Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2019-08-30

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2019-08-30. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Community view: Chinese Wikipedia and the battle against extradition from Hong Kong (10,381 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • WP's mission, ethic, and power structures were created in the innocent days of the internet at the start of the century. This article reveals how vulnerable the wiki communities are to the wrecking influence of state actors. Tony (talk) 03:36, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I came from the Village Pump of Chinese Wikipedia. After reading this article, I only saw one point: the leader of the Wikipedia User Group Hong Kong headed by 1233 and some of the leaders of the Wikimedia Taiwan, is not only using Chinese Wikipedia as a tool for political propaganda and ideology on Chinese Wikipedia, but also implementing ruthless suppression and libeling on editors come from Mainland China. That the appearance of this article on Wikipedia Signpost is an extremely serious insult to the free and open Wikimedia spirit. --To my distress 14:28, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • First of all, this commentary is written at my personal capacity and does not represent the official views of the Wikimedia Community User Group Hong Kong. (Representing the User Group) However, according to all statements and the resolution from the User Group, the User Group only expresses its wishes for a proper consultation of the bill within Hong Kong, as it adversely affects contributors (who may be targeted by the CPC) who wish to travel through the Hong Kong Airport. The User Group did not use Wikipedia as a tool for propaganda, has never done so, and does not plan to do so at the same time. The misinterpretation of the notice contents contributes to complete misunderstanding and accusations from other members of the Chinese Community.
  • (In own capacity) As one of the authors of this commentary, I can reassure that all contents are supported by facts, and can be fact-checked. Furthermore, what insults most is not this article but all attempts to block anyone expressing their own opinion. I personally, before becoming the liaison of the User Group, has brought the tug of war within the Chinese Wikipedia to Meta's RFC.
    Furthermore, the User above also disregards the fact that they are assuming all editors who are of PRC origin are connected with the Wikimedians of Mainland China working group and that Wikimedia User Group China (which is offline as stated within the article) is still recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation as a User Group. What members and supporters of Wikimedians of Mainland China should do is to not to continue their stance of all accusation of wrongdoings are attacking the Mainland Chinese community and blocks mainland editors from contributing positively to Wikipedia but try to look into any possibility of wrongdoings first before replying in a tone highly resembles the Communist Party of China. Expressing in a similar manner makes your working group another Communist Party of China, where all accusations, recommendations and error-pointing from non-Mainland contributors who seem not to be pro-China become something that attacks all mainland editors, disregarding their active contribution, and hurts the feelings of Mainland editors. And even here I still haven't counted the ruthless attacks from their mouthpiece, QiuWen (zh:WP:QW)(also the only running source of news related to the movement within the Chinese Wikipedia) against members who seemed not supporting the working group (including, but not limited to me, and also the WUGC).--1233 ( T / C） 16:02, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I warned To my distress for making polemic and personal attack statement on his user page, which mirrors what was said here. OhanaUnitedTalk page 02:47, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I must say, things in this style (attacking other members of the community) is somewhat common at the Chinese Wikipedia, particularly for community members connected to the aforementioned working group. I don't see the reason for them to stay within the community if they only speak newspeak.--1233 ( T / C） 05:44, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To me, this has been what you guys are doing, not us. Also, I only edited the article grammar and added some missed information, so we all had a say on this. All of what we said is true and is basically a summary of the protests and what has been going on. The information given was the point of view from us and not from the User Group. Furthermore, I assume that nobody wants cross-wiki arguements, so please take your complaints to your own places. My talk page doesn't get many vistors, so feel free to try and screw me over. I'd like to see that! Thanks, Oshawott 12 ==()== Talk to me! 00:47, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting, the accusations. The first thing I'd encourage is for the parties to try to find common ground at zh.WP. But perhaps the ideological differences are too great for them to consider communicating. Tony (talk) 07:52, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • It is vivid that the things described in this article are actually happened here. I would also like to point out that Mr. To my distress (User:痛心疾首) might be a sockpuppet of the global banned account User:Galaxyharrylion (appeared in this article). First of all they shared similar behaviors. To my distress seems very familiar with Wikipedia since day one he registered. In addition, To my distress was registered exactly three months and three days late after Galaxyharrylion's last edit - the CU logs expired in exactly three months - just as this article stated: "Socks are especially hard to detect due to the high proportion of editors who use VPNs to edit Wikipedia, and their knowledge of bypassing the CheckUser system." --PhiLiP (talk) 21:18, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • I feel interesting to hear your random, boring and vicious socket puppet accusations. That's what a bureaucrat of Chinese Wikipedia had said. Well done. --To my distress 12:37, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • As a ex-WUGC, and currently an active WMC @ ZH-Wiki; a citizen of Shenzhen and a CCP member, I am delighted to observe the current chaos in Hong Kong, and expact the prospective widening gap between Shenzhen and Hong Kong in next fiscal year and future. Thanks to their night efforts in streets and subways, the HK is sinking inevitably. I am a neutral to neither support or oppose any side, despite most of my friends at Zhwiki naively hope HK returns to normal ASAP. We had disagrees inside, for sure; but HK issue was actually only a nonsignificant boring piece. Therefore, to identity the editors from China Mainland is a rude, disrespectful attempt. Most editors from China Mainland, like me, did not participate into any editor war regarding this city. The accusation of Mainland editors is not statistically significant, i.e. Checking all the 200+ WMC members' edit history, less than 5% were engaged. Unfortunately, according to this biased press, our contributions had been neglected but the identification had been highlighted and misused. Seeking for a common? Oh please let us go. Walter Grassroot |talk 03:25, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The issue discussed at this Community view is long-term arguments within the Chinese Wikipedia. Arguments related to the bill protests is just a tip of all the issues discussed within this piece. Fact check: Although the total GDP of Shenzhen surpassed that of Hong Kong, the GDP per capita in HK is still higher than that of Shenzhen. And the youth, who did not benefit from the economical prosperity would hope to go self-destruct with those who benefit (i.e. the majority of them supporting the government and is labelled as "the silent majority"). No one is disregarding any positive contribution, but those which is destructive to the movement should be highlighted, discussed and resolved. (And even you admit that these errors exist)--1233 ( T / C） 06:08, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • All my concern @ Wikipedia is about Wikipedia. The affairs you tired to highlight, is somehow fabled target which "is destructive to the movement" by the youths' going self-destruction, i.e. suicide terrorism? Another lovely point you mentioned regarding to GDP Per Capita, since your city have a better per captia statistics, your next generation started to destruct the airport, subway and public transporation. All right, I have less idea/concern about any error existing in your city, please do not push me into your lope. Walter Grassroot |talk 23:42, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for writing this. Though the issue is not as severe as on the Chinese Wikipedia, English Wikipedia has been similarly subject to politically motivated censorship over the past several years. Admin have been ineffective at dealing with this, especially when it is done subtly. Citobun (talk) 10:06, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion report: Meta proposals on partial bans and IP users (3,427 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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@Pythoncoder: - nice summary, it might be worth noting that the partial/local ban consultation is specifically intended to start sometime shortly after the 7th September (when ARBCOM rules on the FRAM case)? Nosebagbear (talk) 23:51, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I hope they add my proposed question about the issue of private accusations, evidence, and adjudications interfering with the ability to learn the standards to which editors are expected to adhere, and with the checks and balances against retaliatory and abusive accusations. I got it in well under the deadline. I am also not very happy about referring to "the Office Actions policy" as if it had ever gone though the policy process, which it has not. I guess they thought "formerly proposed" had too many negative connotations? EllenCT (talk) 02:26, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Office Actions is still marked as a global policy; thus, the WMF's characterization in the quoted portion is accurate. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 03:03, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • The 2006-2016 policy was announced, discussed, approved and adopted. The 2017 and 2019 edits were not. EllenCT (talk) 08:24, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would appreciate a link to discussion leading to the use of "AD" to denote years, instead of "CE" which seems to be preferred by non-Christians, for whom it is not "the year of their Lord." Edison (talk) 21:01, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Whichever way you look at it though, Edison, it still won't change the fact that international counting of the Common Era coincides with the creation of Christianity. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:12, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict) Talk:AD 1/Archive 1#What should the articles from 1 to 100 be moved to?. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:12, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • It is surprising that Wikipedia's position is that Jesus of Nazareth is the Lord, so we have to use BC/AD ("Before Christ"/"Year of the Lord" rather than BCE/CE. I hope someone gives me a nudge on my talk page when this comes up again. Edison (talk) 10:19, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • Wikipedia's position is that it should name things in the way they are usually named in reputable sources. (And as an atheist, I don't like the assumption that I'm living in a "Christian Era". I'd probably dislike it even more if I followed some other religion.) Maproom (talk) 20:23, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In focus: Ryan Merkley joins WMF as Chief of Staff (4,699 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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"I love the idea of work we can only do together", so do I, it's a shame the Community and the WMF have never really succeeded in seeing eye-to-eye. Let's hope that with the Executive Director spending 200 days in a in a metal tube in the air (–WMF) and being an excellent advocate and ambassador for the movement, this appointment will fill a serious gap in ground control. Or will it incur yet another hefty budget for plane rides to and from SF? For my part, I can't easily envision the management of a 350-strong staff from a living room in Toronto. Lets hope we volunteer minions are going to get our money's worth from the millions our labour generates. Don't get me wrong, for once I'm not being cynical - for obvious reasons it was a solution waiting to happen, and Ryan sounds like the right person for the job. I very much look forward to meeting him here in Bangkok next year, Katherine as well, of course. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:45, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The fact the new COO will be working in Toronto, while the main office is in San Francisco raises the question just how effective can he be? And if a COO so far away can be effective, it leads to the question why is the WMF headquarters located in one of the most expensive cities to do business in? -- llywrch (talk) 05:07, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • His experience is good, though we've see major issues both previously and recently with people with great CVs that still demonstrates the differences of Wikipedia. I'll wait and see on that front. If's he's reading, can I suggest improving Biodynamic wine for some mutual practice? As an aside, I'd never even heard of it until now, and I'd say I'm pretty active on my wine! Learn something new... Nosebagbear (talk) 14:53, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Some little-discussed and little-advertised information: about a third of WMF staff do not live or work in the US at all, and at least half of the staff do not work out of the "head office". The current head office location was chosen because a decision about whether or not to renew the lease on the previous office (an office suite just down the street in San Francisco) had to be made just about the same time that Katherine Maher was appointed *interim* ED, and when even many SF-resident staff were avoiding working in the office if they could possibly do so. Given the level of turmoil within the WMF at the time, it was decided to keep it in SF for a period, just to provide some organizational stability and buy some time to do proper research on alternatives. The current WMF head office is about half the size of the previous one, despite the fact that WMF staffing numbers are up considerably from Fall 2016, when the location was moved. The WMF, as currently constituted, needs to remain resident in the US, and there will always need to be a "head office" somewhere, but if I was a betting woman, I'd lay odds that when this current lease expires, the head office will move elsewhere. Many of the executive, not just the new COO, work primarily from other locations. Risker (talk) 04:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
They should move the HQ to Barstow, California and use the money they save for state-of-the-art teleconferencing facilities. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:58, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This Barstow for sure. Not so sure about the many others. How about Juneau? That would appeal to their love of airplanes. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:47, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another example of the WMF's bloated bureaucracy. I'm sure the employee hired is qualified, but the position is unnecessary. Padding the payroll is one of the ways the WMF justifies the increased funding it requests from foundations. Senator2029 “Talk” 20:16, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Or maybe not quite so unnecessary - as can be seen recently at this page, there really is no one ireally n overall control. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:13, 18 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In the media: Many layers of fake news: Fake fiction and fake news vandalism (3,050 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • Fogcam isn't closing down anymore. The website has announced the intention of continuing. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:19, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Later that night, an anonymous vandal edited Delaney's biography on the English Wikipedia declaring that Delaney died, slain by Warren. ... "I thought it was funny. Presidential debates are largely substance-free spectacle so no, I don’t think there’s much more to report."

    I love ITM but stories like this always read as lionizing vandalism. Stories of COI battles and the sifting and winnowing for truth are always great, but when the story is that the media latched onto a fleeting vandal edit, what more is there to say than that prominent outlets are disparaging Wikipedia's reputation for cheap clicks? Or, as I unclutch my pearls, maybe it simply offends my BLP sensibilities. Anyway, might be worth casting such events in a harsher light. czar 17:30, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As co-writer of much of that particular story, I'll take that into consideration.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 20:15, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • On the flip side to The Young Turks journalist's idiocy, today I encountered a reasonably constructive edit (here) made by two YouTubers for this YouTube video about director's cuts, in a slightly surprising aside. — Bilorv (talk) 21:34, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was going to make a joke about the Once Upon a Time plot twist but then my twitter mutuals told me that the image featuring New York still with the Twin towers in Yesterday was not even in the final film. -Gouleg (Talk • Contribs) 14:23, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "When asked by The Signpost about the vandalism the reporter did not deny that he vandalized the article stating "I thought it was funny. Presidential debates are largely substance-free spectacle so no, I don’t think there’s much more to report."" unless they were asked point blank if they vandalized the article, this is gross character assassination. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:29, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

News and notes: Documenting Wikimania and our beginnings (872 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • Worth noting: it's the first time since January 2017 that more than three admins have been elected in a month. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:20, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hopefully "Hello, World!" ("One small edit..." to quote Wbm1058) will someday be chiseled somewhere alongside "That's one small step...". Randy Kryn (talk) 16:47, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]


News from the WMF: Meet Emna Mizouni, the newly minted 2019 Wikimedian of the Year (661 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • Good to know. Congratulations to Emma. Regards. --Titodutta (talk) 08:11, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • For some reason her name is not wikilinked above but we do have an article about her: Emna Mizouni. I boldy added the link and asked the author for forgiveness. Poveglia (talk) 07:14, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month? (2,985 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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I learned about Royal christening gowns today after seeing the DYK hook on the main page. It's an interesting topic that I didn't even know I was interested in! I loved reading it, the article definitely satisfied my curiousity. Clovermoss (talk) 01:44, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Pine, thank you for this article. I had to struggle with it at first but became more engrossed as I read on. Guess you wouldn't be able to make this a regular feature for The Signpost? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:57, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, it is a regular feature of The Signpost. If I misunderstood, it's up to Pine to decide. Personally, a lot of us - definitely including myself - can get carried away with criticism at times. It is important to look at the problems of Wikipedia, but then we have to ask ourselves "How did Wikipedia become such an outstanding success?" In its own quiet way this column answers that and I hope it will continue to answer that every month. The flip side - how Wikipedia could crash and burn - is explored 3 times this month: In Opinion, Op-Ed, and Community view. I'm glad we have something to keep in balance. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:15, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Kudpung and Smallbones: thank you very much for the comments. I'm planning to continue to write these pieces, although for at least the near future after the week of September 1 my comments will probably be shorter because I have other things that I need or want to do. Kudpung, if you didn't see June's or July's "On the bright side", you may want to have a look at them. --Pine (✉) 21:28, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Op-Ed: We couldn't have told you this, but Wikipedia was censored (35,739 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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  • Perhaps an IP range block would have been in order for Australia targeting the article in question? I am presuming that an article specific block is technically possible. This would need to be coupled with a registered user block where those users declare their residency in Australia. Again, presuming this is technically possible. If possible, then this could be a general approach to specific information blockade to comply with legal restrictions which are geographically defined. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:05, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    @Ceyockey: Neither is this technically possible at the moment (mw:Manual:Preventing_access#Restrict_viewing, phab:T230668) nor should Wikipedia ever comply with censorship orders that it doesn't have to in the United States. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:18, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree. One of the advantages of Wikipedia being hosted in the US is that the United States has an extremely broad right to free speech. -- Rockstonetalk to me! 03:19, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting. --Mark Miller (talk) 00:20, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding, "given the recent behaviour of Facebook and Twitter," as someone who has edited on this in the past three months, Twitter is nothing compared to what YouTube's algorithm was doing. Recently it has apparently been fundamentally altered, and seems somewhat better but still has way more intentional far-right radicalization than Twitter. EllenCT (talk) 02:30, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • More dangerous than "an impending crackdown" in terms of censorship is a concerted effort to push disinformation into Wikipedia. Censorship always has a clear source. Disinformation, not so much. — Neonorange (Phil) 02:59, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Censorship only has an obvious source if it fails. If it succeeds, you'll never know it happened at all. Even if it results in fewer people knowing about something than otherwise would have, it can be stated to have successfully suppressed knowledge of the censorship occurring at all. (Hence, probably, why the judge was irritated about the "Censored" page in the newspaper—it wasn't just that the judge wanted the censorship to occur, but for people not to know it was occurring. After all, a completely black page certainly did not publish any details the court order prohibited.) Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:42, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I consider censorship as flowing from the state. I live in the U.S., though in the past I have worked many countries, including Poland during the suppression of Solidarność. Disinformation I think is much more dangerous—see its use in the U.S., India, and Britain... to divide and demonize. Corrupt information is more dangerous than no data. Anyway, I agree with your statement about censorship—in trying for a succinct statement, I assumed a single source for censorship, and perhaps oversimplified. — Neonorange (Phil) 05:41, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Using the services in a manner that is inconsistent with applicable law" is a violation of our terms of use. This presupposes that Australian courts have anything to say about what non-Australian contributors do on a US-hosted server. They do not at all, IMHO. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:11, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The notion that none of the Wikipedians who made edits were Australians is not likely to stand up to any scrutiny. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:33, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's great, but what's Australia going to do about it, since Wikipedia is hosted here in the US? -- Rockstonetalk to me! 06:48, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Publication of a web page is deemed to occur at the place of comprehension, rather than the place where the data is stored. If a page is viewed in Australia (as per a number of other jurisdictions), it can be considered to have been published in Australia in regard to Australian law, even if it is hosted in the US. - Bilby (talk) 06:50, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding of what could happen (based on enforcement of foreign judgments) is that an Australian court could fine Wikimedia, and then take them to court in California to recover the money. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:48, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hawkeye7, I don't know of any particular case law on the matter (though now I'm rather interested, and if I have time today I might take a look), but I'd note the SPEECH Act in particular, which was passed particularly to forbid US courts from enforcing foreign libel judgments. Foreign judgments are not enforced if they are "repugnant" to the public policy of the United States, and I think it would be pretty repugnant for a foreign court to be able to use the US courts to restrict Americans' free speech and free press rights in a way a US court or law would be forbidden to do. Arguably, since those are constitutional rights, the court would even be prohibited from enforcing those foreign judgments, since all judgments by US courts are subject to constitutional review no matter why they were originally made. If a ruling by a US court would abrogate such a right, it will be overturned. Basically, courts can't end-run the First Amendment like that. (And before anyone pulls out the "But they had to specifically prohibit libel enforcement by statute!", yes, but libel is explicitly not protected under the First Amendment. Reporting on crime and criminals unquestionably is.) Seraphimblade Talk to me 11:41, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note that the WMF also has assets outside the United States. According to m:Wikimedia servers, there are servers in the Netherlands and Singapore that you could try to seize by suing in the Netherlands or Singapore. You would have to look at the laws of all countries where the WMF has assets in case one of those would recognise the Australian court ruling. Also, the WMF might be prevented from ever having assets in Australia unless the WMF pays the fines. --Stefan2 (talk) 13:49, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If Australia has laws requiring suppression of facts, I would certainly say it would be no loss for the WMF to be prevented from having assets there to begin with. Seraphimblade Talk to me 14:29, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
What exactly is applicable law? Is that the laws of all countries in the entire world? Let's say, for example, that some "random" country were to decide that you can't write about the Fourth of June Incident, would we then be prevented from writing articles about that subject due to the vague wording applicable law in the terms of use? --Stefan2 (talk) 13:49, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"Applicable" is a combination of "enforceable" – i.e. United States law – and "voluntarily upheld" foreign law that the WMF chooses to abide by, including judicial decrees. Given the repugnancy of the Australian gag order to U.S. First Amendment rights, noted above by Seraphimblade and others, I highly doubt the WMF would voluntarily abide by anything related to it. Given their public position on Turkey's censorship of Wikipedia, it would be a strange thing indeed if they did so. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:08, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Does anyone think there's little future for courts in making such suppression orders? And that the practice might simply peter out because it's becoming ineffective and impractical? Tony (talk) 11:55, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tony1, actually the Singpost article cited an article asking exactly that question. It basically raised the concern that when a court says "I demand that the tide not come in!", the court is lowering respect for itself by making a demand it can't ever actually enforce. (And of course, in this case, the restriction actually resulted in Streisanding, so there's that concern too.) Basically, they're going to have to come up with other ways of ensuring a fair trial besides censorship. Seraphimblade Talk to me 14:49, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:IGNOREALLRULES. No physical courts can or should control the digital environment. Cardinal Pell is a child molester, and let this be screamed from the rooftops. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 19:23, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, Vami IV, I'm not sure I would agree that no court should control the digital environment in any way whatsoever. If you're trying to use the digital environment to hire someone to kill me, I would rather prefer that law enforcement be able to stop you from doing that. But certainly simple statements of fact should not be censored, whether or not they are convenient for any given government. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:22, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that "screaming from the rooftops" is what may cause a mistrial to be declared, potentially allowing such people to walk. The supression orders are generally used to ensure that the jury trial is fair, rather than to protect the accused - if media coverage prevents a fair jury trial the accused may be deemed to be unable to recieve one, which may affect the outcome. Bilby (talk) 08:23, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Vami IV: - Assuming that you're pro fair trial, but that you think the internet should no (or very limited) free speech limitations, how would you ensure accused receive fair trials in similar (but potentially less clear-cut) situations? Nosebagbear (talk) 15:27, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Retracting this. I was just in a pique at more government-led fuckery with Wikipedia and wanted to scream about it. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 15:53, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I made a discussion proposal. Not really sure it's worth keeping a category of just one person. -- Rockstonetalk to me! 23:16, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm sure there will be more added over time.--Auric talk 11:12, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for an interesting topic! I'd suggest a category for Category:Wikipedia article subject to censorship and banner template. Banner could be used for articles currently affected, and category, for articles affected in the past. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:56, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Does another country have the right to impose their legal standards on an entirely American entity? Answer: No.
American sovereignty is impinged when another country, in this case, Australia, dictates what an American entity can and cannot publish. The fact that Australia does not have the same free speech protections as America does not afford them the right to issue, let alone enforce restrictions on content on American servers with an American non-profit. The default position (albeit from an American perspective) is freedom of speech, with limitations meted out cautiously and with great consideration, not merely as a matter of convenience or even offense. That isn't the case here. Their understandable concerns of finding an untainted jury should be addressed in voir dire, and sequestering the chosen jury, as is done in American courts when necessary.
And what kind of precedent does such censorship set? While I hate the term slippery slope, it does fit here. What if Pakistan doesn't like articles about Al Qaeda? What if Saudi Arabia doesn't like articles about their ruling family killing American journalists in Turkey? And is the right to censorship reciprocal? Does America get to rule and dictate what can and cannot be disseminated in other countries on their servers? Positively Pandy (talk) 16:18, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Positively Pandy: Yes, other countries do have the right to impose their legal standards on an entirely American entity. If you do not believe me, go read the GDPR article. Poveglia (talk) 07:31, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is no different from censorship of Wikipedia in China or Turkey: It is not Wikipedia's responsibility to prevent access or editing from those countries, regardless of what their governments might say, and we don't self-censor in order to have blocks lifted. Should we also consider rangeblocking all of China to prevent any illegal activity that may slip through? –dlthewave ☎ 18:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Dlthewave: Ehm, this was done to ensure a fair trial. Turkey and China have a lot of censorship for other reasons... The situation is completely different and not even comparable. Poveglia (talk) 07:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The goal of the censorship, to ensure a fair trial, is one that Wikipedia/Wikimedia should certainly be respecting. The method of attempting to achieve that goal though is obviously not fit for purpose in the present era (regardless of whether one supports or opposes it). One solution might be for the court to not release the verdict (regardless of what it was), even to the defendant, until all linked trials are complete, at which point all the verdicts are delivered simultaneously. In a case local to me, the names of five (of about 12) people identified in a report into corrupt activities by a local council may not be published until 5 September. The goal of this is to ensure that the people concerned and, particularly, their families (who to my knowledge are not implicated in any way) are all aware of, and prepared for, the significant media, etc. interest that will result from publication. Especially as there have been allegations of harassment and intimidation of witnesses in the case, this is the sort of thing that Wikipedia should be respecting even if it is technically censorship. Thryduulf (talk) 19:42, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Dear God, no we shouldn't. Now, of course, if Australia's courts decide not to report verdicts at all, and therefore we have no reliable source material on what that verdict was, then that's simply a lack of verifiability. (We could, of course, still note that the trial took place and some verdict was reached, unless even that is successfully kept secret.) But if it becomes known, we should ensure that, if it would constitute due weight, it finds its way in as soon as reliable sources verify it. It is no more our job to cooperate with Australian censorship than it is to cooperate with Chinese or Turkish censorship, and we routinely refuse to do that. We shouldn't be playing favorites. Seraphimblade Talk to me 03:27, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • The hypothetical you pose is so open to prosecutorial and other governmentorial abuse that the goal of a fair trial can not be served—for the defendants nor the society. Delaying verdict release is no better. Wikipedia is neither a society nor a sovereign state with a government. — Neonorange (Phil) 04:02, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • "One solution might be for the court to not release the verdict (regardless of what it was), even to the defendant, until all linked trials are complete, at which point all the verdicts are delivered simultaneously."—It would be a denial of natural justice (justice must be seen to be done). Tony (talk) 07:53, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • This is a more innovative idea than the one that has actually been floated, which is the abolition of jury trails in such cases (or altogether). Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:37, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Hawkeye7: I didn't dare to mention that; but now that you have, I can say that I fully support the idea. If the cost of retaining the jury option is this unworkable ban on reportage, get rid of it altogether. There are other reasons, too, for abolishing juries in this increasingly technical age. Tony (talk) 23:49, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • cardinals are not high-ranking bishops. It’s not even necessary to be a bishop first. https://catholicexchange.com/bishops-archbishops-and-cardinals ~TPW 10:19, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Maybe the author should have said "Pell is a cardinal, and formerly one of the highest-ranking bishops in the church"? That's what I inferred when I was proofreading it. - Bri.public (talk) 17:00, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      That was indeed what was meant. Pell was only removed from the Council of Cardinal Advisers a day after the conviction (but without mentioning why), so he was at the time. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:37, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am the editor who initiated the discussion on the WikiProject Australia talk page described by the Op-Ed article as "weird". The reason the discussion was "weird" was, of course, that at the time the discussion took place, the gag order clearly applied, at the very least, to Australian editors of Wikipedia. I now have the following brief comments about the Op-Ed and the comments above. First, the gag order was made solely for the purpose of ensuring that Cardinal Pell would have a fair trial of the further serious charges against him that were then still pending. There is a strong public interest that every person charged with a serious offence have a fair trial of the relevant charge. In the United States, that public interest is reflected in the Sixth Amendment, and in the Due Process Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. Internationally, the public interest is recognised by Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Secondly, a number of the comments above appear to be based on the assumption that the First Amendment would prevent any US court from making any similar gag order, and from enforcing any foreign judgment based on any violation of any similar gag order. I am not convinced that that assumption is correct. On the contrary, the outcome in the US Supreme Court case of Sheppard v. Maxwell (1966) strongly suggests that the assumption is wrong (one of the comments above refers to the SPEECH Act, but that Act applies only to libel verdicts, and the imposition of a fine for contempt of a gag order would not be a libel verdict.) Thirdly, I think that much of the media reporting, both in and outside Australia, on the gag order in this case was self serving and inappropriate. Similar observations apply to some of the comments above. As I have already pointed out, the gag order was made solely on the basis of the strong public interest that Cardinal Pell, like anyone else, receive a fair trial of the charges against him that were then still pending. In cases like this, the media is fond of rabbiting on about freedom of speech, but anyone who knows anything about that topic will also know that freedom of speech cannot be, and is not, absolute, even in the United States. To make parallels between the gag order in this case and, eg, censorship of Wikipedia in China and Turkey is, frankly, complete nonsense (and also an insult to Australia and its robust system of justice). Finally, I think the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) should have a procedure for dealing with any future gag orders like this one. In this case, the WMF failed to comply with an order of a court in a liberal democracy that, as I have made clear, was made solely for a strong public purpose that, at least in my view, should be respected in every liberal democracy, including the United States, and by any reputable NGO, including the WMF. Bahnfrend (talk) 07:10, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Bahnfrend, I actually went and read the full decision from Sheppard v. Maxwell (and I was the one who referred to the SPEECH Act, but I also went into detail why other such restrictions would also be prohibited under US law, so you quite mischaracterized and took out of context what I said). Did you actually read the Supreme Court decision? In it, they do list some pretty shocking things, such as Sheppard's chief counsel being "forcibly removed" from proceedings by a participant, and media being allowed so close to the defendant in the courtroom that he could not privately confer with his attorney, as well as the contact information for potential jurors being publicly released prior to the trial, allowing people to contact and harass them. Obviously, those things kept Sheppard from having anything that could be in any way considered a fair trial, and the Supreme Court was correct in its finding that he did not receive one. Such practices are no longer allowed in the US. But if you read section (c) of paragraph 1 in the holdings of the actual SCOTUS opinion ([1]), you'll notice that while the Supreme Court states several things the trial court should have done and failed to do, issuing a blanket gag order on nationwide media was not one of those recommendations. Presumably, the SCOTUS did not consider such a practice to be an acceptable one. In the US, prior restraint is considered to almost automatically be unconstitutional. The WMF should not enforce any foreign censorship laws or orders, period. I'm sure Chinese or Turkish censors will also tell you that their motives are good and they just want to help, and I suspect that they actually believe that. Almost no one is a cackling villain intent on harm. I suspect they genuinely believe they're doing a good thing, as does the Australian judge issuing similar orders. But censorship still is inherently harmful. When people are prohibited to know facts, they cannot make informed decisions. Wikipedia, and Wikimedia, should never assist in the suppression of verifiable and truthful information, even if that information is inconvenient to someone. Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:38, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As I noted in United States v. Progressive, Inc., prior restraint is not unconstitutional in the United States, only in certain cases. The World Press Freedom Index maintained by Reporters Without Borders rates Australia at 21st and the United States at 48th. [2] Both could do more to improve their ratings. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:39, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Seraphimblade, I agree with Hawkeye7. The Wikipedia article on Nebraska Press Ass'n v. Stuart (1976) says that the Supreme Court decided in that case that "... it was inappropriate to bar media reporting on a criminal case prior to the trial itself, except in matters where a "clear and present danger" existed that would impede the process of a fair trial." [my emphasis] In the present case, there was a clear and present danger that media reporting on Cardinal Pell's convictions would impede the process of a fair trial of the then pending further charges against him. Under those circumstances, the restriction imposed by the gag order cannot be said to have been inherently harmful. As I indicated in my previous post, the right to a fair trial is recognised by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the trial judge's gag order must be viewed in that context, both in Australia and elsewhere, including the United States. Bahnfrend (talk) 01:47, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As to US v. Progressive, as brought up by Hawkeye7, I'd actually thought about bringing that one up myself. If you read the opinions and history there, several judges said that cases of nuclear secrets are about the only place they'd even consider upholding prior restraints—and at the end of the day, those restraints were even overturned there, and Progressive was allowed to publish its story. So far as the example by Bahnfrend, of Nebraska Press Ass'n v. Stuart, the courts noted that there were other measures available to ensure a fair trial, such as careful jury questioning to ensure that jurors can and will remain impartial. Presumably, Australian courts are capable of doing that as well. Both of those are cases where prior restraint was considered and rejected by US courts, and one was specifically one with implications on the right of fair trial. US courts are generally highly allergic to prior restraint or censorship of any kind, and that's especially true when it comes to censorship regarding political or legal processes. The right of the public to know what government actions are being taken and to discuss them or disagree with them is considered core political speech, and that receives the absolute highest degree of protection. And the right to do so in a timely way when protest might be effective, rather than after the moment of controversy has passed, is always considered a core part of that right. Or basically, don't expect US cooperation with Australian gag orders. Seraphimblade Talk to me 05:21, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
US v. Progressive is hardly a useful precedent. The case was in a first instance District Court, not the Supreme Court, and was never finally decided, because eventually the government dropped its claim. As for Nebraska Press, none of the alternatives suggested in that case would have been effective in the present case. Cardinal Pell was not a relative unknown being prosecuted in a minor court in a small town, as in that case. On the contrary, he is very well known in Victoria, nationally, and internationally, as one of the most powerful figures in the Roman Catholic Church, his trial was being covered by international media, and he was being prosecuted against the background of very heated controversy, in Australia and in many other countries, over a long history of persistent child abuse by Catholic clergy worldwide. Bahnfrend (talk) 06:00, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The United States has a written constitution. This constitution has been expanded by amendments. The first ten amendments are known as the United States Bill of Rights. The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution states:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Australia seems to lack such constitutional guarantees and the Pell gag order has no force under the U.S. Constitution. — Neonorange (Phil) 07:01, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The US case law does not support your assertion about the US Constitution. As the Wikipedia article about the Sixth Amendment points out, the Supreme Court ruled, in Sheppard v. Maxwell (discussed above), "... that the right to a public trial is not absolute. In cases where excess publicity would serve to undermine the defendant's right to due process, limitations can be put on public access to the proceedings." Bahnfrend (talk) 07:07, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, we can go back and forth all day long about hypotheticals. Here's a challenge for something concrete: Find me one case where the US Supreme Court upheld a total ban on media publishing anything. Anything at all. Not even just something trial related. Find one case where SCOTUS allowed the government to issue a media ban. Here's a hint: It isn't even allowed in cases of "national security". Glenn Greenwald, before publishing the Snowden leaks, told the State Department what he knew and was planning on publishing, so that they could tell him if certain details might immediately endanger someone, and so that if his publication did endanger them, they could try to get them out. But he knew full well that State couldn't keep him from publishing, even though he was about to publish classified material. That's how strong freedom of speech and press is in the US. So trying to "read between the lines" of some past cases doesn't undermine that; it was upheld far more recently than that. State didn't even try to go to court to keep Greenwald from publishing, because they knew they'd just get slapped down and look foolish for doing it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 07:23, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Yet the contents of the writ from the U.S. Supreme Court differs from your statements (one reason Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source). The writ speaks to judicial misconduct—failure to apply available remedies to pretrial publicity and courtroom conduct. Two more points: you bring up a case from 1966, fifty-three years ago. Pretrial publicity in the U.S. differs greatly now. In addition, the entire set of hearings by higher courts concern the original defendant.
As Seraphimbladesuggests, you find a reliable source that supports your contention (guessing here) that Australian legal custom supports suppression of Australian trial results in other countries. And I will, as Seraphimblade suggests, look for an applicable U.S. ruling.
— Neonorange (Phil) 07:54, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In case someone is wondering, Australia does have a written constitution, and Section 80 says:
The trial on indictment of any offence against any law of the Commonwealth shall be by jury, and every such trial shall be held in the State where the offence was committed, and if the offence was not committed within any State the trial shall be held at such place or places as the Parliament prescribes.
Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:59, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There are two countervailing reasons for wanting the fair trial these gag orders (and other sub-judice measures) are meant to support. Firstly it it in the interest of justice for the defendant. Secondly if it can be shown that a fair trial cannot be held, or was not held, the defendant can escape justice, so it is in the interest of the prosecution too. A similar case in the UK recently involving a grooming gang, resulted in the imprisonment of someone reporting on it. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:12, 16 September 2019 (UTC).[reply]

^^What Rich said, and while still looking at the bigger picture, we actually do have PAGs that cover what we can/cannot include that requires strict adherence to our core content policies. Along that same line I ask, what benefit does free speech serve if it becomes the catalyst for a trend to ban WP in other countries? WP is not a tool for SJW, it's an encyclopedia and we don't encounter problems when we accurately include the final results of legal cases in an encyclopedic article after the cases have been finalized and RS have all the facts. Jumping the gun is a problem we frequently encounter in AP2 and it appears to be spreading to different topics pedia-wide. WP:BREAKINGNEWS, WP:NOTNEWS, WP:NEWSORG, WP:BLP, WP:RS, WP:NOR, and on and on all come to mind. Just exercising free speech here. Atsme Talk 📧 15:26, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Opinion: The Curious Case of Croatian Wikipedia (30,939 bytes · 💬)[edit]

Discuss this story

  • So, the monies we donate to the WMF are being used to support and promote a fascist website. This isn't a New York Times article yet? -- GreenC 00:36, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@GreenC: I'm not _entirely_ sure what a "fascist website" is, but it does indeed appear to be the case that the Croatia Wikipedia is being (ab)used by people who harbor sympathies, if not inclinations, towards the country's history of fascism. And that is a situation that should alarm each and every Wikipedian worldwide.
The English Wikipedia is not without very substantial de facto censorship. Since the terms of my topic ban forbid me from explaining myself in full, I will link to this preprint of a best-selling book and risk asking why, for example, we don't have an article on short-term interest rates, a topic in the news virtually every day, and the primary means of controlling the cost of labor for well over two thirds of the world's population. EllenCT (talk) 02:44, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
For articles on short-term interest rates see:
Or Federal funds rate, in which the words "inflation," "employment," and "unemployment" do not occur in the three paragraph "Explanation of federal funds rate decisions" section or anywhere else in the prose. EllenCT (talk) 07:03, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
At the same time, the WMF's funding also helps facilitate the production and dissemination of the Signpost, and to maintain the transparency that permits the rest of us to discover, monitor, and attempt to respond to the hr.wikipedia editors' activities. Think how much worse things would be if those editors were in full control of the content of a closed-site encyclopedia, and could operate with impunity without being subjected to our established transparency policies. Not only would they be free to revise history however they pleased, but nobody would even know they were doing it. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 00:59, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No argument with your basic point - that the Croatian Wikipedia benefits by having its articles published via the WMF servers. I'd guess that its funding (or the funding to the hr user group or chapter) from the WMF pretty much ends there. I'll check. BTW The Signpost gets the same level of benefits from the WMF. Our budget is $0.00. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:20, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
meta:Wikimedija Hrvatska was only "active" from 2009-2011 having had only 1 meeting and was closed down according to its by-laws. So I'd guess that it got very little money via that route. I suppose we'd have to check the individual or small scale grants to get more info, but given the controversy surrounding hr.wiki for a fairly long time, any small grants would likely be really small. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:40, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm confused as to if or how this is different from the controversy earlier this year on azWiki. If anything, based on the reporting in this article it seems like a more extreme case, as the POVs being pushed appear to be fringe even in the context of Croatian media and society. I hope that the publication of this piece leads to some sort of intervention, and hopefully a more decisive one than in the Azeri case. signed, Rosguill talk 01:26, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ditto. Was going to link to the same Meta page. Start a RFC on Croatian Wikipedia? Renata (talk) 01:34, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • My gut feeling is that if stewards did not act on Azerbaijani Wikipedia (where the issues were relatively more clear-cut) then they won't act here, unfortunately. --Rschen7754 04:34, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for this interesting and well-written article. Glad you brought this to light! Ganesha811 (talk) 01:28, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good piece on a really problematic issue. I edit in this area on English WP. This problem lies squarely with WMF in the absence of an ArbCom equivalent on Croatian Wikipedia. Unlike English WP, where we have a solid core of a dozen or so largely neutral editors and a few admins who hold back the POV-warriors (on all sides) on articles relating to the Independent State of Croatia, few such editors remain on Croatian WP, and they cannot operate to protect the integrity of the encyclopaedia because there are admins who support the inclusion of this right-wing fringe material and are behind it in some cases, as this piece explains. You only have to look at the history of our Jasenovac concentration camp article to see that we do have issues with POV-warriors here, but they are swiftly reverted. With my basic Serbo-Croat I could contribute at Croatian WP a bit, but I stick to English WP because of the long-standing hostility to neutral editing on Croatian WP. I wouldn't be the only one, I am sure. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:56, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would assume that the reasons for the existence of three Wikis (Croatian, Serbian, and Serbo-Croatian) instead of two are largely political, so one cannot be entirely surprised at the political behavior. I see that the Croatian is smaller than the others, but it is still quite a bit larger than some of the fringe Wikis out there. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:22, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge all Shtokavian wikis into one wiki. Minor font (alphabet - and Serbians use Latin too) and other minor variations are less than the difference between British and American English. The resulting sub-wikis are by definition WP:POVFORKs and a waste of editorial resources.Icewhiz (talk) 04:06, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Serbo-Croat is a pluricentric language with four mutually intelligible standard varieties, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin. There is no Montenegrin Wikipedia, but we currently have separate Wikipedias for the other three, although the Bosnia one is rather small. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:29, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "with its nationalist sentiments, factual mistakes, lack of academic references and omitted facts [...] [Croatian Wikipedia] is not a reliable source" I'm afraid I can also name quite a number of other projects where all of this is also true. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 11:47, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • If it want, the WMF has full control of any versions of Wikipedia. When it does not take action against misuse, as shown in the article, it expose itself for not doing it what it should. If WMF do not take action, the problem will not go away, sooner or later this will be in the media. Ulflarsen (talk) 18:11, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Depiction of Wikimedia Foundation destroying Wikipedia with the Fram ban, Flow, and Media Viewer instead of the more important task of stopping admin abuse. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 19:32, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for your comments! I'm fairly sure that issues similar to the ones described in this article may be seen in many smaller Wikipedias (largely because smaller communities are easier to subvert by cliques). I'm somewhat familiar with the recent controversy around the az wiki - indeed, that problem seems to be quite severe. Croatian Wikipedia, however, - as far as I can tell - stands unique for its deliberate and systemic abuse, the way it affected both content and editors, as well as its dismal media image. When I wrote that "it is necessary to face the reality", I meant that it is necessary to abandon the romantic notions of Wikipedia communities as bastions of free thought ruled by the wisdom of the crowd. As argued by Harari, digital domain in general is vulnerable to subversion, and when it does turn into a tyranny, that tyranny is very powerful and fighting against it is virtually impossible without outside help. I wish the WMF at least acknowledged it. Finally: if you find it unacceptable that Wikipedia - with the funding it receives - is used in the way described in this article, you can help by asking questions and demanding answers. Also, if any of you have the means of contacting Jimbo Wales (not his talk page - I've tried that already :-) ), I'd be really interested in his take on all this. GregorB (talk) 19:40, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting read, thanks for taking the time to write it. --Hmxhmx 07:15, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Last year, as the Croatian football team went really far on the World Cup, indications of their supporters having some far right tendencies showed up. And the people of the country also edit Wikipedia to paint fascists positively? Man, that's just depressing. igordebraga ≠ 16:35, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Given that Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia is larger and more active than Croatian Wikipedia, I wouldn't be shocked if non-fascist Croatian editors have just decided to edit there instead. signed, Rosguill talk 17:44, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the stuff that happens IRL is indeed depressing, because one cannot do anything about it - but when it happens here, it's more than just depressing, to me it is insulting.
The three admins in question know about this article, but they are not coming here to defend themselves. Apparently, they don't think it's necessary, because they are not in any danger. What's worse, I'm beginning to think they might be right. GregorB (talk) 19:54, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Here[3] is a link to the discussion at hrwiki. To me, the hrwiki community's response to this Signpost article is further indicative of the problems with hrwiki. Response from the admins in question is first ad hominem, then argument from fallacy, then whataboutism. They really aren't helping their case, but at the same time, the reason they can be so arrogant is that they feel they have nothing to fear. If nothing happens as a result of this Signpost article, we may need to consider proposing closure of Croatian Wikipedia because of how poisoned it is. DraconicDark (talk) 20:55, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
...and, whoever takes a look at that discussion, will find I've already been accused of "serving lies and disinformation", compared with Paris terrorists, been called a "mercenary who has to account to his master for the financing" and a "political commissar", associated with a "maniac who threatens with murder and rape" and, finally, being called "Grigorije", and declared an agent who is a part of a Serbian plot against Croatia. I'm not making any of this up. This really defies belief: one would assume that people who are accused of right-wing extremism would know better than to defend themselves in a way that makes the accusations seem even more plausible. GregorB (talk) 22:20, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not to go in too much depth in ex-Yugoslav politics, yes the political situation in the region has definitely deteriorated over this decade. E.g. read Aleksandar Vučić#Controversies for an example of what's happening in Serbia. Not to cast a wrong aspersion, the majority of people in ex-Yugoslavia are preoccupied with geting by in the Great Recession which hasn't ended here, not theorising about WWII-era ideologies and vengeances. Most people in Croatia have no qualms watching Serbian and Bosnian TV and listening to Bosnian and Serbian music and vice versa, and very well see the idiocy and insult in expressing national pride by supporting a Nazi puppet state. The sad part is that though these ultra-nationalists are a small minority everywhere in the Balkans, they're unfortunately a very vocal minority. The recession and the worsening global political climate are allowing the voices promising fairy tale future through such ideologies to gain relevance -- or at least letting each such fringe group garner tacit sympathy through the ethnic FUD created by the other fringe groups (I speculate that a substantial amount of frequent editors on hrwiki are going along with and supporting the current admins for fear of those being replaced by an equally far-side group of another political ideology), not unlike the support for white supremacist and Antifa violence in the US.
Croatian Wikipedia is a small project which has been from early on controlled by a handful of admins representing a fringe group, whose gatekeeping policies have for a long time successfully turned away people who don't participate in their worldview. See for example their article on abortion with a number of graphic images and, to drive the example home, the text: "According to statistics, there were 38,500 intentional abortions in Croatia in 1990, and a little over 5,000 in 2004. The large difference can be attributed to higher education and a more informed public" (original Croatian in comment), while the newspaper article cited goes actually focuses on how due to obstructions by a few doctors women seeking abortions in some parts of Croatia have to travel hundreds of kilometres to find a hospital willing and certified to perform one. Croatia was one of the first European countries to legalise abortion (as part of Yugoslavia), and anti-abortion activism in public discourse is a fringe topic in Croatia that is only touched by far-right activists. For more examples of gatekeeping and fringe activism read my old posting on Jimbo's talk page.
I would say the crux of the problem is that hrwiki is a small community with a small number of admins, who effectively only answer to each other. In such an environment one has to be much more mindful of not stepping on their friends' toes, sacrificing newcomers and dissenters, while there's little to no force guiding the community consensus away from fringe and far-side mentality. Exacerbated here by the political ideological side, this problem is likely a common one in wikis with less than 100-150 admins and influential non-admin editors. I think that would be a good starting point to consider when searching for a solution. Daß Wölf 07:05, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

So is this an issue simple within the articles about politics? Or is this a systemic issue across much of the content? Do people have proposals for improving the situation? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:23, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Doc James: I would say the issue is very much a systemic problem. It's mostly found in articles about history and politics, (which are written from a far-right, Croatian nationalist, anti-Serbian point of view backed by questionable sources), but because any attempts to remove the bias in articles are countered by the admins, and all dissenting editors were forced out a long time ago, it has become ingrained in all levels of Croatian Wikipedia, including in page patrolling and the requests for adminship process. In regards to proposals for improving the situation, I will point you to this discussion on Meta-Wiki, where a proposal to resolve this issue is being discussed. DraconicDark (talk) 15:13, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is a small insular group. Which is not unique to Wikipedia. Any sort of democratic process typically in the judicial side of things would help. Once the judicial is corrupted so goes everything else, the first thing dictators do is stack the courts with cronies. Perhaps some sort of world-court for Wikipedia with judges elected from other language-wikis, that is able to take cases like this. -- GreenC 15:41, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Doc James: I agree with DraconicDark's assessment. Hot spots of grossly unencyclopedic content are largely related to Croatia in World War II, notably including the Holocaust revisionism. There are also strong currents of anti-Serbian and anti-LGBT sentiment. As for the solutions, they will be discussed on Meta (very likely in a new RfC). Judging by the reactions of the article's subjects,[4] these solutions will have to be of highly involuntary nature. GregorB (talk) 16:59, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
How about simply shutting that particular language WP? Its rulers would presumably copy its contents to a new, defiantly independent and ethnically cleansed wiki and roll along, no longer posing a problem anymore for WMF and WP. Jim.henderson (talk) 20:25, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's also one of the options discussed on Meta right now. I'd say that would be fair game if all else fails. There are surely less drastic solutions to be tried first. GregorB (talk) 20:33, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • As an editor of sr.wiki and someone who closely follows the developments of each community on all of the 4 projects of the 1 (serbo-croatian) language (which, btw, only became possible coz in the mid 00's the Wikimedia Linguistic committee decided to engage in identity politics but science as they should have), I agree with the opinions above calling for an intervention. I myself from personal experience can say that the admins on that project don't abide by the basic wp rules, it's all arbitrary according to their will. And the rest of the community there hasn't got the internal strength to kick them out, because, by now, they've purged everyone who isn't in line with the right-wing POV.

The truth is that the internal battle over hr.wiki has been lost in 2013 or so. That was the last time a big chunk of the community mobilized to revoke the admin status of these three incriminated admins. And all three votes were lost by a fairly slim majority. The consequences were the medial decimation of hr.wiki, a bunch of ppl left and the project fell in terms of number articles created that and the next year b4 2004 and 2005 (years immediately after hr.wiki was started). And this discussion is also one of the consequences. So, we are in fact debating a battle which is internally already lost. So the only way forward is an intervention or to shut down the project. Guess the only positive thing for the croatian public if it want's to inform itself on their native language is the „luxury“ of having 3 more wikipedias on your native language, so google search levels out things (coz it puts the other 3 wikis on top, behind hr.wiki) and, i guess, the impact from the perspective of the public is somewhat limited.

As for the history, as a long term Serbian wiki editor, looking back i can say that the main difference why sr.wiki hasn't gone the hr.wiki road, although it also struggled vehemently with the same issues in the mid and late 00's, is that from the start sr.wiki had a local Wikimedia branch who recruited a core of non-biased admins onto the project, so politics never prevailed. U, ofc, have still POV articles but no1 will stop u editing them acc. to the guidelines. So since the temptation of politics got overcome the project is thriving in terms of popularity in public and new editors. In conclusion, yes, because the Wikimedia Language committee decided early on that u can have 4 wikis on the same language (granting each identity it's own wikipedia (but also delegitimizing serbo-croat.wiki in the public's eyes)), hr.wikipedia very much has public legitimacy for it's existence. It's just the ruling cadre that needs to get booted out and the project will very fast be back on track. --Ivan VA (talk) 02:52, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Serbian Wikipedia unfortunately has some problems of its own in the political department: e.g. the page on abortion, or the conspiracy theory opening the article on Srebernica massacre. I do agree that srwiki stands a better chance of correcting these on their own than hrwiki due to the extent of gatekeeping on hrwiki. Daß Wölf 15:06, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Daß Wölf:Tnx fot the input, but, tho, i've never heared so far that the abortion article is somewhat controversial on sr.wiki, unlike Srebrenica. Most of the medical articles are quite good on sr.wiki, @Doc James: is perhaps familiar with it coz he cooperated with two of the quite active editors contributing on that field (Dcirovic and Intermedicibo) in translating stuff. I'll ask some of the two to look that article up. The Srebrenica massacre article is an other can of worms. It is badly written and has got POV, but mainly because there is no serious editor who is eager to get thoroughly, in depth, with the subject. It's somewhat a sysphean venture because the number of references is exorbitant (from the fake ones to the real ones). Unfortunately most editors who go to that article are just interested in the medial sensation and the political hype surrounding it, and not into serious editing. So if u wanna give it a try, u're most welcome. I'm atm tied to writing the article about the Ferhadija mosque, so i won't be on that article any time soon. But the main difference to hr.wiki is that there is no admin abuse. I've some time ago written an article on some ARBiH medal, it almost made it into the good article status/front page. So, u certainly can edit „controversial” articles on sr.wiki, but (as, i guess, on any wikipedia version) u have to know what u are doing. --Ivan VA (talk) 12:48, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it seems that the abortion article stands up better on another review. I was mostly concerned because of the concealed pro-life advocation link on top of the External links section and the graphic abortion pictures that are also present in the hrwiki article (I suppose both were translated from an older version of the enwiki article).
Re: Srebrenica, there's unfortunately a common pattern in political articles everywhere that the editors with the most interest and tenacity tend to also have the most WP:INVOLVEMENT, what from political COI, what from promoting fringe political views. I have little interest in editing this kind of articles even on enwiki, but I believe that article should definitely be tagged in some way. In future it would be a good idea to create ARBCOMs not just on hr but in other sh WPs too, or an inter-sh ARBCOM, to deal with the promotion of fringe/conspiracy politics. Daß Wölf 12:34, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @GregorB:, @DraconicDark:, @Hmxhmx:, @Daß Wölf:, @Doc James:, @GreenC:, @Jim.henderson:, This is hardly only problematic aspect of (ab)use which emanates from hr.wikipedia project, albeit being the most disturbing and elaborate one, for sure. However, here's another illustrative example of abuse, dritto from my own experience. The merger debate of two articles related to Balkan topics, namely "Turkish Croatia" → "Bosnian Krajina", is completely overwhelmed by Croatian editors from Croatian Wikipedia, thus being completely disrupted and irregular. It started with few antagonistic editors, who self-identify as ethnic Croats, contacting each others, exchanging e-mails via their Talk pages, to organize response against that merger. This exchange predictably resulted with them posting requests and asked for assistance at Croatian Wikipedia, which brought several like-minded Croatian editors into merger discussion, which is a lot considering that this is both obscure subject and really problematic article in regard of verifiability and notability - entire process couldn't draw much of attention from uninvolved and neutral editors, which makes this canvasing and number of these editors really big deal. Some of the administrators mentioned in this opinion piece also appeared, namely "K". They were warned over this behavior, but they dismissed it with some justifications and icy contempt. They all expressed their opinions and started voting, amusingly (or maybe not so much) some of them voted more then once(!) each, while using, apparently, so-called "Single-purpose accounts" when editing in English Wikipedia. But what baffled me is the lack of interest, if not with the lack of concrete reaction, on the part of English Wikipedia adminship, as I reported on this whole shebang. (Of course, it may be that I am doing it all or something wrong. I'm not overly experienced in dealing with disputes through "Noticeboards" and reports, so I may be wrong in creating a report and building a case.)
Anyhow. Amazingly, on Croatian Wikipedia they have something called "List of irregularities at English Wikipedia", which is a subpage of "Kafić", Croatian version of "Village Pump" I suppose - as a subpage it's obscured from passing-by outside editors' view, and obviously serves as a sort of forum for collecting reports and preparing an organized approach and acting in unison toward articles, edit-wars, disputes, on English Wikipedia. Cheers.--౪ Santa ౪99° 21:22, 18 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Update: as a direct consequence of this article, I am now indefinitely blocked on Croatian Wikipedia. On that occasion, I was accused of "attacking and poisoning [the Croatian Wikipedia project]" and having a "dirty agenda", and associated with Serbian officials and their "anti-Croatian mythomania". Finally, I was told that implying that anyone on CW is a fascist or a supporter of fascism is "impudent and shameless". The blocking admin was "K", one of the protagonists of this article. GregorB (talk) 18:06, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @GregorB: sorry to hear that, though the action by "K" reinforces what you said about the Croatian wiki is probably accurate. It is anti-intellectual, reliant on physical brute force (blocks) to eliminate ideas, opinions and people they don't agree with. It violates core Wiki principals of multiple POVs among other things and raises questions if Croatia is a Wikipedia or something else. -- GreenC 18:29, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks. It's worth noting here that - if nothing else - this is as severe and blatant violation of WP:COI (WP:INVOLVED, to be precise) as it gets. This alone would instantly end any enwiki admin's career. GregorB (talk) 20:25, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@GregorB:It's disgraceful. Banana republic stuff, really. For others who might read this, he got blocked on an accusation that he conspired with the serbian government against the „croatian (political) cause (?!?)” which, apparently, hr.wiki is a part of. McCarthyism stuff and alike. Insane. I really don't know why WMF doesn't do something against this absurdity. --Ivan VA (talk) 13:43, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Recent research: Special issue on gender gap and gender bias research (12,391 bytes · 💬)[edit]

Discuss this story

  • (later note – my initial comments here overlook table 2 in the Adams et al. article, see later comments) The first article reviewed has this sentence: "Examining only sociologists with Wikipedia pages, men’s median H-index (27) is higher than women’s (22)".[5] This straightforward method doesn't give the result they were expecting – and indeed it might even suggest that more articles on male sociologists are what's needed if gender-blind notability fairness is the ideal. But fear not, once the authors use a "logged version of the H-index to adjust for a strong right skew in the H-index distribution" (I don't get it, but okay) and throw a bunch of other factors into a regression analysis, they get the result that women are being cheated out of articles after all. I don't know. Seems like a lot of degrees of freedom here and discarding a simple test with what's probably the most objective merit-based measure available (the h-index) in favor of an opaque regression analysis isn't necessarily convincing. Haukur (talk) 01:09, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't get it, but okay – If you don't understand the reasoning of the authors, how can you be so confident that they are wrong? — Bilorv (talk) 08:32, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    The important sentence comes after that one: "Women’s estimated odds of having a Wikipedia page after taking into account differences in rank, length of career, and notability measured with H-index and departmental reputation are still 25 points lower than men’s." But "length of career" and "departmental reputation" are awful ways to estimate whether someone merits a Wikipedia article. The best measure (though it is of course, like everything, imperfect) is the h-index. But instead of sticking to that, the authors decided to go with a complicated composite measurement instead – one that I'd say is a lot less accurate. In the end this is not a persuasive analysis. Haukur (talk) 09:29, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Also note how our current article says "Female and nonwhite US sociologists less likely to have Wikipedia articles than scholars of similar citation impact" which is not at all the conclusion reached in that research paper. We'd better correct this. Haukur (talk) 09:39, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Having now read the Adams et al. article more carefully I must note that my comments above make too much of the sentence "Examining only sociologists with Wikipedia pages, men’s median H-index (27) is higher than women’s (22)" and don't take their Table 2 into account. I think there's a Simpson's paradox in the data. I'm going to think more about this and maybe see if I can get the data from the authors. Haukur (talk) 16:26, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Any data about h-index is highly skewed by the difference in fields and other factors. Even within sociology, there may be vast differences: an h-index of 27 may be exceptional in some areas and ordinary elsewhere. Nemo 07:21, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Good point. Conceivably, women might tend to work in subfields with lower citation averages. I've been thinking of possible explanations for the results here and there are so many possibilities. I've requested the data mentioned in footnotes 20-22 from the corresponding author. Haukur (talk) 08:36, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It seems inaccurate to say there's a "composite measurement" being used in the regression or to suggest that including multiple measures in regression analysis is less valid than just considering one of the measures (H-index) alone. H-index is very much part of the regression analysis and neither including the other measures in the model nor transforming the H-index values (by calculating the natural logarithm of each value) undermines it in any way. Indeed, the regression results in Table 3 indicate that H-index is (as you seem to expect!) the measure most closely related with being the subject of an article (the odds-ratio is quite large and statistically significant). The analysis supports the idea that U.S. Sociologists with higher H-indices are more likely to be the subject of EN:WP articles. It also suggests that female and nonwhite U.S. Sociologists are less likely to be the subject of EN:WP articles. These interpretations are mutually compatible. Aaron (talk) 16:33, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I regret making fun of the log operation, which really is fine. And regression analysis is fine too - though I stand by my criticism of "length of career" being a suitable indicator of notability. I'm developing a more nuanced take on this and the corresponding author has kindly promised to send me some data. Haukur (talk) 16:43, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks all for the great discussion! Haukur: Please do let us know once you have received the data and would like to comment more on it. In the meantime, I have reverted the "correction" because 1) citation impact is actually a general umbrella term that includes the h-index and has the advantage of being easier to understand (also, it was still being used in the body of the review after your edit, so changing it only in the title seemed a bit pointless anyway), 2) "similar careers" seems overstating the results quite a bit, because career encompasses a persons entire professional trajectory whereas the measures used here only pertain to a specific moment in that career (plus its length) 3) it seems from the above discussion that the concerns about the interpretation of the result regarding the h-index have been resolved. (I do agree it's an interesting observation that the differences in the median go the other way, if I understood that correctly, but as Aaron points out, this might not undermine the overall result. In any case, log transforms are frequently used and even recommended by some as standard practice for data that only takes on positive values.)
I think a more interesting question might be whether WP:GNG or WP:AUTHOR could be a confounding factor here - there may well be many sociologists on the authors' list whose Wikipedia notability did not rest on WP:PROF but on media coverage or their authorship of (popular or academic) books. Regards, HaeB (talk) 19:00, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I thought it would be best to reflect the wording of the paper, which never uses the word "citation impact", though I take your point that it can be used to refer to h-index. The paper says "academic rank, length of career, and notability measured with both H-index and departmental reputation" which I think is reasonably summarized as "career" and I don't see what is gained by a switch to "seniority, institutional status, publication count, and H-index".
But whatever, all of this is a side issue since you're quite right that there must be other factors. Indeed, the very data in the paper shows that if you went by H-index alone and used that 100% fairly to pick out sociologists to write articles about then (assuming the same number of articles) you would get a higher ratio of white men then Wikipedia actually had. So the idea that Wikipedia has a bias against writing articles on female sociologists is really not, in my view, supported by this dataset. Haukur (talk) 20:08, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Related discussion: Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(academics)#Recent_study:_"Who_Counts_as_a_Notable_Sociologist_on_Wikipedia?". Regards, HaeB (talk) 19:00, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Gosh, this is a boring subject in the context of Wikipedia because much of it actually has little to do with Wikipedia per se, despite the (often extremely small) samples using WP as a means to "prove" their hypotheses. This is particularly evident in the Indian survey mentioned, which notes that the cultural issues mostly lie outside WP's ambit. One of the problems with being a major site on the internet is that WP becomes a mechanism for pursuit of agendas, regardless of its actual relevance to the overall issue. To paraphrase a BBC saying, "Other websites are available". And as I keep saying, it isn't our job to change the world but rather to reflect it in all its contrasting beauty and ugliness. - Sitush (talk) 03:22, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    True for some of the studies, but the first study might make us question our views of NPROF, the third can lead us to embracing a more careful writing style with regard to how we talk about men and women and the fourth is a damning indictment of the toxicity of our behaviour around contentious topics. And there are plenty more interesting conclusions which are relevant to an editor's regular editing patterns. — Bilorv (talk) 08:32, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I'll quote from comments by Terri Apter, psychologist and Fellow Emerita of Newnham College, in her notes on The Human Stain by Philip Roth: "[The book is] also about the dangerous pleasures of outrage, what Roth called 'the ectasy of sanctimony'. Of course, we have to be aware of hate speech and embedded bias, they are problematic. But using your need to feel virtuous to tear others apart is also problematic". Too many of these studies start from a virtuous/sanctimonious premise. Good studies draw conclusions after the study, not before undertaking it. - Sitush (talk) 19:21, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Can someone with access to the 4th one (Safety and women editors on Wikipedia) give some more detail on what they're suggesting with "internal safe spaces". As in, parts of the encyclopedia with very high civility requirements? Nosebagbear (talk) 15:32, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    @Nosebagbear: The file may be located over here. Regards, ∯WBGconverse 11:19, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the above WBG. So in terms of current safe spaces it refers to off-wiki online (fb, mainly) and offline (women-only edit-a-thons) areas. They moot the creation of an on-wiki women-only space, though they don't consider the fairly substantial issues with that (verification, reporting of misbehaviour, canvassing risks, as well as any disagreements on the fundamental nature of wikipedia) Nosebagbear (talk) 11:29, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sitush I reviewed the breastfeeding study and it really surprised me to find such a poorly done piece. My take on it was so similar to your thoughts that you might like to read User:WhatamIdoing's page where we discuss it. Gandydancer (talk) 15:21, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wikipedia is dynamic, citing a learned article from 2009 in a current work is not useful to describe the current state of WIkipedia or the community. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:57, 20 September 2019 (UTC).[reply]

Traffic report: Once upon a time in Greenland with Boris and cornflakes (11,104 bytes · 💬)[edit]

Discuss this story

  • I find it disappointing that lists of articles with high traffic are used as coat racks for assorted ranting on current events and people in the news. This is not a good use of the Signpost and really has little to do with Wikipedia. In the opinion of the article author, Boris Johnson is a clownish figure who "garner[ed] a bad reputation for what he did as both mayor of London and Foreign Secretary." Why do we need this here? There are a million better places for yelling at your TV. Haukur (talk) 00:26, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • We can let the main author know @Igordebraga: I might agree with you to a small extent, but this has been something of a tradition now for about 5? years and in my time as EiC I haven't seen a real complaint before yours. The idea, I believe, is to give a feel for the subject matter and some idea why so many people are interested in it. And there are only so many ways you can say "that film/TV show was really about some gross stuff" without getting pretty creative. So what do other readers think about the format and text here? Please let us know. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:00, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • I see the personal commentary as value-added. Readers who find it offensive (very few, apparently, since it's easy to post a note here) are free to simply not read it. And, while I'm at it, I'd like to thank Igordebraga and Story Clouds for their time and effort in producing this page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:01, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
        • I wouldn't mind quirky personal perspectives in general but tendentious political commentary and WP:BLPTALK violations are not a good idea. The Signpost is often seen as having some official status as a sort of Wikipedia organ so the Signpost publishing attacks on Boris Johnson undermines the perception that Wikipedia maintains a neutral point of view on contentious issues. If this was at least relevant or funny or cleverly written that would be one thing but it's just standard "My political opponents are bad!" stuff with only the flimsiest connection to Wikipedia. Haukur (talk) 17:44, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
          • @Haukurth: - While I appreciate your criticism in the constructive intent with which it was written, I can't help but disagree with it. Invoking WP:BLP, a policy that the Report has (largely by my fault) become intimately acquainted with in recent times, and alleging that Igordebraga's commentary violates it does not appear apt to me. If we consider the commentary itself, the clownish figure idea is quoted from John Oliver, the comedian explicitly referenced in the commentary, so the extent to which the Signpost is attacking Johnson, rather than aptly referencing the descriptions provided by others, is debatable in my opinion. Moreover, as a resident of the Republic of Ireland, I wouldn't consider garnering a bad reputation for what he did as both Mayor of London and Foreign Secretary. to be erroneous, as I could with relative ease provide citations that suggest, at least in some quarters, he possesses such a reputation. As for relevancy, I would also argue the commentary covers the two things Johnson is most likely known for in foreign quarters - his previous positions in government and his appearance and demeanour. We could argue ceaselessly about what constitutes humour, but so long as there is no explicit policy violation I personally don't think it matters. Given that Igordebraga is Brazilian, I would also question how directly Boris Johnson is a "political opponent" of his, as you allege, but that is neither here nor there.
            • Thanks for replying so politely but look, obviously these comments on Johnson are tendentious. Saying that the first part is cited to a particular person and the second part could be cited to others doesn't change that at all. Try this out about someone else. Would the Signpost publish this sentence: Hillary Clinton, or Crooked Hillary as Donald Trump so aptly called her, garnered a bad reputation both as Senator and Secretary of State. It's cited! Or could be! So it's okay, right? No, it's not – it would be a foolish thing to write and a foolish thing to publish. And if something like this were published by the Signpost I expect it would be quickly edited or removed. And, again, quirky opinions on Lion King or whatever don't bother me. But the population of Wikipedia editors is skewed towards educated cosmopolitans with liberal views. This is unavoidable and mostly okay. But it's also a type of systemic bias which we should make at least some effort to counteract, not revel in. We should not make people with different political views feel unwelcome – attracting editors with a broad diversity of ideological backgrounds helps us in maintaining a neutral point of view. Haukur (talk) 09:16, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Now, as for the status of the Signpost as an organ of the encyclopedia (and the implication that this means its entries must adhere to mainspace policy rather closely), there are two caveats here that I would like to point out. Firstly, perception != reality, and the Signpost, as explicitly outlined, is not a mainspace article with a strictly NPOV tone in all affairs, (and for the record, where this to shift, my interest in writing for the publication would wane dramatically), and secondly, both in timing and readership, the cited excerpt, and the entirety of the traffic report, is not written directly for the Signpost, but adapted from the Top 25 Report, which bears a large banner to dissuade any impressions that it is mainspace. If this is a situation you wish to remedy, you could propose that the Signpost instead posts the raw data, or set about penning a purpose-written traffic report for the Signpost. It is a proposal I personally would disagree with, for the reasons Kudpung has alluded to, but that is irrelevant. I appreciate your eloquently expressed views, and am sorry that you didn't enjoy the commentary, as the education and enjoyment of our readers are our ultimate aims in penning the report, but I would reject your assertion that there are policy violations afoot, or that such commentary is redundant in the Signpost. Thanks, Stormy clouds (talk) 22:03, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As I said the last time someone complained about bias, we sign exactly to show it's a personal opinion. I'm a Journalism major and have been editing Wikipedia for over a decade, so I certainly could go for a fully dry and neutral analysis. But without our added personal thoughts, which includes ranting (which goes even further in yearly reports) and veiled criticisms (the last two Traffic reports had the U.S. president referred to as "You Know Who" and "He Who We Prefer Not To Name"), it certainly wouldn't be as fun to read\write. igordebraga ≠ 17:16, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for replying and explaining your position. The comment on Brett Kavanaugh which you link to is indeed completely inappropriate and User:Jo-Jo Eumerus was right to note that. I can't see how you have any remit to be running a newspaper with a political agenda and nasty comments on living people. Haukur (talk) 18:52, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can't seem to fix it from mobile, but the word "serial" is used instead if "cereal" in reference to cornflakes, which is incorrect. A fix by someone else would be appreciated. The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 03:57, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • That one got past my copyeditor eyeballs. Thanks, it has been corrected. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:13, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I find the comments perfectly apt and also see them a value-added. It appeals to my perception of The Signpost as a magazine with compelling reading rather than just a dry report of facts-of-the-month which it has largely become; due to some criticism this year, the editorial staff have understandably become hyper-cautious about what they write and permit to be published. Hence the reason why there are now hardly any lighter-hearted features, opinion, comic relief, etc, . I do also understand of course that personal time constraints may not be conducive to providing a fatter publication - especially where through lack of interest most of the editorial work has to be done by what is basically a two-person team. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:32, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I too am disgusted that people are expressing political opinions and making jokes without my permission. Poveglia (talk) 08:13, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"How do I like a comment on Wikipedia?" -Gouleg (Talk • Contribs) 13:50, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The results of this review[edit]

Thanks to everybody who commented. The conclusions that I draw are

  • The commentary is meant to be humorous. So the authors (or the EiC, if necessary) should place a notice at the top something like "The commentary in this article is meant to be humorous. The opinions expressed by the authors are their own."
  • Signpost articles are *not* mainspace articles. Signpost articles need to follow the same rules that apply to any project space text, which are approximately the same as apply to talk pages. Humor and opinion are definitely allowed. Content that purports to be factual should be strictly factual, not shaded one way or another. Opinions that are clearly seen as opinions need not follow WP:NPOV.
  • Humor in The Signpost may not target groups that are defined by religion, race, nationality, sex, gender, or other groups with protected status. WP:BLP and WP:BLPTALK do apply and commentary on public figures who have some connection to Wikipedia (e.g. an article of current interest to Wikipedians) is acceptable. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:24, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]


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