User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 180

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Archive 175

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Archive 178

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Happy Holydays and the New Year 2015!

Dear Jimbo, Happy Holydays and the New Year 2015!

Now sorry again that I have a difficult question for you. It is about Draft:Igor Janev. Igor Janev should be classified under WP:NPOL person, since he was Special Adviser of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Macedonia in 2002. See more from data base Macedonian Emigration Agency (national government source:"Специјален советник на Министерот за надворешни работи" in eng. Special Adviser of the Minister of Foreign Affairs) in Macedonian lang. [1] [2]. In any country Special Advisor to the MFA is WP:NPOL by definition of Wikipedia. See Special Adviser status.183.86.209.161 (talk) 17:34, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Good first try at an article. Welcome to Wikipedia.

The entire process for new people creating new pages is fucked up.

If, instead of following 'best advice', you'd made an account, made 10 edits, and waited 4 days - you could have made a live page, then it'd be very unlikely to be deleted.

The easiest answer is probably to do that now. Otherwise you'll be swamped with well-meaning but largely useless advice.

If I had an account, I'd just make it a live page. That means making a user account and 10 edits (to anything) and waiting 4 days, and I can't be arsed. Maybe you can.

Wikipedia politics is bullshit.

Happy Christmas, new person.

Jimbo, in case you read this, please realise that the way 'drafts' (prev AFC) circumvent the prevention of new people making articles (post-Seigenthaler) is killing the wiki; AFC/drafts clearly can't cope with helping new people (check the backlog) - let 'em make articles, and let the (over)keen patrol admin-wannabe's who can't write for shit sort out the mess. Crap gets speedied within minutes because there's a hella lot more people out there who get their kicks from deleting things than making them (and, fair enough, can't write articles). Happy Xmas to you, too; I hope you might listen to this, and make the wiki much more friendly to new users by treating all new articles the same way, instead of the current fucked up 'drafts' v. CSD-warnings etc. 88.104.28.116 (talk) 01:10, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

P.S. I feel sufficiently strongly about the issue that I've made this account, I'll wait 4 days and copy it over to a live article (WADR to the wiki's perceived acceptable practices of links to prior publication).

Maybe Mr. Wales can think about how to fix this for all case, instead of some random annoyed person butting in.

The way new people get their intro to make new articles is really fucked up. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 01:31, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

If new users ask for help, they might get a response in a couple of weeks - and it'll probably be telling them that the references aren't good enough;

There are 2,826 pending submissions in Category:Pending AfC submissions.

If they ignore 'best advice' and make a user account, 4 days later they can make a live article.

Of course it might then be speedy-deleted if it's utter crap, but if it isn't total crap they'll have a chance to fix it - and people will even help try to find sources (in AFD).

Fundamental problem: More people can use clicky-tools to 'tag for speedy deletion' and 'warn user' etc than can actually help 'em make new pages,

Answer: Treat all new users the same. Let 'em try to make articles, and wikipedia can try to help them.

What a wonderful world it'd be. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 01:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

This thread from the Wikimedia Stewards Noticeboard archives may be of relevance here: [3]. There were concerns that Janev is not as notable as was claimed. Articles on Janev have twice been deleted from the English Wikipedia. [4] I think it is safe to assume that the sources in any new article on Janev will receive particular scrutiny. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:44, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

If it was made live, it'd likely survive AFD. As a draft, the new person just gets a shitstorm of rejection. Do you disagree?

(There is more to this than this article; it's really just a typical example). Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 02:02, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It would be more likely to survive (as a draft or otherwise) if it had properly-formatted references. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:06, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps more importantly:

I made this account so that, in 4 days, I can copy the article live. Not to really make a point, but because - having discussed the specific case - I feel a need to give it a fair try.

The specific article isn't really the reason I'm intervening here; it's because of the blatant way that new articles are treated very differently from drafts.

In an ideal world, Wikipedia users would help all new users with their early articles.

Real world: there are not enough good editors to do so.

That's fine; that's just the way things are. OK, so, given that...we should at least treat everyone the same way.

Currently there are two very disparate systems;

A) DRAFTS - wait 2 or 3 weeks, get a review. Likely get rejected for 'lack of sources' with spam-template messages. At least you get some idea how to fix it.

B) Make live article. If it's complete crap, it gets speedy-deleted. Fair enough.

The problem I have is, a large number of good users spend their time trying to help A. But sadly, A is snowed-under, and full of spam.

A great many good-potential new users use B and get no real help at all, just spammed warnings (CSD, etc).

Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 02:09, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Andy, It would be more likely to survive (as a draft or otherwise) if it had properly-formatted references - so, fix them! That's easy for experienced users, but super-hard for new ones.

That is the entire point here.

New users need help, not spam templates.

"properly-formatted references" is just wikipedia internal crap. Formatting is just meh. And stops new users getting involved. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 02:11, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I cannot fix references for material I cannot read. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:25, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

(Assuming you mean because it is in Macedonian)

Sure Andy, so, if you came across this as a live article elsewhere you'd leave it to others, right?

That's what I mean about this double-standard;

Live articles are 'good until proven bad',

drafts are 'bad until proven good'. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 02:30, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

If I came across this article, knowing as I do that an article on the same subject had already been deleted twice, I'd find someone who could read the sources to see if they supported the claims made. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:35, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. And that's cool.

But, because it is just a draft, it doesn't get that treatment. It just gets 'rejected', so it is never even evaluated! Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 02:40, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

If you are so concerned about articles being rejected for inappropriate reasons, why have you just tagged this article for speedy deletion? AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:45, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Unrelated discussion, please take it to my talk page if you want. Thanks. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 03:00, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Igor the facetious xmas bunny - NOT HERE. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:14, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You tagged it and another inappropriately to disrupt wikipedia to make a point I think. Then you went off to cry off line to User:GorillaWarfare. Legacypac (talk) 06:04, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I am trying to talk about the way new users are treated. This discussion of my other edits is totally unrelated. I tried to 'hat' it, and you hauled me over to ANI, and I was even blocked for 'disruptive editing'; you've repeatedly removed my attempts to 'hat' this sidetrack discussion.

If you have concerns about my edits, please ask me on my talk. Here, I'm asking about new user articles. Is all. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 06:19, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

'New user articles' include the ones you inappropriately tagged. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to start by considering your own actions. Until you accept responsibility, you are in no position to complain about others. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:26, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You are posting these issues in the wrong place - that's why I'd rather 'hat' this section. If you have questions about my edits, post on my talk page with diffs, and let's discuss them. It's unrelated to the discussion I was attemting to have about new articles in general terms. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 06:35, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

No. You don't get to dictate what gets discussed here - if you don't like your inappropriate behaviour being discussed, I suggest you stop behaving in such a manner in future. Meanwhile, your double standards when it comes to new articles are very much on topic. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:43, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Back to the point;

Would it be "disruptive" if someone just moved the 2700 articles in Category:Pending AfC submissions to live articles?

Why shouldn't they be treated the same as the other articles that are being created (and deleted) every few minutes? (*)

Maybe if I move 10 of them. Or 100. Or 1000.

Perhaps nobody will notice; after all, I have just as much au-thor-i-teh to move them as anyone else, right? Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 06:47, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It is my opinion that for some reasons Igor Janev is not welcomed on English Wikipedia. Reviewers automatically reject drafts about him. So anyone supporting article on him should just give up. As for case User:Operahome when you look, one can see that most of socs were created on the German Wikipedia. Either person like account creation(s), (less likely) or He/She was constantly blocked, and as a reaction on blocking , operator was actually forced to create new (and new) accounts. On the discussion on Meta, one of German user even gave comment that Igor Janev does not Exists. Now it is obvious that he not only exists, but that he is sufficiently notable.

Apart from that conclusion, he will not get his BLP (by the way Second time, few months ago his Draft was not rejected, but removed probably by Igor Janev himself, after series of page blanking).183.86.209.149 (talk) 08:52, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It is pointless to create Account. Whenever someone start creating anything abuot I. Janev, He/She is blocked and classified as sock of User:Operahome. May be the best way to check status of Igor Janev is to send e mail to Macedonian Emigration Agency and see what will their official answer be. Additionally to consult eng. Wiki. Maced user / editor User:Local hero to see what is his opinion. As a Macedonian editor on Wiki he may have some information about Igor Janev.79.101.88.30 (talk) 09:47, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

There's no conspiracy. Reviewers reject drafts with poor/no sources.

It's really not that "Janev is not welcomed on English Wikipedia". It's all about the refs. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 09:46, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

How come that He is Welcome on Macedonian Wikipedia, and sources are relevant there [5], but not here. As for the conspiracy in a few occasions there were attempts by some (mostly) German editors to remove his BLP on Macedonian Wikipedia too. People who were doing that, even did not know Macedonian language.79.101.88.30 (talk) 10:12, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

No; the rules are very different on different language wikipedias. The English one, in particular, has much stronger insistence on referencing. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 10:17, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Just see that Standards on Eng. Wikipedia. See Stubs under Category:Macedonian nationalists, see for instance Strašo Angelovski or Dragan Bogdanovski. Some of them are much less sourced.seeTodor Petrov. That proposed Draft on Igor Janev was in accordance with Wikipedia standards for Stubs. And most of the article of Macedonians and Albanians are even much less sourced than Draft on Igor Janev. You can see that yourself. List of Macedonians (ethnic group) List of Albanians. 79.101.88.30 (talk) 10:21, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Yep, sure, WP:OTHERCRAP, but that was my point in responding here; the article would survive if it were live, yet it's rejected at AFC because... well, because no reason. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 10:37, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Ones it has been established that he is Relevant, first, as a courtesy, the Tag Blatant hoax at Igor Janev should be removed. Second, someone like Macedonian editor here User:Local hero or anyone else, should get the task to "bring" the Draft on Igor Janev "to the Wiki Standards". As far as I see, Macedonian editors are afraid to create anything about him, since no one wants to be associated with User:Operahome. Further, I strongly suggest that someone from the group User:Operahome or maybe Igor Janev himself apologize to Wikipedia or to Jimbo Wales himself for any misunderstanding or misconduct. 79.101.88.30 (talk) 11:07, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

In addition you Igor the facetious xmas bunny may also try to "bring" the Draft to the Standards. (Apparently one can conclude that amateur(s) created previous version of art./drafts. That does not imply that information or data were incorrect.) 79.101.88.30 (talk) 11:17, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia - it's full of ammeters. Fortunately. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 11:26, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Note: An "ammeter" is a "measuring instrument used to measure the electric current in a circuit". I'm pretty sure you were meaning "amateur". - Neutralhomer • Talk • 11:31, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for correcting me.79.101.88.30 (talk) 11:37, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

If you observe revisions on the art. Tito Petkovski you may find that person who created article didn't knew English word " spouse" or "wife" and that until two days ago no one here corr. that. (There was "Zena vesna petkovska" instead "Spouse Vesna Petkovska" at [6])79.101.88.30 (talk) 11:52, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Where does the "four days" come in? Using the just creates NE Ent new user 2 it appears I could create an article with it -- got as far as preview, at least. NE Ent 12:10, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

That would be fine. I am not professional Wikipedian, and I don't know all the possibilities here, but it sounds as a good for beginning.79.101.88.30 (talk) 12:18, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

In order to create pages in the article space, accounts must have the 'confirmed' flag; you generally become WP:AUTOCONFIRMED after 4 days and 10 edits. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 12:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

So if I had hit "save" from the preview screen, it wouldn't have worked? NE Ent 12:44, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Probably not. Easy way to see is, log out and type 'asdjaksdghad' into the search box; you can't make the page. Same if you make a quick test account. 10 edits, 4 days, usually. Unless an admin sets 'confirmed' status on your account - which is unlikely, but has sometimes happened so new people can upload files straight away.

You can make pages in other namespaces - that's why Articles For Creation made articles in "Wikipedia talk:" namespace. Nowadays, there's "Drafts:" instead. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 12:52, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I just add some notes to the Draft. That is only the proposal. If some of you think that they are not necessary, you can reduce it or remove it. Further, I have added the new Category for Prime minister of Macedonia Nikola Gruevski for his project Skopje 2014. This is too a proposal only.79.101.88.30 (talk) 13:28, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Going back to the start of this thread, just having the title "Special Adviser" does not automatically give notability under WP:NPOL.

Even when autoconfirmed, the facetious but helpful Bunny will not be able to move the draft to the mainspace without the agreement of an administrator, because the title has been salted - protected against re-creation - following a sustained and continuing campaign of sockpuppetry, described at m:Stewards' noticeboard/Archives/2013-08#Igor Janev and WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Operahome/Archive.

Last time a draft was created, an IP repeatedly blanked it and asked for it to be deleted, claiming in this edit that they were acting "under request and authority of Igor Janev" and that he "does not want to be in Eng. Wikipedia." Perhaps his friends should respect his wishes and spare him further embarrassment. JohnCD (talk) 13:27, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Special adviser to the Minister of MFA actually qualifies Igor Janev. Like in US State Department, Special adviser is a diplomat who absolutely qualifies for mention Category. (See as well UN system). As for private wishes of Igor Janev, they may not be relevant here at all. I do not think that he would (as anyone else) against to be on Wikipedia. There are no firm evidence to the contrary. If he is personally against to have a such publicity, he would probably remove himself from Macedonian Wiki.79.101.88.30 (talk) 13:43, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Oh. I was previously unaware of the discussion on meta; I will have to reconsider. Unless there are excellent sources to show N, I agree it shouldn't be made. I didn't know about that previous stuff before; thanks for telling me about it. I expect the cynical will think I'm lying, especially given this 'socking' crap, but nope, I just stumbled across the article! Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 13:47, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

The only person who contacted Igor Janev was User:Neotarf. But Wikipedians made ban on him too. As for relevance, again you may contact the Ministry of Macedonia to verify his rank. What I heard from people is that he is still Advisor of State in the Ministry. As for socks , you should not judge someone based on Believes or actions of other people. 79.101.88.30 (talk) 13:56, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

you have a clear case here. Again I am reluctant to continue discussion were it is absolutely evident that people here don't want art. on him here. If one analyzed situation on META, it can easily see that some of people tried with maximum power to discredit Janev. They were just to fast in making their decision. All or most of them do not know Macedonian or even Serbo-Croatian. They do not (and did not) know/knew even Cyrillic alphabet. On the other side, they tried for several times to remove Janev from Macedonian and Serbian Wikies, with no success. These actions were obviously not based on knowledge of History or anything related to Igor Janev. They made two attempts to remove him from Croatioan wiki, but again with no Success. In conclusion, Igor Janev is not welcome on Wikipedia, for reasons external to the Wiki Standards. 79.101.88.30 (talk) 14:22, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

79, forget all the conspiracy stuff. Can you show me - here - links to 3 articles in reliable sources which are substantially about this person? It doesn't have to be in English. 3 good, reliable sources that give detailed information about the subject. Examples of "Good sources" are national newspapers.

If you can provide that, it's pretty easy to get an acceptable article. If you can't, it's tricky. WP:VRS.

I know there's some refs in the draft, but still...can you show us 3 specific references here, to prove notability? In Macedoian or English or whatever... somebody here will be able to check 'em for us. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 14:26, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

See for instance couple of them[7]. 79.101.88.30 (talk) 14:35, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

See reaction on removing Janev from Wikipedia [8]79.101.88.30 (talk) 14:37, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

See more stuff: [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] LEGAL ASPECTS OF THE USE OF A PROVISIONAL NAME FOR MACEDONIA IN THE UNITED NATIONS SYSTEM [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] , p.77-78 [34] [35] , When we say US, p. 845, note 28. G. Ivanov, "Recalling that the International Court of Justice 1948 advisory opinion had determined that placing additional criteria on United Nations membership contravened the United Nations Charter", [36] Thomas D. Grant, Admission to the United Nations, Martinus pub. , pp. 203-212 [37] [38] [39] [40] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.101.88.30 (talk) 14:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

particulary see [41]

[42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.101.88.30 (talk) 14:54, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Now let me remind you on the "arguments" on the META, particular "it was recently discovered in dewp that the article about "Igor Janev" was a fake. Either the person does not exists at all, or he is very irrelevant and the sources to tell otherwise are fakes. The article was deleted today under the protest of many sock-puppets and some legal threats (AFAIK there is a discussion at Jimbo’s talk-page too)."

[51] and so on... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.101.88.30 (talk) 15:01, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

What was fake here? Where is the Hoax? No Explanation was given! They absolutely disregarded view of the Serbian editor who was the only editor fit to make judgments on Janev: "Please refrain from unilateral actions on Serbian Wikipedia.[3][4] We have our local deletion policies. The person is real, so the article is not a hoax. It doesn't meet the requirements for speedy deletion. If you feel that a person is not notable, you can nominate it for deletion. --Wikit 12:07, 29 August 2013 (UTC)". After that five times people who does not speak Serbian attempted to remove Janev from Serbian Wikipedia. Now anyone can conclude that plan for removal was created even before that was brought to META. You may call it Conspiracy or probably setup. Furthermore, they were pasting tags for deletion on more than 20 Wikies with grate enthusiasm. They invented that articles were bias, even when content was related to simple fact that he was Special adviser.15:18, 28 December 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.101.88.30 (talk)

It is very hard to check through massive lists of such links.

Once again - Can you show me - here - links to 3 articles in reliable sources which are substantially about this person? It doesn't have to be in English. 3 good, reliable sources...

Just 3 good ones. Is all. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 15:51, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

The WP:BURDEN is on you to find those links, not the user. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 15:54, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

First, you can find relevant link at Macedonian E. Agency (first link here). Than links of Nova Makedonija, Makedonsko sonce, Koha, Lajm, Vecer , MIA, and MINA.79.101.88.30 (talk) 16:05, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

[52]

[53] [54] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.101.88.30 (talk) 16:08, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

[55]

[56] [57] [58]79.101.88.30 (talk) 16:14, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

new [59] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.101.88.30 (talk) 16:19, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

In Independent [60]e, Radio Free Europe[61]

79.101.88.30 (talk) 16:31, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Der Standard [[62]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.101.88.30 (talk) 16:38, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

@Neutral, yes, I am just trying to narrow it down so that perhaps we can help the person better.

79, again, can you please show me just 3 good ones. Only 3. Not more. Just 3 good ones. Thanks. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 16:40, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

[63][64][65] [66] [67] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.101.88.30 (talk) 16:42, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Probably best source is Macedonian Agency (government source). Than would be the First. 1. source, than independent , Radio Free Europe, Der Standard [68] [69]79.101.88.30 (talk) 16:48, 28 December 2014 (UTC) maybe MINA [70] also. 79.101.88.30 (talk) 16:52, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Makfax/ Makfaks [71]. Pro-government source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.101.88.30 (talk) 16:59, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

His biographer in "Macedonian nation" [72]79.101.88.30 (talk) 17:07, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

support of presidential candidate for I. J. [73] 79.101.88.30 (talk) 17:11, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

OK well, that's 5, but close enough. The 3rd seems to be the same as the first, and the last two are 2 pages of the same. Looking at them;

1. Independent.mk "Experts: Macedonia's Name Cannot be Isolated from Its Identity" - is not an article about Janev Igor; it just mentions him in one sentence. It is about the name of the country. It does not give any significant information about Igor that we can use in a biography.

2. MIA Time has come to put an end to name issue is similar; about the name of the country. It makes a passing mention of Igor.

3. Same link as 1?

4. and 5 novamakedonija Трета варијанта за решавање на проблемот за името (2 pages of the same article?) are in Macedonian (I guess). Google translate tells me the title is "A third option for solving the problem of name". Again, these seem to be articles about the name of the country and not articles about Igor.

None of these are what I was looking for, so it looks like he does not meet the requirements. Those articles are not about Igor Janev - they are about the name of the country, and mention him.

As I said earlier - WP:VRS. I wish you the best of luck, but I do not see that this person meets the notability requirements. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 17:13, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

P.S. You added more while I was replying; I've not checked those. I really wanted only 3 good references about the person, and I'm not seeing them, sorry. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 17:13, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

1. Independent, 2. DerStandard. 3. Radio Free Europe, are 3 good sources. I hope it is enough. As well as New Macedonia and Makfaks.79.101.88.30 (talk) 17:30, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

They are not articles about the subject. Sorry, can't help. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 17:34, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Still the fact is that he was/is Senior diplomat. That is the Fact! Again, Igor Janev must be classified under WP:NPOL person, since he was/is Special Adviser of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Macedonia . See more from data base Macedonian Emigration Agency (national government source:"Специјален советник на Министерот за надворешни работи" in eng. Special Adviser of the Minister of Foreign Affairs) in Macedonian lang. [74] [75]. In any country Special Adviser to the MFA is WP:NPOL by definition of Wikipedia. These are rules of Wikipedia! And the source is National base. Sorry, that I am not experience with Wikipedia, but instead of myself these job should work somebody else. Here we should only establish the fact that he is relevant. Nothing else matter.79.101.88.30 (talk) 17:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I recently find out about META case. From I. Janev , I leaned that his seven years old son started misconduct with User:Cú Faoil about some photo. As a consequence, User:Cú Faoil initiated procedures on META against Igor Janev, assuming that Igor Janev is behind that edit war. There were no political issues here. Under bizarre circumstances User:Cú Faoil started edit war with the child. 79.101.88.30 (talk) 17:53, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually his son had removed picture/photo of the User:Cú Faoil favorite dog, than vice versa. User:Cú Faoil wanted revenge and started case on Igor Janev at META.79.101.88.30 (talk) 18:02, 28 December 2014 (UTC) Question: What you defined as Credible sources? On the List of Macedonian mention above 90 percent of articles do not have more credible sources than Janev sources. In Macedonia, credible sources are Macedonian Emigration Agency (as a government source), MIA, MINA, New Macedonia, Dnevnik, Večer, Makedonsko sonce, Makfaks. In each of them you have credible information on Igor Janev. I don't see why should he be treated with different standards than others? Again it is story about different or double standards.77.46.216.73 (talk) 19:40, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

P.S. If I.J. was Hoax, Macedonians would be the first who would have deleted BLP on their Wiki.mk Contrary his art. people can find on more than 10 Wikies [[76]]. Probably Macedonians know better than others about their Igor Janev. 77.46.216.73 (talk) 20:20, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

When even Arbcom can't be trusted, who else can I turn to?

Dear Mr. Wales,

I am not posting from my usual account - or even my usual Internet connection - because I fear the wrath of those I criticize.

It has been brought to my attention that there have been several very suspicious goings-on recently related to the ongoing Arbcom case about Gamergate. Most recently, a new user was indefinitely blocked, and appeal denied, as a result of participation in the case. The crime? A single edit to the Workshop page (nothing else pertinent shows up in the user's contribution history) attempting to introduce evidence that that user thought had been missed. The evidence in question is a simple breakdown of number of edits to the Gamergate controversy, by editor, intended to support claims of WP:TAGTEAM.

Now, that would be bad enough on its own, as a blatant contravention of WP:AGF. But then I looked up some of the surrounding discussion between admins about the decision. User:HJ Mitchell is involved in the Arbcom case in question, having proposed multiple findings of fact and not just doing janitorial duties there. User:5 albert square came into the discussion assuming that it must be a sock puppet account, and deciding that it must otherwise be a "troll" with the sole intention of causing trouble for Ryulong. Which, er, really makes no sense to me; the entire point of Arbcom proceedings, surely, is to establish the case that certain of the involved parties should be sanctioned; and it's only to be expected that everyone involved takes sides. That's no different from how anyone else has been conducting themselves, anyway. 5 albert square also personally thanks User:Ryulong (who, as is often noted in these sorts of discussions, has a very long history of Wikipedia infamy) in that exchange, which frankly looks incredibly suspicious.

I have to ask, how can any Wikipedian - or any outside viewer - have any confidence in the system after witnessing such a blatant display of apparent cronyism? How are we supposed to believe that there is anything fair or equitable about the treatment of Wikipedians, when we witness Ryulong get off the hook for everything (including, for just one example, casting aspersions and using profanity in front of Arbcom), even as he brazenly flouts the system (per his own account of events, when he worried about a possible conflict of interest and appearance of paid editing after having raised funds via Reddit, he chose to ask them if contributing to that page was okay, rather than anyone on Wikipedia), while new users are immediately and indefinitely blocked for trying to point it out?

I knew things were bad, but I never realized they were this bad.

69.159.80.46 (talk) 07:49, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

An accurate version of the data had always been available for anyone to add as evidence to ArbCom. [77] What a random new (or 'new') contributor expected to happen as the result of an unverifiable uploaded image being posted after the evidence stage closed, I have no idea. AndyTheGrump (talk) 07:54, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

When you say that "an accurate version of the data had always been available", and then call the image "unverifiable", you contradict yourself. Further, it looks to me like the data matches up just fine - when I run the tool, it shows Ryulong as having 18.4% of the edits, NorthBySouthBaranof at 16.2% etc. And anyway, the fact that the data is "available" isn't a reason not to present it. The entire point of Arbcom is to make a case about the parties. The user would not have been allowed to come in and say "WP:TAGTEAM is going on" without providing some kind of evidence. Everyone is allowed to participate in Arbcom cases, per my understanding, and the new user in question presumably couldn't find something to point to on the Evidence page, and perhaps didn't know about the WMF tools.

But more importantly - are you seriously going to ignore every point about the ridiculously unfair application of rules and policy to focus on that? Here we have someone doing what they're supposed to, to the best of their ability, given a presumed good-faith desire to participate in a process they're entitled to participate in, and getting indeffed for it. And you want to defend that on the basis of how they chose to present information? 69.159.80.46 (talk) 08:03, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

The point is that ArbCom don't need anonymously-uploaded data when they can look at the raw data themselves - all of it, not just evidence picked by one side or the other. Nobody was prevented from entering it as evidence. At the appropriate time. Not after the evidence stage had closed. Though I'm quite sure this alleged tag-teaming has been discussed in the evidence submitted anyway. As for the rights and wrongs of the block, personally, I don't think it was justified - but I don't think that it proves anything much beyond the fact that people are getting heartily sick of new (and 'new') accounts turning up and complaining that the world is conspiring against them. It is all getting rather tedious, and frankly indicates just how warped some people's priorities are. If some poor downtrodden Gamergater got blocked unjustly, it rates about 0.0001 on a scale of 1 to 10 measuring the injustices of the world today. AndyTheGrump (talk) 08:28, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I wonder if AndyTheGrump may side-track this discussion, as he has in the one above.

Arbcom needs to show exemplary openness, and there's certainly reason for concern in the above case. I hope it won't be side-tracked, but this is Jim's page, so it'll probably disperse into unrelated pointless argument and be archived before you can blink. Seasonal best, Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 08:10, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

This section is mistitled -- arbcom can be trusted -- an arbcom clerk reverted the removal of the evidence [78] NE Ent 11:37, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm happy to see that, but if an Arbcom clerk doesn't think it should have been removed, then surely that's more evidence for the unjustness of the block? To be clear, I'm more concerned about Arbcom the process than Arbcom the individuals, here. (I'm also concerned, of course, about the named editors; but they aren't part of the committee, as far as I can tell.) It looks really bad when participation in the process seems to put non-parties at unusually high risk of scrutiny, to the apparent benefit of actual parties to the case. 69.159.80.46 (talk) 12:34, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

The parties are more at risk, actually, and a fairly strong hint was dropped here. While the arbcom process, like all things wiki and all things human, tends to produce reasonable results. The place to watch is Proposed decision. (Note the dates at top are estimates / goals and actual decisions are frequently posted later than indicated). NE Ent 19:10, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Apologizes

Total mess. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 13:13, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

My apologizes for the thread above and how it spiraled out of control. I thought it was a funny comic (which I follow online) and was my way of wishing you a Merry Christmas...with a smile. :) There wasn't anything malicious about it, it was just funny. :) An editor obviously took it as a way to insult you, which I never intended and it exploded from there. I, again, apologize to you and to the editors who had to clean up the mess. It was never my intention. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 08:09, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps the best way to deal with this is to stop discussing it? Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 09:52, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

@User:Igor the facetious xmas bunny would you like to stop WP:TROLL Neutralhomer? @Neutralhomer it only really happened because of the commons uploading. Your intent was clearly in good faith. --Mrjulesd (talk) 11:43, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

it wasn't trolling, but regardless, yes, I've dropped the stick. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 11:55, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

@Mrjulesd: I know, but I always apologize when things get out of hand (and it did here). - Neutralhomer • Talk • 12:00, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

@the bunny if you really are acting in good faith could you please explain what previous accounts you have edited under? --Mrjulesd (talk) 12:31, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I have already confirmed my identity in confidence to GorillaWarfare (talk · contribs) - who is an administrator, checkuser, oversighter and arbitrator. I hope that's good enough for you; check with her if you need to confirm I'm in 'good standing', no blocks/bans, etc. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 12:45, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

See also "Sure, and people could demonstrate WP:AGF by not demanding them." -GorillaWarfare NE Ent 12:51, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict): Explain your use of an IP sock to game the system, then. If you are a user in good standing, then you should have no problems explaining that. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 12:53, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

@the bunny. Well I'm glad that you've done all that. But why not explain here? Surely if you've only been acting in good faith you have nothing to hide? --Mrjulesd (talk) 13:00, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Call it "on principle", if you like. I really would rather not say more, because if I do, people will guess who I am. I really don't think there is any need for me to tell the world, when I've told an arb, and she can confirm I've done nothing wrong? I honestly don't know any more; my mere knowledge of Wikipedia means people are shouting 'sock' at me constantly, and accusing me of all kinds of nefarious things. Maybe I'll just give up on editing altogether; it's kinda offensive to keep being accused of things. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 14:39, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You can't say admit you were another user at one time and then in the next sentence say you have "mere knowledge of Wikipedia". That's clear BS. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 14:49, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You really are clutching at non-existent straws. In the sentence, "my mere knowledge of Wikipedia means people are shouting 'sock' at me constantly" I meant that my merely knowing about Wikipedia stuff means people accuse me; not that my knowledge of it was 'mere'. Sheesh. Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 15:06, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

If you don't explain your previous accounts then, lets face it, people are going to be concerned. Just saying you've told someone else doesn't cut much ice. And your behaviour so far has done nothing to lessen concerns, with numerous complaints against you, including umpteen admins. And you've been here 14 hours? Can you see the problem? WP:DUCK?--Mrjulesd (talk) 15:17, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

That may be true, but a real man apologizes for a problem, even if it isn't 100% his fault. The entire situation began with my post, so apologizes are due. Now whether NYBrad or whoever put the picture on Commons will apologize, I don't know...that's not my department. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 12:53, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I notified Newyorkbrad of this discussion [79] Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 14:44, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Igor has been very clearly id'd by behavior to a globally banned and editing pattern to User:Operahome but he now says he just stumbled across the article... total garbage.Legacypac (talk) 15:11, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

@Legacypac: if you believe that a user is a sockpuppet of a banned editor, please file a case at WP:SPI with your evidence. Do not post unsubstantiated allegations elsewhere on the project. Thryduulf (talk) 15:20, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I am utterly sick of Legacypac constantly casting aspersions on my character, to the point where I am considering just giving up. Is there really nothing that can be done to prevent such harassment? Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 15:28, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I don't know — by stopping use of the Igor alternate account and going back to use of your main account? That might solve the problem. Just sayin'... Carrite (talk) 17:07, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Oh, and one more thing: why exactly is it that we allow people to create alternate shit-stirring accounts again??? Carrite (talk) 17:10, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

See here. He's been editing for 1 day and causing nothing but trouble. Legacypac (talk) 15:31, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Whereas you've been doing it for years?

Seriously, please, stop harassing me.Igor the facetious xmas bunny (talk) 15:38, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It takes two. If you walk away, I will make sure he doesn't follow you. Jehochman ^Talk 15:39, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Bit late to the party here, but Igor the facetious xmas bunny did indeed confirm their identity with me. The user is in good standing, and I have no reason to suspect that they are also this banned user you speak of (though I admit I am not terribly familiar). GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:21, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Dear editors, first I am not User:Operahome. But I can tell you who User:Operahome is! He or as you think they are not terrorist or criminal organization(s), but an underaged person! That is an embarrassment for Wikipedia! You should have here the policy for underaged children who are presently able to create accounts/socks and other crap and trouble. 212.83.146.237 (talk) 12:03, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Please see new fact(s) on Draft talk:Igor Janev / Draft:Igor Janev. Seriously, does anyone knows who currently is the National Security Advisor of the President of Macedonia? Some help? Why his name is kept in secret? Even the media in Macedonia cannot discover the ID of that Advisor[80] (Eng. translation "Who is the secret Advisor for NS of the President Ivanov").183.86.209.161 (talk) 12:34, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

WMF makes peace in Ukraine

WMF still rocks - I was impressed to see that representatives of countries from Russia to the Czech Republic successfully met in Kiev to discuss the nuts and bolts of freedom of panorama legislation. (I can only make as much sense of the ru.wikinews report as Google can, but it appears no shots were fired!) If these people can travel into the middle of an authentic global crisis to have a productive meeting, they should be an inspiration to the rest of us. Wnt (talk) 21:56, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

Dear Jimbo Wales,
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! A new year has come! How times flies! 2015 will be a new year, and it is also a chance for you to start afresh! Thank you for your contributions!
From a fellow editor,
--Nahnah4 (talk | contribs | guestbook) 09:02, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

This message promotes WikiLove. Created by Nahnah4 (talk | contribs | guestbook). To use this template, leave {{subst:User:Nahnah4/Happy New Year}} on someone else's talk page.

Happy New Year Jimbo Wales!

Happy New Year!

Jimbo Wales,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 15:15, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2015}} to user talk pages.

Harpy Gnu Year

Harpy.
Gnu.
Year.

I just could not resist. Cheers! bd2412 T 04:01, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Happy New year!!!

Yeah, happy new year from me too, Mr. Wales. Hope you and yours are well. Drmies (talk) 05:04, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Happy New Year Jimbo Wales!

Happy New Year!

Jimbo Wales,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 10:56, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2015}} to user talk pages.

2015 already

Just squeezing in amongst all the noise, Jimbo, to wish you the very best for 2015. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:06, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

Dear Jimbo Wales,
HAPPY NEW YEAR Hoping 2015 will be a great year for you! Thank you for your contributions!
From a fellow editor,
--FWiW Bzuk (talk) 19:32, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

This message promotes WikiLove. Originally created by Nahnah4 (see "invisible note").

A pie for you!

For your contributions! Huhu9001 (talk) 06:50, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Unblock request

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

This does not appear to be a good faith request. It appears to be time-wasting argumentation and dissembling by an IP hopping banned user. I'm going to semi-protect this page for a bit to give the user a chance to disengage. The advice given about proper methods for appealing an ban should be followed, or else the user should not make any edits at all. Jehochman ^Talk 17:40, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

A very happy new year to you and your family. I am writing to request unblock of my account, Vote (X) for Change. You have said that an initial ban should be for not more than one year [81] but this account has been blocked for five. 78.149.198.202 (talk) 10:21, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

As explained on your talk page, the standard route for ban appeals is to contact the Ban Appeals Subcommittee. The linked page contains details on how to lodge an appeal and what it would ideally contain. -- Euryalus (talk) 10:39, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

This comes under the category "Non - controversial housekeeping". My IP was unblocked four years ago. 78.149.198.202 (talk) 10:54, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, no it doesn't, User:Vote (X) for Change - see WP:UNBAN and, in your case, follow the procedures at Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Ban_Appeals_Subcommittee#Procedure. That an IP you used was unblocked does not mean you've been unbanned - IPs aren't blocked indefinitely. Further WP:EVADE on your part at best only complicates matters, particularly as you had a history of WP:SOCK. Please follow the procedure. JoeSperrazza (talk) 13:19, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Vote (X) for Change JoeSperrazza (talk) 13:42, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

The unblock was followed by a discussion and the consensus was unban. 78.149.198.202 (talk) 13:58, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Great! Can you please provide a diff of that unban decision? I am skeptical, however, about such a discussion, as your ban clearly indicates it is a matter for the Ban Appeals SubCommittee (BASC). JoeSperrazza (talk) 14:12, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Note: This IP has been blocked for block evasion. It is possible the editor is confused about the terms of their ban. Barring any diffs of a successful (albeit, apparently misplaced) unban discussion, this thread should probably be closed. JoeSperrazza (talk) 14:32, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

There's no confusion, Joe, and I don't think you're an expert on this. A community ban can be undone by the community at any time - it doesn't require BASC to do it. The discussion was right on this page and elsewhere - DoRD supported unban on his talk page. 81.178.199.75 (talk) 14:41, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I never stated I was an expert, but your ~~user~~ talk page is marked very clearly with text to the contrary of what you are asserting [82]. Given you are so confident regarding the situation, post diffs that support your contention - "right on this page and elsewhere" is insufficient. As for "DoRD supported unban on his talk page", support is not consensus - and you know that is so. Your WP:SPI page and your talk page history [83] is littered with misleading statements from you, posting as IPs and as socks, so I think I am misapplying my good faith and won't further respond barring your posting of any unambiguous diffs. Even then, don't expect your main account to be unblocked without following Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Ban_Appeals_Subcommittee#Procedure, per Wikipedia:Appealing_a_block#Other_methods_of_appeal. Cheers, JoeSperrazza (talk)

Joe, I'm not asking you to respond. This is Mr Wales' talk page. As for your good faith, asking me to respond and getting me blocked, how does that show good faith? You have twisted my words. I did not say that a talk page comment was a consensus. All comments are taken into account. [84]. As for misleading statements, you want diffs from me, so why don't you provide diffs supporting your claims yourself? How can an editor who was community unbanned be a sock, and do you have something against IP editors? Your DNFTT edit summary is way over the top. Courcelles put it very elegantly when he said

But we follow process in these discussions because the duty is so terrible, not in the clear and obvious cases, but in the tough ones. Because this is our highest and harshest remedy as a community, and three hour discussions do not allow the sobering thought that is necessary in the hard cases. Because of how hard this can be, we do not and must not take shortcuts in the easy cases, it must not become an easy thing to do in less time than it takes to eat a nice meal. Someone is going to haul me up on WP:IAR here, I can see it already. So be it. If there is one thing that we must preserve process for, it is the banning of a user. [85].

The four year - old discussion can be located, because it was triggered by the unblock, which will have been logged.

DoRD supported unban on his talk page. I did? A search of my talk archives doesn't find that discussion. —DoRD (talk) 16:38, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

@Joe: I think the relevant link is WP:CBAN. If I can set your mind at rest, the editing landscape is very different from four years ago. I had a problem with an editor who liked to insert pet fringe views into articles. That editor was given a block warning by an administrator for claiming ownership of articles, promptly retired and later died.

@DoRD: I found it. Which archives did you search? 86.150.241.120 (talk) 17:32, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Regarding the notices at the top of the talk page, I think they have been superseded. One says "you are indefinitely banned from editing the English Wikipedia under any account or IP address. Appeals, should you desire to make one, may be directed to the Arbitration Committee ...".

Note "indefinitely" means "until further notice", i.e. can be changed. Also "may" (my choice) not "must". Following the unblock of my IP it is apparent that it was changed. Also, following a request from Dozzzzzzzzzing off, the link is User Talk:DoRD/Archive 2#Showing you something I just wanted to be certain to make sure you saw. I am happy to stay away from AN and ANI. 92.25.65.245 (talk) 16:55, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Banished words (2015)

Lake Superior State University has published its list of banished words for 2015.

Lake Superior State University :: Banished Words List :: 2015

—Wavelength (talk) 03:48, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for gifting us the link. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:37, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

For your New Year's resolution a simple suggestion on how to use some of that $60 million

Hello, I recognize that this has been raised time and time again, but might I suggest that some of the money the WMF currently has in its possession be directed towards some form of image filter? As it stands right now, any individual who looks for images of Queen Victoria's consort is liable to find themselves with a face full of penis and little Billy looking for images of an electric toothbrush may have to have a serious discussion with mommy and daddy about female masturbation. Surely this is not desirable.

People often go on about the implementation, but there are relatively simple methods to go about it. For instance, there is already a "bad image" filter for some explicit content that prevents them from being used for vandalism. Anyone attempting to add a tagged image to an article that is not pre-approved will find the image is hidden from view. I am sure it would be simple enough to create a "safe search" function akin to that used by Google, which prevents images with such a tag from being displayed in search results and can be toggled on and off with ease.

Other methods that could be employed include the use of administrative categories on articles and other content that would display a "NSFW"-style warning requiring the reader to approve viewing of the content as is common on countless sites with explicit content. Such tags and categories could be added manually or be added automatically by a bot when prompted by certain key words or based on image information, which would naturally be subject to review by a human admin to determine whether the tag or category is valid. I believe that would be a fine way to use some of the money currently being held by the Wikimedia Foundation. What do you say?--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 01:49, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Geez dude, you're a reverse Queen Victoria's consort for making me curious enough to view that. What the heck is up with people. Dave Dial (talk) 02:06, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Censorship of any form is antithetical to the mission of Wikipedia.

It is impossible to choose what to censor. If Wikipedia makes any attempt to do so, it becomes responsible for times when it fails to do so adequately.

No matter what argument you put forward, people will find cases which compel us to continue to make no censorial decisions (other than, perhaps, those caused by the legality of the country where the servers are hosted). Igor the bunny (talk) 04:14, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

TDA did not say anything about censorship. Giving readers some measure of of control over what they see is not censorship. It is common courtesy and common sense, and it is completely consistent with the educational mission of Wikipedia/Wikimedia. Neutron (talk) 04:31, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Igor. Enabling readers to choose to view or not view images they find offensive is not censorship. It is empowerment. Some here think we should oblige everyone to look at an image of a woman masturbating when they search for "electric toothbrush", even those who would prefer not to. These folk are authoritarian ideologues. Try to raise yourself above that. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:01, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Neutron: Almost all computers have an 'off' button. Igor the bunny (talk) 06:54, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Igor, readers already have control over what they see and it is called off button. -sarvajna (talk) 07:09, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Am I missing something? looks clean to me, yeah that toothbrush one probably needs a fix of some kind. I once had an idea of adding a hidden cat to images on commons which were "NSFW" and it won't appear in any searches unless the user explicitly requests it by enabling an option....might be a pain in the a** to do and though our policies are against censorship, this might not be something most of us would be against ...Just think of the little kids Santa!..uhm..I mean Jimmy --Ste moc 07:14, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you are missing something - the result of looking for 'Prince Albert' by name. AndyTheGrump (talk) 07:23, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

You're also missing that some people are offended by ladies in swimsuits. Or naked feet. Or images of Mohammed. Or excrement. Or bananas. Who decides? Igor the bunny (talk) 07:30, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Who decided that a charitable organisation supposedly set up to create an online encyclopaedia (not an anti-censorship campaign) should instead dedicate much of its image storage space to low-grade pornography, catalogued in such a way that searches for other material entirely will risk offending a significant proportion of its readership? AndyTheGrump (talk) 07:38, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I think nobody decided; it just happened. But what you might call "low-grade porn", another person might call "useful material for medical studies". Or banana studies. Igor the bunny (talk) 07:50, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Nothing 'just happens' on Wikipedia/Commons. The porn (which is what it is - medical studies aren't based on images trawled from Flikr) is there because Commons has been subverted for purposes beyond the stated remit of the WMF. AndyTheGrump (talk) 07:56, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

OK, well...this is an old debate, but I'm game.

Define 'Porn'. Igor the bunny (talk) 08:04, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I'll say it again, bunny. No one is suggesting we remove images of penises from Commons or Wikipedia. All the images of penises you may want will still be there, and all our medical articles will be illustrated with graphic penis pictures where helpful to the reader. The filter proposal is that we give you and all other readers the choice to not see them if that is your/their want. Should you go to Human penis with an intelligently-designed nudity filter enabled you can choose to see a penis illustration by simply clicking the blank rectangle where the image should be.

Again. All relevant (educationally useful) images will be on Commons and in our articles, as now. All readers who have opted-in to one or more of the image filtering options will be able to view a blanked image in an article or in a Commons search result by just clicking the blank rectangle.

As for how do we decide what images are filtered by a given filter option: there are multiple possible answers and all worth discussing, but there is no point discussing that question with someone who equates a filter with censorship and so won't be discussing that question in good faith. I'd be happy to discuss the question with anyone who recognises that filtering isn't censorship and that, rather than restrict our readers' freedom, it offers them more options. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:08, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Filtering should and can happen at the users end. Moreover, I've been on the internet since ca. 1987, I've been on Wikipedia since 2003, and the only time I've ever even had the idea of searching Commons for images was in reply to one of these threads. I stipulate that people who actually do perform image searches there know what they are doing and what to expect. Filtering is a problem in search of a solution. It also opens yet another secondary front (well, several, actually) for user conflicts, namely about how to classify which pictures. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:53, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

So, you don't need it or want it. Cool. Don't work on it. Don't use it. Simple. Why would you stop those that do want it from offering/having it as an option? It is an option. "I don't want it, so I don't want you to have it" seems a little ... I don't know. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 10:20, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

So you don't want a big military? Well, don't use it. You don't want a gun? Well, don't use it. So you don't want large scale government surveillance? Well, don't use it. "I don't want it, so I don't want you to have it" seems a little ... I don't know." I hope it's clear that there are at least two points hidden in this analogy. One, you are proposing to use community funding (and other community resources, including volunteer time and good will) to implement image filtering. I may think that it's better to spend those resources on competing projects, or keep a nest egg for bad times. Secondly, once the infrastructure is in place, who knows what it will be used for? And thirdly, maybe I'm of the opinion that seeing the occasional surprising picture is actually good for humanity in general. I have the impression that you want to decide for others what they should or should not see. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:22, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Why would you have that impression, since I've made it clear that I want readers to decide for themselves what they see. You are the one saying they shouldn't have that choice. You are projecting some censorship/big government hidden agenda onto me that isn't there. If this initially benign, choice-enhancing measure should in some future version of Wikipedia be perverted to impose filtering or actual censorship on readers, it won't be because it's a part of my evil plan now.

But let's address that possibility. Let's say there is a button at the top of Wikipedia pages called "image filter", and readers can select "filter nudity" or "filter images of Muhammad" or "filter images of Mormon temple garments". Only those offended by such images will select those filters, and if they want to look at a blanked image they'll just click it. Under what circumstances can you see that changing, where people will have the filter forced on them or where they'll be prevented from seeing a filtered image by clicking its blank place-holder? Do you seriously expect this community to !vote for such a change? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:08, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Re: "You're also missing that some people are offended by ladies in swimsuits. Or naked feet. Or images of Mohammed. Or excrement. Or bananas. Who decides?". They decide, the people doing the searches. People should be able to decide for themselves what kind of things show up in image searches, and if images were tagged appropriately and the search modified to optionally use those tags, people would be able to choose what to see without anyone forcing anything on anyone else. Squinge (talk) 12:20, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

As an example, most image libraries make extensive use of tagging and you can search for whatever tags you want. So if you're not looking for images of Mohammed wearing a swimsuit and eating a banana, but only want images of cock rings, it's relatively easy to find what you want. It's not censorship, it's just making it easier for people to find what they're actually looking for. Squinge (talk) 12:25, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure a multimedia search of en.Wikipedia for "electric toothbrush" will deliver up the same result under your proposed system as the current system. NSFW. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:46, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Not if the images were appropriately tagged and you could include or exclude the tags you wanted or didn't want. So if images could be, for example, tagged as sexually explicit, featuring genitals, showing Mohammed, illustrating bananas or whatever, they could be filtered. It would open up questions of what constitutes categories of images, of course, and who decides - but I don't think that would be an insurmountable problem. What I do think is wrong is the apparent mindset that because Wikipedia is not censored, anyone who wants to find images of toothbrushes has no option but to see them being shoved up vaginas. Squinge (talk) 13:49, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

This is an old discussion, and my old response is at User:Wnt/Personal image blocking. Wikipedia offers a very sophisticated system of user-controlled Javascript extensions that permit individual users a tremendous amount of flexibility, which can be used for image blocking. With a limited knowledge of the language and a few minutes I was able to come up with an example at the time of a script that successfully blocks all the Muhammad images in Muhammad.

Yet so far, it appears that censorware is the better answer to the old riddle "He who makes it doesn't want it. He who buys it doesn't need it. He who uses it doesn't know it." There's just not an iota of user interest expressed by anyone, to my knowledge, so far in making any script like this one to allow people to block images they personally object to. (Some other schemes have been demoed, but the interest is in coding them, not using them, so far as I know) The only "sex appeal" in Wikimedia image blocking is in being the one who gets to make the site-wide value judgment of what images are good and what images are bad, then imposing it on someone like an IP user who is deemed incapable of deciding for himself. Until that changes, no good can come of building a stairway to heaven that cannot conceivably reach its goal. Wnt (talk) 17:08, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I've read User:Wnt/Personal image blocking, and it's very interesting. However, I don't think a system based on filenames would be sufficient (and neither would a system that required users to do any coding whatsoever). In the toothbrush search example above, you'd need to know in advance to exclude files with some combination of the words "Woman masturbating with improvised vibrator", but you'd have no idea that's what you'd need to exclude until after you'd seen the search results. But if images like that were tagged as "sexually explicit" they would be much easier to exclude from a search or from viewing in an article. I also don't see any need for anyone to judge what's good or bad for others - there are plenty of tags that could be applied to images that are objectively factual, and then individuals could decide for themselves what they want and don't want. And if there's dispute over what fits in which tag, we could decide and build guidelines by consensus, like we do with the rest of the project. Squinge (talk) 09:53, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

The "programming" involved can be as simple as copying a page like [86] and pasting it to User:Squinge/common.js; that ought to block the Muhammad images, but I have the list written into the script rather than retrieving them from somewhere. The scheme I describe at the Personal image blocking page involves setting up a text file User:Squinge/image-blacklist, which might contain something as simple as

{{User:Jimbo Wales/image-blacklist/sexually-explicit}}

using transclusion to copy his entries; or it might transclude from multiple categories or blacklists. The key is not to rely on "objectively factual" decisions like whether that famous statue of David is sexually explicit or not. Forming consensus on NPOV is at least difficult --- forming consensus on the right POV ought to be impossible. Wnt (talk) 14:57, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

That example is not remotely close to being a general solution. However simple, *any* specific programming is too much for users to be expected to do, and your suggestion does not address that and does not address the need to know in advance precisely what filenames you would need to filter - unless I'm missing something? Squinge (talk) 18:29, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

It's not actually necessary to cut-and-paste a whole program; you can import scripts also (but then there are some security issues that apply to ensure no one corrupts the master). It amounts to a few lines' change that could be automated with a widget if someone really cared; the time to approach the Foundation would be then, after you've shown interest in doing the hard part. The hard part, of course, is that in any rating scheme, someone needs to look at every picture. You can't make that go away no matter how you do it. The thing is, the work could be divided out among a group of like-minded individuals - you could transclude Jimbo's list of unwanted pictures, he could transclude those from five other people he trusts, who each transclude from several more... etc. Every once in a while a WP:bot, programmed by any user, could compile the lists into single flat files to remove duplicates and thereby speed execution, while messaging competitors who desire it the list of files that others object to but they haven't, in case they want to look. All of this can be volunteer effort by the people who care about it that affects no one but those who choose to trust those particular volunteers' decisions, either directly or by proxy. And the thing is, free speech advocates such as myself aren't going to criticize you for voluntarily changing your user experience, since we recognize that is your right. It's the part where you try to make that an objective standard for others who don't choose that causes us trouble. Wnt (talk) 20:06, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

It is probably not too hard to make some Bayesian filter to learn which categories one does not want to see. Or combinations of categories, and maybe also other features. It works wonderfully for email filtering, why wouldn't it here? Enabling users to choose want to see is not censorship. Forcing others to see whatever one think is to be seen is a authoritarian view that should be curtailed. I don't mind about porn, but it sure is a good thing that nowadays whenever I search for "horse" on the 'net I do get images of horses. Running, standing, feeding, whatever, living their normal horse lives. It was not so 20 years ago, and it was not better :-) - Nabla (talk) 21:28, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

A better idea

I don't know what this $60 million budget exactly refers to, but I propose some of it being used for countering government surveillance and initiatives by racketeering organizations that try to make the Internet less secure for everybody, and for countering attempts to censor Wikipedia itself. That would be more lofty goal than producing more filters for people offended by porn. (don't talk secrets) (talk) 09:40, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Charities aren't allowed to spend donors' money on projects that don't clearly fit their mission statement. The first part of your proposal may fall a bit wide of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission statement. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:40, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

While I like the direction of your mind, I don't think it's the NSA but GCHQ which is responsible for infiltrating Wikipedia. Under the ECHELON/Five Eyes scheme, foreign intelligence agencies are prohibited from acting in their own country so collaborate by doing in one another's jurisdiction what they cannot do at home. My perception is that strange aberrations like the David Cawthorne Haines oversight affair on Wikipedia seem to occur most often in regard to British nationals. Also, with Wikimedia servers now firmly established in a high-security area of Northern Virginia, I see the trend as decidedly in the opposite direction. Wnt (talk) 17:08, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Re @Anthony I'm not thinking any drastic difference to our mission policy, just to make Wikipedia itself and, by extension, its users more resilient for surveillance. For example, why is Wikipedia hostile towards ToR? Wikipedia:IP_block_exemption says editing anonymously is allowed for "highly exceptional circumstances" only (and is not specifying what those circumstances might be. I opened a query about this in a help desk for new users). Template:Torblock goes even further: it has instructions for ToR exit node admins to prevent people from using their node to edit Wikipedia. It looks like we are embracing the censorship and surveillance state if we are telling people, how to configure their software to disallow editing Wikipedia! I was told that my user account needs to be "confirmed" and someone "patrolled" my userpage so I'm feeling somewhat surveilled already :( (don't talk secrets) (talk) 07:16, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Re @Wnt You have a point with GCHQ (and other Five Eyes) likely being used as cat's pawn to circumvent 4th Amendment protection of citizens. However as Wikipedia servers reside in jurisdiction where spying with PRISM is the norm, what assurance there is that NSA and its allies does not collect data like IP addresses and text of deleted articles in bulk directly from our servers? WikiMedia staff and Jimbo could have been silenced with a national security letter forbidding them to acknowledge such surveillance. (don't talk secrets) (talk) 07:16, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Even if I were against government surveillance (I don't particularly care whether they're tracking my internet activity or not.), the Wikimedia Foundation shouldn't use donations to fight against government agencies, especially when the donors think that their money is being used to keep Wikipedia up and running (and to buy coffee for programmers). A lot of donors would be angry if the money were being used for such a purpose. Also, the Wikimedia Foundation is supposed to be neutrally building a repository of human knowledge, not taking political stances. Working against government agencies would be very non-neutral. I'll end this with a couple of comments about don't talk secret's comment two posts up from this one. Patrolling pages is just a measure taken to ensure that pages conform to policy. See WP:New pages patrol. Confirmed/autoconfirmed users are just users who have been editing for four days and made ten edits and are thus unlikely to be vandals, so they are thus permitted to move (rename) pages and edit semi-protected pages. See WP:Autoconfirmed users. We mostly are "hostile" towards TOR because vandals commonly use it to evade IP blocks. Finally, I don't think personally think that there's any good reason to care about government surveillance unless one has something to hide (I'm not saying that you're doing anything wrong here on Wikipedia, though), but that's a debate for another forum. --Jakob (talk) 16:44, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

@Jakec: I think that much of the 'hardening' of Wikipedia is merely a matter of making privacy a consideration in procedure. I recently suggested here that Wikipedia needs to think carefully about what would happen in the event of a large scale hacking spree by North Korea, and many of the actions involved should be the same. We need to learn (a) not to ask for so much private information no matter how 'secret' the forum; for example, ArbCom needs to get out of its recent bad habit of trying to get those on the brink of a ban to confess to every account they've ever held here, even if the information has some marginal value in trying to decide whether someone will be disruptive; (b) not imagine that the private discussions held are really private, even when the Arbcom/internal emails aren't immediately leaked; (c) not build any resources, like records of which IP read which articles, which a spy from any country would have to be stupid not to want to steal, or not to be able to.

As for the claim that those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear, what do you think of things like this? A person makes an obvious joke containing nothing more threatening than "By GOP", and gets hauled into FBI for questioning over it despite doing everything 'responsible' to make it clear. And still with no guarantee that he will not face some insane prosecution of the sort that the prosecutors of Justin Carter would favor. One can curry no favor with the Angel Moloch by sacrificing the guilty; neither spy nor prosecutor can prove that he is competent at his job except by successfully prosecuting the innocent. Wnt (talk) 22:26, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

@Wnt: I agree completely with your comments here and in the linked post. We definedly should take steps to protect editors from corrupt state officials and criminal dictatorships like North Korea. It is too bad that Wikipedia is hostile towards anonymization networks, even for registered editors intending to use them for good purposes like editing "sensitive" articles that might be monitored by the pervasive mass surveillance machinery. (don't talk secrets) (talk) 07:54, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

@Wnt: I seriously think that Wikipedia is not going to be hacked by North Korea. What would they hack into this site for? Having an article on The Interview? It's not taking one side or another, so it would be hard to imagine a motive for such an attack.

It is true that there have been a few false positives (as you have pointed out). However, in the first example you list, the person was not even arrested and managed to clear things up pretty quickly. The second example wasn't even unearthed by government surveillance ; someone misinterpreted a sarcastic comment as a credible threat and notified the authorities, therefore government surveillance cannot be blamed. In general, I think the number of false positives pales in comparison to the number of times that the government does not investigate anyone for posting such material. --Jakob (talk) 03:13, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

What $60 million?

The WMF had $60 million before that recent and rather annoying campaign. Now it probably has 80 million or more. Even Mr. Wales says: "I’m happy to inform you that our current fundraiser is the most successful in our entire history." 103.41.176.1 (talk) 16:56, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Oh, go to heck, IP editor, for bitching and moaning and linking to some ridiculous GamerGate article, which is certainly the most repellent and repulsive Internet meme of 2014. Every year, those who wallow in negativity criticize Wikimedia fundraising, and the people of planet Earth ignore that narrowmindedness, and support this wonderful project more and more. It seems we can do without your pennies; thank you very much. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:29, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

The question is if "this wonderful project" would you my pennies to get rid of its annoying penis. 103.41.176.1 (talk) 06:33, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

MoodBar retained 9% more editors after six months

Hi Jimbo, I hope you and your multitudinous talk page stalkers will please consider voicing your opinions at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Turn the MoodBar back on. I hope this isn't canvassing, because the only "opposition" to the MoodBar before it was turned off, as far as I can tell, was a technical need to remove it in anticipation of testing a Flow component which is no longer proposed for deployment. Please correct me if I'm mistaken. Thank you! EllenCT (talk) 17:13, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I have a phone call with Lila tomorrow so I'll bring it up to see what the status is.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:57, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	:) ^t 1234567890Number ^c 15:32, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

That should actually be a "Defender of Jimmy Wales's foundation" star. Wikipedia and Jimmy's foundation are two different things. (Edit) On second thoughts, the latter would be inappropriate. Your inaction on our BLPs is leaving the foundation wide open to serious reputational and financial harm. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:15, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Just to elaborate on that. (Sorry Jimmy. I know I'm being harsh, and I won't blame you if you tell me to leave. ... But, since that hasn't happened yet:) The board thinks it is not responsible for defamation and simple trashing of people's reputations on Wikipedia (because the foundation can't reasonably be expected to monitor every edit as it goes live). A bit like YouTube. The board thinks it is reasonable to expect the foundation to take down libellous Wikipedia/-media content the moment it is drawn to their attention, and they do. Jimmy and the rest of the board are wrong on the first point. They are responsible for the shit we say about people. Because they can impose policy on us. They simply choose not to, out of a puerile attachment to Ayn Randite "government is the enemy". We - this "community" overpopulated with social misfits - need government, Jimmy. You don't believe in it. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:43, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

? Just to be clear. The board has imposed policy that one must not libel: "you may not engage . . . in harassment . . .[i]nfringing the privacy rights of others . . .posting content that constitutes libel or defamation. . ." WP:TOU. As has the project. WP:BLP. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:21, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Action: Jimbo tries to go above the community. Response: what gives you the right to go against the community? You should follow consensus.

Action: Jimbo helping out with normal admin duties. Response: why are you doing that? You're just creating controversy!

Action: Jimbo does normal editing. Response: you're not doing enough really.

Action: Jimbo doesn't do anything. Response: why aren't you doing anything?

--Mrjulesd (talk) 14:37, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villian.--AldNon^Ucallin?☎ 19:33, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Anthony, you are just being obnoxious. If you want to raise a concern, start your own thread, and do so politely if you want to get a reply. Don't hijack somebody else's comment for your own purposes. Don't start a second thread about the same topic as the one above. Jehochman ^Talk 16:07, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

A beer for you!

Cheers - Royal Mate1 06:17, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Bess Myerson

I was wondering if anyone out there has heard about the former Miss America Bess Myerson dying. We've had her dead for the past two days on the say-so of an IP editor. I've just reverted as I can't find anything in Google News, but if I've missed something please accept my apologies and make her dead again. Coretheapple (talk) 21:44, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

And yes, I realize this is probably vandalism. I just think it's pretty amazing that we proclaimed this fairly well-known individual dead for two days. Maybe I'm not jaded enough to be used to this kind of thing.Coretheapple (talk) 02:37, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Nothing on the Internet and since I live in the NYC broadcast market, I probably would have heard or seen something, and have not. So it appears she is still with us. As for it being "amazing" that we had her as being dead for two days, unfortunately it is not amazing, it happens now and then. It usually gets caught faster when the person is still in the public eye, but she has not been for years. Wikipedia depends on vigilant editors to correct things like this, and in this case you were the one. Neutron (talk) 03:09, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

A couple years ago, I found this guy proclaimed dead on the Russian Wikipedia for about 10 days. We even have a category to help catch some of this; see Category:Living people on EN wiki who are dead on other wikis. It wouldn't have helped this one, but I don't know if other versions of Wikipedia have equivalent categories. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:16, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

I wasn't being vigilant at all. A friend of mine posted "RIP Bess Myerson" on a social media site. Source was Wikipedia. People believe us. Maybe they shouldn't. Coretheapple (talk) 04:19, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Another quality contribution by an IP editor. Let's sanction this person... Whoops, there is no sign-in-to-edit protocol, we can't... Carrite (talk) 04:51, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

This is why I think all BLPs should be placed under flagged revisions. We have a good solution to this sort of thing, used with great effect and popularity in other languages, we just choose not to use it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:58, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Or semiprotected. Here's a person who would get a page one New York Times obit, and yet we're declaring her dead and it might have stayed that way for a while. The underlying problem is that well-known people of past years, and people and subjects of importance but without much of a following, don't always get a lot of attention on Wikipedia. I'm having the same problem in an article on another notable of past years, a major star of the 1960s, not vandalism but rampant OR and general inattention. Coretheapple (talk) 14:40, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Ha! Turns out it wasn't vandalism, it was a scoop![87] Still, it was a BLP, and we needed a source. In fact, I see that her date of death was Dec. 14, and the IP said Jan. 2. Coretheapple (talk) 17:57, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Jimmy, in all honesty the majority of BLPs never cause an issue and we already have edit filters, the BLP PROD, a number of admin enforcements etc etc to deal with BLP problems. Quite possibly, what is needed more is awareness of WP:RS and WP:BLP. Is there any way that when a BLP is edited, the notification that comes up can be more visible? That may help--5 albert square (talk) 22:52, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

All those tools don't stack up to a hill of beans if nobody notices the edit. That was the problem here (or would have been if it was vandalism and not, as it turned out, some insider inaccurately sharing his or her knowledge of Ms. Myerson's death). All it takes is one or two major whoppers, as in the Seigenthaler affair, and Wikipedia's reputation is tarnished. I think this is an existential issue for the Foundation, very much like paid editing if not more so. Coretheapple (talk) 23:22, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

What an irresponsible position, 5 albert square. Jimmy, if you actually care, start an RfC. Do something. You know, act. But do you actually care? Your BLP is fine; any unsourced negative content in it will be reversed in seconds. [88] (So, people who don't even know they have a Wikipedia article should be checking it regularly? That's telling him, Jimmy. Heh. You're really funny, sometimes.) Why don't you stand up to people like 5 albert square? Start a serious row about this and - most importantly - actually see it through? Discuss it when you're at a podium, or on a platform like the BBC. Encourage the wider readership to come and join in the debate. While you mouth platitudes and tacitly defend the status quo, you're cementing the problem.

But you won't do anything, will you? You never do. You'll just whine a bit here on your talk page. I wish there were some way of ridding this project (and the WMF) of you. You're an embarrassment, a net negative. You are crushing this project with your inappropriate alliances, your contempt for scholars, your platitudes and your ineffectiveness. Watch and learn about your hero, Coretheapple. This project needs strong moral leadership. He's sitting on the only leadership position and shrugging, "Duh, gee. What can I do?" --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 00:26, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Stand up to me? I made a suggestion for change--5 albert square (talk) 00:47, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

That's right, we're just chatting here with my "hero" (groan). Anthony, as I understand the decision-making process here, Jimbo has basically stopped running the place and let the "community" run it. However, I agree that he could push things more forcefully than apparently he has. I've actually gotten disillusioned over paid editing on that very point. Coretheapple (talk) 00:53, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Anthonyhcole and even Coretheapple overstate the case, but every time I look at this page I see more evidence that the basic governance system of WMF projects is flawed. Very straightforward, simple, adjustments of key issues - supported by 90% of the editorship - are almost impossible to make. The central problem IMHO is the consensus system for issues that need a large amount of input. An RfC for 3,000 editors simply does not work - we all just yell at each other. A concerted minority of 10% can high-jack the "discussion" and prevent almost any change. Any rule can be ignored - even our foundational principles. Any current rule can be twisted, so that Wikipedia now appears to stand for the opposite of what it used to stand for.

We need to begin the discussion on reform of the basic governance system. You, Jimbo Wales, could take a leading role in that. You could certainly ask the Board to begin the long process. I don't know what the reform will ultimately look like, but we need a governance system that will allow - even encourage - change in Wikipedia. We need a system that will be immune to the bullying by small minorities.

So, how about it Jimbo - are you in for fundamental change?

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:34, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't think the Board's about to start suggesting to projects that they implement pending changes/flagged revisions/whatever you want to call it, because it's not had nearly the positive effect that some like to think it has had. German Wikipedia's current average time for reviewing all pending changes on a page is 8 days, 16 hours; on Russian Wikipedia, it is 365 days 6 hours. (They're the two largest Wikipedias that have implemented widespread PC/FR usage. Data taken from their PC statistics page within the past hour.) Activity is entirely dependent on current editors taking up more work. Jimbo already knows that the real and far more effective change would be to raise notability standards so that many of the marginal BLPs simply don't exist so don't need to be patrolled. Now, I'd still count Bess Myerson as being probably notable enough for an article; however, we all know that we have tens of thousands of articles about people whose notability is so marginal that the people most likely to watch it are the SEOs paid to have created them in the first place. Yes, there's also that pleasant side effect of raising the notability standards: it would be much, much more difficult for paid editors to get their articles under the radar. Risker (talk) 03:04, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Risker, regarding, "I don't think the Board's about to start suggesting to projects that they implement pending changes/flagged revisions/whatever you want to call it..." Then the board (or the foundation) needs changing to one that would do all it readily can to protect our readers from false content - especially with regard to human health and reputation. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:21, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I have no problem with raising notability standards, especially for BLPs and corps/businesses. There was a recent case of an AfD on an article on a publishing company that expects to publish it's first books this spring. After 10 days the result came back "userfy" not outright delete. Then there was an end-run - a new article on the owner of the company. That AfD eventually came back "userfy" as well. If we can't outright delete an article on a publishing company that has never published anything, we've got real problems. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:28, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Risker, am I right in thinking German WP (and Russian?) have "pending changes" on all articles? I think I've heard that somewhere. Most proposals I've read here are for pending changes only on BLPs. If so, the policing burden wouldn't be as onerous.

As well as raising notability standards, another help would be a button at the top of all BLPs saying we can email you when the article changes - that would take a lot of the worry out of it for our subjects. (I know this can be done through Preferences/User profile, but no readers know about it and the WMF could make that complicated process simple - just click, add email, save.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:20, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, Anthonyhcole, they do have it on all articles. However, given the fact that a good 30% of our articles, if not more, have BLP content in them, even if they aren't specifically BLPs, we'd wind up in the same boat. Right now we have 2000 pages on PC, and there are times when I see pages waiting a couple of days to be resolved (which is really absurd, given that tiny number). They also have automated processes for granting reviewer status after a certain number of edits (and admins can't withdraw it, I understand, without a big community discussion almost equivalent to a desysop), so almost anyone who's been around for more than a month or two is automatically a reviewer; we don't have any of those processes in place, and only about 15% of our regular editors have reviewer permission, 20% if you count admins. As to the email thing, most editors I know don't even turn on that preference because their inbox would be inundated (I had it on for 3 hours and had over 100 emails); nonetheless, it requires making an account and setting preferences. There is no method for "saving" an email address absent an account. Not only that, but if they get that dreaded email...what do they do next? The normal instinct is to go and "fix" the article, something that will get them outed, blocked and ridiculed. Risker (talk) 06:33, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes. The current system involves creating an account and adding the article to your watchlist, going to preferences/user profile, and ticking "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed." Then, all items on your watchlist will trigger an email when they're edited. Clearly inappropriate for someone with more than a few articles on their watchlist. That is why I say the WMF should create a new thing - a button at the top of articles to click, add email address, save.

What the BLP subject chooses to do when they're emailed about a change is up to them. Have I got this clear? You are saying this feature would be a bad thing because the subject would then email info@wikipedia.org or ask for correction on the talk page or make a correction themselves - all of which are within their rights (and, incidentally, permitted by our policy).

If adding pending changes to our BLPs results in big delays in reviewing pending changes, then we just keep raising our notability standard until the number of BLPs the WMF hosts is small enough for the volunteers to cope with in a timely fashion. Ultimately, though they whistle and look the other way, the WMF - including, especially, Jimmy Wales - is responsible for the shit that gets said about people here. They just won't do what's needed to treat our subjects with the minimal degree of respect. They. Don't. Care. The platitudes they spout are PR. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:08, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Risker, I've just been advised that there is a key difference between the pending changes implementations on the Russian and German Wikipedias: in the Russian Wikipedia, changes are shown to all readers immediately. Approving them only means they become part of an "approved" article version. In the German Wikipedia, the default is that readers do not see the changes at all until they are approved: the changes are only visible to logged-in readers viewing the draft version of the article. This explains why approving changes takes so much longer in the Russian Wikipedia; since it doesn't change the default appearance of the article, it's seen as a lesser priority by editors.

And regarding the average time it takes to approve a change in the German Wikipedia: the average waiting time is 14 h 51 min, with a median of 1 h 32 min. The 8 d 9 h refers to pages with unreviewed changes only (there are about 8,000 of those, less than 0.5% of the total number of articles) and measures how old the oldest unreviewed change is on these pages, on average. [89] --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:16, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

User:Anthonyhcole is right. – I would like to add that I do not think it would be wise to do away with flagged revisions altogether or to use them only with a subset of articles because this would do harm to the quality of content, as we can see on English Wikipedia as compared to German Wikipedia, generally speaking. We do not have enough editors any more on either language version who are willing to engage in QA tasks such as proofreading and correcting new contributions. What's more, although we have learned that the Wikimedia Foundation including Jimbo does not support self-government of communities any more since the introduction of superprotect. So any more move would further disencourage the most active editors contributing. – BTW, if you have not yet signed the Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer I recommend you do. Signatures are still coming in and counting. We are now at 948 supporters. Thanks.--Aschmidt (talk) 11:47, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Comparing both language Wikipedias, Aschmidt, would you say de.Wikipedia's flagged revisions protects our BLP subjects better than the free-for-all that prevails on en.Wikipedia? Also, Would you say the BLP notability criteria are about the same on both encyclopedias? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:57, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

First, flagged revisions have contributed a lot to the German Wikipedia being respected by the general public. I've been a public speaker on Wikipedia since 2010. When it comes to explaining in a talk how QA works, most people attending my classes have shown relief when being told that all changes by a new contributor will be checked by an experienced Wikipedian before they will be accessible to an ordinary reader be default. This applies to all subjects, not only BLPs. And then, of course it is easier to revert vandalism with flagged revisions, particularly with less and less ediors engaging in QS. I think the criteria for notability for BLPs are more or less the same for en and de.--Aschmidt (talk) 13:00, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

As the person who had the fortune to be one of the closers of the discussion which switched PC on, and then took on the subsequent round of RfCs on my own, I remember this being floated around then too. There was a lot of concern about mass-applying it to any category of articles for mostly the same reasons elucidated above, and in this case there are a huge number of articles about living people. The impact of having or not having essentially all of them (obviously some really high-profile ones are staying at semiprotection) requiring reviewers to approve or reject a large proportion of edits is something people will have to carefully thresh out. And after all of that, I still have yet to care about whether this feature is used in any form. Oh, and as a final note, with major PC proposals you guys (the community at large, not anyone specifically in this discussion) have a way of leaving closers badly shell-shocked from the experience; the angst isn't too bad, and questioning of the decisions was never a big deal, but the massive walls of text people generate are extremely difficult to manage. If you go that way on this, might I suggest taking it down about 15 notches from the previous discussions? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:44, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

When Roger LaVern of The Tornados died in June 2013, an IP editor added it in good faith [90] and it took three days for the media to confirm it. Sometimes this can happen, but the possibility of vandal edits means that a reliable source is always needed.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:35, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

We have even subtler issues such as the death of Stuart Scott. His desire was that the type of cancer that killed him or that he had not be revealed and indeed, no press release says anything other than "cancer." It's ambiguous at best since the first diagnoses came after his appendectomy. Nevertheless, there are many that wish to attribute the death to appendix cancer. Regardless of its truth, the overriding factor for me is a) no source attributes his death to that particular type of cancer and b) his desire not to release that information. It's not just the BLP article but it extends to other articles that latch on to it like Appendix cancer. It's gone so far as the media asking his doctor, who declines to discuss followed up with a non-treating doctor expert on appendix cancer. We normally only apply WP:SYNTH to WP articles but it's clear we also have to be careful with sources as well. --DHeyward (talk) 16:34, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Reply to Smallbones

Smallbones writes that the basic governance of WMF projects is flawed. I partly agree. The consensus model for policy changes in the English Wikipedia has become a roadblock to reform, because consensus is so broadly defined and so difficult to achieve that it won't happen, that any reform of English Wikipedia governance will come only from the WMF. Some editors have in the recent past proposed an on-line "constitutional convention" in which decisions can be made, consistent with WMF guidance, by simple majority.

However, more specifically, what is Smallbones saying needs to be changed? In the particular article in point, I don't see a real problem. Myerson was and is dead. Her death hadn't been confirmed, and is now reliably sourced. I don't see the need to lock down all BLPs on pending changes protection, for instance. BLP policy did work. Do we need better enforcement of BLP discretionary sanctions? Probably. However, what is Smallbones saying needs to be changed? What should Jimbo or the WMF be doing? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:58, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Fair question (in the 2nd paragraph). I need to shovel some snow, so my answer will be a bit incomplete.

I agree that the Bess Myerson situation was not a disaster. The fact that we can't implement or enforce WP:BLP is more problematic, and we need to improve there, but that doesn't, in itself require immediate Board action.

There was something that Anthonyhcole wrote that struck a nerve however: "Jimmy, if you actually care, start an RfC. Do something. You know, act. But do you actually care?" Please allow me some space to explain my reaction fully.

Governance on en Wikipedia, Commons, and presumably several other WMF projects is broken. We need to do something about it.

We should first recognize that for over a dozen years the governance system has worked. Sometimes spectacularly well. It is responsible for the success of Wikipedia, and that success has been spectacular.

As I understand it, Jimmy Wales and a few others set up this system based upon deeply held beliefs and then set the community free to run the projects on our own. The standard characterization at the time was something like: "Wikipedia is an idea that couldn't possible work in theory, it only works it practice." (but now it doesn't work either in theory or practice!)

Jimmy walked away from control - he is not a tyrant who can solve everything, he is not a benevolent dictator, he's not even the Queen of England. Anything he says or agrees to is likely to get him into hot water with somebody, especially if it is vaguely stated or incomplete - like any proposal for governance reform will be. But he is a very influential person around here, he is on the Board, he is an inspiration to many of us here. In my opinion he is now the "indispensable person" if we are to reform the governance system.

anthonyhcole's comment seemed to say that Jimmy's modest proposal for using Flagged Revisions for BLPs was a copout. Nothing is going to happen on that line and Jimmy knows it. Why not take the bull by the horns and actually *do something*?!!!

All I am proposing is that we start a process that *will* result in a workable governance system.

How about it, Jimmy? What do you think?

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:34, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

(note the edit conflict with Coretheapple immediately below.) Smallbones_(smalltalk)

I think that Smallbones is making a general statement about paralysis in Wikipedia's governance, and he has a point. It's impossible to get a "consensus" on any meaningful change. That's pretty indisputable although, as you say, one can make a case that the status quo is OK. I would suggest that it isn't, and that the Myerson case is a good example. She is and was a prominent person, as evidenced by the fact that she got a page-one obit in the Times today and her article yesterday received almost 18,000 views, and I'm sure there will be at least as many today. Yet she does not have a dedicated bunch of Wikipedia watchers, as evidenced by the fact that one IP was able to state that this person died, without any sourcing, total OR, and it stayed that way for two days. It could have been a lot longer; I'm told there are other examples of that being the case. We have the Seigenthaler incident to consider. As Jimbo pointed out, one can simply implement flagged revisions for BLPs but that has not been done, and as Smallbones correctly observes, nothing like that can be done as things are now. Coretheapple (talk) 18:12, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Smallbones, Coretheapple, exactly what are you saying doesn't work in practice? Also, what are you proposing is a process that will result in a workable governance system? The one proposal that I have seen that makes sense is an on-line constitutional convention, but there is no guarantee that will result in an improved governance system? What in particular are you (Smallbones or Coretheapple) saying is broken that can be fixed somehow? (I am not saying that nothing is broken. I am asking what in particular either of you say is broken.) What should Jimbo or WMF do? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:56, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

RMc has lots of questions above and is asking for lots of specifics. I'll concentrate just on the specifics on how to start the process, recognizing that other specifics may work there as well. As far as specifics on what the biggest specific problems are ... please just read the archives of this page. Folks come here all the time saying something like "this problem is crucial to the future of Wikipedia and nothing can be done." And then nothing gets done. Maybe I'll list of few of these topics at the end - the ones that particularly interest me, but I'll suggest RMc (or anybody else) can come up with a list of a dozen issues pretty quickly. I don't want, however, for my list of specifics to be taken as some sort of "ultimate goal". I just want to say that our governance system is broken and somehow we need to start the process of fixing it.

How the WMF can get the process of governance reform started

1st - admit that there is a problem - big issues can't be solved. Major controversies that require surgery, are treated with band-aids.

2nd- the WMF should issue a statement saying that they have begun the process of governance reform. They will be consulting with academics, legal advisors, trusted editors, readers, the open information community, and other stakeholders to come up with proposals on how to best organize a governance system for the community.

3rd - various proposals that the Board believes will work are vetted by the editing community (but not necessarily approved via an RfC - if that system was expected to work, we wouldn't need governance reform!)

4th - the Board - on its own authority - writes the new "constitution" or governance system, with approval taking place over a 1 month period, on meta, essentially as a yes/no vote, open to any editor or reader.

As far as what specifics I think are wrong with Wikipedia now/the current governance system, just a quick list:

RfC, RfA, RfD, ANI, ArbCom, notability requirements, enforcement of rules against personal attacks and incivility, inconsistent enforcement of all rules, the size and opacity of our rules, treatment of women editors, treatment of newbies and BLPs, paid editing (still!) and advertising in articles, development of new technologies. I'm sure everybody has their own list to add.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:26, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

(replying to Robert) Right now I'm preoccupied with preventing Bess Myerson from being dismembered by a singularly difficult editor, which raises one of a number of issues I've seen discussed in the past year or so but never acted on. I.e., how to handle bad editors. Should the RfC/U process be simplified/fixed? That's just one of the perennial issues that can be dealt with. But what Jimbo mentioned above was one that in fact had been already dealt with quite a while ago, flagged revisions for BLPs. Robert, why not ask Jimbo why he feels it is a good idea? He apparently doesn't have the power to enact it on his own. That's a good start. Coretheapple (talk) 21:54, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I will comment more in a little while, but Coretheapple mentions dealing with bad editors and asks whether the RFC/U process should be simplified or fixed. RFC/U was deactivated last month. It was the opinion of several editors, including myself, that RFC/U was fundamentally broken and did not need to be fixed or replaced. RFC/U, with its rigid certification requirements, was cumbersome, and then, when it was properly put into effect, almost always resulted in as much disruption as it solved. Its original purpose had, as far as I can tell, been as input to User:Jimbo Wales to request that he use his power to ban users, before the ArbCom was established for that purpose. Now that Jimbo no longer uses his power to ban editors, they can be banned either by "the community" or by the ArbCom. "The community" is able to ban editors who are trolls, flamers, vandals, or incompetent. It cannot effectively deal with editors who are polarizing. Only the ArbCom can deal with them, and RFC/U has not been a step toward the ArbCom for a very long time. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:15, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

It's a shame that no solution to that has been found, because disruptive, inept and sometimes even mentally ill editors are one of the main problems that I've seen and, on rare occasions, experienced that can be an obstacle toward improving content. The drama boards aren't set up to deal with such people any more than the police are set up to deal with the homeless. Coretheapple (talk) 23:24, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

@Smallbones. I don't think there is a need for WMF leading some charge for community governance reform so much as I think there is a need for the community to lead the charge for WMF operational reform. Carrite (talk) 00:47, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

But the community can't seem to agree on anything. Also I think you have things backwards. The WMF is the owner of Wikipedia, not the other way around. But even if the WMF would consent to the "community" trying to "reform" it, what would that mean? Coretheapple (talk) 00:56, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

The encyclopedia is paramount. WMF runs the servers, defends the logo, and maintains the software (among other things), the various autonomous, independent language communities of volunteers write the thing. At a certain point this became a multi-million dollar enterprise and priorities and behavior has been skewed by this reality. This destructive situation needs to be fixed far more than any long-running inefficiencies of Wikipedia's hokey-pokey decision-making process. Carrite (talk) 03:20, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

It's not either/or, Carrite. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:15, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

This looks like a pure smokescreen to me. The community can't make even basic obviously needed changes, and your solution seems to be to starve the WMF of money (and the ability to make technological changes) by stopping them from asking you once a year (for about 10 seconds) for a small donation.

There is a certain inevitability of the result here. You won't get a consensus to implement your impractical, nonsense program.

The WMF and the Wikipedia community together will find a way, sooner or later, to find a decision making process that will work again. Why not start the process now? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:51, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Carrite I'm having trouble understanding the "destructive" aspect of your argument. My head is about to explode in Bess Myerson (the reason we have gathered together here, let us not forget), so I am having trouble focusing on your argument. But even if I could, I'd think it was a bit excessive. Coretheapple (talk) 04:22, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Re:The WMF is the owner of Wikipedia by Coretheapple. Well, the WMF is the owner of the Wikipedia trademark, the servers this website runs on, and the domain name. They're certainly not the owner of the content. Let me ask you, would you consider the domain name, servers and trademark without the content the more essential part of Wikipedia, or the content on a different name, different domain and different servers? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 13:45, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

They're the owners of a lot of money, too. They own Wikipedia, but not the encyclopedia. We're the encyclopedia. We could move tomorrow to another supplier who provides a better service. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:56, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

(ec) I was about to say that yes, they own Wikipedia and can do with it as they please. Anthonycole is correct that volunteers are free to go elsewhere too. Coretheapple (talk) 14:58, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Martijn and Anthony: "We're the encyclopedia", we presumably meaning "The Community of all editors", is a pretty useless statement in this context. There are no legitimate spokespeople or representatives of "The Community", except those appointed by, or with the approval of, the WMF. "The Community" has no legal form or definition and no ownership rights. Anything that can be effectively owned that is commonly identified as "part of Wikipedia" is owned by the WMF. Any self-appointed spokesperson for "The Community" has no legal authority whatso ever, and less moral authority than official WMF spokespeople.

Wikipedia content is owned by the individual editor who originally wrote those individual words, but that is meaningless in most contexts. Even if you can identify who 1st wrote the individual words, the practical effect of that ownership is so small as to be nonexistent.

(Aside) Yesterday I was checking out hotels for an upcoming trip. One had information on its website on the area, so I checked it out. It was obvious that the material came from Wikipedia and *I wrote it.* My theoretical ownership of the material, however, has no practical effect. Sure, I could sue the hotel and get nothing in return. The WMF could put $10,000s into suing the hotel and get an acknowledgement or an apology, and $3.57. I hope nobody would like the WMF to do that.

Carrite presents the view that the "WMF runs the servers, defends the logo, and maintains the software (among other things), the various autonomous, independent language communities of volunteers write the thing," implying that "The Community", or its self-appointed spokespeople, have the moral control over everything else. That's quite a self-serving statement, it doesn't have any sort of historic agreement or statement backing it up that I know of, and, most importantly, it's a very static view of Wikipedia. It says "We, The Community" own everything, control everything and we're not going to let "you" the WMF change anything or do anything, unless our self-appointed spokesmen say you can. Pure bushwa as far as I can tell.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:31, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Smallbones, I never said, not intended to imply that "We're the encyclopedia" or "The Community of all editors" is the encyclopedia. I meant to say that the encyclopedia doesn't have a clearly defined owner. The community of all editors fails the clearly defined part, and the WMF fails the owner part for that part of Wikipedia that matters, and neither are a useful construct to use in any argument as the owner of Wikipedia. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:40, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Sorry if I've grouped several comments together and tried to answer too many at one time. Yes, much of the encyclopedia doesn't have a clearly defined owner - or from a positive viewpoint let's say that the entire world owns much of what we do. The only situations where it makes sense to speak of "an owner", that owner - who has the right to decide on things like control of the servers, basic rules, spending money contributed "to Wikipedia", then - in that limited sense - the owner is the WMF. Folks who claim that some vaguely defined "The Community", that they are the spokesman for, controls Wikipedia's strategy, $, ... and everything else, occasionally raise my hackles. For the possibility of "the Grand Fork", see below. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:00, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm saying if someone else put up $4,000,000 a year to host the servers but with significantly more attractive software and governance, we all would just switch across. We probably wouldn't even vote on it. Lila discussed this in her excellent talk at Wikimania (starts at 5m20s). --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:44, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not against such a Grand Fork (as long as it's not located in North Dakota), that may even be the way this all works out. It might even turn out that the WMF sets up its own GF - one with reasonable governance, one with the current non-system where editors can't overcome the weight of all the no-changes nay-sayers. If somebody else promised $4 million a year, I'd wonder why, what's in it for them, but I can imagine a Buffett, Gates, Google, Soros, doing that for the right reasons. Heck, if somebody promised a one time $10 million, it would probably be worth a go. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:00, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

If we all moved to a better service provider, Google would switch to the new brand, as would our readers. After that, I would expect Jimmy's foundation to hand the money across to the new foundation and wish them well. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:49, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Question for Jimbo Wales

Coretheapple has suggested that I ask you why you think that flagged revisions / pending change protection is a good idea for BLPs. I will ask whether the WMF should have a role in implementing it if it is a good idea. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:17, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I'll write something up about this later today if I get time!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:41, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Bear in mind that implementing flagged revisions "from above" is apt to be a debacle if done without community support. It's real easy NOT to click OK and that might rapidly become a gridlocked mess. Speaking for myself, I'm not going to approve a single thing here on out over liability concerns. You click YES and there is something defamatory hidden in a long piece and you are a party to it... Screw that, this gig doesn't pay for the house that I might lose... Carrite (talk) 00:42, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't see that as a real risk, or if it is, it is no different from the risk you face when you make an edit and hit save. Indeed, it seems clear that approving a particular edit is *less* risky since it is so clearly not an endorsement of the rest of the page but just of that one edit. And the nature of the endorsement can be specified in a minimal way.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:41, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Carrite raises a serious question. Would you please ask the WMF to provide the community with the opinions of several independent legal experts on this point? Will the WMF cover the legal costs of a good faith editor who approves a libellous edit and gets sued? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:06, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

As the victim of a specious subpoena in a case involving an article I didn't even touch, trust me when I say this is a very real danger. Litigious individuals can choose to sue whomever they wish; whereas I can say (and prove) that I never touched or edited a piece under the current system, clicking APPROVE very clearly can be cast as being part of a "conspiracy" or coordinated effort to "libel." My position on this is absolutely not a joke or an off the wall comment, it is a serious and fundamental defect of the flagged revisions / pending changes process. Carrite (talk) 15:27, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Vexatious or stupid litigation occurs in all fields of life. I don't think we should modify our behaviour here to accommodate that kind of threat. I'm sure Jimmy's foundation will compensate any affected reviewers. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:32, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

That's absolutely correct. However, I understand Carrite's concern and I would not necessarily assume that the Foundation automatically would pay the legal fees in the event a user is sued, however much without merit. Coretheapple (talk) 17:30, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I think the legal risk to editors is being way overblown. It's arguable that a Wikipedia bio implies a public figure which, in the U.S. would require malice (and if they aren't a public figure, they shouldn't have a bio). Secondly, finding the actual editor would most likely require WMF to identify the editor and I presume the WMF would not provide that without a court order and I doubt that a plaintiff would remove WMF from a lawsuit. Thirdly, the argument that an editor is responsible for the whole article, rather than their own edit, is rather specious. If "USA today" prints a defamatory article and I clip coupons and leave it on the Starbucks table, I do not become liable because "my" paper had a libelous story. Lastly is the big gaping hole: WMF knowingly allows unidentifiable editors to add content. WMF is aware this exists and the diligence is that they will correct or remove false information when it comes to their attention. No amount of boilerplate "editors are responsible for content" will remove a foreseeable negligence by not requiring accountability when malicious, anonymous editing occurs. If the diligence for anonymous editors is simple correction and that is sufficient, it would be difficult to argue that the same diligence for registered editors (correction on notification) is inferior. To me, the biggest issue is not straight out malicious libel, it's false light libel. Joe Scarborough article, for example, has a paragraph that is both undue and false light yet exists because political opponents that edit want to keep it going because it's notable to them. WP runs similar risks with articles on Bill Cosby and how much space to dedicate to certain aspects. Those are public figures which raises the bar. The truly sad cases are articles like Monica Lewinsky or George Zimmerman others that seem to be worthwhile bio's but everything notable ends long before their lives end. When does their "public figure" status end and is it ethical to have these articles and footnotes of minutae that forever taint their name? Bess Myerson is a great example of the "divide" where impropriety often had the ability to fade over time and allow normal life to resume. Myerson's death didn't seem to get widespread coverage until WP covered it from an anon IP. Is it ethical to keep alive the scandal long after the publics memory has forgotten. Lewinsky is in her forties but will forever be an "intern." Is that moral? Is there redemption from a bio that arises from an infamous event? If asked, would subjects like Zimmerman or Lewinsky want a wikipedia biography that ends at their last, negative newsworthy event? --DHeyward (talk) 09:46, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Even as I look at the coverage some is still appalling. For example, we immortalize the Lewinsky scandal. Would we name it that today? Should we rename it today? --DHeyward (talk) 09:57, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Monica Lewinsky's biography continues on to last year. It may well cover her life until its last days. The world may have been a better place if she never became famous (or at least, not for the reason she did), but we can't fix it by hagiography (or by pretending that Wikipedia is the world's sole source of information, such that we can add or subtract fame from someone like George Zimmerman or Monica Lewinsky) Wily D 10:48, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

You are correct but the question is "Why?" Our bio follows her to London. It tracks any bit of news that is mundane for anyone else. The latest bits are ironically about cyber-bullying and how it has become impossible for her to escape. Wikipedia would not be less informative if her biography were completely removed and only the event left. It would be barely less informative if her name was removed and just replaced with "intern." There's the saying about people getting their 15 minutes of fame and then they move on with their lives in anonymity. We've turned it into condensing a persons life into that 15 minutes forever - a life sentence. There's a point where we need a step back to ask if we are contributing to the good or the bad "sum of all human knowledge." There's a point where we need to ask whether these biographies need to exist at all or has time eclipsed their usefulness. If the NSA were building a wiki with the sum of all the knowledge they collect and published to the world, would we applaud it or deride it? Normally our reaction is that the NSA data should never have been collected and shaming them with exposure to stop collecting it because intrinsically we feel a need for privacy. We should do the same and simply ask what value is there to maintaining these biographies or tidbits long after the public spotlight has moved on. It's rather ironic to read in our own Lewinsky bio page that During her decade out of the public eye, Lewinsky lived in London, Los Angeles, New York, and Portland, but due to her notoriety had trouble finding employment in the communications and marketing jobs for nonprofit organizations that she interviewed at. By 2014, she had still not held a full-time job since leaving the Pentagon in 1997. A stable relationship leading to marriage, which she reportedly desired, had also not happened. Take a step back and ask whether we are part of the problem. We have wiki-NSA-gnomes all over the world and in small towns and large cities. I have no doubt they believe they are expanding the encyclopedia by carefully sourcing every small detail. But are they? --DHeyward (talk) 12:33, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Just to go back to one point you raised above, I'm not a lawyer but it's my understanding that in the U.S., subpoenas are issued rather easily by lawyers, do not require court orders ordinarily. They can be fought in court, of course, but the burden is on the recipient to initiate legal action. The question is whether the WMF has a policy of fighting or complying with such subpoenas. Coretheapple (talk) 15:30, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

I believe since it's civil court, it would be after a lawsuit is filed and would be a Subpoena duces tecum which needs a court to be behind the subpoena but the court doesn't need to authorize it. Yes, it's not hard to get those once a case has been filed. It's also not free and would have to have a lawsuit attached with it, not just random discovery requests. They could make an example out of someone (or try) but the cost hurdle coupled with the possibility of never identifying a culpable person to name and WMF, without malice, corrects any errors requested by the public figure, and the chances of prevailing go way down. It's likely very low even if they identify the editor. My point wasn't that their couldn't be a lawsuit but rather, WMF would most likely be a named party to it as they have money and designated agent for service and a plaintiff would be really unlikely to pursue someone without knowing in advance if they have the means to pay. Moral victories are expensive. The thing that would be interesting to me would be to see how the boilerplate "WMF is not responsible for content" stands up to "Yes, we know we have anonymous editors making libelous statements and we have the means to stop it but we don't use them." Like the Apple photo theft, there is an individual out there that did it, but plaintiffs are much more likely to go after Apple even if Apple had a boilerplate "Security is not guaranteed." --DHeyward (talk) 21:05, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

It's sometimes a noble sentiment to ask "Wouldn't it be great if people could walk away from their past, and start anew?" - though when two of the four examples quoted are George Zimmerman and Bill Cosby, you've chosen really shitty examples. Quite frankly, if I ever had to be around either, I certainly would want to know what they've done, for my own safety, and the people who actually are around them do deserve to know, for their own safety. The era when you could escape your past by moving to the next state over was great, no doubt, for unfairly maligned, but the fairly maligned are not the same story. Lewinsky is a better example, though it's patently silly to suggest that expunging her name from Wikipedia (or the entire internet) would reduce her notoriety one iota. That she spent years afterwards being a celebrity in various contexts isn't helpful to the question, either. The best we can hope to do by her, as far as I can see, is tell a balanced story - so that Time Magazine's slideshow of the "Top 10 Mistresses" isn't the first ghit when you google her. There may be better examples - though of course, any that come to mind can't work, since we can't bring attention to a name already burned into our minds as deeply as Lewinsky's. Wily D 09:21, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Your comment in WP:Lunatic charlatans

According to WP:Lunatic charlatans and some media reports, you allegedly accused a group of holistic healers of being "lunatic charlatans" [91]. Could you confirm or deny this statement linked to your name? -A1candidate (talk) 18:08, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

You haven't fully understood what this was all about. Jimbo's statement was in response to a petition to allow lunatic charlatans (homeopaths, acupuncturists, etc,) to write what they wanted to on the Fringe pages. Jimbo's response was naturally something like "Don't be daft" (That isn't a quote, but a milder version of what he said.) -Roxy the dog™ (resonate) 18:14, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

The comment violated numerous fundamental policies of Wikipedia including WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA, WP:AGF, etc. -A1candidate (talk) 18:24, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

The comment was not made on Wikipedia. What's your issue? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:29, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Then it's off-wiki harassment and still violates our core principles of behavior. -A1candidate (talk) 18:33, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I can't even see where the page WP:Lunatic charlatans, or the statement by Jimbo, violates any of those policies. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 18:35, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I would say you're grasping at straws but even the straws don't exist. There was no attack on editors, generally or specifically. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:38, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Jimbo defending core Wikipedia principles against professional promoters of quackery violates precisely nothing. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:39, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Regardless of who it was directed against, it's not the type of behavior we would expect from WMF staff. This statement violates the code of conduct policy of the WMF. -A1candidate (talk) 18:52, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Bollocks. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:54, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

It is the sort of behaviour that happens every day of every year in homes, offices, workplaces, educational establishments, pubs, cafes, on trains and charabancs all over the world. Its called banter, and for it to be twisted into incivility is typical of those who don't like the science pointed out to them. Well done Jimbo, more please. -Roxy the dog™ (resonate) 18:59, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm off for a pint ... in Eric Corbetts pub. -Roxy the dog™ (resonate) 19:00, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Lunatic charlatans and their fan-boys and fan-girls are to be actively worked against, they will otherwise destroy the WP. There is nothing defensible in the propaganda of lunatic quacks. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 19:02, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I guess the WMF should give up its crusade against undisclosed paid and COI editing and not call out PR shills who attempt to subvert Wikipedia articles. Because they're part of the public too, right? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:02, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

The WMF does not do it with incivility and name calling -A1candidate (talk) 19:09, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

WP:SPADE. Anyways, Jimbo clearly made the comments. So now what do you want? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:20, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Let's get the quote back into context - "If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals - that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately. What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". Let's face it, those who try to push non-scientifically proven methods of healing as "medicine" are, indeed, charlatans. Whether they are lunatics is another question, but in many cases of "holistic healing" it is quite clear that the only reason for them wanting to change Wikipedia's coverage of their "cure" is that they make money selling it to the gullible. I'm not one to defend Jimbo usually, but I can't really see the problem here - he's calling it as he sees it. Black Kite (talk) 19:22, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

The assumption Jimbo makes is that all holistic healers are charlatans, and suffer from some degree of lunacy. Those people are trying to improve Wikipedia's coverage of their treatment because the articles do not conform to WP:NPOV -A1candidate (talk) 19:31, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

No. They were trying to 'improve' Wikipedia coverage because it would increase their profits... AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:47, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

There are several things severely wrong with that page, the first two being there is neither a userbox for users who are lunatic charlatans, nor is there one for users who aren't lunatic charlatans but would like to be one some day. I myself am in the last group. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 19:07, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

It also discriminates against non-charlatan lunatics and non-lunatic charlatans. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:14, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm starting a new petition. "Dear Jimbo, please share out that 60 million between Roxy, Martijn, Neil and S G Sanger. NOT AndytheGrump though. Don't like him. Grumpy sod. -Roxy the dog™ (resonate) 19:11, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Mumph... The Grump wanders off, muttering to himself once more... AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:15, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

It was said off wiki, it mentioned no specific Wikipedian user. It is not Wikipedia policy that people never engage in name calling in their regular life outside Wikipedia. Anyone who does not self identify as a lunatic charlatan can just assume he was talking about someone else.

This is yet another attempt to attack the actions of Jimbo without basis no matter what, and in this case those doing so are reaching further than ever before. The fact that this was months ago shows that they are reaching even further. I know it is in fashion to find any reason to criticize Jimbo, but this is really the weakest attempts to do so I have seen in a long while. Chillum 19:19, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

It is not an attempt to attack Jimbo, but to contain the damage done to the encyclopedia by ensuring WP:NPOV is maintained. -A1candidate (talk) 19:31, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

NPOV requires that we do not give undue weight to fringe elements. Just as we don't record the findings of those who lack scientific backing we also don't record that the Earth is 6000 years old because certain religious groups say so. We don't record that the Earth is flat because certain people think that. We use this thing called science to determine what is right and wrong, someone comes up with an idea and shows how it can be experimentally confirmed, then others confirm it through experiment and a new fact is found. If this standard is not acceptable then I suggest another wiki. Chillum 19:47, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

To be fair, this page and Jimbos words are months old, but the recent arbitration case request regarding one specific fringe medicine is just 1 day old. As A1candidate is involved in that request, I would not hesitate to make the assumption of some connection between this paragraph and that one, but may be it's just OR ;) ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 19:33, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I think you have found the crux of the matter. Chillum 19:47, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

As for NPOV, it is maintained by not misrepresenting lunatic charlatanry as science. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:38, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

The error lies in labelling true scientific discourse as "lunatic charlatanry". -A1candidate (talk) 19:58, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

But the comment was not aimed at those doing true scientific discourse. That is sort of the point. I think you are confusing true science with pseudo science(which is not science at all, just a use of the word to borrow credibility where non is due). Chillum 20:56, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I believe science has to be done before you can enter a scientific discourse. Which was kind of Jimmy's point. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:10, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @A1candidate: Reality check, though: the more a viewpoint is odious, ignorant, wrong-headed, or obscure, the more likely its adherents will perceive Wikipedia as their best opportunity to promote it. This is a real problem, and one that needs to be acknowledged in any serious discussion about demarcation on Wikipedia. Wikipedia has always hosted a rotating slew of lunatic charlatans who use this site to promote their pet claims. Moreover, many Wikipedians consistently underestimate the real-life damage which can result from inaccurate or misleading medical content. (Otherwise, we'd treat medical content as least as seriously as we treat BLPs). If this is about acupuncture specifically, then I agree with you that some Wikipedians are too quick to confine it to the "lunatic charlatanry" bin when in fact it is a subject of true scientific discourse. But if this is about lunatic charlatanry in general, then I for one am immensely relieved to see the project's outward-facing leadership take a strong stance against the constant efforts to promote it here. MastCell ^Talk 20:13, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with 90% of what has been said above. Nevertheless, I'm trying to picture MastCell's "a rotating slew of lunatic charlatans who use this site to promote their pet claims." It bogles the mind. Where's a cartoonist when you need one? In any case MastCell gets the award for The best mixed metaphor of the year (so far) :p Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:04, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I was using slew⁴: a large number. MastCell ^Talk 04:14, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@MastCell, this is not just about acupuncture but alternative medicine in general. Take Transcendental Meditation (TM) for example - the American Heart Association (AHA) recommends TM as a possible approach to lowering blood pressure (Class IIb) with an evidence level of B. If you look at the AHA's Classification of Recommendations and Level of Evidence attached to their original statement, you will find that such a recommendation with an evidence level of B corresponds to a treatment that "may/might be reasonable". The Transcendental Meditation article on Wikipedia, however, cites the phrase "unknown/unclear/uncertain or not well-established", which corresponds to a Class IIb recommendation with evidence level of C (!?). This is not the position of AHA, it's the position of Wikipedia and an example of how scientific inquiry is downgraded into "lunatic charlatanry" by Wikipedia. -A1candidate (talk) 20:55, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Page 3 of http://hyper.ahajournals.org/content/early/2013/04/22/HYP.0b013e318293645f.full.pdf does not differentiate it's suggested phrases between evidence levels. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 21:26, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

That page is exactly the same as the one I provided above. -A1candidate (talk) 21:37, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

It still doesn't differentiate it's suggested phrases between evidence levels. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 21:46, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

As others have pointed out, A1candidate's concern is based on his misreading of the AHA paper. Table 1 makes clear that Level IIB evidence is properly described as "usefulness/effectiveness is unknown/unclear/uncertain or not well-established". This is the grade that was given to Transcendental Meditation. Instead of listening to A1candidate, just go look at Table 1 yourself. Go down to the bottom of the table, under "Suggested phrases for writing recommendations". You'll find the phrase that we use in our article. So we're actually using, verbatim, the wording recommended by the AHA here. I'll add that there is little chance that we'll undersell TM on Wikipedia, as a rotating cast of TM-affiliated accounts are highly active in using Wikipedia to promote their product, and we are forbidden under pain of ArbCom to call attention to the obvious conflicts of interest—undisclosed to our readers—which underlie our coverage of the topic. MastCell ^Talk 04:29, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Jimbo's sentiment, but I'm disappointed that he would use a term like "lunatic charlatans". Most holistic healers are neither lunatics nor charlatans. And furthermore, most lunatics are not charlatans, and most charlatans are not lunatics. It might not be as effective rhetorically to use terms that are actually accurate, but for me, at least, it would make me feel better. Looie496 (talk) 20:19, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

He said that lunatic charlatans are not the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". He never said holistic healers are lunatic charlatans. Frankly when it comes to things like faith healing and psychic readings the perpetrator at best innocently believes in what they are doing and are ignorant, and at worse are engaging in fraud or suffering from delusions. Chillum 21:03, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I proudly confirm my statement and I am glad to repeat it here at Wikipedia, so any question about whether I think it is appropriate as policy for Wikipedia is made perfectly clear: if you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals - that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately. What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". That is a core value of Wikipedia and will remain so as long as I have any ability to make it so. The moment we drop the requirement for NPOV, everything will be a disaster.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:47, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales, what I'm trying to say is that scientific discourse is being misinterpreted and intentionally distorted in many alternative medicine articles. For example, the American Heart Association says that "the overall evidence supports that TM modestly lowers BP" [92] while Wikipedia claims that AHA found that TM's effectiveness is "unknown/unclear/uncertain or not well-established", something that AHA does not assert. It's a misrepresentation of scientific consensus and it's happening in many alternative medicine articles. -A1candidate (talk) 22:01, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I do not think that scientific discourse should be misrepresented and intentionally distorted. I invite everyone who has commented in this thread to investigate this specific question and only this specific question now. If there is a legitimate sense in which we are not representing respectable scientific journals correctly, we should correct it. And if A1candidate is misleading me, we should know that as well.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:28, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

the AHA writes the following conclusion about TM (omitting other meditation techniques): "The overall evidence supports that TM modestly lowers BP.[... other meditation techniques omitted] As a result of the paucity of data, we are unable to recommend a specific method of practice when TM is used for the treatment of high BP. However, TM (or meditation techniques in general) does not appear to pose significant health risks. [... other meditation techniques ] The writing group conferred to TM a Class IIB, Level of Evidence B recommendation in regard to BP-lowering efficacy. TM may be considered in clinical practice to lower BP.". The same document suggests the following phrasings for IIB, "may/might be considered", "may/might be reasonable" and "unknown/unclear/uncertain or not well-established", not differentiated between evidence levels. IIB is shown in that table as benefits >= risks and is classified between III (non-effective or harmful) and IIa (benefits >> risks). Our article on TM writes about this statement of the AHA "A 2013 statement from the American Heart Association conferred a Class IIb, Level of Evidence B, classification to TM as a treatment for hypertension.[83] This designation generally means that a treatment "may be considered in clinical practice" but that its effectiveness is "unknown/unclear/uncertain or not well-established".[84] The section on meditation finished by stating: "Because of many negative studies or mixed results and a paucity of available trials... other meditation techniques are not recommended in clinical practice to lower BP at this time."" this is completely in line with what the document said. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 22:43, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Martijn Hoekstra - "May/might be considered" corresponds to evidence level A. "May/might be reasonable" corresponds to evidence level B. "Unknown/unclear/uncertain or not well-established" corresponds to evidence level C. -A1candidate (talk) 22:53, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

At the risk of sounding contrarian, no it doesn't. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 23:00, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Even if it doesn't, the statement makes it very clear that "TM modestly lowers BP". In addition, the lead author of the AHA paper, Robert Brook, explained their recommendations in a separate review paper in PMID 25164965, wherein he makes it clear that "Transcendental Meditation was found to modestly lower BP". The fact that Wikipedians cited Brook's original paper but did not include the central fact that "TM modestly lowers BP" is another example of how scientific consensus is distorted. -A1candidate (talk) 23:11, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

"...is another example of how scientific consensus is distorted." What particular scientific consensus do you claim is being distorted? Moriori (talk) 23:30, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

The scientific consensus, per AHA, is that Transcendental Meditation modestly lowers blood pressure. The distortion pertains to the omission of this fact in our article. -A1candidate (talk) 23:39, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Breathing slowly and being calm is going to lower blood pressure, so any sort of meditation is going to do that regardless of how "transcendental" it is. Chillum 03:05, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Chillum, the AHA found that other meditation techniques they studied did not have the same effect as TM -A1candidate (talk) 12:28, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

An AHA statement alone is not a scientific consensus and can only be if there were other bodies expressing similar opinion. You have a point re omission of possible relevant information. Maybe it would be better to press that point and forget the consensus angle which can never fly because there is no actual consensus. Moriori (talk) 02:06, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

You're right, an AHA statement alone might not be representative of scientific consensus. However, neither is a review. I just looked at the TM article and the last sentence of the lede reads, "it is not possible to say if it has any effect on health as the research to date is of poor quality." While that may be an accurate statement, a review, no matter how good or wide it is, is only representative of a mere portion of "scientific consensus." Reviews might not take the best research into account. Even the best ones can be very flawed. The AHA consensus statement ought to, at least, be in that same sentence to give the reader a wider perspective. Or follow it. And if the research isn't including whatever strong data the AHA used to make their consensus statement, should we really feature that research so prominently on the page anyway? I don't know the answer myself, as it's not an article whose talk-page history I'm all that familiar with. But I can tell you there are many editors who could care less about discussing questions like these on our encyclopedia, preferring instead to make anything and everything in the alt-med universe appear as invalidated as possible, policy be damned, and that's a shame to our readers. LesVegas (talk) 05:58, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Moriori, scientific consensus in this context is used to refer to the consensus of scientists at AHA. When a community of scientists make a collective judgement about an issue, we call that a form of scientific consensus, but that's besides my point. We could simply use Jimbo's language and call it "scientific discourse" if that sounds better to you. As a matter of fact, scientific discourse by an authoritative group of scientists has concluded that Transcendental Meditation lowers blood pressure but Wikipedia omits this fact from its article. So it's a distortion of scientific discourse. -A1candidate (talk) 07:07, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

The thing with the phrase "TM modestly lowers BP" is that it may set expectations that are not necessarily true. AHA found that there is evidence that TM has an effect lowering blood pressure, but only in a very modest amount, and no averse effect was found, which means IIb. How much 'modest' is is very subjective, and not very indicative to the reader. Exactly for that reason, we use the suggested phrasings of IIb of the report. By following the recommended descriptions of the AHA we can be sure not to mis-represent the AHA. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:20, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Martijn Hoekstra - Even if it's modest, it is still important to state it. Our article says that "It is not possible to say if it (TM) has any effect on health". That's not what AHA meant. -A1candidate (talk) 15:08, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

The section (as opposed as this discussion here) doesn't only deal with the AHA report. That statement isn't sourced to the AHA report, and doesn't intend to only reflect what the AHA meant; it's sourced to more recent comparative studies. The part of the section that deals with the AHA report reflects the statement of the AHA in a way the AHA suggests it should be represented. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:26, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Martijn Hoekstra:

That statement isn't sourced to the AHA report. It's sourced to PMID 17764203 and PMID 16437509

The first source fails the criteria of WP:MEDDATE and should be removed.

The second source, a Cochrane review article, does not support what is being written. The study analyzed TM with two other relaxation techniques. The authors found that "There was no differential effect between the 3 treatments in reducing anxiety" and this is being used to make the claim that it's is not possible to say if TM has any effects on health

The only sources that fulfill WP:MEDDATE criteria are the AHA consensus statement and the Cochrane papers. All other sources should be deleted per WP:MEDDATE.

-A1candidate (talk) 17:32, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

I have excellent news. I managed to find the goalposts. If you would kindly put them back past where you say the article says the AHA said something they didn't, which was exactly the point, then turn back and walk to where you claim that our language on the AHA lies by omission which has been refuted,to right around your statement that our article misrepresents the refuted claim that the article uses the advised language for evidence level C rather than B, I'll be on my way again. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 18:29, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Jimmy (in case it's not clear from the above), regarding "...if A1candidate is misleading me, we should know that as well."

A1candidate is misleading you, at least on our use of the American Heart Association's statement on alternative approaches to lowering blood pressure.[93] The AHA statement grades the apparent efficacy of various alternative treatments (I helpful, IIa & IIb modest/neutral, III harmful) and the strength of the evidence for that efficacy (A strong, B moderate, C weak). At the bottom of table 1 (page 3) the statement recommends appropriate language for describing the different treatment effects.

The language recommendations for class IIb (TM is classed as IIb) are:

may/might be considered

may/might be reasonable

usefulness/effectiveness is unknown/unclear/uncertain or not well established.

We say,

A 2013 statement from the American Heart Association conferred a Class IIb, Level of Evidence B, classification to TM as a treatment for hypertension. This designation generally means that a treatment "may be considered in clinical practice" but that its effectiveness is "unknown/unclear/uncertain or not well-established".

A1candidate assumes that, because there are three suggested wordings, and three strength-of-evidence levels (A, B and C), the first suggested language should be used for treatments with strong (A), the second for those with medium (B) and the third for those with weak (C) evidence. The AHA grades the strength of evidence for TM as B, therefore, we should not use "unknown/unclear/uncertain or not well-established" to describe the efficacy of TM on blood pressure.

Since other efficacy columns in that table have only two suggested wordings and yet others have four, it is clear that the list of 3 suggested phrases for describing treatments classed as IIb does not refer respectively to the three grades of evidence strength, and any of the phrases or a combination of them may be used.

It is great to see you taking such a strong stand on this issue. Thank you. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:21, 8 January 2015 (UTC)-A1candidate

Anthonyhcole, I assessed the table of recommendations at AHA's Classification of Recommendations and Level of Evidence and my assumption is based on the fact that the 3 suggested phrases and 3 levels of evidence were presented in columnar form and they therefore corresponded with each other. Even if this turns out to be incorrect, AHA makes it very clear about it's stance on Transcendental Meditation: "The overall evidence supports that TM modestly lowers BP". However, Wikipedia's article on Transcendental Meditation completely omits this health effect. So it's a distortion of scientific consensus. -A1candidate (talk) 13:58, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

The overall evidence supports that TM modestly lowers BP, but that overall evidence is not strong. So we can't know, actually, whether what the overall evidence indicates is the case. The evidence isn't strong enough to say anything other than - very clearly and plainly - its effectiveness is unknown/unclear/uncertain or not well-established. When the evidence for a modest effect on BP is strong, then we can say it is well-established. While the evidence is in its present state, we say modest efficacy is not well-established.

Like Guy here I think you are sincere and well-meaning, but I do believe you're mistaken in your attempt to remove this clear statement of the AHA's view of the evidence. (I think Guy's comment on the fate of scientifically refuted ideas here is worth reading.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:00, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Anthonyhcole, thanks for assuming good faith and not characterizing me as a charlatan. However, I respectfully disagree for the following reasons:

The AHA authors later explained that "most approaches have modest efficacy (not just TM)" ([94])

Even if it's just a modest health effect, it is nevertheless important to say that to our readers per WP:NPOV. We cannot omit reliable information just because Wikipedians assume that it's unimportant

Our article ignores the fact that there's a modest effect and falsely claims that it's "currently not possible to say whether meditation has any effect on health". That's completely different from what AHA concluded.

Based on the reasons I listed above, I stand by my assessment that scientific consensus had been distorted. -A1candidate (talk) 15:24, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Regarding The AHA authors later explained that "most approaches have modest efficacy (not just TM)" [95], that is a letter to an editor, not a peer-reviewed paper, from 2 of the 12 authors of the AHA statement, and their language in the sentence you picked out is sloppy. In the letter they take great pains pointing out the weakness of the evidence for the apparent modest efficacy of TM, and they stand by the B grade they gave that evidence. While the evidence is as it is, it is misleading to say, unequivocally, that TM has modest efficacy while not highlighting the state of the evidence. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:48, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Anthonyhcole:

To be exact, that is a reply to a letter to the editor.
It may be from just 2 of the 12 authors, but one of them is the lead author of the AHA statment
I don't see how quoting the rest of the letter in prose is going to change anything. I simply quoted what was relevant
I am not disputing the fact that TM has modest efficacy
I am not disputing the fact that we should highlight the state of the evidence, although this should be done in an appropriate manner
I am, however, disputing the claim that Wikipedia faithfully summarizes medical literature because Wikipedia asserts that no health effect of TM has been identified.
Robert D. Brook (lead author of the AHA statement) wrote in peer-reviewed paper PMID 25164965: "Transcendental Meditation was found to modestly lower BP (class IIB recommendation, level of evidence B)." Period. All other claims are a violation of AHA's scientific consensus.

-A1candidate (talk) 18:05, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

And there, precisely, is the problem. The AHA statement represents the (hard-won, judging by Brook's letter to the editor cited above) consensus of twelve authors and speaks for four councils of the AHA. The strongest form of words they are prepared to use are (p. 6):

"TM may be considered in clinical practice to lower BP" and
"The overall evidence supports that TM modestly lowers BP"

You are trying to trump this genuine consensus statement with one from two of the authors saying TM "was found to modestly lower BP" - language that did not appear in the consensus statement.

And you are trying to prevent us from saying, "usefulness/effectiveness is unknown/unclear/uncertain or not well established" - the exact language recommended in the AHA statement.

I agree that our coverage of contentious alternative and exotic treatments is often crude and overly dismissive. You are doing your side no favours, though, when you try this kind of puffery. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:38, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Anthonyhcole:

"TM was found to modestly lower BP" is an accurate paraphrase of "The overall evidence supports that TM modestly lowers BP"
If you still disagree that Wikipedia violated AHA's scientific consensus, I would suggest you contact either AHA and/or the lead author of the AHA statement and ask them for clarification. If they say that Wikipedia represents their position accurately, then it does. If not, it does not.
I am not on the "side" of TM, but on the side of AHA's scientific consensus

-A1candidate (talk) 10:15, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Regarding "TM was found to modestly lower BP" is an accurate paraphrase of "The overall evidence supports that TM modestly lowers BP", that the moon is cheese-coloured supports that it is made of cheese. Weak or limited evidence may support a proposition. That doesn't make the proposition true. It is fair and honest to say overall evidence supports a modest effect on BP. It is going beyond that cautious, limited statement when you say the effect was found, as Byrd and Brook do. They're entitled to their opinion. But their opinion doesn't trump the AHA consensus statement. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:44, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Regarding "It is fair and honest to say overall evidence supports a modest effect on BP", our article is not even saying this. Instead, it claims that TM has no health effects whatsoever. And the sources used to support this claim either do not make this claim or fail WP:MEDDATE criteria -A1candidate (talk) 12:20, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

"...our article is not even saying this." Because we use the very language - an exact quote - that the AHA recommends for describing the efficacy of TM. You are groping and grasping for any and all wording that might mislead the reader into thinking the evidence is stronger than it is. I'm reconsidering your likely motives here. And my heart goes out to the poor souls who have been dealing with you and yours on this topic. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:11, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Our article does not even say that overall evidence supports a modest effect on BP. Instead, it claims that TM has no health effects whatsoever. And the sources used to support this claim either do not make this claim or fail WP:MEDDATE criteria. You are simply ignoring the points I brought up. -A1candidate (talk) 02:17, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

"Our article does not even say that overall evidence supports a modest effect on BP." Our article reports the effect size:

...reviews have not found health benefits for TM exceeding those of relaxation and health education.

"[our article] claims that TM has no health effects whatsoever." Our article says, inter alia,

It is currently not possible to say whether meditation has any effect on health, as the research to date has been of poor quality,[10][11] including a high risk for bias due to the connection of researchers to the TM organization and the selection of subjects with a favorable opinion of TM.

You are either a liar or a fool. I won't be responding to any more of your comments. (See: Transcendental Meditation#Health effects.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:11, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Read my comments again because you are simply ignoring the points I brought up. Our article does not even say that overall evidence supports a modest effect on BP. Instead, it claims that TM has no health effects whatsoever. And the sources used to support this claim either do not make this claim or fail WP:MEDDATE criteria. Calling me a fool and a liar isn't going to change the fact that I know more about evidence-based medicine than you ever will. -A1candidate (talk) 09:02, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". So Wikipedia has the final say on deciding who is and who isn't a lunatic charlatan, and thus that their work is by a lunatic charlatan or not? Wikipedia is in the real world, and many people take the information here as fact. It may end up leading to legal trouble for the WMF is someone decides that the labeling of their work as psuedoscience, a vague and catch-all term with severe negative connotations, or as the work of "lunatic charlatans" significantly damages their reputation and business.

I'd just like to close with the following reminder: Wikipedia cannot assert for themselves, even through RfC or otherwise, if a work is psuedoscience or the work of lunatic charlatans. Only in the presence of reliable sources are we to say this, and it must be presented in their voice; ie. "So and so states that the work of xyz is psuedoscience". Not "their work is psuedoscience" or even "their work has been described as psuedoscience" (by whom?). KonveyorBelt 02:48, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

How would you deal with an article like Financial astrology? Ignore it? Delete it? Understand that the scientific consensus is usually one word "pfft!" There are actually books published on the topic, but they are written by lunatics and/or charlatans . You can quote me on it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:54, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Attribute real arguments to real people. The scientific community considers astrology to be a pseudoscience is not ok, and needs referencing and more specific terms than "the scientific community." If xyz, abc, and opq all say it's a psuedoscience, put it, and attribute it to them, not "the scientific community", whatever that is. Even if abc says the scientific community thinks its psuedoscience, it's not "the scientific community bla-bla-bla", it's "abc, in (name of work) claims that the scientific community..." KonveyorBelt 04:13, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I agree completely. There are, no doubt, many lunatic charlatans out there and Wikipedia is a wonderful tool to expose them for what they are. But all too often, I have seen extreme skeptics dominating alt-med articles of all kinds claiming something "is" pseudoscience in Wikipedia's voice. This severely imbalances our articles, and it falsely indicates a scientific consensus where there might be none. We have to attribute statements to sources, unless there's strong evidence that there is consensus, or else our articles become discredited. LesVegas (talk) 05:10, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

The idea that If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals - that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately. is only true if "appropriately" means "probably not at all." Science News editor-in-chief Eva Emerson recently pointed out "Peer-reviewed scientific journals, by one estimate, number 24,000. Each publishes numerous reports every year, adding up to more than a million." [96] (emphasis mine). Furthermore, much of what is published isn't actually the results of experiments (hence Global warming)... So Wikipedia should be thought of as a starting point for exploration, rather than truth or something like that. NE Ent 00:53, 8 January 2015 (UTC)'

I think you're erroneously conflating "peer-reviewed journals" with "respectable scientific journals". These terms are not synonymous. In fact, "respectable scientific journals" is a (discouragingly small) subset of "peer-reviewed journals". MastCell ^Talk 04:22, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

The difficulty lies in deciding which are "respectable" journals and "non-respectable" journals. -A1candidate (talk) 14:02, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

What are the journals with which you're having difficulty? I'd say it's generally quite straightforward, especially for journals within one's respective field. benmoore 15:41, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

benmoore:

1. Journals of lunatic charlatanry that are published by reputable academic publishers.

For example, Acupuncture in Medicine is published by BMJ Group and Homeopathy (journal) is published by Elsevier.

2. Journals of lunatic charlatanry with significant impact factor.

For example, Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine has a 2013 impact factor of 2.175, which is comparable to the Journal of Anatomy with 2.227.

3. Journals of lunatic charlatanry that are indexed in major scientific databases.

For example, Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine is abstracted and indexed in MEDLINE, Science Citation Index, Scopus, and PsycINFO.

-A1candidate (talk) 18:35, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

2.x is a low impact factor and gives no evidence for credibility (neither necessary nor sufficient), similarly those featuring homeopathy in the title are also not generally going to be the home of legitimate science regardless of publisher. benmoore 19:24, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

benmoore:

2.x is not high but nevertheless significant
The impact factor of most anatomy and physiology journals do not exceed 5.x

-A1candidate (talk) 10:35, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

"Signficant" has no meaning in this context. An impact factor of two means papers received on average two citations, it doesn't vouch for the credibility of all articles in said publication nor the legitimacy of their science. That's what I meant by neither necessary or sufficient; for example low quality journals may encourage self-citations to game this metric. Better questions to ask of journals are: who's on the editorial board and what's their affiliation? Which reputable scientists publish there? Is the journal on Beall's list? It can also be useful to evaluate articles based on their content and authorship rather than solely a journal title. For example, if a famous MIT lab publishes a thorough negative result evaluating homeopathic methods in Elsevier's homeopathy journal (likely a good source of information) cf. a single author of dubious affiliation reports homeopathic ebola cure in same publication (likely not a good source for Wikipedia). benmoore 12:23, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

benmoore:

Even if you consider 2.x to be low, I believe most medical journals with any amount of impact factor are usually included in major scientific databases. Some of them have stringent quality checks to ensure their reliability (See MEDLINE#Inclusion_of_journals for example). Perhaps that may be where we could look to decide if a journal is "respectable" or "non-respectable". Beall's list is not a scientific database so I don't think we should use that as our criteria
The affiliations of the editorial board should not be used as our criteria. Just as the editors of neurology journals tend to be neurologists and the editors of cardiology journals tend to be cardiologists, the editors of alleged lunatic charlatanry journals tend to be alleged lunatic charlatants.
We should judge a journal based on the quality of its papers, not the affiliations of its editors and the reputations of authors.

-A1candidate (talk) 13:25, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

the editors of alleged lunatic charlatanry journals tend to be alleged lunatic charlatants Bingo! And I agree that being indexed in Pubmed is necessary (but probably not sufficient). Happy to continue this but perhaps one of our talk pages would be better. benmoore 13:44, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

So where's the Wikipedia article on Convergent Transcription at Intragenic Super-Enhancers Targets AID-Initiated Genomic Instability [97] NE Ent 03:02, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

@NE Ent: As of now, here. (I haven't done this justice yet because I spent my time merging the article instead, but like most Cell papers it's an important finding) Wnt (talk) 14:31, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

My response is who really cares? I am not losing sleep over what Jimbo may or may not have an opinion on after all we are all human and cant expect to follow every social norm ever put into place. Some here are treating this like Jimbo endorses child molestation or something like that. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 04:05, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, I do think some editors might have misinterpreted Jimbo's statement and have used it to justify disruptive editing, incivility, edit warring, etc all in the name of "fighting lunatic charlatans." Now that I've read the full context of Jimbo's statement, I see it as a petition by a group of alt-med proponents to twist Jimbo's arm into changing policy to essentially do away with WP: FRINGE, and that would be very wrong. I'm glad Jimbo told them no, and I applaud him for his stance. But when it's misinterpreted, used as a battle-cry and even Wikipedia's very own administrators try topic banning good editors, not for rule violations, but because they are adding reliable, scientifically-validated data to our articles that just so happens to cast an alt-med procedure in a positive light, there's a big problem. Don't think that's happening? It is, right now. To me. I'm currently subject to an Arbcom on that very matter. So it's great A1candidate and Jimbo have opened this dialogue so that we can all get greater clarity about what Jimbo's intentions were in his statement, as well as the full context. LesVegas (talk) 05:33, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

This conversation is getting less and less about what Jimbo said and more and more about a content dispute that belongs on the talk page of the relevant articles. This may be the appropriate place to address what Jimbo said but it is certainly not the appropriate venue to settle a content dispute. Chillum 03:09, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Mark Satin, the Featured Article on today's Main Page, is astonishingly good

The article on Mark Satin is astonishingly good, even by Featured Article standards. I urge everyone to read it, or at least to skim it. I had nothing to do with creating this masterpiece (I made 3 tiny copy edits today). It illustrates the best that Wikipedia can achieve.

I hope I am not violating policy by posting to Jimbo's talk page without complaining about something.—Finell 02:49, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Never fear. No good deed goes unpunished. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:21, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

The Deep South

Thank you for talking sense on last night's BBC Question Time, if only rather briefly. It is rather disappointing when the chairman doesn't ensure that each of the guests gets the opportunity to be the first to answer a question. But at least there weren't any awkward gaps. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:07, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

... but maybe I was the only one watching? Oh well. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:43, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

"Question Time in Watford - 08/01/2015". For those in the UK: BBC iPlayer. A bootleg is currently available on YouTube. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:12, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

... Ooo, a bootleg, how exciting! What's next, Have I Got News for You? Martinevans123 (talk) 11:57, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Je Suis Charlie discussion

Hi Jimbo, I thought you, being a "digital champion of free speech", [98] might be interested in the discussion at ITN about the inclusion of a "Je Suis Charlie" image on the main page. The discussion can be found here: Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates#.5BRe-opened.5DAddendum:_Je_Suis_Charlie Everymorning talk 02:42, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

A challenge to Mr Jimmy Wales

Per: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Adam (band)

Hey pointless PA removed. If I show without a doubt that it is notable, will you step down....or stop editing for 1 month? 750editsstrong (talk) 11:38, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

How would you English speaking people say "a repeated joke ceases to be a joke?" Merge to Orgasm in art? :D --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 12:25, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Deletions_and_editor_retention

Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Deletions_and_editor_retention

If deleted see this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Thewhitebox#RFC

Thewhitebox (talk) 17:02, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Full text

Studies show, editing on wikipedia is stagnating. I have been an editor off and on wikipedia for 12 years. Wikipedia has become less and less welcoming for new editors because of more and more deletion and speed deletion rules. There is a very negative company culture about new edits here on wikipedia. Editors who encourage deletion of good faith edits are rewarded, editors who fight against this trend are banned or leave in frustration.

I remember when established editors posed as new editors, and almost everyone of their new pages were deleted. The larger community was infuriated, not by how new editors were shown to be treated, but that established editors would pose as new editors. I know there is a 80% chance that my article will be deleted within one hour of it being created. If I have no references, it is within 5 minutes.
I remember how Jimmy Wales blessed the wide spread deletion of hundreds of bibliography articles with no notice, writing on the editors talk page what a wonderful job he did.
I remember the secret offline collusion in the case - twenty or so editors were working together to disrupt wikipeda and get tens of thousands of articles deleted. Any other time the editors would be banned, but instead any editors who mentioned the case were warned.
I remember the dozens of articles from mainstream media that complained how an incredibly notable article was deleted often within 5 minutes.
I remember the episode wars over television shows. In which editors wanted to delete thousands of pages on all television series.
I remember how I quit uploading non-copyrighted images from the 1890s because they were always deleted in mass, even when I put the right tags on them.
I have been appalled at many of the really mean editors who have become administrators and the arbcoms. The arbcoms get Jimmy's blessing.
I have been disgusted at how established editors treat other new editors, describing their new article monitoring as "garbage men" stopping "garbage"
I am shocked that every time I see an old editors page from 2006 or before, who really fought for treating editors nicely, he has been banned or left in disgust. Every time.
There is a new trend the last couple of years. I am appalled at extremely ignorant editors deleting whole sections of articles citing copyright violations. They have absolutely no understanding of copyright. Fair use is ignored and deletion is emphasized.

Editors, especially new editors, are consistently treated like shit here by a like minded group of editors.

Sadly I see only one solution

I have come to one sad conclusion: That Jimmy Wales, the founder of this site, is the person most responsible for this trend. He is most responsbile for this site's negative company culture. I believe that it is in the best interest of the long term future of Wikipedia that Jimmy Wales step down. I beleive wikipedia needs a new company culture that is more inclusive and kind.

If you have a better idea how to change this trend, something that has never been tried before, I would love to hear it.

Thoughts?

Studies that show why Wikipedia editing is stagnating
The singularity is not near: slowing growth of Wikipedia
The rate of reverts-per-edits (or new contributions rejected) and the number of pages protected has kept increasing. The greater resistance towards new content has made it more costly for editors, especially occasional editors, to make contribution. We argue that this may have contributed, with other factors, to the slowdown in the growth of Wikipedia.[99]
The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia’s Reaction to Popularity Is Causing Its Decline
University of Minnesota research finds the restrictiveness of the encyclopedia’s primary quality control mechanism against contributions made by newcomers and the algorithmic tools commonly used to reject contributions as key causes of the decrease in newcomer retention. The community’s formal mechanisms to create uniform entries are also shown to have fortified its entries against changes—especially when those changes are proposed by newer editors. As a result, Wikipedia is having greater difficulty in retaining new volunteer editors. "Wikipedia has changed from the encyclopedia that anyone can edit to the encyclopedia that anyone who understands the norms, socializes himself or herself, dodges the impersonal wall of semi-automated rejection, and still wants to voluntarily contribute his or her time and energy can edit"[100]

Again, If I show without a doubt that it is notable, will you step down....or stop editing for 1 month? 750editsstrong (talk) 11:38, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

"Lunatic charlatans" and MEDRS

(This is followup to the discussion above. That section has gotten way too long, so I am starting a new one.)

The discussion has gone way off the mark, probably due to the fact that most of the people who are commenting are not very familiar with Wikipedia's medical domain. Many of the comments are not helpful.

The main difference between medical articles and other types of articles is that the medical literature -- even the reputable literature -- is enormous and very variable. It is possible to take nearly any bizarre assertion and find some peer-reviewed paper that seems to support it. Because of this, we have had to come up with more stringent sourcing principles than are applied in most parts of Wikipedia. Those rules are embodied in WP:MEDRS. Basically the rules say that in order to make it into Wikipedia, assertions have to appear in high-quality review papers, not just in papers that directly present experimental research.

The point is that sourcing quality makes up a continuum. At one end lie lunatics and charlatans, who present their claims on web pages, self-published books, and unreviewed journals such as Medical Hypotheses. At the other end lie authoritative review papers in high-quality medical journals. But there is a huge gap in between, filled largely with peer-reviewed primary research articles in journals that cover the whole range from crappy to excellent.

Many, many papers on holistic healing and alternative medicine fall into that intermediate range. They don't reach the level of source quality that WPMED looks for, but the authors are not by any means lunatics and charlatans.

At WPMED we have gotten pretty good at dealing with this problem. Our solution is simple: we consistently apply WP:MEDRS, which is very carefully written. When we say that something doesn't belong in an article, we aren't saying that it is wrong, and certainly not that it is lunatic, we are only saying that it has not yet reached the level of source quality that we need.

It does not help for people to go around flinging wild insults. I doubt that any of us believes that everybody who advocates massage therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic, or other forms of alternative medicine is a lunatic or charlatan. Making us look like fanatics does not help our project.

This applies particularly to the matter that started this discussion. We don't want to argue about whether the material that user:A1candidate would like to add is lunatic charlatanry. That isn't in the picture at all. What we should be arguing about is whether it is consistent with WP:MEDRS, and, if we want to take the discussion to a more "meta" level, whether the rules in WP:MEDRS are the right ones for us to be using. Looie496 (talk) 15:32, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

I think MEDRS is the right approach. There are plenty of peer-reviewed papers on autogynephilia, but it doesn't mean it's not psuedoscience (regardless of how hard certain editors are arguing). Sceptre ^(talk) 16:32, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like a fine approach, especially in such a surrounding, where giving false information to sick people can do real harm. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 16:54, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

MEDRS is an outstanding policy, and this presents an excellent argument against a point that's not being made. The point that's being made is that our article misrepresents the AHA report. I don't agree with that point in the slightest, but it's got little to do with adherence to MEDRS. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:00, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

The point that's being made by who? Different people are making different points, as far as I can tell. Looie496 (talk) 17:17, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

The actual use of MEDRS is often overbearing and deeply damaging, because our articles should not be written solely for "home consumer use". They should serve people with many different backgrounds and intents. An article about a disease should not be written in a condescending way to tell a newly diagnosed patient what to do next - it should serve, among others, the biology student, researcher, technician, and legislator evaluating next year's budget. (This is also often a flaw with business articles, that are written solely as consumer guides rather than from the viewpoint of the investor, competitor, or supplier) That means that often research leads which are speculative should be discussed. We should not present them as consensus medical practice, but we should not conceal when they are judged worthy enough of study that governments are paying to test them and reputable journals see fit to publish them. Wnt (talk) 23:34, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

My experience of WP medical articles is that their most common fault, in terms of style, balance etc, is that (in defiance of WP:MEDMOS) they are full of undiluted medical jargon, and read like notes written by medical students, which they perhaps often are in part. It's my impression that most regulars at WikiProject Medicine share this perception and concern to some degree. MEDMOS allows for research sections, but these need to be clearly segregated from "Management" and other sections higher up, and should be very firmly sourced only per WP:MEDRS, even at the expense of some conservatism. Many research sections don't do that, and cover primary sources, and since they are often mainly written several years ago, examination may prove that none of the "breakthroughs" reported led very far. Especially in my field of cancer, governments fund, and reputable journals publish, VAST amounts of research that we should not trouble Wikipedia's readers with in disease articles until it approaches actual use a decade or two later. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 16:34, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

@Wiki CRUK John: Well, that's the attitude I'm opposed to. Don't worry your pretty little head about it. Just take two green pills twice a day. Wikipedia articles aren't just for patients trying to learn a little about the treatment they've been prescribed. They should serve the researchers who are trying to decide whether a line of research has been going somewhere recently. They should serve the patient advocacy group that wants people to petition Congress for more funding to pursue that line of research. They should serve the student who needs to know what an angiogenesis inhibitor is and eventually understand why it works differently in a mouse, even if only for academic reasons. An article that encourages you to examine what happened with the research it cited is far more useful than one that provides you with nothing. Wnt (talk) 15:04, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

We certainly are opposed, but your caricature does not reflect my attitude at all. Broad lines of research should be covered by specific articles, as many are (but many are not). So yes "They should serve the student who needs to know what an angiogenesis inhibitor is", by that article, and indeed the 17 articles in Category:Angiogenesis inhibitors. But these seem to be rather a good example of why we should be cautious in adding research lines to disease articles, looking at the dates of the references on specific articles in the category - eg endostatin - so where are we with that in 2015, exactly? Those articles should also be where WP "should serve the researchers who are trying to decide whether a line of research has been going somewhere recently", or the few articles that tackle research into a specific disease. But most of these are becoming increasingly out of date, and WP is mostly useless for this function, unfortunately. Concerns over COI editing in my present role have led me to avoid doing anything much with the laughably bad cancer research; perhaps this rather daunting subject is untypically poor. Articles on diseases should not include every research possibility that has been mentioned somewhere, using either primary sources or news reports just concerned with one line of research. Bu that is what most of the existing coverage we have is. Balanced WP:MEDRS-friendly reviews of where current research is going are fine to include in a "research directions" section, and I have been putting in considerable effort pursuading experts to write these. But first you have clear out the clutter of newspaper reports of single studies in mice etc., stuck into the main management sections. Your characterization of WP disease articles as overly patient-directed and simple is so at variance with everything I see that I can only conclude you don't read many disease articles. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 15:16, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

The research is not temporary, and in fact is ongoing [101]. I think the slow pace reflects technical and especially commercial and bureaucratic considerations. There was no reason why in 1994 we couldn't try putting endostatin in a naked plasmid or a viral vector for episomal expression, tried it on some dying cancer patients, and seen what happened. But though medicine is a very broad field everything has to pass through a very narrow aperature; it has to be made cheaply, sold expensively under patent, and above all standardized and regulated in a way that admits no possible threat of gradual competition by optimization. Nothing moves till the racketeer gets paid, that is carved in stone. Things like phage therapy or even the use of low-dose interferons for influenza - the U.S. will never catch up to the 1950s Soviet Union with these things (though there might be at last some signs of progress on the latter), because they seem to be bureaucratically or commercially inconvenient. But as Wikipedia puts it "notability is not temporary". If MEDRS has not imposed a patient's perspective on the articles we have, mostly, it's because there is still considerable resistance to it. Wnt (talk) 17:41, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

No it's because so much of our medical editing is (was) done by people with some level of medical training who haven't read MEDRS & don't know that articles aren't supposed to read like a medical/biological textbook, or who just can't write on technical topics any other way (which is a difficult skill), or are effectively working up their revision notes. Our articles on general medical research issues, and medical research economics are pretty rudimentary & should certainly be improved. They are also getting increasingly out of date: "In Australia, in 2000/01 (the most recent data available), about $1.7B was spent on biomedical research,..." I read in medical research! Wiki CRUK John (talk) 03:56, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I should add that the most-viewed articles on major diseases are typically better, because more edited by the regular medical editors. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 13:48, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree " Articles on diseases should not include every research possibility that has been mentioned"withWiki CRUK John logic dictates it , practicality obligates it--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:22, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

For articles on diseases, narrowly construed, there is indeed a threshold of relevance to be demonstrated; however, there are or should be many other articles on concepts and approaches involved that can cover more specialized content. Wnt (talk) 19:21, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Accurate but readable coverage of medicine and anatomy is also a passion of mine. The fast majority of our readers are not jargon-ready professionals but lay readers, students, and well-meaning doctors (many of whom are probably not conversant in full technical terms) and as stated we should try very hard to write in an engaging and understandable manner. CRUK John's 16:34 sums up many of my feelings about why this is the case at the moment. I edit anatomy articles with several others and have created an essay for this purpose in our field: WP:ANATSIMPLIFY. --Tom (LT) (talk) 20:48, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I think that the value of an article is equally partitioned between its text on one hand and its references, links, and file inclusions on the other. I recognize that text often needs to be made shorter and simpler; but references are best hoarded. In practice the imbalance has been against references: it is all too common to complain an article is unreferenced, but I don't believe most readers ever really find the list of sources to be just too long to stand. So when I speak of including research papers that MEDRS frowns upon, I'm thinking more of keeping the numbers at the end of the line than making any long detour into arcane medical terminology. That said, I can't fully support ANATSIMPLIFY because replacing terms like "posterior to" with "behind" can at times be confusing. For example, "behind" might be taken to mean "deeper into the body", and for the arms/hands the standard anatomical position is not all that obvious. I think jargon should be used sparingly, and explained always, but not avoided when it carries a useful payload of information. Wnt (talk) 00:25, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that is the purpose of this essay. It is not advocating wholesale removal of jargon, but substitution of lay terms when appropriate -- and that's quite often. --Tom (LT) (talk) 21:30, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

FYI

Given the above, this seems applicable:

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.

This message is informational only and does not imply misconduct regarding your contributions to date.

—HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:34, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

November 2014 participation numbers

A new set of official participation statistics are up, these for November 2014. These show the two key metrics for En-WP as essentially stable, with Very Active Editors steady at 2910 against 2897 for November 2013 and Average Number of New Articles Per Day falling 3.8% to 893 from a previous year figure of 928. The sky is still not falling. Carrite (talk) 11:37, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

It occurred to me this morning that much of the month-to-month variation in the count of Very Active Editors is directly attributable to the number of days in the month. If somebody is bored and wants to play with a project, it should be pretty simple to adjust the series to account for fewer days in February, April, June, September, and November. Carrite (talk) 17:04, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Of course this is right, though the number of weekends in a month is probably also a smaller factor. Then there's holidays and academic terms around the world. We know December will bring low figures, as always. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 12:05, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Request for WMF to Address Arbitrator Comments

I am asking that the following post, by an English Wikipedia arbitrator, User:Roger Davies, be considered by the WMF. I am commenting here because User: Jimbo Wales is the public face and a public voice of the WMF and has an open talk page. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3AArbitration%2FRequests%2FCase%2FGamerGate%2FProposed_decision&diff=642154916&oldid=642151661

I mostly agree, at least that ArbCom is being asked to do too much with too few resources.

First, if ArbCom is being asked to handle off-wiki harassment, then the WMF is placing itself at legal risk. Off-wiki harassment has civil and criminal implications, and should be handled by paid staff, not by volunteer arbitrators. If paid WMF staff finds that editors must be banned, WMF has the power, which it has used, to ban users globally.

The post then lists three areas where “the community has failed”: CU/OS (checkuser – oversight) responsibility; administrator misconduct; community ban appeals. It is true in an abstract sense that “the community has failed”, but the English Wikipedia community, as represented by those of its editors who take part in discussions, is a large, diverse, and fractious community that is not really capable of self-government. The fact that it almost does govern itself is an interesting experimental outcome that perhaps requires more explanation that its failures to govern itself. It is time for the WMF to lead or even to govern (it owns the servers), since asking the community to govern itself is asking what has been proven not to work. With regard to Oversight, in particular, the WMF should take that responsibility on itself, again, so that it does not place itself at legal risk, since the primary purpose of Oversight, which is really suppression, is to remove possibly defamatory or otherwise legally questionable posts. Checkuser supervision requires the same high degree of trust as is placed in the arbitrators, but other than the need for trust, there is no connection. If community ban appeals are a burdensome drag on the arbitrators, again, another group of trusted functionaries may be needed. The WMF should lead, initiate, or if necessary govern, rather than expecting “the community” to do what it has not done.

What the community can see is that ArbCom cases are time-consuming, and that the ArbCom is only able to handle a few cases at a time. In 2005 through 2007, the ArbCom was able to handle a hundred cases a year, until additional responsibilities were shifted to the ArbCom.

I have suggested in the past and will suggest again that the ArbCom should handle full evidentiary cases in panels of three, with the power to issue final rulings, from which there should be a right to request en banc rehearing, but no right to an en banc rehearing. That is my suggestion. Other reform suggestions may vary. In any event, the WMF should take leadership in areas where “the community has failed”.

Robert McClenon (talk) 19:11, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: I have to admit that I wholeheartedly agree with what you are saying. Off-Wiki harassment is something which always has the potential to develop into something much more serious so I think it should be only paid staff that deal with it. That way Wikipedia should be 100% covered, should any criminal or civil proceedings begin and it gets the time and resources it deserves (and WMF would have a lot more of that than ArbCom). I think the problem may arise though from getting the WMF to take responsibility for it. --5 albert square (talk) 20:44, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

How does one define "off-wiki harassment"? (For the benefit of those of us who have not been following that humungous case.) Coretheapple (talk) 21:26, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

How to define "off-wiki harassment" is really a question for User:Roger Davies, since he said that dealing with it uses too much of the English ArbCom's time. Also, my original post and his original post had to do with various issues that the ArbCom has to deal with besides conduct arbitration. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:44, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Just to narrow my question: I realize it means outing. Anything other than that (to your knowledge)? Thing about the WMF is that if one passes the buck to the WMF, what guarantee that it will actually do anything? Not that it shouldn't be involved, mind you, but is that the correct place to expect action? If your house is burning down, who do you call first, the fire department or your insurance adjuster? Coretheapple (talk) 21:52, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Why should the ArbCom be the police or fireman whom one calls about off-wiki harassment? I don't know the details, and I don't think that I want to know the details, but there is a problem in that the ArbCom is slow (and was not always slow because it did not always have non-arb responsibilities). Robert McClenon (talk) 23:06, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

That's true. Also I agree with Smallbones below. Coretheapple (talk) 01:11, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Comment You seem to be searching for a problem when there is none. There is nothing that Wikipedia can do in terms of off site harassment. That's just a plain fact. Not to mention that the H word is a strong indicator and as a result, people like to use it for things that may or may not be actual harassment. But to Robert--what do you suppose are the methods that these WMF paid staff will do? I really want to stress 'off wiki', because that's what I'm getting confused about here. We have problems on Wikipedia that need attention, stuff that needs refining, tending to, copy edits, sources, articles, community discussions, etc. Why would we need to delve into off wiki harassment--even giving that it's happening, when there's absolutely nothing that we can do. It would be the equivalent of Youtube deciding to monitor harassment on Facebook. It's just a bit off base in my honest opinion. Now, I can very much understand if from perspective that someone, of the same username, linked to an account from their Wikipedia userpage or elsewhere confirmed it was them was doing questionable stuff, ie: Canvassing, promotional editing, whatever. But the big H word is very much used even when it can't be confirmed that the individual on Wikipedia is the same person as on that website. I'm very much tentative to get into matters where it's possible that some person on another site may get a Wikipedia editor blocked when it may just be a coincidence that their usernames match or that they talked about 1 of the top 10 websites in the world. It just reads very ambiguous, very convoluted, very concerning. Tutelary (talk) 21:52, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

There is a problem if an arbitrator says that there is a problem that is taking too much of their resources away from their primary job of handling arbitration cases, some of which are complex and hard. I don't know the details of the problem. There is a problem if an arbitrator says that the problem is taking too much of their resources. Robert McClenon (talk) 6:06 pm, Today (UTC−5)

That very much is true. Now that I brought this up, I'm also a bit curious on how ArbCom even deals with off wiki harassment. I get it, they were elected by the community, very likely have admin status on one of the top ten websites in the world. Great. They're also elevated (even if not intentional) to have more power. Their combined authority decide disputes on Wikipedia and can desysop admins and issue discretionary sanctions in their name. I mention all of this because even given their authority, power, respect within Wikipedia. What can they do about off site harassment? Harassment that occurs on Reddit, Facebook, Youtube, Forums, etc. You have all the power in the world on Wikipedia, the instant you get off the site you're on the same stance as everyone else. What I'm assuming they do is look at plain simple cases, with same usernames, basic confirmation that the user is who people suspect they are and then block or restrict their access to Wikipedia. Other than that, I don't really have a whole lot of belief they can do anything about off wiki harassment. Until I know exactly what ArbCom does in terms of off wiki harassment, I can't support this proposal because the fundamentals aren't there. If we don't know what ArbCom does, how can we adequately ask ourselves to designate this to a paid WMF representative, to do this function automatically? Or to safeguard against possible mistaken blocks. Say it weren't so black and white, different usernames, styles, maybe a diff implicit mentioning as proof? I've no comment for now on the other things you brought up, but it surely is interesting. Tutelary (talk) 23:21, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the problem has been well defined so far, but if arbcom members are saying that they can't properly perform the duties expected of them by the community, then this is worth pursuing. My feeling is that arbcom's duties have gradually grown and that it is too much with too many different types of things for them to do well. Cases do take too long. Rules of procedure should be laid out better, and the ones in place should be enforced. For example, I was recently involved in a case, and I had to spend a whole lot of effort pursuing the question "What rule am I accused of breaking?" I also think that the CU function needs some work. Too often I've reported sockpuppets and the response seems to be "what do you expect me to do about it?"

Wikipedia has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 10 years, and governance mechanisms which were fine back then seem to be incredibly outdated now. A review of arbcom, and other governance mechanisms, seems overdue. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:10, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia is now big enough that we should employ an ombudsman, preferably a retired judge but certainly someone with formal legal qualifications, if only to blow away Wikilawyering. Hell, hire Ken White from Popehat. He'd be perfect. Or Mike Godwin. Guy (Help!) 23:53, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

You might want to take a look at this

Good Morning,

This discussion was just recently closed and due to discussion a guideline [was updated because of it ]. Since Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, and since this policy , in essense, makes it the encyclopedia registered users can edit, I thought you might want to be aware of it, and weigh in if need be. Thanks KoshVorlon Je Suis Charlie 12:02, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Quick question, but how does that affect how unregistered users edit? It's one thing to be able to edit, and it's another thing to declare an outcome for an AfD. --RAN1 (talk) 12:20, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, there are lots of things IP editors can't do, and lots of things new editors can't do, and lots of things editors who aren't admins can't do... none of these restrictions breaks the core principle of an encyclopaedia anyone can edit. For example, a newly registered or IP editor can still contribute to a semi-protected article by requesting an edit. In this particular case, you are referring both to an area of Wikipedia that is not an encyclopaedia per se (it's part of the administration of the project, not the content) and is also only restricting their ability to close a discussion which in itself is not restricting their ability to edit (i.e., add some content) but rather their ability to make a decision - something very different. QuiteUnusual (talk) 15:14, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Good questions! Actually , it assumes bad faith on the part of the IP users. The deletion policy , prior to the change just made, read that non admin closes were possible by users in good standing. It's been changed to read that non admin closes were possible by registered users only. This implies that somehow IP users are "less-than" or "unequal" to users that have actually registered, thus automatically assuming bad faith on the part of IP users, and that's flat not right. KoshVorlon Je Suis Charlie 16:04, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

It only makes clear that "Editors in good standing" can't possibly mean IPs, as IPs are by definition anonymous and thus unable to gather any standing at all. That's all, that's imho self-evident for adminstrative actions like those (and thus something completely different from just editing), there's no problem to see anywhere. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 16:15, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

You, User:KoshVorlon, persisted in using Assume Bad Faith as a mantra in order to argue that unregistered editors should be able to close AFDs. By bringing this here after it has been dealt with, KoshVorlon is, first, forum shopping for a strange cause about unregistered closers, and, second, engaging in a massive case of refusing to listen to reason. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:39, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Of course they can; please see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Followup NE Ent 10:04, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Deleting content is something most prone to chicanery, so yes, I can see "semi-protecting" the deletion close process. That said, there's a danger of proliferation of arbitrary and undefined levels of authorization here. "Registered editors" is a criterion somewhat different from the usual autoconfirmed users standard of semi-protection, as is "editors in good standing" or "experienced editors". Practically speaking, I don't think the extra minute to register a brand spanking new account entitles someone to close an AfD any more than being IP-'anonymous', so I'd just as soon see it done at the autoconfirmed level. The other levels need to be formally and clearly defined to be usable, or else there will be post facto arguments. Wnt (talk) 17:56, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Robert McClenon When "reason" favors unreasonable bias, of course I'm going to refuse to listen. Stating or even better yet, having sysops endorse a line of thinking like "IP's cannot close AFD's because they're IP's" is insane, and against what Wikipedia actually stands for (you know, "The Encyclopedia Anyone can edit "). The rationale for it has been bizzare (for example, "can't track history ", bizzare since history is tracked for anyone that edits, IP's included, so yes a history exists for that IP ).

Also, what you call "forum shopping" I call dispute resolution. Because Sysops are now involved, I can stir more drama up by attempting to bring this to arbcom, but you know what, that's too much damn drama, I figure , dropping a note on Jimbo's page, since he's the guy that started wikipedia, might get a more sane point of view. For the record, I have no dogs in this fight, I log on with my name , the two times I didn't, I identified myself in the edit summary, my argument is this, banning someone from making some kind of edit for any other reason other than the content of their edit is assuming bad faith, period, full stop, and it can't exist on Wikipedia. KoshVorlon Je Suis Charlie 18:11, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Nobody is 'banned from making edits' unless they have previously been sanctioned (and unless we find out that they are in fact banned...). Nobody not previously blocked/banned is prevented from creating an account - a reasonable precondition for anyone wishing to carry actions which require long-term accountability. If people chose not to create an account, any restrictions it places on them are voluntary. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:31, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

More to the point, even if Wikipedia were to completely ban all edits by IP's (not that this is something I'd necessarily endorse), it would still be "The Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit" because we allow anyone to create an account. The business of history being maintained for IP's isn't reliably true. Some people only edit from one computer and have internet service providers who try to allocate the same IP address to you all the time. But other ISP's reassign a new IP address from a pool of thousands or even millions of addresses every time you reboot your computer and/or once a day whether you reboot or not. This creates a great disparity. For some IP's, yes, we can indeed track their history with some degree of reliability...but for others, it's utterly impossible because they get a new IP address every day - or, when evildoers figure it out, they can dump their old history and start afresh with a simple Ctrl-Alt-Del. In many cases, a total newbie will come to Wikipedia with every intent to do good work - and pick up the IP address of a previous evil-doer, and then the history that they seem to have may be horribly ill-deserved. I've seen this happen with places like schools that may only have a Class-D network with a pool of only 127 addresses....one stupid kid can easily fill up all 127 addresses with blocks and bans and terrible history records - then graduate from the school and move on - leaving every single student and teacher with a stinky reputation here. SteveBaker (talk) 19:04, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

There is a substantial and obvious difference between editing content and taking part in Wikipedia's bureaucracy. This was discussed in detail in the debate you lost. This just in: nothing's changed in the short period since that closed. Guy (Help!) 23:57, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

blocking accounts and IP addresses

I thought one of the advantages of having an account was that it functioned separately from IP addresses. In the past when I worked from school I would get a message saying the address was blocked but if I logged into my account I could edit. Now I can't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richardson mcphillips (talk • contribs) 14:16, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

It depends on the type of block on the IP address. When blocking an IP, administrators have the option of allowing registered users to use that address ("soft block") or to disallow it ("hard block"). If you often face the problem of not being able to edit as a registered user because of blocks on the IP address you are using, you may request Wikipedia:IP block exemption. -- Ed (Edgar181) 14:22, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Note that it's preferable that, if it's just an occasional thing, like wanting to edit for around 30 minutes while in class, you wouldn't request the exemption. It's for people (from my understanding) where their IPs have constantly been used for disruption, and that is their primary IP address. Tutelary (talk) 17:19, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

The problem comes when an evil-doer starts to engage in massive sock-puppetry. Creating hundreds of accounts at the same IP address (or the same small group of IP's). Since nailing each sock individually gets painful, we'll have to impose a hard-block, which will indeed prevent innocent people from logging in through that IP address, even though they have a legitimate account of their own. This is unfortunate and annoying - but honestly, what else can we do? IMHO, if you're at a business or a school where this has happened, you should go to whoever is in charge of the network and have them track down and nail the evildoer. Since you can see the history of all of those socks, you should be able to correlate dates and times on edits to the network logs to figure out which physical computer is the source of the problems, and thereby find out who owns it and to take appropriate disciplinary action. If that's done convincingly, then it should be no problem in getting the Admins to unblock that IP address again.

Or IP block exempting the demonstrably good-faith users. Guy (Help!) 00:03, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Media star and thank you

Copy from here, to be sure you see it, as this is the nl-wiki tradition to hand out the media star

As tradition on nl-wiki describes, hereby the media star for being in RTL Late Night and telling the Wikipedia story very well. Also thank you for asking Humberto Tan for more editors from Suriname.

Romaine (talk) 11:54, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Photos of the symposium yesterday are here: c:Category:Symposium Wikipedia as a research tool, 15 January 2015.

Photos of the talk show are here: c:Category:RTL Late Night, including c:File:Humberto Tan in 2015.JPG and c:File:Luuk Ikink in 2015.JPG.

Thank you also for being at our wikimeet in Amsterdam in between those, we had the core of the core community from the Netherlands present there. Romaine (talk) 11:54, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

PS: Please pay your contribution for the ASA, you can by eating on while you are visiting the Netherlands! ;-) Romaine (talk) 11:54, 16 January 2015 (UTC)