very, very tiny percentage of posts are damaging to democracy, but those posts which are, are very damaging. Congress and the public are finding after-the-fact reporting and take-downs to be unacceptable for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They are endeavoring to find automated and moderated solutions -- my own suggestion might be very crude, but it gets to the gist of the problem. BC1278 (talk) 19:14, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
  • The end notes to Farrow's book mention only the one HuffPo story and a quote from one Talk page as Farrow's sources. User:SoWhy, an uninvolved admin summarizing the admin consensus of the ANI review said HuffPo's story was written by someone who “has no idea how Wikipedia works” and that I had not violated any Wikipedia policies or Terms of Use. [12]. User: Swarm, an admin who was involved in the discussion, did his own summary of the ANI review: "Eight admins have replied to the thread. All eight appear to be on the same page that the article is exaggerated sensationalism, and that the editor has not actually has done anything wrong. It has been suggested that the user should probably be more concise, but we haven't seen anything to support the notion that they're relentlessly argumentative or engage in "bludgeoning" behavior." [13] Many editors looked at every contribution I ever made and found no policy violations. although I do appreciate and take seriously the complaints that I can be too wordy. My entire consulting practice is based on ethical behavior and strictly following policies to the best of my ability.BC1278 (talk) 19:23, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
One specific point about SoWhy's column: Regarding the article about Andrew Lack, I submitted that article for AfC in August of 2016. The New York Times and New Yorker reporting on Weinstein was in October of 2017. I couldn't mention events that had not yet happened.BC1278 (talk) 19:32, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Just to make it clear, the "freeze direct public editing of all articles" is known as flagged revisions (WP:Flagged revisions). The system is used on every article by some projects including German Wikipedia, though I believe the edits are still shown by default (but may be configured to not be shown before they are flagged, similarly to our pending changes protection).--Ymblanter (talk) 20:27, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Readers here may be interested to know that I recently identified several single-purpose accounts whitewashing the page for Black Cube, the private intelligence firm hired by Weinstein to follow Farrow. The page needs some cleanup to undo the damage if anyone is inclined. Sdkb (talk) 07:36, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
  • The endnotes of Farrow's book are not exhaustive, since the book is full of original reporting on a topic where confidentiality of sources is particularly important. There may be times when I'd be willing to second-guess a New Yorker fact-checker, but this isn't one of them. XOR'easter (talk) 16:24, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
Astonishing arrogance from BC1278 (talk) to suggest he is more credible than a Pulitzer-winning journalist. DaRonPayne (talk) 02:38, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
— Newslinger talk 04:40, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Re: "I'm calling on Wikipedia to freeze direct public editing of all articles. Every edit should be reviewed by experienced editors prior to publication, just as every edit I propose is." – There are very good reasons to vet paid edits using the {{Request edit}} procedure. Considering the lack of repercussions for requesting biased or inaccurate edits, paid editors have every incentive to request edits that portray their employers in a positive light, against the neutral point of view policy. (In most cases, the worst possible result for a biased or inaccurate edit request is that the request gets rejected.) Editors with no conflict of interest are needed to ensure that the edit requests from paid editors comply with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines.

    The fact that paid edits are subjected to more scrutiny than non-COI edits is entirely intentional. Community resources are limited, and it is better for the encyclopedia when we dedicate our time and effort to areas that are most in need of attention. There are simply not enough resources to require all non-COI edits to undergo a review procedure; the peer-reviewed Nupedia was superseded by Wikipedia for similar reasons. In light of available resources, it makes sense for the community to prioritize the vetting of paid edits, which are more likely to be biased and inaccurate than non-COI edits in the absence of a vetting process. In contrast, the proposal to "freeze direct public editing of all articles" would divert community resources away from where they are needed the most, benefiting Sussman's interests at the expense of Wikipedia as a whole. — Newslinger talk 06:47, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm afraid this flies in the face of reality. There are perhaps two or three edit requests per day from self-disclosed COI editors, compared to more than 45,000 daily edits on Wikipedia WP: Stats - one edit every 1.8 seconds. The actors intent on using Wikipedia for propaganda, promotion, revenge, or damaging their corporate rivals edit in secret. Open and immediate contributions, without screening, is a model developed in a more innocent time on the internet, before the dark-side of user generated content became well-known. Nupedia was written by volunteer subject-matter experts with articles pre-screened by volunteer subject matter experts. Wikipedia-wide adoption of WP: Flagged Revisions is completely different. If people knew their edits had to be reviewed prior to publications, I'd guess that many more would volunteer to be reviewers. BC1278 (talk) 17:18, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
Whataboutism is a poor justification for a proposal that reduces scrutiny of paid edits relative to all edits on Wikipedia. The vast majority of those 45,000 edits per day are not motivated by personal gain, except for the satisfaction of having contributed to the encyclopedia. Unless your proposal includes an extremely large recurring donation of time and/or money to support editor recruitment and engagement, the burden of reviewing 45,000 edits per day, most of which don't have issues, will negatively impact the encyclopedia. — Newslinger talk 19:45, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
  • without commenting on the issues in the story - thank you @Smallbones: for a heavily researched and reported story that summarizes this story of both public & Wikipedia-wide interest for us. It's difficult to track down complex talk pages and editor relationships; there is a ton of work represented here, and as a reader & Wikipedian I appreciate it! -- phoebe / (talk to me) 20:23, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
    • Seconded. Tony (talk) 00:02, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Traffic report: Wrestling with a couple of teenagers, a Nobelist, and a lot of jokers (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-10-31/Traffic report


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