User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 159

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10 years of editing in Wikipedia - when will I get my golden watch?

Dear Jimbo, my son aged nine just asked me after going to bed: how was Wikipedia founded? Well, this is a second question. Maybe not many people can remember. I am here (in German Wikipedia mainly) for nearly ten years now. I started in April 2004. So, how many year are there to spend in this company until a volunteer employee will get a present for ones jubilee? Because, ten years are a very long time in the digital world. This is a very serious question and I hope for your serious answer. Thank you very much, Sir! Yours sincerely Simplicius (talk) 21:10, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Since admins only get a crappy t-shirt, hoping for a gold watch might be over-optimistic. You could, however, join the Wikipedia:Ten Year Society. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:17, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
The watch has been delivered. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:35, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
Oh, I thought the postman would bring it. -- Simplicius (talk) 21:46, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

By the way, was Jimmy ever invited to join this certain society? Simplicius (talk) 21:46, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, he was. Graham87 02:49, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
So, long time editors like Jimbo are at least still tolerated in the project, aren't they? -- Simplicius (talk) 12:39, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Why wouldn't they be? That question makes no sense.--Atlan (talk) 09:30, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
My question can be simply answered with a "yes" or a "no". Your answer with a "why" does not make sense. Beside this, above I was asking Jimbo. -- Simplicius (talk) 07:35, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

So far, I will try to form a 10-year-Society in German as well. My question to Jimbo is still: is there any "thank you" to the long time users put into consideration? -- Simplicius (talk) 14:36, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

I've come to the conclusion that the only reason one can have to edit Wikipedia for any length of time is to have an agenda. When I say "agenda" it doesn't have to mean anything bad. One can just simply have an interest in a subject matter and a desire to get it out before the public. Perhaps one is interested in (just to pick a subject out of thin air) certain species of cockroaches. So you write and edit articles on species of cockroaches. Or you notice that articles on Parisian sewers are incomplete and you want to build 'em up to feature article status. However, when it comes to recognition, forget about it. Not happening. Nobody cares, except your fellow cockroach and sewer aficionados. Alternatively, one can become addicted to the politicking and gamesmanship and other "Internet forum" kind of aspects of Wikipedia, and spend all their time on pages like this one. Lots of people get caught up in that, the editing becomes secondary. I think people like that either master the bullshit and become administrators or have a very frustrating time in Wikipedia. It's easy to make that mistake. Coretheapple (talk) 15:09, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

You will be live on CeBIT in TV (German NDR) - like to meet you tomorrow

Jimmy Wales speaking on the topic of "Knowledge, Community and Human Rights" at CeBIT, March 14, 2014.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bernd Schwabe in Hannover (talk • contribs) 10:21, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Dear Jimmy,
please find the Video-Livestream by NDR Fernsehen with the following link:

Like to meet you tomorrow. Best regards, --Bernd Schwabe in Hannover (talk) 22:52, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I will be at CeBit but it might be quite late or impossible to arrange a meeting. I have by my count 8 one on one interviews tomorrow as well as other scheduled events, and I leave immediately afterwards!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:08, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
wow, cebit tells us you are a "London-based American artist" (via Google translate, of course). Hope it goes as well as UK's Question Time. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:15, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
8 one on one interviews in a row? Dang dude.....remember to stay hydrated. Seriously and I know you know what I mean but, it has always been something to be reminded to others where I have worked so I remind you as well. Stay well!.--Mark Miller (talk) 02:50, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Well, not in a row, but yes - staying hydrated is good. I did 4 before my speech and 4 after, I believe. It was a bit of a blur.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:50, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Does change really = revert?

Bbb23 recently blocked me for violating 3RR, but has refused to provide the four revert diffs. Through discussion here and here, it seems that Bbb23's interpretation of 3RR is that any change to the existing text of an article is a revert and can be counted as such by an admin while justifying a block for violating 3RR:

And

Just moments ago, Bbb23 explained his interpretation of WP:3RR:

Is this accurate, because it comes as a serious shock to me; after 40,000 edits and 4 1/2 years on Wikipedia I'd never heard this before. Is copyediting virtually synonymous with reverting? If I used 5 edits to trim inaccurate and unsourced material from an article is that really a 3RR violation? GabeMc (talk|contribs) 01:20, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

I suppose it's all a matter of intent. If a person is edit-warring, it doesn't matter if they're physically changing the text via normal editing or hitting a REVERT button, it's a revert. On the other hand, of course, making 5 successive changes to the same paragraph during the normal editing process isn't "reverting" at all. The 3RR prohibition is an, ummmmm, "bright line" proscription against edit warring. Carrite (talk) 04:06, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
If its a matter of intent then all editors are subject to blocks at all times. GabeMc (talk|contribs) 17:24, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
It's yet another case of a policy that got broken because making the rules all-encompassing in order to prevent people from abusing them by weaselling out of a violation instead allows other people to abuse them by accusing others of violations. Ken Arromdee (talk) 04:15, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
  • History repeats itself. See this AN thread and this corresponding WT:EW thread for similar problems with this admin. Policy interpretation is not the only issue -- the behavioral problems persist: stonewalling, refusing requests to list the diffs in question, even deleting such requests.[1] Back then, I brushed off Bbb23's behavior without taking further action, however I no longer believe the matter can be ignored. There are a host of behavioral problems with this admin (even open violations of WP:ADMINACCT, e.g. here), and I believe a case should be brought to remedy the situation. vzaak 04:55, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
In general, a revert involves changing text back to what it was before. A pure revert is a revert to a previous version of the article. But it's still reverting if you (for example) revert one section of an article to a previous version while at the same time making some tiny little change elsewhere. It is unclear to me without looking more closely (which I won't do unless there's some really good reason for me to get more directly involved, which there probably isn't) whether the changes under discussion here constitute reverts.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:49, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Mr. Wales, don't you see this strict interpretation as a serious contradiction to the fifth pillar and WP:BOLD? GabeMc (talk|contribs) 18:16, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Edit-warring isn't just slamming the undo link, this was the kind of subterfuge one usually sees in contentious political areas like Israel-Palestine or the Troubles. Un-discussed changes were being made by this user to Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums, several attempts and restorations of attempts to introduce language that users are free to ignore the style guides and suggestions of the project. Which is true, of course, but being right is not a reason to edit war, barring vandalism cleanup. Tarc (talk) 13:36, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Tarc, take another look. None of my edits "introduce[d] language that users are free to ignore the style guides", in fact my edits were an attempt to dispel that notion, not support it. Bbb23 said that this non-contentious copyedit that was completely unrelated to the material Static reverted was counted as one of my four reverts. GabeMc (talk|contribs) 17:02, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
  • If Bbb23 is interpreting the guideline correctly, then this edit is a revert and I have only two more edits that I can make to this article today before I violate 3RR. GabeMc (talk|contribs) 18:16, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Bbb23's definition of a revert goes way beyond copyediting. Here he says that "a revert is changing information on a page". Given that Bbb23 feels entitled to block without warning long term productive content builders with clean block logs on this issue, does this mean that, under his new regime, all content builders should be advised to suspend development work on the encyclopedia? --Epipelagic (talk) 22:08, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
  • I agree and in fact, if Bbb23 is correct then I could have been blocked several times at every article that I've ever improved, as I often make more than 3 changes to an article in one editing session. GabeMc (talk|contribs) 22:20, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Some admins feel entitled to block after only one "revert". It comes down to the whim of the individual admin. There is no centralised control, just loose-cannon admins who believe they individually have personal entitlements to arbitrarily decide policy when it comes to blocking content builders. --Epipelagic (talk) 22:33, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Here are the four consolidated consecutive edits that Bbb23 claims I violated 3RR by making: 1st series, 2nd series, 3rd series, and 4th series. GabeMc (talk|contribs) 23:04, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
    I don't know about 3RR, but I certainly see edit-warring there. 3RR isn't the only rule under which someone can get blocked for edit-warring. --Carnildo (talk) 00:45, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
    Do you really see an edit war? Where? The four edits are: add links to two policies, restore a link to one policy and add a link to a guideline, add a second link to that guideline (the first link to that guideline, in a different section, is still present/unreverted), and trivial copy edits. In that entire series, there is exactly one sentence that was removed by anyone and restored by GabeMc. He accepted all the other changes made by other people. Is that really "an edit war" in your mind? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:15, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
    According to Bbb23, this edit is a revert that counts against 3RR, but the thing is, I'm the one who added that word to the article in the first place, so the potential for a 3RR violation is increased by copyediting your own prose. GabeMc (talk|contribs) 18:25, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
    The interpretation of policy by Bbb23 is not only wrong it violates the pillars of editing. If changing someone else's edits constitutes a revert, then nothing can ever be changed. It makes absolutely no sense and has no credibility. If Bbb weren't an admin, people would have laughed at him already for making such a bold and obviously incorrect statement. 172.56.3.179 (talk) 15:22, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
    While I have no issue with Bbb23 and generally consider him to be a good admin, I didn't agree with this block. But whether or not there was a violation of the 3RR bright line is meaningless when one considers that editors can be blocked merely for acting "in the spirit" of edit-warring without actually violating the 3RR thingy. And this, combined with a "personal attack", was why you were blocked. So, your block log is forever tainted, and there's no recourse. Welcome to the club! Doc talk 05:00, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
An admin who blocks someone for violating the spirit of edit-warring without violating any explicit rule may be asked to explain himself, and if enough people disagree with him, the admin runs the risk of being censured for overstepping his authority.
An admin who blocks someone for violating a clear (but overly broad) written rule is not required to explain himself, even if the rule is so broad that good editors violate it all the time.
That's the difference: by pointing to a rule which makes everyone a rule violator, the admin is immune from having to justify his own actions, while if he blocks someone based only on his discretion, he runs the risk that someone else will disagree with his exercise of discretion. Ken Arromdee (talk) 21:17, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

I think we could all use input from Jimbo, administrators, bureaucrats, ARBCOM, and WMF on an issue that has popped up at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 March 11. This is deals with the creation and potentially plastering every article on Wikipedia with banners explicitly stating that paid editors have edited that particular article, due to the recent German court ruling.

I suppose every bountyboard request will need to have the banner attached, as well as every instance the community has fixed editing by COI from the House of Representatives, companies, or individuals promoting their own stuff. And of course, every article a paid WMF employee edited.

Will we be rolling out such a banner, is this the directive from the Foundation, or of legal opinion? And how does this affect WP:NODISCLAIMERS ?

-- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 05:55, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

My position on these matters is generally well known. The only specific comment I have at this time is that you really need to distinguish between COI editing ("paid advocacy editing") and paid editing more generally. There is a huge difference between the two and in my experience the people who try to blur the distinction do so in order to confuse the issue to try to keep the gravy trainrolling.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:14, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
I think the confusion is prompted by the poor tautology used by the community, not by a conspiracy from corporate interests to intentionally confuse the issues. Because marketing is defined as "conflict of interest" it is natural for editors to lump them together with other types of COI and POV pushing.
A Conflict of interest (as a regular English phrase) is when someone holds two positions simultaneously with competing interests. However most marketing professionals do not consider themselves to be Wikipedians, to hold a position within the community, or feel any pull to put Wikipedia's interests before their own. On the contrary they/we are obligated to serve the client/employer's best interests and to put Wikipedia's interests first would be unethical.
Therefore - in most, but not all cases - marketing professionals are hired advocates lobbying for their client or employer's point-of-view, which is very different (worse) than COI. However, there are exceptions where companies decide it is in their best interest to merely support a neutral article and these exceptions are too abundant to ignore entirely.
As long as marketing is lumped with COI (which I expect it will be for the foreseeable future), I think we can expect this kind of blurred perspective on how they differ. It is routine for professional publishers to publish guides on what they want (and don't) from PR, even though PRs are not accepted as a part of the editorial team who merely has a COI.
Respectfully, a frequent "COI" contributor. CorporateM (Talk) 15:07, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
Hmmm, that's an interesting point re conflict of interest. It's true. I think when the Wikipedia was set up, we really didn't envision, and weren't set up to handle, the presence of large number of editors of the mind "I am now going to write very much material into the Wikipedia; whether this is good for the Wikipedia or its readers is no concern of mine (although I'm not against the Wikipedia either)." When we have editors of the mind "...whether this is good for the Wikipedia is no concern of mine, I'm simply here to spread the word that Israel is evil" or "...whether this is good for the Wikipedia is no concern of mine, I'm simply here for the social drama" we generally give such editors short shrift, but for whatever reason if it's "...whether this is good for the Wikipedia is no concern of mine, I'm simply here to improve my client's image" it's more accepted. But right, WP:COI doesn't apply to these editors. Herostratus (talk) 16:38, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
Well... every situation/article is different and there are few characteristics that should be used to universally describe every marketing participant. The aspect of self-interest on behalf of the company I think is universal enough, but what that self-interest means (what their objectives are) varies substantially. I have done plenty of work on behalf of companies cleaning up COI or fan-written promo because they feel (or I have convinced them) that it is in their best interest to merely maintain high-quality, NPOV articles. However, I have also turned down at least 3x as much work from companies whose sole objective is to remove or whitewash negative material, with no interest in the damage it does to Wikipedia whatsoever, and we still refer to this as COI, which is very strange. CorporateM (Talk) 18:20, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
3x huh. I wonder how many of those 3x are then are all like "Well, this CorporateM fellow has convinced me that having my sole objective being to remove or whitewash negative material, with no interest in the damage it does to Wikipedia whatsoever, is just wrong, and I certainly won't pursue the matter with another operative such as Wiki-PR or whomever". Perhaps a significant percentage of them then take vows of poverty and silence and retire to a monastery. But I doubt it. So hats off to you and your personal probity, but this has little impact on the system I think. 3x, hmm.
Also, of course it is true that some percentage of commercial editing is just removing false or improper material. What the percentage is I don't know. Maybe it's a high percentage. My take is that even if it is a high percentage it probably doesn't mmatter, in the same way that it doesn't matter that in a high percentage of games Hal Chase was trying his best to win. But I'm an Al Smith man and others may feel differently. A thorough study would be interesting though.
But off topic. Your point that a commercial editor (unless they're a bit unethical and taking their salary partly under false pretenses) doesn't have a COI is an important point and this is something that it's worthwhile to get across. Herostratus (talk) 23:07, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm not so sure. The argument is that there is no loyalty or interest by the paid editor to Wikipedia. If that is really the case, for example if the paid editor does not agree to follow our rules, or to build an encyclopedia, he has no business editing here, and we really do not need WP:COI or any other rule to ban him. So maybe CorpM is technically right, but practically wrong. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:30, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Jimbo that the distinction between COI and paid editing is mushed up by the paid editing community and their advocates. I'd feel better about Jimbo and the WMF if they'd just simply get on with it, define prohibited conduct with specificity and then prohibit it in the TOU. As for these templates, I notice they are proposed by an SPA and my guess is that they are part of the continual effort by a certain banned editor who likes to keep the pot boiling for some reason. Coretheapple (talk) 16:04, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Sometimes you can't tell the players without a scorecard, but somehow I didn't think this one was wearing the number 2001. For one thing he didn't just ramble on and on and try to put puzzles and tricks in his prose. Maybe his manager is retiring the old curveballer because he can't get anything over the plate, and going with a new fastballer? Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:30, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
True, but I thought it was odd that someone with no previous edits would begin their careeers at Wikipedia by authoring a template. Coretheapple (talk) 14:03, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Commercial (paid advocacy) editors do not have a conflict of interest

I want to double down on this because I think it's a small but very important point, so let me try another way to get this across.

Suppose I am an advertising executive and I wish to place a ad for my product in Time magazine. Suppose the ad is sort of shocking and controversial, but I feel that it will help sell my product, but at the same time so alienate a small but not negligible number of Time subscribers that they might cancel their subscriptions. Suppose that the Time employees responsible for accepting the ad accept it anyway (whether because they don't realize the possible problem, don't care, really want the immediate income, or whatever).

You can accuse me of a lot things, but you can't accuse me of conflict of interest. You can't say "Well, your responsibility to sell your product is in conflict with your responsibility to see that Time magazine thrives". I have no such responsibility. If Time goes belly-up I'll just place my ads in whatever succeeds it.

This doesn't mean that I am actively against Time magazine. This doesn't mean that Time shouldn't run my ad (maybe overall they benefit from sticking strictly to a policy of "we'll run any ad that meets our specified list of requirements", or whatever). This doesn't mean that running my ad will damage Time (maybe the gain in immediate revenue will more than offset any subscription losses, or maybe Time will gain a better reputation with hipsters and actually gain subscriptions, or any number of things). This doesn't mean that I won't follow Times specified rules, such as submitting the ad in a certain format and avoiding profanity and so forth. And there's any other manner of things that this doesn't mean.

But it does mean that I don't have a conflict of interest. It's important to understand this! In order to think about these difficult and fraught issues we need to clear in our language and thinking.

Well the same deal applies to commercial editors of Wikipedia. None of this proves that commercial editing (paid advocacy editing) is bad for the Wikipedia, bad for the readers, or bad for humanity. Maybe it's not, maybe its the bee's knees. But let's at least talk clearly and forthrightly about it and use precise language. Herostratus (talk) 13:48, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

If I understand your analogy correctly, the Time advertiser is in the same position as a Wikipedia editor. But that does not jibe with the relationship between Wikipedia volunteers and Wikipedia. Time advertisers have absolutely no obligation to Time. It can rot in hell, for all they care. Their sole and only responsibility is to their clients, companies or employers. But I don't think we need to intellectualize too much on this general subject. If the WMF doesn't want people running businesses by placing material on WMF websites, providing absolutely no compensation whatsoever to the WMF or Wikipedia and indeed actually harming Wikipedia's reputation, the WMF can and should ban that kind of activity. Why it doesn't is not clear to me, but seems to be a combination of cowardice, stupidity, bureaucratic lassitude and interference from Wikipedia volunteers who are either paid editors, off-the-edge libertarians, or paid-editors-in-waiting. Coretheapple (talk) 14:03, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

The first of the WP:Five Pillars of Wikipedia is that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. In particular, "Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and, as a means to that end, an online community of individuals interested in building and using a high-quality encyclopedia in a spirit of mutual respect." If your theoretical paid editor has no interest in building an encyclopedia, he has no business here. Wikipedia is WP:NOT a place for advertising, marketing, public relations, or promotion. Your example is about an advertiser, but even if it was about some other type of paid editor, I suspect that if that paid editor specified what his goal was, it would also be included in WP:NOT. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:28, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

So? What relevance does any of the above "doubling down" have? Of course, an advertiser is not conflicted in writing an advertisement. So what? On the other hand, if Time magazine is passing off advertising as something else, both it and the advertiser appear to be engaging in 'deceptive trade practice', and thus engaged in multiple conflicts of interest: pecuniary, ethical, and legal. The conflicts are all the more so, when the publisher and the advertiser are the same person, as with a wikipedia editor. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:13, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

It doesn't have any immediate relevance, it's just something I wanted to point out so that people don't use the term "COI" in a way that's incorrect and obscures the issues at hand. That's all. This is not automatically a deal-killer or anything; after all, Time does not say "You don't care about us, so we reject your ad".
As to deceptive trade practices, right, an in fact the origin of this thread was pointing to a TfD for templates designed to address this (they're at the top of Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 March 11). Herostratus (talk) 23:30, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

This is a definition issue. First, under all scenarios, the Wikipedia meaning must necessarily be different that the real-world meaning. The the COI guideline starts with an excellent gold standard definition.....essentially a situation where other interests dominate over the objectives of Wikipedia. After that, everything goes to hell in a handbasket. The use of the term later in the policy conflicts with that, as does the common usage in Wikipedia. North8000 (talk) 00:33, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

@Herostratus:, your analogy limps in the following way: In the Time magazine, ads and content should be clearly separated, due to journalistic ethics. Furthermore, journalists and advertisers should be a disjunct set of people, and if a journalist placed an ad, or an advertiser wrote an article, that would not only raise eyebrows but potentially be a COI, particularly the latter case.

Now, Wikipedia is supposed to be free of ads, and all editors should be writers, not advertisers. It therefore indeed represents COI if someone whom we think is a editor is doing some sort of product placement, or disguising an ad as an article: The conflict of interest is in their role as Wikipedia editor: They should write an encyclopedia, and what they are doing instead is writing Yellow Pages. --Pgallert (talk) 06:27, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Suggest Conflict of Objectives rather than Conflict of Interest

I think the focus of WP:COI looks for the solution in the wrong place. It should be on What is the Objective of this edit? What is the objective (or the intention) of the editor making this edit? Is it to hide...or to inform? Is it to broaden the readers knowledge on the subject...or to restrict and hide verifiable facts which may change a readers mind. The influenced-by-pay editor and the reader have differing objectives. The reader comes to Wikipedia for information. The influenced-by-pay editor comes to Wikipedia to mold the customers article. That singular objective is the driving force. Strict scrutiny by all volunteers is required. Professional editors are paid to be diligent on their customers behalf, to be on-guard. The average Wikipedia editor is not. The objectives of the two oppose each other. The objective of some editors confiscates our readers expectation of neutrality and conflicts with the principles behind "everyone is free to edit". Improving the article is not always the goal of every editor. ```Buster Seven Talk 15:25, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Both the terms "conflict of interest" and "conflict of objective" have the same problem. They assume that there is a conflict. That conflict is between improving the encyclopedia and adding promotional information. With some paid editors, there is no "conflict". They are simply not here to improve the encyclopedia, and are only here for promo. So the term needs to be revised. KonveyorBelt 16:10, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
"Objective, goal, intention, and interest" all seem to have the same meaning in this context" as in "economic interest". Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:14, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
In general, what we refer to is having a potential conflict of interest. It is possible for a paid editor to have interests that are aligned with those of Wikipedia. So in those cases they do not have a COI. However, because they are being paid, there is a potential that their interests as an employee/contractor conflict with Wikipedia's interests. In industry, you normally disclose potential conflicts of interest, and then those involved look to see if there is also an actual COI. If there is no actual COI, they may be permitted to continue to take part in spite of the potential. But if it is not possible to determine whether or not the COI is actual, they may be asked not to take part because of the potential problems. - Bilby (talk) 20:30, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Hey, another minor in positions of power

Nothing gives me chills more than emotional teenage malefactors with access to checkuser data than the potential abuses of a pre-teen having power and building a base for more of it. In Norwegian: [2].

11 has to be a new record.--ColonelHenry (talk) 15:06, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

You might want to relax a little bit. First, admins don't have access to checkuser data. So already you've gotten yourself alarmed about something that just isn't true. Second, Sami language is a very small language with a very small Wikipedia and this kid has single handedly built it up with the help of just a few people. I hardly think his admin bit is a reason for you to imagine "teenage malefactors" building "a base" for power.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:56, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  • The reference to a teenager with checkuser access was to an recent discussion of which I believe you and/or someone at WMF was made aware of an underage individual who lied (and falsified docs) to get access sensitive information, I did not state anything about admins having or not having that power (which I already know they don't). So, you assumed I was mistaken when I made no such statement, and I was not as clear I should have been. However, on the heels of that earlier discussion, it is salient to consider whether an 11-year-old's judgment and maturity is appropriate for sysop tools. In my judgment, 11 is far too young for responsibility. Regardless of whether it's a small language, it's questionable and rather reckless and negligent to be granting power to minors, and to be doing so without sufficient oversight (waiting until after damage is done is not good enough). Therefore, WMF really needs to reevaluate its policy on age and power and the accountability that comes with it. If there's one good underage admin, fine...but I think history has shown us several examples of underaged individuals to whom power should not have been given.--ColonelHenry (talk) 16:14, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
The same can be said for an array of users who were presumably adults. Should we begin barring adults from positions of authority, purely on the basis that some adults have been shown to not handle it well? Bright lines in this context make for absurd cases; it's much simpler to evaluate each individual... individually.Nathan T 18:43, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
A little hyperbolic, aren't we? There is no conspiracy and there is no "emotional malefactor" with access to CU data. Building a base? What? KonveyorBelt 16:05, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
You should also consider Ilyanep, who has done a great job here while very young. There is nothing wrong per se with young admins. —Kusma (t·c) 16:07, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
Having someone in a position of power who also works at Palantir Technologies is a different question (see also Barrett Brown).[3][4][5] While I have recently emphasized (against some vocal opposition) the importance of not considering an editor's outside opinions and publications, things may well be different if a conflict of interest could exist under circumstances where it would not be legal for the editor or anyone else to report it. Wnt (talk) 16:18, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
Age isn't really a factor, especially on the internet. 11 year olds can have the maturity of 21 year olds, and vice versa. Legality poses some issues, but I don't think that translates into a young identity thief or anything like that. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 18:05, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
The worst thing about the internet aka and wikipedia's minors can edit anonymously is that any supernerd can make laughable statements and say anything as if it is correct , like, " 11 year olds can have the maturity of 21 year olds" - the fact is that 11 year olds have the maturity of 11 year olds - Access to private data should never be given to a minor or anyone not of legal adult status Mosfetfaser (talk) 18:15, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
Any 11-year old I encounter has the attitude of "why not, why can't I be an adult?". Any psychologist worth his or her salt would disagree with the absurd claim that an 11 year olds could be as mature, just on brain development and cognitive judgment skills alone. As far as age not being a factor on the internet...perhaps, but then again there's very little except "community process"...no safety mechanism in place to guarantee against identity theft, that the person isn't a bête noire, or at a minimum a repeat of the Essjay experience. WMF really needs to establish a safety mechanism before there is damage, instead of its pattern of cleaning up to save face after the damage is done. This doesn't even get into the area of Wikipedia's credibility if it is seen as being run by 11-year-olds with a big hammer. Then again, how long until an 11-year-old admin is a 13-year-old arbitrator? --ColonelHenry (talk) 18:20, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
I believe Essjay was an adult. Nathan T 18:45, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Essjay was an adult--though at only 24 years old he probably wasn't as mature as most of us. [6] He was, however, older than I am (I am 19). As they say, though, On the Internet, nobody knows you're a teenager. Of course, while there could be who knows how many teenage admins lurking among us, the fact that RFAs have become much, much harder to pass than they were when, for instance, Ilvanep was appointed (in 2003!) However, I agree that requiring proof of identity and age, and therefore whether one was a certain age, should be required for anyone who wants to become an admin, as it is for becoming an oversighter. After all, adminship, oversight or no oversight, is a serious responsibility with potentially serious implications. Jinkinson talk to me 19:52, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

That is all headed down the wrong road - a vicious cycle of requiring documentation, requiring documentation be kept secret, requiring documentation to prove ????? that the people keeping it secret are keeping it secret. More and more power, less and less collaborative wiki. The proper thing to realize is that if something is genuinely illegal (i.e. child porn) it needs to be removed definitively, not kept as a private stash for a thousand admins. If it is merely grossly inappropriate, then we should not worry so much about if people see it; the liability of posters is first and foremost their own problem, and a few extra people seeing it doesn't matter. And so we can live with adminship being "no big deal", something that (literally) a child could do. We can live with it being done by anonymous community members. We can live with a Wikipedia model, rather than a strict bureaucratic hierarchy. Wikipedia is like everything else on the Internet now, run out of a handful of data center alleys in northern Virginia, this one within a literal stone's throw of a site proposed for the new FBI headquarters building due to its colocation and security, and as pointed out above, internally accessible to at least one employee of a firm reported to work with the NSA. We can't stop anything on the site from being sucked up for the worst purposes, and the NSA has already been caught bragging about that. What we can do is not force data to be handed over in the first place, and try to keep such data as we have as close to accessible to all as possible, so that the public is at less of a disadvantage than usual. And cut back on the policies, the topic bans and arbitration decisions and outright purges of editors that infect the site, to reduce the bite of the admins' powers. Above all, the checkusering, the endless quixotic hunt for sockpuppets has to end, because it violates the original model of the site. We need to set up a system where accounts simply gain power slowly with the work they put in, so that just creating a bunch of accounts doesn't work unless you spend a preposterously large amount of time making good edits. Wnt (talk) 20:22, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
The current system has over one thousand legacy admins appointed for life with no centralised control or oversight. Wikipedia could hardly be further damaged by an influx of 11 year old admins and arbitrators. Children of that age often have a sense of natural justness and fairness, and could be a much needed breath of fresh air. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:42, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
Well, perhaps so. But the reality is that it would be virtually impossible for an 11-year-old to pass an English Wikipedia RfA in the current climate. And of course English Wikipedia admins don't get access to any private data (defined as such) anyway. So that leaves us with much smaller projects, where "position of power" is more scare-mongering than anything else. Have there been any complaints about this 11-year-old from actual editors or ex-editors of the wiki in question? (Like the presumably adult admins that have been subject of numerous complaints regarding the Croatian and several other language Wikipedias?) I'm guessing not, otherwise the OP in this thread would have something more than "OMG he's 11" and a bunch of misleading insinuations. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:08, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
I tend to agree. Besides, most of the problems I can see on Wikipedia are caused by adults. Kids do cause problems, but mainly as IP vandals. I'm not worried by the prospect of the occasional bright pre-adolescent getting involved in the project in some capacity. It could be a positive experience for all concerned. Coretheapple (talk) 17:21, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

If we could split admin into gnome tool belt work and decisions that could harm editors, and fix the RFA process, then we would be vetting for the needed qualities. And an 11 year old is neveer going to make the higher level if split. But between the usual challenges combined with the fact that current admins (who have an inherent COI on the question) weigh in against such changes, it isn't happening. North8000 (talk) 22:05, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, since children are not legally capable of executing contracts, I guess one solution to the paid editing problem is to require proof that one is under the age of majority in order to edit Wikipedia. Coretheapple (talk) 22:21, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Ha, I like that. A maximum age limit? (When I did some part-time software development work as a teenager, my parents always insisted I make clear to the customer that, being under 18, I was unable to enter into any legally binding contract with them, implicitly or otherwise. Customers didn't seem to care much though.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:08, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
  • I concur with Demiurge. Your average 11 year old would never pass the strict RfA standards. If they do, then it is a sign that they are beyond their age level in maturity and intelligence, and thus are better suited for the position. KonveyorBelt 16:41, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
(Facepalm) User:Coretheapple, the reason most of the problems on Wikipedia are caused by adults is because 87% of editors are at least 18 years old. I guess that since adminship, while it is a big deal, is not as much so as the ability to drive, vote, or buy alcohol, that we shouldn't have a strictly enforced age limit for it as we do for the latter three. In any case, just to be sure that no one immature and irresponsible seeps through the cracks, we should ask some tough hypothetical questions to people, regardless of their age, in their RFAs. Something that involves deciding whether or not to block someone. Jinkinson talk to me 18:20, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps. However, I wonder if admin candidates get an excessive grilling as it is. A few months ago I saw a perfectly good candidate for admin get trounced for what I thought were rather silly reasons, and he is anything but a kid. In fact, I understand that he has grandchildren. On the other hand, I've met some real dillies who are administrators, people I wouldn't want to administer a phone booth. I wonder if a better idea might be to require periodic evaluations of administrators. If they turn out to be children, of if they act like children, they can be eased out. The absence of periodic evaluation of administrators, their life tenure except for removal for extreme cause, is one of the things that distinguishes Wikipedia from the real world. Coretheapple (talk) 20:44, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
That sounds like a good idea--maybe we could require some other body (possibly ArbCom) to prepare an admin "report card" every so often. Now what would the subject areas be in which their performance was being assessed? Jinkinson talk to me 20:58, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
Oh, I guess civility, judgment, stuff like that. But there are a lot of admins, not many arbs, and it would create a heavy burden, as well as drama. This is easier to suggest than to execute. Coretheapple (talk) 21:07, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Complaint

Hello Jimmy. This administrator violates rules of Wikipedia (and acts vs the US Constitution: vs the freedom of speech on legal grounds): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mike_Rosoft (user). The US government says about violations vs human rights in Russia almost every day.

Violation: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Mike_Rosoft&diff=prev&oldid=599916570#Dmitry_Medvedev (and other violations on this issue). I ask you ban his actions (you have the right do it vs any English admin). Thank you! 78.106.107.254 (talk) 21:40, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, this complaint appears to be a result of Mike Rosoft semi-protecting the article about Dmitry Medvedev for a couple of days. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:02, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
This ip editor has been at it all day, continually adding Category:Human rights abuses to the biography of Dmitry Medvedev in clear violation of WP:BLPCAT and WP:NPOV. I tried to engage with them on my talk page and also at Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Dmitry_Medvedev but without success as the user is editing from several ips. They've already been told that the US constitution has no priority over an international website Wikipedia but disruptively persist in WP:SOAPBOX and WP:IDHT. Valenciano (talk) 22:10, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
In matters of civil rights or human rights, there are many gray areas with loopholes for alternative judgments. Users, here, who have extensive legal experience have noted to beware thinking in terms of absolute limits because there have been numerous exceptions to many laws which had seemed clear-cut. And that does not even include the "exceptions" caused by falsified evidence, or missing evidence (mid-level drug/cash evidence which disappears from police evidence lockers). A U.S. citizen who is at first judged not guilty overseas, but retried and declared guilty, might claim exemption by "double jeopardy" under the rights as an American citizen, regardless of international laws. Instead, just try to be more understanding of a user's frustrations, and remind them that their concerns are being heard. We really want to avoid the irony of being overly restrictive to a user who complains of human-rights abuses. Try more ways to defuse the frustrations. -Wikid77 22:58, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
User:Wikid77, I've already done that. I explained to them on WP:BLPN that the material in question is already in the article (though unsourced) and that it is the category that is the issue. Their replies were that only removal by an administrator would satisfy them. Well, that's happened, but yet here we are. Below, they're now suggesting that Medvedev, who was born in the mid 1960s, should be included among the perpetrators of the Great Purge, which happened in the 1930s. Does that seem reasonable? Valenciano (talk) 06:08, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
You are wrong Demiurge1000 (Mike Rosoft does not wish provide quality in the article: who is observers). In the original is written that it is people, which hate the Red terror and the Great purge, and they respect millions of victims - them relatives (any human hates terror from the Cheka and NKVD). Rosoftor or others must not hide the truth (only facts are welcomed in Wikipedia). If violation of human rights (need to display via relevant category). 78.106.107.254 (talk) 22:47, 16 March 2014 (UTC).
Fact: 20 December very large number of people celebrates bloody holiday (guys, which are happy in this day with glass of red wine). My relative was killed also - like millions of other people (Great purge). If somebody has no relative, who was killed in these terrible times, he can not understand this fully. President can change the date during 5 minutes, using simple decree (but he does not respect victims, if he free of this). Only several minutes to change date. Example: date, when bloody organization became the FSB (optimally). Category (Medvedev "has right" be not only in category of violations of human rights, but in categories, which in many times worse: Great purge - for example). Every defender of Medvedev and Putin (on this issue) acts vs the US government. This government wishes the good situation in Russia. Good mental health of society everywhere. 21 century now (not 1937 year). Mike Rosoft or somebody other instead him - must take action (I hope). Violator vs memory of millions of victims must be in the relevant category. Observers (relatives of victims, of course: every clever understands). Only facts. They exist in great number. When Valenciano is not vandal to hide them. During whole day he did it many times. 78.106.107.254 (talk) 01:07, 17 March 2014 (UTC).
Erm, please assume good faith. Mike Rosoft was simply trying to enforce one of our policies. Also, Wikipedia protecting a page or blocking a user doesn't violate anything about "Freedom of Speech" or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Those policies do not prevent us from enforcing our own rules and blocking editors/protecting pages from editing. Wikipedia tries not to promote any sort of view, image, or take sides on any article. K6ka (talk | contribs) 01:13, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  • TO K6ka: you need read with good attention (only facts). Violation of the rules here, when somebody ignores facts for any own aims. 2.94.9.163 (talk) 01:23, 17 March 2014 (UTC).
    • As I have noted at User talk:176.15.22.243: Category:Human rights abuses lists actions that constituted human right violations; and to state as a fact that somebody is responsible for human right abuses, there needs to be a near-universal consensus for such an appellation, or a court verdict saying so. Wikipedia is not a soapbox; see also the policy on articles about living people. (Otherwise, articles can use - with reliable references, of course - such phrasings like: Organization X [e.g. Amnesty International] has accused Y [e.g. the Russian Federation] of such-and-such human rights violations. But unless they have specifically accused the President of Russia, it's off-topic in an article about him.)

      You are probably looking for the article Human rights in Russia, which covers the Russian violation of human rights in detail (and that category probably wouldn't belong to that page, either - as I have said, the category covers specific actions or incidents). - Mike Rosoft (talk) 06:06, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

    • To all anons, "fact" in Wikipedia must be properly sourced. If the deer is identified as a "horse" by all the reliable sources, we write that it is a "horse" without second thought. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 06:42, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
      • Except when all sources call it "deer-horse" we change the hyphen to a dash (just kidding, but likely true). However, Jimbo has discussed the sources-are-wrong problem before, and when sources mention the "horse" had 7-point antlers then wp:editorial judgment applies, and the word is likely to be "deer" instead. The same reasoning applies if sources give a questionable birthdate. -Wikid77 13:45, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
        • So pardon me where is this "editorial judgment" guideline or discussion? However I do have doubt any editorial judgment in Wikipedia without citation is ever allowed. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 14:09, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Very strange question about observers. Even little child in Russia know that the Checa and NKVD - bloody organizations for the genocide or something like this (everyone, who was against the politics of Lenin and Stalin - must die). Stalin did it even without motivations sometimes (to achieve him personal goals via NKVD). And relatives of victims live now (not very big time gone after the Great purge and not only). About role of the NKVD under Smolensk was known even in 1946 year (Nurnberg). All kept silence, because the USSR were among winners in terrible war. Exist facts and understanding: when many people are glad in day of creation of tool for genocide, relatives of victims are not happy. Any clever understands this situation. Date of professional holidays in Russia is changed very easy. Simple decree of president (see above). Medvedev was president and he not became do it (strong relationship with Putin). That's no excuse for everyone of them. Any governments must respect own peoples. 128.73.83.206 (talk) 10:07, 17 March 2014 (UTC).
It is difficult to prove that what a person didn't do is relevant enough to be part of his biography. The way to move forward here may be by creating the article Day of Security Officers, which Putin still regularly celebrates with ominous warnings to the world. [7][8][9] Wnt (talk) 13:26, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
That would be a good solution, although again, these criticisms would need sourced. As far as the ip's points go, I don't disagree with what they say regarding Stalinist terror and how it was ignored for reasons of realpolitik, but they're still chaining various ideas together. Their argument basically goes: The Cheka was formed on that date>The Cheka did bad things>Medvedev doesn't change the date>Medvedev supports The Cheka. That's a considerable stretch and you could make similar arguments about any world leader. For example: The British National Party leader Nick Griffim said the Holocaust didn't happen>The British government hasn't banned the BNP>The British government supports the British National Party. Pure synthesis POV and original research. Valenciano (talk) 16:26, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Which is absurd in the words of Valenciano: he can not understand simpliest things (specially). The BNP has no support (freedom of speech almost like in the US and nothing more). The UK government does not respect this party: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party :

"The party's ideology has been described as fascist by political scientists and commentators.[4] High-profile groups and people including The Royal British Legion and David Cameron have criticised the BNP, and BNP membership is prohibited for people of certain occupations. It restricted membership to "indigenous British" people until a 2010 legal challenge to its constitution." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cameron (Valenciano loves the lie on highest level, to achive very bad goals: now everyone understands this very good). Not Mike Rosoft has right get sanctions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mike_Rosoft#Dmitry_Medvedev (provocateur Valenciano made request on the page of Mike Rosoft about support, using cunning: mix of different rules in own context). Political party with bad ideology simply exists (without many places in parliament). No of support from population and from a state. Such party can be registered even. Any political party - is not head of some state. 176.15.53.188 (talk) 23:25, 17 March 2014 (UTC).

The only thing that everyone understands here is that you refuse to listen to advice from multiple editors to follow Wikipedia's rules, especially WP:NPOV and WP:BLPCAT. Category:Human rights abuses will not be added to that article as it is against our rules. If you continue to break those rules, you will likely be blocked from editing here to prevent disruption. Valenciano (talk) 06:07, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Nobody will place Medvedev in this category. 93.81.84.91 (talk) 08:32, 19 March 2014 (UTC).
  • This website is placed in the black list of Wikipedia, but has the useful article: kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2005/05/10/3782.shtml (understand better: what means the holiday 20 December):

"Alas, today it is possible to add and the SVR, and the FSB in this list. The successors of the KGB still have not renounced anything; they even celebrate their professional holiday the same day, as during reprisals, on the 20 th of December. It is the same, if the present intelligence and counterespionage of Germany celebrated the Day of Gestapo. I can imagine how indignant our press would be!" Said very respected man - professional on the such issues: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Preobrazhensky (happiness in relation of crimes of Hitler and Stalin together - this means). 176.15.53.188 (talk) 19:45, 17 March 2014 (UTC).

  • Does not exist something more relevant (relations of Putin and Medvedev are so strong, that Medvedev recognized terrible date). Putin from the FSB (former the cheka: bloody organization on the highest level, when Medvedev not against - because of Putin). 95.29.147.57 (talk) 13:54, 17 March 2014 (UTC).
Despite, being told by at least six editors here that such edits are unacceptable, our i.p. has now added this blatant piece of soapboxing and synthesis to the article. As this is an editor who refuses to follow the rules here, I'm afraid that it's time for administrators to draw the necessary conclusions to stop their disruption. Valenciano (talk) 22:40, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
  • When biography of 1 living man became more important, than respecting to memory of millions of victims of soviet Bolsheviks .... The material with many proofs (sad truth - almost axiom). Or Wikipedia is has fear before Medvedev. The Checa is criminal organization, who was created December 20 of 1917 year (causal relationship is displayed on the website of the FSB and not only). Neutrality? Do you think that memory of millions of killed people - is empty space? If no, I ask ban actions of users like he: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Materialscientist And restore material with truth and with iron proofs: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dmitry_Medvedev&action=history (relevant info - the cooperation with Putin). If need remove part of text - I will do it (Himmler, for example). Interesting detail (this is removal of the truth: Gestapo and NKVD). But I agree if is need. 95.29.136.112 (talk) 08:58, 20 March 2014 (UTC).

Patriots of Wikipedia (from USA) have the good possibility to give support for the US government (on legal grounds in any sense). I do not wish to be patriot for government, which does not respect victims of Bolsheviks (Medvedev and Putin do not respect victims). Not interpretation (December 20 of 1917 has the direct relation to the holiday of modern security agencies of Russia). 78.106.154.212 (talk) 17:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC).

Vancouver Meetup

Well cited facts indicate you're in Vancouver for TED this week. Interested in a meet up with some folks? Maybe Steamworks downtown or Granville Island or so (a couple blocks from your hotel or a short transit hop) --Tawker (talk) 02:53, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good idea. Possibly a coffee is all there will be time for, and in the afternoon. Can you help arrange it? Can you email my assistant Sam? The problem for me is that I'm in sessions the whole time and barely doing any email even!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:14, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
I emailed Sam - let's see if we can work out a time. On an related note, welcome to Vancouver! --Tawker (talk) 20:35, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

More WMF donors found paying for Wikipedia edits

Jimmy, it would appear that numerous large donors to the Wikimedia Foundation are quietly manipulating their Wikipedia article content with behind-the-scenes paid PR (advocacy) editors and conflict of interest editors. One such donor, the Qatar Foundation, gave the WMF at least $100,000. Guess which PR firm was editing their Wikipedia article? Bell Pottinger! (Surely, that firm rings a bell for you?) At about the same time in late 2011 that you publicly scolded Bell Pottinger for unethical editing of Wikipedia, guess what Qatar Foundation did? They switched PR firms, to Grayling. Grayling then picked up editing Wikipedia right where Bell Pottinger had left off. You've already said that you would gladly keep the money donated by a paid advocacy user like Qatar Foundation, but you also said that you would "ban them" from Wikipedia. Is that going to happen now? To read more, visit Wikipediocracy for the blog post. - 50.144.1.129 (talk) 11:16, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, my position on this is very firm. I haven't looked into the evidence yet, but I'll be passing this along to the Foundation and asking them to comment if appropriate. I don't know if I have any personal contacts at the Qatar Foundation but if I do, I'll raise the issue with them personally.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:12, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
Jimbo, could you also ask the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation why representatives of Arthur Gallagher made at least four different visits to the WMF headquarters? - 50.146.199.56 (talk) 12:21, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
No, I actually won't. Arthur Gallagher (I had to look it up) is a giant insurance brokerage. Like any organization with employees, property, etc., the Wikimedia Foundation purchases insurance. I have no idea if they bought insurance from Arthur Gallagher, filed a claim over something, or what. I know that if anything really big or interesting happened, I'd already know about it as a board member.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:12, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Another perspective

Let's put this into perspective for a moment with a discussion of how most nonprofits work. Consider Comcast, heir aspirant to rulership of the Internet in the United States. For many Americans, there are maybe two choices, maybe one, for broadband, and this company is one of them. They are no longer subject to net neutrality and has started charging fees to anyone who wants to be allowed to get their broadband content through to a consumer, in addition to their own high oligopolistic rates (albeit with quality inferior to that in more industrialized countries like China). They command the right to assess "six strikes" against users, and once they and their partners in internet domination are finished with you, the plan is pretty much that you're off the Internet. As they grow ever larger, their approval becomes more and more necessary for any aspiring artist or pundit.

Well, what does a company like this expect when it gives a nonprofit a paltry sum, say, $18,000? They expect that there will literally not be a single tweet critical of one of their people, that's what.[10][11][12][13] But that's not all --- they actually expect an organization that receives $20,000 from them to take the letter they receive from them, put their signature on it, and file it with the FCC in support of Comcast's merger to get even more monopoly control of the market.[14][15] And so Comcast goes around, handing out more than a billion in "donations", receiving a subsidy from the taxpayers for the influence buying they achieve this way. (No, don't complain - really that's just a face saving gesture for the taxpayers. The rich don't pay taxes to the poor; this way you can pretend that is something they've earned by doing good for society)

Now Wikipediocracy, instead of focusing on something like whether the U.S. is really going to have any more freedom on the Internet than Russia a decade from now, persists in this game of saying that there's something wrong with some foundation because they a) edit their own Wikipedia entry, directly or via paid proxy, and b) give donations. Lots of organizations do the first --- not so many do the second. Now, if Wikipediocracy could show that the donations actually bought something that anyone from any company in the world doesn't already have access to by hiring the same PR firm, that would be something, it would show Wikipedia is no better than any other nonprofit. But I see no talk of Office Actions to quell ANI cases against the PR people, or to protect the gilded versions of the articles. So far, there's no evidence that the money donations have bought a single blessed thing, which is admittedly remarkable in the context I laid out in the preceding paragraph, but that's the evidence as it stands. Wnt (talk) 16:44, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Wnt, you're drunk - go home. Begoon talk 17:34, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
Funny you should mention Comcast. A self-professed paid editor materialized on the Reward Board in October to offer a cash reward for creation of an article about Comcast Business.[16] Coretheapple (talk) 17:36, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes, funny you should mention Comcast. Ad hominem much? Carrite (talk) 18:09, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't really take it personally if Begoon makes a nasty, pointless comment; after all, all his edits are like that. But having that used as justification by some IP to "hat" my comment [17] is just too much. Wnt (talk) 07:53, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
That's very kind and reasonable of you Wnt, I was a bit flippant and dismissive - sorry, long day. However, I think you do the IP something of an injustice in suggesting they somehow intended or needed to "use my comment" to justify hatting your comment as an off-topic ramble on net neutrality, Russia, taxes, and whatever else was bothering you. That action stands alone, I think. Regards. Begoon talk 14:12, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
The edit summary used your comment as justification. It also mentions Carrite's "ad hominem" comment - I have no idea how mentioning Comcast is an ad hominem, unless the OP were affiliated with them??? If my response is irrelevant, surely the original posting is more irrelevant: what possible difference does it make if a corporation that uses PR people to manage its Wikipedia entry also happens to be a donor, except that some people here want to make trouble for Wikipedia's donors? If there is any correlation it would probably be that companies that think about Wikipedia think of both ideas - and given the lack of clear policy guidance about them not editing their own articles, especially for organizations that don't think of themselves as for profit, they could do so innocently enough. And in terms of overall significance -- they are worried about some foundation in Qatar trying to skew an entry about itself, but not about Comcast having control over everything you see on the Internet. They are excoriating people making genuine donations to a Wikipedia, without reward but thanks to such efforts as these not without harassment, while ignoring how often donations to other organizations are themselves no different in character than paying PR people, a way of getting control over what is said about a company. Wnt (talk) 16:49, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Actually, I just geolocated the OP's IP and I see it is a Comcast address, but I hadn't looked before, and in any case it's no surprise, since as I said the company is well on the way to being a monopoly. Wnt (talk) 16:53, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't know. It's a mystery to me, too. I'm glad you seem to feel a bit better about it now, though. Begoon talk 17:58, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

question

Jimbo, if a user edits under his real name, is it OK to reference Wikipedia articles to his own works without disclosing COI? Thanks.16:41, 19 March 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.11.35 (talk)

Presumably this relates to the matter which failed to gain traction in a Wikipediocracy thread, rephrased here in slightly more oblique form. Here is what I believe the answer to be (being in a very similar position myself just this week). (1) It is always BEST to make mention of the linkage between WP editor and source author on the talk page. (2) The main thing is that accurate and verifiable information is being added. If the work cited meets WP standards as a so-called "reliable source" — or, rather, if the source is widely recognized as authoritative and correct — there is no worry using this to substantiate information presented via an in-line footnote with or without mention on the talk page. (3) What is NOT okay is to spam-and-jam many multiple mentions of a source like this into a wide range of articles under "Further Reading," which is a form of commercial promotion. Hope this helps. —Tim //// Carrite (talk) 18:01, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

abuse of user rights

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

Hello Jimbo,

I've been editing for quite a few years, since creation of WP almost, and I've seen consistent increase of abuse on Wikipedia. It is becoming less and less friendly place, and more and more just think they can do stuff which WP:rules explicitly prevent. Do you have any comment on these developments, if you have noticed them as well...

Cheers 178.221.101.86 (talk) 20:06, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

See this editor's post at [18]. JoeSperrazza (talk) 20:11, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
Yet another example of what I am talking about, above editor just removed other editor's comments [19]. Do I need to cite here rules which prohibit this? 178.221.101.86 (talk) 20:20, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
Yet...the above editor seems to be a better (and more accurate) example of "rule" breaking since they were just blocked again for "block evasion".--Mark Miller (talk) 20:23, 19 March 2014 (UTC)


Thank you! A gift from fellow Wikipedians.

You have been selected to receive a merchandise giveaway. We last contacted you on 3/11/2014. Please send us a message if you would like to claim your shirt. --JMatthews (WMF) (talk) 06:43, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Oh...there really is a t-shirt. LOL! I thought it was a joke! (Head desk).--Mark Miller (talk) 06:47, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Привет Йимбо

Я из сswiki и ruwiki. На обеих я создал 50 статьей и сделал больше 3000 правок и удаляю вандализм. Когда что нибудь ищу, ищу это в Википедии а если невыищу, так такую статью попробую создать. Честно могу сказать, что Википедии отличаються и что есть нормальным в одной, тот в другой не знают. В Российской не исползуют отсроченное удаление плохих статьей а в нашей вики наоборот не знаем, что такое патрулирование в правилах также бывают различия. Спасибо тебе Йимбо, за то что ты создал самый лучший источник информаций в интернете и когда ни он не может быть всегда безошибочный а надо его постоячно улучшать и защищать перед вандализмом. Моя учетная запись была на enwiki заблокирована безссрочно, и разблокировать меня никто не хочет, мотому что не говорю по Английски и также никто не понимает тут что хочу сказать.--Тома646 09:23, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Quick translation:

Hi Jimbo! I'm from cswiki and ruwiki. On these two projects, I've created 50 articles, made more than 3,000 edits, and delete vandalism . When I'm searching for something, I look first in Wikipedia, and if it's not there I try to create a new article on the subject.

I can honestly say that different Wikipedias differ from each other and what is normal in one is unknown in another. In the Russian Wiki we do not have delayed removal of bad articles, and we do not have patrolling rules that distinguish between different types of bad articles.

Thank you Jimbo , for creating the best source of information on the Internet, though it is not infallible and it is necessary to improve and constantly protect against vandalism. My account was blocked on enwiki indefinitely and nobody wants to unblock me because I do not speak English well and no one understands what I want to say here.

(Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:15, 20 March 2014 (UTC) with help from Google Translate)

Your hovercraft is full of what?! Thrub (talk) 09:41, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Прости, но то что ты написал понимаю так правильно, как ты понимаеш мое сообщение выше.--Тома646 09:23, 20 March 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.48.51.64 (talk)
I don't think Jimbo speaks Russian. Maybe you can contact someone here first 178.222.53.31 (talk) 09:57, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
It's just block evasion by someone who doesn't understand a word of English - and who apparently thinks that should be no impediment to editing here. Thrub (talk) 11:52, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Tisk Tisk.... K6ka (talk | contribs) 22:04, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, User:Toma646 was blocked not because of his or her proficiency in English but because of serial sockpuppeting, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Pszczolka_Maja1/Archive. I guess Wikipedia:Standard offer is applicable here.

Уважаемый, User:Toma646, Вы были заблокированы не за плохой английский, а за Сокпаппетинг, посмотрите Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Pszczolka_Maja1/Archive. Вероятно, Wikipedia:Standard offer (ru:Википедия:Разблокировка бессрочно заблокированных) применим к Вашему случаю. Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:17, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

What is your opinion?

A former arbitrator believes that arbitrators who "don't do much content" aren't good arbitrators. More than half of your arbitrators "don't do much content". I wonder if you too see it as a problem?71.202.123.2 (talk) 15:25, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

  • ArbCom is a full-time job. Active content-writers shouldn't be on there, they should specialize in what they do best. There are a few really excellent Arbs who would be wasting their time writing content — they're contributing to the project and providing it the highest possible benefit of their time just where they are. I do think it would be good to have at least one intelligent advocate for non-administrators on ArbCom, which has been something that has been difficult to achieve in the past. But content writing and problem solving are totally different skills at WP. Carrite (talk) 17:08, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
You don't stop being an editor when you get elected to ArbCom. That's just not how it should work. And to be a good content editor, you do need problem solving. The two are not opposite. KonveyorBelt 17:19, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
  • @Resolute, I am surprised by your arguments. Would you ask a white man why he's standing to speak for African Americans if he isn't one himself?71.202.123.2 (talk) 17:46, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
    • Nice attempt at dodging the pertinent questions. What I am interested in is why you are interested. It is impossible to view this in good faith while you evade scrutiny. Resolute 19:11, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
  • @Carrite, there are quite a few arbitrators who have never done much content. Please see this unsuccessful RFA. Many users who opposed the nomination were complaining about lack of content creation by the nominee. For example Sandstein writes: "No offense intended, but admins should have substantial experience in contributing content." Many arbitrators don't have any "substantial experience in contributing content". Besides ArbCom should not be a full-time job. Casliber was working on content while he served as an arbitrator. Much of so called ArbCom's job is unnecessary and is created in purpose by the very arbitrators who don't do much content. 71.202.123.2 (talk) 17:41, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
I've seen no shortage of cases taken to ArbCom. The process takes a certain length of time (arguably too long, but it is what it is), and when one case is done there are two more to take its place. It is a job which is not conducive to serious content-writing, plain and simple. I'd be interested in hearing a couple Arbs chime in with estimates of how many hours a week it takes... Carrite (talk) 20:04, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
I was thinking the same thing re time stats during a some recent arb process discussion -- I think there have been estimates published and it should be up front somewhere in the arb pages but imagine if its 5-20 hours a week for 2 years -- that's a vocation - like a part-time job -- also would like to see 'receive about ___ amount of e-mail per week/month collectively/individually'. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:21, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Carrite, I am not even talking about doing content after a user is elected, but please see edit count of some arbitrators who have less than 25% of content contributions.
  1. [20]
  2. [21]
  3. [22]
  4. [23]
  5. [24]
  6. [25]
  7. [26]
  8. [27]
Besides as I mentioned earlier at least some arbcom's job is not necessary, and is invented by arbitrators.71.202.123.2 (talk) 21:32, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
There must be some "iron law" to the effect that "bureaucracies, once established, create their own work." Of course they are going to be busy. But, hey, do you really think that New York Brad or Salvio or Roger Davies or Worm That Turned, just to cite four of your examples above, would contribute more to the project by writing a few lame articles that nobody sees instead of doing what they do on ArbCom? I think not. I shudder to think what ArbCom would be like without the "steady old hands." They fuck up from time to time, as do we all, but there is absolutely no reason for them to be doing things which are not maximizations of their "best use" to the project. Carrite (talk) 21:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
If you'd like to know my opinion, Carrite, yes, I am sure that Wikipedia would benefit, if arbitrators do more content, or simply do less "arbitration".71.202.123.2 (talk) 22:09, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Carrite seems to have a 40-15 advantage over Mbz1 here. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:50, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Ironically, 71, Arbcom2013 was often criticized for not doing enough arbitration. Resolute 22:14, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Is it possible that the 2014 arbcom is the WP:WORSTARBCOMEVER ? Strangely enough, the 2013 arbcom also held this title, which it took from the 2012 arbcom. Which, in turn, took it from the 2011 arbcom.
Actually, statistics show that every arbcom is better than all arbcoms that follow, but worse than all preceding arbcoms. And thus every arbcom is the WP:WORSTARBCOMEVER. According to user feedback, anyway. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:21, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
... now, where did I put that white stick? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:38, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Are you suggesting that some members of the current arbcom may have sight in at least one eye? If so, they sound like good choices. I congratulate the electorate. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:14, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Priorities

Content unrelated to writing an encyclopedia

Our government has given you and your millionaire chum Lily Cole's digital boondoggle "Impossible.com" £200,000 of public funding. Presumably that's money they've saved by savagely cutting funds for community organizations and support structures for society's most desperate and vulnerable.

How do you sleep at night? — Scott • talk 18:39, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Probably on a pillow and under some blankets? Perhaps after catching some late night TV and with a glass of water next to his bedside? Not sure if Jimbo is a pajamas or boxers kind of person; or perhaps he sleeps in the nude? That might affect what temperature he keeps the central air at, so I'll go with a safe bet of 74 degrees fahrenheit. I imagine he keeps the curtains open because he wants to be able to look out and see the view from his London home. He likely keeps his cell phone next to the bed in-case of an emergency with one of his numerous projects, including Wikipedia and Wikia, but it's placed on vibrate because he hates being waken to loud sounds. I bet he's a belly sleeper, his right leg usually bends at a slight angle, and his left arm hangs over the bed. His right arm extends toward the far side of the queen size mattress where Kate smiles slightly in her sleep from a happy dream from an early childhood memory. I think it goes something like that.--v/r - TP 20:18, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
TP, do you really imagine that Jimbo sleeps in Florida with Kate? Wrong spouse or wrong location, I'm afraid. Can't be both. - 70.192.139.217 (talk) 21:25, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
Seems Jimmy's article is out of date.--v/r - TP 21:32, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
...I don't believe my own eyes. Is the thing I am reading real? K6ka (talk | contribs) 21:38, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
...No, it's a dream. But you need to let Jimbo have some of those covers back, ok? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:56, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Unhidden. Demiurge1000 - your opinion about my motivation is as noxious as it is incorrect, so keep it to yourself. — Scott • talk 01:10, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Really? Some guy on WO who has a succession of cute little doggies for avatars, and also used to spend some quality time with (that's enough of that for here - Ed) had this to say about your attention-seeking:
"The whole concept of 'food banks' is revolting. There are already food banks all over the UK. They're called 'grocers'. You choose the food you need, and you pay for it with money.
Food banks are intended to keep the poor on a short leash-- and to send them the clear message that, if they were trusted with enough money to live on, they would sooner spend it on beer and cigarettes than on their own hungry children.
They are a way of ignoring poverty, because 'there are always the food banks'
Even more insidiously, they give those who don't have to worry about their next meal a way to imagine themselves as Lady Bountifuls who are 'good people' because they occasionally toss a dented tin of unwanted beans into a donation box."
Something to think on, I guess. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:16, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
Alright, chill guys. Scott - Your question is probably never going to get answered because the way you asked was dickish to begin with. Jimmy isn't part of the UK government and it wasn't his decision to grant himself the money. In my rulebook, you don't avoid asking because the answer might be 'no'. Jimmy asked for the money, it was granted. He has no control over what the government decides are it's priorities or how it distributes money. It's likely the money here was sorted into a "Startups" pot of grant money ages before any decision over which programs to cut was ever made. And frankly, your righteousness is offputting and it isn't going to attract Jimmy's attention. You throw out accusations which destroys from the get-go the trust needed for honest communication. At this point, Jimmy likely wouldn't believe that you wouldn't twist whatever words he gave you to suit the already preconceived vendetta you've got against him; so why bother?

Demiurge1000 - Calling people trolls is also a bit dickish. From Scott's perspective, this is a legitimate social issue that Jimmy's startup has deprived the needy of necessary funds. It's important to him.--v/r - TP 01:34, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Excuse me? It may be important to him, but that doesn't justify trolling about it. If he's incapable of even basic manners, he should keep his opinions where they belong. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:38, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
Look into my eyes, and repeat after me... "Jimmy isn't part of the UK government"... "Jimmy isn't part of the UK government"... you're getting very sleepy... "Jimmy isn't part of the UK government". There, you are very comfortable now, and you are susceptible to my voice. When I count back from three, you will be fully alert and ready to write a wiki biography of Carolyn Doran. Now, three... two... one... wakey-wakey, eyes open, rise and shine! - 2601:B:BB80:E0:CDA:6DA:4814:7DF1 (talk) 03:00, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
Look into my eyes...log in and post.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:07, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Impossible (organisation)

Hi Jimbo, do you think the Impossible organisation/initiative might be notable by Wikipedia's standards? I looked for it at the large disambiguation page Impossible, but couldn't find it there. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:58, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

WP:WEB is the relevant guideline and it imposes quite a high bar. It would be for others to judge based on whether it meets the guideline's requiement for "The content itself has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself". The stricture against "inherited notability" would be relevant as well. Because I have a very strong conflict of interest, having said that Lily is like a daughter to me, it's best if I do no more than point you to the relevant guidelines and some potentially useful sources.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:28, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks! I will take a look over the weekend. I am always fascinated by areas that impose very high bars for notability, WP:SOLDIER is one such. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:31, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
The article exists (just a stub) at Impossible.com - I was just having a look yesterday. →StaniStani  09:06, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
WP:WEB looks like it's just a rehash of WP:GNG; WP:SOLDIER is an essay. Many of the miscellaneous notability guidelines are supposed to offer an alternative to WP:GNG, but too often they are misread as arbitrary restrictions. I think that we should get rid of them all and use solely GNG, adding a generic provision that you can have articles about non-notable subjects if they round out a notable set (as with the British peers). The database of arbitrary decisions presently written into policy could then be fobbed off to a noticeboard. Wnt (talk) 13:23, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
It's now included in the dab page at Impossible. PamD 16:51, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—March 2014

Did you know?
Click this image to see the details.

The template dialog has been simplified to make it faster and easier to add parameter data. Read the user guide for more information.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on changes to the template and image dialogs.

The biggest change in the last few weeks was the redesign of the template dialog. The template dialog now opens in a simplified mode that lists parameters and their descriptions. (The complex multi-item transclusion mode can be reached by clicking on "Show options" from inside the simplified template dialog.) Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing.  With today's update, searching for template parameters will become case-insensitive, and required template parameters will display an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes. In addition to making it quicker and easier to see everything when you edit typical templates, this work was necessary to prepare for the forthcoming simplified citation dialog. The main priority in the coming weeks is building this new citation dialog, with the ultimate goal of providing autofill features for ISBNs, URLs, DOIs and other quick-fills. This will add a new button on the toolbar, with the citation templates available picked by each wiki's community. Concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. Please share your ideas about making referencing quick and easy with the designers.

  • The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. Pages that exist, but are not indexed by the search engine, are treated like non-existent pages (T56361).
  • Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from the paragraph you are editing.
  • The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has been slightly redesigned, to introduce larger buttons. Your suggestions for more significant changes to the special character inserter are still wanted.
  • The page options menu (three bars, next to the Cancel button) has expanded. You can create and edit redirect pages, set page options like __STATICREDIRECT__, __[NO]INDEX__ and __[NO]NEWEDITSECTION__, and more.  New keyboard shortcuts are listed there, and include undoing the last action, clearing formatting, and showing the shortcut help window. If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged.
  • It is easier to edit images. There are more options and they are explained better. If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size.  You can now set image sizes to the default, if another size was previously specified. Full support for upright sizing systems, which more readily adapt image sizes to the reader's screen size, is planned.
  • VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. These "slugs" are now smaller than normal blank lines, and are animated to be different from actual blank lines.
  • You can use the Ctrl+Alt+S or ⌘ Command+⌥ Option+S shortcuts to open the save window, and you can preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window.
  • After community requests, VisualEditor has been deployed to the Interlingual Occidental Wikipedia, the Portuguese Wikibooks, and the French Wikiversity.
  • Any community can ask for custom icons for their language in the character formatting menu (bold, italic, etc.) by making a request on Bugzilla or by contacting Product Manager James Forrester.

The developers apologize for a regression bug with the deployment on 6 March 2014, which caused the incorrect removal of |upright size definitions on a handful of pages on the English Wikipedia, among others. The root cause was fixed, and the broken pages were fixed soon after.

Looking ahead:  Several template dialogs will become more compact. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. You will be able to see the Table of Contents change live as you edit the page, rather than it being hidden. In-line language setting (dir="rtl") may be offered to a few Wikipedias soon.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on 19 April 2014 at 2000 UTC. Thank you! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
We appreciate all you work Jimmy. -Movimiento Tijuana Innovadora TijuanaInnovadora (talk) 00:34, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Access to WikiProject article quality tables

Neither CBM and Theopolisme seem to be reachable, so I've had problems getting data on articles at certain classes, from the "X articles by quality and importance" tables that every WikiProject uses. I've seen a few unanswered comments around where other users are "forbidden" from getting data, myself amongst them. I recently noticed it while revising/updating the WikiProject Poetry page's "recognized content" section, being told that it (the data) might exist but the server has been instructed not to let you reach it. and wonder why this past week this problem popped up (when it never had before). This only seems to have been a problem in the last few days. I always was able to generate lists with this tool last week. Would someone fix this? --ColonelHenry (talk) 14:20, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't know about this specific problem but I get error messages all of the time from http://tools.wmflabs.org/ (sometimes, it's all of the time) when inquiring about basic things like edit counts (and more complicated queries). I assume it is part of the migration of Wikipedia tools over to wmflabs but it would be nice to receive some response from the editors in charge of this tool. Liz Read! Talk! 16:16, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Semi Protected indef but move protection expiring?

What is this? Do we not have an open door? Also, why is the move protection expiring? KonveyorBelt 18:57, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I suspect that the administrator who semiprotected the page meant to semiprotect for a limited time and leave the move protection indefinite, and inadvertently got them reversed. I've fixed it to what I am pretty sure was intended. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:12, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes, thank you, that's obviously what I wanted. Jehochman Talk 20:52, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Autofixing cites

As discussed last month, I am working to "autofix" (or auto-correct) about 10,000 pages for various invalid cite parameters in the wp:CS1 Lua-based cite templates. I have created a working Lua prototype, to begin comparing the results when a citation has been autofixed for simpler display. Compare the sample results:

  • {{cite web |title=Test1 |last=Doe |pages=3--4|Guardian|http://z |office=London}}
autofix:
current: Doe. "Test1". pp. 3--4. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help); Text "Guardian" ignored (help); Text "http://z" ignored (help)

Note, in the above autofixed example, the missing "url=" parameter is set with the text "http://z" from the 5th parameter, and linked to title "Test1" while the double-hyphen in pages "3--4" is filtered as a single dash, 3–4. Next, the 'Guardian' is shown, followed by "office: London" as extra text. By comparison, the current cite is awash in a sea of alarming red-error messages which overpower the text but demand attention to the simple details which have been quietly autofixed in the first case. I, personally, have been distracted by so much red-error text, as focused on fixing red-messages while other, more important, errors remain in the nearby text of an article.

Why Bot fixes have not worked: Many people had claimed that Bot-driven updates would correct most invalid cites, but after a whole year, it has not happened. I think a major problem is the risk of mis-judging the invalid cite parameters and having a Bot "permanently" update the page in a manner contrary to the original cite intention. That risk has had a chilling effect, and scares a Bot programmer to not attempt every automated correction. By contrast, an autofixed cite is a relatively temporary change, altering the displayed page but not actually storing the results, and hence, a "bug" in autofixing can be improved by revising the Lua-based templates, to re-display a better autofixed result when a page is viewed later. The risk in autofixing is much lower, because the original invalid cite data is still available to re-autofix and redisplay, unlike the Bot-updated pages which hide the original cite in the prior revision and hinder the ability to re-fix a mistaken automated update. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:17, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Handles a hundred respell rules: Although the autofixing of invalid cite parameters appears to be a workable solution to auto-correct 10,000 pages for common typos, it seems to require over 100 possible misspellings (or respelled aliases) for Lua to catch the vast majority of problems, such as spelling "url=" as capital "Url=" or people using "web=" to set the URL address link. Many respell keywords can be detected by checking prefix/suffix letters of each parameter name, where "author=" can be detected by checking prefix/suffix combinations of "au__or" or "a__hor" to match invalid names: "autor=" or "arthor=" or "auther=" or "auhtor=" etc. For some parameters, there is a common respelled form, such as "published=" often used for "publisher=" along with rare misspellings like "publlisher=" or "pulbisher" or "pubsher" etc. See in example below:

  • Example: {cite web/auto |last=Doe|titolo=Title|Url=//:x|dtae=May 2011|pubsher=BBC |vol=IV|pg=9 |otters=Fred Smith|translator=Mary Dohh |locaiton=London |First=Tom |ediottor1-last=Smith, Dee|BBC News}}
  • autofixed:
  • currently: Doe. Translated by Mary Dohh. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help); Text "BBC News" ignored (help); Unknown parameter |First= ignored (|first= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |Url= ignored (|url= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |pubsher= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help)

Although few pages have contained so many invalid parameters (some have), the above example shows many of the common typos, such as "vol=" for "volume=" (and even rare "dtae=" for "date="), which occur in more than 1,000 pages. However, the autofix algorithms will correct hundreds of potential problems in over 10,000 live pages, including hundreds of draft pages in user-space. It detected invalid "pubsher=" as the "publisher=" parameter, while autofixing over 13 red-error messages, to allow live typesetting of the page as if nothing much was a problem for readers. -Wikid77 06:04, 10 March, 15:52, 11 March, 08:30, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Reasons for autofixing: I guess I forgot to explain why autofixing of cites is preferable to those red-error messages, which do not inspire people to fix cite errors. Well, most users are readers (not writers) of pages, and they are not motivated to edit a page just because a problem is tagged with a red-error message. Also, beyond the backlog of over 10,000 prior pages containing invalid cite parameters from months (or years) ago, we seem to get dozens of more invalid pages every week. Unless autofixing is used to correct the minor typos (and suppress trivial error messages), it would take 3-5 years (or longer) to hand-edit the pages to fix invalid cite parameters and remove red-error messages from pages, including many major articles where cite typos have been recently added. -Wikid77 09:34, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Why autofixing parameters works so well: There are some key reasons why the template parameters can be auto-corrected so quickly, as shown by the amazing success with autofixing the cite parameters in the wp:CS1 cite templates. The actual results, when autofixing the cite parameters, have shown much higher accuracy than many people had imagined. Some major reasons are:

  • parameter names are typically chosen to use whole English words, easy to respell;
  • English words have diverse origins which makes them very different in spelling;
  • template writers often choose unique parameter names to avoid confusion between parameters;
  • many parameter names differ even in the first/last 2 letters;
  • the frequency of parameters follows an 80/20 Rule, with some names used often;
  • Lua-based templates can rapidly match misspelling patterns by regex matches;
  • all those factors lead to parameters which are easy to distinguish, even when greatly misspelled.

By first screening all the correctly spelled parameter names (as with a whitelist), then only the rare misspellings or alias names need to be autofixed. Then by checking in order, first, for the commonly misspelled, frequent-use parameters, the total amount of time to autofix parameters is greatly reduced, as a tiny fraction of the overall processing time needed to handle parameters. Hence, with the CS1 cite templates, the autofixing has been clocked at over 400 auto-corrected cites in 1⁄2 second, or potentially 800 citations autofixed within one extra second of processing time, if a page could hold that many cites. As a spinoff impact, we should consider autofixing many other common templates, for the often misused, or misspelled, parameters. Then almost any half-way recognizable parameters would be accepted for new users, with a minor note to fix the spellings later (or just have a hidden link to an autofix-warning category, since the template parameters would perform when autofixed), but meanwhile, the user will get instant results from close-enough templates on the first try. -Wikid77 19:16, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Cite messages in major articles: The scarring effects of those red-error messages are so common that even the page "Vladimir Putin" had 2 cite error messages, despite 17,000-50,000 recent pageviews per day, which should have inspired other people to fix the cites, but they did not (I did). See pages in category:
   • Category:Pages with citations using unsupported parameters.
There is no reason to imagine that casual readers of pages would even know how to locate the cite templates, to fix the red-error messages, and I suspect many readers would think, "Hey, the Wikipedia people still have not fixed the typos in this Russia page; are they protesting something like the solitary Ukraine athlete at the 2014 Winter Paralympic ceremonies(?), by leaving these errors in the page, as if refusing to update the page any longer". My first impressions of Wikipedia, in mid-2001, led me to imagine the "editorial staff" was backlogged because a misspelled word remained in a page for days (which I checked all week), and it took me a while to IP-edit the page to fix that typo. However, it took me, years later, quite a while to understand how only a relative handful of people are actively correcting grammar and spelling in pages, while others are sidetracked by bickering or logging tons of trivial data into various articles. That is why the recent 9,000 wp:CS1 cite-parameter errors had lasted most of the past year, still not fixed after all these months. Fortunately most pages are rare topics, with only about 90-150 major pages having those red-error messages, most viewed from 3,000x per day to somewhat below 100x per day, as with "Sydney Biddle Barrows" (Mayflower Madam). -Wikid77 05:45, 16 March, 13:26, 21 March, 17:57, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Recent cite corrections to 5,000 articles: In the past 2 weeks, over 3,000 5,000 more pages (of 8,500) have been fixed to remove the red-error messages in cite references, while the debates have continued, about whether cite parameter error messages should be autofixed as minor warnings, including proposed deletion of Template:Cite_web/auto to prevent users from autofixing their mistakes. When checking the red-error messages, to determine which common errors could be autofixed, I have confirmed how numerous pages have contained those error messages for over 3 months, with many spanning back over a whole year. During the past year, there has been a diversion to instead change thousands of wp:CS1 cites to re-specify dates (instead of fixing errors), where parameters "month=May |year=2008" were changed to be "date=May 2008" as a sub-optimization of date formatting. Such side-track activities are also common in software development, where instead of solving major problems or providing new features for users (with "value-added" functionality), a group of developers is quite likely instead to focus on sub-optimization for internal changes to the software, for little glitches which bother them directly (hence the term "navel gazing"). In fact, it seems that any mixed group of people is unlikely to "think big" and instead focus on whatever minor issues catch their attention. The result is a "negative synergy" because while people debate whether big issues should be fixed easily, then more time is burned which could have been focused on handling even bigger issues. A common management solution to such problems is to have competing groups, where a group which dwells on trivial details can be bypassed by a rival group which shifts into larger improvements. The overall concept is to "work smarter rather than harder" and avoid creating busy work which wastes time. Anyway, at this point, many of the glaring cite errors are being removed by various people who use whatever existing tools to try to clear the one-year backlog of red-error messages in cites. -Wikid77 04:26, 18 March, 17:57, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Autofixing URLs which have bar/pipe: An unexpected "spinoff" to handling misspelled parameter names is the instant ability to autofix a URL which has an internal vertical bar/pipe "|" as in Google Translate links containing "&langpair=it|en&u=" for Italian-to-English, where the bar "|en" triggers the parser to see parameter name "en&u=__" as separate text. Even highly experienced users might copy such a whole URL into a template, not remembering to check for internal bar "|" in the URL, but no problem, because the autofixing could detect the split URL (often having an ampersand "&" in the 2nd part), and rejoin the parts as rapidly as autofixing a misspelled "datte=" parameter. More later. Wikid77 16:25, 19 March
Update about reversed URL parts: Several tests have confirmed URL portions could rejoin in scrambled order. The MediaWiki markup parser tends to split a URL containing multiple bars "|" into scrambled parameters, and so the autofix gets the main URL first, but finds the split portions and rejoins them in whatever sequence. Lua gets all numeric parameters in sorted order: {1}, {2}, {3}, {4} (etc.), while Lua currently swaps named parameters in reverse c-b pairs: a, c-b, e-d, g-f, i-h, k-j, (etc.), but there is "method to the Lua madness" and reversed parts could be re-reversed to rejoin URL parts in order, using a tedious algorithm. Fortunately, a common single-split bar "|" always rejoins a URL properly. -Wikid77 21:40, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

If smart templates had memory

Tangent from: #Autofixing cites

Future FYI. Currently, Wikipedia cannot save data values from templates, but there is an optional MediaWiki extension software package which can save variables between templates when reformatting a page. There might be performance problems, but in theory, if templates could pass data to each other, then we could have the duplicate or similar footnotes auto-trim as "ibid" to omit the repeated titles/publisher when a page-cache is being reformatted. I think the Bot User:Citation_bot has been combining some duplicate footnotes and removing extra cites from articles. However, a smart template (with memory) could review perhaps the prior 4 footnotes (each saved separately), and autotrim a new page for the repeated titles/publisher. As a proposed example:

1. ^John Doe (2013). "A Long Chapter Title". Some Book, vol. 3. pp. 56-58. ACME Printing.
2. ^Mary Smith (2005). Another Book. p. 234.
3. ^Doe, 2013. p. 134.

In the above proposed example, the cite templates would remember 4 prior footnotes (in saved variables), and then detect John Doe's book cited 2 footnotes ago, so just autotrim the next footnote as author/year and page number (as a form of auto-ibidem notation). I have worked with similar 4-prior memory groups before, and when a prior case is matched, then the other 3 prior can retain their memories for all repetitions, until a 5th (unique) cite is detected, to overwrite the memory of the "least recently used" (LRU) case in the memory variables. Anyway, the basic concept is to implement template memory, because remembering data is a part of "smart template" operation. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:06, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I like the idea in principle, but if everyone used shortened footnotes then we wouldn't need to consider this. They do an excellent job of condensing references. — Scott • talk 13:28, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
Well, it would probably be easier to teach users to put the shortened author/year/page format, than to get the developers to improve the MediaWiki software with major features, as we still have trivial wp:edit-conflicts on simple changes to adjacent lines, which even a school student could fix in diff3.c. Wikid77 (talk) 22:32, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
  • More duplication outside cite templates: In reconsidering the impact of smart cite templates, to check for duplicate cite titles and publishers, we should also consider creating "smart MediaWiki software" which could check for duplicate text in the wp:reftags <ref>...</ref>, which seems to be where most of the duplication occurs. However, the continued runs with User:Citation_bot, to combine duplicate reftags, might be the best we could get at this point. -Wikid77 15:42, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia - Suggestions

Dear Sir,

I love Wikipedia. I have learnt a lot and it is a brilliant tool. However for a person who is not an expert in any field, some of the content has become so technical that I have difficulty understanding the content, e.g. pages on quantum physics Suggestion: can we have for example, WikiSimple - Wikipedia pages simplified, that is easier for non-techies to understand please, in everyday language so that perhaps even a child can understand. Perhaps even have a WikiYoung (as opposed to WikiJunior which appears to relate to books only, pity!).

Also, I find that certain pages that one would consider complete at a particular date are constantly being updated. Is it possible to see the history of the changes for that particular discrete page rather than a block of changes for more than one Wikipage.

Just some thoughts.

Regards

Monika — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.229.225 (talk) 09:26, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

  • I think Jimbo has been on travel this week, but several of us have noted the increasing complexity of many articles, which add ever-more abstraction of concepts to widen an article for broader coverage of rare cases. Several attempts to simplify wording have been met with hostility over the risk of omitting unusual corner cases of a subject (in n-tuple space!), or perhaps a limit to wp:data hoarding, and now many pages read as total "geekspeak" overrun with technical jargon. Hence, the page "Polygon" must mention the word "polytope" long before "triangle" or "hexagon" or "octagon". Even many sports articles fail to explain the score-board systems, such as RHE (runs/hits/errors) numbers. I still recommend writing the clarified versions as pages on Simple English Wikipedia, where the word "simple" refers to the vocabulary used and does not limit topics to only simple treatment. We also tried to branch into a "Micropaedia" of short, explanatory blurbs about major topics, but that idea was met with numerous objections. Perhaps even harder than writing simple explanations of complex topics, it is a struggle to convey to some people why simplicity even matters. The Micropaedia format would have encouraged thousands of editors to write simple summaries about perhaps 300,000 common topics. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:56, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
The Micropaedia approach works, and has been taken already - the article points to simple polygon right off, and regular polygon later. I think an argument can be made for simple regular polygon to be a created as a separate article again, where beginners can be introduced to the very basics of triangles and squares and such. The navigation (and some of these articles) could be better. Wnt (talk) 18:59, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
Hi, there is a proposal at meta:Wikikids (not Wikids :), which would be a project analogous to Wikijunior if accepted someday.···Vanischenu (mc/talk) 20:23, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

I think Monika raises a very good point, as complexity not confined just to quantum physicians and scientific subjects but many others as well. Sometimes it is as if articles are written by committees of people who don't like each other. Coretheapple (talk) 17:50, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

There's a discussion at WikiProject Biology about the jargon added to the article on Cell (biology) about this. If I didn't know anything about astronomy, most of these articles on various stars would drive me away. I feel sorry for 4th graders doing school papers and thinking "I wanna be a scientist" and then happening on an article about a volcano saying This diatreme contains a small plug-like body of nepheline syenite that is about 30 meters (98 ft) in diameter and is choked with variety of angular to subangular xenoliths and autoliths or trying to learn about cell mitochondria and facing: Chlorplast thylakoids constitute earth's most abundant and yet unique phospholid-defficient biomembrane system containing largely a inverted-hexagonal cylinderical micellar phase-forming monogalactosyl diglyceride (MGDG). However, total lipid-extract of thylakoid membranes forms aqeous lipid bilayer organisation, as also native thylakoid membranes - was revealed by NMR and TEM studies. Add to the list of things Wikipedia is not...not a resource for kids to learn more about science, math, and other stuff unless they had a Ph.D. at age 8.--ColonelHenry (talk) 22:33, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Write a simple overview of quantum physics

I glanced at "simple:Quantum mechanics" (QM) on the Simple English Wikipedia, but even that page seems to ramble without providing a clear, balanced overview about "quantum mechanics" (versus traditional "classical mechanics"). However, because the general topic seems so extensive in the various facets (physics, chemistry, and math formulas), I am thinking we should write an essay "wp:How to explain quantum physics" as an exercise in writing pages intended for general readers. I am too tired to work on that essay yet, but one easy tactic (to keep the wording simple) is to limit sentences to just 4 prepositions each. Also, a teacher has warned to avoid tedious words (such as "complex") which tend to discourage potential readers as warnings of difficult thinking will be required. More later. -Wikid77 01:01, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

This list of introductory articles, including "Introduction to quantum mechanics", might be helpful.
Category:Glossaries, including "Glossary of quantum philosophy", might be helpful.
—Wavelength (talk) 01:38, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the links. Those pages also show a tendency to dive into rambling details, without giving an overall "overview" of quantum physics. So, the essay could emphasize this aspect, where explanations tend to either launch into detailed descriptions about light waves (frequency and photons) or follow the history of quantum mechanics as how it was developed over a period of several decades. It would be interesting to try explaining the major concepts in perhaps 10 paragraphs, because excessive tangents would likely consume too many paragraphs (or create very large paragraphs!). -Wikid77 10:14, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law. JohnCD (talk) 10:58, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
As soon as somebody writes a clear explanation of quantum physics, the universe will cease existing. Fortunately, we are all quite safe against this possibility.Jehochman Talk 11:07, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Somebody already did, and that universe did stop existing, as soon as somebody read it. This happens all the time, and we were simultaneously never, and always, in danger. Surprised you didn't know that. Begoon talk 16:23, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
My Google search for quantum nutshell reported about 850,000 results, including Quantum Enigma » In a Nutshell. My Google search for quantum simplified reported about 11,300,000 results, including The World of Quantum Mechanics Made Simple ~ An Animated Guide - Part 1 (1/6) - YouTube (11:49).
—Wavelength (talk) 16:38, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Those webpages will be good to compare, when thinking about the core concepts to cover in a simplified overview. I have already decided to mention the various, refined experiments which led to new ideas about the structure of the atom and the interactions of subatomic particles. I see the medical articles are also severely cryptic, and seem to require the typical reader to have an M.D. or at least extensive pre-med background. -Wikid77 15:42, 25 March, 08:35, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Change.org Comments By Jimbo Wales 23rd March

I wouldn't normally dream of contributing on this page, but having read the comments referred in my section title regarding that rather daft petition, I just wanted to say thanks for such a measured and direct response. This does wikipedia lots of good.

"More of this sort of thing" -Roxy the dog (resonate) 12:05, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


  • Presumably, you are speaking about THIS.

Petition to JW: "Create and enforce new policies that allow for true scientific discourse about holistic approaches to healing."

JW Reply: "No, you have to be kidding me. Every single person who signed this petition needs to go back to check their premises and think harder about what it means to be honest, factual, truthful.

"Wikipedia's policies around this kind of thing are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals - that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately.

"What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of 'true scientific discourse.' It isn't."

Agreed that this is on-target. Carrite (talk) 15:29, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, that is what I am referring to, thx. (I've checked my garage, now I'm going to check the rest of my premises) -Roxy the dog (resonate) 16:43, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
Roxy the dog, I wonder why did you say: "I wouldn't normally dream of contributing on this page"? Thanks.71.202.123.2 (talk) 16:46, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Ping @Montanabw since this piece also mentions the "unicorn lobby", with which she has long been locked in a struggle for scientific truth and basic common sense. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:50, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Science as Falsification (1963) by Karl Popper should be required reading for the people who have signed the petition. But it probably won't be.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 19:56, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
Unicorns? You rang? It's not [just unicorns, it's also pink and rainbow ponies and fairytale pegasi. All of which routinely seem to inhabit the bodies of real horses. Montanabw(talk) 21:19, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
It always seemed to me that the convenient added ability of pegasi to fly over tall or wide obstacles, plus their assorted other magical powers, wouldn't make up for the additional cost of having to buy custom-built stabling facilities four times normal size. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:32, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
To respond to IP 71 above who asked I said "I wouldn't normally dream of contributing on this page" - it is because this page belongs to one of the founders of the coven, serious topics are discussed here by intelligent and forthright people, and I'd rather not have the spotlight on my own inadequacies, and poor editing record. I do not propose to further comment on that subject. I must now rush off to feed the centaurs. -Roxy the dog (resonate) 22:30, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
I suppose it's useful to check the articles from the petition: "As a result, people who are interested in the benefits of Energy Medicine, Energy Psychology,[28] and specific approaches such as the Emotional Freedom Techniques, Thought Field Therapy and the Tapas Acupressure Technique, turn to your pages, trust what they read, and do not pursue getting help from these approaches which research has, in fact, proven to be of great benefit to many." I don't see any obvious surprises, though. Wnt (talk) 14:08, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
It is worth noting though that a too-skeptical approach isn't a good thing for skepticism. For example, an application of the ever-overbearing, ever-unreasonable WP:MEDRS to Tapas Acupressure Technique removed[29][30] all mention of $2.1 million in government money given to Kaiser Permanente to study this proprietary nonsense by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Now having seen some of the good grant proposals that don't get funded, and knowing how far that money could go in a legitimate lab, it really angers me that it was doled out by a center which seemed to be seeking to test really absurd "alternative" practices rather than trying to screen a wide range of cheap and time-honored herbal preparations from traditional Chinese medicine. An article about medicine, and especially about pseudo-science, is not all about medicine, and its sole purpose should not be to serve the medical lobby in pushing its point of view. Wnt (talk) 14:48, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject Bacon

Hello, Jimbo Wales.

You are invited to join WikiProject Bacon, a WikiProject and resource dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of bacon and bacon-related topics.

To join the project, just add your name to the member list. NorthAmerica1000 02:07, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

For totally owning those stupid "holistic medicine" nuts, and not letting them (or anyone else) promote their crackpot theories without evidence.

Jinkinson talk to me 12:12, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

El Reg (sic) sees the light, is welcomed back to the Temple of the Mind

Pott, Trevor (25 March 2014). "Schoolkids given WORLD'S CHEAPEST TABLETS: Is it really that hard to swallow?". The Register. (in their "sysadmin blog" section, which of course is more reliable than "special report"...)

"... Encarta may be history, but today we can download the totality of Wikipedia for offline access. ... Take some time to look up things you don't understand in Wikipedia and get lost chasing links and learning.

"... A 'worthless', low spec, outdated-before-it-is-launched £30 tablet that no person from the developed world would ever want can contain dozens of times more information than Encarta 1994. When and where internet access is available, it can give those children access to all of humanity's collected knowledge." (emphases in the original, which mentions Project Gutenberg first)

I'm sure that last phrase sounds vaguely familiar...

It seems some parts of "El Reg" are moving on from the obsession with generating regular "flame of the week" material that I found so entertaining when I was a teenager. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:38, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

The obsession is mostly courtesy Andrew Orlowski looking to rack up a freelance click-troll piece. The Register is odd editorially - basically, a bunch of freelancers pitch pieces, some of which are insanely awful and some of which are great. So not quite Forbes/Examiner, but rather more varied than the conventional news site. I have friends who write for it who I'd happily talk to about Wikipedia for el Reg - David Gerard (talk) 22:27, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

You must know

Legal threats have no meaning, when an admin violates rules of Wikipedia on highest level. You must know and you can ask the question (Jimbo Wales). Not anarchy (knowledge must be - not violation from the side of any admin). Use of personal message instead protocol (template) - super violation. Do not touch (the admin must get warning). If not anarchy. 128.73.115.165 (talk) 21:42, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

You must know: I have no idea what you are talking about. If you have a specific complaint, it is best to discuss it using specific diffs.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:44, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

If an administrator abuses administrative powers, these powers can be removed. Administrators may be removed by Jimbo Wales, by stewards, or by a ruling of the Arbitration Committee. At their discretion, lesser penalties may also be assessed against problematic administrators, including the restriction of their use of certain functions or placement on administrative probation. The technical ability to remove administrator status rests with bureaucrats, stewards and Jimmy Wales. - 128.73.115.165 (talk) 22:02, 26 March 2014 (UTC).

Right, so the next step is for you to present evidence, using diffs, that an administrator has abused their administrative powers. Yes? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:09, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Note: the reference to "legal threats" above is likely because this user, who has been blocked indefinitely under the name Need1521, issued legal threats to the blocking admin under another IP address. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 23:18, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Requesting your opinion on a very controversial and high profile AFD.

The AFD is here. Having your majesty weigh in there, King Jimbo, would be greatly appreciated, if you don't mind (since you are, after all, the constitutional monarch). Jinkinson talk to me 02:10, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I have no strong opinion about the particulars. There is no reason why, in principle, there cannot be an article about a set of conspiracy theories. (We have for example: John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.) But such an article needs to be well-researched and encyclopedic - i.e. there need to be reliable third party sources confirming notability, etc. Lacking that, such an article probably could be deleted.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:38, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Impossible.com application held by government

Jimmy, given that you've thrown much public support to Lily Cole's Impossible.com, and your wife's Freud Communications added PR muscle behind it, I'm publicly notifying you here that the UK Nesta office refuses to share Impossible.com's application papers that resulted in the project receiving a £200,000 grant. Since you are a champion of open government, perhaps you could orchestrate an end-around the secretive government and personally convince Ms. Cole to release the application documents to The Register and/or post them on Wikisource or Wikimedia Commons? Would you do that, please? - 50.146.162.25 (talk) 12:50, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

This discussion is not relevant to Wikipedia. I recommend you take it elsewhere. The article in The Register is typical of them - lots of sneering innuendo that doesn't really stand up to a moment's scrutiny. I've reminded Lily that Andrew Orlowski once trumpted a claim that Wikipedia was "Khmer Rouge in diapers". This is not a serious debate. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:10, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
I agree, the question, as framed, isn't appropriate to wikipedia. But, hey, it's your personal talkpage, so asking your opinion in this open-house format might be ok, no? Do you think it's ok for documents relating to a large government grant like this to be hard to access, if they are? That's not something I'd imagine you'd approve of, given what I know of your passion for openness. If the question seems personal to you, that's not necessarily the fault of the questioner. Begoon talk 18:08, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
If you are asking me my philosophical position on the transparency of government grants, then I will say yes, there should be significant transparency. It's important to note, though, that the reason the FOIA request failed is that the grant came from Nesta, which is not the government but rather a charity. It has a big endowment which did not come from the government but from the lottery, which is operated by the Camelot Group and licensed and regulated by the government, including a requirement that 28% of revenue go to good causes. What level of transparency should there be around that? Again, a very interesting philosophical question and were I to have anything at all to do with any of these organizations I would recommend that they pursue very transparent policies.
But as you can see now that we're into the details, none of this is what the original poster was really after.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:57, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the answer, Jimmy. That does make some things clearer. Sorry about the diversion below. I didn't intend that. Recognising a genuine question when tempers are running high can be difficult. I'm glad you were able to do so. Some folks can't, and I hold no hard feelings for that. Begoon talk 18:59, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't mind Begoon's questions, as they seem to be moving in the direction of discussing philosophical matters rather than misstating facts to try to make me look like a hypocrite (the original poster is the one who did that). I still think this page is not the right place for this discussion, as it has virtually nothing to do with Wikipedia.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:03, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This is not a chatroom. You can email Jimmy if you want to, and he will answer if he wants to. Otherwise, please extend to him the same courtesy as any other user and do not start discussion topics that are unrelated to the encyclopedia and potentially unwelcome. Jehochman Talk 18:45, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Ok. It says it's open house. Maybe you wrote that. Or maybe you're sticking your beak in unwarrantedly. Hard to say, really. I doubt it's your call, though. Begoon talk 18:53, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
It not hard at all to understand what's going on here. You need to treat other people on Wikipedia as human beings, rather than avatars in a shoot-em-up game. Jehochman Talk 18:56, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
If you interfered with a third party conversation on my talkpage like this, I'd have you banned. I hope Jimmy will be more lenient. Begoon talk 19:01, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
1) Talk page bans are informal requests that cannot be enforced, 2) Jimmy's page is often answered by third party 'helpers', and 3) Based on Jimmy's response above, I believe that you'd face the greater chance of a talk page ban if Jimmy were to ever give one.--v/r - TP 19:13, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
You're lovely. Wikilawyering is beautiful. The world will appreciate it one day. I'm done here now. Enjoy. Begoon talk 19:30, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Wikilawyering? Is that your go-to retort when someone points out the obvious to you?--v/r - TP 19:36, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
No. But I really am done here now. Have a nice day, Begoon talk 19:44, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Re: "Talk page bans are informal requests that cannot be enforced", go ahead and keep posting to a user's talk page after they have told you not to, and you will have a nice peaceful 24-hour block to contemplate the question of whether talk page bans are informal requests that cannot be enforced. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:48, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Show me the policy. I can show you pages of ANI threads specifically about talk page bans. Unless there is a formal interaction ban by the community, administrators will not block because someone said "U banzed from muh page yo." Users don't own their talk pages. It is considered polite to respect a talk page ban but not required. And there are quite a few accepted exemptions including warnings and ANI notices. An administrator who blocked an editor for violating a talk page 'ban' by the talk page owner would certainly be questioned about their suitability in the role. Administrator's enforce community decisions. There is no community involvement in a talk page ban and so tool use is wholly inappropriate. WP:User pages: "If a user asks you not to edit their user pages, it is probably sensible to respect their requests (although a user cannot avoid administrator attention or appropriate project notices and communications by merely demanding their talk page is not posted to)." Do you read an explicit rule there? I read an implicit request.--v/r - TP 19:57, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
They may not block for violation of a talk page ban, but they will for disruption and hounding, which stalking a talk page may certainly include. KonveyorBelt 20:25, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Then it wouldn't be a block for a talk page ban violation, now would it? It'd be a harassment block which has it's own set of standards of which ignoring a 'talk page ban' isn't one of them.--v/r - TP 20:32, 26 March 2014 (UTC) Which really distracts from which central point which is: Jehochman has sided with Jimmy whereas Begoon has sided with the OP. Who do you think Jimmy would 'talk page ban' if he were to do so?--v/r - TP 20:35, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Still, the actions in which a user takes in ignoring a talk page block, like hounding the user and personally attacking him could fall under certain standards for "harassment". KonveyorBelt 20:39, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Like I said, go ahead and keep posting to a user's talk page after they have told you not to, and you will have a nice peaceful 24-hour block to contemplate the question of whether talk page bans are informal requests that cannot be enforced. If and when that happens, feel free to consider it a harassment block instead of a block for a talk page ban violation, and the rest of us will feel free to mock you for silly wikilawyering. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:43, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
If you say it enough times, it'll come true? Have you ever blocked someone for a talk page ban? No? Have you see it? No? Got policy to support your claim? No? You've got nothing but insistence that it is so. You're being silly. The issues that you say will get someone blocked are issues in themselves that would earn much more than a talk page ban. Someone involved in the harassment, hounding, and personal attacks which would earn a 'talk page ban' would actually have earned much more before such a talk page ban was even enacted. So what's left to talk page ban? I'll tell you, it's users who don't get along but are not violating policy. We don't block users for not getting along. And so we don't block for talk page 'ban' violations. If someone was doing all the things you said they are doing to get a talk page violation, they would've been given an interaction ban and so a talk page ban wouldn't be necessary from the start. And if all of those things are happening after the talk page ban to earn the block, than what was the original reason for a talk page ban? I don't need to Wikilawyer, logic simply doesn't support you. You're in a causality loop.--v/r - TP 20:53, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't have the least idea what you are talking about. But the idea that it's a great thing to do nice things for others with no expectation of any particular return does not imply that one must do every random thing that anyone asks. I'm sorry if I disappointed you in some way and if you can be more specific, I can either do the thing you are talking about, or try to explain to you why I won't.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:00, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
I am reminded of an incident regarding TV chef Ina Garten, a BLP I have on my watch list. The woman receives far more requests to assist charities than she can possibly agree to. A sick child asked for something through Make-A-Wish which she couldn't fit into her schedule. So she got pilloried online for weeks for something she didn't do, and for about two years, SPA editors tried to add that tempest-in-a-teapot to her biography over and over again. Well, not on my watch, but how about the BLPs that aren't watched? So, it seems that you, Jimbo, have something in common with Ina Garten. Trolling. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 21:36, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
It is a very common modern problem for anyone the least bit in the public eye - and many who are not.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:39, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

So, "the discussion is not relevant to Wikipedia", according to Wales. I wonder, then, if someone were to come along to this Talk page and say...

When I searched for Lily Cole, who doesn't much use twitter or facebook, klout told me that she's influential on several topics including, much to my surprise "World of Warcraft". This turns out to be because there was some kind of commercial for the Body Shop called "WOW! project" and her line of makeup is featured.

...we would rightly say that that sort of out-of-left-field discussion of Lily Cole's Klout score is not relevant to Wikipedia, and therefore shouldn't have been placed on this Talk page. Is that correct, Mr. Wales? - 50.146.203.48 (talk) 23:08, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Kind of the other way round. Someone else asked Jimbo for his opinion of this Klout thing, and he listed some concerns, drawbacks and problems with it, in quite some detail; also including its relevance (or not) to Wikipedia. One of the examples used seems to be someone he knows. So...? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:54, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

LinkedIn group - again

Hi Jimbo, - may I ask again that I be made an additional admin for the LinkedIn group? There is a lot of spam and there's no way to remove it, because it appears you're the only administrator of the group. There are definitely interested/potential Wikipedians on the group, so having spam (and the people who harvest addresses) is a detriment to Wikipedia. (My name on LinkedIn is: Bob Kosovsky). Thanks for anything you can do. -- kosboot (talk) 12:52, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I'm not seeing you as a member of the group. Are we talking about the same group? This one?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:10, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
No, it's this one: https://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=39542&trk=anet_ug_hm -- kosboot (talk) 17:15, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
While you're there, I would not mind being an admin ('manager') as well (I am at LinkedIn under my name, Brian E. Logan). Bearian (talk) 18:03, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
I've made you both managers. I'm still owner but I'll transfer that to someone at WMF when I get the chance.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:36, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
Many thanks! -- kosboot (talk) 00:15, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

How to request mass message sending

Hello, This situation has me totally baffled. The situation is that Wikipedia, on April fools day, is vandalized excessively. I want to request that a mass message be sent to let Wikipedians know that they should be ready for the giant attack of the vandals. But I do not know how to take the action necessarily or if it is even allowed. Hoping to get this settled with only 5 days left, Happy Attack Dog (you rang?) 15:04, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Sending such a message is not necessary. There are lots of experienced Wikipedians who are familiar with the different sorts of things that occur here every April 1. And although this would not be the attention, sometimes posting too prominent a warning of incoming vandalism has the paradoxical effect of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:48, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
While I agree with Brad about all of that, I'd say that there are some good places to notify active editors without unduly alerting people who may simply take the warning as an invitation to cause trouble. Village Pump is a good place. But there are also places like the sitenotice for logged in users only, or the watchlist, which might be used to good effect. Note well that there have been controversies about these things in the past, so not everyone would agree.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:07, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
Please note that I have addressed appropriate April Fools' Day demeanor here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:03, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
Epic. All must read.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:40, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
Awesome in 2008, Brad, and it remains so today. Ironic detachment is a good April 1 attitude. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 04:16, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
  • See WP:BEANS. Those with experience already know what to do. KonveyorBelt 22:26, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Need help with the C Word (Crimea)

I am a WP:DRN volunteer, and occasionally get requests for advice on my talk page. Today I got a request regarding Crimea that I don't quite know what to do with, and I think it is the sort of thing that may interest Jimbo or at least one of his Loyal Minions Loyal Talk Page Watchers. The request is here and here, but a look at the pages involved (Russia and Ukraine) shows that it goes a lot deeper than that. It touches on how Wikipedia treats disputed territories in general. Any advice would be really helpful; this one is over my head. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:50, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I looked at those, and it's well above my pay grade too. I respect Guy, and if he's asking for help, here, on this, he obviously needs it, and I hope he's getting it, somewhere. Far too often, well meaning contributors are left to act on their "best guess", then crucified for not "getting it right". Pleas for help with consensus like this should be acted upon swiftly, and I'm sorry if all I can do here is bump this for attention. If I knew more, I'd do more. Begoon talk 16:52, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
The dilemma we have now is to deal with something "unprecedented": A country lost control of a seceded area which has already received high media coverage (i.e. no shortage in reliable source) but there is not yet any non-governmental cartographic agency published any updated map to depict the updated status of the area. Should we change the infobox map in the country's article lede to reflect the disputed status of that area? One side believes reports on the disputed area is sufficient to justify the new map. The opposite believes any country map must have real counterpart from any credible cartographic agency. I have no doubt the latter will settle all the editorial disputes. However, I don't think the former breaks any pillar of Wikipedia either. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 01:38, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
Actually, Sameboat - 同舟, I have noted on the Ukraine talk page that it is not merely a matter of the maps, but the fact that, in accepting the maps, it has automatically been accepted that statistics in the infoboxes (population, area of country, number of regions, etc.) are to be split as plus and minus Crimea. That is where WP:OR is really coming into play as there are no reliable secondary sources to justify such changes.
In the second instance, both articles are being treated as current affairs articles and are suffering from WP:UNDUE information bloat. There are articles covering the current affairs developments, which is why I have added hatnotes to the top of the Ukraine article directing readers who are trying to find information on the subject to the correct articles. The Russia article, however, is sporting a current affairs tag. I'm not even going to try to change that as I know, from experience, that such an edit will trigger an edit war. Sadly, both articles are prone to POV hit and run edits already. The high media profile since last year has culminated in unprecedented traffic on both articles (which is spilling over into other Ukraine/Russia articles) with the advent of the Crimean situation.
My understanding of articles dealing explicitly with any given country/nation-state is that are not venues for WP:RECENTISM. They cover more generalised areas of history, culture (and sugar 'n spice things like flora and fauna), sports (snips 'n snails), et al. The articles in question have been turned into a free-for-all for those who haven't managed to get a look in on the current affairs articles. Instead of being informative, they are being turned into complete gobbledygook. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 06:20, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
Can I take it, then, that 'due to lack of administrative interest' (AKA passing the buck), all matters regarding original research in splitting figures with and without Crimea, with and without the territory, number of regions, primary ethnicities and languages are fine by Wikipedia? I can live with contributors being carte blanche to do as they choose in all matters Eastern European (even the fact that basic principles such as civility, properly assessed consensus, personal attacks and harassment are going to be ignored and that bullies are going to be allowed to run the school because they have the numbers to do so) on the proviso that there is no neutral administrators be allowed input on any level.
When edit warring, ANI and other disputes are brought to the attention of administrators and editors, I think it best that no one touch the cases on grounds of hypocrisy. If the buck stops with local consensus, then it stops with local consensus. The administration has forfeited its right to penalise any contributors on all Eastern European articles simply because you will end up penalising more scapegoats than offenders.
Thank you for all the higher level assistance rendered in this section. I'll let you all get back to the pertinent issues of 'how much I hate it here' and 'remember the good old days when'. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:27, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Going back to the original question, The Washington Post reported five days ago how National Geographic will be treating it in its maps here. Am I missing the point completely to think that is a WP:RS that answers the question? (Genuine question, not sarcastic, btw) DeCausa (talk) 09:42, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
That would only be useful for a "cartographic dispute" section in the Crimean crisis article (if someone doesn't mind the recentism), but the report hardly justifies the new map in Ukraine's infobox. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 15:21, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
I thought you summarised the problem as "A country lost control of a seceded area which has already received high media coverage (i.e. no shortage in reliable source) but there is not yet any non-governmental cartographic agency published any updated map to depict the updated status of the area." National Geographic's statement seemed to me to respond directly to that. But obviously not. DeCausa (talk) 16:59, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
"Russia's annexation of Crimea won't affect maps, cartographers say." [31] USchick (talk) 17:50, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
I think you can all see now why I don't want to touch this with a ten meter pole. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:35, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
Not only that, but the sources cited by editors as Reliable Sources, use Wikipedia maps (that exist only in the imagination of Wikipedia editors). US News [32] uses File:Russian Federation 2014 (orthographic projection) with Crimea annexed.svg an "orthographic projection" that happens to be an original illustration that exists only in someone's fantasy, just like File:Fairy icon.png. It's circular logic to claim that reliable sources are saying something that only exists as Original Reseach on Wikipedia. Surely, this is not the first time something like this happens. What does Wikipedia do in such cases? USchick (talk) 21:32, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't blame admin for not wanting to touch it, but someone needs to step in enforce policy-based decisions. As would now be evident to you, DeCausa, it isn't as cut and dry as having RS for cartographic depictions for disputed regions. Please see the Russia article edit history and corresponding lack of policy-based talk page. Note, also, that the disputed territory map was introduced by some form of vague local consensus prior any RfC [33] (I think the 'consensus' being referenced was this piece of weirdness. Any dissent just gets ignored (or, perhaps, there's been some form of executive decision made that queries regarding policy are considered trolling).
The Ukraine article has only just had split statistics cleaned up. Please see the article edit history. Its talk pages features policy-based gems such as, "Crimea is Russia now. Maps should reflect that reality, like Kosovo does. A big majority in a large voter turnout spoke. Stop the nonsense now please." Both articles have always been the target of POV interest groups and hit and run edits, but unless someone draws the line as to what purpose these articles serve and what purpose they don't serve, plus spells it out for contributors, admin are going to be bombarded with disputes, edit wars and sanctions that'll make the old hostilities look like a dispute about Europop.
Per Sameboat, I understand this to be recentism. Add to that the fact that splitting population numbers, territory and other statistics under the guise of 'facts on the ground' (is this a Wikipedia policy, guideline or just plain bold?) adds up to Wikipedia actually serving the function of being a journalistic resource. What happened to NPOV and secondary sources? I guess that the real question being asked is whether articles on countries should serve as being either on par with, or at least acceptable substitutes for their current affairs counterparts, therefore the current affairs articles are simply being bypassed. Is it, or is it not misusing subject specific formats as a free for all sparring platform without a referee? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:42, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
I still don't see it. It was presented by Sameboat at the top of this thread as a carographical issue when cartographical sources were yet to appear. That seems to me to be fixed by National Geographic. If it's the broader issue of how it should treated in infobox data, text etc. then that's just a prsentational issue of reflecting current WP:RS which clearly identifies a de facto/de jure position. It's just a question of finding an accessible presentation of both. There's no WP:OR in that. DeCausa (talk) 23:01, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
While I still don't see where you're addressing the issue of bloating already byte-heavy articles with WP:RECENTISM, I would appreciate a concrete example of how "just a question of finding an accessible presentation of both" translates from the abstract. Please define 'accessible presentation'. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:53, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
In zh.wp we treat it by stating the infobox statistics only reflect the pre-secession status. To me, subtracting the figures on our own is a definite violation of NOR more than using the new map, so the statistics issue doesn't quite bother me. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 00:25, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
There is no such map from NatGeo. If someone has seen a map, please provide a link. USchick (talk) 02:37, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
I think it would be pedantic to disregard National Geographic's announcement because it is a description in words of its cartographic solution, if that's your point. DeCausa (talk) 09:30, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

That certainly makes more sense to me, Sameboat. If an area is disputed, my understanding is that the automatic spill-off as that of interpreting stats in NOR. Incidentally, if anyone is wondering, I was withholding my vote until a few days ago, at which I voted in support of the new map while expressing serious reservations. Closing the vote would require a neutral admin to look at the votes on the basis of the merits of the discussion. There are a plethora of 'votes' by single purpose IPs (at least one of whom has voted three times) and newbies who only just appeared around the time of the crisis and are mistaking discussion for being a political forum and accusing, harassing and downright bullying anyone who doesn't agree with them. Should anyone be interested, I'm happy to provide a list of dubious contributors.

As an addendum to the last query directed at DeCausa, finding an acceptable presentation presumes that both articles have neutral, collaborative contributors working on them. Unfortunately, while this may be the ideal, it is not the reality. Neutral contributors come in to clean up redundant UNDUE and POV content on occasion. They disappear very quickly when they realise that these articles come under WP:OWN by contributors/editors who pick and choose what is relevant and what is not. I wouldn't call it WP:CHERRY per se, but heavily leaning to being borderline. In all honesty, I seldom care to intervene other than reverting unsourced POV contributions. There are, however, degrees and degrees of shrugging off a bit of dogma. Either they're Wikipedia compliant articles to a tolerable degree, or the information isn't worth the cyberspace it takes up. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:15, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, what you identify is just standard fare in controversial articles. I don't see any policy clarifications needed for that. I still don't understand the OR issue. Article stats would need to reflect the de jure and de facto positions, and yes the potential for ugly crowding is there but that's a prsentational/aesthetic question where the local editors need to find the most accessible way for readers to see it. Again, I don't see it as a policy issue. Are you saying it's OR to present, say, the de facto population of Russia by giving the de jure population plus the Crime population? Clearly not as we will have RS for de jure Russia and RS for Crimea and to ad them together comes within WP:CALC. DeCausa (talk) 09:14, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
There is no policy that deals with what some users find "pedantic," however, there's this policy WP:CBALL. DeCausa, if you don't understand the OR issue, perhaps you should review the arguments on the talk page and on the OR policy. This is not what this discussion is for. USchick (talk) 15:20, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
When I said I didn't "understand", that was (obviously) just a polite way of saying it was nonsense.If you had reviewed the arguments on the talk page and on the OR policy you would have got that and perhaps you might not have posted such a crass comment. DeCausa (talk) 00:11, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps you didn't notice that I'm one of the leading people discussing it on the talk page? If you have something to contribute to the discussion, perhaps you would like to discuss this "nonsense" on the article's talk page? USchick (talk) 00:18, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
"Leading"? I noted several days ago that you're contribution was to repetitively post the exact same simple point (which amounts to a strange mix of illogicality and pedantry) over and over again.DeCausa (talk) 07:52, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
Actually, DeCausa, my interest is that of parity between both articles, and ensuring that the admin position is onside with making changes without accusations of Russophile or Ukrainophile interests being served. Having serious policy-based advice is going to help to diffuse tensions regarding content.
The RfC regarding the use of the map is being submitted to be closed, and there appears to be no doubt that it will be accepted. The next step will be that of splitting stats. If I'm reading your interpretation correctly, under the circumstances WP:RECENTISM is not an issue for the articles given the plethora of WP:RS. The aesthetics are neither here nor there (we have experimented with a couple of stats and, while it isn't exactly pretty, a few tweaks and probably colour coding will make it presentable enough). As for being tagged 'current affairs', is that appropriate? As noted earlier, I've added hatnotes to the top of the Ukraine article, while those editing the Russia article have only just removed the 'current affairs' tag, but have not added hatnotes. Any thoughts on that?
If you can withstand being pushed for a little more input, I'd be grateful if I could pick your brain on the de jure and de facto issue as there's being some confusion expressed as to which applies to which. My understanding is that it's a Ukrainian de jure state, while it is a Russian de facto state, although there have been arguments that the referendum enshrines it as as being a de jure Republic of Russia, and merely a de facto Ukrainian region. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:53, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
Sameboat's right (below) the article talk page is the place for that. However, it's one of those WP discussions where one or two editors doggedly push their perspective whatever is said to them in response and it goes round and round in circles as a result. Sorry, life's too short. I suspect that I'm not alone in reading the discussion that way as there does appear to be a difficulty in recruiting others to contribute to the thread. DeCausa (talk) 08:12, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

I think we should move the discussion back to Ukraine's talk page due to lack of interest from uninvolved editors. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 06:05, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

Because who doesn't need one once in a while? I am Quibilia. (talk) 22:21, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Nom nom nom.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 03:56, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

A ridiculously huge quantity of bottled water for you!

A ridiculously huge quantity of bottled water for you!
(just a reminder!) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:44, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
I hadn't realised until just now, these humanitarian supplies were dispatched as a result of the humanitarian problems caused by past Russian aggression. Click on the image for more info. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:35, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Might interest you, Jimbo

I've only gotten thru about 3 chapters so far, but somehow I thought "Jimbo might be interested in this" as I read it. Michael Lewis's new book Flash Boys. Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:32, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Oh the irony!

At AFC I have just reviewed and declined a submission about a company that advocates abusing Wikipedia for "reputation repair"[1] - WT:Articles for creation/Recover Reputation. The draft does not pass WP:CORP. -- Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:45, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

It gets even more ironic. See How NOT to Fix Your Online Reputation: 5 Tips, Steven W. Giovinco, with the 1st tip being "Don't write your own reviews". Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:33, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
Actually I don't see much of an irony here. His video opposes doing things that usually break the rules. But Wikipedia, being run in a particularly callow, self-destructive and moronic manner, actually allows COI editors to create articles through the Articles for Creation process. This one didn't go through, but because it was not notable. If it met our weak notability guidelines there would be no reason to deny the AfC under the cockamamie rules practiced here. Coretheapple (talk) 15:44, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
Though this is by no means the worst case, I still wish people would learn better than to cyberbully contributors here. Like it or not, the AfC process is being presented as the legitimate way for a company to propose an article on itself. Picking them out to humiliate them because of their particular trade is kind of like picking through the contributions for editors with advanced degrees in mathematics and naming and shaming them whenever their table columns don't add up to 100%. It does do a positive good to enlist people associated with companies to propose useful content about themselves, when (as in this case) we have safeguards to ensure that the ensuring article meets encyclopedic standards. This company may be able to put up a better presentation in the future that has sufficient independent secondary sources, especially if they have enough PR pull to be able to arrange articles to be published in "neutral" media like so many big companies seem to. It might well be that our policy is too lenient, but if so change it, instead of harassing contributors, even commercial contributors, who have followed the rules. Wnt (talk) 16:13, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
Hint taken - I have removed my review comment. I'm not so sure that being welcoming to intentional bright-line violators is a "Good IdeaTM" Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:16, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
It is not. It is, in fact, an open sore. However, it is permitted by policy, and some people derive an income from writing articles for companies, for payment, for submission to the AfC process. Dealing with such persons and their selfish agendas has been a significant administrative burden for Wikipedia, and a major time and energy suck (re "change the policy if you don't like it"). Coretheapple (talk) 17:40, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I did a little bit of work on the article on Reputation management a while back. It often has a seedy element, but there are also legitimate practices. We do have articles on reputation management firms Reputation.com, Brand.com, BrandYourself, and Reputation911. I'm going to do a quick skim to see if some of them need cleanup. CorporateM (Talk) 23:48, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

My understanding, which may be a few years out of date by now, is that Reputation.com/ReputationDefender has a very firm internal policy against editing Wikipedia directly.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:01, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
I doubt they do much work here, given that most of their clients are small businesses and individuals frustrated by forum posts, court records and online reviews that top search results. They charge $1-$3k a year, which is not very much (a corporate general PR budget is usually $8-$20k a month).
The talk page Talk:Reputation.com has a lot of borderline BLP violations. One section called "Rep.com a tool for people who have a problem accepting the truth?" is just a rant and others are emphasizing it as a scam based on obviously non-reliable sources. Ironically, it's the kind of trolling they (depending on your viewpoint) are intended to address and I think we would also want remove or redact it, which an admin may want to consider doing... CorporateM (Talk) 02:21, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
When people pushed for WP:BLP to be made a policy, one of the concessions they seemed eager to make was that it was not a "biographies of living corporations" policy. Also, the use of unreliable sources is permitted on the talk page, because the talk page is a main place where people determine which sources are reliable. While an apparently unsourced allegation about flooding with positive reviews makes me nervous, and here verges on mere soapboxing (which can be removed under policy), it is still a lead for article improvement in that editors should be able to find out whether this company does or does not do such things and improve the article likewise. I can't guarantee an editor in the wrong jurisdication couldn't get into personal trouble this way, but as a matter of policy I cannot approve of muzzling discussion that may be relevant to article development on talk pages to fit a preconception of decorum. Wnt (talk) 15:47, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
Please note: when in doubt, dive. If you look at the implications of some of these patents, you should see plenty to be seriously concerned about. We indeed do need to take seriously the need for people to join together to stop the increase of economic inequality and the consequential erosion of civil liberties in the economic arena. If you want a wealthy class to control all the jobs and give them out only to the people who have never in their lives uttered a bad word against them (as determined by machine) then by all means, do nothing. But otherwise, we need nothing short of an economic constitution that defends the right of all people to have real resources, so that all the gates of employment and publicity are not manned by the robots of a single master. Wnt (talk) 17:11, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
Naturally (like with the company's business model itself) it's a blurry line between muzzling discussions and turning Wikipedia into a forum. Much of the soapboxing has a breadcrumb of truth in reliable sources, but then there's stuff like this:

This company is a complete scam, and everyone knows it. And apparently Wiki is taking "donations" to allow their BS to continue. Apparently they dont have enough "donations" to convince google to remove all traces of their fraud from the internet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.197.125.131 (talk) 10:18, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it is representative of a more general problem regarding the quality and thoughtfulness of discussions everywhere on Wikipedia. CorporateM (Talk) 18:31, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
Well, if you accept that it's OK for you to repost the text of the comment here in order to say that it is wrong, then it should be sufficient at the talk page to reply and point out that this is an unsourced assertion, without the need for admin intervention. Either it's material needing removal or redaction or it isn't; and we should have a high bar for that. Wnt (talk) 00:09, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Reputation.com and Ronen Segev

Jimbo: above you said that Reputation.com has a policy against editing Wikipedia directly, and as ReputationDefender in 2007 they denied editing Ronen Segev,[34] Nonetheless, the entry that "someone kept editing" has since 2007 been a permanently protected redirect via an Office Action, by your order, after Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ronen Segev yielded a "keep" result. None of the previous article history is visible.[35] The redirect leads to Ten O'Clock Classics, a small article currently under Pending Changes control to prevent additions of Priceline-related content (most recent addition on March 12).[36] I should mention that the underlying incident that had Segev using ReputationDefender appears notable; he had a brief news flap after he apparently called Priceline.com 215 times in protest over being charged $953 for a flight he never made, then was put in jail for two days for trying before the charge was dismissed - followed by more sustained publicity about how ReputationDefender's attempt to get a site to take down the story backfired.[37][38][39][40] Now I understand we have a BLP policy, but to my eyes it looks like this action would tend to protect Reputation.com more it is protecting Segev, who I see as the victim of an injustice comparable to any other bogus arrest to stop a protest against a company. So I have to ask: how often has Wikipedia done Office Actions based on Reputation.com's requests? Wnt (talk) 11:19, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

To my knowledge, there have never been any office actions based on requests from Reputation.com/ReputationDefender. Even the example you cite had nothing to do with Reputation.com and to my recollection I never heard from them about that situation. That was ordinary BLP stuff. I think it fairly obvious, by the way, that the "brief news flap" is a classic example of a BLP1E.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:42, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm very glad to hear that! Thank you for responding. Wnt (talk) 20:31, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

The new April 1 guidelines

Let's all have fun today  :) . Count Iblis (talk) 00:47, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

@Count Iblis: I've taken the liberty of removing the "information page" header and replacing it with the humor (or humour) one, just to make sure nobody mistakes your little joke for the real guidelines. Wouldn't be so funny then, eh? ansh666 02:56, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
And I see that Jehochman has made a slight change here :) I'll let the Admins short this out, I will just focus on the contents of the page. Count Iblis (talk) 13:58, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
@Jehochman: was tagging the fake page as policy intentional? Several well-meaning editors were actually confused by it, see the ANI thread about Spartaz. I'd say that that was disruptive, Iblis, but I'm not one to decide such things. ansh666 22:20, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
If true, then that simply means that the joke/prank worked (but I'm not sure about this). Count Iblis (talk) 23:33, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
@Count Iblis: this is definitely not the type of thing that should be joked about. ansh666 00:21, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Tomorrow or at the end of this day, we should elect who gets the "short tempered Admin" reward. Count Iblis (talk) 13:58, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, watch out particularly for those April Fool Ninjas. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:03, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Avoid all contact with them. Count Iblis (talk) 14:29, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

So, who wins? Beyond My Ken, Spartaz, or someone else? Count Iblis (talk) 00:23, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

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Also, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name using four tildes (~~~~); that will automatically produce your username and the date. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Remember, the above links are very helpful, so make sure you check all of them out. All the best, Matty.007 10:10, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

.....what? K6ka (talk | contribs) 12:01, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
.....click on the links. Matty.007 12:08, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Ahh, unscrupulously redirecting editors from what appears to be a valid informational template to somewhere else. ES&L 12:27, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Don't worry, I didn't change the actual template... that would be silly. Matty.007 12:34, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Oh, I get it. Didn't bother to click on the links. Well, I got fooled. K6ka (talk | contribs) 14:24, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Facepalm Supreme facepalm of destiny NFLisAwesome (ZappaOMati's alternate account) 15:13, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Yawn, more wasted bandwidth...--ukexpat (talk) 17:03, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
It's a bit of fun for once a year. Matty.007 17:18, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
That presupposes that it's actually funny - very few AFDay pranks are, and I am afraid that after the spaghetti harvest the bar is set pretty high.--ukexpat (talk) 17:21, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
The spaghetti harvest is too hard to top though, this is just a light hearted jest. Matty.007 17:44, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
For it to be a jest, it would actually have to be funny :-) DP 23:01, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
* lol --TheChampionMan1234 02:42, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Mailing list and Irate

Unclear what the humorous point is supposed to be of this discussion being reposted from several years ago.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:02, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Jimbo, I see that you've blocked User:Irate indefinitely based on some comments he made on IRC. But I only found out about this on the mailing list, and I think it should be discussed on Wikipedia, preferably on WP:AN or WP:AN/I, so that the rest of us can know about it and discuss it. For example, I myself strongly disagree with your block, but if you take this process, of doing it by fiat and only talking about it on the mailing list, those of us who disagree are effectively excluded from the decision. Everyking 03:02, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

You may start a discussion there if you like; I think it will be quite instructive. You could also discuss it here. I think such a discussion might be quite helpful to everyone to clarify the purpose of the website: is it to be a playground for belligerant, illiterate, and unapologetic users (like Irate), or a serious encyclopedia project? --Jimbo Wales 10:47, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

That isn't a fair characterization of the matter. Nobody wants Wikipedia to be a playground for anybody. The question I was raising was one of process, whether it was done correctly or whether it should have been done only on the basis of broader input. But of course it's settled now anyway. Everyking 10:56, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't see what you think was done incorrectly. Everything was by the book. There was an arbcom case, a result, an appeal, a result. There was and continues to be broad community input and support for the process. --Jimbo Wales 11:07, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
Huh? You just banned him because he said something you didn't like in IRC. Everyking 23:01, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes he did. Irate said that he intended to disrupt wikipedia. Everyone who has had any contact with irate knows that this was no idle threat as Irate had already disrupted wikipedia. Jimbo enjoys my support for this action, and I expect the support of everyone else with the exception of Irate and yourself. Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 23:11, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
You're trying to trap me in the box of supporting Irate, but it's not going to happen. All I'm saying is that we should follow process and a permanent ban should not be done purely on the basis of an IRC conversation. I'm not even saying the IRC conversation shouldn't be admissible as evidence! That alone is pretty radical, since there's precedent that IRC and the encyclopedia should be treated as completely separate. Everyking 23:23, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
I am not trying to trap you! you daft thing! Yes IRC and Wikipedia are seperate things, and yes something like "you are a wanker" said on irc shouldn't be grounds for a ban on wikipedia. But "I will disrupt wikipedia" is a different matter. Jimbo banned a disruptive editor who threatened to disrupt again as soon as his current block expired. This is entirely within process. Jimbo has every right to ban anyone he sees fit to. Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 23:33, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Theresa, but I'll go further and say this wasn't just a ban because "he said something I didn't like in irc" nor was it a ban of "anyone I see fit". This is part of our standard operating procedure which sets no new precedent at all.
Everyking's point would be valid if I had randomly banned an otherwise good user for misbehaving in IRC. But Irate was not misbehaving in irc, and that was not at all the point. (And, let's be honest: Everyking surely knows this and is making a silly argument anyway.) The conversation could have taken place in email, on the phone, in the wiki, wherever. The point that a user was protesting his sentence before the ArbCom by making the argument that (a) "the rules are rubbish" and (b) other people's bad behavior justified his own and (c) a clear promise to continue behaving as he always has and (d) a clear rejection of my own suggestion that he hold himself to a higher standard than the rules.
I am quite certain now that this case is going to go down in the "troll version" of the history of Wikipedia as the case where Jimbo randomly banned a perfectly good user because he said something that Jimbo didn't like in irc. Fine. But good users will not be deceived by that sort of nonsense.
Irate was very very very lucky to have been allowed here as long as he was.--Jimbo Wales 10:51, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Well, I think there are cases like this, or there could be, where a user makes a threat on IRC and that is followed by an encyclopedia block. I think C is the only one of your points that could warrant a block. The question is, did Irate make this promise? I mean in the sense that he said he would continue doing what got him banned before. Even in that case I think a block based on that is jumping the gun a bit, but it would be a bit more reasonable than I've previously thought it to be. Everyking 13:42, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
What worries me most: how certain can you be that you are actually speaking with the editor on IRC, rather than some adversary who simply says he is the editor? I've generally avoided IRC over the past 20 years but I tend to think of it as a morass of netsplits, spoofing, flooding, hacking ops etc. Wnt (talk) 17:00, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I'm a little torn here. I am for "process" and I think Everyking mades a good point that Wikipedia in 2014 doesn't need Matt Dillon on a big horse riding around shooting bad guys. On the other hand, it's about damned time that IRC gets reeled in (or better yet, terminated as a quasi-semi-official arm of WP). So: consequences for bad behavior there, that's good. It's a tie. Carrite (talk) 16:34, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Erm, it appears Jimbo banned this user in 2005 (!). Am I missing something that caused this to become an issue today? Resolute 16:53, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Blocked

Stop icon with clock
You have been blocked from editing for a period of 1000000 years for for inappropriately founding Wikipedia, as you did at Wikipedia. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. Your ability to edit your talk page has also been revoked. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you should read the guide to appealing blocks, then contact administrators by submitting a request to the Unblock Ticket Request System.  Epicgenius (talk) 17:24, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

[April Fools!]

  • This is so funny I think I just wet myself. Or maybe not...... Spartaz Humbug! 20:35, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
  • So laugh I forgot to funny. NFLisAwesome (ZappaOMati's alternate account) 21:03, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Outrageous!

I see that Jimbo has given a number of interviews lately. This one is something everyone should see.--Mark Miller (talk) 00:46, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

It's not April Fools Day in Wikipedia time anymore, Mark. Nice try. ansh666 01:04, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
When Jimbo missed a deadline he set himself some time ago, it was decided that the International Date Line should make a detour by moving to Jimbo's location, wrap a few times aroud him and then move back to run along its normal course. This then has the effect of shifting Jimbo's time zone a few days back in time while it doesn't affect anyone else's time zone. Count Iblis (talk) 01:31, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
Let's do the Time Warp again. It's still April 1 in California for another 4 hours...but I did see the time stamp. (by the way, The Rocky Horror Picture Show began screenings at midnight in New York city on April Fools' Day of 1976).--Mark Miller (talk) 03:16, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Because you don't hear it enough

I love it here. I love Wikipedia. It's got its problems - lots of them. It has its issues. It's not perfect. But that, in its way, is the point. It's not a complete encyclopedia, it's an encyclopedia that you, and I, and everyone else on the planet (and maybe people not on it) are welcome to edit, as long as we're trying to make it a better encyclopedia. It is flawed, but that is the essence of humanity's works. So I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this magical, wonderful, flawed, human endeavor. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 19:24, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:30, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you...(Re: Medical pseudoscience on Wikipedia)

... for this. MastCell Talk 17:26, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

See here -Roxy the dog (resonate) 17:46, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
A day late and a dollar short, I guess. But thanks for the link—as always, I was dying to know what Wnt had to say on the subject. :P MastCell Talk 17:53, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
Jimmy, I know you haven't always agreed with all of my decision-making on Wikipedia, but in the unlikely chance that you may read this, given your busy schedule, if you happen to have a .gif of me clapping, please add it to the ones seen here. Kudos. :-) Nightscream (talk) 02:17, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
Although I might be deluded by confirmation bias, I believe I have noticed a recent increase in submissions on ALTMED topics to AFC. Perhaps they are pushing back after Jimbo's response. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:32, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
At least some people who emailed me from the alternative medicine advocacy side of things seemed to misunderstand me to being saying that I think we should delete articles on those topics. Obviously, I don't. Indeed in many cases one of the best public services we can give is to have NPOV coverage of these topics, including that they are not consistent with scientific knowledge.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:09, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
Well put. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 16:00, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

More can be written about the placebo effect theory on alternative medicine. Recent results point to this being far stronger than previously thought possible. See also here. Count Iblis (talk) 01:43, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

What's your point? Many of our articles on alternative medical approaches already discuss the placebo effect in detail. I'm not sure that adding coverage from the Daily Mail would be an improvement. Separately, it's one thing to test the placebo effect in a randomized clinical trial where patients have given informed consent and understand that they may or may not receive an active treatment. It's quite another to sell an alternative "remedy" with false, misleading, or unproven claims about its effectiveness. The latter is typically considered unethical, and legitimate research into the placebo effect shouldn't be used as an implicit justification for it. MastCell Talk 00:43, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

This Arbcom is very slow

One of the Wikipediocracy threads that probably should be at least touched upon here relates to this: Arbcom is multiple weeks late with decisions on their Austrian Economics and Gun Control cases. A fairly straightforward topic ban modification request by Cirt has been ridiculously slow. It doesn't seem their workload is any higher than previous Arbcoms — probably the opposite. What is going on here? Is this impression about Arbcom's slowness to resolve their caseload wrong? If it is not, how do we fix it? (And no, this is not a matter for some random Arbcom talk page because that institution is notoriously cloistered and opaque). Carrite (talk) 17:34, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

What does it matter? The Pedia races, or limps, along, regardless. Is there a "right" amount of time? Sure, a tentative (or at least provisional) resolution of whatever conduct issue is delayed. That might matter to some few but does it matter significantly to many? Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:10, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
  • One of the Wikipediocracy threads that probably should be at least touched upon here...
You mean there are others? Let that conversation stay on that website...it serves a purpose when it stays over there.
A discussion on this subject has occurred on ARBCOM talk pages (several times) and arbitrators and clerks have responded. Decisions on ARBCOM cases are rarely posted at the scheduled time, at least the ones I've read over. I don't see how a conversation about ARBCOM on this talk page will cause them to to move any faster. When you're talking about reaching a consensus decision that could result in topic bans or blocks, I don't think putting pressure on the participants will result in an outcome that is more fair. Liz Read! Talk! 21:01, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
I think the question isn't about forcing a rush to judgment but rather is there something fundamentally wrong with the system that causes the process to be so long. The answer according to some is... who cares if it takes too long? Saffron Blaze (talk) 16:30, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
My perspective is that the process was inordinately long to begin with and now it is "inordinately long and six weeks overdue beyond that." Of course, maybe it's all for the best if they take two cases every January and issue their decisions in December... I can't discount that possibility. Still: things have slowed and deadlines been disregarded and that is a pain in the ass for involved parties. Carrite (talk) 19:11, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
IIRC, one of recently successful electees ran on a platform of not being around much. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:29, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
In that case, the electorate got what it asked for. (Although something Douglas Adams wrote about lizards springs to mind. And no, it wasn't about lizards being sluggish in cold weather like other reptiles.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:00, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Ah, THAT is quite good. I clearly need to buy four books... Carrite (talk) 16:24, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
There are five books in the Hitch-Hiker trilogy. Just sayin'. Guy (Help!) 23:32, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
"I love deadlines. I especially love the whooshing sound they make as they pass by" (Douglas Adams) DP 23:34, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
Train of Thought, meet Derailment of Distraction. And Guy: There are six, if you count And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer; seven if you count the little Young Zaphod Plays It Safe. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 00:47, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
They are not by DNA though, so not canon. Harrumph. Guy (Help!) 07:33, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, the community is always free to set up an alternative ArbCom that doesn't suffer from this problem and recognize that as their ultimate authority. Count Iblis (talk) 15:53, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Comments on ArbCom Slowness

I don't usually agree with Carrite, but Carrite is on the mark about the English ArbCom. The current ArbCom has accepted two cases this year, on Gun control and Austrian economics. Both of them were "combination disputes", where content disputes could not be settled by dispute resolution in the usual way because of conduct issues including persistent personal attacks. These were precisely the type of cases for which ArbCom was set up. There hasn't even been a draft proposed decision in either case yet. As a result, both cases have resulted in new threads being opened at WP:ANI again, which just illustrates that these were cases that were correctly taken to ArbCom in the hope of foreclosing further drama, but also illustrate that the cases aren't being resolved. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:44, 4 April 2014 (UTC) There had indeed been performance problems affecting users of Verizon Communications as a DSL provider in the middle of March, but those were resolved about two weeks ago. If the performance problems were the only issue, then the ArbCom should at least have been able to provide draft proposed decisions. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:44, 4 April 2014 (UTC) I realize that the WMF's highest priority at this point is dealing with paid advocacy editing, and that the WMF is making progress on that front. However, I would ask that the WMF also consider that the ultimate level of dispute resolution in the English language Wikipedia, the ArbCom, is not working effectively. Can the WMF please ask the ArbCom whether, first, it needs some sort of assistance (which is unlikely, but the question should be asked), or, second, there is some unknown reason why it is making no visible progress (and should be reminded that its lack of progress is very visible), or, third, the WMF needs to take unilateral action (having roughly the effect of a receivership), or, fourth, something else should be done? Can the WMF please ask the ArbCom what the problem is and how it can be solved? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:44, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Here's a great idea: let's give them the most intractable problems on Wikipedia, howl for blood every time they come up with a decision we don't like, and simultaneously scream blue murder if it takes them a while to think things through.
Oh, wait, that's how we already do it. Guy (Help!) 07:35, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
I think you are barking up the wrong tree if you expect the WMF to get involved in managing ArbCom. Two cases is peanuts in every possible world of measurement. While the people involved surely feel agonized by delays and uncertainty, in the wider scheme of things it is totally irrelevant and meaningless. Not to say ArbCom shouldn't aspire to resolving cases they accept as efficiently as possible, but to look for divine intervention is to mistake the gravity of the problem. Nathan T 20:36, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

April 2014

Stop icon This is your last warning. The next time you add unsourced material to Wikipedia, as you did at Mzoli's, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. LOLTheChampionMan1234 02:44, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Dude. April Fools is over. And you weren't supposed to use a real template! K6ka (talk | contribs) 11:19, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Villagers torch Frankenfonts castle

There has been a storm of controversy in several other-language WPs, and many German WP (dewiki) users have tried to shut-off the "Typography Refresh" of the Frankenfonts display in Vector skin (&useskin=vector), to stop the serif-font header titles, or arial-font "*" bullets or whatever unusual fonts have been activated. English WP has an RfC in wp:PUMPTECH, see threads:

On French WP, there is a discussion:

The French term re "Typography Refresh" is "nouvelle typographie". I guess it could be predicted these "Wiki-fashion wars" would cause a huge debate among users, worldwide, as a massive distraction because useskin=vector is the most-common browser skin. Clarification: The new fonts vary, for each browser, where Firefox might use a narrow font with crowded letters (such as "example of this"), but some Internet Explorers have wider body font with short letters where "h" looks like "n" (hose/nose), "f" like "t" (offer/otter), but capital "i" looks like ell "l" ("I'll"), so a solution is to change the list of fonts which the browsers are offered. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:40, 4 April, 08:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Why was there no mass messaging to editors-and readers-about such a massive change, the rollout is better than Visual Editor, but still a surprise to many and still not very popular. Thanks, Matty.007 13:42, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
This whole thing is even being noticed outside of here (there's been a few Fast Company articles about, for example). The WMF has really put themselves in a tough spot: If they keep it, there's lots of people who really hate and who knows what they'll do, and there's the people that love it, who'll sorely miss it if it goes away, and who knows what we'll do. At this point, there's not really any good decision. I think that the gadget to return Vector skin to how it was before is the best that they can do. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 13:47, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
I think they should have a vote of readers, that would be interesting. Editors can enable skins, gadgets and the like (though sometimes hard), whereas readers have no such luxuary. Whichever font the readers prefer should be standard, the other an opt-in skin or gadget. Thanks, Matty.007 13:50, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
Question is, how would such a poll be done? If I recall correctly, the Reader Feedback was eliminated due to low participation and not making much headway towards improvements, is there some way to at least minimize that? Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 13:54, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
I don't know if you contributed to the Picture of the Year competition voting on Commons, but that had a pop up box, similar to requests for feedback on sites such as the BBC or the Telegraph. It probably wouldn't be too hard to enable it for all readers to be able to vote. Thanks, Matty.007 13:56, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
That could work. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 14:00, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
@Supernerd11: regarding "there's lots of people who really hate"...Lots is a relative term. Remember how big Wikipedia is. There are more than 400 million readers every month.[41] On English Wikipedia alone, there are more than 30,000 active editors (nearly 3,000 of which make 100+ edits/month).[42] 800+ editors opted-in to the typography beta before it was launched. Having 85 people (as of right now) vote to revert a default change for all of thousands of editors and millions of readers is not really a lot in my view. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:54, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
The readers in general haven't a clue where to complain, lots can't be bothered, and there are only about 30 who have voted that they like it in the same discussion. Thanks, Matty.007 20:09, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
Hm, good point. I was just basing "lots" off of the comments I'd seen at the Village Pump poll, other WMF projects, and the Help Desk; I never thought about all the people who haven't commented. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 20:51, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
Hmm.. (irony mode on), so @Steven (WMF):, what you are saying is that 29,200 (97%) of active editors chose *not* to opt-in to try it. Of the 3% that tryed it, you do not show (here) any figure on how many liked it. So, you roll out a new font based on the fact that AT MOST 3% of active users liked it? Don't tell me that a large silent majority not opposing you is a valid thing, but also large silent majority not supporting you is not. The new font is not too good. But silly arguments hinting that silent majority is on your side... that's really bad. Jimbo, the quality of WMF's helping hands are terrible... you should get better. Really. - Nabla (talk) 00:19, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I'm getting the feeling the big picture issue here is that the developers, both for Flow and for this, think that Wikipedia has to go to some format designed for a phone, with bigger font, more whitespace (I don't know how that fits in), and some different fonts. The problem I have with this is fundamental and more fundamental. To begin with, before I log in and see my usual MonoBook, I only read (with sidebar, as usual) to "great battle", with a sentence of the TFA summary missing, before scrolling down. With my MonoBook I read down to "More featured articles..." On an article I was editing, I see two more paragraphs with my settings. I'll avoid going on long about how this benefits deletionism and harms the encyclopedia, or the general undesirability of many mobile platforms to free culture; let's just say this is disturbing. This is supposed to be the good version of Wikipedia, the non-mobile version, and we should retain a format that packs our screens with information. Wnt (talk) 21:09, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
Something like this, but even more narrow ...
Eh, never thought I will ever start editing this page, but: you say Wnt, bigger font, more whitespace - I got on the contrary a much smaller and with less whitespace, ... how weird. Squeezed up, 4 times as high then wide. The lines are thinner, thickness of hair. It kind of vibrates when I trying to read it. Hafspajen (talk) 00:43, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Well don't sit on the washing machine while you're editing! PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 01:07, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Paley, I am not sitting on the washing machine, I just feel like I was... Hafspajen (talk) 01:10, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
  • The argument they gave for not even testing this design was that no test could accommodate all the possibilities. This is a defense of willful arrogance. It is the equivalent of an editor saying, since I could not search all possible sources, I said whatever I wanted and didn't bother doing a search. Some few of us tried to comment on the relevant meta talk page during the design phase, and as far as I can tell, anyone from outside the circle of designers was ignored or given condescending answers. The WMF exists to serve the community of editors and readers, not to implement their own private ideas. Some aspects of function are relatively esoteric, but the question of what page design works is a matter that every reader and editor can evaluate. DGG ( talk ) 05:11, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
...and have an opinion on. WP is very good at discussing the small stuff to death. When I first saw the font yesterday, yes I didn't know about it, yes it was a surprise, yes I didn't (don't) really like it, but that's just an opinion. Ultimately it doesn't really matter. Looking at the screeds of text at Village Pump and elsewhere on this (for and against) I'm just glad that there's some aspects of WP where decisions are just made, without having to defer to the interminable search for community consensus. DeCausa (talk) 08:47, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
I take issue with your suggestion that "the question of what page design works is a matter that every reader and editor can evaluate". The Australian education minister, Christopher Pyne, has suggested that because everyone has been through the school system at some point, everyone thinks they're an expert on education and curriculum. In the same way, although everyone interacts with web pages, magazines etc. on a regular basis, that doesn't make everyone a design expert. People often know what they themselves think would look good, but when it comes to finding a design to please the masses, people tend to get it wrong. That's where real design experts come in. — This, that and the other (talk) 08:54, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Yes, all I can personally know about either education or interface is the effect on me; to find out the effect on others, some level of actual investigation is needed. Further, I can never know that I am not deceiving myself, and my true reactions are not what I think they are, and the my feelings and my behavior might be discordant. All the experiences of my life--and there is no other basis for any of us to judge anything) however convince me that others, even those calling themselves experts, regardless of credentials, are likely to know even less, except through the medium of disciplined research presented in a way that the literate can understand and evaluate. Detailed evaluation of presented material can be very revealing-the claim that grey is better than black turns out to be based on the much weaker finding that for many people grey is acceptable. DGG ( talk ) 04:17, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I said something similar at Wikipedia_talk:Flow/Design_FAQ#Bunkum:_easy_to_read_grey_text back in February. Wnt (talk) 15:33, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
If the real experts don't ask the people, because the people don't know, then how do the experts know? It is a God given inspiration? - Nabla (talk) 09:57, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Out of interest, Jimbo, what is your opinion on the new font? Thanks, Matty.007 15:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)


One of the questions on the FAQ is "Did you test this design on readers" and the answer is "No." Admittedly it was a 2 paragraph "No", but it was"No" nonetheless. Also many Wikimedians had commented on the design since December - the key point iterated time and again was "don't mix serif and sans". Admittedly we are, some of us, old fogies, but we are not ignorant old fogies - I even ran a printing company once upon a time, though my typographical and design knowledge pales compared with many disputants. We are told this design is "happening" and will appeal to the young 'uns. One of the demographic holes for Wikipedia is, though, oldies, who are more under under-represented than women (my thanks to RexxS for this tit-bit). Come on, time for the WMF to make a commitment to really really involve the community. This is a minor issue, but it's re-treading the steps of so many previous mess-ups that it is ceasing to be funny. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 04:01, 7 April 2014 (UTC).
Socializing changes - is that corporate speak for brainwashing? All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 04:14, 7 April 2014 (UTC).

Russian alternative to Wikipedia

I learned, at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions, that Anton Likhomanov, the director general of the National Library of Russia, has expressed a need for an alternative to Wikipedia.

Such a project is unlikely to be successful unless the Russian government decides to block access to Wikipedia, a prospect that I previously considered highly unlikely, but one which the events of the past two years have suggested is entirely possible. Further down, Wnt has it right - the Wikimedia Foundation would flatly refuse to turn off access to Russian Wikipedia at the command of the US or any other government. And under the First Amendment such a demand is not going to happen. So the hint that such a thing is possible is clearly FUD. I think the true rationale for this is that Russian Wikipedia reports in an NPOV way on various things in a country which I fear increasingly wishes to return to state-controlled information flows. As we have seen recently in Turkey, such attempts are sheer folly.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:11, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Addendum: I found an email address for Mr. Likhomanov and emailed him a friendly note.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:28, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
  • We also need an alternative to Wikipedia: Find us a website that fixes wp:edit-conflicts to allow changing/adding adjacent lines, an edit-screen that warns how many people have edited the page within the past few hours, an edit-screen with button '[Check_format]' to detect invalid wp:wikitext syntax before saving edits, an edit-screen that knows tag "<editonly>" to allow template warnings during edit which are hidden upon SAVE, a wikitext parser with wp:expansion depth limit > 40/41 levels, or a page-footer feature which always displays some end-of-page text defined higher in the page. If the Russians can design such a website, then perhaps we can edit there and post the completed pages back here! ;-) Wikid77 (talk) 20:46, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Jimbo: you could help head this off. Itar-Tass made the deceptive comparison to VISA/Mastercard that can just cut off payments. But Wikipedia is CC-licensed, and the Russians or people of any other country can set up their local mirror any time they want, provided local laws don't forbid it. More to the point, Wikipedia is not an appendage of the U.S. government - we don't expect to be and wouldn't tolerate being told to stop running the ru.wikipedia as part of any sanctions package; it's our free speech right in the U.S. to publish in any language we want. Unless the U.S. were actually to force a disconnection of all the Internet cables across some new Iron Curtain, Russians will continue to have access --- unless, that is, TASS is hinting the Russians' own government intends to censor them from coming here and plans to force them to use the "alternative", which is what the cynical reader justifiably reads into this. In any case, it would be within your power to publicly remind the media of some of this. Wnt (talk) 21:20, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

In Russia, Wikipedia edits you. Neutron (talk) 01:56, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I expect the Kremlinopedia will turn out quite similar to Baidu Encyclopedia which only cares about censorship but the verifiability is technically non-existence or just forking Wikipedia's content selectively. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 15:58, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
It might be similar to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (БСЭ — Яндекс.Словари) and the Great Russian Encyclopedia.
—Wavelength (talk) 20:13, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
The only robust way to head this off is to have a distributed Wikipedia, something I have been giving thought to a lot over the last few years. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 04:05, 7 April 2014 (UTC).
  • Hello all. I can try to explain the situation (99%). After fighting for honor of Viktor Tsoi from the Kino_(band) in Russian Wikipedia, these people made ​​a complaint to Vladimir Putin via form on the website of the Kremlin. In Russian Wikipedia is violated medical confidentiality (attention of millions of people instead one or two humans). Russian Wikipedia uses very bad "sources" with the crime inside. Cultural organizations and agencies can not create creative projects about the legendary band of the idol of millions of people from the former USSR (Viktor Tsoi). Because of Russian Wikipedia (continues violate the legislation and now). They do not wish seek new sources (lazy). In eyes of any normal human - waiver to serve in an army through a psychiatric hospital - a shame. Compare to understand: Mahatma Gandi is located in the hospital, which is intended for crazy people (to implement his theory) - it's just a laugh and shame. From the Russian articles: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=ru&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fru.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F%D0%A6%D0%BE%D0%B9%2C_%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87&edit-text= (about V. Tsoi): "In the autumn of 1983 , Viktor Tsoi lay on a survey in a psychiatric hospital on the buckle , where he spent one and a half months, avoiding conscription. After being discharged from a psychiatric clinic, he wrote the song "Tranquilizer""

and: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=ru&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fru.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F%D0%A6%D0%BE%D0%B9%2C_%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87&edit-text= (album 46): "After the hospital, he became quite such a man as I knew him. Moreover, he was the complete opposite of Victor, with whom you wrote "Forty-five." And so it remained until his death. It was then that he became Viktor Tsoi, which we have here now. With all capital letters ... He had a lot of complexes, it's not a secret. Everyone who knew him personally confirm this. And, apparently, he decided at once to get rid of them all. And a little bit overdone in this case. It was sometimes the impression that he's just crazy."

- From conversations with A.Vishni A.Rybinym. "Cinema" from the very beginning to the very end " -- 78.106.181.88 (talk) 09:00, 8 April 2014 (UTC).

Sockpuppetry

Surely one answer to the problem would be to have everyone sign in by entering their e-mail address, as happens on numerous other interactive sites? Obviously no one wants their e-mail address on display so they would select a username and that would be aligned to the e-mail address. This still means "anyone can edit" but only if they behave themselves. Okay, someone might take the trouble to create several e-mail addresses but when it becomes obvious that there is a breach of WP:SPI, you block not just the usernames but the e-mail addresses too and so make it umpteen times more difficult for the troll to re-enlist on a continuing basis.

Looking at WP:SPI now, there are more than fifty cases waiting. That is ridiculous when you think of the damage just one troll can do. The list inevitably includes this person who is as usual (Redacted). If you look at his archive you can see how persistent he is in his prolonged campaign against this project and its members. This is, however, an unusual troll because he confirmed his real name at the start of his activities and has repeated it several times subsequently. He has also kindly supplied the information that he held a prominent position in this organisation and with that knowledge it is very easy to find his then home address. His recent edits suggest he has since relocated and that appears to be confirmed by use of IP addresses which geolocate to this town. Nevertheless, there is more than enough information to hand to quickly locate him.

Routine blocks of successive "sockpuppet" accounts are all very well but I would have thought that Wikipedia should be doing something really positive and meaningful to protect its members from hate crime. Two of your senior English admins – this one and this one – have had direct contact with the troll on several occasions each. There may be a process within WP for escalating such matters but, failing that, perhaps you should ask one of the two admins to contact these people about this particular troll? 217.44.70.189 (talk) 04:28, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Requiring a unique email address for required registration and sign-in-to-edit would be an excellent start to ending the sockpuppet/multiple unconnected accounts/undisclosed COI madness. I note now the irony that it is an IP editor making this excellent suggestion. Carrite (talk) 15:41, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
I've always found it baffling that having a verified email address was never part of the signup process, not least because it prevents users from being up the creek if they forget their password. You're right that when it comes to sockpuppeting, the effort involved in registering a new email address for every sockpuppet would be prohibitively high. Obviously, there are cases where multiple accounts are permitted (doppelgangers, non-privileged spare accounts for admins and the like), so the software would need to be engineered to support that in some way. — Scott • talk 17:29, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
The effort involved in registering a new email address for every sockpuppet would be prohibitively high? I pay $24.00 a year (http://www.tuffmail.com/) for the ability to create as many email addresses as I wish, Every website and every person I email reaches me though a different email address. It takes less than a minute to create a new one. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:42, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
It'd dampen the sockpuppetry a bit, but like Guy Macon said, there's still plenty that would be able to come back (there's plenty of free sites for email out there, even). But what about censorship and that sort of thing? If you're somewhere that you're not supposed to be on Wikipedia (China, I'm looking at you) and you find a way on, a required email would just be another way to track you down. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 21:22, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
I would strongly support research and experimentation in this area. I think changes to our sign up policies should not only include working to minimize the impact of sockpuppets, but also should include an assessment of how they impact new editor recruitment and retention. I think we can all agree that some measures to minimize sockpuppetry (such as requiring a credit card confirmation to edit) would go much too far. There is some evidence (from Wikia) that requiring signup has minimal impact on signup rates and positive impact on editor retention. But notice that other issues quickly come into play: Wikia uses Facebook Connect, which is very successful for them, but we'd be highly unlikely to do that. Still - there is a wide range of tests that could be run.
One thing I am dismayed about is the high level of intolerance by some members of the community for any sort of change. In the wiki, we still have a spirit of BE BOLD and an understanding that anything can be rolled back if it doesn't work out. The same is true of software changes of all kinds - if we can allow the developers to BE BOLD, then things that don't work out can be rolled back. But if we get out the pitchforks and torches everytime some little experience isn't what we expected, we make it really hard for them to improve the software.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:52, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
With respect, Jimbo, bollocks. The "pitchforks and torches" come out because the battle lines are pre-drawn. There is a real disconnect here, and a real problem. Community members feel their concerns are ignored, and WMF developers feel they are "picked on". This needs a solution, not dismissal. I'd like to think we can solve this, and I'd like to think you can help us. Please comment at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Proposal. I'd really appreciate that. Begoon talk 16:37, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
The reasons that changes to Wikipedia are often met negatively are the lack of notification and/or the lack of need for change. We didn't need VE, we don't seem to need a new font. Change for change's sake is not a good policy. Thanks, Matty.007 17:36, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
You are mistaken about the facts, I'm afraid. Both the VE and updating the site to improve readability are both needed, and both were discussed well in advance. If you aren't involved in such things, don't cry when they happen without you. The Foundation has been incredible about soliciting feedback and socializing changes beforehand.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:55, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
The fact that VE was withdrawn near immediately, and the new font is met with near universal surprise speak otherwise. 10,000 users on a site with hundreds of thousands, and millions of unconsulted readers is a minute sample to take. Matty.007 18:04, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
In addition, why were changes to COI editing, which arguably doesn't affect readers too much met with sitewide banners, viewable to readers, whereas this had only a small discussion on meta, with no banners for readers, or (as far as I am aware) editors? Matty.007 18:11, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
as I understand it, the problem with VE was that it was simply not ready for widespread release, and the WMF completely ignored the enwiki consensus that it should be opt in. it ended up that someone listended to IAR and BEBOLD, and made the change to opt-in without the help of WMF. -- Aunva6talk - contribs 06:10, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Ha, found it. THIS is how it looks like! (Washing machine or not). I do understand that it was meant as an improvement, of course, no doubt of that, but we must face it like a man - maybe it came out not quite as it was intended. Hafspajen (talk) 19:37, 5 April 2014 (UTC)


In regards to the topic of socking and changing the way Wikipedia does things. If you start digging into who is socking by creating new mechanisms I would be willing to bet you are going to make some startling discoveries of who is using more than one account. Also, adding email address as an autoconfirmed would only go so far, if you added email address to the list of fields checkusers have access too, it would also help to eliminate a lot of the lazy ones who use the same Email for multiple accounts. 172.56.2.75 (talk) 22:34, 5 April 2014 (UTC)


  • Bold user-interface changes are terrifying: The massive changes to the user-interface are extremely distracting to users (hence the pun: "user-interfere changes"), especially to the millions of people who view pages without login, without setting Special:Preferences to useskin=Monobook, and get whatever their PC or tablet or library or classroom displays among the selection of Frankenfonts which their browser provides. For many people, the serif header titles were overwide, spread and wrapped across the screen, but the horseplay in the body text was either oversized, chopped ("norseplav") or small run-together text ("if just leaming about fonts"), and hence many users concluded their browsers were garbled because Wikipedia had always displayed clear text, and some people spent hours trying to reset their browsers and computer fonts. Some schools were helpless to reset 500 computer screens. Couple those problems with VE-bad-experience memories, and now predict the latest comments, repeatedly: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Perhaps beta-testing will require 50,000 users. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:00, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
What? People can't handle technical glitches? Is this the 21st century? Is this technology, we are talking about? (Also, having looked in a couple browsers signed out - don't see a problem). Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:47, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Any change is terrifying: So never change anything, ever! --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:04, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Just because Lavabit's crypto-grade email is down doesn't mean you can't pick up a free email or six on the web, without even giving a different email address. Puppet masters can change e-mail, change browsers, clear cookies, and in general run rings around you ... then proudly share their exploits on chat forums so everyone knows how to do it. The sockpuppet hunting only hurts the innocent newbies who get caught up in the net all too often. Wikipedia needs to give up sock hunting and come up with ways that making lots of contributions for a long time gives more political pull. Wnt (talk) 00:39, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Resistance to change is part of the human condition. Regarding the proposal, it's very sensible. I wonder what needs to happen to make it real. CorporateM (Talk) 20:05, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Honestly, far too much time and effort is expended to "stop" sockpuppets and the tools used are so crude and unhelpful that its more common than not to have collateral damage in the process because the use of the checkuser tool is, and verified by the instructions, more about the skill of the interpreter than the data it presents. A quick look at SPI most of the "sockpuppets" that are counted and blocked have never even edited. Many that have, had positive contributions with no apparent vandalism or problems with disputes. I wonder how many of these were just innocent editors caught in the net to stop "sockmasters". Several users and sockpuppets have been identified as being collateral damage and allowed back, additionally, several sockmasters have identified that many of the accounts they were credited with weren't even them. Of course its not outside reason that they would lie, but are they? IMO, we need to give more value to the nature of the edits than if they are a user returned. 172.56.2.52 (talk) 20:20, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
While I cordially despise big social media's data gathering through beacons, cookies, single sign up and so forth, I am not in principle adverse to WP enabling fb/G+/whatever sign-in. Or maybe we could offer our SUL to the blue chip companies? Hmm maybe that ship has sailed.... All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 04:10, 7 April 2014 (UTC).
04:10, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Special Barnstar
thanks for creating Wikipedia! ^^ You really,really,really deserve this star. thanks for everything. Macadam1 (talk) 07:59, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

New fonts

Even though it's unaesthetic, I'm sure I'll get used to having a font with serifs for titles and one without for body. It will take longer to get used to those wimpy little esses, though--Ss--that fade out in the middle. It didn't really bother me till I tried to read a whole article. Hard on the eye. Yopienso (talk) 05:03, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

It was something of a shock and I wasn't even exactly sure what was different but thought....did Wikipedia get a haircut...new glasses?--Mark Miller (talk) 07:18, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • It sort of is Layout 101 that sans-serifs are for headlines and serifs are for body-text, which is probably why there is a hipster element that wants to do it backwards. Of course, some hipsters have more power than others. Seriously though, if this layout stuff bugs ya, just switch your skin over to Cologne Blue and live a happy life. Carrite (talk) 16:27, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • There's also the gadget to switch your Vector back to the old way, if you want. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 18:52, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. Any tips on how to do that? Yopienso (talk) 22:04, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Preferences ==> Gadgets tab ==> Appearance section ==> Vector classic typography (use only sans-serif in Vector skin) Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 22:14, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Got it! Thank you very much! Yopienso (talk) 22:54, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Thank you so much for starting this, and making ignorance no longer excusable.

Goat Herd 2 (talk) 23:31, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

You're invited!

NE Meetup #5: April 19th at Clover Food Lab in Kendall Square

Dear Fellow Wikimedian,

New England Wikimedians would like to invite you to the April 2014 meeting, which will be a small-scale meetup of all interested Wikimedians from the New England area. We will socialize, review regional events from the beginning of the year, look ahead to regional events of 2014, and discuss other things of interest to the group. Be sure to RSVP here if you're interested.

Also, if you haven't done so already, please consider signing up for our mailing list and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

We hope to see you there!

Kevin Rutherford (talk) and Maia Weinstock (talk) 21:36, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

(You can unsubscribe from future notifications for Boston-area events by removing your name from this list.)

  1. ^ http://www.recoverreputation.com/8-proven-ways-to-improve-your-online-reputation-for-lawyers-financial-executives-professionals/
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