Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-11-22

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2010-11-22. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Brews ohare site-banned; climate change topic-ban broadened (2,085 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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Prof. Dr. John R. Brews was never really disruptive. While there were certainly issues with the way he edited Wikipedia, this was never a serious enough problem that would warrant a broad topic ban for all of physics, let alone a site ban. Brews was basically bullied/pestered away from Wikipedia. The ArbCom system is set up in such a way that they will always choose the side of a cabal that opposes a single editor or a small group of editors without much regard for content issues.

In case of the climate change topics, the opposition against climate sceptical editors was far more justified than the opposition that existed against John Brews. At least this is true if we assume that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not some online social medium like facebook. However, the ArbCom system focusses only on social interactions. Then, because the climate sceptics form a rather large cabal, ArbCom appeased them. They topic banned good contributors including two out of the only three expert editors we have in this area (definition of expert I'm using: someone who has published papers in peer reviewed journals on the topic area).

The motion ArbCom passed was prompted by complaints by some editors that a topic banned expert was placing notifications of compromized articles on his userspace. That expert was blocked for two weeks even though what he did fell within the boundaries of the topic ban. A motion was passed that explicitely forbids this sort of activity. The fundamental issue of maintaining Wikipedia articles was not addressed, largely because it is politically incorrect to contradict the official rationale for the topic bans: Topic banned editors are supposed to have nothing useful to contribute to the topic area, even if they are big experts in the topic area.

Count Iblis (talk) 02:18, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Book review: The Myth of the Britannica, by Harvey Einbinder (6,336 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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"the management attacked the methodology of the study, rather than fixed the problem." - umm, if the methodology was indeed wrong, then that's quite correct. This phrase is almost an inversion of scholarship - they're being accused of serious analytic thought, rather than a marketing/PR quick-fix! -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 00:10, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I read this as "rather than fixing the undeniable errors, the management was mostly concerned about how they were counted in comparison to the competitor". (And as we all know, Nature stood by its study.) Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:22, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wait a minute, "rather than fixing" - it can hardly be that they said they WOULD NOT fix errors. That would be absurd. I assume you mean something along the lines of rather than focusing on the errors being fixed in the future. Which is my point, about a marketing/PR approach, contrasted to disputing if the rating of errors was being done reasonably. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 00:39, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand why actually fixing errors (i.e. undeniably improving the product) should be called a "marketing/PR" approach, if that is your point.
As it happens, just two weeks ago I noticed that an error I had posted at WP:EBE in October 2005 - two months before the Nature study came out - is still not corrected in the online Britannica. To be fair, other errors have been fixed much sooner after they appeared on that page; I guess it depends on who needs to be contacted to authorize a fix. But if they have such a process (specific people who wrote an article years ago have to be reached and respond, etc.) that would mean that for Britannica, even fixing clear errors comes at a cost.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:16, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In both cases -- in 1960, & again in 2005 -- when errors were reported in the Encyclopædia Britannica, instead of admitting to the problems & promising to fix them, its management instead replied that the problem was not in Britannica, but in the study. In 1960, they accused Einbinder of cherry-picking from their thousands of articles & singling out the comparatively few that were missed somehow by editorial review. In 2005, they claimed that where Nature found errors, they were instead differences in opinion or interpretation of facts. Reading about the earlier incident, I could not help but think of the 2005 study. These two identical responses leads me to suspect that EB management believes it is more cost-efficient to treat the inevitable errors in its work as public relations issues than to simply fix them! If my understanding is correct, this reflects sadly on Encyclopædia Britannica. (And as a post script, Einbinder did examine the 1964 release of Britannica to see how they handled his criticisms: some articles were lightly revised, a few were more thoroughly revised, but far more appeared without any changes whatever.) -- llywrch (talk) 00:50, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The first paragraph mentions "a list of 666 articles in the 1958 edition which were unchanged from the earlier ninth and eleventh editions, completed, respectively, in 1889 and 1911." Is it possible for Wikipedia to have a page listing those 666 articles?
—Wavelength (talk) 01:12, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I no longer have the book. (I borrowed the copy I read through my public library's Interlibrary Loan services.) -- llywrch (talk) 01:37, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you wanted to see a list of articles that stay unchanged for a long time on Wikipedia, check out Wikipedia:Dusty articles. Svick (talk) 23:11, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • interesting review. One small correction right now: stubs don't have to be useless. As a note, where I have fully checked articles copied off old PD sources against modern sources, I haven't found any problems. —innotata 03:14, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for defending good stubs!
How good is the review mechanism, if there is one, for old PD articles? Would be great to know which of those articles have been fact-checked and approved by one or more editors. --Chriswaterguy talk 05:43, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your guess is as good as mine. :-\ llywrch (talk) 23:11, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography#Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography (permanent link here).
—Wavelength (talk) 17:24, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very fond of Einbinder, and use him to make my book to argue how reference works (including Wikipedia) can serve as a flashpoint for larger social anxieties about technological and social change. There's many fascinating parallels one might draw with WP. Here's a quote I like: "When a work is as prominent as the Britannica, it is only natural that it's real and imaginary faults should attract the attention of critics, cranks and querulous eccentrics who have been smitten by a desire to improve this familiar institution of scholarship. As an august symbol of authority, it is an attractive target for critics; and since it is continually cited as a source of information, its treatment of controversial questions has frequently provoked individuals whose ideas and beliefs have been cited." \acite[58]{Einbinder1964mb} -Reagle (talk) 12:55, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Election report: Candidates still stepping forward (608 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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It's my fault for not catching it and telling Tony but I wouldn't agree that I have "expertise" in any martial arts. I've never advanced much beyond beginner's level in any martial art in which I've participated. Cla68 (talk) 05:21, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. Tony (talk) 08:38, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Features and admins: The best of the week (0 bytes · 💬)[edit]

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-22/Features and admins

In the news: Jimbo Wales interviewed and parodied; Wikipedia in politics (21,634 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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I'm thinking maybe we should remove the bit on the Irish student prank per WP:DENY. Powers T 18:42, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I might be bold and redact it a little--the specifics of the game described are almost tempting. Then again, who reads Signpost but the loyalists anywho? Ocaasi (talk) 04:56, 25 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please avoid making significant alterations to Signpost stories that long after publication (see also Wikipedia:Signpost/About), unless there is a pressing need to do so (and as you said yourself, this detail is "not a big deal").
However, you are both very welcome to become involved in the pre-publications process that is coordinated in the Signpost Newsroom, and suggest edits to stories before they become published.
In addition, the remark about WP:DENY somehow misses the point of the Signpost's "In the news" section - one of its main tasks is to inform the community of what parts of Wikipedia have received media attention recently. In other words, it is too late to deny attention to this particular vandal, he has already received plenty (from an audience that he probably cares much more about than about Signpost readers) by writing about it in the University Observer, which can't be undone by excluding the story from the Signpost. And WP:BEANS doesn't quite apply here either - the few potential vandals who are Wikipedia-savvy enough to read the Signpost but still haven't thought of such mischief yet are far outweighed by the many good-willed Wikipedians whom the Signpost coverage might make more alert about unsourced additions of names to articles about historical events.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:17, 25 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why don't we just change the speed of light? We could probably get consensus for 500,000 km/s initially, as a pilot project. Lampman (talk) 14:19, 25 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo's dangerous incursions into international politics[edit]

Am I the only one who is distinctly uncomfortable at Jimmy Wales's sounding his mouth off repeatedly about the release of war documents by WikiLeaks?


At this point, I want to urge caution on the part of both Jimmy and The Signpost. First, when you watch the BBC vid linked to above, he's a good deal more measured than the coverage here implies: "slow down, be careful", seems to be the thrust of his advice to WikiLeaks (which he appears to comment on solely because of the commonality of the word "wiki" in the names of both organisations—a slender reason indeed). Crucially, in this interview he does not repeat what many people regard as his unwise comments that WikiLeaks could "put innocent lives at risk". Memo to The Signpost: much as I admire its coverage generally, that seems like a slip-up.

If our own in-house publication gives the wrong impression by partial and inaccurate quoting, it shows just how dangerous it is for Jimmy to be making any political comments about WikiLeaks; it is just too easy to interpret such contributions to the debate as POV. We should not wander down this path at all; among other reasons, we leave ourselves open to future claims of hypocrisy WRT neutrality and censorship. For example, during the same BBC interview, Jimmy says, "many countries around the world very inappropriately filter political information they don't like ... we've take a very strong stand in that we will never compromise on [or] participate in censorship".

The release of "confidential" documents by WikiLeaks raises complex questions about the role of the anglophones in Iraq, state secrecy and the possibility of cover-ups of wrongdoing by troops, and the balance that needs to be struck among the stakeholders. Let us not forget that as well as > 3,000 deaths among Western troops, more than 25,000 Iraqis have died. The argument previously put by Jimmy that lives could be endangered by the release of WL documents sounded perilously close to what is being pumped out of the Pentagon right now, in advance of the next release of documents. A cynic would ask whether Jimmy is being paid by the Pentagon. We know better than this, but outsiders may be inclined to use his remarks to attack WP.

Let us avoid putting out confusing signals about censorship. Tony (talk) 02:37, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree perhaps it was a poor choice of wording on my part to suggest he "repeated" the same comments. That was not my intention. However as you rightly point out, the impression I took away from the interview was that he was of the same opinion as before, and that was what I had intended to bring across. Strange Passerby (talk • contribs) 02:45, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. And not only was the choice of wording not your intention, it was actually somebody else's choice - see below. Regards, HaeB (talk) 07:18, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just because Jimbo has a deeply held belief that goings-on at Wikipedia should be decided by community consensus—and abides by that worldview by taking a very minimalist, hands-off approach to governance on Wikipedia—is no reason that he cannot, should not, or may not express his personal views about other goings-on in the world. Because of the “wiki” that begins the name “WikiLeaks,” it is not surprising that many people would assume there is a connection between WikiLeaks and Wikipedia—and Jimbo by connection. His voice on this matter carries weight in the court of public opinion. Jimbo is understandably anxious to remind the press and the rest of the world that he and Wikipedia are in no way, shape, or form associated with WikiLeaks.

But he didn’t stop at the simple point about how Wikipedia has zero relationship to WikiLeaks, did he? He went on to say that WikiLeaks’ disclosures could “put innocent lives at risk.” Bravo to Jimbo for going the extra mile and reminding the world that what Julian Assange is doing is dangerous stuff that can cost lives. Were it me, I would share my personal opinion that Julian Assange is pure pond scum who simply basks in his 15 minutes in the limelight while putting the lives of dedicated military personnel at risk. In short, I can affirm that I am ‘distinctly comfortable’ with whatever Jimbo opines about Mr. Assange and his efforts to criticize the U.S. military.

Nation-building is tough business. It’s double-tough when one must do so while routing Taliban in order that the country might no longer give safe harbor to the world’s most dangerous terrorists and so the Afghani people can chose to send their girls to school without fear that the Taliban will burn down the girls’ school and shoot their teachers. And the way the Taliban religious police club women in the street for showing too much ankle under that burka is a splendid exhibit of “reinforcing a proper religious etiquette.” Check out the photo to which I linked. I wonder what that child at the far right is thinking. Indeed, nation building is tough business and I don’t think it can work in the long run. But military personnel are there doing their best to carry out their mission as directed by their civilian leadership. Jimbo is spot-on correct, in my opinion, that it is very, very wrong to further endanger lives for the mere pleasure of 15 minutes of fame. Greg L (talk) 03:57, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Talk about missing the point. His utterances have been way out of line. Tony (talk) 06:46, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The point I took was that Jimbo was out of line for stating his opinion in public. I am merely pointing out that I don’t see that his day job requires that he keep his trap shut about WikiLeaks’ conduct. Of course, I could be biased on that point since I agree with his sentiment. But even if I disagreed with his sentiment, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t shortchange him on one of the core foundations of my worldview: he has a right to think as he does as well as the right to state what he thinks. Disagreeing with him is an altogether different matter though; bring it on if you feel he is incorrect. I’ve long held the view that “The proper response to bad speech is better speech.” Greg L (talk) 06:51, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is a journalistic problem here, but it is both less serious and has a different culprit than stated above.
The full quote of Jimmy Wales' comments about Wikileaks in the BBC interview is as follows:
So contrary to what Tony implies, Jimmy Wales did actually make a remark similar to his comments in September that AP had summarized as saying that a Wikileaks decision "was irresponsible and could put innocent lives at risk." Tony also seems to have overlooked the Charlie Rose interview reported in the next paragraph, where Jimmy Wales formulated the same concern as "you may get good people killed".
That being said, I agree with Tony that the Signpost article should not have stated that Wales "repeated his previously reported comments that WikiLeaks could 'put innocent lives at risk'", because this implies that he repeated that exact wording in the BBC interview, whereas he chose a different wording there ("some of the information that they could be releasing could be dangerous to good people").
However, this was not Strange Passerby's fault. The problem was introduced in a subsequent edit by Ohconfucius that was labeled as "ce, trimmed" ("ce" = "copyedit"):
Strange Passerby's version:
Ohconfucius' version:
One can see that Strange Passerby's version had made it clear that Wales had chosen a different wording of what Strange Passerby (IMO reasonably) interpreted as the same opinion. By quoting Wales' statement that he was a "fan of the concept" directly, it also did more to convey what Tony calls the "measured" content of Wales' comments. In Ohconfucius' edit, this was weakened to "favoured a concept".
Another problem introduced in Ohconfucius "copyedit" is the "However", which constructs a contradiction between Wales' opinions about Internet filtering on the one hand and about Wikileaks' editorial policy on the other hand. This reflects the opinion put forth by Tony above, but I think it is misguided. There is no contradiction between opposing censorship of the net by third parties such as governments, and advocating that a certain site should not publish certain content. Otherwise any Wikipedian who ever voted "delete" in an AfD could be accused of hypocrisy when speaking out against the Great Chinese Firewall.
The basic problem here, regarding the Signpost, is sloppy copyedits which change the meaning of the text instead of just its style (and are apparently done without checking the source that is being reported on). This has been a serious concern in Signpost articles for many months now, and although I would say it has improved recently, just this week there was another misquote in "News and notes" (wrongly reporting that an interviewee had accused the German Federal Archives of frequent copyright violations), which had been introduced in a copyedit and was unfortunately only corrected after publication.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 07:18, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't that your fault? You launched in there as soon as I had done the first run-through (it had been rather messy, structurally), despite my protestations that I hadn't finished. I had to twiddle my thumbs looking at the unfinished version. It was almost 3am and I had to got to bed. Are you yourself taking the blame for errors that were not picked up until after publication? Tony (talk) 08:37, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, your errors are not my fault. Every Signpost writer is responsible for his own edits. It's true that I (not you) had pointed out the error earlier on IRC and it unfortunately somehow slipped through the cracks while I was fixing several other issues that had been introduced with your edit, but that only highlights the need to be more careful when making such changes in the busy phase right before publication - not throwing out something and expecting others to do the hard work of fact-checkingg. In any case, I have now started a general discussion about the issue at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost#Misquotes and other errors introduced in copyediting, which you are welcom to join.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:48, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The lessons to be learned is that we should all be more careful when copyediting, and never do so 'blindly' without reference to the source text. We should constantly cross-check each others' work to prevent such changes in nuances and other errors from creeping in. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 08:56, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]


About the other questions raised above: I don't think it is our job as Signpost writers to judge the wisdom of particular comments or views by Jimmy Wales when reporting on them. For example, I am not sure if his explanations of the connectivity issues holding back participation in India are entirely accurate, but at least they seemed to be notable, and an interesting new aspect to the much-discussed question on increasing participation in the "Global South", which is why I chose to report them in the "Briefly" section. Lacking newsworthiness would have been a more pertinent reason not to report about on the "dangerous to good people" comment, as I indicated here.
About "which he appears to comment on solely because of the commonality of the word "wiki" in the names of both organisations—a slender reason indeed" - that's not correct. First, this is an interview, so one would assume it was an answer to the interviewer's question. And if you watch the video in full, the BBC commenter states a solid reason for such a question: that Wikileaks is "often confused with Wikipedia". Or read the earlier Signpost coverage (e.g. this article), which reported that both Wales and Sue Gardner frequently had to deal with people contacting them based on assumption that they were involved with Wikileaks. Or see m:Wikimedia_Forum#Wikileaks_2.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 09:42, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(1) I made my original criticisms as a WPian, not as a Signpost journalist. (2) If you launch into the edit mode just after I've done a major edit, you need to take responsibility yourself. Tony (talk) 13:20, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It is likely going to be useful to run the final wording of this by me before publication; email will be best.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:45, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's too late for that, isn't it. I got the Signpost with that article on my talk page on 23 November, and so presumably did everybody else. --JN466 21:38, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, unfortunately. Just in general, I would say that Signpost shouldn't post anything that might be controversial in some way, or represent my views on anything that might be controversial, whether in the news generally or just of internal community interest, without asking me to help with the drafting to ensure perfect accuracy. In this way, the Signpost can clarify rather than merely adding to the noise in the world. :)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:50, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, Jimbo, I can't go along with that view; I don't think the Managing Editor would either (contacting him now for an opinion). The Signpost needs to be independent. Sometimes well-meaning glitches occur, and we learn from them. But the idea of first passing by you reports of what you have said publicly for vetting would not go down well among the readership. Tony (talk) 10:05, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, it wouldn't, though the more cynical among them might enjoy the irony of seeing on one and the same page—this one—reference to Jimbo's disapproval of all censorship ("filtering"), and to his feeling that it would be "useful to run the final wording of this by me before publication." I'm sorry, but "Signpost shouldn't post anything that might be controversial in some way, or represent my views on anything that might be controversial ... without asking me to help with the drafting to ensure perfect accuracy" is a very naive statement. You do not possess a "perfect accuracy" wand, Mr Wales, and, emphatically, rewording by you does not always "clarify". Sometimes it clarifies, sometimes it befogs. Bishonen | talk 20:20, 29 November 2010 (UTC).[reply]

News and notes: No further Bundesarchiv image donations; Dutch and German awards; anniversary preparations (3,944 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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Preparations for Wikipedia's tenth anniversary gearing up[edit]

  • For those interested, we'll be having an IRC meeting about the tenth anniversary plans on December first at 16:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office connect. If you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to get ahold of me. Steven Walling at work 23:43, 22 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why not http://10.wikipedia.org? That would avoid the potential (though unlikely) clash with the Tama language Wikipedia, and would also be more internationally recognizable. — SMUconlaw (talk) 09:03, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Steven Walling said "Our first choice was actually the more culturally-neutral 10.wikipedia.org, but MediaWiki is unable to handle having numerals at the beginning of a domain name at this point, so there was no way around it." I was not aware of this issue and I don't see anything about it in Bugzilla. Reach Out to the Truth 14:42, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's not in Bugzilla because no one filed a bug at the time. Operations staff simply emailed me and said that a numeric domain makes MediaWiki go haywire without describing the problem further. A bug should be filed though, so I'll ask about the specific error it produced. If it could be fixed we could migrate it, or at least set up a proper redirect. Steven Walling at work 16:58, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Could there at least be a redirect from 10.wikipedia.org to ten.wikipedia.org, without involving MediaWiki? – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 17:26, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Minh, I answered on the tenwiki Main Page talk, where you asked first. Cheers, Steven Walling at work 19:16, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting that there was no problem with ten.wikipedia, but the creation of a "COM:" namespace for Wikimedia Commons has been denied for two years based on potential conflict with a hypothetical Comanche-language Wikipedia... AnonMoos (talk) 15:56, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not to negate the idea (which personally I think is a good one) but Comanche is at least nominally a living language with a writing system. Bit of a different case than a language that's officially extinct and had no written script. It's ultimately Langcom that has a hold on this issue, and they're the ones that told me that it was not a problem to have tenwiki. Steven Walling at work 16:58, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

German Federal Archives won't extend collaboration with Wikimedia[edit]

All in all it sounds like a very successful pilot project, evaluated in both its seen benefits as well as the costs. This means that the Bundesarchiv or any other similar organization has good background for a new decision for such cooperation. It seems to be a matter of will and funding. Also here I have to say that 800-pixel wide images -- not much to store for the future -- is ok for a pilot project for Wikimedia but not a real cooperation. -- Sverdrup (talk) 10:51, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • It has been great for Wikipedia getting all the Bundesarchiv images: just look, say, Weimar Republic or Adolf Hitler to see what a difference it has made; I hope the image collaboration can be restarted at some time. —innotata 17:10, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News (1,086 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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"...web robots as [...] they were humans." Augh! We're bing attacked by human web robots. HELP!!! ( ) WikiCopter (radio • sorties • images • lost • defense • attack) 01:56, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Glad to see the reject button is coming into place. Not that the current solution of clicking one of the Twinkle rollback buttons, or the actual rollback button wasn't easy as heck anyways, but this makes the module "complete." Sven Manguard Talk 20:02, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject report: WikiProject College Football (0 bytes · 💬)[edit]

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-22/WikiProject report


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