User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 194

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일반 문서 (Ilban munseo)

Korean is a swell language and all, but I'm at a bit of a loss why the Edit Count pages (Example) have the Korean words 일반 문서 (General Documents) instead of "Mainspace" or "Articles" or whatever the former English word was... It has been like this for six months or so, just thought I'd ask... Carrite (talk) 23:47, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I haven't the least clue. At all.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:51, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
Answer. Winner 42 Talk to me! 01:31, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Battle for number of articles in the Swedish Wikipedia

Hello, Jimbo! What do you think about this way of competition in the battle for the number of articles? sv:Големо Градиште, sv:Golemo Gradiste, sv:Golemo Gradište.--Soul Train (talk) 12:16, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

@Soul Train: If you're on the Swedish language Wikipedia, unless they have different rules about this, I would convert sv:Големо Градиште and sv:Golemo Gradiste into redirects to sv:Golemo Gradište, as only one disambiguation is needed here and in its current state this will likely cause confusion. --Rubbish computer 11:07, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ScoopWhoop

Withdrawn by nominator...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

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ScoopWhoop. Thanks. — CutestPenguinHangout 12:51, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Archive 190 ← Archive 192 Archive 193 Archive 194 Archive 195 Archive 196 → Archive 200

The Signpost: 09 September 2015

Getting better?

Is Wikipedia getting better? --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:43, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

@Bob K31416: That depends on how you classify "better". It is growing. Rubbish computer 19:29, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
There was a study before showing it gradually getting more neutral in terms of wording, but still being biased to the left. Unfortunately I can't remember where. Rubbish computer 19:30, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
I agree at it would depend on what you mean by better since there are several ways to interpret better (including more non Western content, Quicker response to vandalism and POV Pushers, improving the software to make editing easier, etc).--65.94.253.185 (talk) 03:05, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
"It is growing." Well, then it obviously must be better, mustn't it?. Because everyone knows that bigger is better. Q.E.D.
However, if instead of looking at the number of articles it contains and creates (many of which are of mediocre quality) you instead look at the number of active contributing editors, then Wikipedia has actually been shrinking since 2007, and continues to do so. Of course, no one involved in Wikipedia wants to hear that - especially old guard "well-entrenched" editors who wish to perpetuate, as part of their own Peter Pan denial of changing reality, the period just prior to circa 2007 when Wikipedia was in its heyday and had become a web institution. However, since its 2007 zenith at over 50,000 active editors, Wikipedia editorial participation has been steadily declining due to it becoming a bureaucratic behemoth with no structure or leadership and a high level of policy creep. By its very nature Wikipedia eschews any sort of central planning and conventional expertise. Thus it considers contributions by subject matter experts in real life to be a conflict of interest since they get paid for their expert knowledge, and that's not "the Wikiway" - which is amateur volunteerism. Consequently, Wikipedia articles are created mostly by unemployed management consultants, dilettante telephone sanitizers, and a Scouse hairdresser called Rita who mostly contributes on her two half days off work.
Over the intervening years since its 2007 peak Wikipedia's culture, which was always feisty and argumentative (but ultimately in a good, constructive way), has now become top heavily bureaucratic and highly confrontational (in an obstructionist and persnickety unproductive way). The rules and guidelines for contributing to the project (which used to be just the "five pillars" of policy guidance) have now reached labyrinthine levels that long ago crossed "Teal Deer" thresholds, becoming internally inconsistent and self-contradictory in the process. This, in turn, only creates more opportunities for daily acrimony and disputes to occur, thereby requiring an ever-increasing volunteer work force of officious and sometimes abusive admin panjandrums to police it. Jimmy Wales has been dismissing suggestions that the project will get worse for years now (despite hard evidence to the contrary), but is on record as stating that he believes the project cannot significantly improve without an influx of new editors who have different interests and emphases (not to mention gender!). Yet Wikipedia's complete intransigence - or perhaps its inept incompetence (e.g., the "Visual Editor" debacle); it's actually a lot of both - at abating the ever-increasing levels of acrimonious confrontation and bureaucracy is not only failing to attract his desired new blood, but is preventing what new editors that do venture to dip their foot into the Wikipedian waters from also staying very long, in addition to driving away long established "old guard" editors as well.
On the flip side of the coin, with Wikipedia receiving more than ten billion page views every month that keep it in the top ten of the most used websites in the world, and with the project still creating lots of new articles and pages, there are many Pollyannaish Wikipedians that feel everything is simply fine and dandy and generally tickety-boo. Wikipedia has continually grown from day one and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. For instance, it hasn't even started to scratch the surface yet when it comes to documenting all the Finnish and Czech ice hockey players, so still plenty of work to do right there. Ask any Wikipedia editor and he'll tell you it's "a work in progress" with still no end in sight where that Borgesian day is eventually arrived at when the encyclopedia will have finally documented and defined everything that has ever existed in the world. No doubt the editors of Encarta felt as equally confident and bullish. If Wikipedia is bigger and brighter today then it can only be even bigger and brighter still tomorrow. Indeed it can, but one does suspect that such ostrich Wikipedians may have never read this particular article. — not really here discuss 05:56, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Wow, that'a really, really long comment there. I doubt that many people will read all of it. I prefer to be concise. The best available metrics show that the number of active editors is actually increasing modestly, rather than decreasing. Read a recent Signpost article about the data. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:31, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
There ya go, old fella. I've now broken my post up into four separate messages so that even people with IQs less than ambient room temperature, or recovering from cataract surgery, like yourself will now be able to follow it. I also made sure I did it in as many edits as I could in order to maximize my edit count. That way I will soon be a Senior Editor, which will hopefully allow me to wander around Wikipedia with a gold star stuck on my forehead like an over-achieving preschooler too. Good call. — not really here discuss 08:15, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for the gracious remarks. They reflect well on you, I'm sure. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 21:13, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
My favorite way of checking this is to "click random article" on 10 articles, and go back and look at them a year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. Every time I have tried, it's unambiguous: Wikipedia is getting better by this test.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:28, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
So just checking that ten random articles all get longer in any chosen five year span conclusively proves Wikipedia is getting better? Wow, that's really scientific! Do you perhaps have any sources you could cite that verify that such a methodology is remotely meaningful of anything? How do your random checks prove the quality of the writing is improving; or that it's becoming more NPOV; or more factually correct; or better sourced? Does you random check methodology conclusively show that the percentage of women editing Wikipedia is significantly increasing over every five year span? Or that more articles are being written about Africa than, say, Finnish ice hockey players? BTW, by "citable sources" I mean reliable secondary sources from independent publishers ... not a Signpost article produced by Wikipedia as an Orwellian morale-raiser for the troops ; and by "percentage of women" I mean the percentage of real independent thinking women, not women who get paid by, or receive college course credits from, feminists to intrude ultra-feminist POV material into Wikipedia anyway they can (because they don't count). — not really here discuss 09:22, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Perhaps your could read what Jimbo actually wrote? The word "longer" or any synonym doesn't appear in his post. --NeilN talk to me 16:01, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Perhaps YOU should read what Jimbo actually wrote. And Jimbo too, because he states below that he "suggested checking the quality." Show me where the word "quality" appears in his two line post? He merely states, "Every time I have tried, it's unambiguous". Unambiguous WRT what? Length, quality, truth, format, sourcing, dates, wombats? It's a meaningless statement. He may have intended "quality" - and I'm sure he did - but it's not what he wrote. He cannot expect readers to magically divine his intent. Incorrectly assuming what another person says goes right to the heart of WP:AGF. It applies just as much to expecting someone to correctly divine what you really meant to say (but didn't) as it does to expecting them not to read something entirely different into what you did say.
His persnickety reaction to my post may have been justified if I had chosen to divine "wombats" given the context of the discussion, but not for choosing any of the others meanings I listed as they are all pertinent. I went with "length" because that is the ONLY objective criterion on my list; all the other criteria require subjective analysis and assessment and are thus POV, therefore they could not possibly be considered unambiguous. — not really here discuss 06:59, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
"Wikipedia is getting better by this test." You were the one who started a rant based on the facile assumption that better equals longer article lengths. --NeilN talk to me 18:59, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
His point is that no method at all was given. Jimmy wrote "My favorite way of checking this is to "click random article" on 10 articles, and go back and look at them a year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. Every time I have tried, it's unambiguous: Wikipedia is getting better by this test". By what test? By just looking at articles written 5 years, 10 years ago? Peter Damian (talk) 19:36, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
I'd say it was his opinion, just like any of us could compare an article today with what it was like 5 years ago. You might try it with an article chosen with the random article generator, just to get an idea of what it's like to make such a comparison. --Bob K31416 (talk) 19:45, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
No, he assumed Jimbo equated getting better with longer. If someone says to you get better meat at supermarket x than at supermarket y do you assume they're talking about the quantity of meat you get? And the method was given. One test to see if Wikipedia is getting better is to look at random articles at specific points in time and see if they're getting better. --NeilN talk to me 19:49, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
The key word here is "unambiguous". Jimbo did not specify what the test criterion was (criteria were). The only criterion that might possibly be unambiguous after looking at the two versions of an article would be length. If one of the randomly selected articles was a FA article five years ago and still is now, but there had been inevitable textual additions and deletions to it in that interim five years, making it a couple of paragraphs longer, there would be unanimous agreement amongst all editors following Jimbo's outlined process that it was unambiguously longer (and thus better if bigger is better). If quality of writing or factual truth were criteria instead then different editors performing Jimbo's process may come to completely different conclusions about the two versions of the article.
Some may regard that the newer (longer) version is now too verbose and thus the article has regressed for that reason alone. Others may feel that the additional material was sorely missing from the previous version and thus the longer version is a clear improvement. The newer version of the article may have corrected some earlier factual errors while introducing a few more new ones. The decision over which one was considered more factually correct may divide the reviewing editors right down the middle. There may have been some awkward phrasing introduced with the text added to the newer version that despite it being more comprehensive (longer) and more factually correct still made editors claim the earlier version to be a better quality read. Quality and truth are not unambiguous attributes within the context of this discussion; they are subjective and need to be carefully weighed and factored. Jimbo's claim that his test with unspecified criteria was unambiguous can only lead a reasonable reader to the conclusion that he meant length.
It was NOT a bad faith assumption on my part as you keep confrontationally claiming in violation of WP:AGF. It was a perfectly reasonable one, even more so given that bigger is better was the concept at the front and center of the discussion at that juncture. One of my own fields of interest is Critical thinking, which is an important branch of philosophy, and I don't wish to waste my time in juvenile arguments with somebody with your own poor levels of comprehension, anymore than Einstein would want to waste his time discussing relativity with someone who can barely do arithmetic. Until Wikipedia can find a way to fix this sort of problem then it will not get the participation of the brain trust that it desires to take the project to the next level. I'm not in academia, I'm just well read with diverse interests, but if this sort of thing cheeses me off, it most certainly will cheese off members of the Royal Society. — not really here discuss 20:11, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
Comparing yourself to Einstein, or even claiming that you have expertise in critical thinking, doesn't help your argument at all. It might also help to take an intro to stats class. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:20, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
I didn't compare myself to Einstein. The analogy applied to a situation not to individual personae. The analogy, like most such analogies do, exaggerates the roles to emphasize the disparity involved. I have never claimed any expertise in stats. — not really here discuss 22:31, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
Gee, Gamergate much? That's a lot of questions, and virtually every single one of them contains an invalid premise or is asking me as if I made claims that I did not make. Let me answer your questions, all of them, and then you can go away and never ever post on my talk page again unless you take that chip off your shoulder.
  1. "So just checking that ten random articles all get longer in any chosen five year span conclusively proves Wikipedia is getting better?" - Checking the length is not what I suggested. I suggested checking the quality. 'any chosen five year period' - not 'any' - the relevant 5 year period, the one ending now. Does checking 10 articles "conclusively prove" anything? Of course not. I said that it's my favorite way - it is something that I do from time to time, and I encourage others to do it.
  2. "Do you perhaps have any sources..." No, I don't. I made the method up out of thin air. But it's a good idea, and you should try it sometime. I would actually love it if we had a tool to allow lots of people to do it and track the results across thousands of articles over many years.
  3. "How do your random checks prove.. (various things)" - try it and you'll see what I mean. All those things are true.
  4. " Or that more articles are being written about Africa than, say, Finnish ice hockey players?" - This particular method is focussed on the quality of individual articles and will completely miss problems with balance across various fields. A different test would be required to deal with that. Again, I told about a favorite way to check on the quality - it is not the only way nor even a comprehensive way. I never claimed it was, so your hostility is unwarranted.
  5. As to the rest of your comments - they contain little content but they do reveal your agenda, so thanks for including that.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:05, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Of course you didn't say 'longer', but since you gave no methodology for assessing 'quality', he was teasing you with 'length'. Given that the random method generally gets you 10 articles that you would never find in a standard reference work, a better method is to start with random articles taken from a standard reference work, and see if Wikipedia through time is approaching the quality of the standard work, using an appropriate understanding of 'quality'.
Another method, if you are a specialist in some subject, is to watch the progress about articles in that subject. As you know, I know a little about this guy, and this recent edit was just plain weird. On that measure, it's not getting better at all. And that's despite my occasional attempts at improvement. Peter Damian (talk) 17:19, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Apparently it's not getting better. I have had many differences with Fram, but he is on the mark here. Peter Damian (talk) 09:30, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

@Me? I'm not really here: I know bigger isn't better, I was simply stating a fact. Rubbish computer 11:49, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
@Me? I'm not really here: Do you have a source for the number of active contributors continuing to decrease? --Rubbish computer 12:06, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
I have a number of sources (a dozen or so off the top of my head, possibly more) that support most of the points I made in my original post. If I was posting that text into an article they would, of course, have been cited at the appropriate places. But this is a Talk page and I made my comment extempore, not with those sources directly to hand, some of which I have not read in a long while, so I will have to go Google them in order to locate them. There is a possibility that some no longer exist (as some might go back as far as 2009). I will post each source as and when I find it and append it as a bullet underneath this reply. This might take awhile. However, before even starting that process, I first wish to address Jimbo's response(s). — not really here discuss 20:03, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
OK, here is the first reference source for some of what I initially posted (but not re Wikipedia contributors getting smaller, those will follow in due course). It can be summed up by the quote: "So long as an illiterate drug addict can override the work of a Harvard professor, Wikipedia will never be an authoritative reference." This is the source / basis for my comments at the end of my first paragraph (although obviously I cannot source my own humor) and it is clearly pertinent to the sort of posting interchange that just occurred with user JBL (which is why I found it first). Peter Damian also appears to be having a problem with this obvious flaw regarding how Wikipedia works.
— not really here discuss 03:59, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Here is a source reference that covers much of the material in my first post here (it is one of many and no doubt there will be much overlap). It addresses your initial question as to whether I could cite sources for "the number of active contributors continuing to decrease". It states categorically that they decreased by a third from the zenith contributor rate sometime in 2007 until ... well until it was published in October 2013. It doesn't prove the editor count hasn't increased again during the last two years, but I would have thought that highly unlikely, if only based on the sample behavior of people posting on this section of Jimbo's Talk page alone. My comments re paid feminism advocacy that upset Jimbo is based mostly on things I've read elsewhere (hopefully I can find those links too). This source actually contradicts that statement, claiming that articles on women's literature and feminism have actually declined in favor of computer games, which appears to be the exact opposite. I had no idea what "Gamergate" was until Jimbo stuck that label on me in order to try and suggest I had a hidden agenda, and so I had to go read the Wikipedia article on that topic in order to find out about it (to be honest I didn't expect to find an article on it). My source reading for that comment came from an Ivy League university source, if I remember correctly, but it may still have been an indirect reference to "Gamergate" without calling it that as such. I'm next going to redact that part of that comment until I can find, re-read and re-assess my sources supporting (or not) its validity. It is not at all critical to many of the other points I made, but it appears to have touched a nerve, and I apologize to Jimbo for that.
However, there's no hidden agenda here. If Jimbo wants me to declare my agenda then he need look no further than this comment in the Daily Mail article: "Unsurprisingly, the data also indicate that well-intentioned newcomers are far less likely to still be editing Wikipedia two months after their first try." If Jimbo wishes to fix that problem then he might wish to listen to some of the things I have to say. I consider myself to be such a "well-intentioned newcomer" albeit a "reincarnated newcomer", so I'm probably not as typically naive and more tech savvy than an actual newbie. However, the problem people on Wikipedia that are causing new blood not to stick around don't know that, so I've been getting the same treatment. Anyone in retail knows that 99% of people who feel aggrieved by a store or vendor don't bother to go back and complain (where the situation might be resolved) - they just cut the crap and simply start shopping elsewhere. I'm the other 1%. If Jimbo sincerely wants to see new blood come into Wikipedia and wishes to listen to why it might possibly be leaving from a first hand perspective, then I'll try and explain it to him. If he cannot do anything about it, then so be it; but one always has to understand what the problem is before you can start to fix it. If he simply doesn't want to hear because he believes he's heard it all before, or he wishes to deny that Rome is burning, then that's fine too. I will have given it my best shot.
— not really here discuss 05:35, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
While the Daily Mail article above mostly addresses the fact that long time editors are leaving because they are not willing to limbo dance in response to the new initiatives taken by Wikipedia in 2007, this study addresses the parallel lack of retention of new blood since 2007. However, it is purely a statistical analysis. Nobody appears to have talked to any exiting newbies to find out first hand why they left. Their reason for leaving is mostly speculative based on statistical analysis of new user accounts. But it does confirm statements I made in my initial post (and have repeated since) re linear falling newbie retention.
— not really here discuss 06:20, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
This WSJ sourced article from 2009 even comes with a video for the ADD crowd that now appear to dominate Wikipedia. Although from 2009, nothing appears to have changed from what was already trending even six years ago. Are Jimbo and the folk at WMF simply just covering their eyes and ears and ignoring these long term trends or are they not able to do anything about them? I don't believe they are completely unaware of them since they keep coming up for discussion at the annual Wikimania meetings. A couple of notable quotes included in this particular source:
- "Wikipedia is becoming a more hostile environment, contends Mr. Ortega, a project manager at Libresoft, a research group at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again."
- "He argued that Wikipedia needed to focus less on the total number of articles and more on 'smarter metrics' such as article quality."
— not really here discuss 06:49, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Using Jimbo's method, I pushed the random article button in the side menu 10 times. I only tried the 5 year part of Jimbo's time ranges of 1, 5, and 10 years, which would have been more thorough. Below are the links to the diffs from 5 years ago to now. In cases where the page was created less than 5 years ago, I gave the current version, which is essentially the diff from it's nonexistence 5 years ago to now.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kim_Hee-sun&type=revision&diff=678916354&oldid=383599363
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dunleavy&type=revision&diff=652077569&oldid=369884357
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Iniquity_%28band%29&type=revision&diff=662721521&oldid=378161666
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chamaemelum_nobile&type=revision&diff=672437156&oldid=380965667
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Walter_G._Alexander&type=revision&diff=679298867&oldid=372115853
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Uilenburg_%28Amsterdam%29&type=revision&diff=545941955&oldid=379618447
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tadahito&oldid=536153308
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Niemi&type=revision&diff=540632279&oldid=372534500
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Simon_Petrie&oldid=655260314
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eoxin_E4&oldid=670415197

--Bob K31416 (talk) 14:32, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Great. I don't have time right now to study all those... how did we do in your random set?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:07, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Here's some comments for each page. (I use "page" because some are disambiguation pages.)
1. Improved. Changed from small article with no figure and almost no cites to moderate sized article with 36 cites and figure.
2. Improved. A disambiguation page that grew with more wikilinks to articles and a discussion of item that was disambiguated and with a figure added for the discussion.
3. Unreferenced and about the same.
4. Uncertain but probably improved. It would take study. Reflist increased from 2 to 6, which is a good sign.
5. About the same with a few lines added.
6. A stub about the same.
7. Stub created about 3 years ago.
8. A disambiguation page that is about the same.
9. A small article created a little less than 5 years ago.
10. A stub created 8 months ago.
Overall, it looks like an improvement to me. (Just an aside, but most of the 10 pages were about people.) --Bob K31416 (talk) 21:03, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
I would be careful about inferring from this result anything about the rest of the encyclopedia, considering the limited subject matter of these pages and other factors. --Bob K31416 (talk) 21:31, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
You have just spent upto 7 hours (based on the difference in timestamps between posting your initial ten diffs and then posting back with your cursory analysis of them) discovering for yourself first hand the wisdom that Peter posted at 17:19, just under three hours after you first posted your diffs, and which was also the basis of my, "Wow, that's really scientific!" comment made at 9:22, over five hours before you even embarked on this experiment. You just stated in your last two posts:
  • "Just an aside, but most of the 10 pages were about people."
  • "I would be careful about inferring from this result anything about the rest of the encyclopedia, considering the limited subject matter of these pages and other factors."
What you have just said, in effect, is: "Yeah it appears in a touchy-feely sort of way that some have improved, while a few others have remained about the same, so 'overall, it looks like an improvement' (your exact words)" ... and then having thought about your analysis some more, you felt obligated to post further to add words to the effect: "But this doesn't really mean anything, given how skewed the sample was."
Not only was the random sample skewed, it was a totally indeterminate and meaningless sample rate for an encyclopedia that now boasts however many millions of articles. If you know anything about statistics and probability sampling rates then you would have realized, without embarking on your recent exercise to indulge Jimbo, that in order to make any useful inferences about a sampled population, choosing an insignificant sampling rate is basically counter-productive. It is simply going to fool you into believing that your sampled results mean much more than they really do. That is, it's not going to be predictive of anything meaningful, no matter to what kind of population (in this particular case, all currently extant Wikipedia articles) that sampling is applied, because the likely error rate is going to be way too large.
Even if we allow Jimbo the grace of a much larger than normal margin of error in his choice of sample size (since it is meant to be a quick sanity check, frequently applied, rather than a one-shot prediction of who is going to win the upcoming election), sampling only ten random articles would only have had some merit if the encyclopedia was orders of magnitude smaller than it currently is. All the necessary formulae are in that linked article should you wish to perform the math yourself. In layman's terms, the exercise you just undertook is the equivalent of trying to predict the outcome of a general election in the United States by asking only half a dozen voters how they voted as they left the polling booth. Thus it was an exercise in futility before you even began it. Which is the conclusion you came to yourself the more you thought about it afterwards.
It was also what I meant with my "that's really scientific" remark, but I can hardly expect you or anyone else to infer all of the above from that single remark. However, that observation came out in that curt manner due to some other numpty having previous played the WP:TL;DR card who I was also trying to satisfy with my post. IMO the "Teal Deer" contribution to WP guidance is the biggest cause of confrontation on Wikipedia (and thus editors leaving) because anyone trying to have intelligent open discourse in order to achieve consensus can be simply closed down by someone else, who cannot provide a convincing counter-argument for anything themselves, by their repeatedly using it to try and silence any arguments they disagree with by simply declaring the more constructive contribution to be longer than a Tweet. No wonder most differences of opinion on Wikipedia never reach consensus as they are meant to, but end up in AN/I instead. — not really here discuss 02:06, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
I also forgot to add in my comment above, for such a sampling exercise to be meaningful, in addition to the sample being large enough you usually also require a control group reference population in order to make any sense of what your sampled data is telling you. I don't wish to turn this discussion into a Math 101 course so you will have to work that one out for yourself. In this particular case, Wikipedia is your friend (but that is not always the case). However, exactly that point had already been made by Peter, as I stated above, before you ever reached the conclusion you did yourself. Please go read Peter's post again. A standard reference work, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica, that Peter refers to would be the control group or reference population in this instance. Peter explains in his post that unless you choose some sort of reference point for apples-to-apples comparison then your random sample is going to be fairly useless - such as disambiguation pages incorrectly treated as articles or bios of people or heavy metal bands of dubious notability. If Jimbo had instead randomly selected ten articles from the EB (all of which are written and peer-reviewed by subject-matter experts) and asked, "OK, how does Wikipedia treat these same ten topics?" and then compared the Wikipedia articles with the corresponding EB ones based on some well-defined and mutually agreed upon definition of what constitutes "quality" then we might actually have the makings of a useful metric. All Jimbo has done is given you a pseudo-metric that looks and feels like it is more scientific / mathematical than it really is. It's the Wikipedia equivalent of a proof that all triangles are isosceles. — not really here discuss 02:42, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
In contrast with my earlier comment below, I would like to note that this exhibits real style. I mean, we've got nearly 50Kb of edits here in the past week (plus tens of Kb on other talk pages) and in the middle one finds sighing laments about WP:TL;DR. The care and craftsmanship applied is almost touching. --JBL (talk) 02:47, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Also of course the choice of a username echoing WP:NOTHERE is all class. --JBL (talk) 02:50, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for violating WP:AGF by making your puerile assumptions about the origins of my user name simply to post a personal attack. My user name has absolutely nothing to do with WP:NOTHERE (bit unfortunate that) but is instead a nodding reference to Paul Lake, plus also the fact that I left Wikipedia due to encounters with people like you but would infrequently post anonymously now and then to correct things. Interestingly, what I discovered (purely by accident) while posting anonymously is that others paid much more attention to just the edits being made (simply because they had nothing else to go on in order to make entirely invalid and almost libelous assumptions about the person that made them like you just did) such that they never led to any confrontation and were rarely challenged. I only re-registered with a user id. because I had to change my static IP address of some fourteen years or so standing, by which time I had a lengthy Talk page associated with it, and it just seemed easier to redirect to a user name than another IP address. I was reluctant to do that (hence my new user name) for the reasons you just validated. — not really here discuss 03:30, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Making the Wales method work

The wall of text by the editor who is not really here makes exactly one valid point. A sample size of 10 is not big enough to draw serious conclusions. Big deal, everybody knows that already. So the question arises "How could you make this method work to draw serious conclusions?"

I actually made three main points. One of the other ones was that Student's t is usually applicable in situations where sample sizes are extremely small relative to the population being sampled, which was most definitely the case for Jimbo's original process of taking only ten articles as a representative sample of a four? million article encyclopedia. I don't know if 400 is the right sample size; it depends on what error rate you seek and the current size of the encyclopedia, but a ~1/10,000 sample is definitely a big step in the right direction. It is the fact that you are now considering much larger sample sizes that makes my other point no longer pertinent, not because it wasn't valid. My third point was that in addition to comparing how Wikipedia is improving relative to itself, it should also measure how well it is doing at getting to where it needs to be - i.e., where the asymptote lies. It is misleading to say that an article has improved 300% if it has only improved from 1% to 4% of what most people would consider to be an adequately decent article. At least three other people have also expressed this same point in different ways. As for "walls of text" readers need look no further than the "Yet another method" section to see that a double standard is possibly being used here. — not really here discuss 21:25, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm sorry if I was too direct above, but it is a fact that when somebody who knows nothing about statistics talks to somebody who does the 1st person's lack of knowledge becomes obvious. The proper sample size most definitely does not "depend ... (on) the current size of the encyclopedia." For a test of proportions, one of the first tests you'd learn in intro to stats, all it depends on is the standard error you're willing to accept. For n= 100, the approximate s.e. is 5%, for n=400, the s.e. is 2.5%, for n=1,600, the s.e. is 1.25%, etc.. It's a general principle throughout stats that population size doesn't affect the required sample, which is the main reason that random sampling and statistics are useful. Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:28, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
Good. I stand corrected. But I'm glad that my original taking to task of Jimbo has inspired you to subsequently make all your productive inputs here. I neither have the time nor expertise in this area to pursue it further so I'm pleased that someone else has now taken the bull by the horns and is willing to run with it. Let's hope some or all the ideas that have been suggested below bear some fruit.
I'm also glad you clearly see that a disparity in statistical knowledge creates an issue when the person that knows less about it (not necessarily nothing) gets to disagree with a person that knows more. If it really cheesed you off then you now know how others might feel in comparable situations. To make useful inputs to Wikipedia you don't have to know anything about probability and statistics - any disputes in such an area of knowledge are going to be confined to the content of the articles that handle probability and statistics topics (or a discussion like the one here). OTOH, to make useful inputs to Wikipedia everyone has to use language, for both the edits to the article and for the discussion on the Talk pages. So if there is a simiar disparity in language skills, then the person that has the lesser language skills - such as logic, reasoning and comprehension - is going to cheese off the other person in exactly the manner you just felt. This disparity problem is a much, much bigger one than the comparable disparity of stats. skills because it affects every aspect of Wikipedia input and interaction, including all the discussions on the Talk pages to resolve contentious issues, not just the articles about probability and statistics (or any other specific area of the Wikipedia knowledge base). — not really here discuss 23:44, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
  • 1. you need to understand that this is just one way to evaluate the improvement of the encyclopedia. It could answer the question "Is the average article getting better?", but ignores completely how many articles there are.
  • 2. It would be nice to have some sort of measurement of article quality. Many measures are presumably related to article quality, e.g. size, number of editors editing in the last month or year, number of footnotes, number of tags on the page, and perhaps even the number of see-also links, or illustrations. But these don't really get to the heart of the matter. I wouldn't completely trust the stub, start, C, B, A, FA ratings. They generally seem out of date and inconsistently applied, and probably change in meaning over time. A subjective assessment of quality might be applied (say 1-10) but care would have to be taken to make sure different reviewers rate consistently.
  • 3. A sample size of 400 articles should be able to do the job, if you want to test for a 5% change in the proportion of improved articles. (Notice this doesn't depend on the number of articles in the encyclopedia, whether it's 10,000 or 10,000,000 articles)
  • 4. Since you want to measure the quality of articles, ditch the disambig pages, but leave in every other type of article, e.g. lists
  • 5. I can't see any reason that the random article function, which is actually pseudorandom, shouldn't be good enough. It wouldn't be good enough if for some reason it selected e.g. newer articles, or larger article more frequently. Anybody have any info on the random article function?
  • 6. One fly in the ointment is that deleted articles would not be sampled, so the "average article" from 1 or 5 years ago would be biased. Presumably, if our editors believed the encyclopedia was better off without the article, then the bias would work against finding improvement. The missing deleted articles were bad, and now that they're gone the encyclopedia is improved. I doubt the %'age of deleted article is high enough to effect any results however, and you never can tell for sure whether our editors delete good articles.

So it is definitely possible to make this method work, with just a couple quibbles as is usual. I'd suggest doing it over time, say 25 article each week. Then you'd have a large enough sample size to draw conclusions every 3 months, and then 4 samples per year to see how things change over time. Anybody interested? Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:27, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Very interested. One twist I'd like to add. Presumably we care a lot about improvements in quality in articles that people actually read, as well as improvements in quality in articles that are more obscure. It might be useful if the random selection of articles were weighted to article popularity.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 06:32, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
By Friday I'll set up a user page/sandbox, outlining my ideas. I'll bounce the basics off a few people before then. It would be a lot of work just doing one article, but I think it could be designed that it could be done in 30 minutes per article. The subjective quality rating would be the hard part, probably a rubric (rating guide) would have to be developed. The idea of selecting the most popular articles is good, but I only have some vague ideas now on how to do it. I'd have to see at least 5 qualified reviewers sign up before I'd commit to this. It's not a 1 person job. Perhaps call it WP:Random article. One thing I'd insist on, Jimmy Wales could not be a reviewer - people might think he is biased. Sorry Jimmy, you don't get to (have to) do the hard work of rating, but your suggestions on designing the rubric, work flow, etc. would be appreciated. Smallbones(smalltalk) 11:24, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Welcome to 2014, everyone. - 2001:558:1400:10:84B5:2235:9D3B:1BF5 (talk) 16:48, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Regarding weighting for popularity, one way is to exclude articles with fewer than a certain number of page views in the last 90 days. For the list of 10 pages previously given, here's what their page views were in the last 90 days, along with a very brief description of each page.
1. 25,686 – person
2. 594 – mostly people disambiguation page (dab)
3. 526 – musical band
4. 4,525 – plant
5. 345 – person
6. 866 – city, stub
7. 67 – a given name of people, stub
8. 507 – people dab
9. 321 – person
10. 460 – chemical, stub
--Bob K31416 (talk) 15:18, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Yes, just including articles with 90 day page views above x (say the 50th percentile for all articles) would get articles that a lot more people are interested in. Another, way would be to take articles over a specific length. This would increase the work of the random reviewers quite a bit. Stubs would be very easy to review, but longer articles would take much longer. Also, it then wouldn't make much sense to test if articles with higher page views, or articles with greater size, are positively related to quality - that's essentially in your assumptions.
This brings up the 500 lb. gorilla in the room. Bob's 10 random articles look incredibly weak in content. This might be true for a large percentage (40%?) of our articles. This type of exercise might just end up convincing folks that we need to delete a ton of articles. Some guesses here - we might look at articles with less than 100 page views per month, that have been stubs for over two years, that have less than three sources of any type, and are less than 40 words (all 4, not 1 out of 4), and find that 20% of our articles fit the description. My feeling is that we could probably delete 20% of our articles and lose only about 1% of our page views. I'm not saying I expect this to happen, but do please be prepared for what the data tells us. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:09, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Using a percentile to choose the cutoff seems like a good idea. Also note that there may be a correlation between page views and length of an article, i.e. people may be more likely to come back to view a longer article.
Personally, I wouldn't delete any of those articles because there's always the potential that someone may come by and decide to expand them, it's easier to expand an article than create one, and it's not as if it was a print encyclopedia where space is being taken up.
Just out of curiosity, I pushed the random article button another 10 times.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kattakkada_Assembly_Constituency
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_L._Stevens
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphoderus_bilineatus
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delvim_Fabiola_Bárcenas
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphiplica_knudseni
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stillwater_Range
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Swift_(politician)
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Awaria
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Cajal_body_specific_RNA_18
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STK25
--Bob K31416 (talk) 21:42, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Article size statistics can be found at [1]. From these statistics, these random article lists are expected to contain mostly stub or start size articles. (See the red and orange parts of the pie chart.) --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:34, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I went thru all of the 10 new articles nd my first impression was that they are quite a bit better that the previous ten. My second impression was that I must have been in a bad mood when I went thru the first 10. But still most below 100 page views a month, and pretty short. Definitely we need to do this in a systematic way. Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

If we had the following type of data for previous years, do you think that may indicate whether Wikipedia is getting better?
All rated articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top High Mid Low ??? Total
FA 1,558 2,448 2,375 1,894 180 8,455
FL 179 665 761 696 108 2,409
A 355 681 785 579 83 2,483
GA 3,166 7,191 14,519 19,011 1,732 45,619
B 16,575 32,174 53,107 65,611 20,528 187,995
C 16,557 53,110 132,376 296,771 84,451 583,265
Start 18,476 91,842 411,712 1,576,572 396,353 2,494,955
Stub 4,224 31,618 278,159 2,773,567 760,649 3,848,217
List 4,757 16,863 53,079 188,358 66,762 329,819
Assessed 65,847 236,592 946,873 4,923,059 1,330,846 7,503,217
Unassessed 120 485 1,251 19,242 425,922 447,020
Total 65,967 237,077 948,124 4,942,301 1,756,768 7,950,237
About this table
--Bob K31416 (talk) 05:25, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
You know Wikipedia pages have a history, right? ‑ iridescent 11:33, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Two points: first, I note the lower right entry is over 5 million, what is in this list that isn't in our article count? Second, picking up on Iridescent's point, it shouldn't be too hard to look at the table at selected points and provide a summary of changes - absolute increases in counts of higher quality items, plus a measure of relative changes- are we adding low quality faster than we are improving quality of older items?--S Philbrick(Talk) 12:55, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Using data from September 30, 2010 [2] and September 9, 2015 [3], I constructed the following table of article count for each quality rating.

Quality
2010 2015
FA 3,237 5,513
FL 1,626 1,988
A 670 1,509
GA 9,772 24,620
B 66,490 103,337
C 71,602 207,091
Start 631,690 1,316,024
Stub 1,621,445 2,728,973
List 54,967 178,726
Assessed 2,461,499 4,567,781
Unassessed 394,094 504,314
Total 2,855,593 5,072,095

In the table, article counts for each quality category significantly increased over the last 5 years. --Bob K31416 (talk) 20:42, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
On the average over the last five years, there is a net gain of 10 articles per day in the group consisting of Good Articles and above. --Bob K31416 (talk) 05:13, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Quality
2010 % 2010 total 2015 % 2015 total
FA 3,237 0.11% 5,513 0.11%
FL 1,626 0.06% 1,988 0.04%
A 670 0.02% 1,509 0.03%
GA 9,772 0.34% 24,620 0.49%
B 66,490 2.33% 103,337 2.04%
C 71,602 2.51% 207,091 4.08%
Start 631,690 22.12% 1,316,024 25.95%
Stub 1,621,445 56.78% 2,728,973 53.80%
List 54,967 1.92% 178,726 3.52%
Assessed 2,461,499 86.20% 4,567,781 90.06%
Unassessed 394,094 13.80% 504,314 9.94%
Total 2,855,593 100% 5,072,095 100%
I was bold and added the percentage columns. It's clear that the largest absolute numbers added are in the stub class, but the percentages are going down (from 56.78% stubs in 2010 to 53.80% in 2015). Which class did they go to? Almost all to "Start" and a few to "C". Note that the total percentages above "Start" were only 5.4% in 2010 and 6.8% in 2015. We've also been doing a better job in assessing articles (3.9% increase of total) and are creating relatively more lists (1.6% of total). Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:16, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Another method

I made a start earlier this year on this, using the methodology I mentioned above, i.e. take a standard reference work, in this case Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, randomly select articles from there, and compare with the corresponding WP article. See the small sample on the page I just linked to. The evidence to me seems compelling: WP compares very unfavourably to a traditionally produced, peer reviewed-by-specialists reference work. The objections I have received so far are mostly on the lines that my subject is a highly specialized one. Perhaps, but then educational content is educational content, no? Peter Damian (talk) 18:40, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

That doesn't indicate whether or not Wikipedia is getting better, which is the topic of this Talk secton. --Bob K31416 (talk) 19:32, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Well change it so that we look at the articles, using this sampling method, 5, or 10 years ago. In any case, some of the articles in the sample are so bad that it is hard to imagine them having been any worse. The point is to get an appropriate statistical sample. Random selection, which just gives you a lot of weird stubs, is a poor method. Peter Damian (talk) 19:38, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
The main problem I see is scaling up your method. How would you do it for math articles? How about articles on the history of eastern Europe? And then how to make sure that these separate analyses were comparable. Scaling up, of course, is a challenge for any method. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:47, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
It depends what the objective is. If simply to establish that in some areas, WP is not getting better, that would be a start. The WMF has trillions of $ to spend and quality improvement would be a useful place to spend it. If it can be shown that WP needs help in certain places, that would be helpful. Peter Damian (talk) 19:56, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
I made a start. “Abstract and concrete are classifications that denote whether a term describes an object with a physical referent or one with no physical referents.” This opening definition to Abstract and concrete was added on 13:53, 5 July 2013, i.e. comparatively recently. It actually makes no sense. So, Wikipedia is not getting better. Peter Damian (talk) 19:51, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
There is much in common between the two exercises. I'm thinking you'd take the same approach to each: Person A picks out two drafts to compare - one being the current version of Wikipedia, the other being either an old version or an external competitor. Persons B and C each receive one of the two drafts blindly, not being told where they come from (and implored not to peek!), and are asked to dissect each into a series of separate claims. After they have done this, they exchange the lists of claims and each decides if their own article makes a similar claim as the list they received, and return that yes-or-no feedback to the other party. Now we have a list of claims made by one article, the other, or both. You transmit each claim (including the sources from both articles) separately to a pool of volunteers D who are again blind to the source, who are called on to evaluate whether it is true or false. I picture this more as a scale-of-10 thing than a pass/fail, because it's not always that clear-cut. After each volunteer makes his call, he gets to look over the two articles and decide which presents a true fact more clearly, or checks whether the false statement is really made or was merely misinterpreted. Then somehow you work all that data together into a scoring system. However, that scoring system involves quite some philosophy in its own right! A longer article contains more claims than a shorter one - should it be scored higher? Well, common sense demands it, because if Wikipedia articles keep getting longer, that is a sign of progress. Yet an external publisher might have felt compelled to trim articles to fit the length of a book; any author knows it's harder to make writing short than to make it long, yet that indicates negative progress by this metric. A different dimension would be the average number of errors, and a third would be how well-written the same claims are in each article. As a Wikipedian I'm inclined to put the first dimension foremost - we simply want to have an expansive encyclopedia that covers everything, and so long as the error rate is not extraordinarily high, it doesn't matter that much to me if it is 5% or 1%. But others would doggedly define the quality solely in terms of the error rate, however small, without regard to whether we cover a subject in depth or not. Still others want readable text as a high priority, and then again ... readable to who, by what standard? I think the choice of philosophy in this scoring system largely determines, in advance, the outcome of the exercise. Wnt (talk) 21:10, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
This might work for philosophy, but in my main field of art history, where Wikipedia scores is in the articles that the standard work, Grove Dictionary of Art aka Oxford Art Online simply doesn't have. Despite being enormous (32,600 pages in ye olde print version), this is full of odd gaps - very few individual works, hardly any iconography - that Wikipedia covers far better. Also their short entries are by single authors, which sometimes leads them to neglect or entirely miss out one aspect of a subject. Also their links and search engine are pretty hopeless, and the layout of the articles (lacking good TOCs) unhelpful. When they have an article of reasonable length, and you have managed to find it, it is normally much better than WP, and perhaps worth the hefty subscription non-UK readers need to pay. Johnbod (talk) 15:16, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Action

See below for a table of changes over 10 years to the Action article. My view is that the changes are for the worse. The original article was clearly developed by a professional philosopher. The subsequent additions are confusing, and sometimes distort the flow of the original. For example,"Other events are less clearly defined as actions or not." in the original is a segue to the 'deciding to do ...' list. But the inserted "distractedly drumming ones fingers" is indeed a distraction.

03:55, 22 December 2005 11:32, 29 May 2015
An action, as philosophers use the term, is a certain kind of thing a person can do. An action is something which is done by an agent. In common speech, the term action is often used interchangeably with the term behavior. In the philosophy of action, the behavioural sciences, and the social sciences, however, a distinction is made: behavior is defined as automatic and reflexive activity, while action is defined as intentional, purposive, conscious and subjectively meaningful activity[citation needed].
Throwing a baseball, which involves intention and coordinated bodily movement is an action. Catching a cold is not usually considered an action, because it is something which happens to a person, not something done by them.


Thus, throwing a ball is an instance of action; it involves an intention, a goal, and a bodily movement guided by the agent. On the other hand, catching a cold is not considered an action because it is something which happens to a person, not something done by one.
Other events are less clearly defined as actions or not. Other events are less clearly defined as actions or not.
For instance, distractedly drumming ones fingers on the table seems to fall somewhere in the middle.
Deciding to do something might be considered an action by some, yet by others it is not an action if the decision is not carried out. Deciding to do something might be considered a mental action by some. However, others[who?] think it is not an action unless the decision is carried out.
Unsuccessfully trying to do something might also not be considered an action, since the intention was not completed. Believing, intending, and thinking might also be considered actions, yet because they refer to purely internal states, such a classification is not universally agreed upon. Unsuccessfully trying to do something might also not be considered an action for similar reasons (for e.g. lack of bodily movement). It is contentious whether believing, intending, and thinking are actions since they are mental events.
Some would prefer to define actions as involving bodily movement (see behaviorism). Some would prefer to define actions as requiring bodily movement (see behaviorism).
Even mere existence might be classified as an action by some.
The effects of actions might be considered actions, in certain situations. For example, poisoning a well is an action. The side-effects of actions are considered by some to be part of the action; in an example from Anscombe's manuscript Intention, pumping water can also be an instance of poisoning the inhabitants. This introduces a moral dimension to the discussion (see also Moral agency).
If the poisoned water resulted in a death, that death might be considered an action on the person who poisoned a well, whether classified as a single act or two acts. The classification of actions can become even less clear when the effect of the action is contrary to the intention, such as accidentally curing a person of an unknown disease while intending to kill them by poisoning the well. If the poisoned water resulted in a death, that death might be considered part of the action of the agent that pumped the water. Whether a side-effect is considered part of an action is especially unclear in cases in which the agent isn't aware of the possible side effects. For example, an agent that accidentally cures a person by administering a poison he was intending to kill him with.
A primary concern of philosophy of action is to demarcate actions from other similar phenomena. Other concerns include individuating actions from one another, explaining the relation between actions and their effects, and saying how an action is related the beliefs and desires which give rise to it, and the intentions with which it is performed (a subject called practical reason): A primary concern of philosophy of action is to analyze the nature of actions and distinguish them from similar phenomena. Other concerns include individuating actions, explaining the relationship between actions and their effects, explaining how an action is related to the beliefs and desires which cause and/or justify it (see practical reason), as well as examining the nature of agency.
Actions may or may not be considered to be caused by the reason for action (see determinism). If the reasons do not cause the actions, then they must explain action in some other sense. Actions are not usually considered to be done by inanimate objects, like the sun, which shines, but without intention. On the other hand, a human may still be considered to be acting without a specific intention. A primary concern is the nature of free will and whether actions are determined by the mental states that precede them (see determinism).
Some philosophers (e.g. Donald Davidson[1]) have argued that the mental states the agent invokes as justifying his action are physical states that cause the action. Problems have been raised for this view because the mental states seem to be reduce to mere physical causes. Their mental properties don't seem to be doing any work. If the reasons an agent cites as justifying his action, however, are not the cause of the action, they must explain the action in some other way or be causally impotent.
Action has been of concern to Western philosophers since Aristotle, who wrote about the subject in his Nicomachean Ethics. It is the theme of the Hindu epic Bhagavad Gita, in which the Sanskrit word karma epitomizes personal action. It has nearly always been bound up with Ethics, the study of what actions one ought to perform. Some of the most prominent comtemporary philosophers who have worked in it are Ludwig Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Anscombe, Donald Davidson, and Jennifer Hornsby.
Many branches of Buddhism reject the notion of agency in varying degrees. In these schools of thought there is action, but no agent.

Peter Damian (talk) 20:16, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Would you please add a third column with the parts which you think got better and worse with the reasons so we can see what you mean? 65.118.77.74 (talk) 23:57, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Reframing the question

To me the important question is not whether Wikipedia is improving (because surely it is), but rather where the asymptote lies. Is Wikipedia approaching the level of a high-quality general encyclopedia? When it comes to academic topics, in my view the answer is no. In my own domain of neuroscience at least, we have a few high-quality articles but lots of crappy ones, and over the past five years the situation has hardly changed at all. For what it's worth, I don't view this as meaning that Wikipedia is a failure, just that it is not strong in all areas and not likely to be any time soon. Looie496 (talk) 00:30, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

True. Even if Wikipedia has turned the corner and stopped losing net editors, the problem is that the existing number is too small to complete every article on every topic. The phase of exponential growth certainly illustrated that the project could have reached the number needed, but then (in 2007) deletionism, conflict, political strife, and excessive reverence for BLP at the expense of reality intervened. Basically, once Wikipedia became a respectable reference for some things, and sites like Google were pushing people toward it, it became something that people all over the world wanted to own, and then the environment became toxic enough to drive people away. So the politics of society choked it off just before it could reach its true potential. Wnt (talk) 00:37, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
This is a legitimate, albeit different question. One can test this, using an appropriate whose design is simple, although the execution isn't trivial. Choose a high quality general encyclopedia, select n articles at random, and see how the quality compares. I believe this is the approach done by some well-know studies comparing WP to EB.--S Philbrick(Talk) 01:04, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
I agree that for topics that I already know something about (and thus feel competent to judge), Wikipedia has not appreciably improved in the past 5 or 6 years. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
@Wnt: Please explain how "deletionism, conflict, political strife, and excessive reverence for BLP" hampers the improvement of the crappy neuroscience articles. --NeilN talk to me 02:31, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia attracted people when it was a collective project for the common good. When it becomes dominated by arcane wikilegal maneuvers, that drives off volunteers of all stripes. There have been plenty of editors who were doing good editing on technical articles, only to be keelhauled through an administrative proceeding over a small portion of their overall work that ran afoul of some vocal interest. More generally, the intrusion of such conflict turns everything into a fight, and imposes a consistently negative tone. No matter why editors are banned or driven off, their experiences have given Wikipedia a terrible reputation that is keeping its numbers of editors down. Why, just today I read another statement about this at Nature News: [4], "academics often feel too busy to get into some of the admittedly “petty discussions” that sometimes take place around Wikipedia edits." I didn't even look for that; it's just one of the sites I commonly page through. Wnt (talk) 13:30, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
You would be more convincing if you provided solid examples with your general answer to my specific question. Perhaps Sphilbrick can do so. Do you think "deletionism, conflict, political strife, and excessive reverence for BLP" hampers the improvement of the crappy neuroscience articles? --NeilN talk to me 14:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
I don't want to dredge up anybody's case here. I think we all know we've lost many good technical editors because of overblown objections and obstructionism. You need only look at any list of the most prolific editors to see how many have been stricken off of it or stopped contributing on account of some teapot tempest. Wnt (talk) 13:17, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
My observation would be that at the heart of the conflict and confrontation issue being discussed in this particular subsection is the rather puerile nature of the question NeilN jumped into the middle of the conversation to ask, and the way in which it was framed. Neil's question was pointless and unconstructive. It simply put words into Wnt's mouth that he never said in order to try to ... well what? Deny the obvious? Obstruct the conversation because he didn't like where it was heading? Looie496 never stated that some neuroscience articles were crappy due to the four conditions Wnt mentioned; he merely made the observation that from his own perspective and expertise that some were not so good. End of. Neither was Wnt offering up his summary of events as the specific explanation for why neuroscience articles were crappy; instead he was constructively building on Looie's comments and providing an explanation why articles in general have suffered since Wikipedia's peak year of productivity and positive culture in 2007.
To conflate those two separate concepts the way Neil did simply demonstrates abysmal reading comprehension. To compound his error by then zealously challenging Wnt to justify a statement he never made was unnecessarily confrontational. Wnt is not on trial here and Neil needs to stop pretending he is a public prosecutor. Nevertheless, Wnt took Neil's false challenge in good grace and expounded very eloquently on his original statement. That should have been the end of the matter. Neil's further zealous pursuit of a conflated issue that exists solely in his own head is totally out of order. That is exactly the sort of situation that drives intellectual participants away. If editors get burnt out due to having to endlessly debate about the contents of certain articles over and over then they most certainly are going to get burnt out due to having to endlessly defend themselves for words they never even said. Neuroscientists, doctors, philosophers, whoever, have more constructive things to do with their lives than argue with someone whose reading comprehension is worse than that of most 12 year olds. — not really here discuss 17:35, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
You're talking about making puerile comments and putting words into other editors' mouths? You? You might want to reread some of your earlier comments (some of which you tried to delete). Looie496 put forth observations on a specific set of articles. Wnt offered explanations ("deletionism, conflict, political strife, and excessive reverence for BLP") I found largely unconvincing. I then asked if Sphilbrick (should have been Looie496, sorry) agreed with Wnt. Pretty simple. Two rather short comments when compared to your walls of text and random disparaging comments should have people wondering who's doing the "endless debating". --NeilN talk to me 01:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
Sigh. Yes, I was removing redacted text. The redaction to the text was that I had retracted words by deleting them. So I was deleting deleted text as part of a tidy-up. There is nothing sinister in that as you are claiming. You only wanted the text retained so you could post your "facile ... rant" remark. A paragraph of text is neither a rant nor a wall of text. Which part of this advice in the WP:TL;DR essay do you not understand? ...
Maintain civility Being too quick to pointedly mention this essay in an exchange with a wordy author will come across as dismissive and rude ... Avoid ad hominems. Substituting a flippant "tl;dr" for reasoned response and cordiality stoops to ridicule and amounts to thought-terminating cliché. Just as one cannot prove through verbosity, neither can they wielding a four letter acronym. When illumination, patience, and wisdom are called for, answer with them.
I was indeed confused by the "Sphilbrick" reference but I don't see that error as being any different than any of your other misunderstandings or misuse of the English language. Such as your still being unconvinced that the four conditions Wnt mentioned hampered the development of the crappy neuroscience articles ... which part of the word conflate do you not understand? Nobody has claimed that "deletionism, conflict, political strife, and excessive reverence for BLP" hampered the growth of the neuroscience articles; only YOU have claimed that because you are the only person to have conflated those two separate statements together. — not really here discuss 05:50, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
Actually I kind of did claim that, as I explained above. It perhaps isn't the best thought-out phrase, but the common thread I was digging at there is the idea of "editorial judgment". This is what is invoked when things are omitted for BLP, or deleted as "cruft", or when the two sides of a political issue are "balanced" by taking out "excessive" documentation of one side's position. There are people on Wikipedia who like to make out that it is a high-minded writing and publishing enterprise where the artiste in charge carefully decides what ought and ought not be mentioned in order to present the most perfectly balanced article that covers each aspect of a topic just to the right extent. But that can't happen. First, who decides who is the editor in chief, whose grand plan orders all the other little minions around and tells them what part of an article to work on and what not to cite there? And of course in practice, we see what happens - people muscle in, impose their own "editorial judgment" based on the strength of their beliefs ---- or for pay. So I prefer to think of Wikipedia editors more as migrant laborers putting bushels of fruit in the back of a truck. (It doesn't require expertise, only a passing interest in the topic. Why, I just started cometary knot recently over a couple of hours, without knowing the difference between a planetary nebula and an H II region. Just one sentence before another, learning things for the first time and putting them in not five minutes later. I'd say I didn't do as good a job as an expert would, but you should see the other articles on photoevaporation flows!) Now you can say that abandoning editorial judgment as a concept makes for less artful writing, but I would prefer to view it as more honest. In any case, the lesson I take from Orangemoody is that editorial judgment will be abused. Wnt (talk) 11:43, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Yet another method

NRHP Net Quality Rating (dark red is good, dark blue is bad, pale is in between)
Percent of sites illustrated

The inclusion of the table and graph above jogged my memory that there is another method currently in use on Wikipedia to judge "quality" and coverage in a specific area. I put "quality" in quotes because many people might think the measure doesn't go to the heart of the matter. Rather it measures things like "does a subject we know should have an article, actually have one?" "Does it have a photo?" "Is there more than one source cited?" "Does the talk page have the appropriate project tag?" Not the measure of quality a lot of people might like, but certainly some sort of quality indicator. This "Net Quality Rating" (NQR) Is calculated every week by bot for the entire project (US), by state and by county. It could even be calculated for individual articles, but AFAIK nobody does. By this measure project quality has increased from 33.3% in January 2014 to 44.2% as of yesterday.

The project is WP:NRHP which covers historic buildings and sites listed by the National Register of Historic Places (part of the US Park Service). In total there are 90,000+ sites listed. We have 66,000+ articles (60.9% of sites + county tables + misc). These articles make up well over 1% of the number of articles on en:Wikipedia, with many on other language versions as well (e.g. in German where I think they have county tables and articles on about half the sites). Go to Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress for all the numbers you'd ever want plus a couple more graphs. Go to the article history to see how this has progressed over the last few years.

As I've said, this type of quality measurement is not for everybody, but let me give you a subjective quality assessment for the whole project. There are only 3 or 4 sites on the web that even pretend to give access to info on a large portion of NRHP sites. NRHP focus - the federal government site, Wikipedia, and a few commercial sites. The commercial sites, just repackage a government database, summarize a small amount of government text without the help of humans, and update once or twice a year. Not really worth considering IMHO.

The government site has a very clumsy interface, is down much of the time, and if you are lucky will give you access to a bureaucratic, and jargon-filled academic form (the nomination) dated to the time the site was first listed. There's very little updating except for new listings, e.g. if a building burned down you may not be able to tell that from Focus for decades (literally). Most frustrating is that you'll find that for many states you have to go to state websites to get the nomination, but Focus won't even tell you that. The state website are often inferior to Focus. So if a general interest reader who knows the name and location of the site goes to Focus, I'll estimate the following: he or she will spend 15-60 minutes on the site, and get the bureaucratic nomination form about 25% of the time.

If the same general reader, who has a general knowledge of how to navigate in Wikipedia, searches here it will take him or her 15-60 seconds to find the site's article, 60% of the time they will find at least a couple of information-packed sentence about the site, and an infobox, sometimes with a direct link to the nomination form (!), sometimes they'll find much, much more. Also, even if the site doesn't have an article, summary info (100% of the time) and a photo (72% of the time) will be available in the county list. If the reader is not familiar with Wikipedia navigation it may take them 1- 5 minutes to find all this. In short, for the general reader, Wikipedia is head and shoulders better than anything on the internet or anywhere else, for finding information on NRHP sites. And yes, we are improving. More later. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:51, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Please excuse me if I got carried away above. The point is that, either via mechanical methods or via personal impressions, we can evaluate whether Wikipedia is improving. In at least the NRHP area, we are.
National Register of Historic Places pages by quality and importance
Importance→
Quality↓ 		 Top   High   Mid   Low   Related   ???  Total
FA 1 23 11 45 3 0 83
GA 3 79 60 341 8 0 491
B 10 231 132 845 44 0 1,262
C 10 388 262 2,425 97 1 3,183
Start 9 2,172 1,141 21,998 461 20 25,802
Stub 0 53 745 42,962 517 0 44,277
Total
(articles only) 		33 2,946 2,351 68,618 1,130 21 75,100
FL 0 3 0 3 0 0 6
List 2 115 2,883 385 63 0 3,449
Unassessed 0 0 0 0 0 3 3
Total 35 3,081 5,259 69,300 1,206 24 92,291
Percent assessed
Quality 100.00%
Importance 99.97%

Click here for a bot-updated list (i.e. not real-time) that also includes stats about Category-, Disambig-, File-, Redirect-, Template-, and NA-Class articles.

Can other projects/areas do something similar? Absolutely. The table above can be generated for any individual project AFAIK, so at least some summary measure can be generated from that. WP:NRHP is lucky to have an official list of articles that we should have, but I don't see why other projects couldn't do something similar, e.g. go to the "Encyclopedia of Paleontology" and copy out the names of all articles that should be in Wikipedia (likely not a copyright problem), then see how long it takes to get there. Maybe even make a list of all articles that should have illustrations in the area. You might be able to get things like number of references, page length, page views, stub-FA rating for each article from a bot (somebody should be working on this). I'll repeat that I don't like the stub-FA rating very much - it is seldom reviewed and inconsistently applied - but it is a type of quality rating..
The NRHP method above is essentially a census - we try to look at each article. Censuses have their advantages, but in general doing something as complicated as a quality rating can be done about as well in less time with a random sampling method. To answer Bob's question, we don't really need to get a quality rating for all 5,000,000 or so articles. 400 should do it just fine, unless you want to do detailed analyses of specific subject areas. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:57, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
One of the problems of stats is that the rarer something is the larger the sample size you need to test it. 400 articles would be a good sample size to work with to answer a question such as are we increasing the proportion of articles with references, and the subproportion within that of articles with references we would regard as independent and reliable. But our normal measurements of quality don't just go up to 11, they go up to FA standard, and less than one in 400 Wikipedia articles are assessed at FA standard, so a sample size of 400 should really treat FAs as an excluded outlier. ϢereSpielChequers 12:42, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

And from a different angle

I don't dispute that Peter Damian is aware of topics where Wikipedia is not improving or even deteriorating, and Smallbones is aware of topics where quality is improving. But we all know that a significant proportion of content creators have particular areas of interest, and therefore progress or even regression is going to be very variable by topic according to the interests skills and POV of our currently active editing community. It could just be that each year we add another year to the tally of years that wikipedia covers pretty well, and everything else is a bit complex to measure. So when it comes to overall quality I would be inclined to look for indicators that cut across multiple topic areas. On the crudest scale, I patrol Wikipedia for certain easily confused words that a non lycanthropic spellchecker would regard as OK, public spelled without the l, possess without the final s and several others. I know that on that very specialised quality test Wikipedia is tending to improve, with occasional relapses when the bot writers I work with retire. But overall as I've got on top of particular words I've added more, to the chagrin of some sports fans who regard the shouty sweary guy on the touchline as interfering in the chain of command from the fans to the players, I recently secularised quite a few mangers to managers. Of course if a typo becomes rarer I don't know whether that means someone who used to make that typo has now learned the difference between calvary and cavalry, or they've just left; And for every additional typo that I now patrol there could be another gnome retiring. But in combination with the recent increases in the number of very active editors I think of these as positive indicators of quality.

Other possible indicators of quality would be to measure how the number of citations from Wikipedia articles to various reliable sources changes over time, or the proportion of articles with images, or the quality of those images. A few months ago I had a note from our Wikipedian in Residence in York that all the photos I'd taken when he'd shown me round the museum he is a resident at had now been replaced in all the articles that used them by studio quality images from the museum, a fair and neutral observer, i.e. pretty much anyone other than myself, would consider that a clear improvement in quality.

My own instinct would be to put this on its head, and think of the areas that we would like to prioritise for quality improvement and find ways to measure that. If the theory is true that people focus on the that which is measured then "percentage of citations that are to a reliable source" might be a good metric. If we could agree what reading age Wikipedia should be written for, then percentage of content that is understandable by someone of that reading age would be good. Perhaps we could hire some academics to do random checks each year and assess how we are progressing in terms of gender neutral coverage and language. ϢereSpielChequers 12:42, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

There are some good ideas here from @WereSpielChequers:. Specialized measures of quality, perhaps monitored by projects, would be a very good idea. Getting a random sample of articles for a specific category may be a bit difficult. There is template randomincategory I think, that sorta does this, but gets stuck on subcategories. Maybe somebody could come up with a tool that randomly selects articles in a category and all its sub- and sub-sub-categories. That would certainly help specific projects. Prioritizing specific measures that you want to improve is a great idea, but faces a problem with mass measurement when you put in "from reliable sources" - since what is a reliable source in different context is not immediately obvious (to a computer). So that type of measure would be limited to hand gathered samples, which make it pretty limited in scope.
Something like "the number of images in an article" is pretty easy to gather (even by hand since no judgement is involved) and likely could be done by bot. I didn't realize it until looking at the 2 samples given above - but photos are very rare in articles - perhaps 1 in those 20 sampled! I'm starting to think that most Wikipedians edit and write in a very limited range of articles. Sure we run into stubs all the time, but over half our articles are stubs. About 50% of the articles I work with have images, not 5% as seems more typical in all our articles. Almost all of the sampled articles have sources and links below what I thought was normal. So maybe regular editors are just living in a very narrow part of Wikipedia, and we don't know what is really going on with the rest of it. Random sampling would certainly help this problem. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:08, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

As requested above, a third column added to show how the changes to Action_(philosophy) have left it for the worse. It follows a pattern I have commented on elsewhere, e.g. here. Articles are imported from public domain reference works or, as in the case of Action_(philosophy), are written by specialists. Then they are mangled by well-intentioned but incompetent amateurs.

Werespiel writes " a significant proportion of content creators have particular areas of interest, and therefore progress or even regression is going to be very variable by topic according to the interests skills and POV of our currently active editing community". Well true, but there is a pattern here. Areas of interest tend to reflect general areas of public interest. Example, I look up the Billboard top 100, and go for the first act I have never heard of, which is most of them, but the first is The Weeknd. Right, never heard of them, but I knew that there would be an article on them. Indeed, there has been an article since 29 March 2011, not long after the act become known. By contrast, articles of more academic interest tend to languish. I think we all know this. I am not saying that articles on pop culture shouldn't be there – they are a fantastically important barometer of modern culture and Wikipedia for that reason will be of interest to historians in the far distant future. I am just saying there is a pattern. In my area of specialism there is a need for accurate and balanced articles which are less complex than the Stanford Encyclopedia articles, and which are addressed to a general audience. That's what knowledge is about. How are we going to attract more editors who can help develop these?

The current WMF strategy of targeting the entire internet population is not a good one in my view. It simply attracts well-intentioned vandalism, if that makes sense.


03:55, 22 December 2005 11:32, 29 May 2015 Comment
An action, as philosophers use the term, is a certain kind of thing a person can do. An action is something which is done by an agent.


The first definition is better. The second is clearly circular. The first at least classifies action as a species of the genus ‘things a person can do’.
In common speech, the term action is often used interchangeably with the term behavior. In the philosophy of action, the behavioural sciences, and the social sciences, however, a distinction is made: behavior is defined as automatic and reflexive activity, while action is defined as intentional, purposive, conscious and subjectively meaningful activity[citation needed]. I don’t know where this claimed distinction between ‘behaviour’ and ‘action’ is sourced from. Weirdly, the person who made the edit, (16:34, 8 December 2014) added the ‘citation needed’ tag at the same time. I don’t believe it is correct. The SEP article treats them as synonymous. They aren’t, but the difference is not between being ‘automatic and reflexive’, whatever that means. What is ‘subjectively meaningful activity’? The editor had a short contribution history, and clearly no one checked what they were doing.
Throwing a baseball, which involves intention and coordinated bodily movement is an action. Catching a cold is not usually considered an action, because it is something which happens to a person, not something done by them.


Thus, throwing a ball is an instance of action; it involves an intention, a goal, and a bodily movement guided by the agent. On the other hand, catching a cold is not considered an action because it is something which happens to a person, not something done by one.
Other events are less clearly defined as actions or not. Other events are less clearly defined as actions or not.
For instance, distractedly drumming ones fingers on the table seems to fall somewhere in the middle. As pointed out above, this is not helpful, and disturbs the transition to the list that immediately follows.
Deciding to do something might be considered an action by some, yet by others it is not an action if the decision is not carried out. Deciding to do something might be considered a mental action by some. However, others[who?] think it is not an action unless the decision is carried out. Clearly a citation is still needed.
Unsuccessfully trying to do something might also not be considered an action, since the intention was not completed. Believing, intending, and thinking might also be considered actions, yet because they refer to purely internal states, such a classification is not universally agreed upon. Unsuccessfully trying to do something might also not be considered an action for similar reasons (for e.g. lack of bodily movement). It is contentious whether believing, intending, and thinking are actions since they are mental events.
Some would prefer to define actions as involving bodily movement (see behaviorism). Some would prefer to define actions as requiring bodily movement (see behaviorism).
Even mere existence might be classified as an action by some. This got removed at some point. Clearly a citation was needed.
The effects of actions might be considered actions, in certain situations. For example, poisoning a well is an action. The side-effects of actions are considered by some to be part of the action; in an example from Anscombe's manuscript Intention, pumping water can also be an instance of poisoning the inhabitants. This introduces a moral dimension to the discussion (see also Moral agency). ‘Anscombe’s manuscript Intention’ is clumsy. There is no proper citation. Again, this disrupts the neat flow of the original.
If the poisoned water resulted in a death, that death might be considered an action on the person who poisoned a well, whether classified as a single act or two acts. The classification of actions can become even less clear when the effect of the action is contrary to the intention, such as accidentally curing a person of an unknown disease while intending to kill them by poisoning the well. If the poisoned water resulted in a death, that death might be considered part of the action of the agent that pumped the water. Whether a side-effect is considered part of an action is especially unclear in cases in which the agent isn't aware of the possible side effects. For example, an agent that accidentally cures a person by administering a poison he was intending to kill him with. The original is more elegantly and clearly written. The last sentence of the later version lacks a main verb (and so is not in fact a sentence).
A primary concern of philosophy of action is to demarcate actions from other similar phenomena. Other concerns include individuating actions from one another, explaining the relation between actions and their effects, and saying how an action is related the beliefs and desires which give rise to it, and the intentions with which it is performed (a subject called practical reason): A primary concern of philosophy of action is to analyze the nature of actions and distinguish them from similar phenomena. Other concerns include individuating actions, explaining the relationship between actions and their effects, explaining how an action is related to the beliefs and desires which cause and/or justify it (see practical reason), as well as examining the nature of agency. The later version omits the important ‘demarcate’.
Actions may or may not be considered to be caused by the reason for action (see determinism). A primary concern is the nature of free will and whether actions are determined by the mental states that precede them (see determinism).
If the reasons do not cause the actions, then they must explain action in some other sense. Inexplicably deleted.
Actions are not usually considered to be done by inanimate objects, like the sun, which shines, but without intention. On the other hand, a human may still be considered to be acting without a specific intention. Inexplicably deleted.
Some philosophers (e.g. Donald Davidson[1]) have argued that the mental states the agent invokes as justifying his action are physical states that cause the action. Problems have been raised for this view because the mental states seem to be reduce to mere physical causes. Their mental properties don't seem to be doing any work. If the reasons an agent cites as justifying his action, however, are not the cause of the action, they must explain the action in some other way or be causally impotent. Clumsily written.
Action has been of concern to Western philosophers since Aristotle, who wrote about the subject in his Nicomachean Ethics. It is the theme of the Hindu epic Bhagavad Gita, in which the Sanskrit word karma epitomizes personal action. It has nearly always been bound up with Ethics, the study of what actions one ought to perform. Some of the most prominent comtemporary philosophers who have worked in it are Ludwig Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Anscombe, Donald Davidson, and Jennifer Hornsby. Inexplicably deleted.
Many branches of Buddhism reject the notion of agency in varying degrees. In these schools of thought there is action, but no agent. Inexplicably deleted.

Peter Damian (talk) 09:07, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Dear Peter, I wouldn't agree that our outreach programs simply target the whole of the Internet, at least not nowadays. To my knowledge our three biggest targeted outreach programs are GLAM, education, and Wiki Loves Monuments. None have yet got to the point of competing with simply encouraging readers to edit, but all are targeted at improving quality. Wiki Loves Monuments is a clear success in that it has brought some very high quality photographers to commons, the other two programs both have the potential to bring high quality contributions, though education did have some teething problems with undergraduates committing plagiarism. All three of these programs ultimately rely on the WMF for money, so things are happening, though in many areas we are still trying to find what really works well. (Disclosure, I used to work for a chapter in GLAM outreach). ϢereSpielChequers 09:27, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Who Has Your Back?

The Wikimedia foundation was awarded five out of five stars in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's 2015 Who Has Your Back? report.

"Wikimedia earns five stars in this year’s Who Has Your Back report. This is Wikimedia’s second year in the report, and it has adopted all of the best practices we’ve identified as part of this report. We commend Wikimedia for its strong stance regarding user rights, transparency, and privacy." --EFF

More details here. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:52, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Let's hope, after the material in the section above is resolved, they can say the same again next year. John Carter (talk) 20:03, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

IP appears when logging out

Hello, I have noticed when I went to one article, it shown an IP address (I.e., 75.107.21.141, and geolocated to Snead, FL), but however, CentralAuth didn't say it was registered. I am uncertain If I have accidentally clicked on the submit button on an article's edit page, because I registered in 2013 and I just noticed it today, so the IP should have been hidden. Racer-Ωmegα 20:23, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

What's better and what's worse?

What's gotten better and what's gotten worse about the English Wikipedia since I started editing in 2006 (with uncharacteristic brevity):

  • Better:
    • Increased numbers of articles, reflecting greater coverage of a broad variety of topics.
    • Increased overall amount of content (numbers of articles plus content within individual articles).
    • Increased sensitivity to the importance of the BLP policy and how our articles can affect their subjects.
    • Increased sensitivity to copyright, plagiarism, and related issues.
    • Increased scrutiny of administrator and functionary actions where warranted.
    • Increased receptiveness to constructive criticism.
  • Worse, or at least widely believed to be so:
    • Higher barriers to entry—are we as friendly to newcomers, even those who make mistakes, as we should be?
    • Increased complexity of the rule-set (Pundit is the expert on this, I believe)—lots of individual changes, good in themselves, but cumulating to just too many policies and guidelines to follow?
    • High rates of editor and administrator turnover and burnout (maybe not actually worse than years ago, but certainly not better).
    • Decreased numbers of new editors, and of new highly active editors.
    • Increased backlogs caused by the above.
    • Increased air of overall contentiousness, or so it seems to me, though of course it depends on where one spends wikitime.
    • Decreased collaborative spirit, as perhaps reflected in the number of moribund wikiprojects and the like.
  • Disputed as to whether worse or better:
    • Overall quality of content (see discussion above, or Fram's upcoming piece in the Signpost).
    • How well are we actually improving BLP compliance and addressing similar issues, beyond the most blatant violations, as opposed to just talking more about them?
    • Effectiveness of dispute-resolution processes (not just the formal ones, but how day-to-day issues actually get resolved, other than by someone just giving up and wandering off).
    • The lack of formal governance and coordinated leadership—in the current state of Wikipedia, is that a bug or a feature?

Thoughts welcome from JW and others. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

"High rates of editor and administrator turnover and burnout". If you mean rates in the relative sense, as in fraction of administrators that retire per year, then this is false. Annual retention percentages for both very active users and admins have improved. However, the creation rates for admins have plummeted and that for active editors has also fallen, with the net effect that both groups have shrunk over time. Dragons flight (talk) 20:11, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
It certainly isn't going to improve in terms of creating new admins, at least not as long as every proposal to make it easier to remove admins is defeated by the obstinate attitude of the admin corps. They can't have it both ways. If they want more admins, they are going to need to make it easier to remove the ones who aren't working out. Coretheapple (talk) 20:30, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
Well, in 2015 alone, the average Admin attrition rate in 2015 has been about about 3–4 per month. So we are definitely losing Admins in a net sense. Now I can't comment on the "attrition rate" of truly "active" Admins, because I haven't looked at those numbers (yet...). --IJBall (contribs • talk) 04:04, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Is the increased number of articles necessarily a positive? Personally I think it would be better to see higher quality articles than an excess of stubs or poorly sourced current events (via blogs and op-eds that shouldn't be dictating how an encyclopedia article is written). WP:NOTNEWS is a joke of a policy when we have a front page with an "In the News" section. Instead of looking at how events will be viewed 10 years from now, we've become no better than the mainstream media in trying to get the information out as fast as possible so we can cite our favorite Huffington Post blogger for their "expert" analysis. Muscat Hoe (talk) 21:18, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Re "Is the increased number of articles necessarily a positive? Personally I think it would be better to see higher quality articles..." – On the average over the last five years, I found that there is a net gain of 10 articles per day in the group consisting of Good Articles and above. --Bob K31416 (talk) 23:45, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
In general we put far too much effort into adding new articles (which now mostly get tiny views) and far too little into improving existing articles (many of which get large numbers of views but are terrible and have hardly improved for years). Johnbod (talk) 23:51, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
Spot on. Peter Damian (talk) 09:24, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Re existing articles with large views that need improvement, list a few here and I'll take a look and maybe edit a little. --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:42, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
There are thousands - look at Category:Lists of popular pages by WikiProject for any project you like, & select by rated class & importance. Let's assume for now that these ratings are reasonable. Johnbod (talk) 03:46, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
+1 for Johnbod. We're drowning in trivia. GNG needs a rethink and the topic-based notability guidelines should by and large be binned. - Sitush (talk) 00:29, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Why? If anything, the notability guidelines should be relaxed. One independent RS should be enough, and no bias against "local sources". If we have articles that no one wants sitting around, then at worst no one will read them. However, if we get rid of articles that others want, then we fail the readers. Wikipedia is not paper, and there is a search function, so they don't make traditional encyclopedia articles harder to find. This is supposed to be the sum of all human knowledge, why should we insist on such rigid constraints as traditional encyclopedias? --Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 01:17, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
I've told you why, ie: trivia. Just because we can does not mean we should. Try keeping on top of the voluminous rubbish relating to India and Pakistan, then tell me that we should relax GNG. I can find several reliable sources about me but I guarantee you that no-one else is interested. With one RS we effectively open ourselves up to hundreds of thousands of autobiographical articles, for example. - Sitush (talk) 11:16, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not the entire Internet Peter Damian (talk) 12:30, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Everything is trivia to those who are not interested in it. You say hundreds of thousands like it's a bad thing, but if they're neutrally written, properly formatted, and reflect that reliable source, then why not? I feel that the project is limiting its potential by limiting itself to traditional encyclopedia topics when it could be so much more. --Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 11:27, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Yet the same couple/few thousand editors will have to watch all of those newly "notable" biographies for BLP violations and the newly "notable" companies and products for advertorial spam. You say "if they're neutrally written, properly formatted, and reflect that reliable source, then why not?" like that is how most currently non-notable articles are now written. Such is not the case nor is it likely ever to be as long as there is self-promotion in the world. Please come up with a way to get all of those newly notable articles to comply with our policies before saying we should open the floodgates and drown the editors who try to keep Wikipedia from turning into a promotional libel fest. Until then strong GNG is all we have. JbhTalk 11:59, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Deletion is definitely not a method of removing promotional writing. That's what normal editing is for. Most genuine spam falls under either A7 or G11. The rest is good-faith content that may be written in a slightly positive tone. That's better than nothing if you're looking for information about that person/company. --Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 12:03, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Deletion is not cleanup if the topic passes notability. We do not have enough editors to clean up what we have and what comes in every day. Promotion is, arguably, not as bad as the BLP issues though. Every one of those must be watched and kept clean.

Just for one example think of the problems if every local politician running for election had a BLP here. Local elections are nasty enough when they just have the local paper to print malicious things and that is when there is an editorial gatekeeper who is subject to whatever the local libel laws are. What happens to the level of potential harm to people when those claims are given a world stage that is the first search result and there are no such constraints except volunteer editors and the suggestion to 'clean up' every article on every local candidate. Now we can just delete them, maybe 30 min for a good BEFORE vs initial clean up which will at best give a perma-stub and the hours or time to monitor the article and deal with the probable reinsertion of the BLP violating material.

Keeping BLP violations out of the encyclopedia is, as I understand it, a pretty big deal and it is not better to have an article that is 'only a little malicious and disparaging'. Nothing is definitely better in that case. I would also argue nothing is also better than an article filled with a bunch of false claims because there are no reliable sources to verify them. Since that is likely what will be in the encyclopedia after the initial new page patrol unless someone happens on the article by chance or some time sucking drama ends up at a noticeboard. Ideals are great, they tell us where we should aim but ideals not tempered with a good dose of practicality is Utopian and that has, to date, never worked out well. JbhTalk 12:45, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Lack of notability is not the only reason for deletion. Borderline notability combined with clear promotionalism is an equally good reason. Small variations to the notability standard either way do not fundamentally harm the encycopedia, but accepting articles that are part of a promotional campaign causes great damage. Once we become a vehicle for promotion, we're useless as an encycopedia. At this point, I would say it's the major threat to the value of the project. DGG ( talk ) 21:17, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Yes but the fact that they are part of a promotional campaign makes such articles hard to get rid of. Even one advocate thereof can muddy up the waters, pepper the AfD page with all kind of bogus arguments and fillibustering, and rescue absolute crap. This is true for both paid and unpaid advocates; the distinction is not always pertinent. Coretheapple (talk) 16:51, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. sovereign°sentinel (contribs) 18:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

If instead of spending all the time and energy you just put into nominating that article for AfD, subsequently coming here to publicize that AfD nomination, and then retracting it again once you saw the jig was up, you could instead have sourced and expanded it yourself, and still had time left over to watch a couple of reruns of M*A*S*H. Just sayin', that's all. But congratulations on taking the normal controversial "should I revert unsourced material or just add a 'citation needed' tag" to a whole new level ... now it's should I add a 'cn', revert, or nominate the whole shebang for AfD and bitch about it on JW's Talk page. I guess someone will next have to go and update the WP:BRD and WP:SOFIXIT guidance to include your new innovative approach. — not really here discuss 03:53, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Not really here, if you're just going to be a jerk to people, then it's possibly time for you to really be gone, ok? Geez. The facts don't really fit your criticism here. The notice that appears above is automated when people use TW to nominate something for deletion - I was notified in a routine manner because I'm the one who started the article way back when.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:14, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Sheesh, I already knew that. I was merely exaggerating a little in order to make a point. I'll go and amend the text next so as to make you happy; the amount of time left over was probably only sufficient to watch one rerun of M*A*S*H anyway. My bad! The point I was trying to make (with some humor) was that it's my personal belief that in many cases where editors nominate an article for AfD, if they first tried some basic steps to improve the article they might find they could fix it relatively quicker and easier and thus eliminate the need for the AfD in the first place.
If you read my "comment/question" re stubs on the actual AfD you can see that at that juncture I was just reading and responding to the AfD and had no intention of touching the article myself (I was leaving that to others). When I later saw that the AfD had been closed only a few minutes after my own vote because the nominator claimed that, although he had originally believed the subject matter not to be sufficiently notable, he had reversed that decision once he had seen the sources posted by the earlier AfD voters, I decided to investigate exactly how much effort it would have taken him to have resolved that matter for himself BEFORE creating an unnecessary AfD nomination.
Consequently, I started Googling around and in less than a minute or two I had found a few extra sources in addition to the references mentioned by the earlier AfD votes. So as not to waste the fruits of my own efforts I returned to the article and made a few edits to add more sources and lengthen the article to the point where I felt I could safely remove the "stub" tag ...
What this exercise taught me was that the AfD nominator could indeed have done everything I ended up doing almost as easily as just slapping an AfD notice on the article, which is why I posted the comment I did. Yeah, you're right, it probably would have still taken him a bit more time to go the route I did rather than do the AfD nomination (because, as you say, that's pretty automated) but, at the end of the day, the purpose of Wikipedia is to build an online reference work, and IMHO arbitrarily deleting articles out of languor or ennui seems to be somewhat counter-productive to achieving that goal.
However, going back to the article to get that diff above I now see that my contribution to it on Friday night has since inspired a whole slew of other edits over the weekend that have turned it into quite a decent article. For that reason alone, I feel my approach has been vindicated. If that makes me a jerk to people then so be it. The opinion of others might differ. — not really here discuss 06:02, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
It genuinely is nice to see that you created content once upon a time Jimbo! I'll find the coordinates.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:26, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Indeed. I look forward to my retirement years, when I hope to write daily.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:56, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Didn't you say somewhere that you're particularly knowledgeable about the Houses of Parliament? Just read that the Palace of Westminster has a whopping 1100 rooms. I dare say something credible could be written about some of its rooms like the Queen's Robing Room and Royal Gallery etc in their own right. There's probably too much detail in the main article anyway. If the White House gets coverage of each room we ought to have more content on its interior too. I'd like to see a navigation template with a sort of shrinkable map layout of the most notable rooms of it in which you can click a room and read an article. I'd encourage that sort of thing for many other notable institutions too, the Louvre in particular.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:41, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Certainly the Pugin wallpaper in the Speaker's Chambers is of note! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:37, 13 September 2015 (UTC).
That wallpaper may not be visible to editors using browsers with Add-ons and Pugins disabled. :( — not really here discuss 06:25, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Jimbo, I think that would be pretty good. I have the impression that it would be good to collaborate with you and I would hope that our paths of interest would sometime cross at an article. --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:51, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
  • I ate there. It was fantastic. Everything on the menu. I wish they paid me for saying this. I mean, Jimbo, have you ever had better fried chicken? Drmies (talk) 15:04, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
I don't think I've ever eaten there. Maybe I'm forgetting it. :)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:53, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
And if every Wikipedia editor created unsourced articles about restaurants they have never eaten at ....... — not really here discuss 06:48, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I am glad to see the item kept, but as nominated it was indeed unsourced. I wish we would see every AfD for unsourced articles, even short, positively toned ones about business establishments, progress only after people make a genuine effort to find and add sources as they did this time. In the meanwhile I would certainly not call its nomination "vexatious" -- unless we are willing to say that every AfD nomination without a reasonable effort to find sources and fix issues first is vexatious, in which case I could get behind that. Wnt (talk) 16:02, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Sounds like just a knee-jerk reaction to me. :) — not really here discuss 06:48, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I have to deal with that sort of thing several times a week. An old article from the wiki jurassic period which is poorly sourced or lacking in content and rather than try to improve it people will either prod it for deletion or take to AFD, almost always without success as virtually everything I've ever started can be improved and sourced. I think there needs to be something in place to stop people taking articles with an abundance of potential sources to AFD. People frequently confuse lack of content with lack of notability, it's a substantial problem. Wilkes should never have been permitted to have been nominated, as is the case with most of mine which are taken there, there needs to be something when you come to AFD, does a google book/web search turn up more than five independent sources on the topic?♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:30, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
It's called WP:BEFORE and referring nominators to it in a friendly manner is a good way to cut down on wasted AfDs. I'm more concerned with speedies which can be deleted before an editor can draw breath. Sometimes the deleting admin makes little attempt to check the validity of the speedy tag, it seems. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:41, 13 September 2015 (UTC).

They ignore it though!♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:24, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

IP appears when logging out

Hello, I have noticed when I went to one article, it shown an IP address (I.e., 75.107.21.141, and geolocated to Snead, FL), but however, CentralAuth didn't say it was registered. I am uncertain If I have accidentally clicked on the submit button on an article's edit page, because I registered in 2013 and I just noticed it today, so the IP should have been hidden. Racer-Ωmegα 20:23, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Reality check

I'd like to interrupt the above self-flagellation by pointing out the goal of Wikipedia -- making all human knowledge relevant to the general reader available totally free -- no fees, no ads, no restrictive licenses -- with total perfection using a labor force of mostly anonymous volunteers is just a bit ambitious, and we shouldn't despair if we don't quite make it. I'll be the first to acknowledge that mainspace could be improved and a lot of what goes on in the Wikipedia:: namespace is, uh, messy but if you go back say thirty-five years or so the notion of something like Wikipedia would be absurd or 24th century science fiction. As a volunteer project, this should be fun, so let's try to keep our perspective. Part of this should include having a little more faith in our readers to filter the quality of a given article. I know the only reason I even peeked at Wikipedia around 2005 or so is I heard or read some media interview with some guy talking about how Wikipedia is a tertiary source and readers shouldn't believe it without checking the references. That made a lot of sense then, and it should make sense now. NE Ent 21:41, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Does anyone find this fun? Andy Dingley (talk) 02:36, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I had great fun yesterday. Today, it's a bit less. Drmies (talk) 02:39, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I had fun at first writing Pacific War articles. After I poked my head into some of the nonsense going on in the rest of WP, that's when I started having a lot less fun. I've been waiting for nine years, poking and prodding Jimbo and WP's administration to get their act together and fix WP so that stuff like that won't happen again. I'm still waiting. Cla68 (talk) 03:01, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
While you were waiting you became a paid editor, and advertised for work via a box on your user page, which you only just removed and does not appear to meet the standards required by the Terms of Use.[5] Who did you work for? Or would you rather that the "journalists watching this page" not know? Coretheapple (talk) 19:33, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Enhancing Wikipedia articles can be tons of fun, unless your edits are reverted by someone with no conceivable explanation other than that they have a personal bias against the editor (I think Mr. Dingley understands what I'm talking about). Jackdude101 (Talk) 3:11, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Bug in MediaWiki

In my patrol log it says some of my edits got autopatrolled by myself. But I cannot do that, for I am just an autoconfirmed user. Krett12 (talk) 04:30, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

@Krett12: this related to Pending Changes, as opposed to new pages. As you are autoconfirmed, any edits to a PC1-protected page show up as "automatically accepted/patrolled". 15:26, 14 September 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mdann52 (talk • contribs)

5 millionth article milestone: community press release, video, open letter, and site banner

Users are invited to participate in planning and discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 50#5 millionth article celebration: community press release, video, open letter, and site banner. --Pine✉ 07:00, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Useful cut and paste:

<div>As of {{CURRENTDAYNAME}}, {{CURRENTDAY2}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}}, {{CURRENTTIME}} (UTC), The English Wikipedia has {{NUMBEROF|USERS|en|N}} registered users, {{NUMBEROF|ACTIVEUSERS|en|N}} active editors, and {{NUMBEROF|ADMINS|en|N}} administrators. Together we have made {{NUMBEROF|EDITS|en|N}} edits, created {{NUMBEROF|PAGES|en|N}} pages of all kinds and created {{NUMBEROF|ARTICLES|en|N}} articles.</div>

Which puts the following on the page:

As of Sunday, 05 May 2024, 08:30 (UTC), The English Wikipedia has 47,353,714 registered users, 122,687 active editors, and 859 administrators. Together we have made 1,217,567,603 edits, created 60,598,956 pages of all kinds and created 6,820,444 articles.

..and it autoupdates when you reload the page and the numbers have changed. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:36, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes it's a big figure but you only have to hit random article a few times to know that the general quality isn't great. The sourcing is getting better but 85% of articles at least are deficient. Why boast about 5 million pages when after 14 years we only have 30,000 articles of assessed quality to shout for?♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:09, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Assessed by whom? According to Alexa, WP is the 7th most popular site in the world. Someone must like what we're doing. NE Ent 10:14, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
FA and GA articles/lists officially assessed at one point by wikipedians, it's just over 30,000.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:10, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
What do bureaucratically-assessed articles have to do with anything? Carrite (talk) 11:20, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Everything. It's important that articles are given a formal, decent review by other editors in which somebody can randomly check for quality standards. It's what we should be trying to achieve for every article. By no means does that "officially" mean it's a quality article, but it has at least been looked at by others and peer reviewed.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:23, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I agree in part and disagree in part. The figure of 30,000 assessed is more a criticism of the assessment process, I think, than a criticism of actual quality. What I mean is that for a variety of reasons, not least of which is difficulty of work flow and affordances in the user interface, assessment of quality is something that we, as a community, under-invest in. So articles aren't evaluated often enough, aren't prioritized in the UI enough when they need work, etc. I think there are changes to mediawiki - product changes - that could support and empower and encourage that kind of work.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:23, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the 30,000 figure is by no means exactly accurate because there are in all honesty articles which should never have passed GA status in there or are badly in need of sourcing improvement to reach current standards. Then of course there are articles which are easily good article standard or close and nobody has taken the time to promote them yet. There's a lot more than 30,000 which are decent, useful articles, but what I meant was that is what has been officially assessed including both FA, GA and lists. 5 million is a remarkable figure, but it's a poor reflection of what are actually articles as it includes thousands of disambiguation pages, undeveloped stubs or unsourced material which is barely legible. So yes, we can say "Oh look we've created 5 million articles", but let's not get too carried away..♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:09, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

It is true that there's a lot of articles which are very good but are still at B class level and would need very little work to actually promote to GA. I do think the number of people taking articles to GA is increasing, it's important that work is reviewed and assessed, but the vast majority, even core topics need updating and source improvement and very few people are doing it. One reason is that core articles tend to attract a lot of traffic and people adding bits and pieces so over time it can start to look a bit haphazard. They become too intimidating and bloated to even attempt to sort out without starting from scratch. Also google books as a resource has vastly improved since 2007-8 period. Articles which I wrote back in the late 2000s, when I look at them today the sourcing is poor, when there's now often a lot of decent book coverage. I do think there needs to be a priority to get all of the "vital" assessed articles up to GA status which have had some sort of review and are fairly satisfactory. And those articles I think need to be re-reviewed every year or two to ensure they're up to current standards.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:19, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Why that would involve actual academics and effort and not "I seen it on Family Guy." -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 11:42, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Is the number of 'articles created' being reported the number that have not been deleted or is it just a raw number of 'pages created'? Does it include redirects? If so how many actual articles, not redirects or deleted pages, exist now? JbhTalk 13:10, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

As of Sunday, 05 May 2024, 08:30 (UTC), The English Wikipedia has 47,353,714 registered users, 122,687 active editors, and 859 administrators. Together we have made 1,217,567,603 edits, created 60,598,956 pages of all kinds and created 6,820,444 articles. This does not include deleted pages.
For the details of how the above numbers are generated, start here. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:21, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Thank you. JbhTalk 21:24, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Who Has Your Back?

The Wikimedia foundation was awarded five out of five stars in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's 2015 Who Has Your Back? report.

"Wikimedia earns five stars in this year’s Who Has Your Back report. This is Wikimedia’s second year in the report, and it has adopted all of the best practices we’ve identified as part of this report. We commend Wikimedia for its strong stance regarding user rights, transparency, and privacy." --EFF

More details here. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:52, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Let's hope, after the material in the section above is resolved, they can say the same again next year. John Carter (talk) 20:03, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
The responses above makes it pretty clear that working on this website is a situation where you go to a party that gets unexpectedly out of hand, and the property owner tells you you can call the police if you wish, but you'll have to go figure out the phone number yourself, but not to worry, they've consulted their lawyers and their lawyers are on top of it, but they can't tell you anything about it. There is a real need here for someone who actually represents the interests of the volunteer to be part of the process of resolving online harassment. Leaving this matter in the hands of a software company employee jaded by years of getting online threats himself, who can't tell you anything about what has been done, and who needs to push all all user interactions towards being conducted transparently online is not an optimum solution. A trained, independent representative for volunteers, who reports to a user group, not a software company, who is able to maintain confidentiality, who can work one on one with users to get resolution from law enforcement, who is permitted to be open and honest with the user what is going on, and who doesn't regard online threats as a norm, is much needed for situations of online harassment if this group intends to be a volunteer-based organization. (1 2) ( 3. Also, it should be possible to work with a representative of the same gender upon request. )--Djembayz (talk) 11:50, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Editing environment getting better?

I think there are at least two worlds of Wikipedia regarding the question posed in a previous section, "Is Wikipedia getting better?". One is the reader's world, where the content of the encyclopedia is the consideration. This is the world that has been discussed in a previous section. Another is the world of the editors, where the editing environment is important.

Is the Wikipedia editing environment getting better? --Bob K31416 (talk) 21:05, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

This will depend on the particular constellation of articles and personalities that each editor deals with. I think it reached a trough a few years ago and has improved slightly (or at least not deteriorated) since. Or maybe I've just gotten used to all the bullshit. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:58, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
  • In 2006, when I first started editing, there was a completely different atmosphere in most of Wikipedia. There were literally hundreds of editors who would roam around and try to help newbie or other editors format their inputs correctly, correct minor problems in random articles, and cooperate in a collegial manner in the different wiki-projects. There were some exceptions of course, notably in some of the environmental, political, scientology, and Israel-Palestine articles. However, hardly any of that altruistic cooperation takes place anymore. Now, if a newbie editor makes a mistake in editing an article, it usually either gets reverted or stays broken. If you leave a notice on a wiki-project talk page or admin notice board asking for help, half the time or more it goes unanswered. The Featured Article and other article improvement forums (like DYK) now get much less attention and participation than they used to. WP is now, for the most part, a colder, bleaker place to edit. Cla68 (talk) 01:23, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
Given your extensive block log for a variety of unpleasant behaviors, you may wish to reflect on how you may have personally been a part of helping to make your own experience of Wikipedia "colder and bleaker".--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:29, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
My experience is that sometimes Cla68 himself makes editing Wikipedia an extremely unpleasant experience for other editors. I would assume that his extensive block log is an indication that my experience with Cla68 is not unique. Bill Huffman (talk) 18:40, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
Any curious onlookers who would be interested in "who is this Bill Huffman, and what does he represent to the Wikipedia community", would be advised to see this discussion that probably explains why he is so angry at Cla68 -- Cla68 was largely responsible for pointing out that Huffman was abusing multiple accounts on Wikipedia in order to push his personal agenda, leading to his "retirement", although how "retired" has he really been? Anyway, chalk up Jimmy on the same side as a multi-account abuser, aligned against a nearly decade-long worker on outstanding content. - BajorRules (talk) 23:46, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I'd feel a lot more sympathy for @Cla68:'s grievances, which I see go back centuries, if not for the fact that he 1) invoked the media in an attempt to intimidate other editors, and 2) he is a paid editor who was advertising for work on his user page, taking down the notice a week ago because he "doesn't have time to do this anymore," and I don't see any disclosure of employers. I've asked him who he's worked for[6] and in response I hear crickets. Coretheapple (talk) 13:25, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
I encourage everyone involved with WP to edit or admin for pay, because it has become obvious that spending volunteer time to try to improve this project for altruistic reasons is for suckers. In 2006/2007 Jimbo and I had a very frank discussion over email about how this project's administration was not living up to expectations. He has failed, to say the least, to exercise any effective leadership since to rectify it. Cla68 (talk) 22:33, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
@Cla68: Why won't you disclose the names of the people who have paid you for your work and the articles in which you have made paid contributions? The Terms of Use require disclosure of employers, and I'm not seeing that. Have I missed it? I think you'd have more credibility if you didn't have such a cavalier attitude toward your own personal conduct. Or maybe not, because yes, you do have quite an immense block record. Coretheapple (talk) 12:55, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
Jimbo's and Bill Huffman's posts exemplify the problem. Cla68's post is not aggressive, uncivil or inappropriate. It is an informed response to a legitimate question. But Jimbo and Bill Huffman have not responded to the post on its merits but used it as an opportunity to attack Cla68. And even that is a beat up, Cla68 has been blocked for a few months over an eight year editing history. And as we all know some admin, like some police, use their powers to bully and intimidate. Shame on Jimbo and Bill Huffman, they do know better but they don't care.MOMENTO (talk) 01:29, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Jimmy and Bill are in the right of it, in my recent experience, given just this horseshit comment at ArbCom which was subsequently partially redacted by the ArbCom clerk. Given the block record, and based on that diff and the posturing, sanctimonious comment by Cla above, I urge an immediate indef block of Cla68. Enough is enough, for cryin' out loud. And bravo to Jimmy and Bill for telling it like it is! Jusdafax 15:41, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Notice, journalists who are watching this page, that my statement was responded to with ad hominem responses instead of addressing the substance of my argument. Cla68 (talk) 00:00, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
(ec - note the comment above has been refactored) Cla68, given your above-cited, partially redacted bad faith ArbCom comment, found to be a "personal attack" by the ArbCom clerk, your original statement above is revealed for what you accuse other editors of: trolling. Obvious to anyone, journalist or not, is the fact that you fail to address the "uncomfortable truth" regarding the substance of my diff. And now, your attempt to hold editors here hostage to "journalists who are watching this page" is breathtaking in audacity in and scope; you seemingly expect us to fear you on this basis. I again call on an admin to indef block you at once as you have patently exhausted the patience of both Jimmy and the community. Note to those with the flag: does it get any clearer than this? Jusdafax 00:28, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Back to my original point, as anyone can see from the list of Featured Articles on my user page, I used to be heavy kool-aid drinker on WP. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. The Battle of the Coral Sea article, for example, took me about 50 hours of work, at least, to get done. I even took vacation time from work to complete it. I've gradually become disillusioned with WP over time as I explained above. It's just not a pleasant place anymore and the response to my original post in this thread helps drive home that point better than anything else I could have said. Cla68 (talk) 00:51, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Cla68, So why are you still here? By the way, calling current editors Wikipediots while complaining about ad hominem attacks doesn't present a compelling argument. NE Ent 01:38, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I believe you mean that criticizing others for using ad hominems while using them myself doesn't constitute a compelling argument that ad hominems are wrong? If so, you're right. However, it still doesn't change the fact that they didn't address my original argument. So, since they didn't, I could respond to them however I wanted to because they handn't yet made a logical counter-argument. If they respond with something other than a logical fallacy, which Wikipedians, in my experience, have a hard time doing, then I could respond with a logical response myself. I'm still waiting... Cla68 (talk) 01:57, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
You didn't present an argument. You presented your opinion which is "correct" is the sense that it's your opinion, but there's no particular reason to believe it correct or universal. The current magic words indicate {{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}} 122,687 {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} 6,820,444 {{NUMBEROFADMINS}} 859; what that indicates to me is the scope of Wikipedia exceeds any individuals ability to grok. Your Wikipedia is different that my Wikipedia is different than Jimbo's. It's unclear what exactly you are waiting for; it's been my experience that unnecessarily insulting and disparging people and the institutions they believe is unlikely to get any reasonably positive response; in other words, what goal are you trying to achieve by posting here? NE Ent 02:32, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Actually, rereading Jimbo's response, it looks like he's saying to me, "You're right but it's your fault." Cla68 (talk) 03:17, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
"Journalists who are watching this page"? Seriously? Coretheapple (talk) 19:25, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Jusdafax, it's a general wiki to rule to render unto arbcom what is arbcom's. Given a clerk as already refactored Cla68's comment, it's highly unlikely an administrator is going to indef them in response to a posting here, and very likely such a block would be flipped. In theory, you could argue for a site ban at WP:AN, but that's highly unlikely to happen, too. Best to move on. NE Ent 01:38, 14 September 2015 (UTC)


Well FA and DYK are get less attention in part because they have become little walled gardens of people competing for 'credit', toxic environments where the goal is to get more points than the opponent. Offputting for someone who is collaborative rather than competitive. The point of a FA or a DYK appearing should be that the article itself has improved or is of a high standard, not who gets the credit. The previous promotion issues and ongoing quality problems at DYK illustrate this the most. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:12, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
I can't comment on what Wikipedia was like a few years ago. The impression I get now is that when an established editor makes a mistake or unintentionally gets into a dispute, bad faith is often assumed and they are treated in a rude and uncivil manner, regardless of how tiny or innocent their mistakes were. It seems that editors are more likely to be polite and civil towards newbies who have just written an article advertising their cat, when in fact being polite and civil should be applied universally. --Rubbish computer 10:45, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
(ec)Having been editing Wikipedia for about 10 years, I've seen a number of changes. But I don't think a decline in the environment for editors is one of them. I have noticed that most people who complain about a growing toxic environment around here are editors who spend more of their time participating in various dramas than in actual editing of articles. Deli nk (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:22, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
@Deli nk:I guess you weren't talking to me, but I wouldn't say it's gotten worse, as I wouldn't know. Apologies if I sound like I'm moaning in my above post. Rubbish computer 13:36, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
I was making a general comment in response to the original "Is the Wikipedia editing environment getting better?" question. Sorry, I didn't mean to imply anything about you or your comment. Deli nk (talk) 14:55, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
@Deli nk:It's fine, I didn't think you were, anyway. Rubbish computer 15:36, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I would like to comment on the extent to which those holding preconceived biases are unwilling to rationally survey the reliable sources as opposed to accusing others of misconduct. I have been accused of misrepresenting a body of literature as conclusive simply because I was unaware of an inconclusive reliable source from several years ago. I hope as a community we are able to grow into a nurturing, caring, polite group instead of remaining bogged down in accusatory urges. EllenCT (talk) 13:16, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Some things are definitely better. Edits save faster, the wikilove feature means that lots of people now thank me for fixing typos where once I wondered if anyone noticed; I can upload fifty photos on commons more easily than I used to be able to upload ten. Vandalfighting bots and edit filters have reduced the amount of vandalism that requires manual intervention. But not everything is positive. The tension between the WMF and the rest of the community in the last four years or so seems far worse than it did before. There are also tensions within the volunteer community. Template bombing has replaced much of the collaboration. Revert unsourced has largely replaced <citation needed>. Spam is rising, possibly in proportion to our audience size. There is a growing wikigeneration gulf between the admins and those who started editing in the last four or five years. ϢereSpielChequers 14:16, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

"Revert unsourced has largely replaced <citation needed>." I've noticed this as well. Is that a reflection of a more confrontational editing environment, less tolerance towards unsourced material appearing in articles, a recognition that a cn tag is likely to stay there until the material is removed in the future, or something else? --NeilN talk to me 15:57, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
As an administrator that regularly patrols AIV, I've noticed a significant increase in reports (inappropriate in my opinion) there for editors whose only offense is adding unsourced content. I'm concerned that too many regular editors are starting to view unreferenced content as vandalism. -- Ed (Edgar181) 17:12, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
While I seldom revert for anything not obviously out of whack I do have pretty strong opinions on unsourced content. Wikipedia is a reference work and few of us are subject matter experts in all of the areas which we edit. If there is not a source or reference there is no way to vet the material for accuracy and Wikipedia is useful only in relation to its reliability. We teach Bold, Revert, Discuss and that is what the bulk of editors will do if they have doubts. The person who is adding the material should be able to come up with a good source if asked. If they can not then, well.... the material should not be in Wikipedia per WP:V. Whether this process makes the editing environment better or worse depends on how willing editors are to engage with each other.

Since most drama comes when people are discussing whether the sourcing is adequate and there is more than enough drama dealing with that. My guess is after engaging repeatedly on WP:RS most editors are likely to be disinclined to engage in extensive conversation when there are no sources. JbhTalk 18:26, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

The BRD essay itself says: "BRD does not encourage reverting, but recognizes that reverts will happen" and WP:Reverting says: "revert vandalism on sight, but revert an edit made in good faith only after careful consideration", (emphasis mine). To habitually revert non-contentious content by removing the content instead of requesting a citation fails the "fundamental principle" of assuming that editors' edits and comments are made in good faith, and places the cart before the horse by answering a Bold edit with a revert in cases where another Bold edit, often called WP:SOFIXIT, is the better practice. It is tantamount to "a lazy mans load" with regard to building encyclopedic content; making the latter much harder to achieve while belying the good counsel of the aforementioned which wholly encourages an opposite approach as better, indeed even easier. Consider what would likely have come of this content if I had not observed the edit on my watchlist, Gave the answer I believe our guidelines suggest, and followed through with a demonstration of how nicely our best practices conform with our goals. If my interpretation here is wrong, I hope to have made the best of my error. Cheers, and do correct me now.--John Cline (talk) 21:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
I suspect the issue of reverting unsourced info on sight is one we are going to have to resolve with an RFC. While I have a preference for the old citation needed tag, moving to either extreme would be better than the current mess. It simply isn't fair on the thousands of newbies who are bitten because our de facto rules on sourcing are stricter than our published ones. ϢereSpielChequers 23:26, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
I guess I made the assumption of a) seeing if the edit made sense based on your knowledge of the subject b) seeing if you could source it yourself c) assessing the editor who made the edit as well as how well the material was written (proper English, proper use of subject specific terms etc) and whether it had been integrated into the text of the article in a way that showed the person who put it there had a clue about the subject. All of those things should go into figuring out whether you revert. In the end you must decide whether you think the new material a benefit to the article, if you do not think it is based on what you know and can find out or if you do not have a clue to make the judgement. If you both have a clue about the subject matter and are not convinced the edit is beneficial you should probably revert. If you are familiar with the editor who made the edit you review or you know they are a regular contributor to the content area it is best to ask about it rather than revert.

However, most of the time unsourced material is not added by well established editors familiar with the topic area or by drive by subject matter experts. Most of the time it is added by POV pushers or new/inexperienced editors. Both of which might have something good to contribute. That is why you should engage them on a talk page to explain why you just reverted your edit. Or, if you are lazy, you can probably get a 80-90% 'right call' rate by simply reverting unsourced additions and that is my guess of why it happens so frequently. JbhTalk 00:57, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Just a dichotomy, eh? You were lucky! The decision process just got a tad more complicated. — not really here discuss 04:43, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Ed, I suspect AIV is used because ANI seems like overkill in many cases. The problem is particularly acute with TV shows and genre-warring, with editors ignoring all requests for sources and simply plowing on for weeks/months. --NeilN talk to me 04:08, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
@NeilN: I know exactly what you're talking about. Those types of persistent, disruptive, uncommunicative editors should be reported to AIV or the targeted pages should be reported to RFPP. But lately I've seen cases that are not like that: a handful of unsourced, but good faith, edits is all it takes to get reported to AIV sometimes. That's where my concern lies. -- Ed (Edgar181) 13:43, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
  • I agree that there are some articles in which editors have a solid lock on the subject matter, and in which not just new editors but different points of view are treated with hostility. Once not long ago I was summoned by RfC bot to comment on an RfC as to whether a well-known deceased actor should have an infobox. I opined yes, Oh no! Heresy! I was immediately jumped and pounded down by the editors controlling the page. Then I noticed that the RfC was prematurely closed by one of the editors opposing the infobox! Now in such a situation I could either go to ANI or just get the hell out of there, and I chose to do so. I have no idea if this kind of situation is getting worse or better but yes, there are some "no go zones" in Wikipedia and I blundered into one there. Coretheapple (talk) 18:50, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
    That particular dumpster fire has been burning since at least 2007, and probably earlier, FWIW (with atrocities on both sides, as may be expected of anything that long-running). Choess (talk) 03:16, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
    It's by far the stupidest discussion I've ever encountered, and I've seen some bad ones. Coretheapple (talk) 15:21, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
  • I think it's got better in some respects. There is now a clear division of labour and governance between administrators and those who just want to contribute content (the usual culprits notwithstanding). The main respect in which it's got worse are the lack of content editors, at least in my area. I tried to make improvements to Free will when I returned, but it was just crickets. It's difficult to edit when there is no sounding board. Peter Damian (talk) 09:19, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Ah, so what you are really saying is that you need other editors to push back against your original edits in order to force you into making further edits to the Free will article. Hmmm, interesting. Very interesting. Hold on while I go and make some amendments to that Free will article ... — not really here discuss 01:42, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
Peter Damian, The crickets may be a sign that other editors thought your work was acceptable and didn't need comment. Note the reverts of some of the other editors' contributions after your edits in May 2015. So there doesn't seem to be a shortage of editors there who will react if they don't think an edit is acceptable. --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:24, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
This is a facet of Wikipedia that can sometimes be a bit disconcerting. In the real world, if you do something in public - such as make an informal after-dinner speech, perform some party trick you have a reputation for performing, or just sing a Karaoke song - complete silence from your audience once you are done is usually a sign that you have completely bombed. Editing away on something all by yourself with no intervention from other editors tends to have the same emotional effect on you, even though you just gave a perfectly reasonable and logical reason for why "no news is most likely good news." The psychological effect of "Wikipedia crickets" (i.e., the possibility all your latest edits might be considered a total frost by others) is still very real despite it being in most cases quite illogical. But give me crickets over obnoxious confrontation anytime. — not really here discuss 01:42, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
  • I do notice that many people these days seem to be far too eager for admins to delete or block something (has it always been that way? I don't think UAA was swamped with frivolous reports back in 2013). It's almost as if people are trying to rack up as many points as they can. At UAA, nobody seems to pay any attention to the huge banner saying "Please limit your reports to obvious violations of the username policy." At CSD, people try to A7 articles over mere notability concerns. At AFD, nobody bothers to look for sources before nominating/voting delete. Do people really have to be slammed to the wall for minor policy violations?
Treatment of editors aside, content is improving. The wiki is always growing and most content is getting better, or at least not getting worse. --Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 21:42, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Attempt at an indicator

I made a rough attempt at determining the frequency of bad behavior in the English Wikipedia, using WP:ANI history. I looked at how long it took to accumulate 5000 edits at ANI recently and compared it to the time it took to accumulate 5000 edits at ANI 5 years ago, indexing it for the number of editors in the English Wikipedia then and now (i.e. dividing by the number of editors then and now.) The indexed edit rate at ANI looks roughly the same, suggesting that the amount of bad behavior by editors in the English Wikipedia is roughly the same today as it was 5 years ago. --Bob K31416 (talk) 00:49, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I would say the would reflect upon how much of a dramafest ANI happens to be more than the health of Wikipedia itself. That board has a mind of its own. A better measurement may be how many long term editors are ceasing to edit in a given month, though that may be harder to measure. I suspect that more people simply stop editing than start an ANI slugfest when they encounter a hostile work environment. Chillum 14:05, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Re "I suspect that more people simply stop editing than start an ANI slugfest when they encounter a hostile work environment." – That apparently doesn't apply to long-term editors, otherwise they wouldn't be long-term.
Although most acts of bad behavior are not expected to result in an ANI discussion, a certain percentage should. Unless there is a specific reason to believe otherwise, it seems that the percentage would stay fixed over the years and thus the activity at ANI would be an indicator for the amount of bad behavior in Wikipedia. --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:34, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
There are many specific reasons to believe otherwise, most obviously the deprecation of WP:RFC/U and the increasing tendency to create stand-alone subpages to discuss specific users or specific issues to avoid cluttering ANI—discussion of Betacommand, for instance, took place at WP:AN/B so won't show up in your count, but was a massive time-sink. From the former-arb perspective, I can say with absolute certainty that "I suspect that more people simply stop editing than start an ANI slugfest when they encounter a hostile work environment" applies to long-term editors as well; many people move on to a different topic area rather than stay and fight in a field which is attracting cranks. ‑ iridescent 15:54, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. Although it's not clear whether that activity is significant compared to ANI activity, that would need to be addressed before ANI activity is used as an indicator. --Bob K31416 (talk) 20:55, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Regarding the link you gave, the increasing tendency to create stand-alone subpages to discuss specific users or specific issues – How would you show from it that there is an "increasing tendency to create stand-alone subpages to discuss specific users or specific issues"? Also for those subpages regarding specific users, would that essentially be a new place for the discussions that would have been conducted at WP:RFC/U and are no longer discussed there? If so, that wouldn't affect 5 year changes in activity at ANI. --Bob K31416 (talk) 21:10, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Are conflicts good for retaining editors?

So far the discussion suggests that some editors leave Wikipedia because of the conflicts, etc. Is it possible that even more editors, including good editors, are retained because without the conflicts, etc., they would get bored and leave? --Bob K31416 (talk) 23:54, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Can you please define what is meant by "leaving Wikipedia"? An editor closing his/her account would clearly be leaving, but I seriously doubt that most of the "exiting editors" that are referred to in all the various studies actually do that. All those studies are usually also remiss in not defining what exactly it means to "exit Wikipedia" so I'm not on your particular case here. I'm just seeking some clarity of terminology. Is someone who regularly made edits every week, but who has now ceased to make any edits at all for a specified number of months (feel free to define the threshold of dormancy), considered to be an "exited editor"? Similarly, is someone who was a highly active editor for a long time who now only makes a few sporadic edits each month also considered to be an editor who has left? I don't think he/she would be, nevertheless there has to be a reason for the dramatic drop off in their editing.
Also, it might be useful to define the term "conflict". Because any edit someone does can be modified or reverted by someone else, Wikipedia is by definition an environment of potential "conflict". But that is an acceptable level of mild "conflict" that comes with the territory of doing any edits at all. It is not clear whether or not you are referring in your question to the level of "conflict" that arises over and above what is considered to be generally acceptable. Terms such as "hostile" and "toxic" are normally used to describe such situations. Assuming that you are, the problem now becomes, everyone has their own interpretation of where that threshold of general acceptable behavior lies. Furthermore, they will apply their own threshold level inconsistently in different situations. For instance, if I like someone I will probably apply a higher level of tolerance to their actions than I am willing to apply to someone I don't like nearly as much. Additionally, most of the "conflict" situations that arise can be traced back to two (or more) people interpreting some piece of vague Wikipedia guidance differently; or one of them not even being aware of the guidance's existence; or their being in a situation where there is no pertinent WP guidance, or the pertinent guidance is self-contradictory.
So given all those variables, one person's unacceptable level of "drama" and "confrontation" becomes another person's acceptable environment of constructive "intellectual disagreement" and "healthy discourse". Which, of course, goes to the heart of your question. The very things that drive some editors away may be highly addictive to the editors that remain. If that is the case then Wikipedia is doomed WRT to ever achieving its goal of recruiting an influx of new editors who have different interests and emphases to the current ones. — not really here discuss 03:39, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
Debate is good. The growing problems on WP appears to be that some editors are becoming very skill at gaming the system. By the time a grievance comes to DR some gamers know how to turn round and make themselves look like the victim. The admins are left blinded by the muddy waters that the gamers are skilled at guiding them through -over that of the average Wikipeadian who doesn't Wikilawer. That leave conscious editors feeling dis-empowered and unappreciated. --Aspro (talk) 14:20, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

You've got mail

Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:20, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Editor test

I only just heard about Ballotpedia from Larry. It uses Mediawiki but is the opposite of the wiki concept, namely it vets editors and all submissions are carefully reviewed. I was fascinated by the editor test. I wonder how many editors here could pass it. It tests a mixture of wiki knowledge (e.g. templates) and simple grammar (what is a comma splice). I don't think it would go down well here! Peter Damian (talk) 14:06, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

It's a pity you cannot just take the test and receive your score. Or possibly I did something wrong, because having completed the test I was immediately taken to a new tab window requesting me to email my test results to Ballotpedia without my even knowing how I had done, which seemed a bit stupid. Especially since filling in your name and email address is mandatory data to be entered (these are required fields indicated by a red "*") in order to even submit your test answers in the first place. Even though some of the questions were a bit Ballotpedia-specific (I too was unaware of this site until I read your comment above, so I have never visited it) the only question that made me stop and think was the optional DPL-related one WRT ballot measures because I thought it had to do with disambiguation. The wiki knowledge and grammar questions were a breeze IMO - and should be for anyone with a university degree to their name. Of course, I may have got the answers wrong, which is why letting you know your score (whether you subsequently wish to edit Ballotpedia or not) would have been more useful - and in some cases, a possible "wake-up call" to those taking the test. — not really here discuss 16:06, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
The 'dangling modifier' question is slightly tricky, but not that tricky. Peter Damian (talk) 14:11, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
There should have been more questions on the test such as this one IMO. — not really here discuss 16:06, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
In my opinion comma splice and dangling modification aren't really matters of grammar--they're style. To each their own, of course. Drmies (talk) 02:33, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
See Modifier Placement.—Wavelength (talk) 19:12, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Comma splice, perhaps. Danglers are just poor logic and poor thinking, no? Peter Damian (talk) 20:06, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Comma splicing, dangling modifiers and any other grammar matters are only considered style in the sense that we will normally say of someone who consistently writes in an illogical and imprecise manner that they have a "poor grammatical style". Such a polite euphemism doesn't mean that proper use of grammar is purely a stylistic choice when writing. There are very good reasons why we have rules of grammar in every human language and observing them is NOT a matter of choice. Grammar rules are designed to prevent the construction of sentences whose meanings are unintentionally multiple (i.e., ambiguous) or misleading in other ways. The ultimate purpose of grammar rules is to make the writer say what they mean more precisely thereby improving their level of communication to the reader. The fact that when the rules of grammar do get mildly violated (such as someone using a colon when they should have used a semi-colon) the intended meaning of the writer is still entirely clear, or that Grammar Nazis and other pedants often make an annoyingly big fuss over such inconsequential occurrences, does not mean that the use of good grammar is optional or simply a matter of style. — not really here discuss 18:17, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
"observing them is NOT a matter of choice" because rules. Oh, wait. --JBL (talk) 00:07, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
Three of the questions are sort of Ballotpedia-specific. Their rudimentary citation format isn't very interesting, but the question about mw:Extension:DynamicPageList is interesting. If you search "dynamic page lists" on Wikipedia you'll find remarkably little discussion of it, mostly positive; apparently Wikinews and Wikibooks were using it, at least as of 2008. I've wanted to see a way for Lua scripts and other things to access category lists, but I never knew this feature was conceivably available (though it wouldn't do that now that access to processed page text was removed). Wnt (talk) 15:22, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
So that's what that question was about. I'll have to go research that topic. But that was an optional question (the only one on the test) so I'm guessing that whatever your answer to that question (or even whether you skip it) doesn't affect your eventual score; which Ballotpedia are never going to tell you anyway. You are only going to find out if you scored higher than the minimum 83% if you receive an invitation to become a guest editor at Ballotpedia a month or so after you took the test. Bizarre. — not really here discuss 16:06, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Possibly some potential or actual editors are aware of (and embarrassed by) their area(s) of incompetency. (Compare John 3:21.) Fortunately, performance can be improved for closer conformity with acceptable standards, although some editors might prefer to revise the standards to match their performance. (Compare 2 Timothy 4:3.)
—Wavelength (talk) 19:12, 14 September 2015 (UTC) and 21:53, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Block Quoting

Jimbo suggested a new section to discuss the issue of block quoting more extensively.

I'll start by linking a discussion I started in 2012 Wikipedia_talk:Citing_sources/Archive_32#Use_of_quote_parameter_in_footnote_-_a_proposal_to_provide_better_guidance

Unfortunately, it stalled, but I started with what I immodestly think is a decent summary of background and issues.--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:08, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

A point also worth mentioning is that the Wikipedia rules for usage of materials subject to copyright are more conservative than might be allowed by strict application of copyright law. This is deliberate. The borderline between acceptable usage and non-acceptable usage is gray. If we simply instruct editors to follow the law, we will find some editors pushing close to the limits and we will find ourselves defending lawsuits. Even if we win them all, we lose. Our goal isn't to be in a position to win lawsuits, it is to be so clearly not in violation that copyright owners are not even tempted to sue.

It is almost certain the case that we could allow longer quotes than we currently do and still be within the law, but if we opt to allow longer quotes I would want legal advice from the Foundation to help ensure that we are not creating a legal risk.

It is also my personal opinion that material used within a hidden quote, not visible to the ordinary reader unless they know where to look, might be viewed differently, from a legal perspective, then the exact same amount of material prominent in an article. Not everyone agrees with my position, so I wouldn't push it unless we got legal support for it, but if we got legal support, we might justify longer quotes in certain situations.

As always, input from our copyright expert would be helpful. @Moonriddengirl:.--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:24, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

FWIW, at least to my eyes, except in perhaps a very limited number of situations, I like the idea of keeping our rules for block quotes reasonably stricter than those of the law itself. Doing so helps ensure that we don't face any legal objections under current law, and reduces the risk of our suddenly being in violation of a changed law, should such changes ever be instituted. I am not entirely sure what is meant in the above in the discussion of a "hidden quote," however. John Carter (talk) 20:31, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

John Carter - Example of hidden quote. The first ref is the usual, the second contains the hidden material, which is not viewable by the casual reader - edit to see it.

Blah blah blah[1][2]

References

  1. ^ "New York House of Refuge". New York State Archives. Retrieved 2011-05-05. The New York House of Refuge was the first juvenile reformatory in the nation. It was the product of a philanthropic association, originally called the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, organized in 1816. During its early years, the Society was dominated by Quaker merchants and influential political leaders, such as Cadwallader Colden and Stephen Allen. In 1820 and 1821, the Society conducted an extensive survey of United States prisons and then appointed a committee to study the returns. The committee's report criticized the prevailing spirit of revenge in the treatment of prisoners and deplored the imprisonment of individuals regardless of age or the severity of crime. Following adoption of the report in 1824, the Society reorganized for the purpose of establishing a reformatory. ...
  2. ^ "New York House of Refuge". New York State Archives. Retrieved 2011-05-05.

Specific example New York House of Refuge

  • I personally hate the "quote=" parameter of the citation template. Hell, let's be frank, I hate citation templates — there's nothing they do that can't be done better with regular footnotes within [ref] [/ref] tags... The "quote=" parameter renders footnote sections almost entirely illegible in a really obnoxious TL;DR way (see above)... I don't think there is the slightest copyright concern with them under American law, but there is a small and fanatical Anti-Fair Use krew that loses their stuff over such things and I don't mind making common cause with such people over the matter. Blow up the entire "quote=" parameter and every manifestation of that parameter across En-WP — that would be a double plus good result. Carrite (talk) 00:28, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

This was the occasional misuse of a useful feature. Obviously, well integrated text is preferable to block quotes when it gives us the freedom to express the same facts in our own editable, non fair use requiring way. However, there are many instances, e.g. polemic political statements, where a source may be notable and eloquent, making its position absolutely clear in a way that readers want to know, but Wikipedia, trying to rephrase it to meet our style, would make a terrible butchered rehash of every sentence into which personal bias easily introduces itself. "My opponent is a thief, a braggart, and a vagabond, not worthy of your vote" ==> "Bloggs questioned his opponent's respect for private property, suggested he embellished on the truth, and harped on his transient residences in the years preceding the election, calling on voters to find more worthy options." (I exaggerate in this in that we aren't debating a quote this short, but very much the same thing can happen with longer text) And then it becomes a political WP:OR fight - was he saying the opponent is accused of disrespecting private property because of his tax policy, or that he is dishonest because of his parliamentary tactics? Should we omit the text altogether, hiding it behind some platitude that "Bloggs denounced his opponent harshly" that then is accused of making Bloggs sound extreme without giving his side of the story? No, we should always give the subject of an article his say - a chance to be heard in his own words justifying his opinions the way he did. Sometimes this is really embarrassing to him and his friends want it cut out, sometimes it is embarrassing to his opponents and their friends want it cut out, but either way there's nothing like the horse's mouth. Wnt (talk) 18:50, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Two thumbs up to what Wnt wrote above. NPOV means representing information from a neutral perspective, not sucking all possible meaning out of something so that it is neutral simply because it no longer says very much. It's neutral POV we are after NOT neutered POV. It is always better to directly present all relevant sides of an issue (with the inclusion of short pertinent quotes from each side if possible) - so that the reader also fully connects with the various differences of viewpoint (and is subsequently left to make up his own mind now that he has been better informed of the facts by Wikipedia) - than to stand back and present a removed and neutered MOR summary of the issue as if the article authors are the only ones with any perspective on the issue at hand. The "|quote=" parameter in the "cite" templates is an important tool in an editor's toolbox that better enables him/her to achieve such neutral rather than neutered POV reporting. — not really here discuss 19:38, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

In his "discussion of issue" text, Sphilbrick mentions three possible determinants for whether the length of block quoted text is appropriate:

  • (1) the length of the excerpt relative to the length of the article in which it is placed;
  • (2) the length of the excerpt relative to the original source (e.g., an excerpt from a short poem may need to be shorter than an excerpt of a longer poem);
  • (3) the length of the excerpt when used in the body of an article versus the length of the same excerpt when quoted in a footnote or cited reference.

There is merit in both (1) and (2) IMO, but (3) seems to be somewhat of an irrelevance. From a potential copyright infringement basis I don't think it would matter whether the infringement occurred in the body of the text or in a footnote or cited reference. If the quoted text is not too long relative to the length of the article - and satisfies (1) above - and is also not too long relative to the length of its source - and thus satisfies (2) above - then it should not matter where it appears in the article, in the main body of the text or as part of a footnote or cited reference. The tricky bit, of course, is determining the correct threshold for what is or is not "too long" in cases (1) and (2), but that is what any effort in this area should focus on better defining / clarifying. Case (3) is just a distraction. — not really here discuss 19:38, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

You and I are an agreement that the first two points are relevant to copyright and the third is not. However, I brought up the third point (your numbering; in my original, it is the "second general question") in a different context. I wondered whether the location of a quote in the body of an article versus a footnote had any relevance when considering how long a quote we might want from an editorial standpoint not a copyright standpoint. I still think it is a point worth considering, although of far less importance than ensuring that our rules are clearly in compliance with copyright law.--S Philbrick(Talk) 00:13, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

The gorilla in the room

Jimbo says the sample should be weighted to popularity. I agree. Why don't we make it simpler still and start with the article with most page views and work down? Each version should be assessed using the methods that reviewer assistants to the editorial boards of journals use to assess suitability. Then compare assessments.

The gorilla is not the weak content highlighted by Smallbones, it's the reason for it. People register for Facebook because it's personal to them. Similarly, they register for Twitter for the ability to message their friends. Wikipedia is not personal - it's altruistic. That's why the registration model doesn't work. Larry Sanger is a big supporter of registration to write an article and it's the cornerstone of Citizendum. Check "recent changes" in Citizendum and they are few and far between, and mostly by the same person.

The hook for Wikipedia is "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". But when people visit the site and try to write about something that interests them and they are knowledgeable about they find they can't. Or rather, they can but then have to wait about six months while the journal decides whether to publish. Get serious, folks. This is not the way to do it. Of course there need to be safeguards. Every worthwhile enterprise gets vandalised. But we have pending changes to get over that. So let people start articles within pending changes which will switch off as soon as the text is edited by an autoconfirmed editor (i.e. vetted). See discussion and explanation at en:User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 193#New paid editing scandal - How many more will there be until we take serious action?. This kills two birds with one stone - marking Articles for Creation historical also ends the ability of sockpuppets to dangle the prospect of immediate publication in front of people in return for money. 109.159.90.194 (talk) 10:11, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

This continues the discussion at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 194#Making the Wales method work. 78.145.31.93 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
I see my user name above and a link to a discussion I started, but I'm having difficulty relating the above comment to anything I addressed or proposed. The pending changes suggestion and making AfC "historical" are not something I've personally considered enough to make any suggestions here, but I'm not necessarily against it.
I have been working on an exploratory data analysis comparing random articles vs. their versions from 2 years previous and almost have enough data now to make some suggestions on how to properly do an analysis of the question "Do Wikipedia articles improve over time?" It's been time consuming and I should state that anything I come up with is not a "scholarly study" but just an exploratory data analysis. I have made a mistake or 2 along the way. I am almost ready to say something like "neither the quality-class system used by Wikipedia, nor the quality measure I proposed are useful in measuring quality differences in articles over time." But that doesn't mean that we can't come up with a quality measure that would be useful. In fact, if anybody has experience using bots to collect data, I've got a few ideas on what data to collect so please contact me on my talk page if you think you can help.
I plan to make an organized write-up of my exploratory analysis, and hope to put a link here on Monday. Until then any comments would likely distract me from the work I need to do first. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:21, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Wow that's amazing. When I recently mentioned the concept, I was immediately snarked at for things that I didn't say plus an extra allegation that my proposed sample size was too small to be scientific (which of course was not remotely close to being relevant to what I was saying). So - I love that you say up front that what you're coming up with is not a "scholarly study" and encourage you to persevere anyway. It's a first pass look at an interesting concept. I'd love to hear about the mistakes you made along the way, too.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:32, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
I applaud your initiative in doing this analysis. May I suggest a small modification if it isn't too late? If you choose random articles from Wikipedia you have a selection bias. Given the breadth of Wikipedia, it is likely that this bias is not a serious issue, but it will leave the study open to criticism. It can be easily overcome; randomly choose topics from another source such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, then study the topic as covered in Wikipedia.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:40, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
I think it pretty clear that Encyclopedia Britannica has a much worse selection bias than we do. Even so, I like this idea too.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:23, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Yes, wikipedia might suffer from heavy bias towards "male geek" topics and sports— a large amount of content is devoted to popular culture. If you were to really examine the scope of topics wikipedia actually covers though I believe the overall coverage is pretty phenomenal, and clearly far, far broader in scope than EB. I wonder how many articles Britannica has on Cambodian soups or Faroese ferries for instance. Obviously we need to greatly improve in world coverage and if you stub most articles you'll find several red links in turn, but the scope of topics we've achieved to date is still impressive, certainly far broader than others have managed to compile. So the figures would be interesting to see but might not truly reflect what wikipedia actually has to offer, which is vast, and continually improving all of the time. I'm not sure if you were to highlight our weakest areas it would prompt any serious response, people tend to edit what they are interested in. If the foundation were to sponsor anti systematic bias drives though and actively get people to work on the weak areas though that might start to make a difference.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:56, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Why does EB have a 'selection bias'? Obviously it is meant to be a repository of knowledge, so it is biased towards knowledge, in that sense. Otherwise, how? Peter Damian (talk) 18:28, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Google fundraising banner

File:Google donations banner 17 Sept 2015 Australia.PNG

Nice to see Google being good.

Given the value we're adding to Google (and the page-/banner-views their "knowledge graph" is taking from us), perhaps they could be induced to run banners for us and match donations to Wikipedia dollar-for-dollar. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:35, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Interesting idea... Just as a side note, I'm not convinced that the knowledge graph is taking pageviews from us. The evidence is mixed. And intuitively, take a look at these search results: Google search for 'duke of wellington'. In addition to the first link, we have a link on the right hand side, as well as there being links to 6 search terms, all of which have Wikipedia links above the fold.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:00, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Well, Wikipedia is losing clicks from me. About half of the Google searches I do where I'd normally click through to Wikipedia, I don't need to now because what I want is in their "infobox" (mostly scraped from Wikipedia). And that's not remotely compensated by the number of times I click a link in their infobox. Not a big sample, I know. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:12, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Does it matter? We're not funded by Adsense—why does it matter if the reader gets their information from the Wikipedia page or Google's executive summary, provided they're getting the correct information? ‑ iridescent 14:21, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
If Google gets better at answering searchers' questions on their results page fewer and fewer people will need to come to Wikipedia. The fewer people that use us (directly) the harder it is (longer it will take) for the WMF to raise the annual budget from banners hosted on Wikipedia. From the readers' perspective, it's all good. From the fundraising perspective it matters. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:27, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
You are absolutely right that "pageviews" is not a metric that we care about to the same degree that an ad funded website would care about. But it does matter for a couple of reasons. First, we want to have a healthy community - editorship has been stable-to-declining for a long time, and if more and more people just get tidbits of information (that we helped assemble) from other places, but don't visit Wikipedia, they might be less likely to join the community. Second, we do depend on pageviews when it is fundraising banner time - fewer pageviews means fewer people are prompted to donate. Given what a tiny tiny percentage of our pageviews show banners each year, there's plenty of room to up that - but I don't think any of us really relish the prospect of having longer or more intensive banner campaigns after such a long period of being able to manage with shorter and less intensive campaigns.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:28, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Taking "loss of potential editors" as a potential issue from Google's snippets, wouldn't an obvious approach be to ask nicely for Google to include some sort of note suggesting that people join/edit/whatever? Haven't thought it through, but seems plausible. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 17:28, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
There are many possibilities. Lila and I have discussed. Basically I think we need to take a slow, relaxed, and data-driven approach to the question.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:27, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

"Wikipedia's lamest edit wars show why the site is amazing and infuriating"

vox have released a piece concerning mostly edit warring with commentary by Andrew Lih. It is more of a reflection of Wikipedia culture than Wikipedia itself, as relatively few people contribute to the site compared to those who use it. --Rubbish computer 19:14, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Tweet

A little birdie chirped your name. Drmies (talk) 15:02, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Overseas threats to editors and how to deal with them

Your input, or, for that matter, damn near anyone working for the foundation, would be welcome at WP:ANI#Telstra, Australia IP vandalism. John Carter (talk) 15:36, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree with those calling for a phone call to Telstra to seek their assistance in dealing with the problem. I also agree with blocking the entire ISP if that becomes necessary to get their attention, although I suspect that's not really going to be as effective as a phone call. I'd suggest that we do that (and threaten to go to the press, and go to the press if they still don't respond) only as a last resort. ISPs need to be responsible about cutting off customers who are engaging in massive abuse.
I think we might want to step back and reflect on the current process for handling such situations - they are rare, but there should be a clear and straightforward and accountable way for the community to escalate to Foundation staff.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:54, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
But *who* should call Telstra? The WMF? Or you? Or, are you leaving it all to me?? Huldra (talk) 18:56, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Huldra As I said in a response on ANI contacting the ISP is definitely something that we are looking into as one of the options. We are definitely not leaving it just to you. I have found, however, that the victim also reporting can be very useful (it isn't an either/or thing and they sometimes take multiple reports or a report from a victim more seriously then from a 3rd party) and so would not only say that you reporting to Telstra could be useful but I'd also recommend that you report to your local law enforcement if you feel threatened so that they can make a report in their system either for investigation now or followup later if contacted by other authorities. Jalexander--WMF 19:34, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Jalexander-WMF Thank you for your reply, but I am *not* going to report this to my local police. As I have explained before: "Besides the fact that I live in a country where English is not any of our official languages (we have two), I am not an admin, and all threats are rev-delled. So, I could go to the police, and tell them that this is a rape threat against me and here they want to kill me, ...both comes from an IP at the other side of the world, writing in a foreign language (for my local police), ...and both edits are now over-sighted, so I´m sorry, they cannot see it! Yeah, sure. I would say I have a larger chance of winning jackpot in a lottery, than getting the police to act on such a report." In addition, it is the very good point User:SlimVirgin brings up: the fear of outing. "Huldra" is not an uncommon nick to use online (which is why I didn´t get a SUL-account until this spring), Now, it is bad enough living through abuse-edits like this, and this and this,....but how to you think I would feel if my RN was abused in the same fashion? And I second SlimVirgin´s question; why cannot *anyone* give me a clear answer: who will contact Telstra, and when? At the moment it looks like that "hot potato" everyone is quick to pass on. Huldra (talk) 21:20, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
I can understand how it might be preferable to have police be contacted by the victim, who, honestly, probably is in general the best person to file police reports. But I can also understand that there might be a problem with the victim, in this case, not being able to present evidence. And the law in your country might not be able to be as protective of your real name than you might want. Personally, I might myself opt for an admin in Australia, or an editor in Australia with admin assistance, who can revdel the offending messages, going to their local police, maybe with copies or whatever of all the threats and, maybe, a complaint from you, maybe sent as a wikipedia e-mail, regarding the matter as the victim complaint. But, I honestly have no clue about international law and international crimes and all that rot. James might know better if such might be workable. John Carter (talk) 21:33, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
We certainly can not, and do not wish, to force anyone to report something they don't want to report. The WMF will always attempt to do whatever we're able to do to protect community members (and the public) whether they report or not however I do think it is important to point out that it is an incredible help and that it is not uncommon to face walls where police are unwilling to act without one. Both the WMF and the oversighters (and, where simple deletion is in question, administrators) are able to release copies of deleted information for abuse investigations to the victim, to the police and to 3rd parties where needed. I'm sorry Huldra, these types of attacks suck, and as someone whose had death threats for my Wikipedia work for more then a decade now (long before I was staff) I completely understand your frustration. I will certainly tell you that I'm looking at multiple angles to try and help (including the fact that I'm in the office now at 3pm on a Saturday looking into it) but I can't make you promises on when results will be shown and I can't tell you that I contacted [Telstra (or X)] at Y time and Z date. I know that's not what you want to hear but I don't do that for anyone and I can't do that here. As I've said before I think the likely hood of a physical threat is very small in this case but the reality of the large emotional toll and abuse that the constant attacks cause is very real. Sadly that makes it more difficult, law enforcement and ISPs are much more likely to respond to credible threats of physical violence but it is not impossible and we are doing everything we can to try and help. We've been successful doing so in the past and I am confidant that we can be successful doing so again, it isn't easy but it's important. Jalexander--WMF 22:10, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
John Carter Honestly for reports like that it really depends on not only the laws of the country in question but the responses of the local law enforcement. It's hard to make a blanket statement (it's one of the reasons we like to work through the FBI attache's in the embassy ourselves where possible because they know the local environment). Usually they are going to be more open to it if the victim is the local one coming to them but that certainly isn't always the case and it's often worth a try. Jalexander--WMF 22:12, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
@Jalexander Is someone in the WMF keeping a log of the abuse from Telstra IPs? How many occurrences have there been this year? When was the last? Is anyone in the WMF considering restrictions on the Telstra IPs to prevent further abuse? Such restrictions would be unprecedented (I think), but it's time the WMF walked the walk on supporting the community. Johnuniq (talk) 02:05, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Very little of the Telstra IP abuse has been reported to the foundation (Huldra reported some of it a couple weeks ago and today we were pinged) so keeping a long running log has been difficult. That said a good portion of my Saturday was spent gathering a lot of that information (there is certainly much more that could likely be gathered, I'm mostly waiting to hear back from a couple reports to know what they'll need if anything more first) and taking actions in behind the scenes. I believe that the WMF has been walking the walk on supporting the community for quite some time and that support has ranged all over the map from legal funds to help community members fight long term abusers locally to global bans to criminal and civil action that the WMF supports directly to ISP reports and ISP action and much more. However, unfortunately, I can't sit here and list each case and what we tried to do and the results and I'll likely never be able too. Even in this case if the abuser was sent to a jail cell for years I'd never be able to publicly say anything (and at least some people would probably think the same person was doing other vandalism). I still wish we could do more as every case is still a resources balancing issue but It's a fight we've been winning and I think that the importance of supporting the community is becoming clearer and clearer to both the WMF leadership and the community.
Some of that started when CA (Community Advocacy) was part of LCA (Legal and Community Advocacy) and Geoff agreed to provide legal support for users who were sued and then we were allowed to consider Global Bans and help to investigate long term abuse (each of these cases taking 1-200 staff hours to fully investigate). Still at the time it had to me Philippe (who was also responsible for a lot more) and me (when I wasn't doing other work) along with a sporadic hours from other CAs. Now I'm the first Manager of Trust & Safety we've ever had, with my position less then a month old, and we hired a new staff member a couple months ago who has experience with both on and off line abuse and now reports to me spending the majority of her time helping with T&S investigations. Others in CA are also working on the question of online Harassment and how to deal with that both from the WMF standpoint and the community standpoint (Patrick is running that, you can see some of the initial research on meta but there will be more, including a community consultation and survey, later this year). There is a lot to do, but I'm optimistic that there is a knowledge that there is a lot to do now and that the resources and will to do that are slowly increasing. Re: restrictions on Telstra IPs I think those are significantly better to come from the community, we can help with the offline stuff (and occasionally some of the online stuff) but where editing is going to get locked down for large swaths I think the community usually needs to be the one who does that. I'll never rule something out but that's my default position. It wouldn't be completely un precedented (there have been a couple other LTAs which have gotten close either here or on other large wikis/globally) but is certainly very rare. Jalexander--WMF 07:17, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
As you know, the community has a significant number of editors who would never agree to any kind of restriction for a variety of reasons ranging from "not a problem, suck it up" to "liberty requires that all editing is open". I do not know how much abuse from those IPs has occurred, but if it were ongoing and could not be stopped after consultation with the ISP, the WMF needs to step up and resolve the situation with technical measures, and put up with the storm. Many of us do not like being part of a community where individuals can be picked off and harassed in the ways described. Obviously Telstra will ignore everyone and there are only two remedies: an IP restriction or a court order. The former would get Telstra's attention. The latter is not going to happen even if Huldra were to unwisely report the matter to her local police—unwisely because that would invite accidental disclosure of her personal details. Thank you for the explanations and the resource guide link. Johnuniq (talk) 08:31, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
I am alarmed by this notion of blocking Telstra to try to force them to act against the vandal. Just a couple of weeks ago we were in very much the opposite position - saying that the Russians are crazy to block all of Wikipedia to try to force us to censor information about the production of charas. I feel like any precipitous action ("Wikipedia blocks much of Australia over a single editor") totally undercuts our position on anything like this. Though this is a matter of personal guesswork, I doubt a troll who threatens to rape or kill anyone who reverts him is even as much of a risk as an article about a kind of hashish (at least, not when it says some people mix it with tobacco, which is a dangerous drug) So are you going to make a personal apology to Putin and Roskomnadzor, admit that they hold the proper balance on human rights? God I hope not. So we should explore our alternatives - abuse filter alerts, a cadre of volunteer editors, people to explain and belittle his incessant threats, but not censoring Australia, and absolutely not appeals for prosecution [at least presuming there are no specific, plausible threats being made that actually put an editor in real fear for his well-being; unfortunately I cannot be fully informed here because everything is being deleted]. That country's censorship and surveillance of communications is a crime against humanity, and we should neither validate it nor become collaborators with it. Wnt (talk) 11:57, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
All multiple/long term threats of violence/death/rape are plausible until you can identify the person or group making those threats. There is no way to know if the offender is indeed in the same part of the world as their IP address is nor is it impossible for a person to travel if they are fixated on causing harm. Anonymity is the best defense for the victim at this stage so the idea presented earlier about going to the press to force Telestra 'deal with it' is misguided at best. In my, non-expert, opinion just range blocking all of Australia would be much preferable to the 2+ weeks trauma that has been caused to a known person who has been subject to this kind of attack many times not to mention the possibility of unwanted press attention because this is going on on Jimbo's talk page and it is a bit newsworthy that it took two weeks to get the foundation engaged in the matter.

If there must be a risk of news coverage let it be for Wikipedia blocking Australian IP editors to protect an editor from death/rape threats not about how it took two weeks to get the WMF engaged and how the problem is still on going. The first is arguably good press that focuses on the WMF the second is bad press that focuses on the victim and has a much greater chance of them being outed. Outing being the the worst possible outcome. JbhTalk 13:04, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

On ANI someone said that the vandal threatens essentially everybody who reverts him. A threat against the whole world isn't really a threat at all. This kind of random trolling is annoying, but if people stand together it doesn't have to be unbearable for any one person. But if the outcome here is to undermine Telstra's efforts to preserve whatever is left of the privacy of their customers, that is unbearable.
More to the point, if your administrative model depends on tracking down and punishing any poster anywhere who makes random threats, then you are locked into a model of universal, ceaseless, Orwellian panopticon. You might track down this vandal and find out he's accessing from libraries, so then you have to demand that every library keeps long-term video archives of everyone accessing its terminals. You might find out he's wardriving for Wi-Fi, and then you have to have undeletable logs mandated in the operating systems of all the 'private' computers hooked up to the Internet, so for example, you're saying Linux should be illegal, because some Richard Stallman types might be roaming around outside of jail, letting people wardrive and access the Internet without knowing who they are. Do you want Linux illegal? Don't start down a road unless you want to end up where it goes! Wnt (talk) 14:04, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
They also make it very clear at ANI that the victim of this abuse is a regular target of such abuse, that it could have been someone who had done the same thing to them before and, if you read some of the stuff the victim has been subject to that this relates to ARBPIA. Yet your take away is that 'the vandal does this to anyone who reverts them', that is not the key take away even if that statement was made.

I do not know where you get your distopian panopticon from my comments so I have no response to it. If you want to expand on that subject please do so on my talk page where I would be happy to discuss it. JbhTalk 14:33, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm in Australia and a Telstra subscriber. I'd support hard blocking all Telstra IPs if Telstra doesn't act soon and responsibly on this. That would oblige all Wikipedia editors who are Telstra customers to switch, if they have the option, to another provider. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:45, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

I haven't followed this case that closely, but AFAIK at the moment it's been mostly just IP editing. Perhaps they will move on to accounts after a soft block, but I think we should deal with these things as they come, although not taking too long to do so. I think we should also concentrate on the need for protection. We want to do our best to stop this behaviour, so soft blocking the necessary Telstra ranges isn't unresonable. This would have the effect of stopping anonymous editing from a lot of Telstra customers, and perhaps when combined with media attention would help to get Telstra's attention, but that shouldn't be the primary purpose of the block, rather that we need to do what we can to stop the highly problematic editing. And while it's resonable for customers to consider whether their ISP is able to provide a suitable level of service, including whether their abuse department is sufficiently on the ball to stop them being banned from everywhere, ultimately as long as we our policy is to allow IP based editing where possible, again we should be banning on the need for protection, and not because customers should be switching if they can. Nil Einne (talk) 17:08, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
If they don't immediately end their relationship with the abuser or if they unduly delay handing over the abuser's identity to the police, then preventing all of Telstra's clients from editing here is a protection measure. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:18, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Your idea is lunacy. It would be lunacy with some positive features, since the Australian editors would work together to develop and document effective workarounds for anyone to edit despite all blocks and bans of any variety. Nonetheless, it would so badly undercut our position that Wikipedia might go directly into its final collapse. This is not the first time that you've tried your best to destroy our ideals, nor will it be the last. Wnt (talk) 23:45, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Your ideals, singular. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:58, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Quite frankly if it really comes down to a choice between protecting the personal safety of a registered Wikipedian in good standing versus soft-blocking half of an entire continent's IP users, the only sane choice is to protect the editor and to hell with the ISP. Make it Telstra's problem if they're not responsive to reasonable requests. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:57, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
  • And yet there is a huge double standard at play here. Some otherwise quite sensible wikipedians above are suggesting collective punishment on Australians due to the transgressions of one person, yet are the first to hide behind anonymity to avoid responsibility for their own edits. This is really a non-starter. You will not convince (of all people) Australians by force. People tend to pull together when under attack as a group. You will not convince Telstra by threats (you are not their customers, they are not required to pay any attention to you). Media attention of a block of a significant part of a predominantly white western-democratic country is not going to be favorable to wikipedia (see previous cases of large geographical blocks on the Register). The only way this will actually get resolved is by reporting it to the authorities both locally and in the home country of the harrasser. Australia the UK and the USA all have large well funded cyber crime authorities who actively take online threats seriously. Telstra will *not* provide information on one of their customers (it would violate data protection laws) without a court order. If the WMF wants to actually *do* something about it, making a formal complaint to the police for *each and every threat* is perfectly feasible. The WMF has millions, literally fucking millions of dollars sitting around that it could be spending on actively making the encyclopedia a nicer place to edit. Hiring one or two people full time on even a basic wage (plenty of people need/want jobs!) to fill in the required harrassment forms, log the information, chase for updates from the relevant authorities etc would be a drop in the ocean of their cash reserves. I have actually taken action against harrassers overseas (Texas sheriffs resolved my issue in about 2 weeks!) and its just a case of finding the correct legal route to apply pressure. The WMF has money to burn and could easily support this. The neverending torrent of abuse some editors get is unbelievable. Its been how many years and no end in sight for some long term vandals, despite the admins, editors, WMF, arbcom etc knowing who they are, their address etc. About time the WMF put their donations to work on something more than badly planned & executed tech upgrades that no one wants. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:20, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Well, I have been told (off-line) by an Australian that there is very little chance of the police in Australia doing anything *unless* I give up my anonymity. There is *no way* I will do that, for one very good reason: if you knew my RL name, it would take seconds, minutes on the internet to find my home address. (And the way my society function: I cannot change that.) Do you *really* think I will risk giving that to my old friend,..or any of his copy-cats? So after 5 years of rape- and death threats he gets as an award: my home address!
Eeeeh, I don´t think so.
I have been told we stand a better chance contacting https://www.tio.com.au Jalexander-WMF did you know about them? Could you please tell me if you have contacted them, or Telstra? You don´t have to tell me here; you have my email-address.
Also, understandably, the fact that edits have been oversighted makes the case more difficult, however, oversighted edits *can* be made "viewable", again, can´t they? If so, I hereby give permission to do that..(if my permission is needed) Huldra (talk) 22:22, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm dismayed that WMF haven't even told you if they've contacted Telstra, and haven't bothered to ask how you feel about un-hiding the abuse. I assumed when you went quiet it was because they were dealing with you by email. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 00:13, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Only in death does duty end, it's unfortunate you had to deal with that on your own. Let's see how it plays out when Telstra is faced with the WMF and the Wikipedia community. I'd have hoped to hear by now, though, that they've severed their relationship with the abuser (assuming the WMF has actually contacted them). --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:20, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Huldra While I'm not completely comfortable with undeleting the comments regardless (I still think it causes harm to have them up, and not just to you) I would not stand in the way if community members decided to do so. I do believe that's best within their realm however and not within the WMFs decision (My understanding is that it would be allowed within the privacy policy). I'll contact you by email re you other questions. Jalexander--WMF 01:30, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Jalexander-WMF, thank you for your reply, and I confirm I got your email. You are sending the ball back to the "community", but from what I can see: I´m not sure the community here will ever make any decision. In which case nothing will be done.
I repeat: un-hiding the abuse (temporarily) is fine with me, if that is what it takes to stop it. I marked the abusive IPs with @@ on the WP:ANI thread. Is there any specific person/department I should ask to get this done?
I´ve been taking this for quite some years, so I´m sort of getting used to it--to the extent that one ever can get used to it. (And so is everyone else in the I/P area who is not considered "pro-Israeli" enough). The problem is basically that we are not getting any new editors, they are scared off. Btw, Wikipedia is the only place I have ever been threatened with rape -or murder -in my life. (And I have been on the net for more than 20 years).
Anthonyhcole, I "went quiet" on the "dramah"-boards...as it was week-end, and I did not expect the WMF to be very active then. Also, I personally really don´t like spending too much time on these boards; I had to get back to my relaxing little "gnoming" (like this; which is what I absolutely love doing), cheers, Huldra (talk) 23:55, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Huldra, has the WMF contacted Telstra? Has the Telstra IP stopped abusing you? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:48, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Anthonyhcole Frankly; I don´t know much more than you. I have asked the WMF to say publicly *if* there is no response from Telstra, as I think that is the only way we can get consensus for range-blocking. On the positive side, I can tell you that the last week or so has been without any new threats. If this is because the vandal saw the WP:ANI thread (And he did: 120.144.134.25 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)) and got "cold feet", or if it is due to Telstra intervention: I really don´t know. But from my long experience with compulsive vandals like that: the only thing that stops them permanently is outside intervention. Btw: I never heard back from Telstra. Huldra (talk) 20:35, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. For what it's worth, I think the WMF should heavily pursue Telstra on this and ensure they end their financial relationship with the abuser. WMF have just received five stars in this year’s Who Has Your Back report from the EFF. Who here believes they've got this editor's back? Do you believe they'll have your back should you find yourself in her situation? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:02, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
Perhaps there is a technological way to deal with this? Some kind of filter perhaps? Etamni | ✉ | ✓  20:59, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
I have no idea, but if we had a filter which stopped any Telstra IP making any edits to an article under WP:ARBPIA, then that would probably do the trick, Huldra (talk) 21:24, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

.....and right on track, just after the WP:ANI thread is archived here...they are back.... as

The Signpost: 16 September 2015

JoeSperrazza terrorising editors and Guy allowing it to happen

The following discussion was wiped from ANI so I am transcluding it here.

All the above is chickenfeed. JoeSperrazza has been viciously attacking an editor for months. Feeling threatened, an editor made a report on User talk:Jimbo Wales only for Guy to wipe the thread. Jimbo has said when editors bring concerns to his attention he wants them left there, where he can see them. JoeSperrazza isn't going to stop terrorising the editor so can we turn this discussion to action to be taken against Guy for allowing this to happen? Also, a 266 - paragraph report on the affair was posted at User talk: Ihardlythinkso. Despite his protests it has been revdeleted. Can someone please unhide it? 86.149.12.94 (talk) 17:58, 1 October 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.222.175.101 (talk)

Investigation Request

Please investigate whether User:Rikster2 and User:Bagumba are the same user. If not, please investigate whether they have formed a gang of persistent keyboard warriors for enforcing strict and strongly subjective editing styles in Wikipedia by reverting other editors' good faith edits and randomly hand out controversial bans to those who made a protest. 120.16.105.67 (talk) 03:36, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

This is seriously wrong, they have formed a one-two punch and acted like a gang. Gangs will destroy Wikipedia. I must see this matter dealt under fair mediation. Otherwise, I will leave this place forever, just like many of us have done before. Eventually, Wikipedia will consist of nothing but a bunch of persistent keyboard warriors enforcing and enjoy their own website in the name of their very own Manual of Style. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.16.105.67 (talk) 04:01, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Complaint

Wikipedia is now full of persistent keyboard warriors and unjustified admins. I got banned today for no valid reasons. I would like to report the following two users in my talk page for being subjective and abusive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:120.16.88.202

Cheers. 202.72.165.105 (talk) 02:53, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Further complaint against User:Bagumba

This admin banned me again after I made a complaint against him here. Some serious abuse of admin powers here. 120.16.193.171 (talk) 03:17, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
Calling fellow editors "nuts" is an unacceptable personal attack, unless the OP is their mental health professional, in which case the comment is a violation of professional ethics. Unsurprisingly, this seems to be a comment from a sockpuppet abusing multiple accounts. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 03:31, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
I recall my words when I describe them, but I was very angry at that time because I've done nothing wrong today and I was in the middle of expressing my views when I got banned. 120.16.105.67 (talk) 03:36, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Query

I !voted at an AfD. The sole person who is insisting that the article of his be kept is not\w nominating a slew of articles for deletion on quite tenuous grounds. Several of mine are nominated/ proposed for immediate deletion. One of mine is on a person who is head of a major corporation now, but who had been a UN Assistant Secretary-General (not a US politics issue there) but also held political office - so I am quite absolutely barred from commenting at the AfD even though the AfD is a blatant and absolute retaliation for my position at an AfD. This post is absolutely unrelated to "US Politics broadly construed" but is directly related at blatant misuse of the deletion tools of Wikipedia. Is my post here a violation of anything rational? Collect (talk) 18:24, 24 October 2015 (UTC) Also note - the nominator of the slew of articles at AfD does not notify those who wrote any of the articles - I fear he might be in violation of policy by not notifying when he used the name of the person starting the articles as his main rationale for bringing them to AfD -- I mean - how can anyone rationally say the first black postal carrier in the US is "not notable"? Cheers. Collect (talk) 18:27, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

User:Collect, I've seen it happen. I wrote an article on Tahera Amhad. She was the first woman to recite the quoran in public in the united states at a national convention, featured in PBS The Calling and later the coke can nonsense of may this year. The precedent set was that being a first isn't always a notable thing. I still to this day do not understand that rationale. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 18:57, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
The same sock ([7]) nominated a college president and former Dean of Dartmouth as "not notable", the publisher of the primary reference work on artists as "not notable", and so on. I think he would nominate Rosa Parks if I had edited that article :(. Collect (talk) 19:01, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

@Collect - If there is someone stalking your articles in retaliation for an AfD vote, this is probably a matter for AN/I, not Jimbotalk. Also, links to the AfD debates would help. Carrite (talk) 19:04, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

To the extent that anything remotely connected to "US politics" would get me at least a one-month block, I am trying to be very careful. You asked for a set of links, so I am not going to name articles, lest my friendly neighborhood Spiderman appear. [8] [9], [10], [11], [12]. Enjoy. Collect (talk) 19:12, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
I have no idea of the motivations at work here, but the one I looked in on, Seymour, seemed anything but frivolous. Puffy, and not the greatest sourcing. Coretheapple (talk) 19:31, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
The motivations are clear, Coretheapple. The nominator is retaliating against people who support deletion of their overt SPA self promotional editing by nominating for deletion articles those other editors have written, on spurious grounds. It is naked and it is ugly. Fortunately, it will not be successful, but it gets people riled up and wastes people's time. Classic tendentious editing. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 00:06, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
The solution to any perceived problems with Thaddeus Seymour is to improve the article, not delete it. He meets WP:PROF. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 00:15, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
OK, but I think the nom needs to be recorded on the talk page for future reference regardless. Coretheapple (talk) 15:33, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
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