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Hello Jimmy, it has been a while, and I'm glad to see you are still with us; none of us are getting any younger are we? - Seems we are doomed to grow old together - in the same city too I hear; never mind, there are worse things in life. Anyway, I'm digressing: I've recently had a run-in on my first attempt at editing at Commons (although I didn't actually realise I was editing at Commons). Whatever, to cut a long story short, you might like to take a look a this [1] not everyone is quite as resiliant and tough as me. Giano 19:01, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Well the impressive thing is that the community there seems solidly on your side.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:32, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, that is impressive isn't it? - very humbling. Funnily enough, you and I were at nearby tables in the same restaurant once last year; I nearly wandered over to slap you on the back and say "Hi, c'est moi", but then I thought the sound of very expensive dental work crumbling on a fork is never attractive or welcome - so I restrained myself. Have a nice 2014 Jimmy. Giano 21:38, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
If you think I have expensive dental work, you haven't looked at too many closeups. :)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:43, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
But your American, you all have beautiful teeth, it's only us poor, old Europeans that have characterful, but often startling black and gold grins. Giano 08:59, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
This explains everything that is wrong with Commons. The nomination read, and I quote, "The resolution really sucks! This graphics editor is capable of far better work than this mediocre crap. Please overwrite with a version that shows your true skills" That isn't even a valid reason for deletion. Now, here on the en-wiki the discussion would have been speedily closed after a flurry of snow. But over there, the editors saw fit to derail the discussion and turn it into about whether the picture could ever be used on an article (a redundant question in and of itself, of course it wouldn't). The discussion was then closed as delete. Forget false consensus, there was an obvious no consensus, with 11 keep and 17 delete votes. Secondly, the nominator blatantly and obviously supervoted. I don't know what the hell is going on over there at Commons, but it's obviously not good. Note that this is not a commentary on the picture itself. The picture can be found on Wikipediocracy at http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/01/26/wikipedia-the-new-ministry-of-truth/ for those who haven't seen it. KonveyorBelt 01:18, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
The problem is that when one uploads a photograph to Wikipedia, Commons can take it and delete it here. Yes, we have the 'keeplocal' template, but many uploaders are unaware of it, and Commons has in the past tried to have the template abolished, so it's a risky, vague science. At present, uploading to Wikipedia, is rather like giving a much loved friend a Christmas present only to find it's been given away to the neighbours who have trashed it and given you the finger at the same time. Of course, we all know that when we sign away all rights, we should cease to care, but human nature is not like that. The simplest solution is to have a definitive template that prevents an image being uploaded to Commons, until that happens, I won't be uploading any more images to Wikipedia. Giano 09:54, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
I think you deserve an apology from Commons. At the same time, some issues are merely technical. It is not Common's decision that all possible media to be hosted in Commons. It was a decision by WMF for making available all of them for all projects. I don't like the way it (the image is hosted and managed by Commons and all related requests and discussions should carry out there) is hidden from laymen. See [2]. Jee 11:29, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Given that photos have to be CC-BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL'd to be usable on Wikipedia, it'd be impossible to prevent it from being uploaded to Commons (Well, we could delete everything and start over under a new licence, but I suspect that's a non-starter). If keeplocals aren't being respected, ask someone in Category:Wikipedia administrators willing to provide copies of deleted articles to undelete it here. WilyD 11:36, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
It is possible to keep the same file here and in Commons, even under same name. So I didn't get what you mean. BTW, "keep local" is not a solution for the problem; it is the right attitude. Jee 11:49, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Uh, reading the whole conversation gives the context. If someone (Giano, say) wants an image kept locally so it can monitored/whatever here, but it's moved to Commons and deleted here, that's a problem with a solution. If someone wants to licence an image so it can't be uploaded to Commons, that's a problem with no solution. So one needs to distinguish what's meant. WilyD 13:19, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
I'd like to see more pictures "kept local" because they would not be used outside of here. For Commons to insist that they take charge of everything is silly when nobody else would use them anyway. The joke picture of Jimmy in 1984 would not be used on, say, the Chinese Wikipedia. KonveyorBelt 17:05, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
The Keep Local template does not stop Commons taking the picture; it just stops them deleting it here after they've taken it. In the past there have been attempts to abolish the Keep Local. Giano 17:15, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Konveyor Belt When you upload a picture, you are agreeing that "...that it is legally okay for anybody to use, in Wikipedia and elsewhere, for any purpose." Not sure why you're not getting this. --NeilNtalk to me 17:22, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
"Legally ok" does not equal to "ethically ok"; if it did we would not have or need the "keep local" template. --John (talk) 17:32, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
I agree, but expecting people to adhere to the latter distinction is basically hopeless. Either an image is free for anyone to use for any purpose (subject to their own local laws) or it isn't. I don't think the WMF is about to introduce more narrowly-scoped licenses. --NeilNtalk to me 17:48, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Of course it is legally okay for Commons to use it. That still doesn't mean that they need to. KonveyorBelt 17:34, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
There has been a lot of discussion of over the last several months about the Commons, their function and their policy and there seems to be a lot of valid arguments about the way they do things and their content. Which makes me wonder, why do we need to use commons. It should be easy enough to make a bot that pulls the images we want and need into Wikipedia and then we can just cut ties. We can do our thing and they can do theirs. As far as I know and am concerned, the usage of commons is not required and if this community decides we don't want to use it, for whatever reason, then we can implement that change locally as we did with the Visual Editor changes. There is just no reason to continue to fight with them about policy and content issues IMO. 138.162.8.59 (talk) 20:51, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Commons is this great monster that looms over us. We don't need it, and we don't have to have it. Without us, the uploaders, there is no Commons, no Foundation and no Wikipedia. Most of us are here to support Wikipedia and couldn't care less about this other project. If we want to upload images purely to Wikipedia, there is no legal reason why we can't - just that the Foundation says we can't - the Foundation should remember who exactly is keeping it in business - us. Giano 20:58, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
I share many of the concerns expressed here about Commons, but mostly it is about a relatively few admins over there and the inability for Commoners to govern themselves in a reasonable way. Somehow, I don't think the solution is just to cut ties with them, though it might be possible, it would be a major hassle (reclaiming all our pix!). There must be a more civilized way of just keeping them in business and re-organizing the governance. My only suggestion would be to have the Board do a study commission on all the problems, declare "reset" if required, and just reorganize the governance (admins, bureaucrats, rules, and other institutions, etc.) to start all over. "Reset" or "moral bankruptcy" probably aren't the right terms to use - neither is exigency, but there is a word for the effective bankruptcy of a non-profit. In any case, it would take some doing. Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:34, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't think a morale reset is practical any more than doing it here (because this project has a lot of the same problems). I also admit it wouldn't be a trivial thing and that it would be a shame to break ties. It was a shame that VE didn't work too, but we had to do what was right for the project, not what's right for Commons. We have enough of our own problems to deal with here (as do they there) we don't need to compound them by compuonding them together. Maybe we should do an RFC to see what the community thinks should be done. Maybe nothing, maybe something, but we can at least see where everyone stands. Wikipedia by far is Commons biggest customer so if this community puts a little pressure on them, they might straighten up....then we can focus on our own problems again. 138.162.8.59 (talk) 21:40, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
There doesn't need to be a great re-think or even anything retrospective. We just start uploading to Wikipedia and state that images must stay here. It's easy enough to do: I did a trial earlier today File:WBDiseased leaf.jpg. If the Foundation (and it is the Foundation, not Wikipedia making these rules) decide to throw our work back in our faces, then we know what they think of us - don't we? Giano 21:59, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
While I'm generally sympathetic to people who have had trouble with difficult editors at commons, I don't think this approach is going to fly. A "license" that purports to be a free license, save for forbidding upload to commons, isn't really a free license. That isn't to say that we shouldn't look for solutions, but just that this particular one is not likely to succeed.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:04, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Well we won't know until we have tried to fly it. Most of us are here to build and enrich Wikipedia, that has to be the ultimate goal - anything that furthers that goal has to be tried. At the end of the day, this is the important place. Giano 22:09, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
The fact that you tagged it with a non-free license is itself a prohibition on a Commons transfer, since they only accept non-free media; the "don't send me to Commons" banner seems superfluous. I'd even say it's likely someone will send it to Files for Deletion on WP:NFCC #1 grounds. Tarc (talk) 22:52, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
I was going to say. The image deletionists will look at that and think "easily replaceable, doesn't pass NFCC". Resolute 23:06, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
I have tagged this for speedy deletion, as not having an acceptable license. DES(talk) 23:16, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
A fairly obvious POINT violation, but the tag is valid enough. KonveyorBelt 23:18, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Intentionally uploading a file perfectly well knowing it to have a nonconforming / unacceptable license was at least arguably a violation of WP:POINT. What exactly am I disrupting by tagging such a file for the speedy deletion that current policy mandates? Especially when I notify the uploader, and those who were discussing it, promptly. Note I only tagged it, i didn't delete it. If anyone thinks this improper, remove the tag and decline the speedy, i won't replace it. DES(talk) 23:28, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't think the CSD is any more or less pointy than the upload itself was. Resolute 23:37, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
The WP:Image use policy is pretty clear about deprecating non-free Creative Commons licenses. Clearly a license for "Wikipedia only" is more restrictive than CC-by-NC, and so far as I know, we're not accepting CC-by-NC except where Fair Use would apply - am I wrong? Basically, picture the following scenario: suppose a commercial company wanted to release a modified mirror of Wikipedia (say, a 'child-safe' Wikipedia where communication is strictly limited and supervised and certain content is censored, or a complete tourist-ad-sponsored translation of the en.wikipedia into Catalan). Would that company be able to copy the database and put it on the Web as is, with only such modifications as they want to do on their own initiative? Well, not if they have to track down and figure out every "no commons Wikipedia only" nonstandard license tag or be in violation. So I can kind of see the point about ruling this out right at the start. Wnt (talk) 23:44, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
The complaints above about how the "Whambo" deletion proves that Commons is badly run are ironic indeed. After all, aren't several of those who argued for that deletion among the crowd that was saying Commons is badly run here before? The bottom line is that Wikipedia, keeping so much content in one place with so little effective mirroring to other sites, has become a valuable resource. Complete with a resource curse, a continual squabble for dominion and deletion of opposing points of view or promotion of content when there is a potential for financial gain. The only meaningful solution to this is redundancy - more backups, so that it remains easy to find any deleted file off-site, making control of the resource less valuable. Wnt (talk) 23:33, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
It's confirmation bias at its finest, really. People who want to hate Commons will hate Commons just as the people who want to hate Wikipedia will hate it. Myself, I have uploaded hundreds of images to Commons that are used on thousands of articles in dozens of languages. Never had a problem. Rarely had an unacceptable wait time when I identified a copyvio, rarely had a conflict. Resolute 23:37, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Of course Wikipedia should have mirrors of content. It's just that we as people on Wikipedia should have at least some control over such mirrors, rather than a separate bureaucracy that is confusing to new users. KonveyorBelt 23:39, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Nay, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Commons gets a lot of its content from people who put up content on Flickr under a free license, which is verified by bot, even though later on they change the license to proprietary. I'd like to see someone do Commons the same favor. Wnt (talk) 23:50, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
There is no sensible or valid reason why an editor cannot upload his/her own work and state that they wish it to remain only on Wikipedia. The WMF may wish it otherwise, but their whims do not necessarily have to take precedence over the wishes of those creating the work. Giano 00:57, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Actually, the whims of Wikipedia to insist that any material that can be uploaded on a free license be done so to allow use by downstream re-users does take precedence over the the wishes of an individual editor. The options you are then presented with fall into three categories: 1. You can accept and upload on those terms. 2. You can choose not to donate images at all. 3. You can try and convince the community to change the image use policies. Resolute 01:29, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
But there is an interesting side point that your three categories don't cover. We can allow people to upload under free licensing terms *and* we can not be jackasses to them if they change their minds. We can and should warn them that the original donation is legally irrevocable, but we can also be humane about not continuing to host something that someone regrets donating - for whatever reason, good or bad. The sometimes-seen stance of "fuck you, you signed a waiver" is just not in keeping with our values.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 04:47, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Well funnily enough Resolute quite a lot of people want to change the polices. I just want people to be able to choose for themselves individually per image, but if you want a dictatorial blanket policy - then so be it - we can work towards one Giano 01:34, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
You might as well try to change the policy allow yourself to retain full copyright over your individual text edits as well for all the good it will do. Call it "dictatorial" all you want, your proposal is the antithesis of Wikipedia's mission. Resolute 01:38, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia's mission is to be an open source encyclopedia that is freely re-usable. That includes both text and images. We allow fair use images insofar as they are required to be a complete encyclopedia, but the goal is free. You are correct that Commons has a separate mission, but it remains one that is closely linked to Wikipedia's and Wikimedia's overall mandate. That is beside the point, however, as my argument was that it is unlikely that either the community or the WMF will favour moving to a more restrictive image license on Wikipedia that harms the reusability of our content because a couple of people are butthurt about Commons. The phrase "cutting off your nose to spite your face" comes to mind. Resolute 03:59, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
To be clear, the point of Fair Use claims is that they are the same no matter who you are. If Wikipedia hosts a file with a restrictive license or no license under Fair Use, with a Fair Use rationale, and another site copies that image, they copy the rationale, and they should have the same right to display that image (at least if based in the U.S.) as Wikipedia. But if Wikipedia says go ahead and host this file that is only accessible by Wikipedia, without a Fair Use rationale, and another site copies it, then they don't have the same right to display it. Wnt (talk) 12:46, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
I can easily understand the difficulty that Giano faced here. He contributed a media here, believing he has enough rights to do so and later found that it is not his work. So he want it get deleted. Meanwhile it was moved to Commons, our centralized repository, and some people there refused to believe his words of claim. I am not supporting that unfortunate incident; but it will happen even if there is no Commons at all. See, that work was being transferred to de, fr, and many other wikis. Then Giano has to approach all of them and make requests for deletions. Chances that the image being used off-wiki too.
Limiting to an English Wikipedia only license will solve that issue. But then Wikipedia become less useful as many other projects where images can serve only to describe the article. No one (a student, researcher, etc.) can use those images for their assignments or research works.
Another limitation is the lack of supply of enough quality contents. I'm not talking about third party uploads from sites like Flickr. But we have many sister wikis and German and French wikis are roughly the second and third suppliers of media files. How we get connected to those contents? My contributions are negligible; but if no Commons, I had to upload all of my 514 works to Malayalam Wikipedia which is my home wiki and little chances that it will be available for other Wikipedia(s). Jee 02:58, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
I have had exposure to the culture at Commons, and had my share of bad experiences there too (as I have had here). Where I choose to participate is my affair and mine alone, and my activity level at Commons has dwindled since same. Whilst it's certainly against the spirit of cooperation that underlies the collaborative nature of the various WMF projects, it's regrettable and understandable that push has come to shove, and users on one project want "divorce" from another because of their collective bad experiences.
Such problems are usually caused by people (often but not always admins) who are psychopaths sociopaths, or who do not possess or fail to properly use their diplomatic skills, or by people who choose overly-strict interpretations of rules and then carry them out officiously (and often brusquely) whilst refusing to back off or apologise even when they are manifestly wrong.
We cannot force cooperation, nor can we legally stop Commons from usurping our content. However, there are practical and technical means I employ to "localise" the media. First, I add a {{do not move to commons}} and {{keeplocal}} tag; a {{nobots}} tag helps to slow the transfers from happening. Although it's not very productive use of watchlisting, it helps to watch the media and systematically to be aware of any transfer tags that any drive-by editor might have placed. -- Ohc ¡digame! 04:30, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
But {{do not move to commons}} is intended only for legal reasons; not for author's interests. So others can neglect it (happened in my case too); if no legal reason prevent it being hosted in Commons. {{nobots}} also don't work as those bots don't edit the file page; they add the "eligible files" to a gallery so that a user can manually move them to Commons. You're right you can have on an eye on the "file usage" and remove it form those "maintenance galleries" whenever you found that your file being included. :) Jee 07:04, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Section break for Is Commons getting above itself
What many are failing to realise is that legally Commons is meaningless. Under international law, the publisher of copyright is responsible for it, and the law requires individuals to be responsible - in this case the members of the WMF. If they are ever sued, standing in any court in any country and saying "Well, User: Fred the Fox in LaLa Land said he owned the copyright" will not get them very far - in fact it will probably loose them any money they have, Far better for them and us, to keep things tidy on Wikipedia alone, where they can be easily yanked in and suppressed if there's a problem. Giano 07:58, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
We are trying our best to improve the quality standards of Commons; but all our efforts went vain as they fall in to deaf ears:
I'm afraid that saying "None of the authors, contributors, sponsors, administrators, sysops, or anyone else connected with Wikimedia Commons in any way whatsoever can be responsible for the appearance of any inaccurate or libelous information or for your use of the information contained in or linked from these web pages." doesn't carry much weight in many legal systems - I'm not sure it does in any. A publisher (that's the members of WMF) is 100% responsible for what it chooses to publish. Commons is a very high risk Utopia. Giano 08:38, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Then we have to delete tons of contents from Commons. But I prefer it than hosting useless unverifiable contents. (Unfortunately I will be away for 3 days; so can't participate in this discussion, any further.) Jee 08:47, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Giano I understand why you are angry and agree some folk on Commons lack the gene for common sense and social understanding. However, it is not a homogeneous community and "don't upload/transfer to Commons" is not an appropriate reaction. What you are writing about legal liability is complete rubbish. Both Wikipedia and Commons are "free content" projects. Many people are under the impression that Wikipedia is just a "Free to read" encyclopaedia, hence the "can I donate to just Wikipedia" question. The fact that our content is free means we have no control over who gets it and uses it. That's the point. And we would be grateful for that freedom should it ever become necessary to fork. -- Colin°Talk 09:11, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
You are rather missing the point, and I can assure you that what I am writing on the legal side is far from complete rubbish. The members of the WMF are personally responsible for what is published on Commons. It's enshrined in all legal systems and constitutions that no man can set himself above and beyond the law - of if you like: national law does not have an in-or-out option for its citizens. Disclaimers are pretty worthless. Uploading to Wikipedia only would be a far safer option as it gives complete control when things go wrong. Were I a liable member of the WMF, I would certainly want that option - if only for my own pocket. Giano 09:48, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Giano, you broke copyright by uploading a picture you didn't take and claiming it was yours and slapping a CC licence on it. Getting these things right in the first place is your responsibility, not the WMF and not the Commons admins. You were treated badly initially when you tried to fix your mistake, but it is your mistake. Now you seem to be trying to make WMF personally responsible for your cockup. And you are trying to tar the whole of Commons for the actions of one person, despite huge evidence that Commons agrees this one person was stupid. As for your comments on copyright law and liability, please desist from spouting this nonsense. Give citations for your extraordinary beliefs or stop spreading misinformation. -- Colin°Talk 11:25, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Hi Giano, I'm not familiar with the Internet laws of any single country; but at least in Germany where several suits against unlawful re-users of my photos are currently in progress, you cannot generally say "a publisher (...) is 100% responsible for what it chooses to publish". There is a certain law on telemedia (de:Telemediengesetz) and its § 10 clearly limits the responsibility of the owner of a website for anything contributed by users (other than by the owner themselves, or the redaction). That means, for example, that if I find a copyright violation of my photographic work in a webforum, I may prompt the owner to immediately remove the copyvio, but it will be pretty useless to sue them for a monetary compensation. --A.Savin (talk) 10:37, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
The law is the same in the UK. Perhaps unsurprisingly as we're both members of the EU. As you say, the WMF only begins to become responsible if it fails to remove something a copyright owner objects to. Similar situation with libel as it happens. But suing the WMF for not removing copyrighted material would be an exercise in futility, as the claimant would have to demonstrate some pecuniary advantage accruing to the WMF as a result of a breach of copyright or financial penalty suffered by the copyright holder, neither of which is likely. EricCorbett 20:33, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Giano, you say that if all Commons media were instead on en.wp it could be "yanked back in". Why would that be easier on enwp than on Commons? We on Commons have procedures for deleting things, just as enwp do, and WMF can office action on Commons, just as they can on enwp. There would be nothing gained by taking everything from Commons and putting it on enwp.
As an aside, I will say you were badly treated by Jcb, who can at times be a complete idiot. Just like some enwp admins, some wikisource admins, some zhwikicupcakes admins... any social group, which Wikimedia surely is, will have idiots. And sometimes people will get badly treated by them. It's not an excuse, but it is reality, and while we can try to ameliorate it, we can never entirely avoid it. The problem image has been deleted, but please understand that if the file has been there for years and years, someone coming along and trying to get it speedied is a bit curious. And if it has been there for years, the extra few days a DR takes is unlikely to be a problem. I encourage all sides to take a step back and breathe. -mattbuck (Talk) 10:44, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
What you could do, of course, is detool the abuser of tools on Commons. Of course, that would probably start quite a chain of dominos falling, would it not. Best not risk that, eh? (By the way, Mattbuck, I've neither forgotten nor forgiven the abusive way you went after my Commons uploads, back in the day before I wised up and started using the { { keep local } } template...) Carrite (talk) 02:33, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
It would be easier to 'yank back in' because the image would only be permissive on Wikipedia, an image uploaded 'Wikipedia Only' would only be here. Once an image has been uploaded to Commons it belongs to the world and has flown the nest. Giano 12:57, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
At the cost of undermining the whole "free encyclopaedia" thing. -mattbuck (Talk) 13:41, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
(EC)If you know this admin lacks the communication skills and judgement to handle a situation like this sensitively, why is he allowed to keep the tools on commons? SpartazHumbug! 12:42, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
People who do good work occasionally make mistakes. Hell, you blocked me once! -mattbuck (Talk) 13:41, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Similarly in the US there is a law saying that sites hosting user-supplied content are not considered publishers of that content, and are not liable for possible defamation included in such content, nor for any of several other grounds of action. Giano, I am confident that the WMF legal team was involved in writing or approving he disclaimer you find of such little value. In any case actions for copyright infringement or other legal issues would be no harder at Wikipedia than at commons or any other WMF project. I don't see what would be gained, in a legal sense, by limiting images to en-Wikipedia. DES(talk) 12:39, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
@DES while I am pointing the risks of Commons, if you can read through all the verbage above, you will see that what I am saying is that editors should have the choice of being able to upload to Wikipedia alone if they wish to. Those that want to play with Commons and its risks should be allowed to do so; I cannot see what is wrong with people being allowed a choice. Giano 12:49, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
The problem is that all the content we have on Wikipedia was licensed under the explicit promise we wouldn't do that. We'd have to delete everything and start over, which probably wouldn't go over well. WilyD 13:03, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Yes that was clear enough, Giano, but that wasn't the point you were making just above so it wasn't what I responded to. The answer is that Wikipedia and the WMF generally have made a policy choice to privilege the rights of reusers over those of uploaders. Insofar as possible, the goal is to allow any person at any time to reuse content from Wikipedia (and other WMF projects) in any way. One can argue that this is a poor choice, and it could be changed, although it is sufficiently long-standing and fundamental that I don't expect it to be changed. In order to allow reusers to fork or mirror all or part of Wikipedia easily, or to use its content freely, it is highly undesirable if not unworkable for images to be under a wide variety of licenses, some of which permit reuse and some of which do not. You received what I agree was quite improper treatment at commons, largely from a particular commons admin.That was unfortunate, and commons governance should quite possibly be changed to allow some sort of appeal in such cases, and to have enforced WP:AGF on the admin. But then such ill-advised actions have happened on en WP also. This incident is not, IMO a reason to change the whole free-licensing model. Users do have a choice: They can upload with a license acceptable to Wikipedia, or they can not upload. Or they can start a proposal to change the list of acceptable licenses. DES(talk) 13:08, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
I have put that absurd admin at Commons to the back of my mind; I shall be dealing with him later - it confirmes a log held belief, but if they wish to keep such admins that's something they need to address. However, it has highlighted problems and anomalies of which I was not really aware. We don't just have to accept something because it has always been so. Nothing I'm proposing needs to be retrospective. The oly difference is that uploaders have a choice or limiting their images to Wikipedia only; it would only apply to modern images that are still within copyright. We'd also get a lot more image donations, I've often contacted website owners who are happy to have an image used illustrating a page, but when told they have to sign away all rights, decline. How is that helping Wikipedia? Giano 13:16, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
It's a question of whether we would prefer lots of images but to not be able to reuse them, or fewer but freer images. I go for the latter personally. -mattbuck (Talk) 13:45, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Is that really what is at issue here? I am having a difficult time understanding what Giano issue really is. I get that he stumbled and bumbled his way over on Commons and got met by an unfriendly admin for his efforts. However, the image was deleted and deleted for the right reason. The admin in question was verbally censured by numerous other users for the reception he gave. Whether further sanction is warranted should be addressed over there. How we go from obnoxious admin to a bizarre notion that things should be hosted exclusively on WP vice Commons is where I get lost. WP exclusive content is anathema to the entire ethos and goals of this and every related WMF project. Moreover it solves nothing Giano has raised an issue. The risks being discussed are inherent in any "free and open" project. Nevertheless, from what I can see on Commons there are efforts to mitigate that risk where possible and at least educate users to those risk in amore open and meaningful way. 131.137.245.208 (talk) 14:36, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Well however you care to trivialise it there's an awful lot of people who seem very concerned and interested in my 'bumbling.' There are also a lot of people who do not wish to have their work uploaded to Commons, and there is no satisfactory reason given why they should. There is not one single valid reason why images cannot be uploaded purely to Wikipedia, other than some people at Commons wouldn't like it. Saying one would rather Wikipedia had fewer pictures illustrating its articles than permitting these proposed sole uploads, seems to me that certain people have lost sight of the greater good of the project in favour of the worship of Commons. Giano 14:47, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) You have a point, Giano. Some years ago I argued for a somewhat more limited image license, one that would not permit highly modified derivative images (as opposed to simple rescaling). Some photographers (particularly professionals) would be more willing to contribute images if they did not have to worry about the possibility of their images being used in collages or other drastic modifications, and some museums and educational institutions have as a license condition that charts and similar images may only be reused if they "do not distort or misrepresent the underlying data", which would be satisfied by a no-derivs clause, but not by any of our currently acceptable licenses. Those suggestion got no traction at all, and were shot down as "not fully free, and so out of the question". I think re-examining our policies on this might not be a bad idea, but I would oppose permitting "en Wikipedia only" to be a valid choice. Even our fair use images do not have that restriction. DES(talk) 14:45, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm afraid you have found that some people are just resistant to change in any form, which is odd for a project where one imagines most of the editors to be young. I would support any form of licensing which attracted more high quality images, but I do seriously think that limiting their re-use will have to be the ultimate bait. Giano 14:52, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Or perhaps people here believe in freely sharable content and are resistant to what they perceive as being negative change? Resolute 15:15, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
but hardly negative to the project which is deprived of thousands of images because commons is placed before Wikipedia. Giano 15:23, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia is deprived of thousands of images because it does not allow for fair use where free equivalents could be found. That has very little to do with the issue of one Commons admin vs. your ego. Resolute 15:26, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
I always know that when Wikipedia admins start to get personal that I am making headway. Thank you Resolut; this must be very difficult for you. 15:32, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
And I always know you are losing a debate when you start dodging the salient point. Once again, Wikipedia is deprived of thousands of images because it does not allow for fair use where free equivalents could be found. If you want to propose a change to our image use policies to allow for Wikipedia-only licenses to the detriment of all other reusers, the village pump is ready and waiting. Resolute 15:44, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Oh dear we are getting tetchy [3]Resolute; I will endevour to find a cure for dyslexia just to sooth your fraying nerves. Now calm now down dear. Giano 15:48, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Oh dear. Now you're getting personal. I must be making headway. Resolute 15:52, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
The fact that the effort to be legal has been been polluted with the effort to get people to give away their IP for unlimited commercial use by everybody has de-focused any coherent effort in this area. A part of this has been to reject all of the normal forms of (limited) permission to use, and only accept permissions that grant permenent permission of all uses by anybody. The (rejected-by-wikipedia) normal type permissions would give an immense amount of protection while enabling uses but the WWF blunder (plus the go-too-far Barney Fifes enabled by their vague wording) has prevented the norm types of legally safe routes to be the norm. North8000 (talk) 14:54, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
You are correct that it would be perfectly legal to use content released under more restrictive licenses, and anyone who says that not doing so is required to avoid copyright problems is confused or being disingenuous. However Wikipedia:Wikipedia is free content is a pillar and has been since a very early period of Wikipedia development. It says, in part: "Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute." What North8000 and Giano propose would require modifying or abolishing that core policy, as I see it. DES(talk) 16:39, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
I think you will find it will come eventually, with or without me, sooner or later, and from the WMF itself. This resistance to change is concerning because things that don't adapt and change usually expire. Wikipedia is no longer the small beast it was when these core policies were engraved in stone, and neither are those who engraved those policies the people bearing the ultimate responsibility today. Commons is now a wild beast with too many 'free' images to control and properly monitor, and a simple disclaimer will prove to be worthless; couple this with the fact that Wikipedia and its dedicated editors are divested of and no longer responsible for their own images, it's a problem in the making. Giano 17:16, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
(Added later) DESiege, actually, while tweaking the policy should be open to question, stopping overreaching from it would also help. Nowhere in there does it say that all permission short of infinite must be rejected. North8000 (talk) 20:42, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
No it doesn't North8000 but it does say "Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute." and "anyone can...distribute" seems to me to preclude a "Wikipedia only" license, and "anyone can...modify" seems to argue strongly against a no-derivatives license. It also says Non-free content is allowed under fair use, but strive to find free alternatives... and ...all of your contributions can and will be mercilessly edited and redistributed. I think those would need to be altered a fair amount to allow the kind of changes that Giano is suggesting, or even something like a CC-by-ND-NC which sounds like what you have in mind, unless I misunderstand you. I have thought that allowing somewhat more license restrictions might be a good thing. At this point, however, it would require both a community acceptance of such a change, perhaps in a site-wide RFC, and a modification of the relevant WFM board resolution, as I understand it. Maybe Giano is correct and all this will happen, but I don't see it any time soon. In any case I don't really see any of the above being a sensible response to Giano's original issue, which was simply a very poor misinterpretation of already existing policies and practices. I could see a somewhat more restrictive license option as possibly being a plus in some cases -- I don't see a "Wikipedia only" option as being anything but a negative. DES(talk) 21:00, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
OK, DESiegel how about this I had obtained permission to use an image of a celebrity/performer who is also sort of a social activist. I was explaining that the required licenses allow basically unlimited use (provided that there is attribution). She asked, as an example whether it permission for the American Nazi Party to use the photo as a cover of their magazine, or for people to put the image on coffee cups and T-shits and sell them. I asked the former question at the image talk page, and they said "yes". End of ability to use the image. So I think that some type of permission that doesn't go quite that far would be a better idea. North8000 (talk) 01:58, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Unfortunately, that isn't really true, because there is a whole nebulous layer of personality rights and even other vague conceptions which further muddy how free a free image really is. I haven't really heard evidence that the verdicts of such cases can be predicted, but an image of a celebrity would quite certainly carry the Commons:Template:personality rights warning on it, letting anyone unpopular with shallow pockets know that the free image could be quite expensive for them. Wnt (talk) 03:42, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, North8000 that kind of thing can be a problem, and is one of the costs of running an open-source project: anyone can make use of the work in any way. That said, quite aside from any [[personality rights] issues -- that is an area I don't know much about -- such groups can be discouraged from using an image in a few ways. 1) the SA (share alike) aspect of a license means that a re-user must grant to others the same rights, which commercial reusers may be reluctant to do 2) the attribution requirement allows the licensor to specify HOW attribution is made -- in particular a link to a particular website can be required, which a group such as the American Nazis would be rather reluctant to do i would think (if the site contained views very different from theirs), and 3) if the image is under the GFDL but not CC (which i think is still allowed for images, a reuser must include the full text of the license, which is several pages long. On a website this isn't a real problem, but on a teeshirt or a mug would be a significant issue. Not a perfect solution, but it means that such risks are mostly more theoretical than real. DES(talk) 15:45, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Lots of good information and insights there DESiegel. Even for me who is only a semi-dummy on this, I'm not sure where to start to utilize that to try to get releases/licenses. Can you tell me specifically what license that is? Long term it may be helpful to communicate those ideas/thoughts to others somewhere. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:39, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
May I suggest that discussion of Commons policy would be more useful on Commons than on someone's talk page on a different wiki, even if that someone is the founder of WMF? Most of the relevant parties are unlikely to find the discussion here, whereas you could easily invite Jimmy Wales into a discussion there if his participation is needed. - Jmabel | Talk 17:22, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
In fairness, Giano's arguments are pushing for a change in Wikipedia policy rather than Commons. Commons cannot control what licensing terms we allow here. It would still be better handled at a VP if there is an actual proposal to be made, of course. Resolute 17:42, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
I'll share my "good" Commons story for what its worth. Recently, I guess out of boredom, I googled my user name for the first time, and was plain shocked (I literally had no idea that this is what would come up) at the number of places my poor amature images are used by bloggers, news organizations, web businesses, brochures, newsletters. etc. (obviously, these were the publications that honored the attribution license) but, I don't know, it seemed like a "nice" thing that people were actually communicating using my images. And "via Wikimedia" seems like a bonus, for Wikimedia any way. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:24, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Indeed, I have to say, this page on Commons makes me really happy. Might've happened anyways, I don't know, but I certainly feel vindicated for the effort I put into it. WilyD 08:48, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
This whole complaint/proposal makes about as much sense as someone who, after being treated rudely by a bus driver for not having anything smaller than a £20 note for his fare, proposes the government should build a new train line past his house so he doesn't have to take the bus ever again. -- Colin°Talk 19:23, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
Start reading at the top Colin, you'll soon be able to grasp it - word of mouth/email can be so unreliable. Giano 19:33, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
I have read from the top and I think Colin's analogy is quite applicable. You think because you were treated badly that the whole world must now change to deal with your hurt feelings. Problem is the things you want to change have nothing to do with why your feelings are hurt. The silly part is you are blaming Commons for the entirety of the Free Culture Movement and WMF policy. Saffron Blaze (talk) 22:14, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
I also have read from the top, following the link here from the Village Pump on Commons. -- Colin°Talk 07:28, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Ah, your from Commons - I wondered where these people were coming from! Giano 07:49, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
"Ah, your from Commons" That's really funny Gianno. That explains it. Them be weirdos there. I suggest you stop ranting like a fool and take a break. -- Colin°Talk 11:42, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
No need for personal attacks. Also if you had properly explained the reason for speedy deletion instead of just "copyright and provacy issues" your image would have probably been speedy deleted. Jcb was insofar correct to deny a speedy deletion but he should have converted this into a regular DR instead. You also had the option to start a regular DR as requested by Jcb but you chose to editwar with him. So both of you were of equal fault. Please stop crying and learn from this experience (Jcb should review his behaviour as well).--Denniss (talk) 10:12, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
It seems quite clear that Commons has now replaced IRC as Wikipedia's ruling body. it's quite hard to launch DRs when one is blocked without warning, and the Admins concerned lie - it all seems vaguely familiar from here in the early noughties. However, we seem to be going nowhere at present, but in the many years that I have survived on Wikipedia, I have learnt one thing - if there's a problem coming, Wikipedians will stand idly by and watch it, and I will be there to say: "I told you so." Giano 10:22, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Just a hint, I would have converted the speedy into a regular DR but if you would have continued to add a speedy tag without proper explanation I would have blocked you as well. --Denniss (talk) 10:36, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Oh you are an Admin there? then yes, I expect you would have blocked me without warning or even being aware that I was editing Commons and then lied about it. Now I have better things to do than argue with people from Commons. For now, I'll leave you to carry on there in your own inimitable ways. [4]. Giano 10:42, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Please stop whining, especially if you are not even acknowledging your own faults. You should have started a regular DR to de-escalate the situation but you chose confrontation instead. I have already stated Jcb was at fault as well as he could have started the DR himself to de-escalate the situation. BTW if a user is edit-warring and has been warned in the revert comments there's no need for a further block warning on the user talk page. --Denniss (talk) 10:57, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Is "please stop whining" the best you can offer to Giano? His account on Commons was 6 days old. He was warned in an edit summary and blocked with a block summary of "Abuse of tags after multiple warnings". Multiple??? And how was he supposed to know the difference between "Speedy" and "normal DR"? Is there something inherently obvious in those terms that a user registered for 6 days can be assumed to understand? If so, how? - by osmosis? Just who was best placed to open a DR at that point? Please have another think. --RexxS (talk) 18:58, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Exactly, sums up the mentality at Commons perfectly. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:00, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Giano isn't a child. He knows about edit warring, and he knows that speedy tags, once removed, should not be replaced. He most certainly has a not-insignificant share of blame for his experience. Resolute 20:06, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Giano, take a break. You are ranting like a fool. I've been a Wikipedian nearly as long as you. This "us and them" mentality is not helpful.
Nice signature! Very concise and to the point... Carrite (talk) 17:49, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Would people please stop responding to these Commons people on my behalf - appreciated as it is. They know very well that this is not about me being blocked there, but about the serious problems I discovered on my short stay there. Responding to them is rather like blowing a smoke screen around; they are obviously very rattled and worried - as I would be in there shoes. I think we should let Jimmmy's page regain it's customary tranquility now. Giano 20:17, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Would you please stop referring to "these Commons people". I'm the first to admit there is a problem culture at Commons and there are a number of people who are, shall we say, disagreeable [many of whom have bans on Wikipedia] and who are either admins or highly vocal, active and influential. (And the same complaint could be said about parts of Wikipedia, not least the inhabitants of Jimbo's talk page.) But, there are lots of good people on Commons too. And plenty people at Commons would also call themselves Wikipedians. Anyone who knows anything about psychology knows that forming an "us and them" attitude is a disaster when it comes to understanding and resolution. And nobody ever solved problems by ranting. There's nothing intrinsic about Commons that causes the issues Giano faced. Quite the opposite. In Giano's preferred world, he'd end up with his photo copied to all the dozens of Wikipedias independently and have to request deletion separately on them all and in foreign languages. How daft is that? Giano hasn't "discovered" a serious problem any more than the rude bus driver in my comment above indicates that all bus travel is broken and should be replaced by trains. Commons is not "rattled and worried" by Giano, far from it, and all that discussions like this do is confirm prejudices and polarise opinions. How does that help anyone? -- Colin°Talk 18:51, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Once you get past the single abusive admin and the drubbing that admin took from the Commons Community, is there any substance to Giano's diatribe? What exactly are the issues he found at Commons? Is there a reason that Commoners should be afraid of him? Is this a case that thar be dragons and he is St George? 131.137.245.208 (talk) 19:56, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm sure there's nothing to worry about, everything at Commons is lovely and beautiful and coloured butterflies are fluttering around all the pretty pictures. You just all stay nice, relaxed and chilled and I won't be nasty to you any more. Giano 10:51, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Can you name one person who has this view of Commons, Giano? One person who thinks Commons is some Garden of Eden? Can you name one person who supports your view that Commons, as a group, treated you badly? Right from the start, from Jimbo in fact, your who complaint has been found baseless. You've just discovered what "free content" is. You give your images away to anyone for any purpose. And that is wonderful in many ways, but also a huge loss of control. And it does make things a little difficult if you discover that what you gave away wasn't actually yours to give away. But guess what.. your image got deleted. And you didn't have to request its deletion in Esperanto. Or Spanish. Or Russian. Commons, as a site and as a group of users, worked. Move along now. -- Colin°Talk 11:51, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Problems with Commons, TW, licensing templates
Currently our licensing templates don't indicate what jurisdiction for which they are "free" in, and many users just assume that all the general templates function as defined for the US. But these files will then be transferred (TW) to Commons, where they are found to not be "free" in their home jurisdictions and then deleted. Shouldn't our general free licensing templates explicitly state they only apply to US jurisdiction, unless they are supplied with an additional parameter indicating it is free in the home jurisdiction? The problem can be seen also in the inconsistency of some of our PD-licensing templates. {{PD-signature}} takes a home jurisdiction to indicate it is free at home but {{PD-ineligible}} does not. PD-ineligible is frequently tagged onto files that are considered free in the US, when used on English Wikipedia, but this is not necessarily the case in the home jurisdiction, and when these get moved to commons, they will end up deleted. There's no way to indicate the home jurisdiction on {{PD-ineligible}}, ti doesn't support such an option, but {{PD-signature}} requires the home jurisdiction be indicated. (it would make life simpler if when the home jurisdiction isn't indicated, it should apply as US-only for all these PD-ineligible type templates, and all support supplying home jurisdictions). -- 70.24.244.161 (talk) 12:49, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
I agree that it's highly counterproductive to transfer files to Commons that aren't free in their source country, and thus violate Commons' licensing policy. We already have {{PD-ineligible-USonly}}, which lets you warn against transferring the file to Commons because it's probably non-free in its home country, and so partially solves this problem. But we have no way to indicate that certain {{PD-ineligible}} files are safe to transfer (e.g. if they are from the US, or if they are also PD-ineligible in the source country), which probably leads people to assume they all are. I'd support changing the template to let you indicate why a file can be safely transferred to Commons, and to discourage carelessly transferring files that don't have any such indication. I think this would greatly reduce the chances of mistaken transferrals occurring. It would thus prevent needless deletions, reduce friction between Commons and en WP, and probably be helpful to the files' most likely re-users (people in the source country) as well. --Avenue (talk) 09:33, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Flow
Hello. Please consider to ask the flow team to enable flow on you talk page. It could be nice to see the extension on a heavly used talk page. Christian75 (talk) 11:22, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
WP:Flow problems related to browsers or LiquidThreads features: At this early stage of "prototyping" for the wp:Flow features, some browsers might not be able to edit a talk-page, and people who often reply to 2 or 3 threads at once are likely to be hindered in their limited time to debug a "son-of-VE" product, with a whole new set of problems. Already, at WT:Flow, some comparisons have been made to wp:LiquidThreads, and it will be easier instead for hundreds of people to discuss issues on this page without hindrance from questionable new "user-interfere" (user-interface) changes. I was shocked to see the "add-thread box" at the top half of an edit-section operation, rather than see the current text displayed for editing, as normal people have done for decades. Perhaps we need another essay, "WP:No original freak-jerk" to remind people how WYSIWTF interfaces are still What-The-F**k distractions from trying to write the 'pedia. Sorry, but someone had to say it. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:43, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Status of bugfixes in wp:Flow: There are numerous design changes being discussed at WT:Flow, to handle many major problems:
Replying to 1 comment might generate empty replies to all comments on a page.
The format is another "scatter-talk" layout, with large double-spaced text, where 12 short replies will span 5 pages, as 5 Page-Down to scroll and see every reply. Consider setting TextSize as zoomed 3 times smaller to use Flow.
The history log of replies has seemed to omit, or conceal, some updates.
The wp:Notifications interface, to inform other users of new replies, is being reworked.
To test the entry (or re-edit) of messages, see: "WT:Flow/Developer test page" to try adding messages into a Flow talk-page. -Wikid77 23:04, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
I think this is an awesome idea. If you liked Visual Editor, you'll simply adore Flow. It has a cooler logo, after all. Carrite (talk) 23:25, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
It's not impossible to get things right. For example, the code editor for Lua modules was, for a long time, something I tried to avoid whenever possible, but it has gradually improved until, in this most recent version, it really is a pleasure to use with top-of-the-line find and replace utilities. The developers of things like this just have to avoid being hasty and provoking a backlash from users who don't want to change. Wnt (talk) 23:49, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Personally I think the Flow experiment is best suited to where it is right now, i.e. not heavily trafficked and politically sensitive pages like this one. If there were a way to stop Flow appearing in my watchlist so much, I'd be happier. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:53, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Looking at the test page, I'm seeing a significant problem: it looks like Flow makes it easy to hide or delete individual subsections from talk pages. While it is possible to revdelete serious BLP violations now, I would be very concerned that having such a convenient "line item veto" will mean that Wikipedia will have talk pages full of omissions every time some admin decides that a source or incident shouldn't be talked about. Wnt (talk) 15:13, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Can somebody remind me why talk pages have to be "fixed"??? They work fine. Of course there are people here that use WP as a form of social media, debating opponents and such on scores of talk pages, and I'm sure they'd like WP talk pages to look more like the comments sections at newspaper sites, or Facebook. But we are here to build an encyclopedia, not to muck about on Facebook. I emphasize: there is no objective reason for this lousy piece of software making its way down the pike to even exist. Unless, of course, one's career depends upon it... Carrite (talk) 17:56, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
WP:Flow could be expanded to have schedule/milestone features. However, some people have imagined we need wp:Flow to prevent edits to other user messages, and that notion was quickly refuted by real examples of redacting outrageous insults (or threats) before admins have a chance to debate whether the insults are bad (or as bad as their threats?). Then there was the fantasy of preventing wp:edit-conflicts by wp:Flow, but people noted the reality of edit-conflicts when updating busy articles, not just talk-pages. Overall, if Flow makes talk-pages more tedious to read, then long-lasting insults could be tolerated longer awaiting admin removal, but it is pretty sad to defend protected insults by noting how Flow dialogues will be tiresome for most users to read.... -Wikid77 14:09, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
(interposed comment)I'm not at all fan of redacting insults unless you're pretty sure the target hasn't seen them yet. If the target probably has seen them, the emotional damage has been done, and redacting them then can't fix that, and only serves to protect the insulter from the evidence (and corresponding disapprobation) of what he's done being being seen. It allows him to get away clean. Herostratus (talk) 01:20, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Maryana Pinchuk, the product manager for Flow, is the person to talk to about this. That said, Maryana has told me that the current pages that are Flow enabled (WikiProject Breakfast and WikiProject Hampshire) were chosen specifically because they were pages with relatively low traffic by English Wikipedia standards. Jimmy's talk page obviously doesn't satisfy that, so it's unlikely that this page would be Flow enabled until the product is more developed, as the product isn't ready for such large-scale deployments yet. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 23:25, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Yep, what Dan said :) We're at very early stages with the software right now, and while it's working okay for two low-traffic WikiProject talk pages, it needs a few more cycles of users hammering on it to catch bugs and our dev team building out more features & functionality before it can thrive on a talk page as busy as this one. That said, our stretch goal for this quarter (Jan-March) is to package Flow as a beta feature that anyone can opt into on their user talk page, try out a Flow experience, and opt back out if it's not working. So hopefully soon... Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Does this mean that it will not be available as an option for User talk pages in Q1? I hope so as it isn't ready for that. Dougweller (talk) 11:55, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
The Guardian
Jimbo, that's a lovely interview you had with Carole Cadwalladr at The Guardian. I notice, though, that something you knew from here on your Talk page some weeks ago, [redacted per WP:BLPTALK], but she had the actual evidence to back herself up. Here's the exchange:
CC: But there are problems, aren't there, with commerce entering Wikipedia? One example of this was mentioned in the comments beneath an article about the People's Operator which claimed the Wikipedia entry for the People's Operator was written by its marketing consultant.
Jimbo: No, it wasn't. I'd rather not talk about him.
CC: But, when I looked at the Wikipedia entry for the People's Operator and looked at the history of the article, and then Googled the name of the person who had written the initial entry and looked him up on LinkedIn, it stated he was a marketing consultant for the People's Operator.
Jimbo: I'll have to look that up. That's very interesting...
Two questions for you here, Jimbo.
When you said, "I'd rather not talk about him", who did you mean? The guy who commented beneath an article about The People's Operator, or the content executive Dale Marshall?
Why would you deny that The People's Operator was written by a marketing consultant, when on January 21, User:50.153.112.1 clearly notified you here on your Talk page about this very situation -- that a UK-based marketing consultant created the article, and then how Dale Marshall enhanced it while being paid by The People's Operator? You had all of the facts spoon-fed to you, but when talking to Ms. Cadwalladr, you decided to say, "No, it wasn't", then when caught in your misstatement, you said, "I'll have to look that up", as if it were the first time you'd heard about it. Clearly you saw the evidence that User:50.153.112.1 presented, because you responded to it on the very same day.
It seems to me that you're regularly caught telling [redacted per WP:BLPTALK] about various things. Shouldn't the sole founder of a great encyclopedia like Wikipedia be more honest?
I'll close on a high note: it doesn't appear that Carole Cadwalladr was authored by any single-purpose or conflict-of-interest accounts. Yay! - Checking the checkers (talk) 20:33, 7 February 2014 (UTC) Created by a user who states "I work in publishing", who only made articles about a select few obscure English authors? Nah, of course, no COI there...? 88.104.19.171 (talk) 02:49, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
Jimmie, our community hopes for your response on this matter. - 50.146.187.80 (talk) 14:21, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
What is with Jimbo's silence here? - 70.192.137.96 (talk) 13:34, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
Notwithstanding
Notwithstanding the question of whether Jimmy got caught in an untruth, I've always found it amusing when editors using scrutiny-evading sockpuppet accounts try to chastise others for lacking honesty. Resolute 20:41, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Who exactly are you accusing of sockpuppetry, Resolute? I'll have you know I've been editing Wikipedia with this account for over a year. If you're saying I'm a sockpuppet, please bring on the investigation. Until then, you should redact your snide accusation. - Checking the checkers (talk) 21:20, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I was basing my comments off the discussions on your talk page. Certainly you appeared under this ID a year ago, but this obviously is not your first account either. Resolute 23:12, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Come on, Checking the Checkers, you're not being totally candid here. It's perfectly obvious you're Mr. 2001 from a few weeks ago. Please. Don't insult what's left of our intelligence. Coretheapple (talk) 23:38, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Resolute, I really think you should amend the above comment: "basing on", not off. As for Checking the checkers, I welcome the oversight from critical but conscientious people. This is not one of them, and you wish, sometimes, that CU was allowed for fishing expeditions. "It seems to me that you're regularly caught telling untruths"--thanks, Mrs. Checker, but it seems to me that maybe you need to get off your lazy couch and do something real, like maybe write an article or something. Drmies (talk) 23:41, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
This is also a BLP violation by accusing this figure of lying in the interview. I will be removing this in a moment, in the same manner we are expected to remove such BLP violations on any page, including talk pages. I will leave this up momentarily for editors to see this notification of my pending action.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:34, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Mark, this isn't a BLP violation, because if you look up WP:BLP, it says that "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced and not related to making content choices, should be removed, deleted, or oversighted, as appropriate." The above claim that Jimmy Wales was caught in a falsehood is painstakingly sourced with relevant quotes and diffs. You will be adding gasoline to the fire, should you delete this. Wales is a big boy -- he can delete it himself if he wishes. - Checking the checkers (talk) 03:49, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
From WP:BLP:
Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced and not related to making content choices, should be removed
...
Although this policy applies to posts about Wikipedians in project space, some leeway is permitted to allow the handling of administrative issues by the community, but administrators may delete such material if it rises to the level of defamation, or if it constitutes a violation of No personal attacks.
I think you're wikilawyering by claiming that that can be deleted under BLP. Ken Arromdee (talk) 03:51, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
I think you are exaggerating by saying I am Wikilaywering.--Mark Miller (talk) 04:36, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Accusations of lying fall under BLP violations. There is actually no proof. I am deleting per BLP guidelines. Adding it back means that the burden of proof must be met.--Mark Miller (talk) 04:26, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
You have just had two long-time editors tell you that you are wrong about this being a BLP violation, and yet you are prepared to overrule the majority and delete? Looks like you're just trying to stir up trouble and cause even more attention to be drawn to this, Mark. You've heard of the Streisand Effect, no doubt? - Checking the checkers (talk) 04:29, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Except I already have Jimbo telling us on another talkpage that such accusations must be removed. I trust him more than those two that old timer.--Mark Miller (talk) 04:32, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Could you provide a link or a 'diff' pointing to this discussion that Jimbo seems to be having about "such accusations must be removed"? You're behaving rather rashly, Mark; so, it would be helpful if you could provide some evidence of your own, even as you are trashing the evidence that others have carefully presented. - Checking the checkers (talk) 04:54, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
So you want a link to another BLP violation like yours? Unlikely to happen. I won't edit war over any editor that should decide to revert, but it is indeed a course of action supported by our BLP policy and guidelines.--Mark Miller (talk) 05:01, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
No it isn't, don't be ridiculous. If users cannot write "you didn't tell the truth HERE and HERE" on Wikipedia talk pages, then you've got an awful lot of removals to do. You could start by trying to revert almost everything that arbcom does. Good luck with that.
Yeah, actually...it is. Just because you are unaware of the guideline doesn't mean it doesn't exist.--Mark Miller (talk) 23:57, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
I gave you *direct quotes* from BLP which clearly says that it should not be used for what you are using for. Your response to those seems to have been to put your fingers in your ears. Ken Arromdee (talk) 01:15, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
No, I listened to you. You were incorrect. The guideline does allow for the removal.--Mark Miller (talk) 20:55, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Any suggestion that there is a policy to support the inclusion of a heading and comment that directly accuses another user of lying is seriously misguided. Any suggestion that the wrong form was filled in when the personal attack was removed is also misguided. Johnuniq (talk) 01:27, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Kindness, fairness and understanding: unfinished business
While I appreciate the sentiment behind archiving the previous thread, some the OP's original concerns--the issues of the template, and of "stemming others' aggression"--have gone unaddressed. While the tragedy of the user's suicide cannot be undone, it has been pointed out that the user would have wanted his Wikipedia experience to help others. Perhaps those who have been personally affected by the situation would be able to bear with a few more comments, in the hope that someone else might benefit.
The template needs to be deprecated immediately. Someone who is experiencing mental health issues, to the point of considering suicide, does not need this template. They need medical care and privacy, and the template documentation should inform them of that. Some mental health conditions are temporary, and many others are treatable. For many many people who experience difficulties, things WILL get better, and the documentation of this template should say so unequivocally. If any user page template is to be used at all, there is a generic medical template somewhere that would be more appropriate. If anyone has not already seen the template (where I have now opened a new discussion), this is what it looks like:
Example of "mental health issues" template
This user is currently experiencing mental health issues, which may affect their Wikipedia editing in various ways. They may have difficulty with:
altered perception when making editorial judgements, determining consensus, or reading Wikipedia discussions addressed to them;
reduced availability on Wikipedia during times when they experience issues;
limited capacity to respond to other Wikipedians via talk page messages or e-mails in a timely fashion, to participate in conflict, or to complete their usual workload of Wikipedia tasks.
Thank you for your assistance and understanding.
Bullying. The problem of wiki-bullying is more complex, but in spite of a rash of policies on civility and personal attacks, I am not aware of any dialogue that has taken place about it. Unfortunately it's all too easy for someone to use WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA, or the perennial ArbCom favorite, WP:ASPERSIONS as a bludgeon in a content dispute. But there is increasing awareness of the bullycide problem elsewhere (see "Bullying: The 34 we lost in 2010 to Bullycide") and schools and government agencies are beginning to develop programs to combat it. Why can't Wikipedia be in the lead here?
Regards, —Neotarf (talk) 07:29, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
I agree with the sentiment that Wikibullying in any form must be stop, and any steps to counter it would be much appreciated. Just a little kindness and friendliness would go a long way to make everyone's Wiki-experience better. Any steps which help achieve that will serve good to John's memory.TheOriginalSoni (talk) 10:23, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
The gender gap appears to apply to wikibullying as well, this user choosing to vanish after being targeted. —Neotarf (talk) 10:58, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
I think the most important response to bullying is to give the target some leeway and not have the administration become part of the problem. I spoke a lot about this here during the Fae ArbCom case a couple of years ago, in which one of Wikipedia's best admins and editors was being dragged through the mud with outrageous (that is too weak a term) false allegations and cherry-picked mockery of all his personal activities coordinated offsite. Administrators were, and still are, infinitely more focused on the impropriety of him speaking perhaps a little broadly on why so many were putting so much effort into causing him trouble, and on technical formalities, than on denying bullies the opportunity to drive out their opponents and potentially take over Wikipedia. We need to be able to take a step back and say look, there are people coordinating an attack on someone, so we need to be much more cautious about acting on allegations against them. This is the social counterpart of the multiple comparisons problem in scientific statistics.
That said, it is hard for me or anyone to react to a specific case when I don't know anything about it. I looked up some of the people who said they'd interacted with this person, found their references to a deceased Wikipedian, looked over the page history carefully ... saw the last vandalism, but no references to suicide or the mental health template. It's only due to subsequent conversation about the last posting by those who knew him that I was able to see acknowledgement this was the person. I am tempted to Wikilove the vandal with a rotten kitten... But when all trace of goings-on is carefully removed by People Who Know Better Than Us, what can we do to identify and fix the social phenomena specifically involved in things like this? Wnt (talk) 14:25, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
This person ("John") was much kinder, much nicer, much more mature, and much more sane than many Wikipedians who have never used the template on their talk pages. Wikipedia is full of psychotic, sadistic bullies who like to torture human beings absolutely needlessly. One of the recent cases is described here, and there are many others of the same. Eric Corbett believes that using such templates turns Wikipedia to "a psychiatric hospice." I disagree. If something turns Wikipedia to a psychiatric hospice, it is its psychotic, sadistic bullies who experience a physical pleasure of bullying. 69.181.40.211 (talk) 16:32, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Administrators do you mean? EricCorbett 16:35, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
No, Eric, not only administrators. There are some Wikipedians who enjoy absolutely needless bullying. I could provide you with many examples of such behavior. 69.181.40.211 (talk) 17:12, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
You are all getting off point. The point is that Jimbo's tal page is not a book of remembrance or shrine for late Wikipedians, and neither is it a place for unqualified autopsies, unfounded allegations and inferences which seem to be growing more and more outrageous. That unfortunate boy did not kill himself because of Wikipedia or because he was failed by friends virtual or physical; he died because he had a deep rooted illness, which involved struggling with "depression and anxiety for years." Secondly, Wikipedia is not a place to be putting up templates regarding one's mental health, or any health - if you have a problem, see a doctor and obtain professional help. Its common knowledge that people really planning to kill themselves seldom advertise the fact, and I, personally, would regard such templates with a great deal of scepticism and cynicism. WMF has a moral obligation to advise any editor 'crying for help' to cease editing and see a doctor. Wikipedia is not therapy and attempting to provide it would be very wrong and possibly dangerous and we should not be encouraging it in any form. Giano 18:22, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
While it pains me to go down eight levels of indentation, I find myself agreeing completely with you, Giano. This is not "about", and should not be "about", the overall conduct patterns of anyone on Wikipedia, sysop or not. This is about someone whose family is entitled to respect, and about how Wikipedia can best help those who still may be helped: refer them to professionals. I'm not aware of all the history of disputes involving Eric (who will I hope forgive me for saying there've been a few), but I think on this note, this particular debate can end. Pakaran 18:47, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
If you're intent on continuing to personalise this issue by further demonising me let me point out one simple fact, from which you may draw the obvious conclusion that someone who hardly edits here at all is less likely to find themself in disputes. You've made a little more than 11,000 edits in the last 11 years, less than half of them to article space, whereas I've made well over 160,000 in the last eight years. EricCorbett 19:20, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
That's a fair point, and you'll see that, in the past few days, when I've been participating at a small fraction of your pace, I've had a few concerns raised about my own actions. I hope those continue to be relatively mild, and that I continue to learn from them, but indeed, my commentary was rather personal in nature and I acknowledge that. Pakaran 19:49, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
I think Eric was treated too harshly in the last thread. What he said was not gentle, but he told us this had to do with his own father. The sympathy we would give to the one, we should give to the other, and if we're not willing to excuse an occasional teapot tempest on the basis of that sympathy, it doesn't mean much. Wnt (talk) 19:58, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Obviously I don't expect a WP day of "kindness, fairness and understanding" just because my father – who was never a Wikipedian – committed suicide. But neither do I expect one for anyone else who commits suicide. And the knee-jerk schmaltz surrounding this episode nauseates me. The subject of suicide came up in a lecture during my psychology course, many course ago. I still vividly recall the jolt of realisation I felt when the professor suggested that suicide can sometimes be a rational choice. Who are we to make judgements? If Kevin Gorman or anyone else is in possession of evidence that this specific suicide was triggered by something that happened on WP they should take it to the police, not collude on IRC and write secret reports. EricCorbett 20:21, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
The OP and you both seem to be saying is that the right time for our kindness and understanding is before, not after. I suppose the eagerness with which people give their sympathies after something like this only underscores how senseless it is that we would have denied them when it mattered most. Wnt (talk) 20:53, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Saying that "Wikipedia is not therapy" is literally true, and a tempting out, but it is not actually correct. Look at List of countries by suicide rate. The rate of suicide depends on culture - depends more than 100-fold on culture. It is not strictly dependent on economics; in fact, many of the poorest countries listed have the lowest rate, but then again, the highest rates are not in the most affluent countries either. Now the thing is, no doctor can cure a culture. As we spend time together, in some sense, on Wikipedia, it becomes our country, with its own culture, and its own rate, and it is fair to ask whether that rate is high or low, and why. Wnt (talk) 18:55, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Except that viewing it as a country where a User lives seems probably unhealthy. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:15, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
I was being rhetorical - if anybody took it literally, next thing you know they'd be hitting you up for 3% of your income! The point is, though, that as a fraction of overall time, it has a potential effect. Wnt (talk) 19:55, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
If a person gives it power over them, it could have a potential effect, but they should not be giving that power to this website. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:15, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
arbitrary break
You all are missing the point. It is not about the template, it is not even about suicide, and most definitely it is not about turning Jimbo's talk into remembrance or shrine for dead Wikipedians. As I said above Wikipedia is full of psychotic, sadistic bullies who like to torture human beings absolutely needlessly. They don't add templates to their talks. They don't cry for help,and they don't go to see a doctor, but they are the ones who are really sick because only very sick users could experience a physical pleasure of bullying. That's why Wikipedia needs a day of kindness, fairness and understanding. Let's start with a day, turn it to a week, to a month and then to a year. 69.181.40.211 (talk) 20:04, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Bullying and other forms of incivility should never occur on Wikipedia, ans should be rooted out when they do occur, regardless of any risks of suicide or other harm. But I suspect that what some think of as the actions of "psychotic, sadistic bullies who like to torture human beings" may seem to others as "upholding Wikipedia policies". Without knowing the specific cases you have in mind, 211, I can't have an informed opinion, but things often look different from different points of view, and it is well to consider what things might look like to other editors. DES(talk) 20:40, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia should simply be a safe and welcoming place. If it isn't that has to do with its people not its policies. Saffron Blaze (talk) 02:40, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
It's not designed to be safe and welcoming. Those qualities are treated as bugs, not features. The site would have to be redesigned to serve users not administrators to promote a safe and welcoming atmosphere. Viriditas (talk) 08:37, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Regarding User:Giano's "Its common knowledge that people really planning to kill themselves seldom advertise the fact": Seventy to eighty percent of people do disclose to someone prior to acting on suicidal thoughts. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:26, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Whether they do or they don't, Wikipedia is not the place to be crying for help, even the suggestion that it's OK's to threaten and talk of suicide on Wikipedia is opening a minefield, there should be an extremely strict procedure for dealing with those that do - and it should not involve therapy or anything beyond the minimum understanding here. We are not the Samaritans, and should not pretend to be so - who knows what incompetents could be handing out 'advice' to people in the most distressed of minds. Giano 18:52, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Giano, nobody asks Wikipedians to be the Samaritans. Wikipedians should simply be humans, or at least not to be psychotic, sadistic bullies. If a person, especially a kid (I know such a case from 2 years ago) was bullied to the extend he threatened suicide, it is the fault of the bullies and not the fault of the person who was bullied.Period. That 16-years old kid did not commit suicide, but he has sustained irreversible emotional damage, and it is the fault of the arbcom that was notified about the situation, and did nothing to stop the bully. It is also the fault of the WMF that goes above and beyond to attract children to edit Wikipedia, but does nothing to protect them from bullies.69.181.40.211 (talk) 19:29, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
The great majority of Wikipedians are not psychotic, sadistic bullies and it's a to be deplored if 16-year-olds find such people here; however, perhaps the guardians of those 16-year-olds should be taking better care of them. This is a community of largely adult anonymous editors, it's inevitable that their will be the odd crank and pervert. It's as wrong and impossible to expect other editors to provide protection and care for passing adolescents as it is to expect other editors to care for those wtth mental health problems. This is not Utopia, it is not even La La Land, it's an online encyclopedia. Nothing more. Giano 20:40, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
"The great majority of Wikipedians are not psychotic, sadistic bullies". True, but also true that The great majority of Wikipedians are keeping silent, when they see a person being bullied, but probably most Wikipedians don't even see it. They are busy with content creations, and not watching drama boards and user talk pages where bullying is taking place.
"This is a community of largely adult anonymous editors". "Adult"? Please correct me, if I am wrong but weren't you the one (Maybe it was Eric) who wrote about Wikipedia admins that Wikipedia is the only place where teachers are younger than students. It is not an exact quote, but something like that.
"It's as wrong and impossible to expect other editors to provide protection and care for passing adolescents" Disagree. Every editor who sees a kid being bullied should do something to help the kid, and most definitely the arbcom should have done something.
I am not suggesting Wikipedians should take care for those with mental health problems. I am suggesting the WMF should take care of Wikipedia bullies.69.181.40.211 (talk) 21:08, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
You are forgetting that one doesn't "see a kid" they are anonymous. This is supposedly not a playground, people are assumed (often with difficulty) to be adult. We are editors of an encyclopedia, not childminders, carers or nurses. To even intimate to people with problems that that is otherwise would be foolhardy in the extreme. Now, I'm sure that Jimbo is quite sick of this thread, so lets conclude it. Giano 21:17, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
The kid identified himself as a kid, and everybody who looked at his contributions would have no doubts that he was a kid. The WMF was in contact with him, but it was after the fact.
Honestly I cannot care less what Jimbo is sick of. Jimbo is talking about the day you (Wikipedians) fight back, not about the day of kindness, fairness and understanding. Of course it his talk, and he could collapse the thread. 69.181.40.211 (talk) 21:41, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Oh for Pete's sake, no one is proposing turning WP into a 911, I'm sure there are proper procedures in place for reporting medical emergencies. What we are talking about is a toxic editing environment. And while we're at it, how about a little compassion for the "psychotic, sadistic bullies"? The research shows they are at an increased risk of suicide as well. —Neotarf (talk) 07:14, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
See, Facebook is a different animal. Facebook users could complain about being bullied to the administration. Here on Wikipedia a person bullied by a few anonymous sickos who call themselves "the community" is refereed to the very same sickos to be bullied again.69.181.40.211 (talk) 16:12, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
I strongly disapprove of this law. At the time of its passage, people warned that it allowed a very broad range of censorship, and now with its very first usage, it is targeting someone critical of "the chief of Pictou Landing First Nation". Searching around, it looks like Chris Prosper has been trusted by others to report political events in the past. [5] I have not found the "negative and threatening" comments to evaluate them myself, but I fear that Canada has effectively become one of those Third World countries where it becomes routine to read about newspapers being shut down because they "went too far" in an editorial about someone in power. Wnt (talk) 17:26, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
That's about what our "Human Rights" Commissions have been doing for some time now already. If you're butthurt about what someone says, go there! In this case though, I would have to ask if the "negative and threatening" posts were actually threatening. If this law were being applied to silence criticism of a public individual, I would hope that an appeals court would slap it down on a Section 2 challenge. But if the person really was posting threats, then we're coming into harassment. As always though, the lack of context makes it impossible to do anything but worry about the general risk of a speech law being applied in an overly broad fashion. Resolute 18:14, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Bullying and bullycide is apparently the hot new topic. For an overview, see here. For further reading see here.
There are three sides of the equation: those who bully; those who are bullied; and those who stand by and watch the event.
WHAT DOESN'T WORK
Zero tolerance programs; "three strikes and you're out"; expelling students
There are just too many--about 1 in 5 students admit to occasional bullying
Extreme disciplinary measures discourage people from reporting problems
Bullies are at increased risk of fighting and vandalism, they need positive role models.
Suspension and expulsion may be used for a small number of cases, but should not be standard prevention policy.
Conflict resolution
It is not a conflict, there is a bully and a victim, the bully needs to be stopped.
Group treatment for bullies
Makes things worse; they reinforce each others' bullying behavior
Simple short-term solutions
May be the topic of a staff in-service training or student assembly, but unless it is part of a larger prevention strategy, it will not have an effect.
Why did you nominate the talk page for the template, rather than the template itself? Neutron (talk) 08:08, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Fixed, thanks for noticing. KonveyorBelt 16:59, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
What another community is doing
The Wikians have voted 7773 to 380 (! more than 95% for some very very diverse editing communities) for Wikia to join the Day We Fight Back protests.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:57, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
We'll never know what would have happened here because supporters of this never brought it to the community.--Cube lurker (talk) 21:08, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Hm, it just let me vote there, and I've never edited Wikia in my life. Are you sure it is a valid vote of community members?--Scott Mac 22:47, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Auto franchised! The new democracy. Saffron Blaze (talk) 02:34, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Vote early and often! --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 11:43, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Hmmm, looks like 95% have clicked a yes button asking "Will You Fight Back?" as opposed to 5% clicking a no button, implying "Do You Love Big Brother and Killing Kittens?" Not a lot of intellectual depth on that page, is there? A poll of whom for what? Here's a better idea: how about Jimmy Wales starts an international campaign for a Snowden pardon and a pledge that he won't be killed by the CIA. Carrite (talk) 19:01, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
I can't decide if you are being snarky or serious. Perhaps both. It's unbecoming, whatever it is you are doing.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:38, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Snarky regarding the loaded pseudopoll from a non-germane website that is being touted as somehow instructive for Wikipedians; quite serious in my suggestion about what you should be doing instead of stirring up a divisive and ineffectual symbolic gesture at WP. And I will give it a break, at you suggestion, having said my piece. Carrite (talk) 06:05, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Jimbo, is there any concern that official Wikipedia/Foundation endorsement of the Day We Fight Back might cause issues for your tax exempt status? I notice that there are legislative goals, and nonprofits aren't supposed to advocate for or against specific legislation. Coretheapple (talk) 19:58, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
No, there is no concern about that. We went through this in great detail during the SOPA/PIPA protest. The lawyers are comfortable that it isn't a problem.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:38, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
While you wait, read [6]. WMF should avoid supporting/opposing specific candidates in upcoming elections. Wishing Feinstein and Harvey Milk had been standing in opposite places, on the other hand... Wnt (talk) 21:10, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
I personally think this is a worthy cause, but I was interested to know if this base was covered. I noticed that the wiki article on this referred to specific legislation. Coretheapple (talk) 21:24, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Regardless of the legal question, it's plainly inappropriate for our project to take a position on a political issue. We are here simply to report the facts. Everyking (talk) 21:30, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't agree. We are a passionate community devoted to several principles which make our work possible. We should not stray into general political activism, but on issues that matter to us, we have a moral obligation to use our voice.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:38, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
That's an issue for the WMF, not for us volunteers. I think sometimes we volunteers lose sight of the fact that our role in governance is really nonexistent. This is true not just on this issue but on others. Coretheapple (talk) 22:32, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Who writes the content? Everyking (talk) 23:14, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
The community. That's why this is not about the Foundation. Indeed, I think there are good reasons for the Foundation to stay out of these kinds of issues other than to seek to understand what the community wants. And I think we should demand that they support us when we want to make a statement.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:38, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Volunteers perform a vital role, but I'm not aware of any role in governance. Maybe there is one; I just don't see it. the WMF is run by its board, and I'm not aware of any direct method by which the volunteers impact on board composition or decisions. Coretheapple (talk) 23:27, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
You should look a bit closer. Six of the ten seats are community seats, or 5 of the ten if you don't want to count me. Three are directly elected by the editing community, and two are elected by the chapters, which all have boards of directors who are directly elected by their respective communities.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:41, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Ah, thanks for pointing that out. Coretheapple (talk) 23:43, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Since the Internet was never designed as a secure communications medium, and since privacy for Internet users should not, therefore, be assumed, wouldn't it be better for all of us to "fight back" by just not using the Internet at all? That's the ironic stance that is sounds like Wikipedia is taking. By the way, what does Wikia have to do with anything that is taking place here? Are the two organizations connected in some way? Cla68 (talk) 01:20, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Stop wasting our time please. Wikia is a separate community, but they also use wiki technology and so have some interesting similarities to us. Your claim that Wikipedia is taking the ironic stance that no one should use the Internet at all is just... literally a waste of typing. Stop please.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 05:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
I think that there is a legitimate question as to whether Wikipedia should be involved in a political controversy, but as I said earlier, that's really a governance issue (one in which, as was just pointed out, volunteers do have both direct and indirect input). If it was up to me, I guess my answer would be "yes." Even though Wikipedia is neutral, it has an interest in the outside world when it comes to Internet surveillance and also, I think more importantly, net neutrality. I'm surprised there isn't more concern on this issue than there appears to be. Coretheapple (talk) 18:01, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Several communities here were sort-of encouraged to take part in this "day of protest" but the ones I'm closely aware of (WP:FLC and WP:ITN) considered the whole thing to be something of a damp squib. Quite why you've decided to tell us about the contributors to a Wikia poll, and quite why that's relevant to Wikipedia, I know not. Were you hoping for some kind of reaction? Perhaps you should have put a banner with your face on it saying "Think about it kids, the Day We Fight Back!!!!!!". Not really sure anyone fought back really, a bit like the threat that feminists would over-run Wikipedia with their edits. All amounted to nothing, or next-to nothing. Anyway, Wikipedians who were interested were aware of this "protest", and that's that. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:01, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
No surprise. The impression I've gotten is that Wikipedians on the whole have the social conscience of a grasshopper. Coretheapple (talk) 18:03, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Well perhaps Wikipedia isn't the place for you. In any case, that's not the nub of the question I've asked. But thanks. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:10, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
The impression I get is that it's a generational thing. I had the same impression in other discussions on this page concerning COI and paid editing: Wikipedians seem to lack a real-world aprpeciation of issues like that. Same situation here. NSA surveillance is greeted with a shrug, no real outrage. It doesn't impact on how Wikipedia does it's job in compiling articles on Nintendo games and mid-20th Century choreographers, but it seems to impact on stuff like this. Coretheapple (talk) 18:31, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Once again, thanks for your response, and yes, all the Big Brother surveillance is fascinating, and you can get all upset about it etc, but this is an encyclopaedia. It has an active core of contributors who have their own opinions, but ultimately the purpose of the project is to provide free information about general and specific topics to the universe. I suppose if you want militant uber-excitement about the fact that we're all being spied on, and have been since the dawn of spies, Wikipedia isn't the place for you, and from what Jimbo's suggesting, Wikia's communities probably should be where you further your cause. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:44, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm not upset about it in any extreme sense, but I don't see the harm of Wikipedia taking a stance. Even the Encyclopedia Brittanica's publisher would take a stance when warranted. But I agree, the majority opinion does not seem interested. Coretheapple (talk) 19:00, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
"Wikipedia taking a stance"? You mean a disparate group of hundreds of thousands of contributors trying to agree with each other for a socio-political cause? Maybe you don't even know what Wikipedia is! If there's no agreement over which version of cricket should be the first page you find when you search the term, what hope is there for some kind of militant uprising against the foul Big Brother and his ugly sister? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:08, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Of that disparate group, I wouldn't be surprised if fewer than 500 paid any attention to this kind of thing. When there are discussions of paid editing (which is the main reason I monitor this page), there never seem to be more than a dozen or so editors participating. Or, in the alternative, the large, cacophonous and often clueless volunteers could be sidelined and the WMF itself could take a stance. Either way I don't think it is such an immense and mind-boggling undertaking. Coretheapple (talk) 23:51, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
userboxes
Do you have userboxes? I want more for my collection of 140. — Preceding unsigned comment added by J73364 (talk • contribs) 00:06, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
You may want to refer to Wikipedia:Userboxes. A category which contains most (if not all) the userbox templates currently used is Category:Userboxes. Hope this helps, --TeaDrinker (talk) 19:35, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
If there is one thing the whole The Day We Fight Back Wikipedia initiative has shown us, it's that a themed day on the main page will crumble with even a hint of political agenda (even if it merely the notion of "we feel security/surveillance/privacy/spying/etc. is an important topic that should be brought to people's attention, as one must know all the facts - both good and bad - before they can even pick a side").
So I am proposing themed days of a different sort. Themed days not because of any deeply political event or something people necessarily feel strongly about. Just cos. Or maybe just due to a non-controversial event like Christmas (resulting in a main page filled with all things cold).
A space-themed day. An animal-themed day. An Africa-themed day. An animation-themed day. A horror-themed day (Halloween?). An award/medal/certificate/accolade themed day (Oscars?).
Getting the idea? :D What do you all think?--Coin945 (talk) 03:37, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Never gonna happen. Advocacy has nothing to do with it-- nobody harassed me for suggesting an advocacy banner. The shit only hit the fan after talk of a TFA rerun, which asked whether WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY & NotOwned apply at Main. They don't. [7][8]. Per instructions,ask permission of the coordinatorbefore any onwiki discussion or !voting of theming, as consensus is invalid without that permission.--HectorMoffet (talk) 12:23, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
All due respect to people below, I'm not talking to you. Coin or anyone else who doesn't know needs to understand that it's easier to get a camel through the eye of the needle than to convince a fulltime bureacrat that he doesn't own what he thinks he owns. If you want to do something special for mainpage, you either need advance permission from the owner or you need to start a huge huge discussion that would be incredibly ugly that starts with rethinking who runs what and how they run it. And I don't think anyone is going to start that discussion. HectorMoffet (talk) 15:54, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
You know perfectly well that "theming" wasn't the issue there. We almost never rerun articles at TFA, and it takes more than local consensus to make an exception. —David Levy 15:01, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
I think PSky was a fantastic editor, and I'm sorry he decided to leave the project over this, but I'm pretty sure he knew when he nominated the article that it had very little chance of running again. We told him, I think. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't mind themed days, and have prepared POTD for them before, but I don't think you can call Christmas "non-controversial". Sure, it's done, and POTD prepared something special for Christmas last year (this poem), but even that drew complaints. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:39, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
May I ask what the complaints were for?--Coin945 (talk) 03:44, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Although none of them are in good enough condition yet... *sigh* — Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:00, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
At least we have 10 months to get to work.. :D--Coin945 (talk) 04:19, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
The crisis of top-level control over themed content is ongoing. When it is OK to have a special day for the elevation of Catholic cardinals (as is currently scheduled), but every special day has to gain support through a nebulous discussion process of insiders in which 5-3 in favor of a more expansive proposal[9] counts as a rejection, it is going to work out that Wikipedia officially recognizes some religions and not others. Should we actually write the inequality of religions into policy, explaining to DYK posters which religions they have to be interested in in order to request a special day? The situation with the Olympics and "Oscars" is another example: it shows that large, well connected commercial entities hold rights to the front page, even while small entrepreneurs are dragged through the mud simply for trying to file articles on their businesses. Wnt (talk) 04:29, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
...in which 5-3 in favor of a more expansive proposal[10] counts as a rejection...
You keep counting the instances of "support" and "oppose" appearing in bold within that subsection (as though the rest of the discussion's content is irrelevant). I expressed strong opposition to deeming February 11 a "special occasion", but because I didn't use that formatting there (as I'd already done earlier in the discussion), you've ignored my input. For the same reason, you've also ignored opposition from HiLo48, Iselilja, Matty.007 and The C of E, as well as support from HectorMoffet.
And as I've brought to your attention more than once, relevant discussion occurred throughout the parent section.
In the portion above the subsection to which you linked, Maile and Taylor Trescott based their opposition primarily on the idea of bending the section's rules (by using articles not written/expanded/nominated within the standard time frame), so let's set aside their comments.
I've already mentioned HectorMoffet, HiLo48, Iselilja, Matty.007, The C of E and myself, who also commented within the aforementioned subsection (but whose input you ignored because we didn't append "support" or "oppose" in bold).
That leaves Acather96, Jakec and Nyttend (all of whom opposed due to neutrality concerns) and Jehochman (who expressed support). Coin945 initially supported the proposal but later developed doubts and decided to withdraw. Allen3, CMD, Harrias and The ed17 commented but didn't appear to express support or opposition.
So by my tally (in which I've excluded opposition from Maile and Taylor Trescott), we had seven editors supporting (AgnosticAphid, Hawkeye7, HectorMoffet, Jehochman, Orlady, Petrarchan47tc and you), eleven editors opposing (Acather96, Alanscottwalker, ColonelHenry, Fram, HiLo48, Iselilja, Jakec, Matty.007, Nyttend, The C of E and me), and five editors not conveying a clear position (Allen3, CMD, Coin945, Harrias and The ed17).
Of course, consensus isn't gauged simply by counting votes, but you appear uninterested in any other type of analysis.
...it is going to work out that Wikipedia officially recognizes some religions and not others...
As I commented elsewhere, this is a valid concern. But rejecting a proposal to use DYK for participation in a protest is hardly evidence that such a problem exists. —David Levy 07:54, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
"Consensus isn't gauged simply by counting votes", but Main doesn't run on consensus. My understanding is that a vote of 12-1 is closed as "opposed" if the one oppose !vote comes from the owner. Actually, "Just Counting Votes" is what happens at Main-- you just need to know who gets a vote that will count and whose votes won't actually count at all. --HectorMoffet (talk) 13:12, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
You've perceived instances in which Bencherlite intervened as the unilateral imposition of his will. In actuality, he acted in accordance with longstanding consensus. (It might be helpful to read WP:LOCALCONSENSUS.) —David Levy 15:01, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
It seems obvious that "uncontroversial" things (including singular DYK holds) will generally get a pass, because that is how WP:Consensus works, without discussion - just doing it. It also seems clear that having a Main Page theme at all, will never get such a tacit pass -- you will always have to have a discussion to establish an explicit consensus, not least because you have multiple projects working on the main page, and you would have to coordinate them all. Alanscottwalker (talk) 08:15, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
It should be obvious what will get a pass, but it's not. Main page doesn't claim to run on consensus, that's for articles, not Main; For better or worse, Main is openly run by an entrenched bureaucracy headed by a few czars. Maybe it has to be that way. HectorMoffet (talk) 12:51, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
If I were a czar, I could just push the octopus back in queue instead of allowing it to skip ahead... Hector, I suggest you stop while you are ahead. Bencherlite does some seriously demanding work, and deals with a lot of sh**. I suggest not adding to it. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Since we don't have a consensus to theme the main page, instead, please consider asking your friends to join Wikipedia and to join Wikipedia:WikiProject Mass surveillance, to increase coverage of topics related to government surveillance. This is not a one day sprint. It will take many years of hard work to educate the public about what's going on. JehochmanTalk 13:41, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Its that type of editing that Wikipedia does NOT need. --Malerooster (talk) 12:41, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
HectorMoffet's complaining here about TFA/R and other processes is nascent self-inflicted WP:PRAM behaviour...so he had an idea about advocacy that a lot of people didn't like, so instead of realizing why other people didn't like it and respect those concerns, he rails at the system or anyone who got in his way. Sounds like a typical first-world protester. I have no objection to writing and featuring well-done articles on any subject, or supporting them at GAN, FAC, DYK, or TFA/R if they deserve support. If the article on Edward Snowden or COINTELPRO or any other surveillance article were improved to a level of quality, I'd be glad to support it and support its day in the sun at TFA/R...but his "Day We Fight Back" bullshit was just a little too over the top. I'm all for talking truth to power and making a stand, but ignoring established rules and procedures and throwing soapbox advocacy in people's faces wasn't the way to do it. I'd caution HectorMoffet to reevaluate why his hasty half-baked idea wasn't well-received to his liking instead of taking petulant potshots at people who genuinely had a reason for disagreeing with the idea. If it were a good idea with a well-planned execution, I'd give it my support. This was a ill-conceived idea too hastily scrapped together and when people pointed that out, HectorMoffet began to complain instead of fixing the idea. --ColonelHenry (talk) 23:36, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Lastly, if he took six months to plan instead of the rushed one month schedule, he might have had more support. If he were more interested in informing people the conventional way (development of sourced, balanced, comprehensive content) instead of something that was blatantly agenda-driven and provocative, he might have had more support. I'm open minded, but for this idea, it was just a bad idea with no planning, with competing objectives (some good, many bad), forced in too short a time, and a horrible rollout.--ColonelHenry (talk) 23:49, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
"So he had an idea about advocacy that a lot of people didn't like"
I want to make it perfectly crystal clear-- I hear and respect the WP:NOTADVOCACY objections. They didn't upset me, they are legitimate concerns--- you should need a pretty huge SOPA-style consensus to advocate.
What demoralized me, to the point of departure, is the overt and ongoing overt flouting of WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY and WP:OWN by the guy who rudely claimed to OWN all of TFA and who, it turns out, really does own TFA just like he says he did. But even that didn't finish me off.
The last straw was when I found out he's done the same thing to other people in the past, even when there was clearly established consensus for inclusion. [11][12]. So you see, it wouldn't have mattered if my nominations had gotten a consensus or not-- our unelected TFA fuhrer does not bow to trifles like community consensus, not even when an overwhelming consensus for a non-controversial nomination exists. He has demonstrated utter disrespect for Consensus-- in his words to me and in his actions towards others.
And so I'm out. WP:CONSENSUS is our pillar-- if it doesn't apply at TFA, best I leave now, before it stops applying to other places. So I leave, as so many before me have done and as so many many more will do after me.
Postscript-- hint hint, you guys really need some new TFA coordinators-- try a site-wide candidate search instead of just leaving it up to the last man standing after everyone else burns out.HectorMoffet (talk) 00:48, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
If you're going to go, stop being a WP:DIVA and just go. I'm not sure what makes you think childish rhetoric like "TFA fuhrer" is going to do anything but undermine any argument you think you are making. Certainly your attitude here is pushing me away from supporting you (and remember, I did try to hold one of your DYKs for your date) and toward supporting Bencherlite. Resolute 01:54, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
And with those kind words from Resolute, which pretty perfectly sums up the hatefulness that lies within our community, I quit. So long and thanks for all the fish.HectorMoffet (talk) 02:12, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, I've worked with Bencherlite and I enjoy working with him, and I've seen many many other editors work with him successfully over the last year. Your characterization of him is entirely baseless and offensively out of line (especially calling him "TFA fuhrer" [sic])--it evinces only a petty and pouting reaction of someone who didn't get their way with their stupid idea of a pet project. Bencherlite's incredibly easy to work with, very open to collaboration, amenable to new ideas, and has reorganized TFA into a very efficient, logical, and workable procedure. So, the way I see it, seeing him work with several dozens of editors on an ongoing basis versus your solitary complaint...Bencherlite is definitely not the problem. Given WP:PRAM and WP:DIVA and all that, I'll just tell you what an former administrator for whom I have a lot of respect told me long ago..."you're expendible and replaceable. better editors have come and gone and will continue to come and go. no one will miss you when you're gone. Wikipedia will still be here"...btw, it's a rather unoriginal farewell cribbing Adams. I'll crib Keillor...Be Well, Do Good Works, and Keep in Touch...(well, not so much the last part).--ColonelHenry (talk) 03:22, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
The critics' error here is in thinking that our mission to spread knowledge is neutral in a politicial sense. Just because we seek to be neutral in a scholarly sense doesn't mean this is so! In ancient times, the Library of Alexandria and the Serapium were destroyed by those hostile to the knowledge they collected. In 2014, Canada's conservative Harper government closed down 7 of 11 Fisheries and Oceans Libraries, destroying rare and irreplaceable holdings or dispersing them without record to whoever happened to come in, falsely claiming to have digitized the information, in what is believed to be a politically motivated effort to further set back environmental research in Canada.[13][14][15] Now it should be clear, for example, that if WP:GLAM volunteers had managed heroically to catalog, get clearance, photo and digitize those works in advance, they would have set back the Conservative agenda; and that if they can still do so in the U.S. and other countries with duplicate copies of many of these works they can still set back that agenda. On the other hand, if nothing happens, the U.S. remains a country close to Canada with many shared interests, and sooner or later, perhaps after the 2016 election, we should expect the effort begun in Canada to be completed here. Neither action nor inaction on core Wikimedia activities is neutral when knowledge itself opposes a political view. Wnt (talk) 14:54, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a bully pulpit for political ideals. The day we fight back is all very sweet and touching but consider for a second the outside motives. The thing is sponsored by Google, the very same company that willingly participated in NSA spying. I can't see anything but a publicity stunt. KonveyorBelt 22:38, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
I thought Facebook posing as the great defender against online snooping and protector of privacy was the low point of this particular campaign. Mogism (talk) 22:49, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
"Do as I say, not as I do." Meanwhile, their Android app screams at me daily for an update that I refuse to apply because Facebook wants access to my text messages. Resolute 00:25, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
It's not accurate to say it was "sponsored" by Google. The event was organized by relatives of Aaron Swartz, who we can certainly hope are honest brokers in this. It was then signed onto by 48 organizations - not Google and Facebook, but honest groups like the American Library Association, EFF, ACLU, CDT, etc., the same groups who have been fighting Internet censorship since the Communications Decency Act, plus some newcomers. Those companies only signed onto it on the day before. Wnt (talk) 05:11, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
The Day We Fight HTTPS
Ironically, on this day, 11 February 2014, discussion at wp:PUMPTECH has explained how the severe problems during editing, of large pages, have been caused by https/secure (HTTP Secure) protocol often triggering "wp:504 Gateway Time-out" while the prior http-mode edit-previews will work fine (although still slow 75-95 seconds). See:
Hence, to avoid the numerous https/secure Gateway errors, the users can edit-preview as http-mode instead, then redo as https/secure and SAVE to set the username in the history log. For many Wikipedians, the https/secure mode was much worse than risks of mass surveillance. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:29, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Are you sure this isn't a one-time/user specific thing? Because I just tried previewing that page (Nash equilibrium) twice, and both times, after 92-95 seconds (despite only 2.7 seconds processor time, not sure why), got https: pages that looked right. I haven't examined why that page is so slow to preview, but it has a whole lot of math in it, and VPT is lit up with threads about math troubles ever since a rollback of some code to wmf11 broke things on February 6. Wnt (talk) 15:52, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Some of the MediaWiki developers are actively seeking solutions, and so the performance might improve within a few days. There is talk of bypassing excessive security features in the math-tag processing, and also, they might increase the timeout limit for "504 Gateway Time-out" to allow https to edit-preview with longer delays, similar to http-mode edits. More later. -Wikid77 00:06, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
If we're going https, can we please use OCSP stapling? I don't like that every https request currently (well, it's been a while since I checked) also tells a third party OCSP server that the person is reading Wikipedia. Https is drastically overrated for protecting reader privacy anyway (it's only good for protecting passwords). If someone is monitoring a user's net connection, the traffic metadata such as packet sizes is enough to tell what articles a person is reading, even if the traffic is encrypted. This metadata is probably collected by PRISM or whatever they're calling it now, against basically everyone. We need a much more serious fix than https, that takes us back to our roots, but everyone is terrified of it, shrug. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 08:06, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
While it is true that - in theory - traffic metadata such as the size of a page could be used to determine (albeit with a significant level of imprecision) what someone is reading at Wikipedia - my view is that we should force the NSA/GCHQ to at least do that work. And for other attackers (your employer snooping on what you are reading at work, the nosy IT guy at your school, etc.) it is unlikely that they would have the time/resources to bother, given the relatively low (in most cases) value of knowing what someone is reading in Wikipedia. So against those weaker snoops, it's a pretty significant step forward. In terms of OCSP stapling, after reading about it, I'm intrigued and agree with you that we should probably try it. Separately, what is the "more serious fix" that "takes us back to our roots" that you have in mind? Often when people say such things, they imagine moving Wikipedia into a tor-like cloud or something, without acknowledging that with 540 million or more monthly users, any radical departure from a standard web architecture is pretty hard to do.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:41, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Well said. Privacy and security are a matter of degree and depends who the attacker is and how motivated they are. We shouldn't stop using technological measures just because the advanced persistent threat guys can break them with some effort. Someone not using his real name (talk) 10:12, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to https but I think we should also be taking stronger long-term measures. I'll try to post something more in the next few days (too busy right now). Advanced persistent threat to me means something like Stuxnet and I don't think it exactly applies here. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 20:09, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't know enough about these things, but our own article's reference[16] not merely talks about the vulnerability of HTTPS, but simple ways to fix it by padding out requests to a common length, and padding out responses with a cookie of random but apparently not very large size. However, based on other sources[17] it might make more sense to look for compromised software or other means of hacking that would have revealed the keys Wikipedia uses. The NSA also presumably has the power to break HTTPS communications by brute force, but I would be skeptical that they can deploy it on very much of the traffic. Wnt (talk) 19:01, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
As for the Wikipedia https bug, I've experienced it too. Sometimes it's a just a slowdown. A small wiki page that normally saves instantly can take 20-40 seconds to save once in a while. Actual gateway timeout messages are much rarer. They happened once or twice to me in the last month. Someone not using his real name (talk) 10:12, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
The recent slowdown has been in math articles using math-tag "<math>" which delayed edit-preview by 10 seconds for every 16 math-tags. -Wikid77 15:55, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
I've been working out a draft RFC about whether Wikipedia should ask the WMF to join the American Library Association on its behalf. The ALA has been one of the organizations consistently supporting advocacy efforts for intellectual freedom and privacy, and I think that membership would allow Wikipedia to develop a more effective and professional way of approaching things like The Day We Fight Back. I'm hoping to make the RFC "live" later today, after getting some good feedback at the VP/Idea lab, but I'm curious if people have any more feedback to offer so that it can come to a clear (and hopefully successful!) result. Wnt (talk) 17:50, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
The ALA is certainly a fine organization and its principles are compatible with the WMF, but I am not sure how it would benefit the English Wikipedia (or the WMF, for that matter) to join the ALA. I think your RfC needs to be clearer about that than it is currently. I also am not sure how "membership would allow Wikipedia [again, distinct from WMF] to develop a more effective and professional way of approaching things like The Day We Fight Back." The ALA and the English Wikipedia have two completely different decision-making structures. The ALA (like the WMF) has a board of directors/trustees/whatevers and a paid staff, and presumably someone within that structure comes up with an idea to support something or do something, and the "highest" person or group that needs to approve a particular decision gives its approval, and they do it. On Wikipedia we have RfC's, which in my opinion are not a great way to try to make decisions, especially if time is a factor. But that is what we have. I don't see how joining an organization that has a more conventional decision-making structure will change the way decisions are made here (and in fact, Wikipedia and all the other projects are already owned by an organization that has a more conventional decision-making structure, but that structure has not been adopted by the projects themselves. And I am not suggesting it should be, though it would be nice to have a better decision-making system than we do now.) Neutron (talk) 00:01, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, my feeling is that if Wikipedia has a membership, we can send a volunteer delegation to ALA meetings and get them more familiar with the issues, we could invite their leadership to set up a page here where they lay out ideas for us to join in on, we can have editors in the meanwhile receiving some of the training they offer, and we are in a better position to ask them to look at controversies that come in and give their opinion about them as a trustworthy third party -- for example, the big controversy about Creative Commons licenses giving away higher resolutions than those released under the license. But I'm just the idea person here - certainly I can't make any promises about what we or they would do, Perhaps I shouldn't have written that much when I'm not a crystal ball. I just feel like if we get enough people thinking about it, the intrinsic compatibility of our visions will find a way. Wnt (talk) 00:50, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
What are "the issues" that ALA is not aware of? WP (or WMF, can't remember which) had a booth at ALA a few years ago and speakers on WP-related topics are at various of their conferences on a regular basis. Heck, Sue Gardner gave a keynote address at their annual meeting a few years ago too. DMacks (talk) 06:28, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Admittedly, the biggest risk to this proposal is that Wikipedia is already a member and I just don't know it. :) But if you look at a library site like archive.org they proudly announce their membership. While I'm sure that the ALA is closely conversant with most of the issues, there are things that seem to come up for us quite suddenly (like the CC image resolution issue I mentioned above, the prosecution of Barrett Brown for linking a source from his Mediawiki wiki, or the featuring of the Wikipedia logo in one of Snowden's leaked NSA presentations) that it would be nice to have the most timely expert guidance about. Wnt (talk) 07:05, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
What is Wikipedia? Or better, what is Wikipedia's real-life equivalent? A library or a book? KonveyorBelt 00:30, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, that's one question I suggest in the RFC. We call Wikipedia an 'encyclopedia', but in truth, it lacks certain characteristics of one, such as a single publisher in charge with a level quality standard. If someone gets sued over an external link or libel, it isn't Wikipedia who faces the music, but that author. So Wikipedia is many articles, many separate works, and in that regard, it is like a library with many books. And in terms of sheer size, of course, it is vastly larger than any encyclopedia. I'm not sure how big it would be when printed out (actually, that would be a cute factoid for the RFC) but I'm thinking it would be the size of a library. And as I say in the RFC, Wikipedia has a reference desk, has a resource exchange much like interlibrary loan, has multimedia collections ... more reasons to answer 'library'. And if Wikipedia is a library, and those of us operating it are, by and large, not trained in library work, then it makes sense to me to get more involved with those who are. Wnt (talk) 00:57, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
When WP (all languages) had 20 million articles, I carefully calculated the text was the size of 365 copies of typical Encyclopedia Britannica (one for each day of year), but double that to include thumbnail images (from Commons if page not illustrated). So, 14,600 illustrated volumes for 20M pages, or 21,900 volumes for 30 million. -Wikid77 15:06, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
There may be reasons for the WMF to consider joining the ALA, but the very strained analogy between Wikipedia and a library is not one of them. Neutron (talk) 03:34, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Alright. It seemed like a great analogy to me, but admittedly, I tend to see everything as analogous to everything else. :) I've demoted my maunderings on "implications" to a talk page thread - it's not really material needing a vote anyway (or as you say, perhaps not even relevant) Wnt (talk) 03:58, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
I can see that part of the motivation of this application is to give you higher stance to oppose the implementation of on-wiki personal content filter. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 04:05, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
It is true that the ALA, like Wikipedia, has opposed content filters because it places a higher priority on people's right to read than on controlling what they read. However, membership in the ALA wouldn't mean that they can override Wikipedia policy: in fact, many of their members, unfortunately, have such policies forced on them under CIPA. Joining the ALA does indeed mean taking a careful position in favor of intellectual freedom, but relatively speaking, unfortunately, we are still in the front of the pack on this particular issue. Wnt (talk) 05:01, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Hence I oppose ALA membership. Providing personal content filter is not equal to interfering (other) people's right to read. The belief held by ALA of intellectual freedom is fallacious. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 05:15, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
You're still conflating decisions on two very different levels. The court battle the ALA was involved in was United States v. American Library Association, in which the ALA opposed an initiative to force libraries receiving public funds to install filters. That doesn't mean that they are telling all libraries not to use filters in any circumstance - see [18] for their actual position. Based on what they were able to win in 2003, they are telling sympathetic libraries they can inform adult patrons of their right to request that filters be turned off. The ALA's perspective is one of legal advocacy that would protect Wikipedia's right to have the policy it does. Wnt (talk) 06:11, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Then tell me, back in the discussion of WM opt-in image filter, people who quoted ALA's position on content filter to illustrate their opposition were all wrong. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 06:58, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
The ALA has put out a lot of material on the topic, but to me it looks like they're trying to accommodate two positions: the self-evident right of the patron to be free of censorship, and the right of those operating libraries to do as they wish or as they must. Accordingly, the document I linked above provides guidance that varies according to state and local law, and includes a section with suggestions for what libraries should do if they decide to use censorware. Wnt (talk) 07:47, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Interesting idea, though the ALA is wimpier than Wikipedia on some important issues, so they might make us softer in areas where I think we should be toughening up. My immediate reaction is mixed. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 08:38, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
I dunno, there's something I don't like about joining the ALA. If they try and change us too much, then there's a definite problem, but if they don't change anything...? I'm not sure there's really much benefit to joining either way. Supernerd11:DFiremind^_^Pokedex 15:02, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
I think that we could make a lot out of this, or not very much, depending on whether people get involved. At the bare minimum end of things (always the more likely outcome) we would help improve public awareness of a group representing a substantial fraction of U.S. libraries on issues that help preserve and expand Wikipedia's freedom to operate. At the maximum and most improbable extreme, I picture a world where you can drop by your local library and it's like visiting "Wikipedia", because we would have gotten experts together to hook from our articles into the catalogs of local libraries and vice versa, and arranged effective interlibrary loan from libraries to Wikipedia home users and vice versa, and trained Wikipedians to serve as library volunteers and vice versa. Wnt (talk) 20:55, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia (at least the English version thereof) is already struggling with an extreme systemic bias in favour of all things American, joining the American Library Association will only make it even worse. Thus as a counter proposal, I would like to suggest that we rather join the library associations of Samoa, Rwanda, Paraguay, Tajikistan, Nepal, Jamaica, Malta, Angola, Jordan and Iceland. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:56, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
The situation isn't really symmetrical though. Wikipedia is constantly dealing with legal issues such as Fair Use based on U.S. law, not Rwandan law. However, one reason why I made the suggestion of having WMF join on behalf of en.wikipedia in particular is the thought that yes, projects in various languages might eventually join counterpart organizations worldwide. I doubt you'll find much of a library organization anywhere in the world that celebrates Book Burning Day, though. :) Wnt (talk) 14:00, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
IFLA would be more appropriate. A chapter based in the US could join the ALA if they wish. – SJ + 19:47, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
That's a good idea, but it's not an either-or decision. The IFLA is has just 1500 members compared to the ALA's 59,000, and wouldn't be in the same position to focus on the American legal issues that affect what we can do on Wikimedia projects directly, but it should have its own beneficial aspects. Wnt (talk) 20:13, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Wired: In the Middle East, Arabic Wikipedia Is a Flashpoint — And a Beacon
I see at lot of issues on the Farsi Wikipedia (where I edit under a proxied-IP every once an while...(1) to spread Western culture and (2) to improve my grasp of the language. There are some interesting arguments between pro-Western and Islamic editors, some bullying of Christian editors by some users I have my suspicions about. There is a lot of interest in the world outside Iran, and I see it reflected in Farsi-language twitter and facebook postings. The Iranian government makes an active effort to block access to certain articles (two that I've written I've been told) on western topics because of their ability to influence youth. I wish the WMF would sponsor a few efforts to improve the Farsi project. In the next few years, I think it could make an impact politically and culturally.--ColonelHenry (talk) 00:14, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
It gives me a warm little glow to know that a thoughtful contributor translated my quality improvement efforts at the WP:FA page Freedom for the Thought That We Hate so that it is now available in the Arabic Wikipedia. :) — Cirt (talk) 00:18, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I've crossed paths with User:Rahma Elkady before. Great editor.--ColonelHenry (talk) 03:27, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Expansion of arwiki in Arab Spring and medical pages: Before I completed the transition of the slow wp:CS1 cite templates into Lua script, I had to use the fast Template:Cite_quick to handle footnotes in large pages expanded during the Arab Spring, when Arabic Wikipedia also expanded fast. Plus, in tracing bogus medical text, I verified how almost all common medical articles have translations in arwiki, and if the medical topic does not exist in Arabic WP, then it is likely quack medicine not allowed by Arabic users. It would be good for more users to help arwiki to expand, such as translating page "Half-pipe" (snowboarding) into Arabic, perhaps copying from the Turkish version, "tr:Halfpipe". -Wikid77 06:33, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Kinda helps to read the WP: pages before you cite them; "To revert edits in your own user space" is a bulleted point under the "When to use rollback" header. Tarc (talk) 04:39, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Ah, I thought that applied to one's own edits. — Cirt (talk) 04:40, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Kinda helps to read all of the WP: pages before you cite them. Yes, rollback may be used in your userspace, but the section starts: "Standard rollback is a fast way of undoing problematic edits, but it has the disadvantage that only a generic edit summary is generated, with no explanation of the reason for the change. For this reason, it is considered inappropriate to use it in situations where an explanatory edit summary would normally be expected." I'm not sure why Jimbo thought that Cirt's edit was problematic or that no explanatory edit summary would usually be expected, so perhaps he will enlighten us as to why he thought it necessary to let continue an unproductive discussion that had already reached the point of me being called the "TFA fuhrer" (NPA, anyone? No, thought not) - over to you, Jimbo. BencherliteTalk 10:29, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, certainly agree with all of these above comments by Bencherlite, but especially the last part!!! — Cirt (talk) 13:58, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Cirt, you tried to shut down a discussion on someone else's talk page, and they justifiably reverted you. They don't need to give you a summary. What you did was inappropriate, and looks like vandalism to me. DreamFocus 10:51, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Line up the firing squad...Jimbo used rollback on his user talk page.....with no edit summary. Oh the horror. Oh the humanity. All is lost. Wikipedia has fallen into the pits of despair...the ninth circle of hell the....oh give it a rest please.--Mark Miller (talk) 12:45, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Indeed. Cirt himself said in his second edit, before I reverted, "Others may feel free to modify, of course" so there was no reason to think it was controversial.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:17, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Agreed. I did say that. Of course. I just felt it seemed a bit brusque, for that edit to be done with zero edit summary or explanation as to why it was done. But I did indeed say anyone was free to modify it, I guess I assumed incorrectly those subsequent others would be quickly by to explain why, if their "modification", was instead a wholesale revert. It just seems the best way to operate with increased kindness to the community, in ideal situations -- and save the WP:ROLLBACK tool for vandalism cleanup. — Cirt (talk) 13:56, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Jimbo, may I ask, why did you revert? Freedom of speech? — Confession0791talk 14:02, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Why are you talking about freedom of speech? This is a private website. You have no intrinsic rights to comment here. IRWolfie- (talk) 11:09, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
@Cirt: I'm not sure why you hatted that, but it was clearly a mistake, and Jimbo doesn't need to excuse why he wants to keep hearing about something he's interested in on his own talk page. You're generally aware of the importance of open discussion, so I can only think you need to fight off a "Godwin's law" meme infection. The "law" is something for observation, sometimes cited as proof of comic victory, but it shouldn't be enforced. I have continued the conversation. Wnt (talk) 15:02, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Okay, Wnt, I fully agree with your explanation, thank you !!! :) — Cirt (talk) 19:47, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
This looks like the best news story I've seen about Wikipedia in a long time. The Sinenjongo High School part is great.
Today, in response to a NekNomination challenge from Five Roses Tea, the cellphone operator MTN Group announced via a YouTube video that they would provide access to Wikipedia without data charges. A NekNomination is an internet craze that started as a drinking game, but developed into an online challenge to make a positive difference in South Africa.[1][2]
This is the first I've heard about NekNominate, which seems like an absolutely awful internet meme, but in South Africa they've turned it on its head to become a "make a difference" challenge to businesses. Still not exactly sure how it works. Do you know any businesses that would want to participate?
I see that the Wikimedia Foundation's old lobbying firm Dow Lohnes has merged with the Wikimedia Foundation's ace law firm and cease-and-desist shoppe, Cooley LLP. I also see that the WMF is following Burger and Salomon over to the lobbying firm of Thompson Coburn, to "monitor copyright legislation". Woo wee, that sounds like good work, if you can get it! Anyway, I went to check out what Wikipedia had to say about this newest recipient of WMF donors' money, and lo and behold (!) the article says that it "appears to be written like an advertisement" and that "a major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject". Jimbo, why does the WMF have such a difficult time finding competent professional vendors who obey the Bright Line Rule? Here are the users to which you might write a sternly-worded note: User:TEdit597, User:38.114.66.232 (really close to the Belleville, IL office), User:63.77.47.130 (that's a Thompson Coburn-assigned IP address), and the granddaddy of them all, User:ThompsonCoburnmktg. That last user is already blocked, but they haven't received that hand-wringing scolding from the Founder of Wikipedia that we all yearn for. Let 'em have it, Jimbo! Please let us know when you contact the folks at Thompson Coburn to inform them of your Bright Line Rule and how simple and ethical it is for them to follow. - Checking the checkers (talk) 20:36, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Hmmm, a few interesting diffs in there. Is this firm the replacement for Michael Godwin, or is that something else? Wnt (talk) 21:05, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
(For further reading perhaps [19][20] is of interest. Anyone up to do a BLP of Michael Lazaroff?) Wnt (talk) 21:16, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Jimbo, will you please post a copy here of the cease and desist letter that the WMF sends to Thompson Coburn? Cla68 (talk) 23:11, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Oh, come on now, trolling checker-mater, you know it's only the productive editors who are hired by WMF who get the sack for COI editing, not the "information professionals." It's only the little people that get squished by multimillion dollar corporations... Carrite (talk) 02:54, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I count at least two self-declared paid editors engaged in this parody of a conversation. Neither has made, as best as I can determine, any disclosure that is visible to any reader of their pages as to what articles they have edited for pay and how much they have gotten. Be that as it may, I applaud their little hypocritical exercise, and I hope that it continues until or unless the WMF decides to ban paid editing. Coretheapple (talk) 17:40, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
That's weird -- I never knew that User:Wnt was a self-declared paid editor! - Checking the checkers (talk) 21:42, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm not. He means User:Carrite and User:Cla68. (Carrite says he has offered on oDesk to write three judiciously chosen articles for benefit something having to do with animals, I think it was, which marginally qualifies; Cla68 has some less specific notice visible on his user page) Wnt (talk) 21:52, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Wnt. I thought you were "pure", so I'm glad to see that there is no tarnish on your edit history! I'd like to respond to what seemed to be the main point of Coretheapple's, though. He seems to say that because Thompson Coburn didn't disclose their COI editing, anyone who criticizes that should disclose any and all of their own COI editing. Here's the difference, though. The Wikimedia Foundation is using tax-exempt donation dollars to fund the business of Thompson Coburn, which has been doing COI editing on the project that funds them. As far as we know, Carrite and Cla68 haven't been paid with WMF-donor dollars to spruce up articles about vendors to the WMF. So, the conversation here really isn't a "parody". The core hypocrisy of the WMF purchasing the services of a firm that itself violates the sole founder of Wikipedia's clear and simple ethical rule against self-interested editing stands on its own, regardless of who wishes to comment further on that hypocrisy. - Checking the checkers (talk) 22:03, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I have to tell you that the idea that WMF paid someone in "donor dollars" as you put it doesn't exactly push my "horror" button, as a threshold issue, unless the WMF has violated its tax exempt purpose. Do you think it has? I don't see it. If it has, you should feel free to notify the IRS and it will yank the WMF's 501C3 exemption in a New York minute. But I don't see that happening. Now, having paid somebody in "donor dollars," you now have found that this firm has done some nasty self-editing. Well, as you know, I think that's pretty bad. But honestly, getting back to my point, here we have two self-declared COi editors, meaning you and Cla68, taking up this issue. I have to say, having no allegiance to the WMF whatever (and finding its attitude on this subject rather chickens--t) that I have no problem with you two gents raising the issue here. More power to you. But is it hypocritical? Yes. I mean, you do agree that it is, don't you? As for hypocrisy on the part of the WMF, I don't really see it. Now if they hired you or some other paid editor, then yes I think it would be a hypocritical act on their part. I tend to doubt that they have their vendors under such scrutiny that they hare aware of this kind of thing, though I guess it's always possible. Again, I don't feel so cozy with them that I feel the need to defend them. I am happy to see them excoriated, as a matter of fact. I think it keeps alive the issue of paid editing, so thank you for that. Coretheapple (talk) 23:17, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Was he really talking about me? Jesh, I didn't take it that way. As I say on my page, quite clearly and in English, "I've never accepted money for editing at Wikipedia, but I do have an ad up now on oDesk and I will eventually do a total of three (3) "paid" jobs..." I'll let you know when that changes. I don't think my friend Core was actually talking about me though. Were you? Carrite (talk) 22:50, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
No, I was actually talking about Cla68, who has a big fat notice on his user page (and nothing else that I can see by way of notice) and our old friend Mr. 2001 a/k/a checking the checkers, who had a heart-to-heart with me on the subject a day or so ago. Checking the checkers knows this; he's a mischievous "old soul" as it were. But I like him. Coretheapple (talk) 23:10, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I've also come to like Mr. 2001 after a protracted adversarial relationship. It's really pretty unfortunate that he was banned in the first place. I suppose he provides the classic object lesson that banning things doesn't make them go away, it just makes them harder to identify. Carrite (talk) 03:06, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Frankly, having worked on the benches of Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Business a fair bit, I can posit that something like 80 to 90% of the small company wiki pages are probably written by someone with an obvious COI or by a SPA who can be assumed to have one. So by random chance alone, any small firm's page, whether they do business with the WMF or not, is probably going to have that kind of problem. Someone not using his real name (talk) 18:13, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Jimmie, our community hopes for your response on this matter. - 50.146.187.80 (talk) 14:21, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
I agree with 50.146.187.80. Jimmy should respond to these questions. Right now, it appears that he is actively hiding from them. - 144.26.117.20 (talk) 17:41, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
I doubt that the community gives a hoot about this totally specious issue. Coretheapple (talk) 22:36, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
The problem here, Coretheapple, is that Jimmy Wales and WMF say that they don't support paid editing, but then they keep declining to back up that stance when one of their business associates gets caught doing it. Cla68 (talk) 01:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Uh yeah. I get that. Duh. It is as subtle as a forest fire. But it begs the question of why there isn't wider interest. I think that there are two reasons. One is that posts like the one at the top of this section, and the ones previously offered by Mr. 2001 before he was blocked, tend to be routine examples of COI editing, nothing really shocking like BP effectively dictating the content of its article for months at a time. The other is what I pointed out earlier about paid editors monotonously raising these issues, so it just really stinks of hypocrisy and cynicism, and people are put off by that. Just my opinion, but that's the sense that I get.
Just one thing I wanted to point out: you call this "paid editing," but it isn't. It is COI editing, and a very banal example, not a really flamboyant example of the kind that...well, you yourself engage in. There is a "paid editor notice" on your talk page, but you don't disclose either the articles that you are paid to edit or how much you are paid, either per article or in the aggregate. I can't find any such disclosure anywhere on your user page (please correct me if I am wrong), so your "paid editor notice" really functions as an advertisement of your services, replete with a link to your email. I wouldn't call it a "disclosure" if I were you because you really don't disclose anything to other Wikipedia editors other than that you engage in paid editing in certain unspecified, unknown articles. And of course, you don't disclose anything to readers of the articles that you are paid to edit. Now I'm not saying you're doing anything against Wikipedia rules, but it's really ironic that you describe this as an "ethical disclosure" because a) it doesn't "disclose" much of anything, as I said, and b) it is about as far removed from anything ethical as one can imagine. It's really almost comical that you call it that, that you feel that your "disclosure" is "ethical," and then come here and make a fuss about someone else's COI editing. Coretheapple (talk) 13:21, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Attacking the messenger, Coretheapple? Believe me, after seven years of participation in this mess, I'm used to it. A big problem with the WMF acting so hypocritically is that their leadership example, or lack thereof, filters down to WP's administration. How is WP's administration ever going to get its act together when their leaders are sending such mixed messages? Cla68 (talk) 22:51, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
What do administrators have to do with this? Which administrator forced you to put a "disclosure" on your page that doesn't disclose but actually advertises your paid editing services? Which administrator or WMF functionary compelled you to solicit articles for pay, and then had you get on a high horse and lecture other people about "hypocrisy"? Do you have any idea how strange it sounds for a paid editor who doesn't properly disclose to behave this way? What I'm suggesting, just to be crystal clear, is that your own behavior is far more revolting than anything you and Checking the Checkers are highlighting. Coretheapple (talk) 05:03, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
By the way, I don't want to be unfair to you. If you've posted a list of the articles you've been paid to edit or to otherwise manage on Wikipedia (such as by offering rewards on their behalf on the Reward Board), by all means provide a link to it, and then it's just a question of your not disclosing in a clear fashion rather than, as seems to be the case, your not disclosing a damn thing.Coretheapple (talk) 05:10, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
You are using and ad hominem argument. The topic here is the apparent inconsistent or hypocritical behavior by the WMF and WP's administration regarding COI and paid editing issues in WP. An ad hominem argument is a logical fallacy. I have noticed that Wikipedians often resort to logical fallacies in debates on issues that cast Wikipedia's administration or the WMF in a pejorative light. So, you're in good company. Cla68 (talk) 05:14, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Are you serious? Really, are you joking? Do you think I give a good goddamn about the "Wikipedia administration" or the WMF? The only reason I monitor this page is because this is where paid editing is discussed. Now, Cla68, who keeps raising the issue of paid editing? See if you can guess. Is it people like me (people who don't engage in paid editing)? Uh... no, it isn't. It's people like you who, I'd say, raise the issue at least three-quarters of the time. In fact, the majority of the time it is one particular editor, the gent who started this particular discussion, and who freely admitted to me in a separate conversation that he is a paid editor. Don't you think that's interesting? I mean, that the primary group of people who keep coming here and initiating discussions on the issue, complaining about picayune examples of COI editing that they exaggerate out of all proportions, are themselves paid editors? Now, if people like yourself, paid editors, were raising egregious examples of paid editing I would view it as a valuable public service. But you're not. Instead you're talking about minor examples, not of paid editing, the crappy stuff that you guys do, but examples instead of ordinary COI editing. It's editing that's bad, and which I don't like, but what you guys do (and don't do, like failure to disclose) is much worse! I mean, really, are you guys trying to be comical? Do you understand the irony of what you're doing? Or do you think that people are just so dumb that they don't notice that, for instance, you're lecturing about "hypocrisy" while you've got a big fat "paid editor" notice on your user page that doesn't disclose whose articles you're paid to edit. Oh, and to make it even more comical, when challenged you become indignant! I swear, this is definitely about as weird and creepy an experience as I've encountered on Wikipedia. Coretheapple (talk) 05:33, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
I suspect that Coretheapple is Lisa Jo Sagolla's husband, exploiting Wikipedia to enhance a biography of Joan McCracken, to ridiculously feature heavy, heavy, heavy reference bias to one book, authored by Sagolla. Since Coretheapple doesn't disclose who he is, nor is there any way to tell if he's being honest about not being a paid editor, I think we just have to look at his edits and assume the obvious from them. Only someone with a conflict of interest in favor of Sagolla would cruft up one Wikipedia article with over 130 edits and over two dozen references to a single book source about one person. Coretheapple has traded "Neutral Point of View" for "Sagolla's Point of View", thereby proving that COI editors are actually quite a bit worse than mere paid editors. Wikipedia's biography about Joan McCracken is now just a book report of Sagolla's The Girl Who Fell Down, thanks to Coretheapple. - 2601:B:BB80:E0:25DB:D830:ABC5:BD7C (talk) 06:25, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, you've nailed me to the wall with that one. I am the illegitimate son of Joan McCracken and LeRoy Prinz. By the way, you used to be Mr. 2001 and now you're Mr. 2601. Does that represent a gain of 600? Coretheapple (talk) 06:52, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Has Jimmy contacted Thompson Coburn about Wikipedia's guidelines against conflict of interest editing? - 70.192.137.96 (talk) 13:38, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
This reminds me that a few months ago, before I realized that agitating on this topic was futile, I compiled a list on my user page of all the bad effects of paid editing. One negative factor, which I left out, is illustrated by the above exchange and other "Mr. 2001" posts in the past: conflict between paid editors and other paid editors, as they seek to gain advantage over each other and to undermine their competitors. Coretheapple (talk) 21:45, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
Do you think Jimmy abandoning his Talk page for 6 days has anything to do with his disgust at Thompson Coburn breaking the Bright Line Rule? - 2601:B:BB80:E0:ACA0:1006:7A54:DADB (talk) 11:33, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Doesn't sound likely but I guess anything's possible in this crazy world. You seem really upset about this. Why don't you call upon him to resign? The petition below is insufficiently ambitious, if you ask me. Coretheapple (talk) 17:03, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
small petition to Jimbo
Jimbo, could you kindly go to the guys at Thompson Coburn, and tell them that, as lawyers of the WMF, they have a reputation to keep in wikipedia? Explain to them that they shouldn't edit their own article. Explain to them that they shouldn't edit articles about their clients. Explain to them what would happen if they were caught doing such things. Please. kthanksbye. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:27, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Since it's business related, you should be able to receive travel compensation and per diem from the WMF for the trip to Thompson Coburn's corporate office in Washington DC. I guess a cease and desist letter signed by you would be cheaper, but the WMF is so flush with cash that why not go yourself? Cla68 (talk) 07:14, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't accept travel compensation or any expenses of any kind from the WMF, not even for attendance to board meetings. But of course your suggestion is not serious, as you have no serious intention of engaging on this topic at all. Just stop being snarky, you are wasting everyone's time and not showing yourself in a good light.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 03:56, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
He could send out a form cease-and-desist letter to all paid editors and all their clients, including yours, Cla68. Say, what do you think of User:CorporateM's talk user page disclosure? Planning to implement it or do we just have to make wild guesses as to who you are paid to rep here on Wikipedia? Coretheapple (talk) 19:09, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I think Core is referring to my user page, not my Talk page. Core has been sort of browbeating me a bit on various forums for a while and I was surprised to see a significant change in tone merely by adding a list of articles on my user page, which shows which ones I have an affiliation/COI with, including some that are not so great which I intend to circle back to and bring up to GA. The only reason I removed such a list from my user page a long time ago was because a particular user used it for stalking and harassment, but re-incorporating it is a rather small ask.
In my opinion there is too much of a tone that such disclosure are intended to expose one to scrutiny and oversight. It is actually a positive thing to boast of the quality contributions one has made with a COI, just as it is positive to boast of the ones an editor has made without one. CorporateM (Talk) 19:43, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant your user page. Yes, while I don't like paid editing, I wasn't joking when I said that your disclosure is a step forward and I'm glad you made it. It puts you considerably higher on the moral high ground, and I guarantee you that if it results in unwarranted harassment, especially by the competition, I will be the first to intervene. Coretheapple (talk) 19:53, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I also made a favorable reference to your disclosure on the TOU discussion at the "Meta" or whatever it's called, in a colloquy with your pal Greg Kohs. Coretheapple (talk) 20:01, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Reliability of Wikipedia
Hi Jimbo. May I ask you a couple of questions about Wikipedia's reliability as a source? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:42, 14 February 2014 (UTC) Clarified 04:28, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Database revisions unstable: The recent unreliability of revision storage at wp:ANI (or the Science Reference desk) has been documented and discussed at wp:PUMPTECH as T63319: • wp:VPT#Discussions disappearing and reappearing In general, if a page seems to be unreliable when displayed, then wp:purge that page, such as appending "?action=purge". An edit-filer has been installed at wp:ANI to help warn when the edited-page is not current. Also, for any major update to a page, consider storing a local copy of the wikitext into a local computer data file, just in case. Otherwise, we could rename it: "Iffypedia" as will it or won't it work... -Wikid77 16:11, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
Speed of math-tag cache fixed 15 Feb 2014: By 00:02 15 February 2014, a fix was deployed (https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/113481) by User:Aaron_Schulz as an update so math-tags run over 2x times faster, than during 8–14 Feb 2014. I have confirmed the math-tag caching speed as double (2.4x), similar now to Simple WP, so new equations edit-preview 2.4x faster than before (124 math-tags in 38 seconds, formerly 92 sec.) and then will re-display from cache within 3 seconds. -Wikid77 12:59, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Ah. I see [21] you haven't been active here for a few days. No worries. I'm happy to wait until you have time. Meanwhile, I'll post the first question. Do let me know if you'd rather not discuss the issue. (I'm looking for answers from you, our figurehead and international spokesperson, not community input - though of course I'd welcome others' thoughts. But if you'd rather not discuss the question, I'll take the topic to the village pump.)
If anything is, this collection of articles is, for the present, the world's encyclopedia. Even our best work, though, is unreliable.
While Google "knowledge panels" (infoboxes) take many of their summaries from Wikipedia, on an important topic like medicine they take from the US National Library of Medicine when they have the option;[22][23] and when they don't have that option, they tend to leave the "knowledge panel" off medical search results, rather than trust Wikipedia.[24][25] I'm sure you'd agree that is the prudent course.
Does the world deserve an encyclopedia it can trust for important information? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:41, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
Comment: I think Jimbo has generally advised people to focus on major topics, and avoid pages about trivia which is difficult to verify (which would eliminate huge numbers of minor pages), such as limit items to list entries rather than being 100 separate stub pages. Then verify the major articles/lists, update the text, and place the pages under Pending Changes control or such. However, the issues are unclear about POV-pushers who create usernames to authorize changes which can slant pages, except that it is harder to slant a page under change-control. We know, by counting the amount of unstopped hack-edits, how some improper wp:Recent_changes are often allowed, as being screened acceptable, even though some editors would have reverted those changes if other editors had not cleared them from the recent changes. It might require a 3-step approval process to deter errors, by having a 2nd reviewer who reviews the actions of a 1st reviewer; however, that could be done by sampling, as done during wp:GOCE copy-edit drives, where 1-in-10 pages is checked to ensure even long-term editors are fixing enough problems before untagging a listed page. -Wikid77 09:08, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
You've probably put your view on this a million times already, and I can understand you not wanting to go through it all over again. Perhaps you or a watcher could link me to where you address the fact that not a single page on Wikipedia is reliable and if you think that matters and something should be done about it? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:56, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Bluntly, the question is based on the faulty presumption that "reliability" is a binary, yes-or-no property. We have this same discussion on a smaller scale several times a month at WP:RSN and WP:FTN, and it goes like this:
Q: Is Publication X a reliable source?
A: That depends; we can't give you a blanket answer. Which material do you want to use, in which article, for what purpose?
Someone looking to determine the reliability of information from Wikipedia would, presumably, ask those same questions. The truth is that Wikipedia is sufficiently reliable for some purposes and uses, but not for others. If you're asking when Wikipedia will declare that every page within it is etched-in-stone perfection, the answer is 'never'; no reference work has ever made such a claim. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:02, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Sure, but it's worth asking "How can we improve the reliability?" without falling into the trap of believing in yes/no reliability. How reliable is Wikipedia? Nature say a smidge worse than Britannica, though the conventional wisdom (at least, in my field) is that half of all results in Nature are wrong. It's worth noting at least two projects have aimed for increased reliability Citizendium and Veropedia, with limited success. Which is probably worth understanding before we cut open the goose to get at the gold. WilyD 18:07, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
I can't say I disagree with that sentiment at all, or that it isn't a question that we shouldn't ask—or, more accurately, continue to ask every time we edit an article. I think it's unfortunate that that isn't the question that was asked here. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:18, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, sure, but the reframing to the right question ain't all that substantial, so we might as well do it and move from there, natch? WilyD 09:49, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
The disclaimer that "Wikipedia is a work in progress" is enough proof that Wikipedia doesn't see itself as "yes/no reliable". So why should anybody else? So we're all fools here supporting something that is unreliable. Maybe in a million years when Wikipedia is finished we can take the question up again. :-) Jodon | Talk 11:33, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
To clarify in light of the above comments: for important stuff the very least I expect from a source before I'll trust it is that it has a robust structure in place for rigorous independent expert review, and that when an article has passed such review, that version, not later unreviewed iterations by Randy, is presented to the public. Does the world deserve an encyclopedia it can trust for important information? My second question is: Does it concern you that we are not trustworthy for important information? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:43, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
It sounds like you're suggesting 2 versions of Wikipedia, an official version presented to the public that is tried and tested with all reliable sources verified to death, and a "beta" version visible only to editors, representing the entirety of Wikipedia in its incomplete phase. I'd like that idea myself, but I don't see that happening somehow. Jodon | Talk 14:22, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Yep. That's about it. If a highly-regarded scholarly or professional society nominated three independent expert reviewers and managed the review process, and they reviewed an article, and it passed as current, relevant, comprehensive, neutral and true to its sources, would we really just let that version slip into oblivion in the article's history while Randy improved on the public version? --Anthonyhcole (talk ·contribs · email) 15:37, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Then the relevant "approved" article might have some kind of a check mark at the top of the page stating that the current version has been approved by such and such an authority, for all the world to see? I think at that stage the article would have to be fully protected, disallowing any further edits (how would that work?), as it would be considered by experts to be at a "complete" stage. This sounds like a not unreasonable goal that Wikipedia should be setting for itself, building up a number of approved or completed articles per month, gradually meeting an attainable target of eventual completion somewhere in the not too distant future. If all the articles are always considered works in progress, how can Wikipedia EVER be considered finished and therefore reliable? Jodon | Talk 16:29, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Editors could continue to work on the reviewed article in WP:DRAFTS space and once it's passed review it could replace the earlier reviewed version on public display. I don't see it happening to Pokemon articles but I'd like to see all our medical content get there. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:09, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I would agree that the focus should be on areas for which reliability is generally called into question (this would have to be pre-established), such as the medical content you mention, rather than on the entire encyclopedia. But I believe the premise is sound. My ideal approach towards articles that appear to need extensive revision would be rather not to add bits and pieces here and there on a "live" article over a long period of time (although I have done that also!), giving the general public a very incomplete version of that live article (with the therefore authentic claim that it is unreliable), such as teleportation, not a mainstream article but not a minor one either. Instead I would see an article needing extensive work such as this, which needs further content and references, and would create the new article here until it was practically complete and ready for review. The point would be to exhaust all the existing sources that are available, BEFORE sending it to article space, thus ensuring its reliability. The problem of course is that our digital age is still young and new sources for any subject are still popping up everywhere, and as long as new books, magazines and journals are being written about subjects, and new websites being created, sources will continue to increase in size and Wikipedia will have to constantly be in sync with the constant expansion. This makes a "finished product" virtually impossible. Jodon | Talk 19:39, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, I don't have a problem with working directly on the public version if it's never been reviewed by experts - presumably every intelligent good-faith edit made to the live version enhances the reader's experience that little bit more. Even articles that have been through scholarly review aren't finished, by the way. Scholarship is constantly evolving and, as you say, new sources are constantly emerging. So, I don't think we're talking about a finished version, just a trustworthy one - as much as you can trust rigorous independent scholarly review, anyway. You'd need to repeat the reviews to keep up with the evolving scholarship. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 20:50, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
In that case, it's probably good that people don't rely on us, and if that improvement caused people to just trust Wikipedia when it matters, it'd be a great detriment to our readership. We can say how much more accurate such a Wikipedia would be, the answer is not very much. Even if we had rigorous independent review, we should still tell people not to rely on us for important information, because we'd still be rife with misinformation. WilyD 15:50, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
We could clearly distinguish the reliable from the "work-in-progress" articles so the reader knows what they're looking at. The truth is we have some awesome articles, like Cancer, but they get lumped into the dubious box by readers because the readers can't tell the gold from the fools gold - and neither can we, really, until they've been rigorously reviewed by genuine experts. (That Nature study is tiny and no conclusions can be drawn from it. The WMF should commission a study of our reliability large enough and rigorous enough to render meaningful answers.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:09, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
If you want to use "vetted by independent experts", you should probably avoid dismissing Nature. Of course, Nature is the posterboy for why trusting something merely because it was vetted by independent experts is a foolish thing to do, but other studies have found more or less the same result. WilyD 18:20, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
All of those studies are tiny. Anyway, why do you think "33% more errors than Britannica" is something to be proud of? We should achieve a much higher standard than that. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:38, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I see no reason not to strive to be the best. But "We should be ashamed until we achieve a standard much higher than the best ever obtained by professionals" is just silly. There's no shame in being 25% worse at baseball than George Herman Ruth, or 25% worse at hockey than Hayley Wickenheiser. We can be proud of doing a good job while still trying to do a great job. But we shouldn't kid ourselves that a fundamental change in reliability if possible - if we eliminated a quarter of the errors in Wikipedia, we'd be as reliable as the most reliable reference works - but you'd still be foolish to blindly accept what's written here then. Otherwise, if your goal is to make Wikipedia orders of magnitude more dependable than any other reference ever made - well. WilyD 14:59, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Beyond the obvious concern about an editor who is basically being harassed by a thin-skinned politician, I find it absolutely hilarious that Katsanevas has not only brought the Streisand Effect down upon himself, but proven the contentious addition to be right. Resolute 00:57, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
It's a reminder that if you are not an administrator, bureaucrat or other cherished person, but just an ordinary user, and you are sued for libel, you are on your own. The only exceptions to that rule are a series of exceptional circumstances set forth here. Coretheapple (talk) 03:58, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Where does that say that "cherished persons" are entitled to legal representation? To me, the takeaway is simply to take heed of BLP policy, and not libel anyone. Cullen328Let's discuss it 07:56, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Are you familiar with the case in question? In this context, your comment may suggest that the Greek editor failed to take heed of BLP policy, and that they they libeled someone. That's a rather sweeping suggestion. Moreover, the implication that it is possible to predict whether the subject of an article might object to a particular edit is not correct. The legals are so confused they are also suing an organization that has nothing to do with Wikipedia (apparently they think it does).
The mention of "cherished persons" is a reference to the fact that the WMF will cover, under certain rather wide circumstances, admins and above, whereas they will not cover humdrum editors (unless certain rather restricted circcumstances apply). Johnuniq (talk) 09:06, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
I am expressing no judgment about the specifics of the case in Greece. However, as I place confidence in the justice systems of civilized countries, I think that people who don't commit libel won't likely be convicted of libel. And, I think that adherence to our BLP policy helps greatly in reducing our individual legal vulnerability in such cases. Cullen328Let's discuss it 05:01, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
There's a more detailed page about what WMF will cover at meta:Legal and Community Advocacy/Legal Fees Assistance Program. It does indeed set admins and above as "cherished persons". That's a good reason to apply for adminship, by the way. Or to oppose RfA of controversial editors on grounds that they may embroil the WMF in costly lawsuits if they have the admin bit. (Although "WMF’s sole discretion" still applies to any such legal aid.) Someone not using his real name (talk) 11:07, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Or quietly redact insults posted by an admin, to hide potentially libelous text which could anger people against WMF. -Wikid77 14:24, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Indeed that is a questionable inequality. Yet... the inequality we see here is so much greater. An editor posts something that a rich person doesn't like, and it's supposed to be worth 200,000 euros. Literally, dollars and sense, many people's lives are worth less than a rich person's smile, which I suppose is why throughout the world economy so many proles spend their whole lives working for no more than the brief smile of one of the upper caste. Someday, whether by a miracle of understanding or a miracle of adversity, this will be set right. Wnt (talk) 14:06, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Or perhaps set right in the "fires of Hell". Another valid warning, "You can't fight city hall" as it is often easier to pay them and then spend the extra time making money elsewhere. The Bible notes if a person is not forgiven, then they carry those sins to their grave, for final judgment. Recall, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than...." (Matthew 19:24). -Wikid77 14:24, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, it seems to me that sociogeny recapitulates cosmogeny. Or as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, "the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Wnt (talk) 20:09, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
It is definitely questionable. It elevates administrators, some little more than children, to exalted status in the event some idiot gets sore and decides to sue. In this Greek case I believe the person sued as an ordinary user, so, if my assumption is correct, the WMF is using good judgment in helping him. I understand why the WMF is making that distinction, but it is yet another reason to be wary about contributing to Wikipedia in contentious topics. Coretheapple (talk) 17:57, 15 February 2014 (UTC) I spoke too soon. The user in question is an administrator. Coretheapple (talk) 18:01, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Note that the defense of Admins and other "support people" is only relevant when they are acting in a "support role". I take it that this means that ordinary editing by an Admin, 'crat, or ArbCom member, or the like would get no more assistance if it lead to a lawsuit than would a similar edit by an ordinary editor. Only an action in pursuit of the special role would get special assistance in defense, if I read this right. DES(talk) 14:32, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
At least in my state, home owner/renter insurance covers situations where one gets sued for volunteer work. Secondarily, editors should set up their own association with small annual dues and help each other. It's silly to complain about WMF when we have the power to take care of ourselves. JehochmanTalk 12:15, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
You'd need an "umbrella policy" in most instances. They can be expensive.[26]Coretheapple (talk) 15:18, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
As for your suggestion about "small dues," I suggest that you price libel/slander insurance and see how "small" it would cost. Coretheapple (talk) 18:02, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
This really should be a signal to all editors. This is what could happen to any of us just for making edits. This isn't the first time its happened either and it certainly won't be the last. 108.45.104.158 (talk) 20:59, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Has anyone tipped off news sites - Wired, Techdirt, etc. - about this lawsuit? This is, from what I can tell, nothing more than an ill-thought-out SLAPP, which on its merits should die if what I'm reading is accurate. —Jeremyv^_^vBori! 21:12, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
Since most named editors are anonymous (and IP addresses are not per se individuals) and since really stupid stuff happens even in civilized countries, all the more reason to not store (or store only briefly) information that can be used to tie user names to individuals. The only truly safe information is that which has never been collected or which has been 100% deleted. North8000 (talk) 18:55, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
There was a mention of no single user having rights to all the information in Arabic Wikipedia at [27] - I wonder if this measure has been fully rolled out. But the biggest problem here may be one of simple outing, which editors here have shown is not so hard to do. The easiest way (don't know if this happened in this case) is you as Black Hat send the editor a Wikipedia e-mail and, not being paranoid, they Reply to it. Wnt (talk) 22:09, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
Yikes, that link from Wnt just above warrants attention. According to the brief article, a high-level admin (a checkuser) at the Arabic Wikipedia was detained by secret police in 2007. They attempted to force him to reveal the IP address of an editor who wrote something about an (unnamed) country's leader. Maybe having advanced rights is not as attractive as first appeared in this thread. Johnuniq (talk) 05:30, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
That article raises a number of serious issues. One is whether volunteer personnel at the projects are entrusted with too much sensitive, private, personal information that could have adverse consequences if disclosed to governments. Coretheapple (talk) 06:17, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
Good points about the one layer of defense, which is protection of information. The next layer is to not gather, or to fully delete information. If it is stored, it will get out through breaches or legal action. North8000 (talk) 16:42, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
Absolutely. Personally identifiable information should be regularly and swiftly purged. The danger is not just governments but private litigants too. Coretheapple (talk) 17:22, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
I think the best improvement we could make right away would be to come up with an alternative e-mail function that offers an encrypted drop box. The way I picture this is, we have a table in the database that consists of a dictionary of public keys, messages, and dates. Alice sets up her account with a (hidden) preferences to email to a public key. (Ideally she can generate the public and above all the private key with either her own software or software provided) Bob sends a message via a Wikipedia https web interface which is immediately encrypted with this public key as it arrives (including a header that indicates Bob is the one who sent it), then held for a brief delay before the time of official posting is recorded in the database. (The time is needed to expire old messages and allow Alice to download only recent messages) Alice (or anyone else) can access the server and get all the messages sent to that public key, but there is no way to tell from those records who sent it, and no way to tell without cracking Alice's preferences who received it either. (Accessing any large set of messages at once would be seen as an attack and hopefully thwarted, since eventually they will be decryptable). Alice then decrypts with her private key on her own computer. Optionally, Alice posts a second genuinely public key on her user page that Bob uses to encrypt the message on his own end so that cracking https gives no joy - which is almost to be assumed; see Lavabit. Optionally, Alice's public keys (the genuinely public one and the one in her preferences) are drawn from a long list of single-use sets in her preferences, so she can intentionally expose a single message text (say, if it's a link to a Stuxnet web site or something) to prove what Bob sent to her. Optionally, the encryption software at either end is sent via https as a javascript or the like, though obviously this is weaker than a more careful method with good checksums. In any implementation, the result of the decryption should be plain text, not html with inline images that allow Stalker Ex to send Alice his Flickr upload of a kitten and get her IP address the moment she gets her e-mail. It should also link conveniently to the reverse alternative e-mail to Bob, rather than any insecure e-mail reply. I think if these things were done well, the result would be a practical and widely used replacement for e-mail that would make it much, much more difficult for bozos to out users, and make it nearly as difficult for spy agencies to spy on Wikipedia personal communications. Wnt (talk) 22:45, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
Resistance to progress is severe
During the past month, I have met extreme resistance to improvements. Forget all those fears of "None will be left to edit WP" (no) and instead, know that grammar/format edits are being actively reverted, new pages are being deleted, and progress is quite difficult. Plus, it is not just recent editors who are difficult, but rather several long-term editors who should know how to discuss issues beforehand. Instead, the trend is: "Delete first, and perhaps discuss later". As a long-term editor and professional tutor, I can only imagine the impressions which newcomers must quickly form, when I have degrees in computer science, math, and information science, and still people are deleting my new templates, new math articles, and reverting changes to computer-typeset tables, plus removing technical replies I post to noticeboards. I wonder if there is a "violence-begets-violence" trend now, as "revert begets revert" where long-term editors have sunk to just passing the negative attitudes along to the next user. In fact, I think it has been months since anyone asked, "Could you explain the reason for that text?" and then discuss options, rather than just delete pages or remove comments. I am beginning to feel as if I must conduct education classes here, first, to be allowed to edit pages. So now the big question resurfaces: "What if an encyclopedia were being written by people who cannot understand the contents?". That would explain why a Micropedia could exist elsewhere, but few could understand the benefits of maintaining small, focused articles here, and avoiding the growing ocean of specialized data-hoarding in mainstream articles. On a positive note, there has been talk by developers in trying to control the rampant swamp of data, and pre-plan how WP could handle 9 million articles here and still reformat them with current contents. The recent deletion of 71,000 stub pages seemed like a desperation move, but perhaps it is tied to an awakening of the future here. Making improvements is a struggle in this environment. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:12, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, people did state some reasons but the act was mainly wp:IDONTLIKEIT, as indicating the debates will be lengthy to gain their "approval" to allow edits. -Wikid77 19:00, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
More importantly, how about some examples? What stubs were deleted and what was/were the rationale(s)? How about some specific examples of supposed progress that were reverted? Resolute 20:21, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
To me, the most-obvious (deleted) progress would have been Template:Tbold, as {tbold|Song Title} → "Song Title" to show a quoted gray-bolded title. Many editors want bolded text in lists of titles, but standard bolding is too-dark, or oppressive emphasis, while gray-bolding would work, and curly braces, {{tbold|__}}, catch markup typos faster (compared to the mis-matched quotes/apostrophes in: "''Song Title'''). Spotting an unclosed {{tbold|__} is easier than spotting 3-versus-2 tic marks in bolding text. Well, I explained all those issues in the TfD, but {tbold} was deleted anyway. Perhaps editors need to spend years copy-editing music pages. -Wikid77 19:00, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia requires constant maintenance to uphold our standards. To leave it in it's current state is a travesty. Like it or not, all edits need to be scrutinized and no edits must be overlooked. "Delete first, and perhaps discuss later" is procedure. Otherwise there'd be thousands of bad pages and non-notable microstubs lying around because someone thought they had potential and vowed to improve it, then promptly abandoned it. Deletion is necessary. KonveyorBelt 18:17, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
Specialist-mindset bias: I guess a major problem is articles still written in specialist formats, with math pages written with too many "math-speak" equations, or sports articles written with "sports-speak" scores, or similar specific jargon and formats for other specialities. Hence, it seems as though re-education is needed to reword pages for general readers, with a general overview of the topic, as an encyclopedia entry. Otherwise, the editors close to a subject keep adding more specialist-mindset text, worded as indepth tangent essays, and expand the articles even further from general-reader viewpoints. A major factor is the wp:grandstanding of special terms to wikilink in the intro lede sections, as if simple "Addition" will be described as, "The adding '+' of typically non-transcendental quantities, even leading to Riemann sums, irregardless of the Einstein-Bose condensate" or other such stuffing of tangent wikilinks into the intro text, in order to increase the advert links to other topics which people seem to push. The pages are treated as boosterism for abstract jargon. It also happens in psychology or sociology topics as well. For many general users, they are unsure if "Riemann sums" should be removed from the intro text, or perhaps other users would re-add the term back into the page. Likewise, some Help pages are written as if being developer-training notes to help programmers configure the MediaWiki software, rather than help people to write articles. More later. -Wikid77 19:00, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm a little surprised to see you sounding so jaded, Wikid77. Do you have any solutions in mind? --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 02:40, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
Other users here noted resistance as wp:OWNership of pages, and I have met similar roadblocks. I guess the first solution will be to allocate extra time to open discussions with each resistant user, to assess the blockage, but the level of negative reverts predicts major difficulty in those discussions. Obviously, some issues need to be elevated to 30-day wp:RfCs, to gauge the community Zeitgeist or willingness to change (see below: "#Example RfC to auto-correct cites"). However, recall the cryptic math-page issue was discussed in 2008: "wp:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 35#Easy as pi?" with now almost 6 more years of cryptic math-page text. -Wikid77 19:00, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
Sure, the first 500 words (ish) of any article need to be a human readable summary for the lay person. Only when this is done can a main section be added that permits techno speak and specialist jargon. Saffron Blaze (talk) 05:10, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
I know that some don't want me to post here because they are tired of hearing me criticize how broken the system is but I'll vouch for almost everything Wikid77 said. There is zero interest in this community for doing anything that makes editing easier or would make the editing environment better. There is almost no interest in writing pages or building up the project except when that improvement reflects their own POV or interest, I've given up editing outside discussions and every effort his been made to completely ban me from the project for my criticism of abusive admins, the Arbcom and other areas of the project that need to be corrected. As with Resolute above though, why were 71000 sutbs deleted and can you provide an example or 2? 138.162.8.58 (talk) 16:34, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
As I recall, the 71,000 sub-stubs were marginal pages, tagged for improvement but abandoned, with no one to champion their topics, although some users noted examples which were notable, easy to rescue. More later. -Wikid77 19:00, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
Oh! Are you referring to abandoned submissions at Articles for Creation? Resolute 19:22, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
I'll repeat the request for more information about the 71,000 deleted pages. It is hard to form an opinion about such a deletion without knowing more.--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:33, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
I think most of the stuff that was deleted withing the stale drafts was probably rightfully deleted based on what I saw (Copy vio's, poorly written, poorly sourced, etc.) I did also see quite a few that should not have been deleted or denied. There was a substantially higher standard set for articles going through AFC than if the individual just created the thing straight out. That probably caused a lot of them to just leave because they can see what other articles look like and then they are being told their submission wasn't good enough because the reviewer was looking for a B-class article. Jimbo even mentioned a case here a few weeks ago. I think we probably lost at least a few hundred articles when those were deleted because many of the people reviewing them for deletion didn't really review them, they just deleted them and that can be seen by the rapid succession of deletes they did. Some had several a minute so there is no way they could have reviewed the article in that time. 138.162.8.58 (talk) 22:38, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
Article count confirmed mass deletion: Recall how WP passed 4.5 million articles earlier, but after the deletion of "over 70000" then the count dropped below 4,450,000 (now {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}: 6,820,309). Hence, when I noticed the total article count, I did not doubt the mass deletion had occurred. -Wikid77 03:45/16:58, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Sorry User:Wikid77, but this seems a bit out of character. You are usually a very through, detailed editor. So when I saw a reference to a "recent deletion of 71,000 stub pages seemed like a desperation move" I took it seriously, but needed more information. Now it seems you simply noticed a change in aggregate courts and leaped to a conclusion. You don't know whether it is a rogue editor gone amok, or some task force did a massive cleanup, or some combination of things. How do you know it is "desperation" when you don't even know what happened? As you know Jimbo's page is a highly visible page, and I think posting on it carries some responsibility. I think you should do a bit more homework before making such charges.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:16, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
About 70000 pages: Well, I had hoped some users who worked with those "76,000" deleted pages (or renamed?) would clarify, but apparently the wp:G13 deletions spanned months, and it was not overnight deletion; plus many pages might have been undeleted, so see January 2014 discussion at /Archive_154#G13 where one user had over 35 pages (not all deleted), see: User_talk:87.252.44.179 for warnings. -Wikid77 16:58, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
"I'm puzzled that you would make an oblique reference to a large number of articles deleted and expect those involved in the deletion would clarify.. I am someone who deleted many of those pages, but I did not speak up earlier, because you did not identify what you were talking about. Now that I realize you are talking about abandoned G13's I'll comment. as you are probably aware, the community reached a consensus that if an editor created a proposed article, and it did not meet the requirements of a acceptable article, and it was abandoned, without a single edit for six months, it could be removed. These attempts at articles had accumulated over many years, and were not being worked on. Despite the authority to delete, checking nothing more than that it met the requirements, I spot-check many in the queue to make sure that we weren't removing salvageable articles. Most were crap, but on rare occasions, I found a couple that could be salvaged. Many editors, such as user:DGG and User:Anne Delong worked diligently to salvage some of the items in the pile, or pass on to suitable project potentially salvageable drafts. However, most were literally crap. Some just a single sentence talking about a high school chum. I have no doubt that of the 70,000 or so deleted, a small handful could have been turned into an acceptable article. But the fact they were deleted doesn't mean anything meaningful is lost. Someone, somewhere will decide to write about the widget factory, and this time a couple decent references will be included and the article will be created.
What course of action would you have preferred? Do you think the encyclopedia would be better off with 70,000 unacceptable articles that no one has touched in over half a year? Are there really editors wandering around thinking "I want to improve the encyclopedia, but the existing 4.5 million articles are all perfectly fine. If only there were a pile of crap I could sift through and maybe find something worth working on".--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:55, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
The huge pile of "crap" has been winnowed down by 90%, and what is left can be found HERE, not including those which have already become articles. Because of the huge numbers being deleted each day, the selections were sometimes made hurriedly, and it's likely that a fair number of these will be let go after a second look. It's not quite fair, though, to say that they must be poor articles because no one worked on them, when they are located on talk pages where no one but the original submitter and maybe a couple of reviewers know of their existence. I hope that the G13-related process is the first step in changing Afc so that articles about notable topics whose original editors have stopped working on them will be "bumped out" into another area (probably in the Draft namespace) where willing editors will be more likely to find and improve them. I agree with Sphilbrick that there are plenty of poor articles in the main encyclopedia, some of which make the ones in Afc look good by comparison, but these are already located where they can easily be found and improved. By the way, I doubt that the large G13 deletion affected the article count - I don't think talk pages are counted as articles in the count. —Anne Delong (talk) 15:40, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Indeed, deleting the AfC talk-pages would not drop total article count, so which 50,000+ articles were deleted recently? -Wikid77 10:33, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Looking at the ones in the period from 6 to 12 months ago, I estimate (as a guess, without actually counting) that of the articles submitted at AfC about half could never be acceptable, though 1 or 2 % are in fact erroneously accepted (this is about the same proportion as deletions at New Pages Patrol for conventionally submitted articles). As for the others, 10% are acceptable as they come in, using the standard of being likely to be kept at AfD, but half of them nonetheless get rejected and usually never approved because the editors give up. Of the remaining 40%, less than one-half of them ever get worked on again, less than half the time successfully. That is, we lose more useful articles than we take, because most people do not return, & most who do never get helpful advice. How many of the 40% could in practice be rescued if we gave good advice is not clear. Probably an expert searching for sources and revising the articles in depth could rescue a great many of them, but we do not have a sufficient number of expert editors willing to work to that degree on other people's articles. A great deal of what we necessarily reject is because nobody will fix it, not because it is absolutely unfixable. I said necessarily reject, because until it is fixed, too much of it is useless or even harmful. I don't see how to correctly specify the true proportion of what we could fix unless people actually try. I know from experience I can fix about 60% of the articles we get on academic faculty, and 30% of the ones on literary authors. DGG ( talk ) 01:38, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
After a lot of discussion and input, no one has identified a mass deletion of articles. Also, the statistics page, while admittedly periodic, seems to show a steady growth in the the number of articles, and no setback. The number of articles is not necessarily the best measure of growth, anyway; many new useful articles are created by turning redirect titles into articles or expanding stubs. As the number of articles grows, more of editors' time is spent improving and updating existing articles, and this both enlarges the encyclopedia and makes it more useful, without increasing the article count. —Anne Delong (talk) 14:20, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
@Anne Delong, thank you for your research and analysis of the situation, and I believe I had confused the upcoming 4.5-million count with the recent 4.4-million count, of enwiki articles, which had been the max-articles count as limited by the Gompertz function at 4.4M (now disproven), in wp:Modelling Wikipedia's growth, where I had concluded would reach almost 10 million articles instead, before deletions/merges will offset the daily new articles. I have been frightfully busy these past weeks, as evidenced by my late remarks here(!), so I appreciate the time taken to dispell any fears of "mass deletion" among the existing articles. However, I really hope we can get better tools to help the current editors update articles faster, for text quality, clarity and references (with less resistance), and write more of the requested articles. -Wikid77 00:33, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
Example RfC to auto-correct cites
As a suggestion for a wp:RfC to promote change, I think the wp:CS1 cite templates (with {{cite_web}} etc.) should be changed to auto-correct for invalid parameters, rather than issue red-error messages in thousands of live articles. I think an RfC is needed because repeated discussions have not led to any auto-corrections in reducing the backlog of 230,000 invalid cite pages (see 19 error categories: wp:CS1CAT). For example, the cite template parameter "|other=" is rejected, rather than considered an alias for "|others=" as follows:
{{cite_book |title=Some Book|author=John Doe|other=Mary Doe}} now shows: John Doe. Some Book. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |other= ignored (|others= suggested) (help) could show: John Doe. Some Book. Mary Doe.
{{cite_book |title=Book 2|author=Jane Doe|contributor=Mary Doe}} now shows: Jane Doe. Book 2. {{cite book}}: |contributor= requires |contribution= (help) could show: Jane Doe. Book 2. (contributor: Mary Doe).
{{cite news |title=News report|author=John Doe|occurred=2 pm, 4 May 2009}} now shows: John Doe. "News report". {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |occurred= ignored (help) could show: John Doe. "News report". (occurred: 2 pm, 4 May 2009).
The general idea behind auto-correction of cites is to assume a close keyword is the same parameter (such as "other=" treated as "others="), or else show the unknown parameter in parenthesis brackets at the end of the cite, such as "(occurred: 2 pm, 3 May 2009)" or similar. The unknown parameters could still trigger a link to some error-tracking category, but the live page would not show an error message as: "Unknown parameter |occurred= ignored (help)" but instead show the extra parameter data as "(occurred: 2 pm, 4 May 2009)". Then more than 25,000 cites could be auto-corrected to show the actual contents of the unknown parameters, at the end of each cite. Treat the unknown cite text as free-form data, not red-error text. Anyway, that is the type of major system-wide change to be proposed in an RfC, to allow more users to consider the effects of auto-correcting over 25,000 cites. Local discussion for the past year has not led to change. -Wikid77 03:45, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't trust scripts to correctly "guess" which correction is, in fact 'correct", and if an autor-correct gts it wrong, ite merely hides the problem This would be a DIS-improvemnt, in my view. DES(talk) 03:58, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Auto-correction can hide problems but error text can invent more: I agree how there is some danger in auto-correcting data and guessing the wrong parameter, but auto-invalidating is often even worse, on many levels. When a template rejects "|other=" as not being "|others=" than that just adds busy work to edit a page for a trivial typo, but when an editor has written several cites with unknown parameter "section=" then flagging all those cites with red-error messages just floods the page with a sea of red, and risks distracting the reader/editor away from important issues on the page. For example, I read a page with several error messages also rejecting date "Sept." as being invalid (but obviously September), and meanwhile, the document page number was "89-993" (no error message, for 904-page cite!) and when reading the source, I finally realized "89" should have been page "989-993" as a 4-page cite, but obsession with trivial errors eclipsed the major problem of an incorrect page number more difficult to handle than "Sept." in a date. When the emphasis is on reporting all (minor) problems, rather than auto-correcting simple ones, then the result can be a flood of trivial distractions which hide the major problems. Likewise, error-message categories are flooded with thousands of minor (easily auto-corrected cites) which obscure the pages which really need work to correct major problems in sources. Among each set of 200 flagged pages, there might be only 7 which need major edits to identify source documents; the other 193 pages are clutter as obscuring the pages which really need to be fixed. Plus, error messages often hide the partial data, such as "Unknown parameter |occurred= ignored" which does not show data "occurred: 2 pm, 4 May 2009" or similar partial data omitted during an error message. Consequently, during the 1960s, computer software began auto-correcting to show partial results, rather than terminate a program with: "FATAL ERROR: DOES NOT COMPUTE" and provide the user with no further data. Overall, the risks from auto-correction are much less than the risks of red-error messages obscuring (or limiting) what the user sees. -Wikid77 07:29, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
IMO there are some here that we can correct with a bot and some that cannot be. I partially agree with DESiegel above but I don't trust all editors either. I think there are a number of these we could fix with a bot to reduce the number that need to be fixed by a human, a human will undoubtedly need to fix some though. 138.162.8.58 (talk) 18:01, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Generalized "auto correcting" for any purpose rapidly runs into trouble (just picture a program savaging the references in The The). This is yet another incarnation of the multiple comparisons problem. But what Wikid77 is suggesting here isn't auto correcting, just a less obtrusive error message. In particular, put an unknown field error in parentheses instead of red font, and then you can file messages with that particular error in their own special category of error message to be ignoredtended to when time permits. Of course, no matter what the error format, if a bot went around telling people "did you know... there's no such cite field as occurred", it might do more. Wnt (talk) 22:22, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps it might not seem like auto-correction, of an unknown parameter name+value, to show parenthesis brackets "(__)" around the data. It is a tactic to fix almost 8,500 pages in category: • Category:Pages with citations using unsupported parameters – 0 pages However, that is just one form of auto-correction, where other forms include:
Treating lone "http:_" text as parameter "url=http:_" (common mistake).
Translating major French parameter names into English (accept: "auteur=" as author, "titre=" as title, or "année" as year/date, etc.)
Auto-respelling of misspelled keywords ("ulr=" as url, "auhtor=" as author, "acesdate=" as accessdate, "insb=" as isbn, "OLCL=" as OCLC, etc.)
Allowing new aliases (common: "isbn10=" or "isbn13=" as isbn, etc.)
Auto-reducing large page ranges, such as "89-492" as 489-492 or similar.
For each case, there could be a special warning-category link, separate from major problems such as a cite with no title at all. Also, when several parameters are invalid, then there could be an extra category to list pages with severely garbled cites (as difficult to auto-correct all parameters). Currently, thousands of pages with trivial cite typos are cluttering the maintenance-category lists (see wp:CS1CAT), and obscuring pages which contain severe problems, where the cite is almost unreadable to users. The original estimate to manually correct the invalid cites was over 3-4 years, but after almost a whole first year of Lua cites, there are still 230,000 pages yet to be fixed. The prior auto-corrections made by the wp:CS1 Lua cites have been careful, such as auto-inserting dashes in page numbers, where "pages=3-7" shows en dash "pp. 3–7" but "page=A-7" retains the hyphen in "A-7". Overall, it seems 80% of problems could be auto-corrected, to reduce clutter which has hidden the pages with severe cite problems. -Wikid77 10:08, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
I'd be against auto-correcting large page ranges, since it's often ambiguous. For example, the "89-993" example given above could just as easily have been "89-93" as "989-993". The other ideas seem fine though. MChesterMC (talk) 10:57, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, I forgot to mention the pages were in {cite_journal} & that's when I knew it was "989" (not 89) which found the document (among thousands of journal pages), as could be expected; whereas "89" would be rare in such journals but typical of a {cite_book} where books rarely exceed 400 pages. Auto-correction can be so trivial once all factors are considered, and then like magic, those 25,000 cite problems disappear. Computers can perform amazing tasks, once the possibilities are better understood. -Wikid77 12:49, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Hypothetical geo places
Purely hypothetical;
Let's say, the land of ning-nang-nong has a spreadsheet 'census data'. Or rather, had, and so it's only available in web archives.
And that spreadsheet said, the town of nong-nang-ning had a population of 5. And the town of Non-ning-nang was listed as not having any population at all.
OK, so this is not hypothetical; let me give concrete examples;
So our policy WP:GEOLAND says, "Populated, legally-recognized places[1] are considered notable, even if their population is very low."
This is a bit of a problem, because "if it's OK" I can use a spreadsheet and make a bazillion articles about potholes in the UK, based on a spreadsheet.
This is 'the sum of all human knowledge' right? But there's gotta be a limit. Based mostly on V - I can't write an artice about my kitchen just 'coz there is a person in there and I can verify it?
Problem we have here is - why are geo places an exception? I suspect it's because of political correctness; we want contribs from india, so if someone makes an article about a place called "मुर्गा बेकार", we deal with it more reverently than we would a user creating Cock sucker village.
But that'd be racism? 88.104.19.233 (talk) 08:36, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
I doubt that your kitchen or very many potholes are considered "legally-recognized places". There are a large number of small Polish and Eastern European villages with Wikipedia articles, but I've never seen anybody complain about this. You might just consider ignoring these articles if you don't like them so much. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:13, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
The potholes are recorded by the government council, so they're just as well-recognized legally as the type of places I'm talking about. 88.104.19.233 (talk) 19:50, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Obviously giving power to any decision by any government can be problematic - just ask the people on Commons trying to observe source-country copyright restrictions. Perhaps tomorrow the Russian tourist bureau will classify each of its citizens as a Potemkin village, and use it to bolster a claim that Russia is the most urban country in the world. Then we would have to recognize the limits of the policy. Nonetheless, in practice, I imagine that Iranian census people probably are pretty professional about what they do, and archive some places analogous to entries on the List of ghost towns in the United States. The point is, if there's an information resource out there that is standard and comprehensive, should we idly peck little holes in our version so it is never really useful as a replacement for proprietary sources? Wnt (talk) 20:55, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
233, if what you refer to as "a spreadsheet" is in fact an actual publication of a national government, then it is at least probably a reliable source. I don't think that a location, such as a pothole or an intersection constitute "legally-recognized places", I would expect that to mean that some note is taken of the locality or type of locality in actual legislation or regulation. In the US, I would think this covered incorporated municipalities, census districts, and larger entities such as counties and states. It might will cover unincorporated villages as well. What the corresponding entities for other countries might be, I wouldn't know, but I would expect them to be named, identifiable, and consisting of multiple inhabited dwellings at the very least. It may be that the guideline needs to be refined. But the idea that it permits an article about "every pothole" is not in my view a plausible interpretation, and trying to actually do that would be a case of WP:POINT. DES(talk) 21:27, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Why don't you just stop beating around the bush and admit that you are forum shopping about a specific complaint? Anyone who wants some background (and a reason to bash their heads against their desk) might choose to look at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Carlossuarez46 mass-creating _articles, where 88.104 is demonstrating a breathtaking inability to drop the stick. I see this has also devolved down to reductio ad absurdum since I last saw this three days ago. Resolute 21:05, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Could somebody close that ANI so we can mercifully move on? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 22:43, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't mean to 'forum shop' - my intention was to ask Wales' opinion on the general question of notability of places, not to re-hash the ANI discussion. So with that, I won't say any more here; I'll just hope ANI can help deal with the specific problem instead. 88.104.19.233 (talk) 05:01, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
The Guardian
A reporter suggested to me that Gregory Kohs was the person who had written the original article about The People's Operator, and I said that was mistaken (which of course it was) and that I'd rather not talk about him. I explained why I would rather not talk about him (the infamous photo that he posted of himself with a gun and his "joke" about getting into a shootout with me). I'd rather not have to talk about this at all, but as Mr. 2601 seems insistent. When I said "I'd rather not talk about him" I was referrring to Kohs, whom I fear is obsessed with my family and children and personal life and should not be given attention lest he grow worse. When I said that he didn't edit the Wikipedia entry about The People's Operator, I meant it. It is very well established and not a matter of current controversy at all there was COI editing of the TPO article (though, it should be said, I am told that it was not at the behest of the company, but by consultants doing a variety of "social media" work) long before I ever even heard of them or got involved with them. When I came on board I read them all the riot act about never ever under any circumstances editing Wikipedia, and that's very firm company policy.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:00, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
not useful
Jimbo, that's a lovely interview you had with Carole Cadwalladr at The Guardian. I notice, though, that something you knew from here on your Talk page some weeks ago, [redacted per WP:BLPTALK], but she had the actual evidence to back herself up. Here's the exchange:
CC: But there are problems, aren't there, with commerce entering Wikipedia? One example of this was mentioned in the comments beneath an article about the People's Operator which claimed the Wikipedia entry for the People's Operator was written by its marketing consultant.
Jimbo: No, it wasn't. I'd rather not talk about him.
CC: But, when I looked at the Wikipedia entry for the People's Operator and looked at the history of the article, and then Googled the name of the person who had written the initial entry and looked him up on LinkedIn, it stated he was a marketing consultant for the People's Operator.
Jimbo: I'll have to look that up. That's very interesting...
Two questions for you here, Jimbo.
When you said, "I'd rather not talk about him", who did you mean? The guy who commented beneath an article about The People's Operator, or the content executive Dale Marshall?
Why would you deny that The People's Operator was written by a marketing consultant, when on January 21, User:50.153.112.1 clearly notified you here on your Talk page about this very situation -- that a UK-based marketing consultant created the article, and then how Dale Marshall enhanced it while being paid by The People's Operator? You had all of the facts spoon-fed to you, but when talking to Ms. Cadwalladr, you decided to say, "No, it wasn't", then when caught in your misstatement, you said, "I'll have to look that up", as if it were the first time you'd heard about it. Clearly you saw the evidence that User:50.153.112.1 presented, because you responded to it on the very same day.
It seems to me that you're regularly caught telling [redacted per WP:BLPTALK] about various things. Shouldn't the sole founder of a great encyclopedia like Wikipedia be more honest?
Remember she told you that she "Googled the name of the person who had written the initial entry and looked him up on LinkedIn, it stated he was a marketing consultant for the People's Operator.", and so did I, and here's what I found.
So here are my two questions for you.
What exact reasons you had to believe the reporter was asking about Gregory Kohs?
I can't explain why the reporter asked what she asked in the way that she asked it and it's possible that there was a confusion between the two of us as to what she was talking about. I'm happy to talk about dalemarshall20, but I'm afraid that I know very little, but that's likely because there is very little to know. A part-time contractor at TPO before I joined the company made some edits that he shouldn't have but as we all know, it happens all the time so there's no real reason to be shocked by it, even if it was wrong - which it was. I'm not sure what else you'd like to know, but feel free to ask a specific question.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:40, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Here's a specific question. You said: "A reporter suggested to me that Gregory Kohs was the person who had written the original article about The People's Operator", but there's no mention about "Gregory Kohs" in the interview published in Guardian. So may I please ask you if Gregory Kohs was mentioned offline? I mean what made you to believe the reporter was asking you about Gregory Kohs? Thanks.69.181.193.108 (talk) 21:33, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, we had a discussion of Gregory Kohs. Because I consider him a danger to me and my family, I was, I'm sure, visibly upset. I asked her not to write about him and explained why. She seemed to think that he had claimed to write the entry on TPO, and I said, no he didn't. She went on further, insisting, and I said I would have to look into it.
One thing to keep in mind here is that the quotes in the article are quite breezy and loose as compared to my actual words. For example, the part about what Tony Blair wrote about Kate in his memoirs was something that the reporter said (in part) and I loosely acknowledged. (That it made her sound 'scary' - that was the reporter's word not mine). This is not a transcript but a write-up (generally accurate but not in every last detail) of our conversation.
Rereading, I see that it is not clear that I was reacting by saying that I didn't want to talk about Gregory Kohs and that he didn't write the entry. One possibility is that she mis-spoke the question, and another possibility is that I mis-heard the question. I don't see that it matters very much.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:16, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
The above comments about Gregory Kohs being a "danger" to Jimmy Wales are complete and utter grandstanding and showmanship. They are not based in fact, though -- merely delusional myths to deflect attention from Mr. Kohs' valid criticisms of how Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation have been mismanaged and exploited by Mr. Wales. Jimmy, you have been contacted by Kohs (and he has publicly avowed), where he has assured you in no uncertain terms that he bears no threat whatsoever to you, your spouse, your children. NONE whatsoever. That you would continue this charade publicly in order to advance a false "victim" pretense is really an embarrassing reflection on your inability to engage with reality. - 70.192.150.105 (talk) 22:46, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
I've said all I'm going to say about it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:56, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Guys, just lay off him, alright? Doesn't matter whether he was telling the truth, misspoke, was covering something up, or anything else, this is his life we're dealing with, not Wikipedia! Some questions at first were fine, but this is really pushing the limit. Supernerd11:DFiremind^_^Pokedex 22:59, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
For god's sakes, that's the most over-the-top hatnote I've ever seen. That's only short an airplane skywriter and a 120-piece marching band from the maximum attention possible... If it makes you feel any better (probably won't), I was also creeped out by said gun imagery and a couple waaaay-too-personal posts from a couple years ago. (Your own videotaped blowing up of produce also took me aback, on a related note.) Starting off as a pretty bitter opponent of his, I've since discovered that Mr. Kohs is an intelligent, perceptive, funny, and reasonable person — although a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes... You've got more to fear from any random stranger on the street than you do him. (Now, about that hatnote... Really over-the-top...) Carrite (talk) 00:42, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
If you knew the whole story, you'd know how reserved that hatnote is. I wrote it several times and ended up choosing the mildest version which revealed the least about the details of his reign of terror.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 04:07, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
I have followed the story for eight years, and, in this, I agree with Carrite: this was over the top. Unless you consider that having your every public statements scrutinised equal to a "reign of terror"? The Guardian journalist asked a question about paid editing, not mentioning Kohs at all, .......and mr Wales automatically thought of mr Kohs. That says a lot more about mr Wales, than is says about mr Kohs. And about guns...it seems to be a hobby for more than one American male. Should mr Kohs feel he and his family is in danger, as one of his opponent is pictured having "Fun with a Mossberg Mariner"? -- 41.130.4.55 (talk) 16:53, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Given the gun pic - which I hadn't heard about before - and Jimmy's stated fears, I'l suggest that anybody who has felt harassed by Kohs email the details to the Wikimedia Foundation. I'm certain that there have been other cases of harassment, so we should have a centralized record just in case. Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:24, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
The key to stopping cyberbullying is standing up to it. There's nothing here, it's a bunch of irrelevant allegations with no causal relationship at all. Jimbo puts up with a lot in the name of openness, but this is ridiculous. He has a right to refuse to discuss this nonsense, and we need to support him in that. This is the same basic moral support we should give to every harassed editor. Wnt (talk) 03:40, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, I am special, which means ironically that I expect less support than most editors in dealing with harassment. But yes, at some point, when conference organizers are so freaked out that they ask for extra security, there has to be a limit that we reach.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 04:06, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Jimbo, I have not seen the image you're talking about, and I am not a friend of Mr. Kohs, but I think that, if you truly believe that as you stated above Kohs "is obsessed with your family and children and personal life", and, if you truly "consider him a danger to you and your family", you should contact the police. I don't think your Wikipedia talk page is the right place for such statements. Besides, I might be wrong, but aren't such statements are violation of Kohs's BLP? Thanks.69.181.193.108 (talk) 05:03, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Jimbo is an intelligent, sane individual. If he felt it necessary to contact authorities, then I'm sure he has - and would have NO need to tell anyone here about it. For wisdom, common sense, and safety sake, this topic should be considered closed; period DP 09:58, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
@Mr. 69.181. That's pretty much my point. Kohs is a real world person, not a cartoon. This is a very highly read page. I don't think anything here runs afoul of American libel law (having seen the video, image, and posts in question — and having objected to the latter myself in writing at the time, as I recall). I do think it runs afoul of the way we are supposed to treat living people at WP. The hatnote is too much, too much, as is some of the commentary that follows, and I urge that it be redacted. Carrite (talk) 17:45, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
since Jimbo has said his "last word" on this matter, it is only fair to point out that the incident has been explained here. the explanation is reasonable, and anyone who wants to research Jimbo's repeated accusations about Kohs should have a look at that post. 2001:4C28:194:520:1A03:73FF:FE0A:7269 (talk) 17:19, 20 February 2014 (UTC) edited 184.8.108.37 (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
To be fair, that's only part of it. Blowing up produce was the starting point. Kohs tried to be witty or funny captioning a gun photo and failed badly. (Hint: Don't ever fail badly if you think you are being witty or funny captioning a gun photo.) Then, unrelated to these two closely related images (a Wales video and a Kohs still photo, as I recall), there were on either Wikipedia Review or its successor a couple posts dealing with Wales and his family members that had a tone which reasonable people would feel had a certain "obsessive" quality, phrasing things delicately. This amplified the previous stupid photo-with-caption into something menacing. It should not be taken that way, I repeat. Carrite (talk) 17:53, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
I have no objection to you or anyone else hatting the whole thing. But I suspect if you knew the full story, you'd not feel so relaxed about the threat here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:07, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor Newsletter—February 2014
Did you know?Click this image to see the details.
You can easily re-use references by going to the Insert menu, choosing "Reference", and clicking on "Use an existing reference" in the lower left corner. A list of all references, their numbers, and their ref names (if any) will be shown. You can search the list for any author, title, date, or other keyword. Read the user guide for more information.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some small changes to the user interface, such as moving the reference item to the top of the Insert menu, as well as some minor features and fixing bugs, especially for rich copying and pasting of references.
The biggest change was the addition of more features to the image dialog, including the ability to set alignment (left, right, center), framing options (thumbnail, frame, frameless, and none), adding alt text, and defining the size manually. There is still some work to be done here, including a quick way to set the default size.
A few bugs in the existing reference dialog were fixed. The toolbar was simplified to remove galleries and lists from the reference dialog. When you re-use references, it now correctly displays the references again, rather than just the number and name. If you paste content into a dialog that can't fit there (e.g. ==section headings== in references), it now strips out the inappropriate HTML.
You can now edit image galleries inside VisualEditor. At this time, the gallery tool is a very limited option that gives you access to the wikitext. It will see significant improvements at a later date.
Any community can ask to test a new tool to edit TemplateData by leaving a note at T53734.
Looking ahead: The link tool will tell you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. The warning about wikitext will hide itself after you remove the wikitext markup in that paragraph. Support for creating and editing redirects is in the pipeline. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including default and upright sizes. The developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments, some behavioral magic words like DISPLAYTITLE, and in-line language setting (dir="rtl").
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 04:20, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Terms of Use change, re: Paid Editing
This is a huge news item: Terms of Use: Paid Contributions Amendment. I'm inclined to think this is a positive step forward towards normalization — paid editing needs to be declared, I think everybody more or less agrees on that. There also needs to be corresponding site policy changes to ban the harassment of paid editors, but Rome wasn't built in a day. Carrite (talk) 19:26, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
If you are interpreting it in that way, you're missing the point. It's the first step from the board in banning paid advocacy editing of all kinds, and empowers good people in the community to ban paid editors much more easily than has been true in the past.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:35, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
That may be the intent, but I think that Carrite is correct as far as the effectis concerned. I think that the effect of this will be to normalize paid editing. It gives another weapon to the arsenal of paid editing defenders, not opponents, because now they can claim "it is disclosed so what is your problem?" It actually weakens the position of those of us who are against paid editing, since we are in the minority anyway. My view is that, as this action acknowledges, this is fundamentally a Foundation issue, and not worth volunteers expending unnecessary angst and energy in dealing with. If the Foundation wants to abolish paid editing I don't see what's holding it back from doing so. Coretheapple (talk) 18:23, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, the rule assumes that paid editing is going to happen and sets up a "proper" way to do it in which paid affiliations must be revealed so that they may be reviewed. Bravo. Exactly what needs to happen. Next there needs to be enforcement of already-existing anti-harassment rules against those who cyberstalk or abuse tools against paid editors. Believe it or not, that's the solution to the mystery. I'm pretty safe in my interpretation of how this plays out. If this is some master plan to ban paid editing altogether, it doesn't. But that's okay, because it can't be eliminated through a crude "banning" policy. It CAN be regulated. Go that route for the good of the encyclopedia. Carrite (talk) 03:08, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
There ain't no "master plan to ban paid editing," we agree on that much. Coretheapple (talk) 03:49, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
There is a master plan to ban paid advocacy editing. (It's important to use the correct terminology since one of the methods that spammers use to block progress is to totally confuse the issue by using faulty terminology.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 03:58, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
OK well putting aside whether there is a master plan or not, I have a problem with the expression "paid advocacy editing." I realize what isn't considered the bad stuff (like Wikipedians in Residence), but I have yet to meet a person in the paid-editing business who isn't on the side of the angels, who doesn't have an army of backers and a chestful of barnstars, and who won't swear on a stack of bibles that he or she hews so strictly to NPOV that the Mt. Palomar telescope would not detect any daylight between themselves and that policy. They maintain that advocacy is perpetrated by low-grade morons and not by them. That is why I am disinclined to use the expression "paid advocacy editing." Coretheapple (talk) 04:09, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
POV editing is already banned. Paid editing is not banned. Conflating POV editing with paid editing through use of an ill-defined and pretty much undefinable term, "paid advocacy editing," leads neither to clarity nor enforceable site policy. Paid editing is going to happen, it's a fact of life. It needs to be identified, so that POV pushers can be cleaned out. Whether they are paid or unpaid is neither here nor there. Some of the worst POV pushers, the ones most in need of being wiped out, are unpaid. "Concentrate on the edits, not the editors." Carrite (talk) 04:54, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
That's why this is a Foundation issue. Coretheapple (talk) 05:13, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Getting back to the definitional issue, there is actually a pretty good definition here.[29] That's a pretty broad definition and includes what I've seen described as "paid encyclopedic editing," which in my opinion is rubbish because one can advocate for a client by adding or expanding an article on a marginally notable person or organization. My problem is that the Foundation has not come to grips with the fact that much advocacy occurs on the talk pages and not by not editing directly. That happened most famously at BP. This disclosure measure is an important step because it addresses discussion-page posts. But the Foundation still has shied away from advocacy that involves creation of articles in the AfC process and adding of text by suggestions (invariably selective and one-sided) on the talk page of articles. Editors need to be reminded that paid reps are here to rep their clients, and as I personally observed, they are not going to point out major, yawning omissions in articles or serious errors, when those errors or omissions are favorable to their clients. When a PR rep is hanging out at an article talk page, keeping the article under the closest kind of scrutiny, it is terribly frustrating to see them treat editors like errand boys, suggesting text and sources favorable to their clients, wanting this and that, consuming people's time, and then you see that major stuff has been omitted or is incorrect. You know damn well that they have got to be aware of that. Yet there they are, on the talk page, advocating, perfectly within Wiki rules, and AGF requires us to believe that these pr people didn't see that, for instance, the organization of their company is misrepresented to overemphasize something they like. The Foundation needs to wake up to this problem.Coretheapple (talk) 16:06, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
@Jimbo Wales: Could you please expand on the "master plan to ban paid advocacy editing" or direct us to a page where it is explained? I agree with you about the importance of using the proper terminology here. If you can't, a simple "no" would be an acceptable answer for me. Although I've been editing and reading Wikipedia for several years, I'm glad this, my first post to your talk page, is on such a pressing topic and I appreciate the time you take to respond to all of us! - tucoxn\talk 22:49, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
It seems to have originated from a WMF staffer. It is not an official WMF proposal, just something that may or may not be considered by the board at some unspecified meeting in the future. I've left him a note on his page asking details about the process. One question I have is whether anyone can make a suggestion to the WMF board. Not being a contributor I don't have much standing, but they seem like a pretty open bunch of people. Coretheapple (talk) 20:59, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Personally, I would go further than the proposed amendment, since it does not cover the sort of undisclosed COI editing that is apparently now fairly commonplace among English Wikipedia functionaries. That is, however, no reason not to support the amendment as it stands - since attempting to perfect the amendment through amendments is more likely to cause it to fail than to improve it. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:38, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
It's an official proposal from the WMF legal department. —LuisV (WMF) (talk) 22:38, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
That was my take, based on header after header after header advertising the change. Good stuff, I think this is actually the correct path forward here. Carrite (talk) 23:29, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Really??? Well I appreciate your clarifying that, Luis, but I think that should be stated explicitly in the relevant page over there on Meta, if that hasn't already been done. It says "we" propose this, but doesn't say who "we" is. Kind of important, don't you think? Coretheapple (talk) 00:24, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm getting a dead link there, actually. No, it's working. tx Coretheapple (talk) 01:15, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I generally think paid advocacy is a significant issue that needs to be addressed (it would be a bit weird if I didn't, given how many hours I spent on Wiki-PR.) I'm initially inclined to think that this is a move in the right direction, but I'm concerned about whether or not we've thought out fully the downstream implications of using our ToU in this fashion. A lack of sleep has my brain feeling a bit addled and inarticulate today, but I've laid out my concern here, and would be curious for the thoughts of others. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:45, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
"If we do eventually take someone to court over this: will we be accidentally setting strong precedent for other companies to successfully pursue ludicrous ToU claims?"
No, precedent isn't set like that. I am not a lawyer, and you need to talk to a lawyer about what precedent is. But with the understanding that this isn't legal advice, precedent is set only at the appellate level and above, and then only when the reviewing Court chooses to publish their opinion as such. Published precedential opinions in this area are unlikely to give or encourage any standing against the Foundation. EllenCT (talk) 08:37, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
In the United States, precedent is set at lower than the appellate level, although the strength of the precedent (and what region it applies to) comes out of what court it's from. Furthermore, a court doesn't need to explicitly state that its opinion is precedential for it to be precedential. And, for that matter, if we ever litigate about this, it's pretty fair to expect that it will wind up going to appellate, if not further. I'm not worried about opinions effecting the Foundation directly: I'm worried about the Foundation incidentally setting precedent that will negatively effect the rest of the internet ecosystem. IANAL either, but do have multiple graduate courses dealing with cyberlaw and IP issues. You can take a look at Perfect 10 for a good example of a case resulting in an opinion that set strong precedent that was not in the interests of the people who filed the case (although that ruling was certainly in the interests of internet freedom.) If you're located in a jurisdiction with civil law, precedent is a whole different (and much less powerful) beast, but the Wikimedia Foundation isn't. Kevin Gorman (talk) 18:24, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Jimmy, can you explain the tool that one uses to tell what is and is not paid editing? I feel that you see black and white, but those of us with potential conflicts see a gray area in between. For instance, if I was once hired by a subsidiary of the New York Times to run the paid ad campaigns on Google AdWords (True, I was), am I no longer allowed to use the New York Times as a source for articles I'm working on purely as a hobby, that have nothing to do with my consulting engagement? If so, for how long must I abstain after my engagement ends? JehochmanTalk 01:40, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
How much is an editor of your skill and experience afflicted by the inability to use the NYT as a source? Have you ever added a NYT source where there wasn't a suitable alternative? But citing the NYT as a source for a statement you just added to your favorite article on a different topic isn't paid advocacy for the NYT, and it isn't paid advocacy at all. If they aren't paying you to make that particular edit, it isn't even paid editing. EllenCT (talk) 08:37, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Right, but I've recently been tarred and feathered for stuff (edits from 2005 - 2006) that I wasn't paid to do, but which did touch on some companies where I had connections. This policy is going to provide a big hammer for editors who want to fight. I've used the NYT many times, as it is an excellent source for many things, and it would be awkward to not use it. JehochmanTalk 17:39, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Wow, Jehochman, you raise an interesting point. Unfortunately, the New York Times has never paid me a nickle for anything. But I am a licensed contractor and often do construction work in Silicon Valley. I have done several jobs for Google, and one for Apple and also a couple of jobs for National Semiconductor and one for Silicon Valley Bank, which funds countless tech companies. I have also done work for Cisco Systems and Hitachi. Does that mean that I can't edit Wikipedia using any of that technology? Lucky for me that I have never done a job for Twitter or Facebook. But, I have done many jobs for McDonalds. Do I have to avoid editing anything having to do with anyone who has ever eaten at McDonalds? If so, my work here is through. Goodbye. Cullen328Let's discuss it 07:00, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
Some ideas involving some possible changes to wikipedia and other WF entities
Acknowledging up front that someone would have to be more than a little self-important and egotistical to even think themselves qualified to even consider doing it, I recently spent some time when I had personal pc problems to just kind of take a look over wikipedia and its sister projects to look for anything that might strike me as being broadly beneficial. I did so, and more or less put the ideas together at User:John Carter/Opinions. Several of the ideas are maybe a bit too specific or limited to really belong with the others, but I didn't see a lot of reason to exclude mentioning them on that basis. Anyway, I would welcome anyone's input regarding their ideas regarding some of the ideas, whether any of them really deserve to be considered as proposals, etc. Anyway, thanks in advance to anyone who spends the time to go through it all. John Carter (talk) 13:28, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Some good food for thought there, however I'm strongly opposed to the idea of compiling lists of "recommended sources" because they would inevitably morph into the restrictive "approved sources" - which would result in exacerbating the many systemic biases we struggle against. Such lists cannot ever be comprehensive. How many of our regular editors even know all the titles of mainstream newspapers published in Vientiane, or all the sport magazines written in Swahili. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:13, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
You've got a good point. How many of our editors know about even all the periodicals published in their home town? Personally, I know I don't know all those published in my town. I would think that maybe any lists in WikiProject or similar space would not be of "approved" sources, but of what are probably the more "basic" and possibly readily-avaiable sources. So, for instance, reference works which have been counted as "Outstanding Reference Sources" may in some cases be considered worse than some others, because the people making those lists take other things into account too, like broad gutters on each side of the page, but they are also, probably, among the sources more likely for libraries to buy, given that recognition. But, if we did have some people going through the Gale periodical directory and other similar sources and broke down the content into subsections, that might be at least a start for editors, like me, who would be interested in maybe developing content on, say, Senegal, but don't have a real clue which periodicals or other recent sources are even available for the topic. John Carter (talk) 16:40, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
A list of sources for a topic area with straight information and no opinion would still be useful. For example, if someone checked out a source and found that it was an "anyone can post here" source, or that it had been publishing for 52 years, or that all of its articles were paid press releases, or that it had a circulation of X, that would be useful information. In fact, information like that could be added to the publication's Wikipedia article, since it would be neutral info, and a list item could link to that article, killing two birds with one stone. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:26, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Essays of recommended sources: About the issue of suggested sources, there has been extensive work on some essays: • WP:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) • WP:Identifying reliable sources (history) • WP:Identifying reliable sources (natural sciences) • WP:Current science and technology sources • WP:WikiProject Video games/Sources#List (lists over 50 sources) The fear of forcing a source-suggestion list, to become an approval list, is a valid concern, but such fears should be handled by starting a 30-day wp:RfC to get more people to defend freedom to choose. There are some severe examples of forced rules, such as wp:DASH which have led people to force the use of dashes where hyphens have been used for over a century in real-world text, as with "hyphenated Americans" (and over 94% of wp:RS sources do not use dashes, yet some have slashes), but a prior RfC could not get support to stop the forced use of dashes. However, people have recommended to extend a controverial RfC to a 3-month period, to allow hundreds of users to express their opinions. We should not stop creating a suggested list of "best practices" simply because some users are obsessed with forcing their severe opinions on thousands of other editors. Although it does require months/years of discussion to thwart intense rule-thumping in many areas of WP, instead I have suggested 3-year term limits for rule-pushers, where they would no longer be allowed to promote their focused mindset after 3 years, but perhaps with a 2-year, cool-down period before return to push those rules again. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:18, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
FWIW, I would myself anticipate that, at least for US based sources, which seem to be the primary focus of the Gale reference book, such a list would include virtually every source with an ISSN, and most if not all local newspapers and broadcast media listed in the Gale directory or other recognized sources on such topics, and, with luck, updated from new editions regularly. I'm not sure how many of you know such works, but the sheer volume of listings in such sources is, honestly, staggering, to the point that I've been kind of afraid to even start them myself. Having been primarily recently active in religious content, I know that pretty much every Catholic or Anglican diocesan newspaper, and similar periodicals of other groups, on either a local or national basis, are listed. So is I think pretty much every local or county history journal, every college journal (and I saw one local university had several more than I had ever seen even in the local library) And all sorts of radio stations, although I acknowledge that I might not have considered music stations, because I'm not sure that they generally would qualify as reliable. But, yeah, even Our Daily Bread type publications would I think qualify for listing, and, honestly, I don't honestly know if they really have anything we could use in the encyclopedia. I personally think, given the number of sources the Gale directory lists on, for instance, various aspects of pseudoscience, generally publications promoting one or more of them, if they have ISSNs they would definitely qualify for inclusion, and I could, probably, even include them in a separate list somewhere for maybe RSN or some similar group or location to consider for inclusion if that were thought useful. I acknowledge that for foreign language sources, the work isn't as extensive, but I think I remember it including at least one "women's magazine" local to the United Arab Emirates, which had an ISSN, so I personally tend to think that if sources of the type of the Gale directory were used, many editors might well find the final result to be so lengthy that some might complain that it doesn't help much. I acknowledge that, so far as I remember, that source might be underrepresentative of foreign language publications, and regret that actually, but would honestly have no reservations whatsoever about any such lists, which I see might be best associated with individual WikiProjects, to have some sort of qualifier to the effect that the list is in no way intended as exclusive, just as a basic, preliminary, list of some available sources.
As yet another footnote, I would anticipate that everything included in the American Reference Book Annual, hopefully up to some limited number of years back, would also be included, with maybe the sole exception of listing all the various editions of a single work to have seen multiple editions in that time. John Carter (talk) 13:50, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Worth noting is that WP:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) (usually referred to by its shortcut link, WP:MEDRS) is recognized as a full-on guideline, and generally treated as having the force of policy. There's lots of discussions on its talk page and on the talk page at WT:MED about sourcing and reliable sources for medical information, which someone interested in this aspect of Wikipedia governance would do well to skim. What is and is not part of the guideline has been discussed very extensively, by editors who often have a substantial amount of topic expertise, editing experience, and appreciation for how much fringe crap tries to sneak into medical articles.
Also worth bearing in mind are the instructions in the big yellow box atop WP:RSN (the reliable sources noticeboard). When editors raise a question there about reliability, they are asked to identify not just the source, but also the specific content to be used, and the article where it would be employed. (I touched on this on this same talk page just three days ago: [30].) There's no such thing as an ironclad "reliable" source for every claim or situation; if we create a list of "recommended" or "approved" sources, we're going to run into trouble with editors who insist that anything published in those sources must necessarily be included in a Wikipedia article. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:33, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
I've noticed several people mention that, actually. At no point did I say anything like periodicals or whatever being "recommended" or "approved," just "available." And, as someone who opposes pseudoscience, I only mentioned that specifically because User:DGG once told me that we have too few articles on the topic. Magazines/journals on pseudoscience would probably be useful to establish notability of some topics. And, I would assume that there would be some form of disclaimer at the top of each list, if they get created, saying that while most of the sources might be useful for some things, few are useful for everything in them. The list might even be broken into sections in some cases, like "generally reliable" or "reliable only for some opinions", or things like that. I also think, in general, any such lists of sources would probably be topped by any relevant ARBA reference works, which are generally considered reliable. Lastly, one of the points in the essay is that it would also be very useful to have individual articles written on those sources which are listed, which would probably be useful as indicators of where the content might or might not be reliable. Even some recent reference works have been really off-base on some topics, and that information would be really useful to anyone considering using them. Hope that helps. John Carter (talk) 20:24, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Long lists might deter source-pushing: I am thinking how some long lists of sources might reduce the temptation to clamp down on which sources would be allowed, at least to provide a diverse selection of suggested choices. Also, we might need to write a page about "wp:Ignore all lists" to explain some cases where an entry not on a list might be an adequate choice. In fact, if the wp:DASH guideline had provided a list of alternative "short lines" to connect words, then the forced use of dashes might have been avoided, where slashes "/" (a form of short line) are often 3x more common than dashes in real-world text, to connect words such as in either/or cases, in some contexts. Recall that some users were site-banned, or topic-banned for discussing the world's widespread use of hyphens, and several others were threatened with bans if they kept noting the use of hyphens in 94% of related sources. When Socrates was condemned by the tribunal in Athens, a key complaint was he was "corrupting the youth" with the things he was saying, which was cited as justification for his death, although scholars have noted the trend was to flee Athens when condemned rather than remain for the execution, although others were under 80 years of age. Is is something of a cosmic joke how people are site-banned from Wikipedia, not unlike the treatment of Socrates, based on the things they have said in trying to expand the coverage of the world's knowledge. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:27, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
The lists you have mentioned are of various purposes. The Gale directories are mostly intended as comprehensive directories, something which is not currently with WPs mission. (that does not mean that I necessarily thing that our mission should not be extended to include them, I was looking at Gale's Directory of Association a few days ago, with the intend of seeing what I could find there to add to WP, and found relatively few organizations there that was not already covered-=it's additional coverage beyond our current coverage was of local organizations and state branches of national organizations, both of which we normally exclude. (It is however valuable as a convenient source of data for membership and financing for the major organizations. This is true for most similar directories, except for the directories for countries outside our primary coverage area.. The sources in ARBA are very different: it's a selective reviewing medium, and indeed everything there should be included,` DGG ( talk ) 09:01, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Instant notability: Sotnikova vs Yuna Kim
We have another single-event case of instant notability: the judging in women's figure skating at the 2014 Winter Olympics is being questioned by millions, with signing an online petition, where prior Gold-medalist skater Yuna Kim (South Korea) was defeated (Silver) by new Gold-medalist Adelina Sotnikova (Russia) on 20 February 2014. Although the Olympic judging is "anonymous" it seems some judge's comments have been obtained, for the free skate event, to show the Russian skater's jumps were noted as "poor" while all jumps of the competition leader, South Korean skater Yuna Kim, were noted "good" but the Russian scored 149.95 to South Korean 144.19 (who might have had fewer difficult jumps), and Carolina Kostner (Italy, bronze) scored 142.61. Anyway, many people are demanding the judging to be investigated, with one online petition already at Change.org. Because the current judgment of skating performances includes instant-replay analysis, a re-judgment might be technically possible, if ordered by a related Olympic committee. Recall how, during the Soviet period, the scores by Eastern bloc versus Western judges were a contentious issue. Due to mass reporting by news agencies, this single-event case of judging seems separately notable (with long-term coverage), beyond the overall womens-skating competition. I don't even know what title would be used for such an article, but it could be lengthy in comparing the elements in each skater's performance, with the related analysis and explanation of the scoring system, plus any future rulings made by the IOC. -Wikid77 01:16, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
That something is notable does not automatically mean it requires its own article. Is there any reason why this couldn't be covered at Figure skating at the 2014 Winter Olympics? (On a related point, however, there are also accusations of corruption in the judging of the ice dance competition. A French magazine story, picked up in Canada, noted a Russian-American deal to prevent the Canadian pair from winning gold.) Resolute 01:21, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Event would be wp:UNDUE detail in a broader article: I think the topic should be a separate page because the amount of detail needed to explain the issues would exceed wp:UNDUE, where sources are comparing several numbers from the posted score sheets. Unlike a brief news report, WP articles cannot assume the reader has been reading earlier news stories, in a continuous stream of information, and hence, WP pages are tasked to provide the encyclopedic background beyond a "news update" in the press, and thus means even more text than the related facts from a news report. If the sources did not repeatedly refer to complex score sheets, then the issues would be easier to describe, but sources have mentioned the 12 "executed elements" and overall "component scores" along with grade-of-execution (GOE) marks, as the 108 numbers logged by 9 randomized judges for each skater. The score sheets are in PDF form: • http://www.isuresults.com/results/owg2014/owg14_Ladies_FS_Scores.pdf So, there is too much related detail involved to properly explain the controversy without a separate article, and instead a new page is needed while noting how the total scores might seem slanted, plus some sources have noted both the short and free skate, indicating unfair scores might have started with the prior short program results. The whole situation is too complex to explain without covering score numbers of several skaters in both skating events. Again, the whole event could be a minor paragraph if sources said only, "It's a puzzlement for the IOC to debate", but this separate page would be needed because major sources have examined the sub-scores, from 9 judges, of several skaters in both events, leaving WP to explain the related issues of the ISU Judging System (2004) verus the 6.0 system, plus the combination of several news updates. -Wikid77 08:10, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Trends hidden as 9 randomized judges: Because the opinions of the 9 skate judges are presented as a scrambled, randomized set of 9, it is not possible to say, "Hey, look how judge#5 always rates a Russian jump as max GOE 3, while S.Korean jumps are always rated low 1" so the random numbering of other judges as '#5' for other skaters thwarts getting evidence of slanted scores. It would take an internal review, by an Olympic committee, to compare the secret, unscrambled marks posted by each judge to confirm an outrageous pattern of biased grade-of-execution (GOE) marks. Unfortunately, if 5 of the 9 judges are posting slanted scores, then they rule the day, even if the other 4 judges were anti-slanting the marks to try to offset the bias, which is unlikely because many judges are likely to be neutral, unwilling to anti-slant the results. Overall, it seems quite possible for judges to "game the system" by posting the grade-of-execution (GOE) as max 3 for each element of a favored skater, while giving the opponent skater a low 1, where giving a GOE=0 would be too obvious a slant. -Wikid77 04:17, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I see the skate judges names/numbers have been listed there, and I have begun revising that article for copy-editing, and might expand the text after examining more about the rules of the ISU Judging System. Some sources have noted the partial scores for judging each combination jump or the other executed elements performed by each skater -Wikid77 (talk) 23:13, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for your kind words
I wanted personally to let you know Jimbo, how gratifying it was to receive your kind note of support and encouragement. Coming as it did from someone all too familiar with just how taxing a campaign can be, it meant all the more to me.
I have taken the liberty of sharing your kind words with the other members of our fund-raising committee--the real movers and shakers in this enormous effort. Your words were visibly heartening to them. They, as much as I, deeply appreciate your endorsement and promise of future assistance.
Please accept my sincere thanks. I look forward to future collaboration. I look forward to meeting you again at the Wikimedia Annual Dinner next weekend. --Civivlaospei (talk) 20:09, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
I must confess to being somewhat confused.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:05, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Me too. If there's a dinner. I want an invite. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:13, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Based on the original poster's general trollishness, I've gone ahead and indeffed the account. No obviously legitimate contributions (one may have been correct but unverifiable,) obvious prior familiarity with Wikipedia, and impersonating Jimbo on their talk page, etc. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:29, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Seems sensible. Would you like to semi-protect this page for a few days, at random intervals, as well please? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:49, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Actually, I was thinking about going ahead and PC2ing the whole thing, just to ensure safety? =p But seriously, an account that impersonates Jimbo, changes the lede of an article to mean something significantly different than the sourced version did (while masking their second change with a minor edit tagged as grammar) and posts obvious trolls at VPT ("Just to let you guys know that the new version of Linux has a bit of trouble viewing the screen resolution in Wikipedia. Wrong ratios, wrong everything") isn't an account I feel terribly bad about blocking, even if they're likely to return as a different account or IP. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:57, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Ha!! Tecnoquat is back! Might want to check for sleepers.... Rgrds. --64.85.214.16 (talk) 14:24, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
I was the editor who put a lighthearted quote box riffing on the Tao Te Ching on your userpage a while ago. I was absolutely amazed that it stayed up as long as it did, i really didnt expect it to be there for more than an hour, and mostly hoped it wouldnt be seen as disruptive. I really love the respect given to sincere editors to contribute as they see fit. Its an honor to work here, thanks for creating this, and thanks to you and the kind editors of your userpage for boosting my ego so much!Mercurywoodrose (talk) 07:33, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
I've added this to WP:Dao of Wikipedia. Though I lack the dedication to see the project through, I imagine that the entire Daode Jing can be 'recontexted' to provide useful guidance throughout Wikipedia's functions. :) Wnt (talk) 14:19, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
On a related note, your (Jimmy's) user page says "You can edit this page!", but it is now semi'd indefinitely, so it should say "You can edit this page!...unless you can't!" Just sayin'. Rgrds. --64.85.214.78 (talk) 11:33, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Good point. Wnt (talk) 14:19, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Help me
Hi Jimbo Wales! please help me,i blocked in Farsi wikipedia without any logical reason for Endless time. you established wikpedia as free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but i can edit, im not human? you also said:the site wants a new generation of contributors, including more women.-- (talk) 23:34, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
A fez for you!
Just a fez
Hi, I want you to have this fez (or more accurately, mortarboard) I found this in a gallery and thought it would be great to give it to you. (Since it was made specially for you anyway) Yutah Andrei Marzan Ogawa123|UPage|☺★(talk) 08:38, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
![[1]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Undeletion_requests/Current_requests#File:Sale_1.jpg){kind=link}
#Talk:Legal_and_Community_Advocacy.23Commons:Village_pump.2FCopyright.23File:Trabalhos.jpg){kind=link}
SA #NekNomination: Free Access to Wikipedia, (3:09), response from the MTN Group, February 14, 2014
