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Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2021-11-29

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2021-11-29. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: ArbCom in 2021 (2,697 bytes · 💬)

  • The report says the case against RexxS accumulated 43 preliminary statements. One of these was SlimVirgin's statement to not accept the case. Newyorkbrad declined (early). Other voices requesting to avoid a case: Hammersoft, Black Kite, Johnuniq, Tom.Reding, Folly Mox, Deepfriedokra, Montanabw, Volunteer Marek, Ched, Atsme, Tryptofish, Sluzzelin, Jehochman, Johnbod, Moneytrees, and Kudpung.
    Also: RexxS commented on 23 February, and made his last edit on 25 February, while the case was filed on 27 February. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:25, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • This year's Arbcom is possibly one of the best in recent years, but as Arbcoms go, it still has a long way to go to becoming a just tribunal. RexxS's comment on Hammersoft's TP is elegant, accurate, and totally to the point. While his absence is a great loss to Wikipedia, he has my greatest respect for quitting the way he did. It could not have been easy. If ever I am able to visit the UK again, it will be a bee-line for nearby Brum and a beer or several with RexxS. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:16, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Small correction, at least I think: My understanding was that the ECP restriction isn't quite the same as the 500/30 restriction, since admins can grant EC to accounts manually. Or am I misremembering? -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 00:00, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Great article JPxG. A perfect mix of detail and summary. Very informative. Well done. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:38, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm in the Signpost 8) –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 07:01, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Those numbers in the Enforcement actions table look suspicious. The lines for AP2 and BLP are almost identical. Is that correct? --rchard2scout (talk) 14:49, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Deletion report: What we lost, what we gained (19,069 bytes · 💬)

 
http://notabilia.net
I'll have to take a look at those when I get home. That one about analyzing 2 million AfDs is very strange if true (there have been a little under 500,000 from 2005 to 2021, and even if you assume that some pre-2005 discussions were held without their own separate pages, I don't think there should be 1.5 million of them). Were they using multiple projects? jp×g 03:43, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Good point - the headline there was relying on the paper's abstract ("an analysis of 1,967,768 AfD discussions between 2005 and 2018"), but in the "Data Collection" they explain more precisely that this means "1,967,768 recommendations" in the sense of "votes"...
Anyway, the underlying corpus was published (by other authors) here: https://github.com/emayfield/AFD_Decision_Corpus . It might be interesting to compare the metadata they extracted with your own.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:57, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • The Oracle data is very cool, thank you for putting that and this report together. Levivich 03:48, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
    Another rather nice visualisation is http://notabilia.net with left spiralling lies indicating 'keep' votes and right spiralling lines indicating 'delete'. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 04:15, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • I remember the Michael Z. Williamson afd, I see it got an honorable 22:d place.
  • working your ass off on an article only to see it flushed down the drain is close to an official rite of passage around these parts Is that really the case? I've created around 120 articles and never had one deleted and only once or twice had to defend one at AfD. Is that unusual? Am I naïve to believe that if you pick a notable subject, make sure you've got enough material to write a few hundred words, and cite your sources, that your new article will be largely immune from AfD? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:21, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Only one of my 156 articles has been deleted, which was probably me flying too close to the sun on a current-events BLP (I was banking on continued coverage which never materialized). Sure, it deserved to go, but I'll be damned if I didn't feel a little regretful about the whole thing. I remember hearing a maxim once along the lines of "if you've never missed the bus before, you're showing up to the bus stop too early" -- maybe the same is true here. Well, I've missed the WP:GNG bus once, so now I know how long to wait :) jp×g 03:51, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
      Old Swedish saying, translated: Better to hear the sound of a bowstring breaking, than to never attempt to draw a bow. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:42, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

AfD

The lack of mention of immense canvassing across the internet and even by media articles being written seems rather wrong. Not only 4chan, but also people like Larry Sanger have been canvassing to get the article kept. Isn't all of that something that would be appropriate to mention, especially as a reason on why the AfD is so big? SilverserenC 18:16, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, I did mention that it'd been picked up by a few blogs (the Fox story came after this article was published). I think it's a stretch to call the 4chan thread "canvassing" -- maybe there was another one that nobody's linked to, but the one I see on the talk page header for that AfD had only six posts, all within one hour, after which point it dropped off the board into oblivion. A typical thread on a high-traffic board will get hundreds of replies, so that would have been a very unsuccessful thread even by >2011 standards. jp×g 23:57, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Is media coverage considered canvassing? Are critics of WP considered canvassing if they're not contributing to the project? I may be mistaken but I don't think that was the intent of WP:CANVASSING. When a controversial topic is up for deletion, it will naturally garner public attention and people will talk about it. Regardless, the AfD is in the process of being closed as I type this reply. Atsme 💬 📧 20:41, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Much of the media attention was solicited by the groups that were indeed trying to canvass and were the reason why so many newly made accounts showed up. Not to mention dormant accounts that hadn't edited for months or years. Again, isn't all of that something that should be mentioned in regards to the AfD and why it became so big? SilverserenC 20:48, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Dormant accounts probably have more to do with socking than canvassing. Publicity and the opinions that are shared off-wiki are just that, which is not a violation of canvassing to my knowledge, unless an involved editor is behind it; i.e., an actual WP editor has to be the "canvasser" and I'm not aware of that happening. Publicity brings people in and I don't see a work-around for that, much less consider it good reason to dismiss the AfD. In fact, it would be great if more people showed up at AfDs instead of just 3 or 4 involved editors making a final determination to keep or delete an article. Atsme 💬 📧 21:10, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
    In regards to publicity bringing in people, I definitely agree. For me, Rama's preliminary statement in the arbitration case about them seems worth mentioning as an example. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 07:26, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
      • I keep hearing about all these canvassed votes, but it is not easy to find one. I did see an IP vote, but it appears to have been removed. A couple of days ago I checked the article stats and there were a total of 11 IP *edits*, but I don't see them on the page now (it's a bit hard to say for sure on a page this size). So I just checked 15 keep votes (willy-nilly, or "random"). All of them had recently edited, *before the AfD started* I didn't count how many edits they had before the AfD this year, but it was generally a couple of screen-fuls+, i.e. over 200. Well there are about 150 keep votes. So can anybody find one of these canvassed keep voters (user names please)? Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:37, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
        • Sure, @Smallbones:, we can start with the person who voted right before you did: User:Gumaaaa and then move on to others including User:Volatile.memory, User:ChronosTruth, User:Johnathan 2001, User:Delhatch, User:Gnuthomson, User:Redderc, User:Rocket in the sky, and User:Cedric Contra. Just as an example. SilverserenC 23:51, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
        • I just had some time to review the !votes. My rough count is 143 keep, 39 delete. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I did check out *all* the !votes with red-linked signatures on the page. You managed to get all one side but not the other. My count on these 16 "!votes" was 2 comments (not !votes), 8 (most of the ones above) look like their first edits, and 6 who have many edits before the AfD and look like regular editors who just don't have a user page. So you've reduced the margin to 135 keep, 39 delete." I trust the closers will check these all out in much more detail. But I very much doubt the deletes will ever overcome the deficit. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:33, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that admin corps is generally overburdened, sometimes leading to actions that are hastier than they ideally might be. Scores of AfDs must be closed every day, some requiring an hour or some few hours to consider (which in a few cases may not be provided -- a symptom of the overburden, perhaps). Surely this is a significant timesink for our fine but very busy admin corps. We do have Wikipedia:Non-admin closure, but this is only useful in a few cases.

There is an open discussion (started by yours truly) of an idea to address this, at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Adding "AfD closer" status, in which participation is here invited. Herostratus (talk) 22:05, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

  • A major problem may have to do with fairness. This was the fourth AfD for the page, at least one more than maybe should be allowed. If a page has been saved two times, and then goes for broke again, with all three keeping the page either by Keep or No Consensus, then a "let's really get it this time!" fourth AfD ignores that enough editors have spoken or commented with silence. When articles have successfully gone through the gauntlet numerous times, triple-jeopardy seems as far as we should take it. Randy Kryn (talk) 22:10, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Never mind canvassing, call it what it is: fake news. There's no such thing as a "moderator". Anybody [not banned/blocked] can nominate a page for deletion, the omission of which (whether due to malice or lack of basic journalistic research) renders all implications by these news sources completely wrong. Other overtly misleading nonsense permeates the other content.
    The news here is that an unremarkable discussion by a direct democracy over how best to arrange freely available information that the same community actually wrote resulted in... nothing (at least not yet, and probably not at all). That a University of Cambridge historian compares compares this to Holocaust denial is rather unsurprising to me given my experience of such people. It reminds me of a right-wing backlash to undergraduates at an Oxford college choosing to rearrange the portraits in their private common room that made the front page of the Daily Mail: in both cases, the idea is that a conspiracy of censorship emerges when, after a group of people choose to take an action, the very same group of people choose to change or update their decision. However, it is one of the stupidest comments I have read in recent months. (Another strong contender is a tweet by Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, that implies that he is hearing of WP:SYNTH for the first time in this AfD.) Actually stupider than anything in a far-right reddit subreddit that weighed in on the issue, which is quite the achievement. — Bilorv (talk) 22:30, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Never fear - WP always makes room for the far left's counterbalance. Perhaps a paragraph from this perspective should be included in the article subject of this discussion, and vice versa. Just a thought...Atsme 💬 📧 23:57, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • So far as I can discern, this bears no relation to my comment. — Bilorv (talk) 21:22, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
I don't think it's fair to hold mainstream news outlets to lofty Signpost standards... understanding of the project seems to be in pretty short supply across the wider Internet. For example, there are about ten thousand Google news results for wikipedia moderators (and 31 for "Wikipedia moderators" in quotes). Heck, even the New York Times references Wikipedia having "moderators". If anything, I appreciate stuff like this, because it inches us a little closer to breaking our Gell-Mann amnesia...   jp×g 00:07, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Good journalism is in short supply in the modern day, and generally found in obscure gems within the field of non-mainstream or specialist news sources. Such as The Signpost, of course. — Bilorv (talk) 21:22, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
  • One one hand, I emailed The Daily Caller regarding their story to ask for a correction; they seem to have additionally gotten the date on when the article was tagged for deletion wrong. While I included the link to the diff where the deletion notice was added, I've yet to see anything corrected. On the other hand, to lump in the report from The Telegraph as "fake news" seems like a stretch-and-a-half. — Mhawk10 (talk) 06:25, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Fiddling around with a wrong date in a Daily Caller article is moving deckchairs on the Titanic. I've had The Guardian and similarly reputed publications refuse to address simple corrections I've emailed to notify them of, like dates and numbers, so I'm not surprised at the lack of response there. The Daily Caller article doesn't seem worse (if anything, it's better) than the corresponding Telegraph article—and that is not meant as a compliment to the former. — Bilorv (talk) 21:14, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Is it expected that when someone is mentioned in a 'report' that they be notified? ~ cygnis insignis 06:47, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
    • No. Our policy is to get the facts right. If you are mentioned, e.g. in "The current AfD, nominated on November 22 by cygnis insignis" and we are certain that you indeed did nominate the article for AfD (see link in that section), then we likely won't contact you. If there is some controversy involved about what the facts are, we likely will ask you for a comment. Of course anybody who does have a comment (even if they aren't mentioned) can comment here, but please don't use that as an excuse to just keep a controversy going here that has been addressed ad nausem in other places. So, first question: did The Signpost get the facts right? If so you probably don't want to complain to us. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:13, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
  • @Cygnis insignis: This is the first article I've written for the Signpost, and I ended up having to throw the part about that AfD together at the last minute (since it wasn't showing up in AfD logs until a day or two before the publication deadline). If it weren't so rushed, I probably would have thrown a ping on the talk page or something. But as Smallbones says above, there wasn't a whole lot of commentary on your specific role in it (just that you were the one who made the nomination), so I'm not sure there would have been much to dispute or amend. jp×g 06:53, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
  • JPxG. Thanks for the insightful article. Quick question. It says that 62% of AFDs close delete and 20% close keep. What does the rest of the pie chart look like? What percent are redirect, merge, draftify, no consensus? I ask because I want to calculate the % of articles that are deleted including alternatives to deletion. I suspect that number is much higher than 62%. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:21, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
  • JPxG. The prose you quote from WP:SPORTSEVENT is a result of the students' efforts as we both found the previous prose confusing. So a beneficial consequence of this incident has been that I think the notability guideline is now more clear. -Reagle (talk) 17:35, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Discussion report: On the brink of change – RfA reforms appear imminent (1,398 bytes · 💬)

Missing "y" in "stated that the will not take on the role of enforcing the results"? Apokrif (talk) 20:40, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Readers are welcome to fix typos ☆ Bri (talk) 21:16, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Wow, had no idea I had been mentioned here. Why the "noping" template? Taking Out The Trash (talk) 01:26, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
    • So you did not get pinged during the article drafting process. — Mhawk10 (talk) 04:03, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
      • No. The correct answer is “because someone forgot to remove the ‘noping’ after the ‘drafting process’” (“Drafting process?” that sounds like something that happens in those wobble-plate can-o-draft stouts.) Qwirkle (talk) 23:38, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Given that this proposal does nothing to correct the essential problem of adminship, unearned tenure, this will almost certainly make things worse rather than better. Qwirkle (talk) 23:38, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

From a Wikipedia reader: What's Matt Amodio? (3,138 bytes · 💬)

  • Is this THE Matt Amodio? Wow! Thanks for stopping by the Signpost! I can't believe it! XxxorBBroxxX (talk) 03:21, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Matt. I thoroughly enjoyed the article. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:54, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Congratulations on your streak, Matt, I watched every game. Thanks for stopping by ... your encouragement was refreshing, and we don't get a lot of Signpost articles like this one. - Dank (push to talk) 15:04, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Congrats, and thanks for an interesting article. I recall reading something similar several weeks ago. Perhaps [1]? Eddie891 Talk Work 21:28, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Although Matt is evidently better at it than most of us are, the structured, telescopable exposure and absorption that he describes here is important for all of us. For all the faults in Wikipedia that people can adduce, I remain convinced that the line of thought that he lays out here is important and worth appreciating. Thanks for sharing. Quercus solaris (talk) 02:54, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
A very well-written article, Matt. Always good to hear some nice feedback from a reader! Congratulations on your extraordinary Jeopardy! performance. — Bilorv (talk) 21:44, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
Congratulations on your wonderful Jeopardy performance, Matt, and thank you for the well-written, eloquent article. Though they may be of different mediums and of entirely different contexts, Jeopardy and Wikipedia both represent and extol our remarkable capability of acquiring a vast repository of knowledge and broadening our intellectual horizons. I look forward to seeing you on the Tournament of Champions! Alacritical (talk) 01:37, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
Here a salute from Vulp to you, Matt! Wikipedia blue link always attract my attention and in most of time sparking Vulp's interest towards a specific topic related to parent article.--Vulp❯❯❯here! 04:19, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Matt! Well said! Side note - would you consider uploading an image to the project for your page? ;) CaffeinAddict (talk) 04:28, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Humour: A very new very Wiki crossword (3,385 bytes · 💬)

  • Most of these seemed much easier than last month, but I'm very much at a loss for 16. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:40, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
@Sdkb: Obi-Wan Kenobi may be able to help you. – Rhain ☔ 04:39, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
My guess would be "IAmTheSenate", but take that with a grain of salt. Panini!🥪 20:24, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
I said Kenobi, not Palpatine.   – Rhain ☔ 22:19, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Will the answers be posted next month? The ones I didn't get are driving me nuts lol. INDT (talk) 09:16, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
    • Yes, the answers will be posted next month - I'm also happy to give you alternate clues / hints for the ones you didn't get. Ganesha811 (talk) 12:15, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
      I managed to get a few more, but 1, 4, and 19 still escape me, and alternate clues would be greatly appreciated! INDT (talk) 15:46, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
      • Some alternate clues (highlight to read): 1-Down "Reflection device" / 4-Across "Wikipedia is a ______ work" / 19-Across "Fedora memorandum" Ganesha811 (talk) 16:41, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
        Ah, still took me a while, but the feeling once I got that last word in was amazing. Great work! INDT (talk) 17:27, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
        • You might want to get your periodic table out for 5 down. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 13:03, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Thank you so much for creating this. Had a lot of fun, but still haven't cracked number 13 across. I guess because I don't follow any kind of fashion trends. —⁠andrybak (talk) 15:04, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
  • It has a Wikipedia article, according to which it has been around since the 14th century. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:01, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Finally got round to having a proper attempt at this, finding it just as tricky as last month, unlike Sdkb. I think 3 down could have been better, as it just contains the answer within the letters of the clue: I would have gone with "janitor", "mop holder" or "sysop". I enjoyed a lot of these, particularly 8 down, 9 down, 14 across and 19 across. For 1 down my first instinct was "joejob", but I got there in the end. — Bilorv (talk) 18:11, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

In the media: Denial: climate change, mass killings and pornography (14,136 bytes · 💬)

  • With all due respect to David, why is The Signpost covering his blog on Creative Commons that does not discuss Wikipedia in any detail? I was under the impression that this section is for 'Wikipedia or Wikimedia in the media', not 'what some admins are blogging about'. There is plenty of news from CC world that we never cover. Considering his blog is monetized (at the very least it is advertising his books), I am not sure we are following the best practices here. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 00:54, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
    • @Piotrus: Anything about CC is related to Wikipedia IMHO (Same for Section 230, IMHO). We report on a blog every 2-3 months. It just depends on the quality of the blog, and what they have to say. David Gerard's blockchain blog is the best source on everything related to crypto on the web. Though his sense of humour could use a bit of work. Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:59, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
      I don't agree that anything about Creative Commons is related to Wikipedia (and equivalent to coverage in the media of Wikipedia). There are many different Creative Commons licenses that aren't relevant, and the arcana of copyright licensing isn't always relevant to the task of writing a crowd-sourced encyclopedia. In this particular instance, coverage of what the Creative Commons organization is sharing on social media is unrelated to how Wikipedia is covered. (Of course, this does not preclude covering this issue in another section of the Signpost.) isaacl (talk) 22:05, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
    • Almost everything we cover at "In the media" is monetized. It would be silly to exclude for that reason. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:16, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Annie Rauwerda, author of the Boing Boing article mentioned at the very end of this one, runs the Instagram account @depthsofwikipedia. Worth a look for a laugh, and almost notable enough for an article. ezlev (user/tlk/ctrbs) 01:51, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Desmond is advocating a highly idiosyncratic definition of "pornography" as applying only to illegal content. That might have been true 60 years ago, but currently, content that 99% of people would consider pornographic is completely legal in many Western countries. I expect that Desmond will have little success with any lawsuit, based on an objective evaluation of the content of the various magazines and websites that Desmond used to publish. Cullen328 (talk) 03:00, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
    • yes a "highly idiosyncratic" definition. I think folks in the US would have laughed at his definition starting about 1974? when Deep Throat came out and wasn't shut down. When did this level of legal obvious porn come out in the UK?
This story, to me, was the biggest mystery of the month. What did he hope to accomplish by doing this? Did he intentionally leak his lawyers' work for some reason? Who else would have leaked the legal work? His lawyers? Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:38, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
It may reflect a "no publicity is bad publicity" mindset.--Kent G. Budge (talk) 17:33, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Fun Fact: In the second section it says "[...] this AfD entry." In Germany, there is a far-right political party called AfD. Directly after this sentence comes "Wikipedia may delete entry on 'mass killings' under Communism [...]" – Hidden message? -Killarnee (C•T•U) 14:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
    • Actually - no. When I wrote this I had no thought about anything related to German political parties. AfD is one of the most commonly used Wiki-abbreviations, and I think that fact, plus linking to the deletion discussion, and the word "deletion" in the previous and next sentences made it crystal clear what the subject was. But at least now I know how bizarre conspiracy theories are born. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:05, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
      A conspiracy theory about the AfD, that's something completely new. Usually, conspiracy theories come FROM the AfD. [2] But don't take it so seriously, that should be meant as a joke: "where there is trouble, the afd is not far" -Killarnee (C•T•U) 16:18, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Frankly, it has always been weird to me that we type "AfD", considering Wikipedia:Articles for deletion isn't capitalized that way. I think it's mostly that "Afd" looks stupid, and "AFD" is obviously wrong since "for" would not be capitalized in any case. A compromise, I suppose. jp×g 12:31, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
  Off-topic @JPxG: Initialisms are basically always title-cased, is the thing. The only exception is in the sciences, where they regularly talk about "DNA" but always write "deoxyribonucleic acid" uncapitalized. As for the rest of us, we write "ATM" even though it stands for "automated teller machine", a phrase that has no business being capitalized except as a consequence of the fact that it's expanded from "ATM". (So, to put it another way, the expansion of an initialism is nearly always treated as a proper noun. At least until the acronym/initialism gets subsumed by the language entirely and detaches from its original expansion, as happened with "snafu".)
In isolation, "Articles for Discussion" would probably just become "AD", when made into an initialism; "AfD" would be used if the 'f' came from somewhere inside the word that started with "A".
(Ref: IMDb for Internet Movie Database, BeOS for Be Operating System, LaTeX (or LATEX, more properly) for Lamport's TEX — but TeX is a bad example all around, since the original name is actually made up of the Greek letters tau, epsilon, and chi. It's not an initialism at all, and Donald Knuth was a weird dude.)
Further, if there are other initialisms being used in the same linguistic space, all bets are off as to how they're forced to be distinct from each other.
There's also the further tradition of constructing backronyms from pre-selected initialisms/acronyms, and taking great liberties is practically the norm there. Both in real life, and in fiction.[1]

"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."
"And what does that mean to you?"
"It means someone really wanted our initials to spell out 'shield'."

So, there's pretty strong precedent for "AfD", or... well, nearly anything and everything else you can think of, TBH. English has always been an IAR space, since long before Jimbo was even born. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 12:06, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ wikiquote:Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.#Season_3
  • Disappointing that The Telegraph didn't find anything about the keep side worth mentioning. Perhaps there was none when they wrote it. Or they thought that all their arguments were nonsense. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:22, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
    • The second half of Professor Tomb's quote above should do it. "I have read the Wikipedia page, and it seems to me careful and balanced. Therefore attempts to remove it can only be ideologically motivated – to whitewash Communism." I think he approves of the keep side and disapproves of the delete side. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:21, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
      Yeah, but it seems like that's about the article. Still no mention there's actually WP-editors arguing for keep. I'd like to see Harrison and/or Benjakob take this subject on. Maybe Harrison would be better, because paywall. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:18, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
      I see Fox picked "would be truly Orwellian" and "Stop left and woke censorship," from the keep side. Not necessarily a better approach, IMO, but they have their customers to think of. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:02, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
I was thinking that Fox News would wait until after the deletion discussion is concluded to write an article, but I guess they are too eager to push an anti-communist agenda. X-Editor (talk) 21:24, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
After the discussion closes as keep/no consensus there's not much of a story for Fox etc. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:39, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Good point, but how are you certain it will close as keep/no consensus? X-Editor (talk) 21:45, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
I can't be certain, but that's where my money is. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:52, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
And why is that? What's been decided and by whom? Do you know something we don't? DublinDilettante (talk) 22:12, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
@DublinDilettante: The person literally said that they can't be certain, so I'm pretty sure they don't know anything the rest of us don't. X-Editor (talk) 22:39, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Was the question directed at you? Why are you harassing me and reverting my edits across multiple articles? It's weird behaviour. DublinDilettante (talk) 22:57, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm not too surprised at The Telegraph's skewed reporting. It has embraced the "culture war" and seems to have a thing for Wikipedia bashing. It uncritically published an article of Sanger's diatribe earlier this year. An upmarket Fox for British retirees? Jr8825 • Talk 14:01, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Japanese and Croatian wikipedia (among others) already have some content problems regarding nationalism, how are you guys surprised they're also pushing climate change denial? -Gouleg🛋️ harass/hound 03:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
    • No, I wasn't surprised. I just thought I'd let Wikipedians know that it's popped up again. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:54, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Croatian Wikipedia has certainly gotten better since the old admin team was ousted (in part thanks to yours truly). Let's also not forget that it also used to have a lot of anti-LGBT stuff on there too, so honestly I would be surprised if they didn't deny climate change. That wiki represented the confluence of many different far-right agendas pretty much held together by a group of 4 or so admins. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done to erase the damage they caused. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 07:12, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
  • "As bad as Holocaust denial"? ~ cygnis insignis 06:31, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Holocaust 6 million deaths, communism-related 100 million deaths? No words.... --TheImaCow (talk) 12:40, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
  • if benchmarking political influence, the English wikipedia entry on Imelda Marcos remains a highlight. [Anonymous Coward] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.200.4.206 (talk) 12:33, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Just bad taste Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:54, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  • "pOrN iS LeGaL!"
Child porn: 👁️👄👁️
GeraldWL 01:27, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

News from Diff: Content translation tool helps create one million Wikipedia articles (5,883 bytes · 💬)

  • I think translation should be taken with good care. In some wikis, there are bad machine translations and it's bad for Wikipedia development Thingofme (talk) 04:01, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • This text is rather promotionally worded ("take translation to another dimension", etc.) For balance, should it not have included discussion on the en.wiki restrictions on the tool? AllyD (talk) 08:37, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
    Because English is the source language of the translation, so the translation problem is smaller than a lot of wikis. In some wikis, they have a higher restrictions on Content Translation Tool, like limiting 85/15% or disabling completely, like m:Special:Translate; or restrictions only for extended-confirmed users. Machine translation reduces the quality of the works and many articles in other projects have been deleted because of machine or bot-making articles. Example Lsjbot Thingofme (talk) 03:35, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
  • This is a frightful and promotional article, about something that rarely works as well as promised. No one should be translating with tools as they should be consulting the original sources to see if text is actually verified and there is no close paraphrasing or copyvio, etc. You can’t do that with a tool. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:12, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
    • @SandyGeorgia: As suggested by @Thingofme: just above this, the problems translating into the English Wikipedia are not as strong as you represent IMHO - for various reasons. Different language versions have different standards. One of the big protections for enWiki in my experience is the stricter requirements for sources. If you're going to translate something into enWiki, you better have some pretty good sources in the original, minimum 3 to oversimplify. So, assuming folks respect our referencing requirements, only the very best of non-enWiki articles are going to be translated into English. Of course the "writer" should have a good knowledge of the original language as well. Given that there are a lot of non-native English speaking editors here with near-native English writing abilities, I'd encourage them to translate from their native languages into English, once they understand our standards - and using machine translation should be a pretty good time-saver. But, of course, just turning on the machine and plopping down the output as a completed article is not going to work.
    • As suggested above (once more) translating from enWiki into another wiki should be technically easier, but has cultural difficulties. Whether the article is about road construction, public health measures, or apple pie, their readers probably don't want an article that is completely from an anglophone POV and ignores their home country conditions. So they have other special conditions and rules. So machine translation these days is a good tool, just not a miracle method. Smallbones(smalltalk) 05:18, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
      So, assuming folks respect our referencing requirements … you see the problem? And, even if they do “respect our referencing requirements”, plagiarism and copyvio (along with poor machine translations) are often the problem. Then, these machine-translated articles hit DYK, where there may not be reviewers who have the language skills to check, and it turns out that a) they aren’t reliable sources, or b) they are poor translations with errors, or c) they have too close paraphrasing or plagiarism. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:21, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Translation done well can be a highly-efficient way to amplify the impact of volunteers writing in one language, to quickly expand small Wikipedias, and to improve coverage of underrepresented topics on big Wikipedias. I have been very flattered in the past to see much article content I've written, particularly on the topic of Black Mirror, translated into several other languages. However, like those above I am concerned by the potential consequences of low-quality usage. It is a very dangerous tool if used even slightly wrongly: the person using it must have a good understanding of both languages (particularly the one they're translating it into); they must actually read the given sources; they must be taking care over all the normal things they would do when writing an article from scratch. These are the sorts of areas and content writing methods we see overeager Wikimedians causing large disruption in, and it can be very difficult to detect—as SandyGeorgia says above—because of the language barriers. — Bilorv (talk) 23:18, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
  • If only we could use DeepL to traslate we would have better translations (from my experience, DeepL is really better than Google t.)Javiermes (talk) 03:36, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
    Doesn't DeepL need a license to use its API? It is good at making translations, in my experience, but I hope that they license it out to WMF at a low cost. Those poor IP users already have enough fundraising banners as it is. Explodicator7331 (talk) 15:20, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Recent research: Vandalizing Wikipedia as rational behavior (5,450 bytes · 💬)

  • Results [...] support the theory that experts are unaware of demand [i.e. experienced editors do not usually check traffic levels of the articles they edit] but they are stimulated to respond to article consumption if consumers signal demand for that particular good through their contributions as novice producers. Very true. I think that article views can get away from some people, so someone randomly editing an article for the first time to try and fix some error (even if they are unable to) generally captures editor attention more often than no one actively doing anything. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 07:45, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
    • I do something slightly similar myself. When in an urban place that I haven't seen in recent years, I bring up the Commons App map or sometimes the WikiShootMe site. It shows me any nearby unphotographed Wikipedia articles or Wikidata items, and I snap them. Sometimes the object isn't there, because WD has the wrong coordinates. Editing WD coords correctly on the phone screen is difficult for me, but that's okay. I just edit the location incorrectly. It's seldom worse than before, and any watchers' watchlists will show it. And whose watchlist? Mine. Upon returning home I've got the big screen and can easily make it right.
    • But hmm, editors are unaware of the amount of demand for their particular articles. Maybe there ought to be an option to make the monthly reader count more prominent. Jim.henderson (talk) 01:13, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
    • I came here to highlight the exact same passage. It would be interesting if there was an opt-in tool where you could specify articles to "super-watchlist" and be notified of sudden pageview spikes (say, if a single day hits x10 of the previous monthly/yearly average, or x3 of the previous daily record). Perhaps it'd only be worthwhile for topics where there is high potential for this: a TV show whose latest season just aired; any living person (who might gain increased media attention for any number of reasons) etc. But, as the paper finds, I do encounter in practice that inexperienced/new editors draw my attention to new developments by adding a basic description that needs expansion and good referencing. The most recent case of this for me happened today with Death to 2020, which will have a sequel this year.
      As for editors being unaware of baseline levels of views, there's a possibility here for someone to write a bot to send a monthly opt-in personalised message saying "of the articles you've substantially contributed to [added/removed more than 500 bytes last month], these are the ones with the highest pageviews that you might consider giving priority to". — Bilorv (talk) 23:51, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
  • ...value expectancy theory "suggests that identifiability acts as a constraint on deviant behavior." Dissidents realize that they are outliers and their asocial behavior only finds voice when they can hide from the consequences. I suspect that many of the editors who protect IP editing know this as they, themselves, are deviants or are deviant-adjacent and support this asociality. (I deliberately edit under my real name.) Were Wikipedia to adapt some version of attributable point of view, as opposed to the farce of WP:NPOV (which isn't really neutral) perhaps we could include minority narratives to create a useful release valve for these dead-enders. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:41, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Working in political areas, it appears to me that much involved vandalism (something that took the vandal more than 30 seconds to write) arises from the vandal's perceived lack of political autonomy and a lack of representation of their views in mainstream media. Wikipedia merely repeats what the (fact-based) mainstream media say, but we are editable where other news sources are not. Media narratives arise from one of two places: the elite dictate what narrative to impose on the public (Rupert Murdoch is the most-cited example here); or market interests dictate that a news source should, in a hyperpartisan manner, manufacture sensationalised stories in whatever topics research indicates will be most-clicked on. Both types of narratives are exclusionary of many people in our society.
    The more superficial vandalism (racist comments, blanking etc.) in political topics is more a consequence of mainstream media manufacturing negative attention on a particular person or scapegoat. Most of it is fairly transient, but sometimes it amounts to long-term persistent attacks from what is undoubtedly the same group of people who will be sending death threats on social media and otherwise engaging in harassment and violence. — Bilorv (talk) 23:51, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Serendipity: "Did you know ..." featured a photo of the wrong female WWII pilot (14,990 bytes · 💬)

  • When newspapers make an error like this, they issue a correction. I wonder if we ought to do the same. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:20, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
    • After 20 years or so you'd think Wikipedia (and DYK in particular) would have already developed a sytem of stating corrections - if we were ever to do it. There's just no place to do it, or any standard of when it should be done. Think of Andreas's opinion piece from last month. Should we prominently post in the article "whoops, wrong photo folks - sorry"? I expect The Signpost will be the best place to do it for some time to come. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:50, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
      • This would be the second time I've seen an F-up on the main page of this caliber, the first was when the mainpage misidentified a Colonel as General MacAuthor and apparently no one picked up on it until it was out on the mainpage. TomStar81 (Talk) 12:11, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
    • Perhaps one way to do a correction is to somehow modify the DYK lineup, but I'm not familiar enough with that process to know if that's feasible without screwing up something else. ThadeusOfNazerethTalk to Me! 13:27, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
    • I thought so too—the fact that it wasn't "our fault" (the mistake was in the source itself) meant that I encountered some significant initial pushback. I still support the idea, though. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 19:54, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
    • Even though I wasn't the only one who made a blunder due to outside coverage, I wish that I knew this happened since I promoted the image to the prep. I just learned of the situation through this article. SL93 (talk) 20:09, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Interesting, because they did the very same thing with a photo of General MacArthur, that wasn’t, in another WWII female bio (Beulah Ream Allen), last year. [3] I wonder if the problem is DYK, or something else, as this is two in the same realm, and people of a certain age know what MacArthur looked like. Talk:Beulah Ream Allen#Did you know nomination SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:08, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
  • SandyGeorgia I'm not sure what you mean by something else, but that DYK was nominated by two women and promoted by a woman. SL93 (talk) 01:12, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
    Interesting. That suggests we may be in too much of a hurry to promote articles about women by women. It may be an unfortunate truth that most men of a certain age know what MacArthur looks like. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:23, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Andrew Davidson started a stub about Volkerz. I was about to beat him by 3 hours :-) but I decided to step aside :-) In doing research I run into some group photos and here is a caption: ATA women pilots at No.15 Ferry Pool, Hamble, in 1943. Here Mary is with friends, standing second right of the picture. In the front row, left to right, are: Rita Baines, Rosemary Bannister, Faith Bennett, Rosemary Rees, Margot Gore, Veronica Volkersz, Jackie Sorour, Mary Wilkins, Margaret Frost. In the back row, again left to right, are: Pam Tulk-Hart, Joy Gough, Sylvia Edwards, Monique Agazarian and Helen Kerly

It is nice to see that the majority of these ladies got their article, but some are still missing. Anyone? "Women in Red"? Loew Galitz (talk) 18:03, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

@Loew Galitz What besides being female is your standard here? Are all ATA pilots during WWII notable too regardless of gender? Should all male ATA pilots have an article? Jason Quinn (talk) 15:23, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
What "standard" are you talking about? I merely copied a caption of a photo of an all-female division. I dont care about male pilots, just as I don't care that wikipedia has an article on every single Nazi soldier with an Iron Cross. You have problems with this? Loew Galitz (talk) 19:28, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Your comment implies that all the people in the caption are notable and should have articles, even going so far as prompting people to go create them. You wrote, "It is nice to see that the majority of these ladies got their article, but some are still missing. Anyone?" So, saying you just "copied a caption" is false. The standard I'm talking about is your personal standard of notability under which you assumed all these pilots are notable, presumably just for being female. Since, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information I'm worried that your standard is too loose compared to Wikipedia's guideline for notability. Given what you've written, it is tenable that you A) assume these ATA pilots are notable primarily because they are female and B) admit that you "don't care about male pilots". So, although I'm sure it was not done deliberately, you are advocating for adding gender bias to Wikipedia articles. Advocating for this kind of editing therefore violates our neutrality policy. So, yes, taken as a whole, I do have a problem with what your comment is implying. It conflicts with Wikipedia's goal of creating a high-quality neutral encyclopedia. The proper way to approach this is would be to ask, "Should any of these other female ATA pilots have articles?", not to assume they should as the wording of your comment clearly suggests. Jason Quinn (talk) 02:19, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
I am worried you are reading my mind and making far-reaching conclusions up to accusations instead of asking clarifying questions. This is hardly a cooperative approach. Also, your answers to my two questions are non-answers. (Q:What "standard" are you talking about? A: The standard I'm talking about is your personal standard of notability under which you assumed all these pilots are notable, presumably just for being female" -Oh, really?). Yes I don't care about male pilots. I don't care about Hasidic rabbis, I don't care about governors of Wisconsin, I don't care about pokemon and sex workers, I don't care about mountains in Kenya. And I thoroughly disagree that this conflicts with "the goal of creating a high-quality neutral encyclopedia". Your demand for me to care about male pilots is on par with these snotty Wikipedia readers who raise media tantrums about Wikipedia errors instead of fixing them. Loew Galitz (talk) 03:34, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
I was not trying to read your mind; that's why I quoted your own words, which do suggest that all these pilots ought to have articles based only on the fact that they are female. That is not how to think about notability for Wikipedia. If that's not not what you are doing, then all you have to do is say I'm mistaken and move on. I have nothing more to say on the matter so I'll finish with this comment. Jason Quinn (talk) 09:03, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
Sorry, I am not mistaken. It is you who are mistaken trying to act accusatively based on your assumptions. Yes, you are quoting my words; and then jumping to conclusions. Since you refuse to communicate, for the record: you are severely confusing "notability for Wikipedia" and Wikipedians' preference which topics to pick: there is nothing wrong for a Wikipedian to prefer writing about women only and this has nothing to do with WP:N. (FYI I didn't write a single article about women; you picked a fight with a wrong person). Loew Galitz (talk) 18:21, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
  • I think part of the problem is that DYK is one of our review processes which is bound by a stricter time frame, i.e. the "New" criteria, thus there's a rush to get the nomination out the door on the part of the nominator. Some nominators in the past have seemed to exhibit tendencies which show they care more about the success of their DYK nomination than the actual quality of the article being promoted (Template:Did you know nominations/Alec Sutherland), which is not how the process is supposed to work. I'm not familiar enough with WiR to make accusations of structural issues per se, but it is a project which regularly encourages and rewards the speedy production of content, so I'm not terribly surprised that an old mislabeled photo would fall through the cracks. -Indy beetle (talk) 00:48, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
  • In that case, the issues were resolved during the review process and the article is now GA status. SL93 (talk) 21:59, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Yes, and it's quite nice to see the article at GA now, but I'm doubtful much would have been said if I didn't place a tag on the article. -Indy beetle (talk) 12:44, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
  • There are some rather strange comments on the topic of gender above. I don't really understand the applicability, given the discussion is over one recent case of a man with the wrong image, and one recent case of a woman with the wrong image. (So, what makes this a problem specific to women subjects or editors?) Two errors is not worth starting witch-hunts over, though there is validity in pursuing discussion about a corrections section/process. I agree with comments in favour of one above, but would like to point out that there's only so much use it could have—newspapers really have them for legal reasons, and as a way to cordon off that pesky matter of the truth when it conflicts with the newspaper's propaganda (100 people read the lie on the front page and 5 read the tiny correction a week later). — Bilorv (talk) 00:38, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
    Actually, both are women’s bios (one happened to have an image of her with a man). Are these processes being hurried? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:44, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
    I see. I've struck the appropriate part of my comment. — Bilorv (talk) 09:23, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
  • The whole DYK process is deeply flawed. Its the easiest way to get an article to the front page and the standards to get there are way too low.--Catlemur (talk) 08:54, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Yep. What worries me is that some people seem to be "feeding" their ego off DYK: they even have a policy that for every 6 self-noms a person have to review one nom. Meaning that some people are just bombing DYK with self-noms. I would suggest to restrict self-noms. Loew Galitz (talk) 17:25, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
      Well, the "reward culture" is a factor at all content review processes. For years, we worked successfully to minimize the impact on WP:FAC, but that, too, has changed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:51, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
      What I described, if my guess is correct, introduces a strong bias into DYK. You remember the case with DYK when it was flooded with articles about one country? I forgot whether it was Madagascar or Hibraltar. Loew Galitz (talk) 18:14, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
      Gibraltarpedia, nothing to do with "ego", but (critics would say) sustained government interference with Wikipedia that went beyond DYK. — Bilorv (talk) 21:18, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
      That isn't the policy at DYK. An editor with five or less nominations doesn't have to review a nom. An editor with over 5 nominations has to review a nom for every nomination. I'm not sure where you received that wrong information. SL93 (talk) 19:31, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
      In addition to SL93's correction, almost all noms are self-noms. Joint nominations sometimes occur, but nominating an article for DYK without consultation of major editors involved is disruptive and out of process (as is the case at all quality review processes). The central purpose of the DYK section is to celebrate newly-improved content, so nominations need to be made quickly (though the review can take as long as necessary to ensure accuracy and quality). — Bilorv (talk) 21:18, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
      I hear about DYK having serious issues at times, but I don't buy that. When issues about DYK are brought up on the errors page, it is usually only minor mistakes involving spelling, formatting, and missing wikilinks. Assuming good faith is still a thing and assuming bad things about DYK contributors, especially without contacting them yourself, is wrong. Two issues with images in the long history of DYK is not a reason to make rude assumptions. SL93 (talk) 21:52, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Did you know ... that the Wikipedia article for Dutch pilot Ida Veldhuyzen van Zanten (pictured) was originally promoted with a photo of Veronica Volkersz (pictured), and the matter was covered in the Wikipedia Signpost? Accompanied by a montage picture of both. ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 08:59, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Technology report: What does it take to upload a file? (4,948 bytes · 💬)

We really need to offer more powerful (and well-maintained) upload tools, for both indivudal and institutional users. The fact that nobody owns this issue at the moment is simply crazy, also considering the Strategic Direction. --Gnom (talk) 16:24, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, except that I'm not sure how the Strategic Direction is helpful in that regard - are you referring to this very brief mention there: "... there are many external factors that we must account for to plan for the future. Many readers now expect multimedia formats beyond text and images"? Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:38, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
@HaeB: Well, the first sentence of the Strategic Direction says that we want to become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge. Allowing people to easily and professionally upload files on Commons is a pretty basic building block for an "essential infrastructure", I'd say. --Gnom (talk) 23:30, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
@Gnom: If this kind of handwavy interpretation of generic language from the strategy documents is the best we can do, then they are even less useful than I thought for the purpose of actually prioritizing work of strategic importance. I mean, I fully agree with you in this case, but it's easy to imagine the same nine words from the Strategic Direction (which are even less concrete than the WMF's mission statement) being similarly cited in support of all kinds of other less impactful efforts. A strategy that doesn't facilitate meaningful prioritization is not worth much.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 12:19, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
  • For more technically inclined readers, more details on the "recent issue" and the incident postmortem is at https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation/2021-11-04_large_file_upload_timeouts . Short version: the slow large file uploads were in place for 9 months before being fixed (granted, it was hard-to-find invisible blue smoke at fault - a Debian upgrade apparently quietly turned on HTTP/2 which had slow upload speed for... reasons). Pretty sure that hiring a few extra backend engineers would be a more productive use of Wikimedia Foundation donations then whatever else they're using it for... SnowFire (talk) 01:27, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
As Amir said in his excellent recent rant: "And it all boils down to not having a dedicated team on multimedia but in all fairness, it's not something you can fix overnight. You need to grow, hire, plan, etc. etc."
On that note, this Signpost article's otherwise great historical context section should have mentioned that starting in the mid 2010s, the WMF already had a dedicated multimedia team for a while (which the article alludes to in veiled form further down, but doesn't go into). Its formation was motivated by many of the same issues that persist today, see this 2013 announcement: "Breaking through walls of text: How we will create a richer Wikimedia experience [...] There has never been a well-resourced team fully dedicated to multimedia engineering work at the Wikimedia Foundation. This is about to change. ..." Of the challenges listed there eight years ago, the team successfully addressed some (in particular the lack of "a standard lightbox viewer for media embedded in an article"), but then was pulled into other directions and later dissolved before making any serious impact on the video UX or, apparently, the technical issues discussed in this Signpost article.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 01:21, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
@HaeB: I remember back when MediaViewer was going to be a "quick win" before working on more complicated projects. ROFL. Bawolff (talk) 07:35, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Traffic report: Reporting ticket sales on the edge of the Wiki, if Eternals should fail (300 bytes · 💬)

  • The Diwali Song! Haha. I did not expected a link of it here. -Nizil (talk) 08:17, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

WikiCup report: The WikiCup 2021 (1,354 bytes · 💬)

  • Lee Vilenski's coverage of snooker is one of the very few things that keeps me from total retirement from Wikipedia. Keep up the good work, Lee. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:36, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
    I think I've run out of articles now Kudpung. Please don't retire. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:15, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Very well-chosen images to commemorate an excellent cup with inordinately high output. The unfortunate absence of Adam Cuerden from all but the start was felt, but many competitors produced some truly amazing work. — Bilorv (talk) 21:37, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Excellent work, everyone!--Vulp❯❯❯here! 04:13, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

WikiProject report: Interview with contributors to WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers (298 bytes · 💬)

  • I enjoyed reading this one, thank you to all involved! Ganesha811 (talk) 18:14, 7 December 2021 (UTC)


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