Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2021-04-25

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2021-04-25. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Changing the world: The reach of protest images on Wikipedia (6,130 bytes · 💬)

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That is indeed a fantastic image for unrequited love. I've also had protest images I took appear widely in the media; it's cool because it's a much more direct way to see the impact of Wikipedia editing than you generally get editing text. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:25, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

• I'd love to get images I've taken used in the media. I've taken a few pictures of campaign rallies - no notable protests yet, though. Elli (talk | contribs) 22:37, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

• No picture of mine is so poignant or seems to have become wonderfully prominent, but dozens have been published in books, magazines, and Websites. Unsung Hero — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jim.henderson (talk • contribs) 23:49, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
• Well, as a matter of fact, this is what is wrong with WP images. How do we know that the photographer didn't set up the photo himself or herself? We don't, and I am really suspicious about the reality of this claim. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 04:51, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
  • How is that in any way specific to images on Wikipedia? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:22, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
• "Image 2 was licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 and most of the websites did not follow the license requirements in relation to attribution, but that is not the point I want to raise." This is an issue that should be raised, perhaps in a separate column, because it is at the core of what both Wikipedia and the free-culture movement at large are all about. It baffles me how professional journalists, who are no doubt educated in copyright to some degree, simply can't get one simple line right: "Photo: 'JMI students and locals protesting against CAA NRC' by DiplomatTesterMan, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0." Publishers should stop treating free content simply as a gratis resource and start valuing it as an important manifestation of how reporting has been democratized. It has already changed how journalism works, for the better, and it is high time to show some appreciation. We're in this together. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:16, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
  • It's disappointing to see. At least with American sources, it's rare for a recognizable publication to just omit attribution altogether, but many will do something like "by Wikimedia Commons" or the like. If it's a particularly well-known source doing that, I might tweet at them or something (Psychology Today and Business Insider come to mind) but there's just too much to try to police (assuming that's something one really wants to do in the first place). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:22, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
• Thanks for writing this. I did a little lightning talk for Wikipedia Day NYC a few years ago on the same subject (the reach/value of protest photos contributed to Commons/Wikipedia). I'd been documenting protests in the NYC area and saw they just kept getting used in various media (big and small, from across the political spectrum). Many of those photos are still finding new use, and probably will continue to do so as long as the issues remain relevant to the news. I find this argument -- the wide use of photos if they're used on Wikipedia -- one of the most persuasive when trying to convince people to donate theirs. You can also use tools like Glamorous and Glamorgan to see how many of your uploads are being used on Wikimedia projects and how many pageviews those articles receive. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:31, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• @DiplomatTesterMan: Shouldn't My Name is Madness be referred to with 'she' pronoun? I got confused when User:BrandonXLF/ShowUserGender userscript shows the user's desired pronoun to be 'she' when the article is referring to her as 'he' in the article. A stroll through her userpage also affirms that the user wants to be referred to with 'she' pronoun. – robertsky (talk) 09:34, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Thanks for bringing this up. I've made the correction. Please note that this is the editor-in-chief;\'s mistake, not the author's. It's something as EIC that I'm specifically supposed to check. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:22, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Disinformation report: Paid editing by a former head of state's business enterprise (86,801 bytes · 💬)

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• Only three COIs? and with no big harm done? Not so bad comparing with quite a few other celebs. Lembit Staan (talk) 22:02, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

• "accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency" - how do you know when a politician is lying? - Check if his lips are moving. Given that perennial wisdsom, I am curious whether anybody cares to carry out this kind of scrutiny on other presidents, such as Bushes or Clinton. (I am sure Trump will beat them due to his ..er... level of wisdom rather than intentional lying, but... ) BTW we have Bushisms, time to write up Trumpisms [1]? Lembit Staan (talk) 22:10, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

The WaPo tracks the Bushes and Clintons, too. They also lie, but not nearly to the same degree.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 14:02, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

• While I'm pretty sure that (Redacted) has a conflict of interest, I don't really see any evidence that the person behind the account is Patton, and I think it's probably inappropriate to state it as definitively as has been in this article. Having reviewed literally hundreds of COI/UPE accounts over the years, I see the hallmarks of someone who was paid, but not the article subject herself. Risker (talk) 22:14, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
• What a waste of an article. We have paid editors and COI editors running rampant but you managed to write an article with a segue from Trump kind of insinuating the paid editors and other editor who people accuse of COI harmed the encyclopedia with false edits. They also last edited years ago. I'm sure we have more recent editors in many different subject areas doing much harm to Wikipedia. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 22:47, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
• I fail to see how Mmartinnyc's "declaration" is "quite convincing". Anyone can claim to be anybody, so this could just as likely be a false flag to tarnish the Trump Organization's reputation. Until Michael Martin confesses to creating the Mmartinnyc account outside of Wikipedia, there are little grounds to believe the claims. I'm not saying that Mmartinnyc is not Martin, but should we be so quick to take identity declarations on Wikipedia seriously without outside evidence to back it up?

I also see the theory that (Redacted) is Patton to be nothing more than speculation. While it's clear that (Redacted) has a COI and it is unlikely to be a false flag given the circumstances, it would be a stretch to say that (Redacted) is Patton. The lack of an identity disclosure makes this claim even murkier than the claim that Mmartinnyc is Martin. - ZLEA _T\^C 23:19, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

• • I'm not sure that I get your point(s) You seem to say that we shouldn't take any paid editing declarations seriously because "anybody can claim to be anybody" trying to hurt TTO's reputation. So what kind of evidence do you think we should take seriously? You seem to want a notarized confession from a dead man! Even if he could do that, why would he? (more later) Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:01, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

  Smallbones I was unaware that Martin is dead (it doesn't really make that clear in the article's text). I'm not saying that we shouldn't take paid editing declarations seriously, because even if Mmartinnyc is/was a false flag they would be a case of disruptive WP:NOTHERE. I don't want a confession from anyone, I just want people to stop jumping to conclusions based on an iffy confession, especially for a heavily politicized article such as this. If Mmartinnyc is/was a troll, this article likely would be exactly what they wanted. - ZLEA _T\^C 00:29, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

  From the first sentence: According to his obituary published in December 2020. – The Grid (talk) 01:22, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

  Okay, I admit I overlooked that. - ZLEA _T\^C 01:23, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• Even if all of this is true, it doesn't even sound that bad; it's the normal background noise of vandalism & POV edits. Clueless newbies editing in an obviously partisan way isn't unusual, and it sounds like it was rolled back without incident. I'd be way more worried about UPE that was either persistent or else uncaught due to being on obscure topics. SnowFire (talk) 23:48, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
• I don't really get the impression Trump cared about what his Wikipedia page said. Reading Donald Trump one would think he'd have some people on the case if he cared. But afaik, he hasn't even ranted about it on Twitter, and it's a reasonably low bar of discomfort for him to rant about something. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:13, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• @SnowFire: @ZLEA: @Sir Joseph: @Risker: I say, how about suggesting the withdrawal of the article, because from the above comments it seems that there was no evidence of massive attack from Trump's camp, little harm was done for wikipedia, therefore the article is of little importance and looks like nothing but petty beating the dead horse of Trump ? Wikpedia should stay away from politics, right? Lembit Staan (talk) 00:23, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

  Lembit Staan Absolutely, this article is a clear attempt to defame the Trump Organization with extremely iffy evidence. TTO is a highly controversial organization owned by a US President who is not exactly known for being universally popular, but any claims that the organization paid editors to edit Wikipedia should be backed up with strong evidence. Without such evidence, they are nothing more than a conspiracy theory. - ZLEA _T\^C 00:37, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

  • That's ridiculous. I think this news article is covering a quite small issue that is not unusual, but it isn't false or anything, and the people involved are public figures (aka this isn't "let's shine a light on a random dude from Nebraska"). Withdrawal would only be appropriate if the events described were false, which they aren't. SnowFire (talk) 00:48, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm astonished that several experienced editors have called for the censorship of a Signpost investigation of paid editing by the recently most powerful person in the world. 2601:647:4D00:2C40:68E5:B805:77C5:11F1 (talk) 20:02, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

• Well, you know ... before 2016, he was in show business, a television show, beauty pageants, etc. There's an old quote alternately attributed to have originated with either P. T. Barnum or Broadway entrepreneur George M. Cohan, "I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right." What better way to have people talking about you, than saying something to disparage your public image? It came out during the 2016 campaign, a recording where he was talking to the National Enquirer about himself. Why would he care, as long as he's talked about? Individuals related to him might not share the same philosophy, but as long as he's in the encyclopedia ... eh ... — Maile (talk) 00:50, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• This is the first time I dislike a Signpost article. Not because of political biases, but because it's just useless. TTO supposedly paying people (paid editing has a wide range of meaning and not just trading so there's the word "supposedly") to edit a Trump-related article is an expected thing, from a popular and controversial subject. What, you make an article and expect things to go smoothly? Especially on a Trump article? The vandalism isn't even so severe. Yet the article highlights Donald Trump and the supposed 30,000 lies, as if these paid edits count. I find this article to be not just biased, but also vague. I've seen worse vandalisms, and it is somehow not being taken to attention. GeraldWL 06:42, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• From the title I expected the article to reveal some grand conspiracy by or on behalf of the Trump Organisation involving numerous paid editors. Instead the article is simply speculation that two editors who between them made 331 edits (23 to Ivanka Trump, 16 to Donald Trump Jr, 258 to Eric Trump, 33 to Lynn Patton and 1 to Donald Trump) were paid editors. The evidence is weak and the offences trivial and long ago dealt with. One editor has not edited in over eight years (and may have died), the other not in more than three years. So long after the events discussed why was it considered relevant to write the article at all? --DavidCane (talk) 01:17, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Who cares? A handful of edits on some of the most watched pages? Ideologically motivated / activist editors do far more damage and are much harder to deal with than any of the editors or edits spotlighted here. Mr Ernie (talk) 18:37, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I second that. Anyone with more than 12 brain cells that reads the Trump bio and compares it to the Obama one, can clearly see the favoritism lended to the latter over the former. Trump is portrayed as if the piece was written by a MSNBC or CNN goon, hardly a neutral treatise on the subject. That the fancruft Obama bio is an FA is telling of the political slant that this website is dominated by.--MONGO (talk) 01:30, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

• High profile politicians, athletes, and performers have paid editors? What a surprise. Even those failing WP:GNG engage "YourWikipediaBiography.com" companies. Of course it works both political ways where a zealous editor carefully monitored Hillary Clinton's biography. Treat them like any other editor with obvious WP:COI and hold them to WP:GNG, WP:RS, and WP:VERIFY.
• Just to clarify my quoted comment maybe a little, the outside connection with an OTRS ticket may be as innocent as having an email chain. I've certainly reached out to all types: museums, businesses, libraries, universities, trusts, what-have-you. But if you ask me where I get that photo, I'm gonna tell you I talked to the librarian at such-and-such. Don't really have anything to hide here, and in fact have a personal interest in keeping things as transparent as possible, within the limits of community standards regarding respect for privacy. Using only publicly available information, at some point, it becomes pretty daggum obvious when someone is making flattering edits and also uploading photos with official confirmation. GMG^talk 23:57, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
• Wow, coming back days after I first read this, I noticed that the second half of information in this article has been removed. At least be honest and put a notice at the top saying half of information has been redacted. enjoyer -- talk 23:43, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
• Am I misreading the diffs, or did Risker—an oversighter—just WP:OUT the subject in question, leading to a swift redaction of ~80 diffs?! In other news, the job of Signpost editor has just opened up—I think you've just qualified for it! ——Serial 11:10, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

References

• • I think you are, Serial Number 54129. This is an interesting situation. I'm actually quite pleased to see that the broader community supports the concept of not connecting real-world names to Wikipedia accounts if not done by the user. For years, editors working at the coalface of COI and UPE have pushed harder and harder against this principle, and have encountered quite a bit of success; I suppose my error was from so much exposure to that pressure. I was wrong in the way I expressed my opinion, and my oversighter colleagues were right in their actions. And no, there is not a snowball's chance that I will take on the Signpost. Risker (talk) 02:02, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Request for retraction

This is my formal request for The Signpost to retract this article. Let's put any political feelings we may or may not have about Donald Trump or The Trump Organization behind us (I will disclose that I am a Trump supporter), the reason I am requesting this is because the article appears to be an attempt to damage TTO's reputation by suggesting that it paid editors to make pro-Trump edits to articles without providing adequate evidence. In the case of Mmartinnyc, the only evidence provided to suggest they are/were Michael Martin was a paid editing disclosure provided by the account all the way back in 2011. As I stated in the above discussion, anyone can claim to be anybody, and the "disclosure" could have been a false flag to tarnish TTO's reputation. Furthermore, the fact that The Signpost decided to wait an entire decade, just a few months after Trump allegedly incited the capitol riots, is highly suspicious. Why not sooner when Trump wasn't as controversial as he is now? It's also quite convenient that this article was written only after Martin died, meaning he can't confirm nor deny outside of Wikipedia that he was Mmartinnyc.

Furthermore, the theory that (Redacted) is Lynne Patton is practically baseless. The only evidence (if you can even call it that) is that she edited "only a few articles on Donald Trump's children or former Trump employee Lynne Patton" and that there is "a parallel between (Redacted)'s editing topics and Lynne Patton's career path." While both of these very likely to mean that (Redacted) is a fan of Patton, without further evidence it is a stretch to say that (Redacted) is Patton herself. While Mmartinnyc at least had a paid editing disclosure (whether it is real or not), (Redacted) has made no such disclosure, so calling her work "paid editing" is also merely speculation (I wouldn't say that for most similar cases, but the fact that her username is literally (Redacted) says she has a huge COI with Trump and likely was happy to make pro-Trump edits without pay). - ZLEA _T\^C 01:12, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

This article is entirely based on facts, with a small amount of my analysis of the facts at the end. If you can find a misstatement of fact above, please bring it to my attention and I will gladly issue a correction. But, to suggest that I'm being dishonest e.g. in my selection of the timing of the article is just wrong. If you don't think that two declarations of paid editing are evidence of paid editing, it just looks like you're engaging in wishful thinking, or attempting censorship here. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:32, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Ironic how they are accusing Twitter of censorship. Trump's legacy as president is not the issue here, it's the UPE. Firestar464 (talk) 01:50, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Please explain how "Mmartinnyc’s declaration that he is Michael Martin ... is quite convincing" and "these parallels suggest that it's very likely that Patton ... edited as (Redacted)" (on a side note I will let you know that there are two "these" in that last sentence) are "a small amount of [your] analysis". It looks more like an opinion rather than an analysis, if you disagree then please also explain how you think a paid editing disclosure can be used as evidence in an article making such a serious accusation against a highly controversial/political organization such as TTO? Assuming that disclosures are real is assuming good faith. Therefore, your claim that "Mmartinnyc disclosed his identity twice ... as Michael Martin" is an assumption. Correct me if I'm wrong, but assumptions are not facts. - ZLEA _T\^C 02:12, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Of course you are wrong Just read [2] and [3]. The edit histories and talk pages show very clearly that User:Mmartinnyc added both edits and that he identified himself in both cases as Michael Martin from the Trump Organization. You can't fake these edit histories. Nobody can. My challenge stands - If you can find some misstatement of fact, I will issue a correction. But I'm very sure you can't. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:30, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

And just to be clear, by the diffs, this is what Mmartinnyc/Michael Martin says, "Please be aware that I manage interactive content for Ivanka as well as the rest of The Trump Organization so the edits I am making come directly from her." He not only identified himself as her employee, but provided an email address at "trumporg.com". Just to be completely open, he even provided his telephone number at the organization. — Maile (talk) 14:39, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost is all about opinions. Firestar464 (talk) 02:14, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm aware that the Signpost is all about opinions, but Smallbones appears to be trying to pass off opinions as facts. - ZLEA _T\^C 02:16, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

SB has already clarified above. If anything, they should clarify the article. Requesting that it be RETRACTED COMPLETELY is a bit too much. Firestar464 (talk) 02:21, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Maybe, but one of the problems is that this article seems to be far too political. Why did Smallbones wait a decade after Mmartinnyc’s declarations to bring them up? I hate to assume bad faith, but it appears they wanted to join in on the anti-Trump train by digging up an unconfirmed declaration from years ago and tying a Trump fan account's identity to a high profile Trump supporter (just because they edited her article). This isn't even a contemporary issue, there are plenty of current disinformation issues to cover other than a couple of years old alleged paid editing incidents. - ZLEA _T\^C 02:56, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

If you don't want to assume bad faith, don't assume bad faith. I don't really understand what the bad faith case is here. You're suggesting Smallbones sat on information about a particular COI user for a decade, and then sprung an article to join an "anti-Trump train" months after Trump stopped being President? What would be the purpose? The article doesn't even read negatively, it's a reasonably bog-standard COI case, with polite messages and OTRS tickets to boot. Not a single block or dramatic edit war. On current disinformation issues, I'm sure if you have a relevant topic in mind you'd like to write about, that the signpost would be very happy to receive a pitch. CMD (talk) 03:33, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• ZLEA you are quite welcome to air your concerns here about the Signpost content on this issue. I try not to devote too much thought to DT, most of all to TTO. But quite frankly, reading the article on TTO, paid editing is the very least of it. It's been in the news over and over again about how TTO pretty much financially took advantage of Federal money, from the inaugural funds that are still unaccounted for, to the excessive amounts TTO charged to the Feds for one thing or another. Staggers the mind. Paid editing by comparison is pretty insignificant, and certainly not worth pulling an internal newsletter topic over.— Maile (talk) 02:31, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

  Maile66 Whether or not TTO took advantage of Federal money has nothing to do with this discussion. Is it neutral to make paid editing claims, no matter how corrupt an organization may be, without proper evidence? The answer is no, any serious claims need lots of evidence, otherwise they are conspiracy theories (note that the first sentence of the article defines conspiracy theories as "an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable"). This article is making claims that TTO is likely paying editors (conspiring) to make pro-Trump edits, when it is just as likely (if not more likely) based on the provided evidence that they are simply Trump fans and/or false flags. Therefore, this article is a borderline conspiracy theory. - ZLEA _T\^C 02:56, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

It seems you never really read the message above yours. Firestar464 (talk) 03:40, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

ZLEA, Sorry for your loss. My thoughts and prayers go with you during these trying times. Jorm (talk) 03:20, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

(EC below)Since there are no disputed facts in this article - and it seems like somebody must have been looking real hard to find something to dispute - I'll suggest that we all get back to reality. The Signpost is not going to retract this story. Of course if you do find a misstatement of fact in the story, I will issue a correction - consider that a challenge, The only interesting aspect of the discussion that I see is that I've been accused of saving up this story until just the right time.

Actually, the timing of the story is the result of Patton's admission that she violated the Hatch Act, which i learned about ~18 days ago. I then read the Lynne Patton article and the talk page - and it was immediately clear that something was going on with a COI editor (Redacted) and a former TTO employee Patton. When I found her resume from HUD (a public record) in the Washington Post it was very clear that Patton was in charge of the same social media accounts for people that (Redacted) was writing about at the time. There are 2 other super-solid pieces of evidence in the article, the OTRS ticket on the Eric Trump photo- where we can assume (if OTRS is doing their job right) that somebody at TTO signed. And the fact that Martin disclosed he was doing the same thing at the same time for Ivanka as (Redacted) was doing for Eric. Maybe I was a bit too subtle in stating these parallels, but folks really ought to read the article before criticizing it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 06:46, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

I can't believe this is happening. Firestar464 I did read the response above mine, but I saw it as trying to turn the discussion away from the topic of alleged paid editing. Jorm I can't tell if that was a joke. Smallbones You say "there are no disputed facts" when the problem I have is your "analysis" of the facts. Also, you may recall that one of your so-called facts, "Mmartinnyc disclosed his identity twice ... as Michael Martin", is the assumption of good faith. Since you bring it up, I'd like to know what the "Not just a party planner" has to do with the rest of the article other than being about Patton. Chipmunkdavis I'm not proud of assuming bad faith, but I feel this is a case when I have to call it as I see it.

Believe it or not, the fact that this article seems specifically anti-Trump is not the problem I have with it. The problem is that it is misrepresenting facts and passing assumptions as facts. I would call for the retraction of the article even if it were about an organization owned by Biden, Harris, or even Pelosi. Say what you want, but my politics have nothing to do with it. - ZLEA _T\^C 12:51, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

ZLEA, As I said, my thoughts and prayers go with you during this trying time. Jorm (talk) 17:02, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Jorm What exactly do you mean by "trying time"? I haven't lost someone and I'm long over the election results. As I said, my problem with this article is not that it appears anti-Trump, but the fact that it seems to be defaming an organization without providing adequate evidence. I would have the same problem if the organization in question was owned by Biden, Pelosi, or even the Communist Party. I don't care who they are defaming, only that they are defaming in the first place. - ZLEA _T\^C 17:31, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• The claim that Patton being (Redacted) is a great stretch but so is the claim that SB published this article "just right after" the Capitol insurrection (4 months) and Martin's death -Gouleg🛋️ (Stalk • Hound) 13:29, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

  Gouleg Is it, though? Let's look at the numbers, shall we? Martin died on November 20, 2020. The capitol riots took place on January 6, 2021. This article was published on April 25, 2021. Unless time started running backwards, it is an undeniable fact that the article was published after the capitol protests and Martin's death. I'm assuming (though you did not directly say it) that you meant that my claim that the SB waited until the Trump controversy was at its highest is a stretch. Maybe it is, but SB's claim that they "learned about [the Patton incident] ~18 days ago" is a bit strange. Would you expect a news agency to report on a years old development because they "just learned about it?" No, unless the whole world just learned about it you would expect them to report on more recent developments. - ZLEA _T\^C 14:32, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

  This isn't a news agency. This is an opinion piece. I'm not sure you are understanding this. I'm not sure you're understanding anything can be written in any period of time. What would be considered not strange? Would it be weird 50 years from now when some items are declassified? You're focusing on the oddest parts of this article when the focus is on paid editing. This piece could be about anyone but the material is the synthesis shown. – The Grid (talk) 15:10, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

  It would not be weird to report recently declassified information because the declassification would be a recent development. And yes, I realize that this is an opinion piece (why opinion pieces are allowed here eludes me), but this article does not make that clear, and it seems to misrepresent opinions as facts. - ZLEA _T\^C 15:21, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

  This isn't an article either. This is like any essay that editors have written on this site. – The Grid (talk) 22:11, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• No to any retractions. I am 100% aligned with Smallbones. The article is well presented. Any editor who has been on WP for at least a year probably knows about the COI editing by interns, staff, PR depts., etc. and politicians are not exempt. Risker nailed it, too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atsme (talk • contribs) 11:06, April 26, 2021 (UTC)

  I've said this many times and I'll say it again. Paid editing is wrong but so is accusing organizations of paying editors without providing adequate evidence. The only paid editing disclosure provided by this article should not be used as evidence because it was not confirmed outside of Wikipedia, and saying it is real as opposed to a false flag is an assumption at best. - ZLEA _T\^C 15:11, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• Retract or rewrite. Clearly, this is a politically motivated opinion piece on a matter trivial compared to other COI cases. It is also a bad case of journalism, since (1) the accused side was not asked for comment, if I am not mistaken. (2) benefit of doubt was not give, since newbies and SPA often write biased texts, because they don't know our policies well. Finally, the discussed accounts did not do much harm, no more than a random not-really-anonymous PR person named user:ThisOrThatCompany jumping in. Therefore I conclude that singling this inconsequential case out is nothing but a piece of political wrangling that should not have place in Wikipedia. Disclaimer I am first-generation naturalized citizen and as such I don't feel I am in a good position to vote, but if one may ask, my opinion about Trump is rather humorous an I am even going to write an article Trumpisms, if no one else beats e to it. :-)Lembit Staan (talk) 16:10, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose retraction - Much ado about nothing, the requests for that are. I'm just glad Trump, over all these years, hasn't taken to Twitter to rally his forces to attack the encyclopedia. -Indy beetle (talk) 04:55, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
• Support retraction this was a non-story in the first place, and all publishing it was ever going to do was draw attention to or own failings as a newsletter at the least or, writ large, a community. ——Serial 11:01, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose retraction. I'm sorry, what is happening here? This is a simple article about a possible past conflict of interest, with no grand assertions whatsoever. In the conclusion, it is argued that Mmartinnyc’s declaration that he is Michael Martin, at that time the digital marketing manager of the Trump Organization is quite convincing. If the declaration was part of a Joe job, it's one that didn't embarrass anybody for ten years, even though the head of the Trump Organization was the president of the United States for four of those years. — no clear statement of fact, just an argument of plausibility (and, by extension, Occam's razor). This is the Signpost, not Reuters. The article ponders an interesting question (after all, many organisations, both big and small, have tried to polish their Wikipedia articles), and the conclusion that no significant COI editing surrounding Trump has taken place was, to me, quite surprising. The concerns over this piece are, to put it frankly, a bit embarrassing to read. (Excluding, of course, the concerns over violations of WP:OUTING) TucanHolmes (talk) 23:52, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

paid editing claims

If we cannot make paid editing claims, we will be complicit in the destruction of the Encyclopedia. The very basis of a encyclopedia is that the information in it be NPOV, and it order to do that it was recognized from the first that it must be written by editors who are capable of writing in an NPOV fashion. Editors paid by the subject of articles are very rarely so capable. if we do not remove them when there is reasonable suspicion, nothing we do here is worth doing, because we will be no better than Google. After all, Google does advertising perfectly well, better than we could.

If we can not call them out, we cannot remove them. We have a obligation to do so responsibly. I think this article is a model of how to do it responsibly, and I so advised its author. Had they been undeclared editors currently editing, I would without hesitation have blocked the contributor and removed the material. I would have done so on the basis of my experience as an administrator working almost exclusively with paid editing problems for the last ten years or so, and clarified by my participation in dealing with private evidence as a checkuser, oversighter, and member of arb com. (This does not necessarily mean that all admins or arbs would think the same as I, but I think it does represent the general view.) I've seen false flags used at WP in accusing people, and I admit we cannot always clearly tell the difference. I have however seen many more attempts to incorrectly or absurdly or maliciously claim a false flag as an excuse, and as my judgement would go, it is in this matter highly unlikely. One of the reasons for it being unlikely is that there is no particular motivation for it.

From the point of view of a PR agent, editing WP in behalf of their subject is by no means unsual. I'd estimate that at least half and more likely 3/4 of all current political candidates in the US have at least tried it, and quite a bit of it remains in Wikipedia, though we do try to remove it from at least the major current candidates. In the context of politics, I doubt it counts as a major sin. The main argument against it from their point of view would be prudence; it tends to be highly embarrassing when detected. Among the sins which tempt politicians--or PR people--it does not rate very highly. It is not bribery, it is not corruption, it is not lying. It is not trying to mislead news sources or colleagues. It is not voting against one's true convictions. It's not even what politicians claim as routine, such as adjusting electoral districts or appointing people to favor them to key positions. It doesn't sabotage the opponents, or pervert the course of justice by sophistry. It doesn't directly harm any public or private interest, or benefit any public or concealed supporter.

And it is not just politicians. I estimate that over half of the articles on companies or non-profit organizations in WP have been written in large part by those organizations, and almost half the articles on individual professionals of all sorts-- in a few fields, I'd say 90%. I'd say that 10 years ago, it was probably considerably higher, for those professionals or organizations who thought it worth the trouble--we have not been completely unsuccessful in discouraging at least the most naïve versions of it.

As PR editing goes, this was reasonably well disclosed. As PR editing goes, it was not even particularly outrageously promotional. It tried to add a small amount of favorable information, and decrease the emphasis on a very small part of the unfavorable. It would have had if successful no major effect on our coverage of the subjects.

I do not see political implicationz. Were I a supporter of the previous president, I would not hold this against him. After all, most supporters accept there is a good deal of otherwise questionable behavior that is overshadowed by the great amount of good the person has done for the country--I cannot immediately thing of anyone, even himself, who would defend everything that he has done in public or private life. Some people support him for friendship, or for their own selfish reasons, and this would be irrelevant. Most apparently support him because they approve of his goals, and this would be equally irrelevant.

Were I an opponent of the previous president, I would do as I am now doing, smile. It's somewhat humorous to think of his organization or supporters doing something like this, in the context of what an opponent would consider all the much worse things they have done, and all the very much worse things he had done and been proud of doing. From the perspective of any imaginary neutral party looking on, had he confined his organization to things like this, the world and the country would have been much less outraged.

From the POV of a supporter of independent journalism within and outside WP. I'd commend what Smallbones has done, tho, personally, I am not quite sure I would in his place have considered it worth the effort. In its own right, it's more in the nature of odd things at WP, than immediate dire threats. From my own personal POV, it's instructive to see the reaction that an attempt to do something well here can produce. I sometimes forget quite how diverse and strange the community can be. DGG ( talk ) 06:27, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Well stated. Whether I am working at CSD, vandalism reports or other, I generally check the origin of any IP to see if it needs a Shared IP template on the user page. During the past 2020 calendar year, in making such a check on a DT article, one identified as Executive Office of the President of the United States. The White House was editing its own Wikipedia articles, but as an IP. As such, it was reported to Wikimedia to handle. If we learned anything in the previous four years, it's been that there have been repeated polarized insistence of removing any offending anything public that goes against a singular POV. Say what you will about that, the IP I reported was an instance of why we need to adhere to our guidelines on such things. Let me add, that much of what I, as an admin, find flagged at Candidates for speedy deletion, are nothing more than well-written, sometimes professionally so, self-advertising, either written by a paid editor, or by a talented subject of the article. Wikipedia was not meant to be a social media self-advertising platform. We need to be vigilant to keep Wikipedia as it was intended to be. — Maile (talk) 14:11, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

DGG You miss my point entirely. Paid editing disclosures should be taken seriously because they mean either the editor is being paid or is lying and being disruptive. However, the assumption of good faith should not be used as evidence in an article that speculates that an organization is paying editors. This is especially the case when the editor in question claimed to be working for arguably the most controversial organization in modern times.

I realize and respect that people have differing political opinions than mine, and I'm not saying TTO did not do everything this article alleges, but making such allegations without adequate evidence is uncalled for. It seems we are forgetting what we are not. - ZLEA _T\^C 14:39, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• I agree with DGG & Maile66. As I stated above, the article is well-presented. Atsme 💬 📧 15:09, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
• DGG if you don't like the way the policy currently on paid/COI editors is you have the opportunity to try to change it. You are a former arbitrator and are well-respected in the Wikipedia community; you would have a good chance to do so. But our policy is very clear; "If redacted or oversighted personally identifying material is important to the COI discussion, then it should be emailed privately to an administrator or arbitrator—but not repeated on Wikipedia: it will be sufficient to say that the editor in question has a COI and the information has been emailed to the appropriate administrative authority." Saying things like "If we can not call them out, we cannot remove them." goes against our existing policies. You should know this. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 00:21, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @Chess: Just to be clear, did you remove any "redacted or oversighted personally identifying material"? I'd say that you removed 0 - there was no redacted or oversighted personally identifying material in the article to begin with. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:04, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
    • @Smallbones: Yes, I did. [4] Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 03:17, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
      • @Chess: I'm still confused about what "redacted or oversighted personally identifying material" you reverted. I'm not an admin, I don't have any access to "redacted or oversighted" material, so I couldn't have included any. I, of course, have access to my work product including this article as originally published. I went over the entire section of what you removed and everything in there was still available at the same place as when I originally accessed it, i.e nothing in what you removed has been "redacted or oversighted". It's still available.
      • There is one spot where I made a typo confusing an already complex history of a photo used in the article. The user uploaded the photo in the form Xxxx xxxxx.jpg and then got an OTRS permission from the copyright holder. Later somebody did an unorthodox name switch on the photo, The original photo was cropped. The uncropped photo was reuploaded as Xxxx xxxxx - full.jpg (complete with OTRS ticket). In the article I used Xxxx xxxxx - full.jpg, because that is the *photo* the user uploaded, and noted the *file* that they uploaded as Xxxx Xxxxx.jpg. That is I put in a capital letter where it shouldn't have been. In any case "both" photos, with OTRS tickets, are still available on Commons. They have not been redacted or oversighted. If you could, would you get the committee together and clarify that I did not include any "redacted or oversighted" material in this article - that looks like quite an aspersion to me, but I'm sure you didn't mean it that way. If I'm totally missing something here - please email or otherwise let me know what it is.
      • Re: my conversation with DGG on this article before publication. I requested that he - if possible - redact the email and telephone number that the paid editor put in his declaration. I realize that the paid editor has the right to put this info on-Wiki if he wants to, but I just did not want somebody getting all upset by the non-issue of me publishing his very old email and phone. Note that these were never redacted or oversighted, before or since. DGG advised me that they couldn't be redacted without also removing the info in the yellow boxes above. So I just copied the text to this article and linked to the unredacted edits. As for the rest of the conversation, DGG seemed very interested that I not do anything to get this article deleted (as am I). I, of course, am solely responsible for how the article came out. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:36, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
        • It's not appropriate to get into specifics, but it was related to the attempted outing of the second Wikipedian. Admittedly it was not suppressed when you published it (only later which technically making it redacted or oversighter info) but the spirit of the rule is pretty clear that it's not ok to post suppressable personal info onwiki about an editor with a COI, even if it helps fight COIs. I would say it's BS to say you're responsible as you got told by an oversighter that the content of the article wasn't oversightable, though. You did your due diligence. I'd be surprised if the committee hasn't gotten together yet to review what a shitshow this was. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 19:19, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
          • The Committee is aware of this issue. Primefac (talk) 22:45, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
      • To clarify; I was not the one who actually redacted the article. I removed the information but it was redacted (really suppressed) by someone else. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 05:06, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

"I chose what I work on, as do we all. I do not normally engage in oversight regarding outing or most reasons for oversight; I focus on oversighting identifying material posted by children. As with admin functions, I will not violate established policy, but I choose what I actively engage in enforcing, and where I disagree with it I do not attempt to participate in such a way as to over-ride it, though I give my opinion if I think it relevant, as can anybody else on anything. For those things where I disagree on policy, I very rarely take a lead in requesting change, though I sometime participate in discussions where someone else does . There is a mailing list where the oversighters (including the current admins) discuss challenged or questionable oversights. The list is strictly private, but I can say this has not yet. been discussed on it. If it is, I will probably refer to my opinion here that this does not require oversight. The problems with oversight are usually instances where an oversighter suppresses material and others disagree, and there are established mechanisms for dealign with this .The contributor here was aware that I did not intend to oversight this, but that others might to choose to do so. I do not and cannot offer them or anyone protection about this, nor do I think anyone should have the power to do so. DGG ( talk ) 15:35, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

if you were aware that this could've been a grey area you should've asked other oversighters BEFORE this article got published to hundreds of readers. See "The contributor here was aware that I did not intend to oversight this, but that others might to choose to do so" We cannot "unout" someone and remove the information from people who have already seen it. Letting the information get published first and then oversighted is not the right way to deal with this. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 19:31, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

WP:OUTING

The allegations made about (Redacted)'s identity are a blatant violation of WP:OUTING, and consequently the post should be oversighted. It is unjustifiable to speculate about the offwiki identity of any account if they haven't volunteered the information, even if it is obvious that the user in question has a COI. I would note that the evidence presented about the particular identity is very weak. Hemiauchenia (talk) 13:50, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

my advice was asked, and although there is no way of giving official clearance, I advised otherwise. No direct accusation was made, and the evidence of COI was good enough to block.

If my colleagues oversighters or arb com decide otherwise, I think that good reason to revise our standards as being unrealistic. We designed our rules to stop coi editing, not facilitate its evasion. I point out a person delivering a speech at a national political convention is a public figure, and has an inherently diminished expectation of privacy. DGG ( talk ) 14:00, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

My problem isn't that (Redacted) has been accused of having a COI w.r.t. The Trump Organisation, that's a totally reasonable thing to say, but that the sentence "Taken together these these parallels suggest that it's very likely that Patton, the former Trump employee, edited as (Redacted)" is unjustifiable outing, given that (Redacted) made no such indications in her edits. Hemiauchenia (talk) 14:07, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

I see the problems with this article are growing. It doesn't matter what evidence of COI there is, outing is outing. If (Redacted) disclosed that they are Patton then there would be no problem, but of course there is no such disclosure. Even if the evidence was undeniable (which it is not), speculation about a user's identity should not be welcome under any circumstances. WP:OUTING clearly states that it doesn't matter if the information is accurate or not. - ZLEA _T\^C 14:50, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

I will also say that WP:OUTING does not say anything about outing editors as being public figures. Therefore, the argument that they have an "inherently diminished expectation of privacy" is moot. - ZLEA _T\^C 14:53, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• I have a much different interpretation of outing or attempted outing. It is not outing to state that an editing pattern suggests, in an Op-Ed, a parallel that a particular COI editor may be the BLP. I actually disagree with the Op-Ed's conclusion about (Redacted) because I can name a few others who would be more inclined to be that COI editor - so, Q: who was actually outed? A: Nobody. Atsme 💬 📧 16:35, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

  Atsme It doesn't matter if the identity is correctly deduced, it is still at best an attempted outing. Is an attempted robbery any less wrong than a successful robbery? No, it is not. Likewise, an attempted outing is not any less worse than a correct outing. - ZLEA _T\^C 16:43, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• Respond to ping - my final comment. I disagree with your reasoning and misapplication of the policy. Outing was included in the Harassment policy for a reason. In this case, no one is being harrassed. For example, if someone says, I removed that material because it is potentially libellous, and against BLP policy, that is not a legal threat anymore than the suggestion that the COI editor might be so-and-so could be considered outing. No one was harassed or outed in this case. It appears to me that you believe the suggestion in the Op-Ed is correct, and if it is, the COI editor is expected to disclose their COI and their relationship to the BLP, as in "I am the BLP" = guess what? No outing. If it isn't the BLP = guess what? No outing. Atsme 💬 📧 18:55, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• It doesn't matter what you think outing is or how you think it should be defined, WP:OUTING clearly says how Wikipedia defines outing. You say that posting personal information about a user is only outing if it is to harass the user, but WP:OUTING contradicts your claim by saying "Posting another editor's personal information is harassment, unless that person has voluntarily posted their own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia." If you are not happy with Wikipedia's current definition of outing, then by all means propose a change to the policy. Until then, we should go by the current definition of the policy, which this article breaks. - ZLEA _T\^C 20:21, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• SIGH - OK, in response to this issue of alleged outing, I've read everything above, studied the WP articles in question. No outing happened, just public musing over the possibilities. The public and media have been exposed to years of "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" of media. What we think was written by one person, sometimes was later revealed to have been written by someone else, or leaked to someone who could put it under their name and get it national exposure. Really folks, when it comes to the last four years - up is down, no is yes, yes is no, and anything you believed you knew ... might actually have been a planned illusion. Nothing I see has succeeded in making the connection. This could have also just been a fan club president. I'm still wondering if the rumors are true about what happened to the "real" Paul McCartney circa 1969 before he was replaced by a doppelgänger. No outing happened for (Redacted), because no real evidence was presented. Enough. It was not an outing. — Maile (talk) 20:45, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• I'm opposed to outing. I've made that point clear in the past. However, I don't see outing here. I raised the issue in the discussion below (now closed), receiving a response that is a bit complex and I'm having difficulty understanding. As the article stands now, I don't see an outing violation, sorry, but I suppose it will be sorted out in the deletion discussion. Editors need to be careful about outing, but this article was highly informative. Coretheapple (talk) 20:37, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Coretheapple The offending content had been redacted. The article previously attempted to out a specific editor as a public Trump supporter. - ZLEA _T\^C 20:59, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

OK, thank you for clarifying that. Assuming there was an outing and it was cured, I would think that this is no longer a live issue. Coretheapple (talk) 15:16, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Contested deletion

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

---

This page should not be speedy deleted as an attack or a negative unsourced biography of a living person, because it is not a Wikipedia article and it is not subject to the policies and guidelines governing Wikipedia mainspace. Neither is the content of The Signpost required to have footnotes or be linked to WP:RS. The Signpost is a newspaper. For the purpose it provides, it could just as easily be hosted on any server off-Wiki like any blog, where like it or hate it, Wikipedia editors, whatever they feel about it, would not be able to have it redacted or deleted. Once published, print media newspapers don't get redacted or pulled from the streets once they hit the news stands. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:23, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

A "G10" deletion applies to all namespaces (hence the "G" label and not an "A" label). If it would be hosted off-wiki, there would be no need for us to redact or delete it. And no, the Signpost is not a newspaper (as a professional news publication with standards), it is a news blog about Wikipedia, and if it wants to be posted on Wikipedia, it is subject to Wikipedia policies. Fram (talk) 13:39, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) No, but they do print redactions to prevent themselves getting sued. In any case, WP:NOTPAPER. Also in any case, BLP applies across the project, not just article space. ——Serial 13:41, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

This page should not be speedy deleted as an attack or a negative unsourced biography of a living person, because... (G10 lists examples of material on "attack pages". None of those apply here. "Examples of "attack pages" may include libel, legal threats, material intended purely to harass or intimidate a person or biographical material about a living person that is entirely negative in tone and unsourced.

• libel? - No way. Everything in this article is clearly sourced to the most reliable sources, or refers to actual, unredacted edits on Wikipedia itself, and links to those edits.
• Legal threats? - absolutely none.
• material intended to harass ... and unsourced -
  • completely sourced as above
  • my intention in writing this was simply to expose that the TTO, which is completely owned by D.J. Trump, edited articles related to his business. This is important because Trump was then the future president of one of the most powerful countries in the world. He is now, of course the former president, but he is still eligible to run again, and is one of the more likely candidates to be the next Republican candidates.

other points:

• There's an MfD discussion on this article. By my quick count the !votes are 8 for keep (including several admins) vs. 5 for delete. Let the process there continue.
• If this type of deletion goes through, there will essentially be no place on Wikipedia where this type of paid editing by government officials can be openly discussed. The threat of disinformation inserted by folks like this is real and one of the most important issues of the day. If you delete this article, you are loudly declaring to the world that we're not even allowing discussion of the matter. Every Wikipedian should be ashamed of our encyclopedia if that's the case.
• I'll revert to an earlier version that doesn't doesn't have any chance whatsoever of being considered an attack page. I'll also change the title and may revise the article further to a form where more can be discussed.

We need to discuss the problem, not cover it up ) --Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:24, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Completely sourced? Not really, no. There is not a single source linking the second person you discuss at length, and Wikipedia. The only intention of the material is to harass the persons, and through them the TPO. A few edits from 10 years ago is hardly "one of the most important issues of the day", there are plenty of more recent, more widespread, and more hidden examples (as the first one was quite openly declared: it was wrong, it was unacceptable, but it is long gone, and a minor issue even then). Furthermore, he wasn't a "government official" nor worked for one, so if your article is intended to expose "this type of paid editing by government officials", then you failed badly. Fram (talk) 14:44, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Facts about the second person are sourced to

• New York Magazine
• The Washington Post
  • The person themself via the US government and The Washington Post
• New York Daily News
• The person's speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention on YouTube from multiple sources, e.g. PBS
• CBS News (New York)
• New York Times
  • Connection between NY Times and CBS stories confirmed by local paper Gothamist
• Office of Special Counsel, US Gov't

Almost all of these sources make a direct connection between the person and TTO. If you can't make a connection between these sources and the rest of the article, it's because you simply don't want to. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:30, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

There is not a single source about this second person + Wikipedia. The inclusion of this person in this article as it stands is an unsourced "guilt-by-association", a pure innuendo, and as such a vile attack and a blatant BLP violation. It is a sorry state of affairs that too many people want to defend this (many of them long-time Signpost defenders, I have to say).

Your reply is pure deflection, and not a reply to what I said above and what for that second part is the essential problem: "There is not a single source linking the second person you discuss at length, and Wikipedia". You are claiming quite explicitly that that person has made paid edits to Wikipedia and has spread disinformation on Wikipedia, which is a clear G10 BLP deletion. You repeat this here, with "If you can't make a connection between these sources and the rest of the article, it's because you simply don't want to." as if the lack of any source about their Wikipedia editing is proof of their Wikipedia editing somehow. That you have found an admin (with whom you have a history of deleted BLP violations in the Signpost) who is again willing to defend this seems like a rather big risk you both are taking. Fram (talk) 15:51, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm only here to address the bad faith accusation that Smallbones prompted me to remove your inappropriate CSD tag. I have had no contact with Smallbones regarding this - or any other matter since prior to the pandemic, to the best of my recollection. I removed it solely for the stated reasons in my edit summary. Given your past history with Smallbones it would be prudent for you to step back from this matter and let the community consensus govern what happens next instead of attempting an end run around an MFD. Gamaliel (talk) 16:13, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I don't doubt that you didn't need prompting, I was just amazed that, with your BLP violating history with Smallbones and me, it was you who decided that you were the right person to act on this. This is something that a neutral admin should have handled, not the person who was in part responsible, together with Smallbones, for a previous Signpost article that had to be deleted as a blatant BLP violation. I seem to remember that Smallbones then tried to make an issue of "outing", as if they cared about this enormously, but was basically laughed out of court for this. Probably something they only care about when their "anonymous source" and their fabrications is getting exposed. Nice talking to you, Gamaliel, and enjoy your admin status for as long it lasts. Fram (talk) 16:21, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry you've decided to escalate your ad hominem instead of stepping back from this matter. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Good luck with your grudge against Smallbones. Gamaliel (talk) 16:24, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

As editor-in-chief of The Signpost I think it is appropriate for me to ask everybody to avoid personal attacks on this page, even when I am one of the targets of the personal attacks. If this goes the way it's currently going, this case is likely to be appealed the result to ArbCom. If necessary you can discuss it there. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:03, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

• I agree that in general people should be careful about "outing" as it is a hot-button issue and not tolerated. But for the life of me I just can't see any basis for deleting this page on that basis. It's an informative article, and the person admitted to be the RL person indicated in the article. So it doesn't fall afoul of outing rules. What am I missing? Coretheapple (talk) 16:07, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
  • The article was about two persons: one recently deleted who edited Wikipedia a few dozen times 10 years ago, long before Trump was President: and another one who has now finally been removed from the article, and whose supposed Wikipedia handle was earlier oversighted for outing (leaving here half an article about a BLP without any link to Wikipedia in the text, but still accused of being a paid spreader of disinformation on Wikipedia). That version, the one which was nominated for MfD and Csd, can still be seen in the article history for now. (Oh, and in general it is not sufficient for a Wikipedia editor X to declare that they are person Y in real life: as long as that person hasn't made the reverse declaration, we shouldn't simply believe the Wikipedia editor on their say-so, and shouldn't accuse the person Y of being editor X). Fram (talk) 16:14, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

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

The Signpost itself predicted this

I'm surprised to check in a week after I read this piece, before it had a first comment written, to find it's blown up like this. What about this piece in particular is exceptional? I found its content a bit weak compared to the usually much more serious and damaging COI that's reported on. (Slow news month, Smallbones is overworked—I get it.) However, I don't see what was uniquely a violation of outing. Perhaps I just forgot the content that's been objectionable. It was only two issues ago that The Signpost explicitly asked its readers what they thought was and wasn't acceptable with these types of reports: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-03-28/From the editor. If only we had established the community's view on this at that article and not this one then the drama could have been avoided. — Bilorv (talk) 22:38, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Unlike most of the prior pieces, this one specifically said that there was strong evidence that a certain Wikipedia user was "John Doe". This user didn't disclose that info anywhere on Wikipedia and it was deduced based on this person's editing patterns to certain articles that the real life person was involved in. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 03:13, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Chilling effect

I had contemplated writing a Signpost article on another COI situation involving various accounts identified on- and off-wiki as being related to the subject of the article, a major public figure convicted of felonies. I think an article like that would be informative. My point was to be how volunteer editors with limited time and motivation are helpless when dealing with determined COI editors. I am opposed to outing and would scrupulously follow the outing policy. But would I write such an article? Hell no. It's not worth the trouble. How can Signpost deal with COI and paid editing issues involving admitted (not surmised or alleged or denied) paid and COI editors if we are going to hound the Signpost editor as we have done here? Coretheapple (talk) 14:11, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

There's literally nothing preventing you from going to WP:COIN if you have a legitimate concern. I fail to see why it is impossible for editors to follow WP:COICOIN and why you have to write a Signpost article outing people. If there's evidence that would out people you can email a functionary. There's no policy against COI editing in general so long as it is disclosed and people follow the COI rules. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 03:09, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

There's literally nothing in your response that has anything to do with my concern, which relates to Signpost not posting on COIN. Coretheapple (talk) 15:34, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

That's the entire point of what I wrote; you don't have to write a Signpost article outing people to address COI issues. We have existing processes to deal with this and I fail to see why you are unable to use those. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 19:16, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Two different places with different purposes. COIN deals with immediate problems, that can be solved with a block or similar. General editors don't go there very often. The Signpost is for all Wikipedia editors and can deal with bigger questions like "there's this guy who tells lots of fibs, had his finger on the nuclear button for 4 years, who encouraged an insurrection against the US government, and his organization edits Wikipedia. What do we do?" If we took that question to COIN, they'd just say "We're not set up for this. Take it to The Signpost." If we took it to ArbCom, they'd say "We're not GovCom. We can't deal with content, much less the real world. Take it to The Signpost". We publish it here and you say, "you can't do that here, at least not in any detail." So the question to you is "where do we tell the Wikipedia community what's going on? And why do you want to bury your head in the sand?" Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:14, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

"There's this guy who tells lots of fibs, had his finger on the nuclear button for 4 years, who encouraged an insurrection against the US government, and his organization edits Wikipedia. What do we do?" So this is a politically motivated article. - ZLEA _T\^C 03:16, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Let's not quibble about the hypothetical, please. The article I had considered writing was devoid of political content, and was intended to describe the kind of time suck COI editing, even "white hat" COI editing, creates for volunteers. To me this is the primary issue raised by COI and paid editing, and yet I find that many editors and especially administrators are callous to that aspect of the problem. It's as if Wikipedia's policies and guidelines create a "level playing field" for volunteer editors and determined, motivated COI editors. That is a problem that has no political aspect. And yet, I wouldn't even go near such a topic on Signpost repeat on Signpost repeat on Signpost as I simply don't have the time or energy to fight the kind of battle that has been created for Smallbones here. Coretheapple (talk) 14:42, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

There should be enough examples that have been raised and documented on English Wikipedia that an article could cite to illustrate this aspect. isaacl (talk) 15:08, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Then you run into another set of challenges. For example, if you;re dealing with a banned COI editor you might run into the NPA rules. Or attack page. This very article was nominated on that basis at one point. Coretheapple (talk) 18:24, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

The issue was raised precisely because the article didn't use examples previously examined by the community. I do appreciate there are challenges, because there is a diversity of opinions on conflicts of interest, and the sub-category of paid editing. For better or worse, the portion of the English Wikipedia community who like to discuss its processes generally favour open discussion, including open discussions on Signpost articles. That has disadvantages but also advantages. isaacl (talk) 05:00, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

• Smallbones, I think you need to take a step back and a deep breath, and look at what you are saying here. I believe I can state with a high degree of certainty that neither ArbCom nor COIN has ever told anyone that they should "take it to the Signpost." The Signpost is generally a newsletter, not investigative journalism. That's not a complaint, I think most of us appreciate it for what it is and don't expect it to do investigative journalism. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:17, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  • @Beeblebrox: Let's first be very clear The Signpost is *not* a newsletter, we run a newspaper here, which means original reporting and analysis. We've declared that we're a newspaper starting with the second sentence of the first article of the first issue of this newspaper on January 10, 2005, over 16 years ago. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's several years before you started editing. BTW the first sentence was just "Welcome to the inaugural edition of The Wikipedia Signpost!". The word "newsletter" connotes a sponsored throwaway publication that prints items more-or-less dictated by the powers-that-be. There is no ultimate power on Wikipedia other than the Wikipedia community. ArbCom, admins, the WMF, oversighters, and other bureaucrats don't dictate what we publish. We follow the rules, just like any other newspaper follows the laws. But the community needs some institution to watch over ArbCom, admins, etc. to see how well they are performing. This is a service we provide, and others can try to provide. We are *not* a newsletter - never have been.
  • Now my saying how ArbCom would react to the question "There's this guy who tells lots of fibs, had his finger on the nuclear button for 4 years, who encouraged an insurrection against the US government, and his organization edits Wikipedia. What do we do?" was rhetorical. I wouldn't exactly expect them to say "Take it to The Signpost". I'd expected the to give a more polite version of "get the heck out of here, we don't do that." So my questions to you is "Where on Wikipedia would you recommend that an interested editor take that question about Trump? Would any place be better than The Signpost? Or don't you think it's a worthwhile Question?"
    Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:37, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
    • To be a newspaper, you first need journalists with journalistic standards, and an EiC who makes sure that all articles and collaborators meet those requirements. If you insist on the label "newspaper", then add the correct adjective to it: "rag". "the community needs some institution to watch over ArbCom, admins, etc."... How many cases of problematic admins have been unearthed by the Signpost? Has the Signpost ever led to a desysopping or de-Arbcoming? Well, yes, a deleted Signpost article written by you has led to the retirement of one Arb, but it is not usually the aim of a newspaper to burn their sources so badly that they can no longer function correctly. You may have high and lofty ideals, but in reality the result of most things resembling investigative journalism in this rag are just some gutter press products. The community may need many things, but this aspect of the Signpost is not one of them. Fram (talk) 08:11, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
      • I tried to soften my tone but I have to say I agree with what Fram said. I don't know why you would think the community wants the Signpost to engage in this sort of reporting. It is not a professional newspaper, regardless of any claim you all may make to the contrary, and this was a nothingburger anyway, there was no problem that was even remotely solved by this reporting, all it did was create problems for the you and the Signpost. If you were planning to step back anyway, I would suggest now as a great tie to go ahead and do that as you really are not helping the overall cause of the Signpost with your more recent remarks. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:32, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
    • I don't see why we shouldn't delegate COI cases where there would be OUTING if the evidence was made public to ArbCom. We already ask editors to talk to functionaries. ArbCom is already cleared to deal with non public information and I think allowing arbcom as a whole to deal with COI issues (with possible delegation within such) involving potential doxxing would be a better system than ad hoc asking functionaries to do stuff. Make it clear where the authority is to deal with COI editing might help with enforcement and investigation.
      In response to what you said about the content of what you write being dictated by the community; it might shock you but ultimately the WMF are the people who own the servers you're posting on. Saying the WMF doesn't dictate what you publish demonstrates a laughable understanding of how this site works. While generally community consensus is what determines what is allowed onwiki the WMF can and does overrule that if necessary. Go look at the new UCOC if you want; doxxing is explicitly banned and that policy cannot be overruled by consensus.
      It's also interesting that you say oversighters don't dictate what you publish when half the article has been suppressed by an oversighter. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 11:59, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

    My suggestion would be to advertise a brainstorming session and solicit participation from the active editors working on conflicts of interest. Let them work out proposals for what ought to be done and what resources are needed, such as more tools, more auditing, or more people to perform needed tasks (perhaps we need the Wikimedia Foundation to providing funding and HR support for the community to hire dedicated staff). Maybe we need more partnerships with university research groups to help tackle problems (hopefully the WMF could help there). Most critically, though, someone needs to be able to devote dedicated time to drive the initiative forward. isaacl (talk) 05:22, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

  • I think Smallbones was being too kind. The reaction tends to be more dismissive than that, when there is a reaction and the response is not silence. Coretheapple (talk) 18:21, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Conclusive outing?

Weird how the time and date for at least one edit would seem to have been physically impossible for the real Martin to have made. Bad idea to take an anonymous person's claim for their IRL ID serious, especially when time and dates can be compared (hell, I have even done that on the internet, back in the day—couple decades ago—and I was able to easily manufacture convincing evidence back then... thousands of people do it for entertainment, trolling, low self-esteem issues, and mischief).— al-Shimoni (talk) 04:18, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't think you know what you are talking about.

• Martinnyc did not edit after his reported death if that was what you are implying.
• I just reviewed both sets of edits from both editors originally included in the article in both micro (minute-to-minute and changes in words and letters) and macro (longer term, articles edited).

I don't believe they are they are the same editors, but they do have somewhat similar styles. Neither made "physically impossible" edits. Both type quickly and save often - so there are spurts of activity, but nothing impossibly quick. To some extent, both - but one more than the other- start with a fairly large insertion, or make big quick deletions (or both), and then copy edit on the run, resulting in very fast and small staccato edits at the end of the spurt, e.g. both have made 3 edits in one minute. Nothing impossible about that. Macro - they look about the same.

In short, do be more specific about this "impossible edit" or I won't be able to believe you. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

This signpost is embarrassing. You are defaming the memory of a dead man

Seriously, don't y'all have ANYTHING better to do than obsess over what some former employee of the former president of the United States MIGHT have edited on Wikipedia articles, six years ago????!!! This is petty and vindictive and embarrassing. Spend your time on actively going after ACTIVE egregious COI and PAID EDITORS not Stalinist purges like this that also reek of being self-congratulatory. I am disgusted.--FeralOink (talk) 20:44, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

From the editor: A change is gonna come (10,360 bytes · 💬)

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• Sorry to hear we might be losing you as our EIC, Smallbones, you've been great to have. While I did look at guest-editoring, I don't think I could reliably commit, and certainly there are many better, more involved, souls than my very occasional participating. Whether you take the guest route or hand over the reins more permanently, thank you for your work thus far and in the future. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:57, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Thanks. I'll be around. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:00, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
• Thank you for the work you've done! I've been a regular reader of the Signpost since I became active on Wikipedia and have found it invaluable in understanding this community time and time again. I would be interested in getting involved - certainly not as editor-in-chief, but perhaps as a copyeditor or writer. I'll drop a note in the Newsroom. Ganesha811 (talk) 23:36, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
• Just wanted to say, thank you! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:03, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
• Thank you for your contributions to Signpost, Smallbones.--Vulphere 07:22, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
• Piling on with the thanks. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:25, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
• Thank you for what you have done with The Signpost of these past few months. Hope you have a wonderful time being not that in EIC chair. HawkAussie (talk) 10:40, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
• Thanks from me too. The Signpost is always a pleasure to read, and has been excellent under your editorship. Onceinawhile (talk) 15:42, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
• Smallbones, thanks for your excellent work as editor-in-chief. The Signpost under you is like Wikipedia's version of The Intercept, with incisive reporting that stays true to the facts on hand, even in the face of controversy. — Newslinger talk 16:11, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Thanks, Newsy. You didn't get that name just from throwing papers on porches! Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:09, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
• Smallbones, speaking as a former editor-in-chief, this is a massive loss for the Signpost. Thank you so, so much for all of the time you've invested in turning this publication around; I know that I and so many others have greatly appreciated it. I'm very glad to hear that you'll remain with the Signpost, even in a reduced capacity, and I hope the next editor-in-chief takes advantage of your experience. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 16:31, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I deny everything. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. But the thought is appreciated, coming from the longest serving Signpost editor in recent memory. This also gives me a chance to say thanks to all the Signposters on this list. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:09, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
• I've recently begun reading the Signpost, and I've loved it, thank you for your hard work. Unbeatable101 (talk) 01:15, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
• You've been wonderful at the editor job. I like to believe one or more editors will step forward with the wherewithal to keep the Signpost rolling along. Thanks for linking the brain fog piece. Until just now, for various reasons, I thought it was just me who was having these issues and wondering why the sudden symptoms arising within the last 12+ months. It makes sense now - that's when the pandemic hit. We are all living through the real life Groundhog Day Your first obligation is yourself and your near-and-dear. We will survive, and hopefully someone in Wikipedia has the talents and willingness to step into the editor's shoes. We'll be fine. Take care of yourself. — Maile (talk) 01:52, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Thanks, I will. That article is great. I read it and it was like a fog had lifted. For a few hours. The condition is temporary. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:09, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
• I wasn't expecting this, but the pandemic has surprised all of us. You did great work taking over The Signpost after its vacancy crisis, and I was very happy to have the opportunity to work with you on several occasions. I would've liked to have been more active in the paper over the last year, but pandemic university learning has really ground me down. We all deserve a break. One of the nice thing's about Wikipedia is that it isn't an obligation so there shouldn't be pressure to perform tasks here when real life is calling. I can't wait for summer myself, I want to get back to the river and go catfishing! -Indy beetle (talk) 04:51, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
• Thanks for leading the Signpost with such grace Smallbones. Take care of yourself. Ckoerner (talk) 20:09, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

• Thank you for your service. Stay safe and hope you retain your overall health. AshLin (talk) 12:06, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
• Smallbones, what can I say but repeat the exact words of The ed17: ...speaking as a former editor-in-chief, this is a massive loss for the Signpost. Thank you so, so much for all of the time you've invested in turning this publication around; I know that I and so many others have greatly appreciated it. I'm very glad to hear that you'll remain with the Signpost, even in a reduced capacity, and I hope the next editor-in-chief takes advantage of your experience. And I will add that when I stepped in to rescue the publication in 2018, what the readers didn't realise and still don't, is that it befalls the E-in-C to contribute most of the content (with a lot of help from Bri of course). What's left is a plain old newsletter with the regular self-aggrandising from the WMF - who have enough sites of their own - accounting for a large part of the publication. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:28, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Thanks @Kudpung: for this and the comment at MFD. I've already denied most of this above (and I'm sticking to it!) The biggest thing I remember from your advice 2 years ago is approx. "There's a reason Signpost EIC's seldom last more than 2 years." I forgot the reason, but it could be any of 4 or 5. I suppose it's that EICs have to have very thick skins, or be 100%+ right 100% of the time (which is of course impossible). The best we can do is just triple check and document everything! Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:09, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Of course it's impossible, Smallbones, to be right 100% of the time, but it has become a sport on Wikipedia to hound people who have a perceived responsibility (such as admins and The Signpost EIC), to the point of driving them off the project, by people who deliberately look for such opportunities. Note therefore, that nowadays other users are not exactly jostling to become admins or Editors-in-Chief of The Signpost. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:26, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

• An excellent decision, Smallbones, thank you. Best of luck for the future! ——Serial 10:58, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
• I would describe this EIC job as rather quixotic, but thanks much for 'dreaming' and for doing it 'your way', with integrity. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:04, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
• Thank you for your contributions as editor-in-chief, Smallbones. — Bilorv (talk) 00:12, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
• I know I'm a bit (well..., a lot actually) late, but I feel the need to express my thanks for your work as well. Your writing is top notch and that's beside all the editing work I can hardly imagine. Your shoes are well nigh impossible to fill! Dutchy45 (talk) 14:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
• Thank you for all the work. Just having The Signpost appear brightens my month. So much so I don't begrudge you the perks and massive salary. I hope someone will interview you for publication here. You could not have done such a good job without enjoying the work. I expect it is very hard to let go—enjoy the freed time with your family. — Neonorange (Phil) 07:20, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
• as a long-ago regular contributor, I know how much work it is to keep up with the Signpost week in and out. Thanks so much for all of your time and work. To everyone else: consider writing for the Signpost!! -- phoebe / (talk to me) 01:09, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

News from Wiki Education: Encouraging professional physicists to engage in outreach on Wikipedia (10,229 bytes · 💬)

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I am a physicist myself, and, while I never got a Nobel prize, I am recognized as the top expert in a couple of fields, and there is also a Wikipedia article about me. It is REALLY difficult to edit Wikipedia in your field of research, because (i) you are likely to be biased towards your own work; (ii) you are likely to come across the colleagues you know in real life (see multiple times per year on conferences, or even work at the same institution) who try to promote their own work, and you can not do anything about it because you may face real-life consequences - and I know pretty much everybody in the field. What is much easier is to do is to write something outside of my field, which I only know from textbooks. The ideal situation is when I need to study a new field and read textbooks - and this happens every few years. Even then, I had negative experience when I was in a situation where I had to fight with ignorant users not willing to have a scientific discussion at an appropriate level. It is so much easier to write about Russian railway stations, where I am likely the only person on the English Wikipedia in years to have access to sources and to have some general understanding of the subject.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:40, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ymblanter and Piotrus: The idea of Ph.D.'s as Wikipedia editors is somewhat contentious and I think a lot of people actually hide their academic qualifications around here. The reasoning is similar to YMB's above. If nobody recognizes it as being meaningful on-Wiki, why discuss it? It can even be a negative in editing I think that's changed slowly since we all started editing. I don't hide my Ph.D. but only mention it when it seems relevant, which has been about 4 times in 16 years. After trying a bit to edit in my area, I pretty much gave up after a year or two - it seemed like everybody in the editing discussions claimed to know more about the subject than I did! (1 or 2 might have!) I did have a couple of "fun" areas, that I never took too seriously in a research context, and still edit - in a very real world applied way - in those areas.

This state of affairs is changing e.g in last month's Signpost Research report, there was a study that said aprox. "30% of editors claim academic expertise in the areas they edit in", Piotrus had an article in the Times Education Supplement last month on the general topic, there are slowly developing academic journals under WMF sponsorship, and now 2 articles from WikiEdu in the last month (the other is about a senior UCLA psychologist mentioned in the Signpost's intro). Maybe it's time that Wiki PhD's start to discuss the matter of how to contribute with academic societies. I'd guess WikiEdu might even help. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:43, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ymblanter and Smallbones: I also wrote an academic article about Wikipedia and experts which will be published around the summer. Which I mention because I find Ymblanter's argument quite interesting, and despite that article being revised after discussion with several other academics familiar with Wikipedia, we didn't think of the example you make - that you avoid editing in topics you are an expert in due to issue (ii). Maybe I'll add it in and even quote you if there's still an opportunity to do so :) In fact, that article is supposed to be a part of a polemic with academics. Would any of you be interested in reading and possibly writing a comment that would be published in that journal? I don't know if the editor is still soliciting opinions, but hey, I can ask. Anyway, in my own experience, I haven't noticed anybody I know promoting their POV in the areas I am familiar with, but that's mostly because sadly in those areas (sociology, Polish history) there's pretty much no other academics. Well, in sociology we have a few people, but we almost never overlap. So I find it interesting that Ymblanter had a different experience. Which is the norm, I wonder? I think mine is more likely - as in, most areas on Wikipedia have next to no experts at all. Of course, there's MED and MILHIST, but they seem to be exceptions rather then the rule? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:45, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I think there might be a difference between science on one side, and social sciences and humanities on the other side. In science, whereas knowledge dissemination outside academia is encouraged, it is not part of a job description. My main end product are articles in scientific journals (and the selection of journals is very narrow, up to now I published about 130 papers, and they all fit in about 10 journals). What we write is just not suitable for the general audience, and when we write articles, even when these are journals like Nature, we never seriously take a possibility that a person from the street would read them, at best a scientific journalist. (And btw this why open access is a non-issue: every person potentially interested in my articles has access to them, and if by any chance they are not in the office right now everything is also on arXiv.org). All this creates a very special communication style, which is hardly compatible with that of Wikipedia. In addition, of course, we have criteria which show what is correct and what is not. Whereas a lot of things are in a grey area (likely correct, and up to debate), we can not be in a situation when we have two contrasting opinions which both can be correct. This is why people are typically have zero tolerance to contrasting opinions, even though they might not have enough argument to base thei own opinion on.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:19, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

The unfortunately late User:Paul Barlow showed one way of doing it. He was a professor of art history specializing in the Pre-Raphaelites (full-length biography of John Everett Millais etc), and on WP he had about 20-30 basic articles on his topic area that he had largely written and subsequently policed rather fiercely. But the great majority of his time on WP was spent on very different subjects, such as the Shakespeare authorship question, where he defended mainstream positions (again rather fiercely). A great loss. It would be nice to see a Nobel laureate writing on WP - so far I'm only aware of a Nobel wife doing so (if that's the term). In general my impression is that we have rather fewer (and older) "expert" contributors than in say 2005-10, when much of our better content was I think added by doctoral students & post-docs. In some ways this is the ideal career-stage for people to be editing. For the next generations of these WP was no longer "hot", and fewer edited. This was confirmed when I was Wikipedian in Residence at the Royal Society and later Cancer Research UK. Several of their top researchers in their 40s had edited WP in the past & were enthusiastic about encouraging their teams to do so, but the teams themselves weren't so interested. Johnbod (talk) 13:46, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Sure we have Nobel Prize winners editing Wikipedia, see User:Brian Josephson for example, but I am not sure his contribution is net positive.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:11, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

@Johnbod: The last part, about teams not being interested, is IMHO highly relevant to my argument in THE - academics don't publish in Wikipedia, because they get no financial or career incentives. Acadamia is not the worst rat race out there, but we still need to publish or perish. And publishing in Wikipedia counts for squat, unlike publishing in predatory journal or paywalled encyclopedia nobody reads - both of those can give you some points if you are luckily. Contributing here will get you zip. Ditto for the Noble winners, with the added note that while those don't need to fear perishing, they probably are too old to seriously realize that in this day and age, to promote their findings they should write something online - they are still living, and quite happily at that, in the 'books and journals' world, ignoring the fact that the average person, particularly younger, stops at Wikipedia and doesnt' bother with their bestselling (if at all) books, and certainly doesn't have access to their paywalled artices in the walled garden that is academic publishing. If they think about popularizing their stuff at all, they'll be content with writeups they get in Science, Nature or traditional media (NYT, whatever). The argument about Wikipedia being 'too old to be cool' for youngest scholars is interesting, and I wonder if it would be possible to design some study to test this hypothesis. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:12, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

@Piotrus: I think you may be interested in checking out WikiJournals. Its creation is to address the gap that you highlighted between academia (the need to have a stable, citable record) and Wikipedia (the need of expert contribution) OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:47, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

• I recommend any high-tier academic professional against joining/contributing to wikipedia. There are too many white males here already. Your energy is better used elsewhere. 2601:602:9200:1310:9D7E:8EB2:518B:1AAF (talk) 09:41, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Op-Ed: A Little Fun Goes A Long Way (23,594 bytes · 💬)

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• A non-Wikipedian friend raised this idea to me recently, but the problem I have is one of pragmatism. Not only are we having our few, overworked anti-vandal volunteers spending hours a day patrolling edits they need to identify as useful/not useful correctly within a few seconds, but they're going to get shit for wrongly judging whether someone was funny enough or not? Every bad edit someone makes on my watchlist wastes my time. The next time someone goes to look up Between the Stops by Sandi Toksvig, or one of the several hundred items on my never-decreasing list of tasks I want to do, the reason they won't find it is because of all the hours I've spent reverting "Sandi Toksvig is a writer, comedian, broadcaster, actor, podcaster, TV presenter and Danish" and all the other things that one person found funny. Samuel Johnson didn't have the slippery slope problem that once one person got wind of the fact that there could jokes in his dictionary, thousands of people would start writing jokes everywhere and removing important content in the process. If someone wants to make jokes but doesn't want to actually contribute to the encyclopedia, I'm sorry but you're one of the thousand cuts that will be the death of the thing you're trying to make a loving joke about. To the dozens of overt vandals who have told me to lighten up and that it's "just one joke": I don't respect your feedback if you've made no effort to learn how Wikipedia actually works or even what it is, and if you treat the people who write the encyclopedia for you like this then you're welcome to never use it again. 80% of the answers to the questions never-seen-before-and-never-seen-again editors ask are "if this was how Wikipedia worked then it would have turned into Urban Dictionary 2 in 2004". — Bilorv (talk) 21:04, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

  ^This, really. There's a place for humor on Wikipedia, especially as it boosts editor retention, but it has to be done responsibly, and too many editors (not just newcomers) abuse any leniency. When it comes to humor in mainspace, it's okay if it can be done without in any way detracting from the encyclopedic value of an article (example: the missing pictures at List of cetaceans), but I draw a line as soon as it does so, even if it's only by changing to less natural wording as seemingly at e.g. Will Smith. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:15, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

How does the author know that we are not already doing this, in our own, quiet way? – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:44, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Much as I love the care taken in distinguishing a penguin from a Scotsman, or the vandalism where a photo of the Presidents of Brazil and the US standing together was replaced by one of Miss Piggy and Kermit in a parade, I'm afraid we have to strike out the jokes in Article Space. Slippery slope, y'know. Jim.henderson (talk) 23:37, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Maybe a Noticeboard for disputes over creative writing. -- GreenC 00:15, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

@Bilorv: It doesn't really bother me if someone knee-jerk reverts an edit the first time, but I think there's a point at which the decision to rollback needs to be critically examined. The issue I have isn't with someone saying "oh, this isn't funny, I think it's vandalism, I'll revert". The issue I have is with extremely protracted and obtuse arguments in which people doggedly insist that anything funny must be bad content. On Talk:Guy Standing, for example, you can see gallons of ink being spilled over whether it's unencyclopedic to caption it "Guy Standing sitting". To me, this is about as silly as you can get -- just as "phrasing it this way is funny" isn't a good justification for an edit, neither is "phrasing it this way prevents it from being funny". Nobody would bat an eye if the caption was "Bob Smith sitting", but as soon as the slightest iota of humor is derived from a sentence, the apocalyptic event of someone chuckling must be avoided at all costs. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll present this as an example of a good post I made being removed on the grounds of alleged inappropriateness, even though "ape iron" is a totally plausible interpretation of "apeiron". But the rest of these seem quite harmless. Perhaps in 2005 it made sense to insist on going out of our way to avoid anything that could potentially be construed as unprofessional; at this point, the New York Times writes articles about how reliable we are on a regular basis. Who gives a damn if Category:Recursion includes itself? And, more importantly, is it really worth fully protecting the category for five entire years to avoid -- Heaven forfend! -- the possibility of someone adding it to itself? I wouldn't be opposed to a MoS supplement specifically to deprecate contorting an article to remove a joke, or a guideline saying that edit-warring to remove a joke is just as much a nuisance as edit-warring to keep one in. jp×g 03:03, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it is worth reverting these things. No, it is not worth protracted discussion. This MoS addition idea is precisely the waste of time I want to avoid. I've never seen a caption reading "X sitting" and it doesn't seem natural to me, so I'd revert it. But if I saw that there was discussion or was asked to join it, I no longer care, because "X sitting" is not an implausibly bad caption. Apeiron can't reasonably be confused with "use of irons by apes" (it would be different if "ape iron" was a thing), even though it might be everybody's first unfunny joke when they meet Apeiron at a dinner party, so I'd revert it. Self-loops in categories are never helpful for navigation, so I'd revert it. I don't need a special reason to undo something that's funny, because being funny is not a trait that has any weight or value according to any policy, guideline or precedent I've ever read. As for The New York Times, whether we are seen as a serious or reliable is not relevant to any of the reasoning I've given. — Bilorv (talk) 03:23, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• Reminds me of when Elon Musk wanted his Wikipedia page to call him a "business magnet" instead of a "business magnate" (even Talk:Elon Musk refers to that). Personally I think humour is fine as long as people who just want the information can easily get the information (and are not confused by the jokes). Making Musk a magnet is not a good idea of a joke on Wikipedia as it can confuse non-native English readers. 45.251.33.233 (talk) 04:40, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• I agree. I have to say, I'm very happy with the discussion this piece has sparked already. I think humor on Wikipedia can go too far very easily - I'm sympathetic to the slippery slope argument. Whenever it becomes non-factual or genuinely confusing, it should be removed. But subtle things that lead to smiles - "cetacean needed" is a perfect example - can enhance the reader's experience. These things need to be handled on a case-by-case basis, and, as Bilorv points out, many "humorous" edits are simply vandalism. But adding a bit of joy to the reading experience can be valuable thing for an encyclopedia built on the idea that knowledge is worthwhile and worth sharing. Ganesha811 (talk) 04:59, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

  To the best of my knowledge, the cetacean needed joke is the only long-standing one on Wikipedia. Is some ways there's something special about 'the one permitted joke'. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 02:59, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, what this leads to is "But it was allowed over there, and my joke is funny too!", and pretty soon we're discussing what's funny and what's not instead of how to have articles contain accurate, verifiable information. Sharp wit and good comedy most certainly has its place in the world, and even here on Wikipedia, we even have our own in-jokes and the like in WP-space and such, and certainly editors may joke around while having conversations with one another. That's all fine, and brings some levity to our work on the project. But in the actual encyclopedia, stick to the facts and leave out the comedy. People come to Wikipedia to be informed, not amused. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 07:43, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• There's plenty of opportunity for whimsy on Wikipedia. This Signpost is published in April and so it's not long since April's Fool Day for which we actually have formal rules. And some topics are inherently amusing at any time. For example, while rescuing an ancient manor recently, I came across another nearby place that demanded instantiation and so I made an immediate start on Betty Mundy's Bottom. This does not require any forced humour – the title is enough to make the lips twitch, eh? The raised eyebrow of donnish humour is best, as with Samuel Johnson's drollery. For more on this, let's consult another exponent. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:01, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

  

  You rang?

  [5], not to mention [6] (which should be read in conjunction with the sentence immediately preceding it). And see also – unintentional, apparently – [7]. EEng 04:07, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

• I will fight in a dark alley any IP/SPA who comes to Wikipedia to add-in jokey edits (especially the ones who come from social media), so yeah, Wikipedia is meant to be serious (at least article-wise) -Gouleg🛋️ (Stalk • Hound) 13:48, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

I think jpxg gets it right in terms of how to strike the balance and the fact that some things get reverted because they might amuse even if they would be unobjectionable elsewhere. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:14, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Was going to mention a dry-humorous but accurate caption edit I made but then would have to fight Gouleg in a dark alley, so will spare them the cement-burn and after-fight-handshake ritual. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:44, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• Back in 2006 I greatly expanded, sourced, and researched Action Park, which has been described as our most hilarious article. I attribute that to a combination of some great quotations from the sources, and the unintended consequence of some incredible-but-true facts rendered in our necessarily dry house style ("Also, nonswimmers would jump off the cliffs, not fully appreciating how deep the water below was, and have to be rescued. Former employee Tom Fergus says the bottom of the pool was eventually painted white to make it easier to spot any bodies on the bottom.").

  I wouldn't change this for the world. Humor is possible, but within the constraints we impose on ourselves, and that often means it comes about unintentionally. If you really want to write joke versions of articles, go to Uncyclopedia. Daniel Case (talk) 20:42, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

What some editors think articles should feel like to the reader: "It was tedious to write, it should be tedious to read."

EEng 02:26, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

• I struggled with this a bit at the article for Abroad in Japan. In a video, Broad called out his viewers to edit his Wikipedia article to state that he invented "green tea sake", something that has existed for quite some time. After several reversions, I considered leaving the claim up to appease his fan base by saying that he merely claimed to have invented the beverage while referencing evidence that he was not the one who came up with the idea (he never even makes it in the video). I decided against this because of the comedic nature of Broad's channel. Personally knowing him, I don't doubt he would continue calling out his viewers to make joke edits if the green tea sake claim was given any kind of leg to stand on. I decided that while it might be fun to leave the claim up, it would ultimately be harmful for the article and the project as a whole. ❯❯❯ Mccunicano☕️ 03:58, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

  I see these things quite regularly, most recently a month ago at Rosie Jones (comedian) after this tweet. A lot of high-profile people dislike Wikipedia because they see the article about themselves as laughably inaccurate—usually correctly, but they don't understand that (a) many inaccuracies originate from an inaccuracy in an online news source (which they could contact and then the news source should correct it... although this has never worked for me when I've reported easily-spotted and easily-corrected mistakes to them); (b) many inaccuracies come from over-eager fans and non-experienced Wikipedians; and (c) when it comes to actual matters of clear fact ("this date isn't my birthday") we welcome them pointing out that there's a problem, but they need to be patient with us because impersonation happens so we have no reason to believe it's really them saying it.

  The "green tea sake" isn't something I would have had a single doubt about reverting, because if I left this thing up then I'd need to leave a thousand things up and they're all useless and not even funny jokes. The jokes also become quickly dated—in five years time, "Broad did not invent green tea sake" will just be confusing to readers and no-one will remember the original reference. — Bilorv (talk) 08:57, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

• I'm reminded of the lengthy discussion at Talk:Lord_Uxbridge's_leg#Image_caption, where suggested captions such as "Lord Uxbridge's right leg, shown attached to Lord Uxbridge in a portrait by Henry Edridge" were rejected in favour of "Lord Uxbridge portrayed by Henry Edridge in 1808, before the loss of his leg". PamD 09:53, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
• And also reminded of Chambers Dictionary where some famously quirky definitions were removed in 1970s but reinstated in 1983 following pressure from readers. PamD 09:56, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
• Wikipedia should be a safe space for those who are in deadly earnest. Humor is diverting, but that also means the narrative is apt to wander and your article on the Civil War end up by telling people where to get good Italian food in Cleveland. There's also the fact that often humor is thinly disguised belligerence; there aren't too many people whose wit is always gentle or self-deprecating and even they are sometimes misunderstood. Dhtwiki (talk) 22:55, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
• Ganesha811 I have now copied this and added it to the top of my user page. I so, so, very much agree with you. After having multiple very mildly humorous phrases removed in GAN, I had almost reconciled myself to the idea that being encyclopedic means being as bland and dull as humanly possible, till stumbling across this. Thank you! Bless you! May a thousand blessings rain down upon your head - gently! As one of the authors of Humor in the Bible I have learned to value a well-placed jest for driving home a point. Keep up the good work here! Humor for Wikipedia! Up with joy! (I would start a campaign if it wasn't also against the rules.) :-) Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:31, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

• Thank you for your kind words, Jenhawk777. I'm glad you found the piece meaningful. As you can see, it sparked a lot of good discussion, as I had hoped it would! Ganesha811 (talk) 22:02, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

• An interesting aspect of this discussion, I think, is the comparison to other encyclopedias and reference works. Despite its reputation for universal dullness, academic writing is not totally devoid of humour. It's not uncommon for textbooks and monographs to sneak in a few very mild puns or witty turns of phrase: why does Wikipedia need to be less funny than a statistics textbook? "Because statistics textbooks don't have to constant defend against vandalism" would be one good answer -- but I'm not convinced the slope is that slippery. I suspect many pieces of secondary writing about Will Smith reference "in West Philadelphia born and raised," for example. The bar is probably to avoid things that are too funny, but I think the encyclopedia would benefit from identifying a standard more generous than "destroy all wittiness in articles." ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 07:35, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

I've just read this op-ed which is admittedly not the most recent one. So my comment comes a little later than most others. I'm happy about Ganesha811's approach and venture. Humor is such an integral component of good communication. Texts that lack any humor are failing to win the readers' good will. A won smile is not only an animation of face muscles but the building of ad hoc bridges. In an encyclopedia humor is a good thing as long it is subtle. Yes , there must be red lines and pragmatic rules to remove e.g. rude microaggressions masked as jokes. And I'm glad that Ganesha811 declares "sympathetic to the slippery slope argument. Whenever it becomes non-factual or genuinely confusing, it should be removed." All this is pricipally able to reach consensus among the majority of Wikipedians I'd guess. But there are also people in our community that don't cherish humor. And I not even presume them to be "evil". For example persons with Asperger's syndrome (just as an example) are sometimes very handicapped to perceive and to enjoy humor. They lack so to say tuned antenna for it and can't help it. Can we pragmatically develop rules that are also integrating those persons inside our community that lack humorous inclination to tolerate most forms of subtle humor in Wikipedia articles? -- Just N. (talk) 13:21, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Or, and this one aligns more closely with the people with Asperger's I've known in my life, such people can have quite different senses of humour. And many things they might find funny will be taken, by people reading their words off a screen with no further context, as rude, unfunny, aggressive or hurtful. But the same can of course be true of neurotypicals too. — Bilorv (talk) 17:45, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Hey, Bilorv, your more differentiated observations sound allright. Yes, I remember things like that. But if I had chosen people with heavy narcism as my example .... --Just N. (talk) 18:47, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

• Humor is just one aspect of "eccentricity and elegance and surprise", also known as writing style, that we often lack. We rightly have lots of guidance for making prose clear and accurate and nonbiased and grammatical and consistent – with the unfortunate side effect of making it dry. The best writing can do all the above while also being engaging and refreshing and evocative. Rather than a narrow call for more jokes, which will always garner strong pushback, we should try to improve our tolerance for creative style (while meeting the existing guidance of course), and provide resources (including external ones) to help writers stretch their expressive capabilities. —swpb^{T • go beyond • bad idea} 14:20, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

  Swpb, I think that's very well put. Wikipedia's neutrality and encyclopedic tone often translate into blandness - it really is a challenge sometimes, but it is possible to write in a clear, lively voice while still maintaining the neutrality and formality we require. Ganesha811 (talk) 21:43, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

  Agree 1000%; see the image and caption halfway up this page. Ten years ago someone actually told me that the writing in articles should be "cold" -- see Talk:Phineas_Gage/Archive_1#Garrondo's_comments_and_edits. EEng 03:38, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

• Thought back to this piece after I spotted this caption [8] "Smiley smiling in 2016".  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 16:47, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
• If it had happened before I wrote this op-ed, the Barbie/Oppie showdown would have been used as an example here. —Ganesha811 (talk) 11:07, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. jp×g 03:54, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Opinion: The (Universal) Code of Conduct (29,875 bytes · 💬)

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Discuss this story

• This essay was originally written for a non-Wikimedia context, and it really shows. The issues it deals with are not the ones we have. We already have well-established sets of policies regarding appropriate conduct. The relevant dispute is about unhelpful overreach by one of our support organizations into an area they don't know much about.
  (Why does it seem like the WMF is sometimes trying to transplant conflicts other groups are having, even when they don't make conceptual sense?) --Yair rand (talk) 20:41, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
• I also feel that this essay, while not unreasonable (if not necessarily correct) within its bounds, is putting a lot of effort into justifying points that aren't the primary issues at hand. It doesn't cover the concerns that enforcement may take, such as the accused not knowing 100% of the evidence against them even in non-extreme cases. It doesn't discuss the fact that while we have "a Community", that community is extremely diverse, with over 300 languages, nearly 200 countries, and that a "UCOC" is therefore going to be an inherently blunt tool. To give a single example, the pronoun bit of the UCOC, while potentially controversial in some senses in en-wiki, has real issues with fr-wiki and ru-wiki because of the nature of their languages. It doesn't cover the fact that the WMF shouldn't be a source body for it, nor does it mention the ratification issue. This means that the essay is not particularly wrong, but seems likely to struggle to convince many to support the UCOC who weren't already inclined to do so. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:52, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @Nosebagbear: As I said below, the intent was not well articulated, but yes I think we're on the same page. There are concerns with the specific text of the UCC as well as whether and how to incorporate enforcement mechanisms. The goal was not to persuade opinions on particular text or plans, but rather make the wider case that a centrally-organized code of conduct can be a good thing even in healthy communities. There are a lot of specifics, and as you (and others) rightly point out, the analogy of the piece breaks down the more specifics we consider. I didn't intend this to be the One Essay to Rule Them All; I hoped it would get people thinking critically about the situation and draw more attention to ongoing discussions. I'd like to see more pieces in the Signpost consider some specific issues, and while this one may not have gone oover as well as I had hoped, at least it sets a low bar for those who want to write more narrowly-tailored essays. — Wug·a·po·des​ 03:36, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
• I regret that "unhelpful overreach" is a fair summary. Every time I read something like this reminds me that control of our creation has been seized from the Wikipedia community. I fear that I've become an unpaid WMF intern who should stop being taken for a mug and do something more valued. As for the peripheral issues: Wikimedia foundation ... provide you money, we give you our name. Really? How does WMF's income from people and organisations who donate because of Wikipedia compare with the amount returned to Wikipedia? Which of the two has plans to rebrand itself by appropriating the other's name? Certes (talk) 22:17, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
• Has everyone forgotten WP:FRAM? Firestar464 (talk) 04:39, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
• "This essay is adapted..." is an understatement. You copied and pasted the essay, replaced stuff with references to Wikipedia (often not entirely, like your anecdote about your experience managing PyCon 2015 or how people thanked you for "showing me you care, and that you are thinking of me"), and threw in some factoids and blase paragraphs. You know what the most important thing underlying our civility policy is? Respect for other editors. I did not feel the least bit respected when I saw this linked on my talk page. I feel like if you actually respected us as editors and readers of the signpost you'd write an original essay specifically for Wikimedia (or better yet the English Wikipedia). Or at least put in a little more effort into editing this essay; otherwise why should anyone put the effort into reading it?

We need to have workshops, we need to be more inviting. We need to lower the barrier of entry of contribution. We need to make safe havens for those who want to contribute but who are scared and intimidated by the status quo. This includes men, women—everyone."

We've been doing this for years. We have endless amounts of workshops for diversity or specific subjects or just general wikipedia editing. Saying "we need to have workshops" feels like a slap in the face. Then there's some vague lines about how "we need to lower the barrier of entry of contribution" and how "we need to make safe havens". Why do you think VisualEditor exists and there's so much effort put into improving it? Why do you think we have the WP:TEAHOUSE? Sure, you could probably write something about how we need to improve on our existing systemes and how VisualEditor needs to support templates better or how more workshops are needed in non-Western countries but you didn't because it's easier to just copy and paste what some guy said for a totally different organization back in 2015 and not bother to make any substantial changes to it.

It's also hilarious how the essay constantly operates under the assumption that we have no code of conduct or any rules regarding conduct whatsoever. Like we don't have WP:CIVILITY or WP:AGF or WP:COURTESY or WP:BITE. Or like WMF events don't already have a code of conduct at meta:Friendly space policies.

Additionally, for what it's worth, I bet if an admin actually did post porn on the main page they wouldn't necessarily get indeff'd for long from Wikipedia. There's a decent chance the admeme could just say "lol I got hacked sorry guys" and WP:SUPERMARIO outta the block.

"I know. Honestly, I do. Except for minor incidents that I recall, the English Wikipedia has largely been free of issues. Every meetup, conference, etc I have been to has been filled with nice, kind people and largely jerk-free. This is a testament to the community as a whole."

I'm going to assume that you included this by accident and that you didn't actually read your own essay and think "yep, there hasn't really been any major behavioural issues on enwiki". Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 06:45, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

@Chess: I'm sorry if you feel personally disrespected, obviously that wasn't my goal. In the preface, I tried to be clear about the goal of this work: "the piece has been edited to reflect the parallels between the concerns then and those of the Wikimedia community now." The goal was not to write an exhaustive policy proposal or reproduce the research done by the foundation on these issues. So yes, this piece utterly fails as an essay arguing for the UCC on its own merits. I tried to make clear that that was not the goal, but it seems I could have explained that better.

Secondly, the minimal changes were an intentional choice. The goal was to prompt the reader to consider the parallels between the Python community Noller wrote about and the wiki community we currently have, so I wanted to keep as much of the source material intact so that the reader can make those parallels themselves. I could have just asked the Signpost to run the original essay verbatim, but I also wanted to take advantage of the unique medium provided by the wiki software and license. Collaboratively written essays are not uncommon around here (check out any policy page) and while not every edit changes the content of the essay entirely, the collaboration can take the form of changing anecdotes, examples, and phrasing to better reflect the contemporary readership. The goal was to use bricolage to evoke new insights by tinkering with existing media, but clearly it could have been done better.

Finally, to touch on your last point, you're coming from a completely different perspective than the one the essay was writing for. If you read this already believing the community is a cesspool then of course you're going to miss the point. The essay contains the following line which was pull quoted: "If we're all chill cool people, and nothing bad has happened, why have [a code of conduct]?" The essay is addressing people who believe the first part of the conditional. If you don't believe "we're all chill cool people, and nothing bad has happened" then the essay, quite explicitly, isn't addressing you. Whether that is a reasonable belief is debatable, but of course you're going to be unsatisfied by an argument when you reject one of the core assumptions.

Regardless, the criticism is well taken: the choices I made did not convey the intent I had hoped. — Wug·a·po·des​ 02:58, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not saying your goal was wrong or that it's wrong to remix an essay to try to make it apply to the Wikipedia community. You're right a lot of our essays are written collaboratively and I imagine it could hypothetically be possible to remix an existing essay and apply it to Wikipedia. I would say you succeeded in prompting me to consider the parallels between the Python community back in 2012 and the English Wikipedia community. The problem is that those parallels simply don't exist beyond Wikipedia and Python both being from the wider free knowledge/FOSS community (in a sense) and both having the general attitude of being a meritocracy (kind of) and having the problem that oftentimes contributors are just those who are able to stick around and fight for a while. That and some of the "why the foundation" section (aside from the part about business sense). But beyond that the similarities end and the truth is that Wikimedia is such a colossal beast of a organization with so many distinct projects with differing requirements or necessities that it's a sui generis organization in the FOSS community. Many of the points in this essay simply aren't applicable to the English Wikipedia. I didn't mean for my comments to imply that this community is a cesspool but come on nobody who's been here for a while can seriously believe that we haven't had any issues. Look at WP:AN/I for just an endless stream of behavioural issues 24/7 that fills over a thousand pages of archives. If you want the "heavy-hitter" bigname Wikipedians go look at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Cases/All for an admin who was literally deadminned last month for behavioural issues. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 05:51, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

No worries, it's not my first tough review. The flipside of drawing parallels is also identifying disconnects. You name some very substantial similarities: shared beliefs in meritocracy, shared FOSS ideology, major volunteer workforce loosely organized underneath an umbrella legal entity. Leaving aside whether they're few or many, they also highlight major differences. Others on this page have pointed out a lot of them---I think Nosebagbear did a good job of that above. You also point out the difference in number or scale of issues. The line you brought up wasn't lost on me, but I kept it because it unsettles a more pessimistic narrative. Obviously I know of the major incidents, but how major were they? Unlike the Scots Wikipedia, we never discovered that our content was gibberish. Unlike other wikis, we've never had global requests for all or most of our sysops to be removed. It's not to minimize the severity of our incidents, but to try and consider how someone could look at our wiki and be optimistic.

The point of editing it like I did was because not only did it make the similarities more obvious, it makes the differences more obvious too. The places where the analogy doesn't work or where the specifics don't match become more jarring precisely because they break the analogical thread. I wanted people to think not only about what Wikimedia is but also what it's not, and to prompt readers to think about those aspects in new ways through literary collage and juxtaposition. Even the less charitable responses show that it prompted people to consider what defines "the community"; I just did a bad job making clear to the reader that this wasn't meant to be a traditional essay. You did say it best: "adapted" is an understatement and I think people would have responded better if that were more accurate. Don't go full gonzo, got it. — Wug·a·po·des​ 08:25, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

@Wugapodes:

Secondly, the minimal changes were an intentional choice. The goal was to prompt the reader to consider the parallels between the Python community Noller wrote about and the wiki community we currently have, so I wanted to keep as much of the source material intact so that the reader can make those parallels themselves. I could have just asked the Signpost to run the original essay verbatim

...And you should have, full stop. Sorry, but by (poorly-)adapting the essay — which based on how you explain it was your goal, to have it not be a good fit for the Wikipedia community in terms of specifics of issues and concerns — by maladapting it to sound like it's about Wikipedia while being about something completely different, you managed to also rob it of whatever value the original, unaltered essay might've had, as an example/analogy/food-for-thought. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 03:27, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

@FeRDNYC: If you're going to give me unsolicited advice on how to improve my writing, at least understand the literary devices I've described. If you want to do something other than condescend, I recommend learning about pastiche, intertextuality, and the 2010 essay on the topic Reality Hunger. If you still don't understand, the deconstruction framework might help you understand how dialectics can create symbols that convey contradictory ideas simultaneously; you might also find the history of gonzo journalism and the New Journalism movement useful context. Of course, why learn about creative non-fiction when you can give people advice on stuff you've only been thinking about for a couple minutes? I appreciate your perspective on whether I got the response I wanted, but I couldn't care less about your opinions on what I should write. If you would have done it differently, then go do it—this is a wiki and the content is freely licensed. That, of course, would be harder than just complaining about how others do things. Food for thought. — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:31, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

@Wugapodes: Explaining after the fact the intentions behind your essay is a questionable justification; these ideas should probably be communicated within the text of the essay which judging by the reactions of the people reading it was not done. It also seems incompatible to both advocate for judging the essay based on the intentions of the author (you) while also advocating for a deconstructivist (?) view on literature; one often based around the idea that authorial intent is irrelevant to judging a work. It also comes off as someone trying to cover for their mistakes after the fact rather than admitting they probably messed up in a few places. Are you really claiming that leaving in sentences like "I have the emails and phone calls thanking me and the PyCon team for the Code of Conduct to show it." or "For PyCon 2013 I was asked by no less than four different sponsors if I had a Code of Conduct / Anti-harassment guide in place. " was intentional?

If so, I'd like to end this by saying that "to be fair, it takes a VERY high IQ to understand a Wugapodes signpost essay..." Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 08:06, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Wugapodes, every time I see the words "intertextuality", or "deconstruction" -- or "dialectics" outside of a Marxist context -- I sense a little bit of someone's soul has just died. -- llywrch (talk) 21:28, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Wugapodes, I've generally found you to be pretty thoughtful, but I think this should have been written from scratch, rather than trying to (rather poorly) adapt something from somewhere else by changing some words. To start with, the English Wikipedia had a code of conduct long before Python did. And that's why you're seeing pushback against the "UCOC" here—we already have our own code of conduct, developed by our own community through long experience, and with our own processes for updating and modifying it if need be. We don't need any advice from Python, thanks, but maybe they could have taken some from us. And also, the WMF uses Wikipedia's name, not the other way around. Wikipedia existed first, and founded the WMF. It does not belong to the WMF, and they are not in charge of it or some type of controlling authority. And they'd do well to remember that. Now, that being said, there might still be some use for such a framework for smaller and less-established projects, but trying to force it onto projects that already have well-developed policies and enforcement mechanisms, developed with the input of thousands of people based upon countless man-years of experience, will cause nothing but grief. We don't need anyone from a San Francisco office telling us how to run things; we've already figured that out, thanks very much. Their job is to keep the lights on and the servers humming, and that's it. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 08:19, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

@Seraphimblade: Firstly, Wikipedia, the trademark, does belong to the WMF (not the other way around). If you scroll to the bottom of this page, you will see "Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc". We can fork the project, but the name "Wikipedia" stays behind with the Foundation. So we can yell about who owns whom until we're blue in the face, but philosophical beliefs aren't going to help much when the trademark paperwork comes out. Secondly, your point that a UCC "will cause nothing but grief" is pulled out of thin air. Why? The essay argues that even in a community with no problems, having a centralized body implement a code of conduct is a net positive (see sections "But Everyone is nice, we've always been cool" and "So why the Foundation?"). You can disagree with that argument, but simply saying "no it isn't" won't get us far. — Wug·a·po·des​ 03:15, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Well, like I said: We know from experience where that road leads. WMF is not competent to make day to day decisions about the operation of the projects; they're not there in the middle of it and could never hire enough people to be kept up to date on all the details. Projects are run by their editor communities, not by people in San Francisco who may or may not have ever made a single edit, according to our code of conduct, not whatever they cook up. (Note that that does not mean there isn't a code of conduct at all! So unlike Python, they can tell people "Yes, there most certainly is a code of conduct for the English Wikipedia", and have that be 100% truthful, even in the absence of the UCOC.) And while the WMF may legally own the trademark—well, I won't put lengthy Shakespeare quotes here, but people do not come here to check out the puzzle globe, even though it is a neat logo and I have always liked it. They come here for the encyclopedia. And that, we own, we maintain, and we can stop doing so and move it elsewhere. Obviously, that is not a desirable outcome, but well, the possibility of Framgate 2 is not a desirable outcome either. Once was quite enough there. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 09:42, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I get that it's rhetorical, but railing against San Francisco reflects your imagination and not reality. The WMF board that voted on the UCC had members from Israel, Poland, Argentina, and Ukraine. Most of the board isn't even in San Francisco. Like I said, I get that it's meant to drive home the point, but it's a completely inaccurate way of depicting the WMF. It also is not a good idea to invite the comparison. "San Francisco" is useful because it makes the WMF seem like a group of out-of-touch elites in a monoculture​ making decisions for large and diverse groups of workers (see "urban elites​"). Meanwhile, you are raving about how the English Wikipedia owns the whole WMF. There are people in this world who don't read or write English. Many of them contribute to WMF projects. This number has been growing. If you want an example of out-of-touch elites making decisions for a vast and diverse group of people, how you described the English Wikipedia would be a good one.

You also seem to misunderstand how community forks go. Sure, people come for the encyclopedia, but much of that has been built. Since everything is irrevocably CC By-SA licensed, the 6 million articles already written will stick around. So they've got trademark and the content, unless there is a complete community exodus they will also have maintainers. Those maintainers will still call themselves Wikipedians, and the organizations trying to recruit new editors will keep pumping new Wikipedians to Wikipedia. Meanwhile CitizendiumTwo is trying to convince Google to rewrite their software to pull from them and not EnWiki or Wikidata.

All of that because T&S overstepped once? Because we want to avoid them doing it a second time (nevermind our still growing list of long-standing hoaxes​)? They handle requests other than TheBigOne, and sometimes, dare I say it, they make the right call! All of this is moot, of course, since we're still deciding how projects and the foundation will handle enforcement so the foundation is currently, actively seeking your input on how to craft this so that another Fram situation can be avoided. — Wug·a·po·des​ 08:25, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

It's a shame we can't vote to distance ourselves from the WMF in the same way the author speculates the WMF could be "forced" to distance itself from the entity that generates its content and (by extension) its revenue. Intothatdarkness 13:59, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

We can vote to write a letter which may or may not be read. If all else fails, LibreOffice voted with its feet when the masters of OpenOffice.org became less benevolent. I hope Wikipedia is not forced down a similar route, but it is an option. Certes (talk) 14:15, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

True. I must say, though, that I'm finding the tone of some of the author's responses here interesting. Intothatdarkness 14:03, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

• Just one more reason Wikipedia (the generator of WMF's money and reason-for-being) needs a paid Wikipedia ombudsman working each shift in-office at WMF (virtual or real office). Randy Kryn (talk) 14:47, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• For starters, half of this piece seems to think that the importance of the code lies in its ability to "signal" group expectations (virtue signaling?). Do our current policies and guidelines not do that, and in what way would the code do it better? Simply by being WMF-endorsed and not merely community-endorsed?

Secondly: A code of conduct is [...] not there to take away your rights [...] It's there to show everyone what is not acceptable behavior, and to show what repercussions there are if anyone violates this behavior. I'd like to reiterate that we already have rules and behavioral expectations. I'd also like to point at out that universal codes, constitutions, charters etc. are not intrinsically incapable of taking away rights, so the assertion means little. To be suspicious of WMF's decision to go for this "legitimizing" strategy after the community accused them of overreach during the FRAMBAN does not mean I support harassment. It means I support fair investigation and fair punishment for alleged instances of harassment. The WMF has given itself (community consultation doesn't matter, the code was coming whether we wanted it to or not) all this power to enforce the rules unilaterally, and for what good? FRAMBAN demonstrates they aren't quite sure what to do with that power.

Thirdly: In closing, all I can say is this—no one is trying to be a fascist Actually yes, the crowd that took over Croatian Wikipedia is trying very hard to be fascist, and only a few months ago has the WMF actually bothered trying to do something about it. Sadly, I think that the UCOC will only be used to address such dumpster fire areas as those as an afterthought, when those should be the primary cases.

-Indy beetle (talk) 07:19, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

• I fail to understand how this UCC is better than the Wikipedia:Five pillars. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 23:47, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

  Only because it came from the WMF. Intothatdarkness 22:10, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

  For projects not covered by the five pillars, the UCC may be better than what they have. The mistake may be to impose the proposed code universally, rather than making it a fallback for projects lacking such principles. Certes (talk) 23:27, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

• The UCC won't work if it isn't accepted by all WM communities. If such rules are imposed directly by the WMF without any community vote or even a survey, it will just worsen all the tensions. Golmore ^! 09:30, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
• Like the Code of Conduct itself, this essay is a well intentioned effort that fails extremely badly. One point where I agree with the author is that the Wikimedia Foundation is indeed the entity in legal possession of the "Wikipedia" trademark. I fear that the Foundation is so pathologically dysfunctional that we will eventually reach a point where there is consensus for us to expel the Foundation from the movement and seek new hosting. In that event I expect the Foundation will wage a life-and-death fight to hold on to the Wikipedia trademark, and I expect they will lose that fight. If necessary community consensus can put a banner on every page telling everyone to stop donating. In under an hour it will be broadcast live on CNN, and a top story in every major news media planetwide. The Foundation's only meaningful assets are the goodwill of the donating-public towards the Wikipedia-trademark, and the goodwill of the community. The latter is already at toxic levels. Waging a nuclear war against community consensus would basically be a suicide note by the Foundation. Alsee (talk) 08:00, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
• Codes of conduct are never well-meaning. They are merely a tool to silence those of different opinions. The clique in charge will always find something you said or did, and make it match the vaguely worded rules. This Ayn Rand quote comes to mind: "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." ---177.208.184.216 (talk) 17:52, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
• In closing, all I can say is this—no one is trying to be a fascist, or a nanny state this is gaslighting a la Nineteen Eighty-Four. Keep going down the Marxism rabbit hole, I am sure nothing bad will happen. 2601:602:9200:1310:F073:19BA:B83E:A7FF (talk) 18:20, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

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• I often coach at edit-a-thons and am perennially annoyed that most have a theme of making new biographies. Twice wrong. First, biographies are already, to my mind, a disproportionate fraction of articles. Second, Wikipedia would be more improved by making existing articles, even biographies, better, than by adding more bad ones that few would read. My guess is, it's done this way because new biographies attract more prospective editors, which reminds me of the old adage that small minds talk about people; mediocre minds talk about events, and great minds talk about ideas. Better if we could find a way to stretch those minds to reach above pettiness and into mediocrity, and maybe even touch greatness occasionally. Pleasant to see that some efforts in a fairly small, poorly covered, and lightly read branch of science have been modestly successful, and I wish this could become a trend. Jim.henderson (talk) 01:15, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
  • So, so true. Partly the emphasis on biographies I think reflects the emphasis on the gender gap, and using editathons to encourage specifically female editors, who are (rather patronizingly perhaps) assumed to want to write about women. Partly it has now become a habit. But there's no doubt new editors like to see a new article that is "theirs". Johnbod (talk) 14:05, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
    • I think part of the draw of bios (especially BLPs) is that they can feel like a lower level of technical expertise is needed (e.g. students are usually more comfortable writing a BLP than about some scientific topic) and the human angle is itself a draw in and of itself to participants. It's a pity because they're so much harder to write than other articles and can give new editors a negative experience. I'm actually in the process of organising a biography-writing editathon with my uni, but I'd like to follow it up with a editathons focused on non-bio articles. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 09:59, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

• more than 60% of the articles assessed for the project remain in poor condition and lack references, have poor structure, or are missing crucial information.

  How does this compare to the rest of the encyclopedia? About 58% of assessed, non-list articles are marked as stubs. I'd be curious about the evidence that Limnology/Oceanography coverage suffers any more than any other topic area. czar 02:28, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

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I find it interesting how there's often more traffic to pages for people involved in notable events (e.g. Derek Chauvin, George Floyd) than the events themselves (e.g. State v. Chauvin, Murder of George Floyd). I suspect the issue is something to do with the way people Google things or the way Google ranks results, but I don't really know what we could do about it. It's an issue, though, because people seemingly aren't finding their way to the most relevant information. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:39, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Do you have a reliable source for the claim that Charles, Prince of Wales has inherited the title Duke of Edinburgh? I have a source (Whitaker's Almanack 2013, p.40) that says "In June 1999 Buckingham Palace announced that the current Earl of Wessex will be granted the Dukedom of Edinburgh when the title reverts to the Crown." Which it hasn't, yet. Charles is already a duke twice over (Cornwall, Rothesay) and doesn't need another dukedom. Philip Trueman (talk) 08:09, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• In The Independent, CHARLES BECOMES DUKE OF EDINBURGH AFTER FATHER PRINCE PHILIP DIES Smallbones_(smalltalk) 12:26, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• • Thank you. Philip Trueman (talk) 14:00, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• In Damian Lewis entry, Band of Brothers was being linked to an unrelated Korean show rather than the Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg-produced HBO series (personally known to me as The Booty Brothers), I've fixed it -Gouleg🛋️ (Stalk • Hound) 14:10, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• Running a Nicki Minaj fanpage equipped Nas X with the proper trolling skills to fend them off for a bit, but it wasn’t long before he apologized for all of it. clearly you did not watch the "apology" video! He was trolling :) Enwebb (talk) 16:21, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• The list claims Nike won a lawsuit against MSCHF/Lil Nas X over the shoes, which isn't accurate. They were granted a temporary restraining order which isn't the same as winning the lawsuit. The lawsuit itself was settled between Nike and MSCHF. I went ahead and corrected that in Lil Nas X's entry. - Aoidh (talk) 19:08, 28 April 2021 (UTC)