User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 169

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What Can the WMF Do (about incivility and other problems)

Jimbo Wales requested that we comment on what the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) (the Foundation) can do. He was initially asking that question about the increasing level of incivility in the English Wikipedia. His specific suggestion as to what the Foundation can do is to provide a few professional mediators to address conflicts. I will expand my comments to include not only incivility, but also conflicts between the Foundation and the English Wikipedia community (currently the subject of an ArbCom proceeding), and the slowness of the arbitration process. I think that mediation will be of little use with respect to incivility, but will address its effectiveness in other contexts.

Incivility

Civility is one of the traditional five pillars of Wikipedia, but it is essentially a vacant pillar. It has not been effectively enforced for many years, and its absence is becoming toxic.

I am not sure, but I think that, at this point, the combination of the systematic failure to enforce it and a small but prominent number of persistently uncivil editors is resulting in meta-incivility, an attempt to make the culture of Wikipedia a culture that is seen as uncivil by most would-be editors. While presumably the large majority of editors agree that a civil culture is a comfortable culture, and that an uncivil environment is a hostile (work) environment, a small number of editors feel quite the opposite, that civility is uncomfortable, and that they would prefer a crude "boys’ clubbish" environment in offensive language is simply the way it is. The longer regular incivility is ignored, the greater the opportunity they have to make Wikipedia comfortable for themselves and uncomfortable for everyone else. If that happens, they will “win” something not worth winning, and Wikipedia will lose.

BrownHairedGirl identifies four areas of incivility. The first occurs where a generally civil editor has a bad day. The second occurs where a dispute causes tempers to rise. The third occurs when editors fail to consider the cross-cultural impact of their language. The fourth is the case of habitually uncivil editors. I think that the English Wikipedia does a good job of handling the first case, and a reasonably good job of handling the second case, content disputes that bring out conduct issues. Occasionally WMF mediation might work for content disputes, but usually the community, including its own mediation processes, either are satisfactory, or are unresolvable due to conduct issues that go and must go to ArbCom. Also, WMF mediators should understand that, with regard to habitually rude, aggressive, or abusive editors, their job is not to mediate, but to support taking those editors to ArbCom.

For the fourth, mediation is a genuinely terrible idea. See Argument to moderation. It concedes ground that must not be conceded. Mediation between civility and incivility will be a compromise, not only over how much incivility is tolerated, but over to what extent to establish a culture whose incivility makes it comfortable only for uncivil editors. Only the third situation, cross-cultural differences, is a good case where mediation should be used.

A situation in which mediation might be useful would be while a necessary but controversial block is in effect. A mediator may be able to help the blocked editor, the blocking admin, and would-be unblocking admins to communicate. Unfortunately, what too often happens is that one admin chooses to unblock, and then further discussion is not useful, because a reblock would be punitive and would risk wheel warring. WMF could strongly discourage admins from unilateral unblocks in order to encourage discussion of the terms of unblock.

What the Foundation can do about habitually uncivil editors (some of whom are proud of their incivility, viewing it as being “genuine” or “earthy” rather than “refined”) is to work with those administrators who are willing to make difficult civility blocks and to encourage administrators to enforce civility.

It would be extremely useful for the Foundation to emphasize strongly that civility is essential, and to reiterate that incivility is not mere noise but is blockable. Mediation would be useful to encourage exploring the issues behind civility blocks, especially if admins were strongly discouraged from unilateral unblocks as fait accompli. With respect to editors who have a pattern of aggressive, rude, or abusive behavior, mediation must be avoided. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:56, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

This is well thought out, however I would add a fifth category to BHG's list: Editors who are deliberately uncivil for the purposes as diverse as proving a point, revenge, provocation, attracting attention, etc. In these cases, it may also be habitual, but it is by no means unintentional.- MrX 16:59, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Yes. Some editors are uncivil for a deliberate purpose. Again, as with editors who are simply rude, aggressive, or abusive, mediation directly with the uncivil editor is dangerous. It would reward the uncivil editor because the mediation would focus on compromising on the extent of incivility. Any mediation should be between the blocking admin and an unblocking admin, except that by the time mediation would take, another admin chooses to unblock, at which point further discussion is useless, because an unblock, even a wrong unblock, is final. (A reblock would be either punitive rather than preventive, or wheel warring, or both.) Mediation over current blocks will only be feasible if admins who want to unblock can wait to work with the mediator. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:02, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
I totally agree in principle. As a community we should require people to behave like intelligent adults here, with a low level of tolerance. In practice, it seems to me that incivility is easy to recognize and virtually impossible to define, a la Potter Stewart and obscenity. And a precise and unambiguous definition would be necessary, I think. Have you given any thought to that? Is it as simple as a list of taboo words? Even if it were as simple as that---and I suspect it's not---I think we could debate until the end of time what words to include.   Mandruss |talk  23:59, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
I think this is the part of the discussion that is most likely to bear fruit, so I hope it doesn't get lost amid all the rambling. It's a significant problem on WP that we have too high a level of tolerance for incivility because, somewhat paradoxically, we are often too polite to shout down a minority who support it (either because they think it is actually healthy or, as Rober McClenon suggests, because it is "just noise"). The hoo-hah over Chelsea Manning is good example of where Wikipedia gave the impression of being basically an out-of-control primary school classroom.
In terms of an ambiguous definition, I would suggest that any **reasonably persistent** behaviour which appears aimed at causing offence of getting a rise out of other editors should be subject to an on-the-spot 30-day topic ban. I can foresee the objection that this would be open to abuse, but it seems to me comparable to how discretionary sanctions operate, and they have been a clear net positive for the project. Formerip (talk) 00:16, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Conflicts between WMF staff and the community

There is currently an ArbCom case open resulting from a dispute between the English Wikipedia community and the WMF staff over the use of particular software (the Media Viewer) that the English Wikipedia community chose to make the non-default. Mediation might have mitigated this dispute, at least if the mediation team understood that it did not represent staff or the developers and was charged with reducing tension rather than enforcing the will of the WMF.

The slowness of ArbCom

In 2006 through 2008, ArbCom was able to handle a hundred or more cases in a year. Now it often handles about a dozen cases in a year, and those often take two months to resolve (during which time the name-calling often continues on ArbCom talk pages). I would ask the WMF first to ask the ArbCom whether any WMF-supported assistance, such as paid clerks or special software, would help. If ArbCom does not ask for assistance, then I would suggest that WMF audit the processes of the ArbCom to see whether business process re-engineering, or other assistance such as paid clerks or special software, would help. This issue overlaps somewhat with incivility because the ArbCom is the only body that can actually deal with habitually uncivil editors. The community cannot deal with them, because they have entourages who can block “consensus” (supermajority) at the noticeboards.

The WMF can recognize that ArbCom is backlogged, and can look into what can be done to facilitate reducing that backlog.

Robert McClenon (talk) 03:38, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

There are a great number of important workloads that could be handled by paid editors/mediators hired by the Foundation, but a lot of resistance to the possibility of them pushing for / representing WMF's interests, which may conflict with the community's from time to time. Robert McClenon said "if the mediation team understood that it did not represent staff or the developers". It seems like a good way to advance the discussion would be to explore models that would give mediators independence from the Foundation, such as sponsored mediators through grants or a separate non-profit. CorporateM (Talk) 04:07, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Off topic Jytdog (talk) 03:32, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Robert McClenon Current uproar aside, why do you think that "Its (civility's) absence is becoming toxic"? I am a bit concerned that the current drama (and in this case, the epithet is deserved) that is really centered on a few editors, is generating a perception that all of WP is moving toward a crisis. So.. why do you think there is a growing tide of incivility? I work on pretty controversial topics and have seen them go through waves of ugliness and relative peace (again, usually driven by the arrival and departure of difficult editors). Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 04:25, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Those topics are only controversial because you make it your job to push a singular POV that eliminates opposing viewpoints. I'm curious what a woman like Gandydancer would have to say about your characterization of this problem, Jytdog, as many of these so-called "difficult" editors you refer to happen to be women. And yes, I've personally made it a point to show up to those articles and help them out, so I'm happy to be characterized as "difficult" because I refuse to let you drown out their voices. Viriditas (talk) 04:35, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
I can't read minds so I don't know if Jtydog is referring to me or not, though I doubt it. I will say that although Jtydog and I generally don't agree on content, he is an excellent editor and has never, ever, in our exchanges showed any gender bias. He has always been willing to discuss areas of disagreement in a respectful manner. I do, however, question the suggestion that women, or "the ladies" if you will, seem to need some sort of special support, which suggests that they are unable to stand their ground on their own. Gandydancer (talk) 17:02, 2 August 2014 (UTC) \
He's not referring to you (and I don't know why you thought that). There is absolutely no suggestion that women need special support, there's a suggestion that one component of gender bias on Wikipedia involves editorial interaction between males and females, with women disliking combative environments. While you might interpret this as women being "unable to stand their ground on their own", that's not what it means. It means women are less prone to stick around in the kind of articles that Jytdog describes because of the constant conflicts and reverts. You are welcome to disagree, but the evidence says otherwise. Viriditas (talk) 02:25, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm not going to be dragged into a discussion with an editor that appears to be only interested in twisting my statements and then going about explaining to me why I'm wrong. I spoke up in this thread because I disliked the hypocrisy of your statements about Jtydog. He left rather than get into a discussion with you and now I'm going to do the same. Although Jtydog and I are in frequent content arguments, I've never seen him engage in this sort of talk page behavior. Gandydancer (talk) 15:45, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
How unusual! You twisted my words abut the well-publicized and published gender gap hypothesis ("Female Wikipedia editors are less likely to contribute to Wikipedia due to the high level of conflict involved in the editing, debating, and defending process"[1]) to instead mean "[women] are unable to stand their ground on their own" and then accused me of twisting words? You are a funny person! Viriditas (talk) 22:32, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
Viriditas you deployed gender politics above to try to settle some anger you have at me. You called Gandy by name, even pinged her, when you wrote "I'm curious what a woman like Gandydancer would have to say..." So she shows up and has something to say and instead of listening to her and to how she heard what you wrote, you ignore her and cite literature at her. Isn't this just the kind of "guy" behavior you have been railing against? anyway, this gender politics stuff is so twisty. please just stop already. please just say "i hear you gandy but we disagree, i really think jytdog is a sexist dick" and move on. please. Jytdog (talk) 01:48, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Those topics are only controversial because you make it your job to push a singular POV that eliminates opposing viewpoints. That's a rather hearty and overt accusation, and I think it's a bit ironic considering we're talking about how incivility at the moment. Nonetheless, speaking as a woman, and having been editing in some controversial areas, my experience has mostly been gender blind. Rarely, if ever at all has my gender been mentioned beyond using my first name (which I sort of invited by using my first name on my user page) or using my pronouns. Many times editors who encounter me use male pronouns--and I sort of chuckle at that. The only thing which I can say I've encountered 'misogyny' was when my user page was vandalized by some vandals, which was in itself an isolated incident. Tutelary (talk) 10:57, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
and with that remark from Viriditas, I choose to exit, as I have before in discussions where V shows up in this manner. There are places to work and discuss things that are not toxic. Jytdog (talk) 16:21, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Please see here for some thoughts from one arbitrator on the reasons the Committee's caseload has declined. With regard to delays in resolving individual cases earlier this year, they resulted primarily from availability issues that affected particular arbitrators at particular times, rather than any more systematic problem. I don't think there are any software issues that would help resolve arbitration cases, nor do I think more clerical assistance is the answer. There are some tasks that have been assigned to ArbCom that most of us do think would be better handled elsewhere, but they don't include deciding the actual arbitration cases. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 04:56, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Arbcom is not a venue that lends itself well to solving these issues, mainly because ArbCom cannot pick its issues, but has to wait until the community makes a request. By the time Arbcom gets involved, it can be several years after the initial disruption has been noted, and the whole Arbcom process can take an additional month or more. The Arbcom can be very useful in clarifying and articulating long-term issues. But a disruption on a talk page is immediate; a series of such disruptions can drive away serious editors long before Arbcom can have a chance to get involved, if it ever does reach that point at all. Disruptive situations need to be dealt with immediately, and stay dealt with. —Neotarf (talk) 21:37, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Miscellaneous tasks assigned to ArbCom

User:Newyorkbrad refers to tasks that are assigned to the ArbCom that the ArbCom thinks could be better handled elsewhere. I understand that part of the problem is that the ArbCom is "trusted"/cleared and so is handed duties involving access to private information (CheckUser, actual identities). Can these responsibilities in the English Wikipedia be shifted to other cleared personnel, such as cleared WMF staff assigned to the English Wikipedia, or to stewards who are primarily editors of the English Wikipedia? Can the tasks of the ArbCom be reallocated so that they have more time to work on cases, the primary function of the ArbCom, rather than being co-opted to essentially clerical duties involving trusted access to private information? Is there some way that the WMF can free up ArbCom time to do real arbitration? What are the tedious duties and can the WMF help? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:25, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Some ideas

I don't think the WMF is needed to solve issues of sex bias, but for that to be true we as a community should show we are able to do something about it. I would suggest...

  • Affirmative action. While this is (literally) an open question (ideas welcome!), my suspicion is that universities broke the boys-club model through a period of affirmative action to recruit women, which has since become obsolete since they are now the majority of students. Now in society at large the government has been able to compel people to hire or admit women for affirmative action, but not to promote them, but in Wikipedia we have less control over the former and potentially more over the latter. These steps include:
  • Jury system. I have previously suggested we adopt a jury system for settling disputes, so that combatants aren't voting on whether each other is the target of administrative sanctions. This system could be modified to provide a two-fold or three-fold higher chance for editors who formally identify as female in preferences, in recognition of the troubles they sometimes face and those driven off by them who cannot participate.
  • No big deal adminship. We should consider having a similar random pool of people who indicate themselves as up for adminship who are generally in good standing. Before and/or after joining the pool they should have to earn various "merit badges" for stuff like acting as third party mediators, nominating DYKs and ITNs and elevating GAs and evaluating AN issues, to make sure they have a rough understanding of the site, but rather than facing a high vote threshold they should merely not get in trouble and be picked randomly from the pool. Once again, the random pick allows us a chance to apply an affirmative-action factor.
  • Sex-neutral language. Currently we are in a catch-22 where if you look up whether an editor is male or female you are likely to treat him or her differently; but if you don't and use the standard English generic "he", you're accused of assuming all editors are male. And saying "him or her" gets tiresome, and still seems a bit sex-obsessed if you ask me. 99.999% of the time I couldn't care if an editor is the proud owner of a cat or a backyard rooster, nor what sex he or she is. So maybe it's time to invent some language to encourage on a social basis, whether it is simply acronyms like HOS and HOH, or (my preference) inventing pronouns to fit (I personally like the idea of using xe/xes/xer for he/his/him and she/her/her, with xe pronounced like ge in gerente, or kse if you can't manage, and "e" replaceable by any other vowel for different persons to permit simultaneous pronoun references).

I should add that I really do believe the usual instinct here - civility enforcement, policy proliferation, administrative drama - that's worse than useless. It's what failed before and it will fail again because you can't know what people intend and you can't be neutral when deciding about it. So it's important to pursue other ideas of some sort per the usual "definition of insanity" rule. Wnt (talk) 14:24, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Note: I've since written WP:xe with a fuller description of the language idea, and I might be tempted to try using it and see if it catches on. (Hey, I can always dream...) Wnt (talk) 15:56, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

  • As to your last point, I recommend the Singular they. No need to invent any new words or anything. Even comes with a handy userbox {{User singular they:Yes}} to show your support. Basically the universal pronoun, covers males, females, persons of a third gender, persons who don't identify with a gender, robots, or anyone/thing else that wants to edit. Monty845 17:19, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
The problem I have with singular they is that it's spectacularly unclear. Never is this more true than in Wikipedia internal discussions; I have chased my tail over that usage a number of times. With "xe" you can look it up once and grok the idea, but with "they" you have to try to figure out if more than one person is being spoken of every single time, for the rest of your life. Wnt (talk) 20:26, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
As I recently remarked on Talk:Genesis P-Orridge, inventing new words that layman readers don't understand is a terrible idea. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 17:32, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Some of us like "xe", some of us like "they", some of us like "s/he", some of us like "one", some of us like "some of us"...Jim-Siduri (talk) 21:00, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
I should apologize about the misunderstanding here - I am speaking of using this in our own conversation, not presenting them in articles where jargon of all kinds is best avoided. Wnt (talk) 20:26, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
If you don't like singular "they" (and I prefer it), a more formal copyediting option is "s/he". It may also be possible to use "one" or to reword a sentence completely. —Neotarf (talk) 21:17, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
The only person I've ever seen using xe/xem etc anywhere was Qwyrxian on WP. Despite him (it *is* a him) editing a wide range of pages, it obviously didn't catch on. He's been inactive for some months now for reasons that I cannot divulge but which, in all honesty, are a far more serious problem for people editing in some topic areas than mere usage of a few allegedly uncivil words. The chances of him coming back are practically zero. - Sitush (talk) 17:52, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
I don't see the relevance of that (and I also don't see any block notice on that user's page). There was actually some support for an actual article Xe which existed as of 2006 [2] with a few editors supporting the idea on its talk page. Nonetheless, it was determined to be original research, so I'm not thinking that that usage is something I have to stick with (their proposed forms like "xyrs" were different than what I have in mind, as is their pronunciation). Basically: the English language is our language. I don't think that we should have to have an advanced degree or (more likely) an advertising contract with some big corporation to be allowed to change it. I think that if we right here were to decide to try this idea out, we might just set off a new phenomenon that spreads not just through Wikipedia but the world at large. It should be up to us, and we should not be afraid to use our power if we can agree among ourselves that a few new words are desirable. Wnt (talk) 20:23, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
I think you may need to manage expectations. Expecting people to communicate in a professional manner is a fine goal. If though you think to spur some wave of utopian genderless language through use on WP talk pages you should probably brace yourself for disapointment.--Cube lurker (talk) 20:31, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Why should I discard the idea as utopian when there are so many people above looking to impose a utopian "civility" language throughout WP talk pages? I mean, my idea is voluntary and simple while theirs is complex and requires constant forcible interventions. Wnt (talk) 20:41, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
I am certainly not one of those you speak of above. I think there's a range of ideas above, some doomed to fail, some destructive. On your idea, I'm not going to stop you. I just don't think it'll spread like wildfire through society.--Cube lurker (talk) 20:52, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
You don't see the relevance of what? And who mentioned a block? You said that you might try using the xe notation and see if it catches on. I'm saying that a reasonably high-profile admin, with whom I got on well, has been using it for years and it didn't. Times may change, of course, but I for one will not adopt that notation. We're an encyclopaedia, first and foremost, not some socio-linguistic experiment or trailblazer.
I'm not going into detail re: Q's inactivity but take my situation as being analogous: death threats and wildly libellous accusations both on- and off-wiki that have a very real, very nasty impact on my life, as well as a tirade of abuse that has absolutely nothing to do with gender and everything to do with trying to maintain an extremely messy area of Wikipedia. One which, I must say, has become more messy since Sue Gardner's ill-advised "push" in India and some of which seems indubitably to be directly connected to that effort. I don't ask for special treatment and I don't get it. - Sitush (talk) 20:38, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Hmmm, I don't know about any of this and definitely not your particular interaction, but with Sue Gardner I assume you're referring to [3] [4]. But Sue's ideas there sound good to me, and it seems difficult to avoid a certain amount of threats (however much we abhor them) when dealing with India and Pakistan due to the amount of censorship that, unfortunately, continues to go on in the region. I waded into such an issue a while ago at Syed Ali Shah Geelani. The problem is, when people can be arrested or attacked for what they say in a society as a whole, how easily can they be ideally disinterested Wikipedia editors? But the solution is not to discard the country but to uphold our ideals until they ooze out the far end of the social pipeline. Wnt (talk) 20:56, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
I'm in the UK and am not Indian, Pakistani etc but am allegedly under criminal investigation of some sort in India (distribution of child porn seems to be the gist of it) due to a fracas involving me upholding English Wikipedia's policies. The issues apparent in the Indic sphere of Wikipedia, and in particular those relating to me personally, usually have nothing to do with censorship in the subcontinent. But we're drifting way off-topic now: my point was, there are very real, very damaging issues resulting from participation in Wikipedia that are more life-impacting those being raised all over the shop at the moment regarding language. FWIW, I disagree entirely with your solution: that, again, seems to presuppose that Wikipedia is some sort of engine for social change. If it was, it would be a bad one. - Sitush (talk) 21:14, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Of course it's an engine for social change. The whole idea of the sum of the world's knowledge being available to anyone, regardless of wealth, caste, or ideology, is vastly radical. Just like personal computing, BBSes and the Internet, Wikipedia is the lineal descendant of Yippie ideas like Steal This Book. I don't know how to interpret your comment about your situation - you say it doesn't have to do with censorship, yet that you are under attack by a censorship law which, hardly a surprise, is being stretched in some very partisan way. It sounds like whatever has happened to you is an important issue for all of us to know about so that we can show solidarity. Wnt (talk) 22:51, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
It's discussed in the literature as a medium for the democratization of knowledge, not an engine for social change. I think comparing it to Yippie antecedents is a bit off. If you haven't read John_Markoff's What the Dormouse Said, Fred Turner's From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget, or Nicholas Carr's The Shallows, then it might be a good time to take a look-see. Access to information is not the same as social change. Viriditas (talk) 01:16, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
You've named some interesting books, but I don't see how they disprove what I suggested. After all, didn't Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs start out by selling blue boxes, which you might say was toeing the Youth International Party Line?[5] Weren't early BBSes and networks a hotbed of radical politics? And in general, doesn't the role of sites like Wikipedia in providing information to the public follow in the footsteps of all those before them who sought to make information less secret to the general public? It is true, of course, that merely knowing about economic inequality doesn't make people equal. But being able to look up the list of free software makes you a lot more equal than someone who is unaware of some of the free options and has to buy software for a certain function or do without. This is just one of thousands of examples where we put the poor and the rich on at least a somewhat more even playing field. Social constructs have deprived people of so many of their birthrights, from the right to work the land to the right to broadcast in radio. But Wikipedia is an effort to partially roll back the idea that the poor should be deprived even of their right to learn, receiving only as much knowledge as they can scrape together the money to buy. Wnt (talk) 03:59, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Have you read E. M. Forster's The Machine Stops? You can have access to all of the information in the world, and still have a stagnant society with no social change. And in a surveillance society, access to information can be used to control and prevent change. In terms of technology, there's really only one kind of engine of social change, and it's called a molecular assembler. Plug one of those puppies in and all working social concepts are obsolete overnight. Trek called them replicators. Viriditas (talk) 11:48, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
That's a good story, and it was a long time since last I read it. But fiction is not actually evidence. I should emphasize, however, that even in that story, a robust Wiki faithfully documenting the explorations of the people who escape by strange paths and try breathing the outer air would have been transformative. Its premise was a censorship that required face-to-face communication to evade, and after all, the digression from which this one sprang concerned opposition to that. In the real world many people do not worry that Wiki and Internet are irrelevant - they fear flash mobs, coordinated protests, people learning how to make bombs or drugs, and so forth, and constantly call for the sort of censorship that the Machine-dwellers of the story might find comforting. Wikipedia can scarcely be accused of coordinating a world-wide surveillance - the NSA builds their own software and their own machines - rather it provides some small counterbalance, a weak technical sousveillance, a pool of knowledge from which the ordinary people can drink. But the ultimate agents of social change are the marks of Beast and Lamb, the former nearly a mature technology to substitute the human soul with something more causal and pliable, the latter I fear utterly a mystery to me. Wnt (talk) 14:11, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
I refer my honourable friend to the short story Business As Usual, During Alterations. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:10, 2 August 2014 (UTC).
Wnt, I must respectfully take issue with your statement that "fiction is not actually evidence". That statement reflects an older paradigm that I believe has been superseded by newer theories about literature and language. There are many types of evidence, and fiction can conceivably be classified as a form of speculative analogical evidence like a model or simulation. More to the point, fiction can act as a model or simulation that can both predict and explain.[6] Let me give you a relevant example. In the above, you refer to the use of cognitive prosthesis technology. The use of such a device has been modeled and simulated extensively in science fiction, such as in the 1995 episode of Life Support (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine). But back to my example. In 1909, Forster was able to model, simulate, and predict how the development of Internet technology would influence society.[7] George Orwell and Philip K. Dick did the same thing with surveillance societies. As it turns out, there is solid evidence that fictional works can act as an engine for social change, as these simulations "[train] us to extend our understanding toward other people, to embody (to some extent) and understand their beliefs and emotions, and ultimately to understand ourselves."[8] Viriditas (talk) 01:54, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
True, fiction can predict, rather interestingly at times. And the point the paper makes about communicating empathy is fairly persuasive. But fiction often falls far short of the mark. Orwell may have "predicted" the long-ongoing state surveillance of his era, but his anti-Communist viewpoint definitely missed the idea of an invasive capitalism that declares information as property and redefines the consumer's relationship to a product into mere "licensing", so that everything that the consumer still naively regards as his property is constantly working to spy on him. And, so far, cognitive prosthesis in fiction largely misses the specific practical aspects of the prosthetic hippocampus -- why will a wealthy elite consent to subsidize 20 years of education for people who could be fitted with far more effective prerecorded skill memories in an afternoon? why would they pay for 20 years of imprisonment with no practical benefit when they can write over someone's ethical programming? But to well and truly digress, I think the true horror of the device goes much deeper; I would consider the origin of free will and "actual" conscious sensation in the causality violation produced by the well-restricted precognition of the immutable future, the human being as boundary condition from which the mathematical solution of the cosmos is drawn. In other words, so long as paranormal events (first and foremost among them consciousness itself) are not understood, I don't think the replacement of memory can avoid destroying the essence of the human being. The victim of the procedure might look and act human, even access the records of past memories and make convincing emotional appeals... yet be no more a person than a video recording. Wnt (talk) 12:21, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Jury System

Wnt refers above to various proposals to implement some sort of jury system for user conduct cases. I will note that this is another answer to Jimbo's question of: "What can the WMF do?" The governance of the English Wikipedia is based on the policies of the English Wikipedia, determined by consensus, subject to the ultimate authority of the WMF. However, the English Wikipedia is so large and divided that it is extremely unlikely that any changes to its policies will be enacted voluntarily. Any changes at this point to the governance of the English Wikipedia can only be handed down to it from the WMF. If the WMF agrees with some editors, including me, that the breakdown of civility, and the breakdown of civility enforcement in its admin corps, are becoming toxic, then the WMF must act on its own. The WMF has been rightly reluctant to enforce its will on the normally self-governing English Wikipedia except by necessity. The rewrite and tightening of BLP policy was a legal necessity. If the WMF agrees that civility is both necessary for the English Wikipedia and being ignored, then some sort of intervention, whether or not a jury system, is a necessity. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:32, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

What we need isn't really force from the WMF, just people who are interested. Get enough people willing to administer the jury picks, and we can be bold and go ahead and start spamming a fairly large pool of candidate random editors in order to get the smaller number who are actually interested. We need merely set up the pages and call them in and make it happen, and provided there's some impetus behind it, nobody's going to stop us. But if we don't have that pool of interested people, no decree from on high is going to make the system work. Unfortunately, I don't have the feeling for organizing people that is needed to make things like this catch on. Wnt (talk) 01:44, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
No. We do need force from the WMF (unless Wnt has some idea that I am not aware of). A jury system will be a governance change to the English Wikipedia. The current governance of the English Wikipedia is by consensus, a form of direct democracy, with the exception of the ArbCom, which is a representative democracy but was handed to them by the founder of the WMF. Any change to that governance can come only either from the English Wikipedia community itself, by consensus, or from the higher authority of the WMF, who has essentially given a self-governing charter to the English Wikipedia community. At the same time, the English Wikipedia community, due to its size, diversity, and fractious nature, is unlikely to approve a change in its governance. It is unlikely to approve any change in its policies. It has been having difficulty in approving any change in its policies on commercial editing, even though the WMF has modified the Terms of Use with regards to commercial editing. Since many members of the English Wikipedia community think that civility should not be required, it is unreasonable to think that the English Wikipedia will, voluntarily, change its governance from a dysfunctional direct democracy to a working government with a jury system. I support the introduction of a jury system for conduct issues. The current system of dealing with conduct is no system at all with regard to conduct issues by experienced editors. Any administrator can unblock any block, and then further discussion is pre-empted, both because blocks are preventive, not punitive, and so a reversed block is in the past, and because of the rule against wheel warring. A jury system would be a good idea. However, it will only be brought about by intervention by the WMF. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:49, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
By the way, participation in a Wikipedia jury system should, unlike participation in the US jury system, be voluntary. In the United States, jury duty is just that, a duty, a requirement of citizenship; it is not voluntary. In Wikipedia, any requirement to serve on juries would strongly discourage unregistered editors from registering. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:49, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
Don't you think you're over-rating the WMF. In the past year we've had 1 WMF member lose his local adminship for gross incivility. 1 Lose his local adminship for sock puppetry. And a third currently at arbcom for threat making. I'll pass on these being our overlords.--Cube lurker (talk) 17:58, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
They are our overlords for better and for worse. They have granted the English Wikipedia a charter of self-government by direct democracy for better and for worse, subject to their overlordship for better and for worse. Any change to our governance will be made only by them, because it is clear that we cannot change our governance or major policies. If you are satisfied with an atmosphere that rewards incivility, or if you believe that that is the least bad of all possible worlds, you are entitled to that opinion, and to leave them alone. If change is desired, it comes only from the WMF, for better and for worse. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:58, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
Oh no, they're not our "overlords." They are the owners of the trademark, the operators of the servers, and the developers of the software tools for use of the volunteer community. Nothing more. Carrite (talk) 17:04, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Robert, can you clarify the nature of this totalitarian future you seem to be advocating for Wikipedia. Did you really mean it when you said above that we "need force from the WMF", or was that just a typo. It seems a very strange idea, given opinions that have already been expressed by employees of the WMF, that the WMF would have the faintest idea of how best to proceed. Are you really advocating blind totalitarian force --Epipelagic (talk) 00:06, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
I used to be a member of Trigger Street Labs, a website founded by Kevin Spacey and his business partner Dana Brunetti where people get feedback for screenplays, short stories and short fims. There is a credit process - review another member's work and you earn a credit, attach the credits to your own piece of work to make it rise to the top of the pile of scripts. There is also a jury system to prevent people gaming the system, an obvious way of earning a lot of credits is to make up a load of generic comments like, "the characters in this screenplay are very interesting", request another assignment, copy and paste, earn credit, and repeat. The site had a Hall Of Justice for members who think the review that they received was unfair. There is a criteria for the reviews including: not cutting and pasting from other reviews, (if you think it has happened then the ref. no. from the other review is submitted as evidence), reviews should be constructive and non-abusive, a decent word length (I think the minimum was 100 words), there should also be evidence in the review that the reviewer definitely read / watched the submission. If a member thinks they have been unfairly treated then they send a review to the HOJ. Other members - let's call them arbitrators - with a high enough participation level (like having 'enough' edits in your edit history) can request a - randomly generated - docket, read the review, read the details of the complaint (e.g. "I think this review is a cut & past of ref. # 'x' ...."). The arbitrator who received the docket for review then has a choice of Y/N check-boxes relating to the docket (e.g. "The reviewer has cut and pasted their review from another review") and a comment form, for anything else that they might like to add. The same docket goes to a number of different random arbitrators in the same way. (Note: there is a limit to how many dockets a single member can request in 24 hrs.) If the majority think it should go further, it is passed on to the jury. The key thing about it is, in the first instance it is other members with a basic account that make the decision, a similar system could possibly work for disputes on Wikipedia. Ironically the message boards were a mess with one of them called the "Free for all" message board. I also mentioned, at the top of this talk page (just prior to the section Early response from BHG & LB), how BBC message boards are moderated - so it never escalates to that point of needing arbitration in the first place. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 21:28, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Conflict resolution

I believe there is a direction that we could take, one I have attempted to bring up before and modeled after Steven Zhang's Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard. Building off the suggestion of Konveyor Belt I would like to discuss a Conflict resolution noticeboard.

I while back Wikipedia:WikiProject Conflict Resolution was begun and got a good number of member quickly. This seems to indicated that there is some interest[9] in understanding how we, as editors can try to resolve more than just content disputes.--Mark Miller (talk) 01:03, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm a little confused as what the difference between the dispute resolution and the conflict resolution board would be? And what do you think of the idea of just changing Wales' initial suggestion to hire people to make those people only mediators who would engage in voluntary mediation and teach it to volunteers. Detailed here. Thanks. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 16:56, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
A dispute is content based and does not deal with behavior. Personal conflict between editors is not as easily addressed as a content disputes, so my suggestion is to assist in that with a conflict resolution notice board where volunteers can at least decide if a situation can be improved with some mediation.--Mark Miller (talk) 05:57, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Gender disparity

There is a documented gender disparity both in the editor corps and in Wikipedia coverage.

Unfortunately beyond this it is difficult to go. Sweeping assumptions are made about "locker room" mentality, editing environment and so forth. Research shows that, if anything, the "bad" editing environment is more conducive to males leaving than females. Obviously we should still be aiming at a collegial rather than combative environment, but we should not expect that that would fix the gender gap (though it may assist with editor retention).

Similarly there is evidence that "women's films" have shorter (by about 20% if I recollect correctly) articles than "men's films". This is the most robust research I know of that demonstrates a content gender gap. Yet even here we have vast areas of ignorance - possibly "men's films" are more action and plot driven, and hence amenable to creation of longer articles from the primary document, where "women's films" are more emotion and character driven and require secondary sources (compare "Jo shoots Bob with the whaling gun" and "Jo, by this time already angry at Bob") - there may even be less subtle differences like cast size.

Consequently more research must be welcomed, both into gender disparity and other forms of demographic disparity (age, sexuality, geography and disability all spring to mind).

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:45, 1 August 2014 (UTC).

Or WP:RS just don't bother to cover women's films as much, or a lot of other things women create, or their activities, unless they are young and sexy or so fucking brilliant they blow competing males away. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 05:55, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Continue these great Wikimania workshops

Wikimania 2014 in London has five workshops related to the gender gap during the August 8-10 programme.

Women, get your passports out. Not too late to sign up. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 02:45, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Now if you want to talk about creating bias, how about leaving discussion of important issues like this to those who can travel to expensive cities in the Global North to discuss them at closed workshops and come up with the solutions for the rest of us? Even if we had to dribble verbal communication at each other, can't we teach each other how to make videos and post them online? Wnt (talk) 16:47, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Is sexual harassment harassment?

I've started to squeeze some of the frass out of the civility policy at Wikipedia talk:Civility/sandbox and stumbled on a curious fact: in our present policy on civility, sexual harassment (the encyclopedia article) is described as one of the ways to identify incivility, in an item separate from our policy WP:Harassment. It turns out there's a reason: I don't see one word about sex in the latter policy.

Now policies on sexual harassment may have a bad name because some try to abuse them as a backdoor route to ban porn and such things, which I definitely don't want to happen here, but we do have to recognize that women here do report being driven off by comments/advances of this type, and there does seem to be some relation with other forms of personal attack and outing. I think it is possible that our weakness on these issues has to do with it being handled separately through this gloriously dysfunctional civility policy rather than the more straightforward and more frequently applied policy on harassment. Wnt (talk) 14:29, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it is important to distinguish between Sexual Harassment such as unwanted sexual advances, harassment based on sex/gender, and general incivility that may create a hostile environment, sometimes with terms that may be more offensive to women. I have honestly never seen the first case, where there are unwanted sexual advances, not result in swift and severe sanctions. Monty845 14:54, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps you've not seen it because it happens behind the scenes, by email perhaps? I know of at least one very high-profile editor who felt sexually harassed on WP. Obviously I'm not at liberty to say who that was though, so please don't ask me. If she reads this and wants to take part in this discussion that's her choice. Eric Corbett 18:21, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Just in case you misunderstood Monty's sentence by focusing on the very first clause (I did this too, my brain was busy thinking of counter-examples to "never seen"); what he actually wrote was that he saw swift and severe sanctions in all examples of the first case of which he was aware. Probably you can think of better ways of writing this than either Monty's original or my mangling of it. (Verb towards extreme end of sentence often caused by too much Cicero. Always hated Cicero, even in that TV show.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:59, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
I don't believe I misunderstood at all. Eric Corbett 21:06, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Indeed. That would be unthinkable. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:48, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
That didn't feel like a very kind thing to say. I'm afraid that I'm going to have to report you to Jimbo's new love police force once he's received his mandate to set it up at Wikimania. Eric Corbett 00:01, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Such a force must make your feelings a top priority, really. If you are right, then there are only a few days until such a delightful arrangement comes into force. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:15, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Speaking of police, remember there are "underage" young people editing wikipedia and some of them sound very intelligent and mature and not mention their real age. They also may sometimes edit on "naughty" topics. Sexual harassment of them (even if they do not identify their sex) could be a crime. There might even be feds trolling to encourage it to beef up their number of arrests. So it may be in one's own interest to self-control. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 10:29, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
If they don't mention their age then how do you know that they're "underage"? Just more of your propaganda? Eric Corbett 16:39, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
In the process of building an encyclopedia, I can think of no reason to sexually harass anyone of any age or gender. I believe that Carolmooredc's comment was intended to provide a little extra incentive for caution to those for whom the usual reasons based on respect and community standards of behaviour aren't enough. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:03, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
You may believe whatever you like, as may I. I was simply drawing attention to these increasingly hysterical claims without even a shred of evidence to support them. Eric Corbett 18:01, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Okay, here's some more: Wikipedia:Help desk#Help, it seems I am being attacked as a woman writer —Anne Delong (talk) 19:40, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Not sure what point you're trying to make. You yourself say in that thread "I have looked at the article in question, at the AfD page and at the editor's talk page. There is not one comment anywhere by any of our editors that has anything to do with gender". Eric Corbett 19:48, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Key, Eric, just providing you with a purely rational thought experiment, i.e. one of many possible ways anyone sexually harassing someone can hurt the project, and in this case even themselves. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 19:44, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
I'd rather deal with hard evidence than with "thought experiments" than are in fact figments of your overly febrile imagination. Eric Corbett 19:48, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Eric Corbett and Carolmooredc, actually I was just providing an example of a "hysterical claim without even a shred of evidence to support it" for Eric's collection. It's surprising but also interesting that both of you interpreted my posting as an argument against his position. (Although, of course, as an easily intimidated person I'm against harassment.) —Anne Delong (talk) 00:58, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I don't mean to suggest anything "hysterical" (perhaps not the best word choice here...), nor do I want to see Wikimania turned into a vehicle by which the wealthier editors of Wikipedia establish their natural right of political dominion over the rest of us. As the first person to reply points out, there already is a policy, it's just not in the policy. Coming up with a philosophically sound, moderate criterion for sexual harassment is not easy, but presumably it would help admins to make more even-handed decisions when cases like this come up, with greater legitimacy, and most importantly, it would encourage any women who possibly have been subjected to sexual harassment but, upon seeing no mention of the topic in the current policy, simply stop editing rather than speaking up. Wnt (talk) 16:54, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

So, Jimbo...

There has been a lot of discussion here on your talk page since I complained January July 29 [10][11] about civility on Wikipedia. It's veered off onto sexism and the gender gap, which are related, but the core problem, IMO, is a lack of respect for and enforcement of civility policies here. I was reviewing the Wikimania schedule, and it looks like that's ongoing through August 10. I was just wondering when we might expect some feedback from you regarding various ideas that have been pitched in regard to addressing the civility problem on Wikipedia. Thanks. Lightbreather (talk) 20:54, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you are asking for. I discuss the issue (giving feedback) often. Do you have a specific proposal in particular that you'd like me to comment on? (And I think you mean July 29th not January? 6 days ago.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:05, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Good catch on the month, thanks. I've fixed it.
As for the feedback, when you rebooted the discussion, you suggested (neither supporting or opposing) that WMF hire community managers. [12] @BrownHairedGirl: suggested adopting the wmf:Friendly space policy, or simply enforcing the existing wmf:Terms of use.[13] I gave four specific suggestions, in two separate edits.[14][15] There were others. Anyway, when you rebooted the discussion, you mentioned that Wikimania was coming up, but that you would read the discussion with great interest. I was just wondering what you think of the ideas - at least those that interest you - so far. Thanks. Lightbreather (talk) 21:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
The debate hasn't moved you much, has it? Carrite (talk) 21:52, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Ah, well, Wikimania is just about upon us. I'm not prepared to speak to or support specific measures just yet but I do think there are proposals that could be very helpful. Nothing can be changed overnight I'm afraid.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:39, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Actually, lots of things change in an instant, especially when someone wants to make a change. The status quo takes longer. USchick (talk) 00:49, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Trolling.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Ah, I love the smell of forum shopping in the morning. It smells like horse. You know, that dramatic smell of well bludgeoned equine when someone just can't drop the stick. 81.171.52.12 (talk) 21:58, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Have I asked Jimbo to speak to a specific incident or editor? No. Am I asking him to do so now? No. Did he agree on July 29 that Wikipedia has a civility problem that must be addressed? Yes. You might want to re-read your own contribution to this page and re-consider who is beating what. Lightbreather (talk) 22:13, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
User:81.171.52.12 at least the meat will be tender. Interesting sense of humor, that got a few belly laughs. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 22:30, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

The heckling following Lightbreather's 2nd comment here is a very good example of why something must be done on civility. Of course there was another recent example: somebody using the c-word, being blocked, and then having an admin remove the block. It's not just about civility, it's about enforcement of WP:NPA and the Civility Pillar in particular, and about a breakdown in the enforcement of very basic rules by admins in general.

Jimbo asked for specific proposals. Here are a few.

  • Hire community managers/advocates/ombudsmen (don't we have these already?) who are easily accessed, and are empowered to block uncivil editors (let's say 2 days the 1st time, 4 days the 2nd time, 8 days the 3rd, etc,). Swift and sure enforcement will solve the problem.
  • Empower the community managers to desysop admins who enable the incivility, e.g. by unblocking.
  • The board should issue a statement saying that admins must respect policies and guidelines as written, and not oppose enforcement of the simple reading of policies and guidelines. Too many admins think that they get to make up their own rules as they go along.
  • Bring in outside organizations, or even consultants, to describe how their organizations dealt with the more specific problem of an uncivil environment for women. There's nothing new here - lots of organizations have had to deal with this problem.
  • Survey editors, readers, and WMF employees on whether they see a problem. It may not show up with readers, but my guess is that 70% of editors (90% of women editors) will tell you that there is a problem
  • Governance on Wikipedia is clearly broken. Make it a priority so that during the next strategic planning period we have a long discussion on how to govern a project of the current size and visibility. The old way of doing things isn't working.

I believe there's a board meeting Wednesday and Thursday. Jimbo, can you bring up these concrete proposals? I won't be in London, but at 15:00 on Friday in the Barbican Room there is a Q&A session with the Board. Can somebody bring up these proposals then with them?

Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:15, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Smallbones, other than the use of the c-word, what problems do you feel apply only to women, or more so to women? Gandydancer (talk) 01:43, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
I think the issue is really on whether the rules will be enforced or not. I can't imagine anybody using the c-word in mixed company and not using it as a way to say as loudly and clearly as possible "Women are not wanted here and I'm trying to insult all of you." If that's not incivility, I don't know what is. But the civility pillar was not enforced. So are any rules ever going to be evenhandedly enforced? That is the key question for me. I'm male, I'll let women answer your quesstion, but you might look at WIKIPEDIA SEXISM IS SO ENTRENCHED, EVEN THE GOVERNMENT'S TRYING TO FIX IT. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:40, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
You have avoided my question. You stated, "[Wikipedia has] a problem of an uncivil environment for women", and I asked, "other than the use of the c-word, what [civility] problems do you feel apply only to women, or more so to women?". Other than the use of the c-word, I'd like to know what problems you are referring to. The article you linked to is about sexism, not about workplace environment. Gandydancer (talk) 04:03, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
This was discussed two days ago, in the subsection above "Sexism on Wikipedia," and if you think that civility, the gender gap, and sexism on Wikipedia are unrelated, join up with like-minded editors and... show us your proof evidence.
  • Lam, S.; Uduwage, A.; Dong, Z.; Sen, S.; Musicant, D.; Terveen, L.; Reidl, J. (October 2011). "WP:Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia's Gender Imbalance" (PDF). WikiSym '11. ACM. Retrieved July 30, 2014. RQ3: Gender-Conflict hint at a culture that may be resistant to female participation.
--Lightbreather (talk) 16:32, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
@Smallbones Apparently you feel otherwise, but I consider ignoring another editor rude and uncivil. Gandydancer (talk) 11:41, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I've given you my answer: I think the main problem is that admins don't enforce the rules and I'll let women answer the specifics of your side-question. If you want me to format the answer in a specific form, I won't comply. Please don't badger people. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:00, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I did hope for a specific reply and "I won't comply" is fine with me. However, please do not suggest that I was badgering you. I was not, and your suggestion that I was can be seen as an example of why some people here find editing here so difficult. Gandydancer (talk) 17:49, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
@Lightbreather Why are you so hostile? It is ironic that any hint that an editor may not be in full agreement with your assessment of the reasons that more women do not edit here is met with hostile statements suggesting that they must be anti-woman. I have not said that the lack of female editors has not affected our articles. It has and it does and the way things have been going since I first began to edit in 2006 I have seen it get worse.
Surely it must be obvious that Wikipedia culture is a reflection of society in general where a woman's thinking is seen as less well-thought-out than that of a man. That's why that when I joined I knew better than to list my gender and only the last few years, now that I have a long edit history, have I been willing to say that I am a woman editor. And I believe that in general editing is more difficult for women because they are more likely to attempt to negotiate rather than use aggressive tactics. Add to that MAS (Male Answer Syndrome) [16], to make discussion difficult as well. I noted that one study found that women tend to make longer edits that appear to have been well-thought-out beforehand while men make shorter edits that they then refine. I'd guess that is an example of MAS at work. Many times over the years I have seen editors twist their edit this way and that when their initial statement was false rather than admit they were wrong, and be unwilling to leave a discussion until they had the last word in. Since they were not aware that I was not a male, they obviously do it regardless, but I can imagine that if I were using a female name I might think that they were treating me in a sexist manner.
Lest anyone think I'm male-bashing, I'm not. I am speaking in general of my experiences over the years. The lead photo for the Americans article is perhaps a good example of what happens when totally clueless men edit. On the other hand, perhaps one of, or maybe the most important woman-related article in Wikipedia since it is the first concern that NOW lists, the Abortion article, was written by men. Three years ago a group of men changed the definition of abortion so that it did not imply that women are murderers. It took many pages with thousands of words on the talk pages discussion. This same group of men continue to watch the page to make certain that the definition language is not reverted to the previous wording that had stood for many years.
In short, I do hope that Wikipedia does not decide that we need to tighten up the civility rules for the benefit of the ladies as though that's going to make anything better. I find passive/aggressive behaviors much more frustrating than the occasional use of a few unapproved words. I don't know what might help. Perhaps some voluntary communication workshops. It would be good, for instance, to have Lightbreather explain in detail how she felt when Eric used the word cunt, which in the US is about the worst word there is (right next to nigger). And for Eric to explain to her his feelings as well. I was involved in groups for many years and it's pretty amazing what a good group facilitator can do. Gandydancer (talk) 11:41, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Gandydancer, I am sorry if I came across as hostile. Let's say I do at times become defensive on the related subjects of Wikipedia civility, the gender gap, and sexism. I think that is understandable because when I bring these up I am usually accosted with a lot of allegations about my own conduct - or worse, intentions. (Although it's rarely provided, I can ask for evidence re my conduct, but intentions? No-one can know my intentions but myself, though plenty like to lecture me about what my intentions "are.")
Isn't it sad that you had to "know better" than to identify as a woman when you first started editing here? Perhaps if I had known better, I would have, too, but I didn't. I don't think I have the energy to comment on that any further right now, except to say again: Isn't it a sad commentary on the state of this grand project that "anyone" (appears 10 times in Wikipedia:About) can participate - but (unwritten) it's best to try to blend in with the fellas? (Then, once you've passed initiation, you can "come out." But for heaven's sake, don't suggest that anything is wrong with the model.)
Finally (I'm running out of steam), I hear you about both the longer edits and the negotiating. I ran into opposition early on in my editing (my currently preferred subject area is a contentious one). At first, I would make long, thought-out single edits. Then, I discovered that some other editors, rather than tweaking the part of what you'd written that they disagreed with, would revert the whole thing. So then I started breaking my edits into chunks. This, of course, meant that instead of one big edit, I might have a dozen or more smaller edits. I would get accused of editing in "avalanches." I would be asked to discuss my edits before making them. When I would discuss, I would be accused of being "tendentious" (a charge which I think is way over-used on WP). Basically, what I was being told was to go away. I suspect a lot of women who leave the project do so for this very reason, because if you get to that point and you choose to stand your ground - you will get the shit beat out of you. (I'm thinking of the scene in Gandhi, when the waves of people keep stepping forward to be beaten, except in this situation, I am a wave of one. I keep stepping up to incivility - as defined in WP policies - and I keep getting beaten down, by those who believe there is no civility problem. In fact, some say to be civil is uncivil. Ha!) Lightbreather (talk) 22:19, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that it's "sad" that a woman would find editing here a whole lot easier if she did not self-identify as a woman until she had been here long enough to understand how this place works and she had a substantial history. It's hard enough for a new editor of any gender to figure this place out, and to mention that you're a woman just adds one more burden to the experience. For instance, there is a great plenty of information that shows that assertiveness, when used by a man, is seen as...assertiveness, but that same assertiveness, when used by a woman, is seen as bitchiness. And so on...I need not preach to the choir as I know that in your real life you must have come upon the same obstacles that I have related to gender issues. At any rate, it must be taken as a given that these same issues are alive and well here on Wikipedia. If someone has a good idea about how to change this mentality in relation to WP editing while it is the mentality of society in general, I'd like to hear it. But, IMO, it sure as hell is not some sort of new speech restrictions for the benefit of the ladies, who as we all know are the gentler sex whose ears are not, by their very nature, able to tolerate course language? That sort of thinking is so sexist that it is, to me, a big step backwards in women's long struggle for equality.
That said, judging by my WP experience your complaints have more to do with behaviors that all editors come up against rather than a particular experience of only editors that have identified as women. I have not identified as a woman but I come up against the same issues. Many articles have a core of experienced editors that resist change. In my experience that can be beneficial, or not. Incidentally, editing a contentious article in "big chucks" just drives me nuts. I don't know what article you are talking about but it can be very, very difficult. Maybe they did just basically tell you to go away, but I doubt that it was just because you are a woman. What article are you speaking of? Gandydancer (talk) 17:26, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
[Insert: I totally agree with your experience, since I also edit controversial topics. I was watching two male dogs on the each side of two neighbors' fence the other day who spend at least an hour a day patrolling their side and peeing on each others' pee. A visiting female dog came up to the fence and started to pee and they both went nuts and scared her off. Here some yell CUNT or other obscene words (in a perfectly innocent fashion, of course) to scare off women. Luckily for them women choose not to reply with words that would wither their kilts in a second. (Tempting as it might be.)
We seem to forget that humans have both an upper brain (the cerebrum) which is relatively rational and a lower brain (the brainstem and cerebellum) that deals with automatic and unconscious functions. I like to think that humans can choose not to act like dogs automatically peeing all over territory they think is theres and driving out any females. Of course, that's more difficult in a culture that is riddled with patriarchal and violent attitudes and entertainment, teaching young males and some females to act like mad dogs. It would be nice if Wikipedia was a place that totally transcends - yes for weeks at a time - the lower brain "mad dog" modus operandi. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 23:30, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
@Gandydancer: I am re-reading your comments before answering, trying to understand. Where did Smallbones say "[Wikipedia has] a problem of an uncivil environment for women"? Lightbreather (talk) 14:53, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
He said Bring in outside organizations, or even consultants, to describe how their organizations dealt with the more specific problem of an uncivil environment for women. There's nothing new here - lots of organizations have had to deal with this problem. I've been here since 2006 and I've never seen women singled out for abuse. But to read Carol's post above, you'd think that the men here have gone wild running all around using foul language and peeing on all the fences to scare the women off. Carol sees no problem with calling the male editors here mad dogs. Gandydancer (talk) 23:21, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
@Smallbones - I'll see your blog link to the (richly POV and thoroughly unscientific) title of the piece in the illustrious Washington Free Beacon with this from Slate.com: Heather MacDonald, "Wikipedia Is Male-Dominated. That Doesn't Mean It's Sexist.: Why the New York Times and feminists should stop hyperventilating about the Web site's gender gap. Provocative article titles in the commercial media don't prove anything. Carrite (talk) 07:24, 6 August 2014 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 07:27, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
The Free Beacon headline is "Government-Funded Study: Why Is Wikipedia Sexist? $202,000 to address ‘gender bias’ in world’s biggest online encyclopedia," and although the how headlines are written is interesting, the more remarkable thing is... that the NSF is spending over $200,000 to find out why Wikipedia is sexist. Lightbreather (talk) 14:58, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
@Lightbreather: the actual title of the grants awarded is "Collaborative Research: Wikipedia and the Democratization of Academic Knowledge". The grants were awarded on September 1, 2013 and neither recipient has published any findings related to the grants. Do you think that it's fair to say that it may be presumptuous to label Wikipedia as sexist based on those facts? Also, I'm still interested on your thoughts on my question to you below. Thank you. 208.76.111.243 (talk) 17:53, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
@Lightbreather: Having now read that paper you keep citing, I have three questions for you:
  • 1)How much weight do you think should be given to findings that 'hint at a culture that may be resistant to female participation.'?
  • To support the conclusion that there is a 'hint at a culture that may be resistant' the paper reports that:
...females are indeed significantly more likely than males to have their edits reverted during the early parts of their tenure. Interestingly, beyond this initial handful of edits, we see little statistical difference between females and males in how often they are reverted. This suggests that females and males who manage to reach a modest level of Wikipedia experience are on par with each other with respect to community-perceived contribution quality.
Given the paper's findings that:
...males and females are focused on disparate content areas within Wikipedia. There is a greater concentration of females in the People and Arts areas, while males focus more on Geography and Science.
Do you find it disconcerting that the paper makes no effort to record the sex of the reverting editor?
  • What other areas of this paper do you think point to sexism or incivility being a cause of the gender imbalance on Wikipedia?
Thank you in advance for your answers. 208.76.111.243 (talk) 01:52, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
208.76.111.243: I am going to answer your three questions, and then no more, because I am not in the habit of discussing my opinions with anonymous commentators. I think the study supports anecdotal reports and the funding of further, related research, such as the one funded by the NSF. Lightbreather (talk) 20:10, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure I follow your line of thinking from "To support the conclusion" to "Do you find it concerting," but to answer your question: No, I do not find it disconcerting. The sex of the reverter would be interesting information to capture - assuming everyone divulges their sex - but sexism doesn't have to be about how you treat the opposite sex. The bigger question, IMO, is, regardless of which "sex" is doing it, are women editors being subjected to different, discouraging treatment? The two parts of this study that (suggest an) answer?
  • Hypothesis: H3b F-Reverted-More Supported? Yes Description: Female newcomers are reverted more than males
  • Hypothesis: H3d F-Blocked-Less Supported? Reversed Description: Females are more likely to be indefinitely blocked
--Lightbreather (talk) 20:42, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
In addition to those just given (H3b and H3d), this: "Hypothesis: H2c F-Social Supported? Yes Description: Females are more likely to participate in social- or community-oriented areas of Wikipedia." Social- and community-oriented areas function more smoothly if their members behave civilly. Or as Lam et al put it: Our results for H2c F-Social suggest that addressing the gender gap could help Wikipedia better address its needs in social- and community-oriented areas.
--Lightbreather (talk) 20:58, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Excellent post, Smallbones. @Jimbo:, if you're serious about this, I implore you to act on this request. The timing is excellent. Lightbreather (talk) 01:51, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
If you want an indication of what Jimbo will do on this is exactly what he's done so far and does so well at in others, he will agree vaguely and then retreat without actually addressing the issue other then vague comments. The reason he does this is because he is largely a figurehead here and only one member of a board of directors. He's stated it off many times, he won't override the authority and I doubt he really can at this point as well. I suspect if the communities wishes are to be completely ignored the editor ranks will hemorrhage even more. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 02:00, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
As I said, we need a survey to see what the community's wishes really are. And as I said "my guess is that 70% of editors (90% of women editors) will tell you that there is a problem." Just wondering, where do you see the community's views? Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:05, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Well if you don't trust him to bring up a problem at a meeting, ping some of the other board members: @Sj:, @Phoebe:, @Raystorm:, @Mdennis (WMF):, @Stu:. Lightbreather (talk) 02:20, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Editor ranks don't hemorrhage. We already have an encyclopedia. This reminds me of the comment that if an editor doesn't like it here, they can "fork". Please, let's be real. Everybody has complicated lives. "Wikipedian" is only a part of it. I don't perceive this discussion as being only about individual terms that might be problematic. Nor even about "women's" issues. The general topic is "civility", is it not? Should people refrain from speaking abrasively to other people? How can friction (to continue the "abrasiveness" analogy) be avoided? There are those who perceive restraints on language to be tantamount to restraints on free expression. I disagree completely. Anybody who has anything to say can express themselves using language that doesn't offend anyone. Therefore there is nothing standing in the way of solving this so-called "problem". Perpetuation of the deployment of potentially problematic language is just a choice. I definitely favor language that cannot possibly offend anyone. Wikipedia would be a better place if editors "spoke" respectfully to one another. Bus stop (talk) 03:03, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
But you focus on words and ignore behaviour, which is the weakness of your position. The problem is not with words. Eric Corbett 03:27, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
How people use words is a behavior. The letters C, U, N, and T alone mean nothing. Put together they have meaning. When a person chooses that word over others that behavior has meaning. Lightbreather (talk) 16:54, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
But the word in question has different cultural connotations depending on the nationality of the speaker. For example, if Eric had said, "Besides, the easiest way to avoid being called a dick is not to act like one." would we still be here? I don't think so. But many people are choosing to ignore that Eric's original statement and my hypothetical are equivalent in many parts of the English speaking world. 208.76.111.243 (talk) 18:35, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
This isn't that complicated - or doesn't have to be. "Cunt" is a word that is offensive to many people. "Dick" is a word that is offensive to many people. What one means when one uses them is irrelevant in social situations, because only the people who use them can really know what they meant. All that matters is, if someone does take offense, or says they do, and the word is one that might reasonably be considered offensive, then the offending party apologizes, and refactors or retracts the statement; perhaps the offended person says "Thank you," but the big thing is - the discussion moves on. You don't spend hours or days trying to figure out who meant what and whether someone has the right to feel offended. That turns the whole situation into a competition. We're supposed to be collaborating, not competing. Lightbreather (talk) 21:14, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Instead of forcing someone to apologize or retract/refactor their words wouldn't it be much less complicated to ignore the word you find offensive, especially given the knowledge that the word has different connotations depending on the locality of the speaker? Why does your offense at a word give you an obligation from that speaker? 208.76.111.243 (talk) 21:30, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

If someone makes an edit that unbalances the NPOV of an article, what "forces" them to retract or refactor it? What makes other editors not ignore it? Why is challenging such an edit an "obligation"? Policy. Specifically, WP:NPOV, which keeps the project's content credible. The encyclopedia is improved by the policy. If someone is uncivil, why are they "obligated" to retract or refactor their comment? Policy. WP:CIVIL also gives the project credibility, because we cannot expect the encyclopedia is improved by being created and maintained in a hostile working environment. I have given you two bonus answers today, ISP 208.76.111.243, for a total of five. I will give no more. Lightbreather (talk) 23:27, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

"If someone makes an edit that unbalances the NPOV of an article, what "forces" them to retract or refactor it?" Unless something has changed with policy my answer is nothing. They are under no obligation whatsoever to retract or refactor. I'm afraid this straw man you've constructed is particularly flimsy. Care to try again? 208.76.111.243 (talk) 23:54, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

A sound proposal, except for one flaw. These "managers" would look after the admins. Who, then, would look after the managers? If your answer is the WMF, that is a poor answer. If your answer is the community, that is also a poor answer. If the WMF had direct control over these people the WMF would also have direct control over us and our admins. If the community were to look after these people, as you suggest by the term "community advocate", it would just create another useless rank in our existing hierarchy. if your answer is none of these two, tell me what it is and I'll poke holes in that answer too. We don't need a nanny, especially not a nanny who is from an outside organization. KonveyorBelt 03:47, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Smallbones I appreciate your suggestions but as has been said countless times here, enforcing civility is hard - while there are some cases that are crystal clear, many many are messy. Just search ANI for "civility" and you will see the crazy quilt of situations. You will see the cruelest incivility couched in perfectly polite language, and earnest efforts to communicate and further the mission of WP, couched in course language. You will see complaints brought by (and against!) editors who are both clueful and insightful, editors who are neither, editors who are one or the other, or who are usually great and have suffered a lapse in one or the other. Some complaints baseless, some solid. Others, kinda. It is hard. "Simple readings" of policy, as you call them, are very often not possible. (here is a typically messy and ugly example from the archives) Add addressing sexism and other forms of systemic bias to the mix, and it only gets murkier, not clearer. I don't know how any high-level, exciting ways to solve the issues that people treat each other in crappy ways sometimes and that people can be terribly blind to what they are doing, sometimes. But I know that these are not issues that high-level declarations can meaningfully address. Like most things that drive change, sustained, considered, nonviolent grassroots action is the best tool. Enact civility. Try to talk people down from incivility, when they go there on Talk pages. Bring clean ANIs when people stick to their guns and persist in incivility, and do it calmly and cluefully. Watch ANI and calmly, cluefully support others who are doing the same. Maybe create a "Wikiproject Civility" and build a considered, insightful culture there. (I keep emphasizing "considered" and "insightful" because especially on complex issues like civility and bias, moving rashly and self-righteously is probably about the worst thing to do, if you want to effect meaningful, longterm change and not just create emotionally reactive drama) With something like that, the culture can change, albeit slowly. It will take something like that. This is not all revolutionary and action-y, I know. Jytdog (talk) 04:09, 5 August 2014 (UTC) (ce Jytdog (talk) 12:57, 6 August 2014 (UTC))
This is really not as complicated as people make it out to be. I propose a very simple solution. Every admin gets a certain number of points, say 10 points to start. Every registered editor has 3 points that can be awarded to admins during the course of one year as reward points, and also 3 points that can be confiscated from admins. Once an admin runs out of points (for making bad decisions as determined by the community) the admin loses admin privileges. Good admins (as determined by the community) theoretically will have lots of points that can be converted to an award of some sort at the end of the year. At midnight on Dec 31 the clock resets and any admin with points gets to renew their adminship. Once you run out of points, you can never be an admin again. Problem solved. (Or at least a huge portion of it.) USchick (talk) 08:29, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Quite apart from the bureaucracy involved, need I point out that it would therefore be easy for a group of ten editors to desysop any admin by pouncing on Jan 1, for any misguided motive, regardless of involvement? This would only hinder admins resolving disputes because their opponents would just take away points. Besides, who gets to take the points? Autoconfirmed? That leaves it too open to sock/meatpuppets. And so on.... BethNaught (talk) 08:39, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
What bureaucracy? Yes, only auto confirmed editors get to participate. Getting 10 editors to agree on something would be a miracle IMHO. Any admin who loses community confidence needs to lose their admin privileges anyway. Losing a few worthless admins would satisfy 99% of disgruntled Wikipedians. USchick (talk) 09:13, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
What bureaucracy? Well, where do you keep track of the points, how do you check nobody gives or takes too many points, how do you prevent fraud? On talk pages which anyone can edit, or do you write some software? It's also worth pointing out that if you had, say a 90/10 RfA, immediately on promotion the opposers could take their points and permanently desysop the candidate despite the manifest consensus. For example. BethNaught (talk) 09:21, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Each auto confirmed editor only gets a total of 6 point for the entire year. 3 to award and 3 to take away. Once they run out of points attached to their user name, they don't have any more for the rest of the year, so what you're describing might happen in January, and then the people attempting to crash the system will be out of the game. What fraud? Unless someone hacks the system to create additional points, there's no fraud. The same way you can "thank" someone now, you can give them points. That's a new feature, right? It would work just like that. You can't make a move now without a bot coming right behind you to identify you, so the system is very well tracked already. USchick (talk) 09:40, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
  • I take it you are not too familiar with WikiPolitics. Ten points means nothing if a popular user doesn't like an admin, and is able to influence WikiFriends to use points. And even some of our most respected admins have made enemies over the years. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:23, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Proposals one and two only should come if hiring and training lots of mediators doesn't work. The rest are good proposals. All of them should make admins who flout clear policies or help their pals and punish their enemies take heed. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 10:36, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

I am not at all familiar with Wiki politics, so I defer to people who know. It seems that the community is asking for an effort (any effort) to do something, which is really sad. If Wikipedia is a social experiment (which I suspect it is) then it's unrealistic for them to hire mediators. Is anyone here actually participating in those discussions? Are mediators seriously being considered? Also, my experience on this talk page leads me to believe that it's being answered by an intern. USchick (talk) 16:50, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Yep, first sentence is good. First, this is Jimmy Wales' Talk page (just like yours). People use it somewhat to actually try to talk with Jimmy Wales, and he answers some things, and sometimes poses questions to the many people who watch this page, but mostly it is a high profile platform to air perspectives. Not much actually happens here or from here. You and some other folks seem to kind of think that WP is a top-down organization. but it's not. It is what we make of it. Per the picture on the associated User page: "Wikipedia is yours." That's my view, anyway.Jytdog (talk) 03:43, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Mr. 2001

Jimbo, can you clarify what you wish editors to do on your behalf regarding "Mr. 2001" ? In some cases, you engage with this person (e.g. here), the conversation takes place as any other, and is archives when it peters out. Other times such as today, other editors revert this user on sight. Tarc (talk) 17:57, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

I've always made it clear that I will revert Mr. 2001 on sight on this page, unless Jimbo requests otherwise. Mr. 2001 is a banned editor and the rules say that anyone can revert his edits anywhere, anytime. When I see Mr. 2001 on other pages, I will always revert him. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:18, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
That's nice, but your opinion is irrelevant to my question here; the "revert anytime, anywhere" traditionally defers to the wishes of the talk page owner, if that happens to be where the posting is taking place. For example, Mbz1 and Grundle2600 may post to my talk page at any time, and I have to revert the occasional well-meaning editor who intervenes. Tarc (talk) 18:46, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Any talkpage editor is free to revert on their talkpage but in the main encyclopedia or other usertalk, Smallbones is well within revert at sight policies. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 18:50, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
That isn't what I'm asking here. Tarc (talk) 21:55, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
  • The 5th pillar of Wikipedia begins: "Wikipedia has no firm rules: Wikipedia has policies and guidelines, but they are not carved in stone; their content and interpretation can evolve over time...." — For those who remain obsessed with rules, here is an idea: When Mr. 2001 is out-and-out trolling, hat his comment. When Mr. 2001 is raising a legitimate point (albeit in a pointy way), grit your teeth and move along. That seems sensible, does it not? Carrite (talk) 18:59, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Nope that's why we have a ban, if they were welcome they wouldn't be banned. If you choose to ignore that on your page that is up to you or in this case Jimbo, but until he or the talkpage editor wants to readd it to the record then it's done within policy. I have left a few on my page too so I understand where you are coming from but I think it's a personal choice to each person's talkpage if they readd it. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 19:16, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, Captain Obvious, we really don't need the rules quoted to us here. The point, to reiterate, is that an editor has leeway on this matter as to allow a banned editor's comments to remain on his/her own talk page. I was asking the person, i.e. Mr. Wales, behind this talk page what he would prefer in regards to this particular banned editor; is it "revert always" or "only revert if they're being a jerk" or something in between. Tarc (talk) 21:55, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
What's the point of a ban then? If we will just grit our teeth and move along why ban them at all? Hell in a Bucket (talk) 22:10, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Yup. Bit like 'What's the point of a civility policy? If we will just grit our teeth and move along why have a civility policy at all?' AnonNep (talk) 22:38, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
No the civility policy is about tolerance and can be cultural in nature in many cases, a ban is we do not want you here. Huge difference. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 22:46, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
No, both are cases where the community has reached consensus but the consensus is not enforced. AnonNep (talk) 22:51, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

If there is a community guideline on civility and a consensus on enforcing it and on what terms where is that consensus. Show me where it defines it like it does with banned users. What I find funny is people specifically like Tarc will argue for civility and then lapse so completely in what a "normal" person could construe as a personal attack. That's why civility and personal attacks are so cloudy, the people whining about civility and decency disregard it whenever they choose. I'm only using it as an example because it only weakens what they are bitching about and is quite ironic and hypocr4itical at the same time. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 22:58, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

WP:CIVIL (which includes 'Blocking for incivility') and WP:BAN (which includes 'Edits by and on behalf of banned editors') became policy through consensus (they didn't drop out the sky). They aren't enforced. That's the rub. AnonNep (talk) 23:09, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
No the pure hypocrisy of the position. It's selective enforcement, now IMO a clear personal attack is something like "Editor x is a stupid motherfucker" on the lamer side is "Captain Obvious" it's clearly not civil, it might even be harrassment if I thought they were doing it in relation to my level 1 warning on refactoring comments. Where is the enforcement for that? I demand justice, the world will not be livable until I right this injustice. Hold on while I climb the Riechstag dressed as spiderman. Enforcing a community ban is black and white, they post and they are reverted. I've left a couple evasion comments on my page but they were more the thank you for voting against sanctions sort which wasn't a discussion. This situation is quite different this is a person attempting to completely disregard the ban and do whatever anyway. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 23:15, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, it is selective enforcement, I gave examples of 2 banned editors who I have allowed to post on my talk page. You have no say in that matter whatsoever; I do. That's what I was asking here; what is Jimbo's say on "Mr. 2001". Tarc (talk) 23:27, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Any admin has a say in that matter, simply by blocking the account/IP of said editors. Resolute 13:43, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
'IMO a clear personal attack is something like...' so, start trying to get consensus for your favoured change to the policy and follow it through until you get it. Until then there's a policy that already has consensus but isn't being enforced. I agree with you on 'selective enforcement' but its 'selective enforcement' of the consensus policy that does already exist. AnonNep (talk) 23:31, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Even after five years contributing to this encyclopedia, I am still surprised at how many editors, on all sides of our perennial "issues", feel compelled to repeat themselves over and over and over again, as if obsessive repetition is persuasive. As for the person we are calling "Mr. 2001", Jimbo engages them in conversation quite often, and this is his talk page, and he has an open door policy. So, as did Tarc, I am directing a question to Jimbo: Do you want various editors reverting inquiries from Mr. 2001, or do you want to make those decisions yourself? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 23:36, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
A quicker answer to that is the block that is needed for evasion. Hence why an SPI was filed. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 23:43, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
And if we could just get enforcement on all existing consensus based policies we wouldn't be talking about them over and over and over again. AnonNep (talk) 23:51, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Yeah enforcement is the problem, because there is no answer to what is incivility and what isn't, what is blockable and what isn't. That's the problem that has to be solved. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 23:54, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
I think incivility is completely up for debate but at the moment we have a consensus policy that is being selectively enforced. As a result there are arguments over both what should be in the policy and what should be enforced by that policy. So, let's enforce the existing policy, the one already agreed to, see what happens. If the sky doesn't fall in I expect it'll be kept, in some form, but the enforcement will allow us to look at the real, rather than oft-projected strawman, effect before we work towards consensus based changes. At the moment, we're running in circles. AnonNep (talk) 00:04, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

of course we are going in circles that's the problem. That's why the pillar is an ideal, we likely won't be able to enforce it but it's a goal to strive for. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 00:05, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

A goal to strive for is a goal to strive for. Let's just enforce what already exists, and has already been agreed to, and reassess, as a community, based on the effect of that. AnonNep (talk) 00:12, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
We know what incivility is. Incivility is unnecessary escalation of abrasiveness. The necessity here is communication. Any degree of abrasiveness above and beyond that which might be necessary for articulating a point in communication with another editor is incivility, for Wikipedia purposes. Bus stop (talk) 00:20, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Civility, the English Wikipedia, and the WMF

Here is a restatement of my thoughts for the WMF on civility (and its lack) in the English Wikipedia and the role of the WMF.

Civility is one of the so-called five pillars of the English Wikipedia. However, it is not enforced, and discussion on the English Wikipedia is often deeply uncivil. There is essentially no sanction for uncivil conduct that does not rise to the status of personal attacks, and some personal attacks are also ignored.

Three policies have the combined effect of preventing any enforcement of the civility policy and further preventing any effective discussion of the enforcement of the civility policy. The first policy is the principle that any block imposed by an administrator can be reversed by another administrator. It is recommended but not required that the unblock first be discussed with the blocking administrator. The second policy is the principle that blocks are preventive and not punitive. The third policy is the rule, very strictly enforced, against wheel warring, conflicts between administrators. The result is that civility blocks, which are controversial, will typically be unblocked. Since the original block was preventive (to avoid further incivility) and not punitive (to punish the incivility), it cannot be restored, and restoring it would be wheel warring. Since any particular case in point is then closed, any further discussion is essentially off-topic. There is no real opportunity within the scope of community enforcement for discussion of civility enforcement.

Some editors are clearly quite satisfied with the non-enforcement of civility. A few have even stated that any editor who is dissatisfied with the lack of civility enforcement should exercise the “right to fork”. (Jimbo Wales said recently that if a group of editors wants a community where incivility is tolerated, he would buy them their servers. I would say that they already have their servers, because they have the English Wikipedia servers, but that is my opinion.) I do not think that anyone knows what percentage of members of the community would prefer a more civil work environment but are silent (either out of intimidation or out of a desire not to cause conflict).

The governance of the English Wikipedia, like other WMF communities, is mostly a “direct democracy” under what is essentially a charter granted by the WMF. The exception to that direct democracy is that the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) is elected by the community and so is an indirect democracy.

A case is currently pending before the ArbCom, waiting to be accepted or declined, concerning a particular incident of incivility and requests from some editors to accept it as an omnibus civility case. The ArbCom is probably about to decline the case. Some of the arbitrators state that this is an issue which the community should address for itself. That would be true in the best of all possible worlds, but this is not the best of all possible worlds. The community has demonstrated that it cannot, on its own, enforce civility. It can be reasonably argued that the ArbCom, which applies policy and does not make policy, should not intervene without at least community agreement as to how policy should be applied.

If the English Wikipedia is unable or unwilling (and the lack of consensus means that it is unable) to enforce its own civility policy, and the ArbCom will not enforce a policy on which the community cannot agree, the only remaining options are for the WMF, as the owner of the servers and author of the charter of self-government for the English Wikipedia, either to leave the English Wikipedia to its own incivility, or to intervene somehow. The problem won’t solve itself. The community can’t solve its own problem, and the community’s ArbCom can’t solve the problem without the backing of the community. Various proposals have been offered as to what the WMF can do. Will something be done, or will civility be ignored?

The preamble to the overarching Terms of Use includes: “Civility — You support a civil environment and do not harass other users.” Will the WMF ensure that the reference to civility has actual meaning, or will it, like the English Wikipedia policy with the same name, be an empty principle?

Robert McClenon (talk) 02:59, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Define civility. Do it in such a way that it enjoys a broad consensus. Once that is done the rest will fall into place. 208.76.111.243 (talk) 03:11, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Draw bright lines. There are NO extenuating circumstances that should excuse a senior edtior from a long-term ban after telling another to fuck off and die. And yet, that actually happened. I'm relatively new around here, but I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't read it with my own eyes.   Mandruss |talk  03:39, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
[Insert: I had an editor link to an off wiki blog entry which included a comment I and my family should be gassed. He got a 48 hour block but still wikihounds me almost everyday. I guess it's off to ANI or Arbitration to see if I can get help again but not holding my breath. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 14:18, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
You seem possibly to be conflating again. From what you say, the user was blocked (punitively? ahem) for posting the link; that the same user is allegedly hounding you now would thus have nothing to do with the original block: a one-off and a pattern are different situations. Or did you mean to say that you had someone who was hounding you, of which posting the link was just one part in the pattern, was blocked for the pattern and is still hounding you? I vaguely recall that you've brought this up several times in the past, so it looks like one of those instances where, really, you need to put your money where your mouth is and actually take it to ANI. "Hounding", though, is a term often bandied about and often incorrectly alleged, so check for boomerangs first. (Obviously, if there is a practical rather than theoretical boomerang hazard then raising the issue here would also be a bit disingenuous, but I'm assuming that there isn't and basically just advising you to double-check). - Sitush (talk) 14:43, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
[Insert: Actually, I have three hounders, the big one and two little ones. All three have trouble hearing me say "you are banned from my talk page" and "stop following me around/criticizing me/and/or reverting me" despite my repeated reminders I consider it wikihounding and harassment. [added later:And as you know perfectly well, Sitush, I've brought copious diffs regarding two of the individuals to both ANI and Arbitration to little avail (not to mention repeatedly to Admins who have already warned them!!) So don't act naive.
But I have begun to realize the reason guys put up with the hostile culture of Wikipedia and much of the internet is that they are taught to suffer pain in silence and "man up" whereas women today say "F* this pain" and split when it starts. Dang, I have to stop manning up! Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 17:51, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I don't know where you got that idea from. Men in general are taught to stand up and fight, both in their own defence and that of others. Is that a bad thing? Eric Corbett 22:14, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
But why does one have to fight in self-defense? Because there are individual and organized aggressors committed to dominating, controlling and looting others through organized violence. On Wikipedia these types want to dominate and control topic areas and articles and ideas, and drive off those who they suspect have different ideas and/or who try to enforce Wikipedia policies through incivility that may feel violent to the subject of aggression. And too often those who fight that kind of aggression get smacked down by admins as forcefully, or more so, than the aggressors, depending on what group the admin belongs to or wants to please. Got it? Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 05:48, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
You don't seem to have answered Eric's question. Instead, you've added another layer of rhetoric. I find the theory that man are taught to suffer in silence a bit odd, although doubtless it can be supported because there are umpteen contradictory hypotheses about both genders. I'd agree that many men - certainly those in Britain - have historically been taught to hide their emotions but that is not quite the same thing. In fact, your statement seems contradictory in itself: if men are taught to suffer in silence then why have you been accusing them of aggressiveness etc? You'd think they'd all be hiding under their beds. If they're not generating the hostility, and I assume that you think that women are not, then who is? - Sitush (talk) 06:04, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Ah, perhaps it is the monkey? ;) - Sitush (talk) 06:10, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Having had profoundly uncivil (to say the least) comments aimed at me on many occasions by admins, sole-co-founders, Arbs, etc, I do not believe that WMF has either the ability or the authority (either moral or formal) to attempt any kind of enforcement in this area. Too many people who should have known better have burnt the bridges upon which they themselves were standing. DuncanHill (talk) 03:51, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict)So, hypothetically, your saying that if another person was constantly making new socks and leaving extremely sexist/racist comments on my talk page, and I finally got so frustrate as to tell the person to "fuck off and die", that I should immediately receive a long term ban? Doesn't matter what was said or done to precipitate the outburst? (personally, there isn't anything that a sock or vandal can say that upsets me, their vandalism of my talk page just proves I've been effective, but others don't see it that way and can get rather upset over it) Monty845 03:54, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I think that pretty well sums up what I'm saying. I doubt there are many cases where people who are uncivil don't feel they're justified. So, if we say, "Don't be uncivil, but experience shows that you'll probably be forgiven if you had enough reason to be uncivil", we might as well give no guidance at all. The only real test of one's civility is how he treats those who don't deserve it.   Mandruss |talk  04:06, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I can think of at least three admins and one sole-co-founder who have such a history of incivility to me that no admin would ever think it proper to block me for calling them names. And that's not to mention those admins who have threatened to block me for revealing that they were enabling banned editors. DuncanHill (talk) 04:13, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
And therein lies the core problem as I see it. All incivility is justified in the eyes of the person doing it---and, as you point out, also in the eyes of some enablers. We have to (1) establish effective ways of dealing with incivility, and (2) in the meantime, respond to incivility, injustice, etc., with civility---or be prepared to pay with a break. Anyway, if I'm so angry that I lose my ability to be civil, a break is probably a gift, not a sanction.   Mandruss |talk  04:16, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I think we're off the topic of the OP, which I think was mostly addressed to Jimbo rather than the community (it is Jimbo's user talk page, after all). It wouldn't offend me if someone hatted most of this.   Mandruss |talk  05:12, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Specific examples help as a reminder something needs to be done. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 14:20, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Note: There's a big difference between occasional incivility because people are doing something absurdly wrong or because someone has gone out of their way to push you buttons and the type that is exercised for domination and control (or because the person has an anger problem). Admins who know the difference can be helpful. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 18:19, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Trying to draw the line between those is where the civility discussion usually bogs down. Whats occasional? Does activity level influence that?) What counts as baiting? And how do you deal with different combinations of those factors, combined with more or less egregiously uncivil comments? If admins don't agree on that, saying leave it up to the admin "who knows the difference" doesn't get us anywhere. Monty845 18:43, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
It is rather pointless to get bogged down in such things, esp here. I think one large step to take would be to make it more difficult to undo an administrator's civility block. If serial disruptors like Malleus and others had had even a handful of those blocks actually stick for their intended duration, we may not even be here discussing this today. Tarc (talk) 21:53, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
You civility warriors really do make me laugh. You appear to believe that it's perfectly OK to call me a "serial disruptor", but if I'd called you that I'd very likely have been blocked again. Have you no insight into your own behaviour? Eric Corbett 22:10, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Tarc, Baiting someone like you've just done is tremendously uncivil. But I expect that you know that don't you? 208.76.111.243 (talk) 22:14, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Of course he does. The dishonesty sticks out a mile. Eric Corbett 22:19, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I take your complaint a about as seriously as a defendant in a trial were he to whine about a witness describing his misdeeds. Which is to say, not seriously at all. Tarc (talk) 23:13, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
And here is the crux of the entire civility matter. You get to bait Eric, you get to purposely goad him by contemptuously referring to him by his old username, and you do it with impunity. If there was an ounce of honesty in this whole civility debate then you would be blocked for such antics. 208.76.111.243 (talk) 23:29, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Ya know, all these personal histories make any worthwhile dialogue impossible. We should all be required to change our usernames once a year, all at the same time, and with no connections to our previous identities. We are reincarnated with a clean slate, and given another chance. Completely impracticable, but maybe worth contemplating anyway. All I know for certain is that what we've been doing to date isn't working and never will, so I'm thinking outside the box.   Mandruss |talk  23:58, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

That is an excellent idea. We all should be given an opportunity to disconnect from our past. I'm all for it. Bus stop (talk) 00:18, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
It would have to be all of us, all at the same time. If I had a bitter grudge against you, it wouldn't do any good to change my username; I'd still know who you were, and the grudge would continue to affect how I interacted with you. One obvious kink in the idea is that it wouldn't take us long to identify our old enemies by their writing and behavior patterns, even chronic spelling issues. Also, if it were available to any individual at any time, it would be routinely abused for socking purposes. No doubt there are other reasons it wouldn't work that I haven't thought about. Like I said, it's not a serious proposal, but thinking about it might help us bear in mind how destructive these histories are to the way we treat each other.   Mandruss |talk  01:17, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
How about just a standard 24hr block for being involved in incivility as defined by the current policy. A no tolerance to admin rollbacks on any civility blocks or they lose tools without appeal. It would, if they took the bait, take in the baiter and the baited, and be intensely painful for a while, but a 24hr block isn't the end of the world. Just an ego slap (deserved or otherwise). We have the policy, let's enforce it. AnonNep (talk) 01:41, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
I really don't see it that way at all. One of the actually good thing about this project is that for the most part (there has been some unfortunately underhanded business of admins oversighting either their own or their friends' edit histories several years ago, but we can leave that for another time), the words that one chooses to use here are a part of the permanent record. You can see my ham-fisted attempt at making a point in the Manning naming dispute blow up and result in a topic ban, the near-30 blocks (acount1 + account 2) earned by our chum above, and so on. A person can change a username as often as they like, but the source of the problem can alwyas be found in the same location. Tarc (talk) 01:40, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Which is more likely to result in civility, forgiveness or accountability? If somebody has near-30 blocks, he has paid his debt to society and it shouldn't be held over his head forever (as you just did). It's no different from making it impossible for a guy to get a decent job because he has a felony on his record from 20 years ago. Yeah, he fucked up once, but that punishment exceeds the crime. We could take this as deep into lay philosophy as anyone cares to. It comes down to a diversity of worldviews, which are all but impossible to change, and I guess that's what the Wikipedia experiment is all about.   Mandruss |talk  01:57, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I realize "it's not a serious proposal" but it is interesting nevertheless. A requirement should be that one cannot reveal one's former identity, though as you point out there might be little and unavoidable clues. Though it would be imperfect, the massive shakeup occurring annually might have beneficial effects. Bus stop (talk) 02:24, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Until every banned editor in the history of the project realizes that they will be able to blend in with all the experienced editors with no records. One of the primary ways of detecting socks is that they don't act like new users despite being newly created accounts, but now everyone will have what appear to be newly created accounts and continue acting like experience editors. Not to even mention the attribution legalities... Monty845 13:31, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Mandruss, look at the log in detail; the majority of those blocks were overturned within hours or a day. Imagine if the bar was raised for civility blocks, making them less likely to be overturned. Then we could have had a series of escalating blocks...24h --> 72h --> 1 week, etc... eventually to indefinite. At that rate, we could've been rid of this person 2-3 years ago. Instead, it has been like a child who is told "no!" over and over and over til the parent just gives in and buys them the shiny toy. They haven't learned discipline or respect, they have only learned how to manipulate. The current climate of this project does nothing but foster manipulators and enablers. Tarc (talk) 13:40, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Except you're ignoring the fact that 97% of the time the editor in question is editing/improving content/helping other editors improve the 'pedia. Can that be said of many others in this debate? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:47, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
What good is content or editing if the environment that that alleged 3% (it's much, much higher) is made so toxic? Who are these "other editors" who have been helped...the ones who have the proverbial "thick skin"? The ones that aren't "militant feminists"? If the only community you want here is one that is 97% alpha male bro-coders, then y'all are well on your way. Tarc (talk) 14:33, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
(a) it's not higher if you actually look at the editing history, in fact it is probably lower. (b) there are plenty of female (and meek male) editors interacting quite happily with him. (c) the causes of the toxic environment are much more complex as you well know. (d) this conversation is not likely to go anywhere productive I suspect, so I think I'll head off now.Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:55, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

There is no civility problem per se. There is a culture of bullying on Wikipedia, and our problem is that we enable bullies (admins or other "power users") to ceaselessly mistreat other users. As it stands, if we implemented a strict civility enforcement policy in this kind of toxic culture, we would just be giving bullies a sharper weapon with which to strike at their victims. Fix the problem of admin abuse and entitlement and then apply strict civility enforcement, equally to everyone. Everyking (talk) 02:19, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

You are right about incivility possibly being used in a biased and punitive fashion, whatever the reason. There does need to be better control on rogue or power tripping admins; I like term limits for a starter. Both times I was blocked I got severe blocks for relatively minor issues (compared to some things I've seen been given a pass or a much shorter block). Both problems were based in part on misunderstandings of policy by myself and admins who had advised me, as well as related to my reaction to extreme harassment. Luckily the community came to my aid in one case and admins in the other and both blocks were shortened substantially. But one can only wonder what the heck those admins were thinking besides "shut this %&$*)#& up". That said, if just the grossest forms of incivility were dealt with (slur terms, obviously demeaning discussions of others work, casting aspersions, making specific charges against specific individuals without a diff in sight, etc.) that would be a big help. Geez, I could make a long list from my own experience just this year. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 06:01, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Weird press release mentioning Jimbo and a "Wikipedia Reform/Civility Movement (WRCM)"

Brought to my attention at WP:ANI#User Jim-Siduri again - I think this might merit admin attention, see [17] (now collapsed). Dougweller (talk) 05:19, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

From the 'release': "Ghe Wikipedia Reform/Civility Movement (WRCM) announced today a new promotional campaign in support of Jimbo Wales’ "moral ambitiousness" concept. The campaign will include press releases, targeted outreach and other support mechanisms to facilitate the effective implementation of Jimbo’s idea into Wikipedia. WRCM intends to use Jimbo’s "moral ambitiousness" concept to initiate a new Wiki-based project to discuss, create and implement Wikipedia reforms with the intention of significantly reducing hostility and uncivil behavior and significantly increasing female participation on Wikipedia." Dougweller (talk) 08:32, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
How strange. For the record, I have never heard of WRCM and have nothing to do with it. I can say that no reputable press will take notice of a press release written in such an amateurish style (referring to me as "Jimbo" - my Internet nickname). I would recommend that those who want to support the idea of moral ambitiousness around how we treat each other get involved in peacefully and cheerfully helping to improve policy and change attitudes internally - an external press campaign is not likely to get traction without my support, nor is it really the most effective route to positive change in this instance.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:44, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
We hatted it at WP:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Gender gap task force with a "not Task force project note" once we realized he was mentioning the project; plus took off all mention of the project. But will leave hat there in case he actually sends out the press release and media visits the link.
This is a strange well-meaning but deeply ignorant editor with grandiose ideas, which appear to be to use Wikipedia as his web vehicle to make the world a better place in some unspecified way. At WP:ANI, I have recommended a block. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:28, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
However, wouldn't it be nice to send out a press release saying "There has been no incivility/harassment/wikihounding at any Wikimedia project in one whole week." Would make my life more pleasant... Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 13:55, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Duh. Like Carol, I would very much like to have significant reductions in the level of incivility, harassment, and hounding on Wikipedia. But if Carol really thinks that something would reduce the level of misconduct to zero for one week, she may be looking at an alternate reality. (So, maybe, is Jim-Siduri.) If there really were no reports of incivility for a week, it would be a very bad sign, because it would mean that everyone who would report incivility had been intimidated. We can hope, but we shouldn't hope for the unobtainable, because that is to dash hopes. I think that Jim really is hoping for something in an alternate reality. I don't know about Carol. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:28, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
The phenomenon of incivility on Wikipedia Talk pages has to do with the clash of a small community with a large community. This is a large community and it always will be one. A much higher level of abrasiveness is permissible in smaller communities. We should be expected to speak differently here than we speak with our smaller circles of acquaintances. The language that we should be speaking here could be thought of as a different language than the one that we speak in the mostly smaller groups in which we exercise our verbal abilities. Bus stop (talk) 22:55, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject TAFI

Hello, Jimbo Wales. You're invited to join WikiProject Today's articles for improvement. Feel free to nominate an article for improvement at the project's Nominated articles page. Also feel free to contribute to !voting for new weekly selections at the project's talk page. If interested in joining, please add your name to the list of members. NorthAmerica1000 16:30, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Request to stop lobbing for the good of the NRA

Hello Jimmy Wales. English Wikipedia is used for the promotion of mass murders vs the US citizens and vs Barak Obama (lobbying for the good of the NRA). I ask you stop the promotion of terrible death via Wikipedia. You can see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gun_politics_in_the_United_States&action=history

and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&action=history (your page is used for the promotion of death)

Vandals for the good of the NRA must restore edits with the truth: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gun_politics_in_the_United_States&diff=prev&oldid=620021457#Second_Amendment_rights :

"Second Amendment is the main trump and subject for misuse from the side of the National Rifle Association. Lobbing and corruption, which have relation to this organization, often are the reason of mass murders with help of firearms in the US (simple citizens are victims). Gun control in the United States almost does not exist by the fault of the NRA. For gradual stopping of mass murders can be organized special investigation to identify corrupt members of the US Congress and take relevant action vs them. Besides that, Barak Obama seeks support and attention of the US population, to decide the problem via different methods. He promises not to cancel the Second Amendment and explains, that restrictions are very needed on the federal and regional level - in relation of other relevant laws.[115] [116] [117] [118] [119]" Thank you Jimmy Wales! -95.27.106.71 (talk) 17:42, 6 August 2014 (UTC).

You have already been told that Wikipedia is not a soapbox for your personal political campaigns. This isn't going to change - and if you carry on like this, you are liable to find yourself blocked from editing. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:46, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
This is becoming a problem. I am not an admin, but I strongly suggest that an admin look into this. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 19:21, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I have contacted discospinster, who locked the article. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 19:26, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
That I did. If the behaviour continues from this editor (via multiple IPs), it will stay locked. Personal commentary does not belong in articles. ... discospinster talk 20:19, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you :) --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 21:21, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Do not write st.pid things, so called discospinster. You and your comrades violated rules of Wikipedia (not about me). And you must restore the contribution from me, by this reason (including, by this reason). You must unlock articles. "IP editor" could edit article one time instead several (when the lobbying vs many of things does not exist). Exists only in favor of the NRA - from your side (see history, to understand - who vs people of the US and who acts for the good of NRA in the same time). Wikipedia does not depend from any NRA (any NRA is zero here). Propaganda (promotion of an idea). Not facts and opinions from respected sources (you must understand such fact, if you do not wish be blocked by the will of the owner of this page, who respects lives of children and the US citizens). Read the rules and respect them. Here is not place for lobbying and propaganda of the NRA. Place for facts and knowledge. - 95.29.135.141 (talk) 23:48, 6 August 2014 (UTC).
    • Wikipedia:Requests for page protection in the place to go to request un-protection of articles, Jimbo cannot do anything for you in this situation. I'd also like to remind you that the possession of firearms is a right enshrined in the US Constitution; you may not care very much for the opinion of the National Rifle Association, but their point-of-view regarding gun rights in this country is significant and it is quite proper to be represented in the article in question. Tarc (talk) 01:20, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Thank you for the advice! But Discospinster made action not in accordance with the rules of Wikipedia (he self is vandal in this case). I can wait time, of course (23:20, 7 August 2014), for restore of my contribution. Paradoxal situation in any case (vandal made administrative action vs user, who is not vandal in reality). And how to be free of vandalism from the side of members of the NRA in future .. I do not know. Vandal with powers in Wikipedia again can make the same bad action (roll back and the article will be under lock). Trouble. How to be. - 37.144.127.167 (talk) 12:30, 7 August 2014 (UTC).
    • discospinster is not a vandal, he is an administrator who protected the page against repeated attempts by you to insert poor material into it. I'm sorry to say, but your grasp of English is rather atrocious; regardless of the content of the text, anyone would revert on that basis alone as it was basically unreadable. Many people do not like the NRA or their use of the 2nd amendment, that point-of-view is already well-represented in the article. You can wait til the page protection expires, but any attempt to re-insert your broken paragraph will be reverted. Tarc (talk) 13:31, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Write "please stop this" could only man, related to the NRA (paid editor, he can be even). Jehochman, here is located not place for the lobbying in favor of the NRA. Tarc was misled and not more. - 37.144.112.60 (talk) 16:08, 7 August 2014 (UTC).

Right to remember

File:Tom Carstairs In Concert.jpg
The file File:Tom Carstairs In Concert.jpg has an uncertain copyright status and may be deleted. You can comment on its removal.This photo of Tom Carstairs on Wikipedia was removed from Google Search following a "right to be forgotten" request.[1][2]

Please see Lila Tretikov WMF Blog, Wikipedia pages censored in European search results, Geof Brigham and Michelle Paulson, BBC Wikipedia reveals Google 'forgotten' search links.

The photo was up for deletion on Wikipedia. I've put it in the Right to be forgotten article. It should also be moved to Commons and put in a new (?) Category:Right to be forgotten. Perhaps all the other articles should be put in a Wikipedia category, or maybe a List of articles subject to "right to be forgotten" requests. Please remind me if I forget. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:46, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

This strikes me as POINT-y and cruel. The photo should not have been on Wikipedia in the first place - it's a grainy photo apropos of nothing of a non-notable person (indeed, it is not clear to me who it is of or why it is on Wikipedia at all). It was linked nowhere. As an illustration of Right to be Forgotten it is also not notable.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:28, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
@Jimbo Wales: whilst I agree with your comments about the actions of User:Smallbones being beyond the pale, I can't agree with you on this being a not notable illustration. Unfortunately, it now is.
The BBC, for example, have published the information, so it would be valid for inclusion in the encyclopaedia based upon current practices. Unless, someone like User:Newyorkbrad were to intervene and act on this as a clear BLP violation. Which it is.
Jimmy, but I will also say, that this situation would not have existed if it weren't for the WMF, of which you are a board member, publicising the information in the first place as an obvious attempt to stick it to the EU. I will also say Jimmy, that you hold relevant tools on this project, so why don't you use them and delete the image yourself as being the right thing to do? 46.43.81.38 (talk) 11:20, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
See Category:Articles blocked by Google for local listings. Monty845 18:52, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
There is a problem with Category:Articles blocked by Google. At the time of writing, Gerry Hutch is still showing up in a google.co.uk search. All we know for sure is that Google has told the Foundation about its intention to block the article.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 18:59, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Update: The reason why Gerry Hutch is being blocked by Google may have nothing to do with Hutch. See this screenshot. This refers to a retired officer from the Garda Síochána who is mentioned in the current version of the article. If we remove this, will the block be lifted? --♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 20:39, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
The page is not blocked by google. Nor will it be. All it means is when a particular name (usually that of an individual) is googled, the identified URLs will not be included in the search results. It would still be findable using any other search string. fish&karate 22:22, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Ummm, actually, I just tried some control experiments and I get the same "some of the results may have been removed" message for any random name, Arnold Layne, etc. I would welcome an experiment that can show whether a page has been removed, but I don't see we're here yet. Adding "Wikipedia" to the search and manually checking whether the article comes up is better, but it may be hard to go through all the results - in any case, Felix McKenna "Wikipedia" does get me Gerry Hutch on www.google.co.uk. (Of course, for all I know they checked and saw I wasn't actually located in Europe, and for all I know they might do the reverse for google.com. We could use more info...) Wnt (talk) 22:38, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
The former Irish police officer is the only name currently in the article producing the "results removed" message (Mike Tyson could not cause this as he is a U.S. citizen, and Jim Sheridan and Alan Devine are not causing the message to appear). As Sherlock Holmes would say, "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth". Well, almost. It is extraordinarily hard to prove who made one of these requests, but it has to be a living European citizen mentioned in a Wikipedia article.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 22:48, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
@Ianmacm: I should have taken a screenshot - I think Google might be messing with me. I had started off by testing the hypothesis that every prominent individual at Global Risk Solutions (list) was subject to the same Google notice as Felix McKenna (though he isn't on that list presently) - my assumption being that the "right to be forgotten" would be enforced less often as a protection for people with specific issues and more often as a routine prophylactic measure by those with some measure of power, or as directed by their employer. I did indeed see this message for at least four people there; but then I was seeing it even on searches like "Arnold Layne" or other random names I made up. I repeated the searches just now though and I haven't seen these notices return on the controls. So I'm having some trouble here. If you have more confidence in your use of this tool I'd encourage you to test the Global Risks list yourself and see how many you think are genuinely blocked. Wnt (talk) 10:16, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
I got the notice by self-googling, and I know as a near-certainty that no-one else living shares my name. I wonder if Google attaches the notice wherever the search string is the name of someone who it knows is not a public figure (and who lives in Europe, if that's a factor)(?). Formerip (talk) 10:48, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
As I understand it, the notice is attached to all searches which are plausible names, when on a European version of the site. Most won't actually be affected. BethNaught (talk) 11:01, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
It doesn't come up for "John Smith", though, and that is definitely a plausible name. Formerip (talk) 11:05, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Right now both I and ianmacm (see my talk page) are getting the notice for almost all the Global Risk Solutions names but not for controls. Yet at other times I have seen it for all names as people describe above. It is possible that Google changed its behavior back and forth for some reason. In any case, the observation with GRS should put us on notice that this "right" could become a curse for European workers. I mean, GRS is presumably a pretty elite employer, but I don't see any reason why college kids making extra money as telemarketers won't soon be forced to sign out a right to be forgotten notice to help keep the spammers' privacy, if they aren't already. And once signed away, do they have any way to demand that they be un-forgotten? For many people in entertainment/news/music, Googleability turns out to be a significant asset. So this regulation could impoverish the people. Wnt (talk) 11:10, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
According to their FAQ: We’re showing this notice in Europe when a user searches for most names, not just pages that have been affected by a removal. But for some famous people (ex: Jeremy Vine) it doesn't seem to appear. BethNaught (talk) 11:15, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
It is all too weird and Kafkaesque for the average person to understand. The question remains though, why, with over 4 million English language articles to choose from, is Gerry Hutch on the block list sent to the Foundation? Even in its rather poor state before yesterday's cleanup, nothing in it was defamatory or clearly wrong.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 11:23, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
It does seem like the notice is about general awareness raising, rather than telling you anything specific about the search results you are seeing. It's probably a good thing if the originator of a request in unfathomable, though, because it is a good argument against either trying to punish people or delete articles. All we can really do is check for BLP violations. 11:28, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
  • All I can say is Streisand effect. Almost nobody heard of these guys before. Now they're on WP:109PAPERS. From the BBC article, I smell a big fine going Google's way. "EU regulators have expressed concern that Google is notifying website administrators of the links it removes, suggesting this undermines the point of the law. While the links do not appear on Google.co.uk and other versions of the search engine created for specific EU countries, they do still appear on Google.com, which can be accessed in Europe." Which is why I never noticed an "memory holes", I guess. Not that I would have searched for any of the topics in that article before that, ever. By the way, Intel was still coy about coughing up that $1.4B (€1B) it was fined at one point [18]. Hopefully they won't fine Wikipedia too... or the WMF might have to shutter all its EU presence. JMP EAX (talk) 00:04, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

I tried to have this image deleted as per this. But it was reverted as you can see. I should have probably transferred it to Commons, then had it locally deleted, and then deleted it on Commons (as the resultant upload was).

@Smallbones: not only is your addition to the article cruel and pointy. I will go one step further and say that it is an especially cunty move on your part. 110.74.219.162 (talk) 10:48, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

  1. ^ WMF Notices recieved from search engines
  2. ^ Wikipedia reveals Google 'forgotten' search links. BBC News, August 6, 2014

I see that I've been pinged here. I've been focusing on some arbitration business tonight, but will take a look at this situation tomorrow. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:25, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

PLEASE STOP ENCICLOPEDIC SCANDAL (first political paid advocacy in Wikipedia)

Hi jimbo, sorry for my bad English (where I live, public education is collapsing because of corrupt politicians). I saw your "Help stop paid advocacy editing!" and I want (or need) to help:

Long time ago, I asked you for help, that Wikipedia in Catalan language is not a secessionist ultranationalist pamphlet, and I said to you the danger that wikipedia is full of lies and changing the history and facts - by "consensus", of course -.

Meanwhile, some "secesionist volunteers" from wikipedia are replacing workers of Libraries and Schools in Catalonia (including the "supervision" of teaching material, as in the worst times), and I warned that there were people who gave money of subsidies to lie and cheat on wikipedia. And to have that BRUTAL MASSIVE BIAS. And INDOCTRINATION CHILDREN SECESSIONISM (If you like democracy, do not see this video of children with the WAR FLAG of communist Catalonia instead real one, you will puke).

Now, watching the recent brutal corruption scandal of hundreds of millions of euros more from that political party that gave money to the secessionists who manipulated the wikipedia, I have the duty to ask for your help again. Sorry if I insist, because before giving this information to journalists, I wanted to know your opinion.. And I hope you understand this, and help me to tell to those who manipulate wikipedia that please stop that lies and stop manipulate Wikipedia for public subsidies money, because it's wrong.

This reminds me of the newspapers in my country speaks well and happy of utilities and telecommunications companies, and they are censoring their brutal price increases caused by a price cartel, when those same newspapers receive money from advertising from these power and other companies. Similar "paid editing" is in wikipedia now:

Remember that this scandal in Wikipedia already warned me long ago and it is EMBARRASING AND SHAMEFUL: "The independence challenge: Arthurmas subsidizes "Viquipèdia" defining Catalonia as a "European country" and many other false historical data". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.144.89.122 (talk) 06:56, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Here I go again with my complains (sorry if I insist this year again):

Please solve ca.wikipedia.org scandal

In red, hatred and paid Catalonian secessionism that bans spanish flags and bias and change history FACTS on ca.wikipedia.org
Catalan speakers in ca.wikipedia.org Most of them know that the Kingdom of Spain and its State exists, of course. But they are censored with war-admins, censoring bots and blockades to avoid non-secessionist editions.

Please solve future ca.wikipedia.org scandal, where a few extreme secessionist admins are shamefully banning Spanish flag in international listings, substituting by the local flag in the region of Catalonia. So, hilarious situations arise as replacing the flag of Spain by the local flag of Catalunya region, suggesting that the Kingdom of Spain did not exist at the 1888 Barcelona International Exposition or that lie: Spain did not participate in the Olympic Games of 1992, also censoring Spanish Olympic Committee to shamefully ban the Spanish flag in that list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.144.89.122 (talk) 07:00, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Secessionist paid cabal of Admins, advanced users do not allow people that are not Secessionist to edit articles, why?

And they say that anonimous IP can not edit or they will say "it's a troll", but that is an excuse to coerce registered users to edit in "secessionist way" because if you insist on adding neutral point of view or attempt to reverse the secessionist injustices editions, automatically those users are locked forever.
There is also an abuse of bots and blocks to avoid editing. -try to change the invented secessionist term "País Valencià" (Valencian State) by the official and neutral term "Comunitat Valenciana" (Valencian Community)... and secessionist goebbelian bot will revert until you accept the north catalonian secessionist point of view.

Examples:

  • http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposici%C3%B3_Universal_de_Barcelona_(1888) "Preceeded by Flag:Australia - Flag:Sovereign Catalonian State Succeeded by Flaf:France"
  • http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocs_Ol%C3%ADmpics Olympic Games hosts: 1988 Seoul (Korean State Flag) 1992 (Catalonian local region Flag) 1996 Atlanta (USA Flag)
  • Hilarious: Barcelona is not in Spain, ¿who says it, FIFA?¿?. WTF is this Flag wars? http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selecci%C3%B3_de_futbol_d'Espanya
  • shameful: F.C. Barcelona player, Carles Puyol, played with Spain in year 2000, then he goes out of Spain and from 2001 to 2013 plays in "Sovereign-State-of-Catalonia-FIFA-recognized-Sovereign-Football-National-Team" hahahaha... http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carles_Puyol_i_Saforcada WTF?¿?
  • Hilarious situation in F.C. Barcelona: some SPANISH football players are from Spain, some NOT. https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.C._Barcelona This is a honest encyclopedia or a website of jokes?
  • Sad: In that awfully biased Wikipedia the paid seccesionism say: "Catalonia is a country of Europe that is next to the Mediterranean sea ..." ¿WHAAAT? Catalonia is an Autonomous Community of Spain. Don't tell lies please.
  • Sad: The region to which we, its population (the Catalan speakers of this region too) have called "Comunitat Valenciana" (Valencian Community) by the Spanish Constitution and the region Statute of Autonomy. They call it "País Valenciá" (Valencian State or Valencian Country) because they please, putting some links to blogs and biased unknown institutes: http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pa%C3%ADs_Valenci%C3%A0
  • Dangerous: They are changing historical FACTS and they say "Crown of Castilia oppressed Crown of Catalonia" (FALSE: Castilia and Aragon joined and created the Kingdom of Spain. Oppressed people were everywere in that Europe 500 years ago) and spaniards we are evil oppressors in ALL articles of that brutally mass biased Wikipedia.

The historians that make fact checks an me, we hope you fix solution to this scandal, as this shameful ban of Spanish flags and history, as well as being full of hatred, goes against all historical encyclopedic accuracy, and goes against what Spanish and American municipalities, institutions, organizations and schools want to give to their children. Spain exists in 1888, in 1992, and Today, and either wikipedia will not change history under dark interests.

The point is that WIKIPEDIA CONSENSUS CAN'T CHANGE FACTS. The table on the Olympics article has a list of countries/nations, and one of them doesn't fit in because political money subsidices lies. Outside intervention is needed.

There is a BIG problem

Amical, (the secessionist association, "owner" of ca.wiki, I guess, with a secessionist president of some catalan ARMY who says FREE CATALONIA SOON !???, with a secretary proud to be a WAR FISH) and a few other WAR-FISH against non-secessionist wikipedians, this WAR-LIKE people (against who? I expect not Spain) that controls ca.wiki, is making the Wikipedia in Catalan languaje fall into a very biased and dangerous secessionism. Only an 8 or 10 percent of catalan speaking people and territories are secessionist, against the rest of catalan speaking people and territories, the Spanish Constitution, the Autonomous Statutes, the European Union, etc... BUT the secessionist government of a little region that speaks Catalan is paying about 9.241 euros to that association and other "gifts" like giving them power (to change history to invent new hatred) in Public Libraries, Museums, Schools, etc... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.144.89.122 (talk) 07:42, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for my bad english. But political donations have to work with us, not against us.

Please, help to stop that brutal and subsidized massive bias by that corruption scandal secesionist political party. This is not about one or two articles. This is about 1000 articles with lies and history facts CHANGED to make a war-like pamphlet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.144.89.122 (talk) 07:47, 7 August 2014 (UTC)


Nishant (film) page edited with wrong information

The movie page of Nishant has been edited and provided with wrong information. It was correct earlier however some user edited it to entertain his fancy. Request correction. The movie is an Indian movie starring Shabana Azmi, Naseerudin Shah, Girish Karnad etc directed by celebrated director of Indian cinema, Shyam Benegal.

Request you to refer imdb page for further information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Virenjanee (talk • contribs) 07:44, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Honoring Wikimedia Foundation's terms of service, including civility

I don't remember seeing an explicit terms of service for Wikipedia/Wikimedia Foundation projects, but a recent Washington Post article linked me to it here. Low and behavior "civility" is one of the five "following conditions" under which editors are permitted to edit. It would be nice if it was detailed more in the following description, but it's in nice big bold letters. Maybe a link to the terms needs to be somewhere high up in the left hand menu of every project. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 15:21, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

There's a link at the bottom of every page, including this one. Having said that, I know that mainly because I was involved in the rewrite, so noticed it then.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:34, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Yoo ha! Now it needs to be bigger and bolder. Let's all be honorable and try to honor the terms of service, as opposed to arguing against them ad nauseum. Such arguments just encourage everyone to be uncivil, even if they themselves are trying to be honorable... Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 15:41, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
See what I mean when I say you are tendentious? You open a new thread for something that already has a thread. And you do it time and again, as if you think that acting like a battering ram will make any difference. These repeatedly-created sections are POINT-y. - Sitush (talk) 16:41, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
The terms of service really don't say much about civility, doing most of the things the TOS refers to after mentioning civility is very very blockable. The TOS summary makes it out to be a big thing, but the actual TOS language just says your encouraged to be civil, and then lists a bunch of things you aren't aloud to do like threats, stalking, chain mail. Monty845 16:48, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Infinite monkey theorem

This is intended as humor

I just wanted to thank you for being the only person I can think of that has attempted to implement even a finite example of the infinite monkey theorem.

I understand that monkeys are hard to get onto the internet and that it was necessary to use humans. Regardless the results are promising in demonstrating the efficacy of the theorem. Chillum 07:20, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

  • Rather inefficient to use hu-mans, Jimbo. They breed so slowly. I suggest the next Wikipedia use mice, or hamsters. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:27, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

While I admit that humans are not optimal it cannot be argued that they have produced masterpieces of vitriolic multi-person diatribes about the minutia of subjects that would never have been conceived by mortal minds without such contrivance. Not Shakespeare, but truly Shakespearean. Chillum 07:33, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

We are saving the monkeys for images. Some promising signs, there.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:01, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
They are pretty sneaking, they have managed to avoid getting listed Wikipedia:List of cabals. Monty845 14:04, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Are you sure? I think they're a subchapter of OMGcom. They've certainly paid their dues. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:38, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Well, as for the mice, it was pointed out long ago by a certain estimable author that it has been them conducting experiments on us; and that this world (and wikipedia) is only the calculator for determining the question to the answer, which is 42. The Vogon Deconstructor Fleet should be along anytime now. As for the pack of monkeys, the babble in the Commons discussion very aptly fits a maxim I came up with about the Wikiverse quite a while ago; "a consensus of fools is only foolishness". Shakespeare it isn't.Skookum1 (talk) 16:00, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

A question?

Hello Jimbo, first time on your talk page. I saw some of your talk page archives. Many come here to complain, criticize, or praise Wikipedia. I just wanted to know how you feel if someone criticize Wikipedia on your talk page?? Obviously it would have hurted if I was in your place but how you feel?? People often get criticized for something done on good faith or by mistake. Do you remember any such moment when you're hurt by someone on Wikipedia. And how do you handle those critisim when you face?? This are some questions I would like to ask. Please take a minute and share your thoughts with us. Thanks, Jim Carter (from public cyber) 15:25, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jim Carter: One example of how Jimbo handled a comment described by someone else as "bloody rude", can be found in the "Just a comment" section further down this page.
Jimbo had some ideas on how people could or should handle less constructive types of criticism (and other negative interactions) in his presentation at Wikimania earlier this evening. Not sure if the live stream has been recorded and put online somewhere or not, but I imagine we may hear more about these ideas in the future. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:41, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Pinging @Jim Cartar: as well --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:45, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
For those of you who missed the link on Wikipediocracy, the Sunday presentation is at THIS URL. JW takes the stage right around the 7 hour mark. Carrite (talk) 06:26, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—July and August 2014

The VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.

Screenshot of VisualEditor's link tool
Dialog boxes in VisualEditor have been re-designed to use action words instead of icons. This has increased the number of items that need to be translated. The user guide is also being updated.

The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.

  • Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments. You can click on the icon to see the comment.
  • You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item. Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.
  • All references and footnotes (<ref> tags) are now made through the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, including the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "Insert" menu. The "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-referencelist-tooltip⧽" is still added via the "Insert" menu.
  • When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.
  • All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.
  • The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.
  • The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.

Looking ahead

The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables. Work to support Internet Explorer is ongoing.

Feedback opportunities

The Editing team will be making two presentations this weekend at Wikimania in London. The first is with product manager James Forrester and developer Trevor Parscal on Saturday at 16:30. The second is with developers Roan Kattouw and Trevor Parscal on Sunday at 12:30.

Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at the VisualEditor feedback page or by joining the office hours discussion on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 09:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East and Asia) or on Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 16:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Europe).

If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at Meta for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:13, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Is it possible to use citoid (Cite-from-id) without the visual editor? The volunteer operated bots in this area are very flimsy. One in particular (User:Citation bot) has been malfunctioning for weeks now. JMP EAX (talk) 22:04, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Hi JMP EAX,
That is the eventual goal. I understand that the current work is focused on stability (a service that has fallen flat on its virtual face is no good to anyone), but there's also the problem of making it expandable. In early testing, you can hard-code your method for figuring out what part of a web page is the title or the author's name, but for production work on hundreds of wikis in a couple hundred languages, you really need something more flexible or locally configurable. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:36, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
DOI has a good set of tools. The catch is that they can ban you from using their service if they think it's abusive (too many queries). It has to be a more or less official approach from a high-volume site like Wikipedia. I'm not sure why Citation bot is currently broken, it could be for another reason. JMP EAX (talk) 07:37, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Note their system is currently working. I can use their Google Chrome extension for example to format Kilgard, Mark J. (2012). "GPU-accelerated path rendering". ACM Transactions on Graphics. 31 (6): 1. doi:10.1145/2366145.2366191. (broken by Citation bot) to "M. J. Kilgard and J. Bolz, “GPU-accelerated path rendering,” ACM Transactions on Graphics, vol. 31, no. 6, p. 1, Nov. 2012." (page number[s] are wrong) But of course they don't offer citations formatted using Wikipedia's template. JMP EAX (talk) 07:47, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
  • I raised the question of large-scale free access in the long term for bibliographic databases some weeks ago on Mediawiki. Presumably I was not the first person to raise the question, and it will surely have been adressed in some kind of WMF document, which might be a useful way of answering both that question and a useful contribution to this discussion here. I found it regrettable that on Mediawiki, one member of WMF staff who presumably knew the answer chose to bury it in a list of half a million other links, and that another, quite senior, member of WMF staff chose to be personally insulting rather than give any kind of details, useful or not, for the benefiot of the community. However, I am glad to note that yesterday a helpful non-staff passerby was able to give some useful information about ISBN databases there. Deltahedron (talk) 08:47, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
    • I think citation auto-formatting from identifiers should not be tied to the use of VE. JMP EAX (talk) 13:52, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
      • I agree, and so does the editing team. They're starting with VisualEditor, and then will look into expanding it. It is possible that the expansion into the wikitext editor will not appear at the English Wikipedia very soon, however, because there are already multiple systems in place here for that (vs zero at most others).
        About the databases, if that particular one has an access limit, then there are others available. In general, it is easy to get high-volume access to databases, especially for books. (The problem with books is choosing which one; as Deltahedron was told repeatedly on the page he links, there are multiple good-quality book databases that offer high-volume access "gratis and for nothing".) But if this one is preferable for reasons of quality, then the WMF does not, in principle, have any objections to negotiating an agreement with them. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:14, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
"Told repeatedly" is misleading. Rapeated answers are not necessarily useful ones. One member of staff's initial response was to suggest I google for the list, another member of staff was simply rude. A helpful non-staff member gave a better answer than either. I suppose that could be described as repeatedly. I have still to see a good answer to the question of sustainability, in other words, the data is available now, but what reasons are there to believe that long-term large-scale access will be made available over a period of years? Has this point been explicitly addressed, and where, and how, was it resolved? Deltahedron (talk) 06:45, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Anyway, the useful thing is not to rake over the past but move on. There is the question of an agreement with reliable and sustainable sources of data such as DOI and ISBN. There are issues about specialised data sources such as MathSciNet and Zentralblatt MATH in mathematics and of course many more. Has it been decided to make use of those, and if so, presumably the relevant specialised editing communities are going to be consulted? Has it been decided whether to maintain a bibliographic database on WMF servers? Will it be open source? What format might be used internally? I would be interested to see the position paper on the method to be used for resolution of discrepancies between data sources, which must have been an early design decision, as it would be interesting to compare with my own experience on a similar but much smaller project. Deltahedron (talk) 17:12, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
  • On a related point: what is the WMF position on database rights, especially when a large portion of a free database has been processed into Wikipedia and re-released under a CC licence? Deltahedron (talk) 19:54, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Editor review/Wifione

Hello Jimbo and talk page stalkers. I hope the summer goes well for everybody. I remember you were interested in this matter (User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_152#User:Wifione), so I'm here with an update. User:Wifione vanished for more than half a year, then came back and resumed editing without addressing the issues outlined in his editor review, despite previous promises to respond. He visited the page only after I wrote on his talk page about my intention to start a ban and desysop request of his account. In his response, Wifione has basically called me an incompetent liar unfamiliar with our policies and a person connected with dangerous people at Wikipediocracy. After that, he closed the editor review. I can't help myself but I don't feel the answers are satisfactory. Quite oppositely, I think they are evasive and obfuscating the real issue - biased and manipulative editing of articles on competitive subjects in the area of education in India. You can find the arguments, diffs and all related links at Wikipedia:Editor review/Wifione. I'd accept that I might be wrong but I have to follow my common sense, especially when I feel that something is being swept under the carpet. So, thanks for any independent opinion. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 07:13, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I think he did reply to basically all the allegations. Let me quote from that page:
So he basically denies everything. Since you don't really have any investigative powers outside his wiki edits, what do you hope to achieve by reiterating this here? The WMF now has a ToU that requires disclosure of such issues, but I think they lack the resources to investigate this themselves as well. So if you (and/or the other editors) think Wifione's edits are beyond the pale of acceptable POV, just go to AN and ask for a topic ban. Reopening the discussion of whether he really has a COI seems a big waste of time unless you have some new and damn obvious evidence. JMP EAX (talk) 22:55, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

A tangential point about university alumni

DGG asks, "Are you a current or former student of either of the two universities and their affiliates?"

I think this is a really bad question to ask. It's acknowledged by people informed about the debates over paid and COI editing that university (and school) pages suffer from the fact that almost no-one is interested in them except people who attended them (and therefore tend to be broadly positive, overall), and people working for them (who are paid to be positive). And no-one else is interested at all. Thus, yes, university and school articles have a problem.

But, and this is important, being an alumnus of a university is not a conflict of interest. I regularly remove random promotional crap from the article about my university, and from related articles too. I suppose I might one day find the time to add something promotional about my former university, but I haven't done so thus far. (It's been a few years now.) Jumping to brand people as paid advocates because they happen to be alumni of a place that has several thousand alumni per year, is silly.

Other types of paid advocates are, surely, more of a concern. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:36, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Invitation: Frankfurt Revisited and Ten Year Society meetup

Jimbo and everyone else who is at Wikimania 2014 who are members of the Wikipedia:Ten Year Society and/or were at the first Wikimania in Frankfurt in 2005, there is a joint meetup happening in the Barbican conservatory at 1pm lunchtime today (Sunday) to which you are welcome. Chris McKenna (WMUK) (talk) 09:11, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Just a comment

In Wikimania I noticed you got, uh, plumpier than usual. BMI must be higher than average, which can be unhealthy. Why not exercise a bit? 94.116.50.150 (talk) 16:31, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your generous concern for my well-being. With a baby in the house, exercise and (sometimes) healthy eating sometimes take a back-seat. But as the little one is just turning 1 soon and sleeping better at night, I think the coming year will be better.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:41, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
I think that's bloody rude. Don't worry Jimmy, I've had four children (well sort of) and still retained the same weight as when I was 21. The secret is to employ a nanny, and on her night off, to employ generous doses of Calpol, which was recommended in those far off days. But then in those days, we used to feed them with a bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other - one wonders how any child born before 1990 ever manged to survive infancy. I feel sorry for you younger parents deprived of all these props, so if you are getting "plumpier" it's hardly surprising. I bet our anon friend has never had a howling baby that's fed, clean and still screaming at 3am - so you have my sympathy. Giano (talk) 20:28, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
A little gin in the milk, Mother's Ruin, but Nannie's Friend. RF 22:04, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I've never had kids but, based on personal experience, if you thought Mr. 2001. was persistent, wait until you've met ... cue ominous dramatic music ... the the chubby chasers. AnonNep (talk) 20:51, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Apologies from Wikimania

Hi Jimbo. Just wanted to say sorry I didn't get a chance to speak to you at Wikimania - every time I got close you disappeared off behind a staff-only door! I would have stayed for the party, but unfortunately I needed to go and do all the weekend stuff that had been put off to attend. I know we've had our disagreements, but I do appreciate the work you've put in to Wikimedia, and I hope you enjoyed Wikimania as much as I did. -mattbuck (Talk) 19:30, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Level of public interest in Wikipedia related projects

Hello Jimmy, I was very glad to be able to attend both of your major talks at Wikimania, which I found both interesting and inspiring. Referring to a comment made by someone else on this page, I too must try to find some time for exercise and healthy eating now that Wikimania is over... though right now I am breakfasting on a caramel nut bar left over from the crew room, 495kcal per 100g, oh dear... but I do note that in many parts of the global south, having a larger waistline is still viewed positively. Food for thought.

I wanted briefly to mention something else I experienced at Wikimania. About an hour after you finished your closing address to end the conference last night, I re-occupied the Wikimania help desk in the ground floor foyer. Partly to assist anyone still looking for help and information, but also for a place to park a large laptop in need of charging, a plate of food and a drink. Anyway, the interesting thing is that while I was there, at least four different people came up to me and attempted to buy tickets for Wikimania, despite being told the conference had already finished. Some were very interested in how Wikipedia works, some wanted to network with tech geek type people for business purposes, some were interested in the ongoing entertainment programme, one exclaimed "Jimmy Wales was here?!? Really? Wow."

Anyway I didn't feel it right to charge them £30 each for a day ticket when the conference was already finished, so in each case I encouraged them to wander downstairs looking confident and just go wherever they wished without worrying about tickets and badges and so on... but I think it is an encouraging sign of how the public at large is very interested and positive about the project and about how it works behind the scenes. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 06:55, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Arthur, that is absolutely fantastic. But you owe User:Kudpung, User:RexxS and me party food! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:17, 11 August 2014 (UTC).

Arbitration case request declined

An arbitration case request in which you were named as a party has been declined by the Arbitration Committee. The arbitrators views on hearing this matter, found here, may be useful. For the arbitration committee, --S Philbrick(Talk) 15:14, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Just a heads up

You may want to keep your eyes on this as it's liable to blow up into another shite storm. It's essentially developers vs end users regarding a new level of protection. Kosh Vorlon    17:10, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

System crisis with Russian wiki

Now Russian Wikipedia goes in system crisis with Russian-Ukrainian war and Putin's regime attack on the human rights and freedoms. It seems that Russian Wikipedia controlled directly and indirectly by russian government that make impossible to write any anti-putin information. An example of systematic political censorship is article Putin khuilo! that exist in 21 wikis, but not in russian. (Some more examples you can see at Арбитраж:Посредничество ВП:УКР (in russian)) Wikimedia can verify fact of non-anonimous russian authorities edits this via logs of wikipedia's servers. So the question is - is it possible to perform a lustration in the Russian wikipedia? Or is it possible to create ru2 wiki - wikipedia in russian for all russian-speak people exept russian authorities and its Ministry of Truth that will be really free? --Pragick (talk) 10:23, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Bill Clinton supporters here managed to get the section header on his sexual abuses removed and mocked the idea it was important enough to be there. Now it's just a bunch of paragraphs under the "Bill_clinton#Public_image" section. So you don't necessarily need the government to removed negative material about a country's leaders or former leaders (or future leaders??). There is one in Public_image_of_Bill_Clinton#Sexual_misconduct_allegations but no listing of songs about his sexual allegations and other cultural phenomena, or about foreign reception. Perhaps his misconduct is as worthy of an article as a "Right sector"(?) football chant. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 10:49, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
1. article Putin khuilo! is not about Putin's personal sexual abuses. 2. "government controlled" means in ruwiki not only edition, but as well access to personal data of users and threats to life and freedom of wikipedia's editors. We know some facts that pro-putin's kind of Hitlerjugend collects addresses and other data for the punishment of undesirable editors. Рersonal data may be obtained from checkusers.--Pragick (talk) 12:25, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
The same collection of data - probably more - is being done in this country. Americans have been threatened with prosecution for "material support" on flimsy grounds from surveillance. Edward Snowden and others warning Americans have been incarcerated or had threats to life and freedom. I don't see your WP:RS evidence it's being done there yet, though I'd be surprised if it wasn't. In any case, let's have facts, not propaganda. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 16:37, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
  • @Pragick: To be clear, are you alleging that checkusers are improperly using their permissions at ru. to facilitate political retaliation? Because that would be a really serious issue if true. Monty845 00:23, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
    I guess it's possible. I know that checkusers can check the user only for its interest for some themes such as ruling party's corruption and stealing. I know that checkusers block not only open anonimous proxy, but as well paid vpn serveсes. --Pragick (talk) 00:59, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
It is hard to keep a wiki from discriminating if enough of its members are committed to censorship. So I think the impulse to "ru2" is a good one. As a whole, the WMF or English Wikipedia can't arbitrarily pick out a few Russian editors or articles we think are good. What we can do is have a more open structure that gives more opportunities for alternative views to take hold. For example, we can encourage Russian editors to work on Russian-language drafts here for immediate translation to supplement our own articles, and in turn to translate our articles, properly updated, into Russian. In this way we can house some "ru2" drafts on en.wikipedia, knowing that they are effectively being watched by a larger pool of editors. Alternatively, I've started a suggestion meta:Usenetpedia... for now most people don't see the need, but it might become apparent; for Russian speakers it might already be apparent (though something tells me Usenet might not be doing so well in Russia, ru.wikipedia is an international resource). Wnt (talk) 17:07, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Putin has a lot of support in Russia. If you're looking for Russian government agents, you're more likely to find them editing articles about US government policy. Russian objection to Putin khuilo! is not about Putin. Russians consider Ukrainians as less civilized, especially when they resort to using profanity about their esteemed leader. As a result, the Russian effort to keep such "filth" off their Wiki is an effort to keep the Ukrainians out along with any Ukrainian supporters. Even those who don't support Putin are more likely to align with their fellow Russians against Ukrainians in this case. (This is an opinion from your friendly foreign political commentator here.) USchick (talk) 17:54, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I see the problem especially re checkuser..... but this would equally apply to Ukrainian editors, and those in countries such as Iran and China and Saudi Arabia and more. Current Russian laws about blogging, just brought in, may apply to Wikipedia, even though it's a collective undertaking (blogs with more than 5000 hits can be subject to licensing requirements).Skookum1 (talk) 03:17, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Quite possibly the Checkuser Ombudsmen should be asked to investigate. (Note, this is simply because they are the most appropriate and experienced volunteers, not becasue it is part of their remit.) All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:26, 12 August 2014 (UTC).

WP:BLP1E == the right to be forgotten?

Note: I've chnaged "S" to "1" as the other shortcut goes somewhere else. 188.27.81.64 (talk) 16:52, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Unless I'm missing something obvious, it seems to me there's a fair bit of hypocrisy on WMF's part in their battle with EU regulators on the "right to be forgotten" because WP:BLP1E is basically the same thing. (As you can see from my IP, I'm writing from the EU [at the moment], but I'm by no means a fanboy of the EU as whole.) I dare you to create a page for Adria Richards for example (a US citizen); it seems she has the "right to be forgotten" on Wikipedia, even though she's in the proverbial WP:109PAPERS. I don't see why much obscure details about a person's life, like which houses they bought and sold need to be on the first page of Google hits for their name. Would it be appropriate to list such info on Wikipedia? By all means, if you have a legitimate interest conduct a background check by soliciting the appropriate records. It seems to me that the WMF is basically endorsing doxing as long as Google does it. 188.27.81.64 (talk) 11:58, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Assuming that it is this Adria Richards, she does not meet WP:GNG or WP:ANYBIO on the basis of the current sourcing. The Donglegate incident recieved a good deal of media coverage, but would not sustain a BLP on its own.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 12:11, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Ugh. The Gender Gap people would not be happy with this one. While the person may not be notable without additional reasons for coverage, the incident Donglegate may well deserve exploration. Until tech companies learn (as WMF per se largely seems to have done) that it is wrong and deeply counterproductive to fire people every time somebody complains they said something weird (or to reward a DDOS attack), any attempt to enforce policy in a tech setting is just a power duel with WP:BOOMERANGs. Wnt (talk) 14:27, 11 August 2014 (UTC)


By the way, this is worth watching to see where WMF and Jimbo's priorities really lie. And not everyone in the press is buying Jimbo's vision on this. Or even everyone in US academia. And by the way, Jimbo has received a personal invitation from the author of that article. JMP EAX (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

By the way, Jimbo, are you being payed by Google for your consulting services on this issue or are you working pro bono? Or am I misreading the Guardian [19] when it says: "The problem is the conflict between information and disinformation – particularly, in preventing overburdening web interfaces and search results with augmented content. Here, the expertise of Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, who has been co-opted to advise Google on this ruling, will be invaluable." JMP EAX (talk) 14:30, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Banned editor's study of COI edits that may violate Terms of Use

Jimmy (and company), here is something to think about. A banned editor revealed almost a month ago that numerous editors on Wikipedia are likely violating the Wikimedia Terms of Use that call for disclosure of any edits for which the author is receiving compensation. I assume this includes company employees who are creating or enhancing the Wikipedia article about their company, correct? Anyway, the banned editor claims that "perhaps 5% or more of all Wikipedia article-space edits are not complying with the new Terms of Use", or that maybe 100 article-space edits per hour are both non-compliant with the Terms of Use and are not being reverted within an hour. What struck me is that in the five examples he gave (nearly a month ago), there were still a couple where the user has not been warned about their apparent violation of the Terms. Do you think there could be some program (maybe for zealous anti-COI editors like Smallbones or Coretheapple) where the Wikimedia Foundation provides a micro-grant for established Wikipedians to assist wayward users to become compliant with the Terms, all in a friendly, compassionate way that is in line with your Wikimania thoughts on civility, of course? Maybe they could be paid 10 cents for every probable COI editor who is issued a thoughtful, loving warning. This could be a great way to get poor Africans involved in Wikipedia, too, while providing them a great means of income! - Spotting ToU (talk) 16:01, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Lolwut? Until I got to the last sentence, I thought this was a terrible idea. Then I thought it was also racist, exploitative and condescending. betafive 16:13, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
I didn't mean to be racist. I was just following in Jimmy's vision, that Wikipedia is "for that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so". Paying her some WMF money for good work that helps the project would also help empower her, wouldn't it? - Spotting ToU (talk) 16:31, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
How on earth would tossing her a dime for each CoI she spots "save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her?" Besides, if the WMF treats her the way they're treating the fine folk of de.wiki... well, I wouldn't call that "empowerment." betafive 16:45, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
I hear you on the German Wikipedia issue, Betafive. Still, consider this -- the mean per capita income in Burundi is only $300 per year. If there are 100 article-space edits per hour that could warrant a Terms of Use notice from our poor African girl, and she could maybe catch at least 5 of them per hour, doing that for 8 hours a day on a Wikipedia Zero connection on her solar-charged mobile phone, that is $4 per day. Working 250 days per year, that's $1000 -- more than three times mean income of her country folk. You belittle that by saying we're just "tossing her a dime", but meanwhile the Wikimedia Foundation tucks away about $8 million a year in unspent revenues, while a program such as the one I suggested could actually change lives. - Spotting ToU (talk) 21:11, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Quote of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry for your closing speech at Wikimania 2014

Dear Mr. Wales

While I was attending your last speech at wikimania about love instead of simply kindness, I think of a quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that I've heard last year in a meeting about social innovation. In my opinion it really worths to remark your idea: 

"If we want a world of peace and justice must be resolutely put intelligence i the service of love" (Antoine de Saint Exupery)
Of his book "Citadelle" (1948) (titled in English: as The Wisdom of the Sands).

--Tsaorin (talk) 17:44, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Tweeting Wikipedia snippets

Since your are fond of tweeting images, how about snippets of articles? Try selecting a piece of text in Slate for example, e.g. in this article. The pop-up under the cursor is a bit annoying, but it suspect it could be refined so it's less intrusive. JMP EAX (talk) 16:20, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

That is seriously annoying. I don't really think the kind of content on Wikipedia can be very meaningful in 140 character snippets, anyway. I also seem to recall like/share/tweet/whatever buttons facilitate more data collection and/or cookie deposition on the part of the social media sites. I would be inclined to oppose this suggestion, I'm afraid. NorthPark420 (talk) 00:24, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
See Factbites: Where results make sense.—Wavelength (talk) 01:21, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Annoying User, Good Content

While following the events of Wikimania this year I saw that you had a slide in your presentation addressing this subject. For those of us that were unable to be present can you please expand on how many users meet this criteria, how these problematic editors are to be identified, and, in your view, what types of encouragement should be given for them to leave the project? Thank you. 81.171.52.10 (talk) 22:27, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Obviously, you'd prefer to hear from Jimbo, but while waiting for his response, I hope it includes starting with (quoting Jimbo):
  • Kindness
  • Generosity
  • Forgiveness
  • Compassion
and only if those initiatives fail, should we find some way to separate the user from the project. I'll also predict that while he may have some ideas, he is but one voice and it needs to be a community approach. (And in a weak attempt at humor, I'm thankful he chose "generosity" rather than "unselfishness")
Back to a serious point, I think we ought to develop the idea he mentioned about floors - if you focus on the hurdle needed to make sure you aren't banned, there may be a tendency to drive to the floor, rather than aspiring to a more congenial atmosphere. In the same way our standards for copyright are not just barely legal bit something stronger; in the same way our standard for inclusion in a BLP isn't well, it's not libel, we ought to be striving for behavior better than just meeting policy.--S Philbrick(Talk) 23:12, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Let's face it, "annoying" just doesn't cut it. Annoying to who? There are plenty of annoying editors (some in very high places, with effectively zero content). The Wikipedia test has always been "disruptive". And to be ethical we should (and usually do) narrow it a little further:- if the folk who are claiming disruption have an option of ignoring it, without damage to the encyclopaedia, then they should do so. I'm thinking here of a user who got banned, as far as I can see for writing TLDR comments. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:14, 11 August 2014 (UTC).

Unofficial transcript. —Neotarf (talk) 23:55, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

'Offensiveness' of speech may play a role in the civil/incivil debate

Thank you for your interesting speech, Jimbo. Many viewers here probably know, I recently submitted an ArbCom case, which has been declined -- a decision I support, as detailed in a statement I made yesterday (([20]). Reflecting on the issue, it was was fact the offensiveness of the statement that was at hand. I think unlike incivility, offensiveness is something that is more readily identifiable. As you noted, I agree that it is not that helpful to continue to define civil vs. incivil behaviour in what a "race to the bottom", however I was surprised that, given the large amount of acronym-full essays and guidelines we have here, I don't think we have one which clearly outlines a statement may offend another user, why, and why that's harmful.

With that in mind, I have created the essay WP:OFFENSIVE. The word 'offensive' has not been often used in this in/civil debate, yet I think it is statements which are widely considered 'offensive' that are the crux of this debate. I think it is often 'offensive' statements, rather than the more nebulously-defined 'incivil speech' that is the cause of a lot of contention. By writing this essay, I hope to clarify that statements that are offensive can indeed be defined, are harmful to the encyclopedia, and that there are some indications as to whether something will offend someone or not.

In my mind at least, incivility is going to be a natural part of conversations on topics us users care a great deal about, yet 'offensive' represents one part of the spectrum of incivility, is more readily identifiable, and perhaps a greater amount of users would agree as to what constitutes offensive speech. --Tom (LT) (talk) 04:12, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Megadittos! Offensive speech is obviously readily identifiable. betafive 05:24, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

hope over experience

You mean, terms such as "incredibly toxic personalities"? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:28, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about. betafive 05:31, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
No? - It's only a language question for you, for y'all, not you personally, - sorry if that was not clear, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:24, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
To clarify: I would rather accept a direct bad word than a general "incredibly toxic personalities" which leaves open if I am perceived as part of that group. - I invite to a stroll, again. to read "I scare away women, children and new editors. Allegedly. But I'll try and be gentle." and "chin up". --incredibly toxic personality (copied from Iridescent, with thanks) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:27, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Regarding "Kindness", "Generosity", "Forgiveness", "Compassion". All those appear to be lacking in the current WMF leadership too. So look who's talking. One thing I did like in that speech was "go and make your own website, release it under creative commons license and we'll try to use some of that material, because it's just not working out." Probably what a number of people are going to do that after the latest exercise in assertiveness of the WMF leadership (see superprotect elsewhere on this page and now in the news). JMP EAX (talk) 18:00, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

And I'm apparently not the only editor to think that lately [21]. JMP EAX (talk) 18:50, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

And as an aside, one piece of CC content saved from Wikipedia (into Neotraf's blog coincidentally) is this interesting piece which is probably related to decline in viewership and the desperation to "modernize" the site. JMP EAX (talk) 18:08, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Super protect please help

Hello Jimbo :). I am verry sad. The WMF has added a 'superprotect' right – granted to the 'Staff' global user group and abused it on dewiki. :( PLS help! https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Superprotect_rights //Diego 186.134.73.1 (talk) 17:44, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Alas this is the time when you'd have to exercise your right to fork. The superprotect right has apparently been used on de.wiki already [22], in an wheelwar over the MediaViewer. I expect to read about it in the German press [first] soon enough. I'm honestly thinking about suspending all my editing, indefinitely. My gut reaction to WMF's action is basically very similar to this. They seem to not give a damn about editors anymore in their campaign to make Wikipedia twitterrific. You can read more reactions here JMP EAX (talk) 18:57, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Oh, and WP:REFLINKS is going away in September thanks to more WMF handiworks. I will not format manually a single fucking URL, that's for sure. DOI citations are already broken. But who needs infrastructure like that when you can tweet wiki images. And upload selfies of monkeys with abandon. JMP EAX (talk) 19:18, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Looks like one or two devs are exercising their right to fork us.  :) Kosh Vorlon    19:38, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
@JMP EAX: What's this about reflinks? I thought it was moved to another private server? --NeilN talk to me 04:46, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
@NeilN: Where specifically has it been moved? All I can see is the notice that it's going to go away in September. JMP EAX (talk) 07:33, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
@JMP EAX: To dispenser's personal server. Which isn't ideal but probably the best we can hope for given the uncertainty over source code licensing. Bit irritating to see the WMF screwing around with stuff which will be met with opposition and controversy when they could be coding a replacement which would have the community's full support. The status of the stuff going away in September is listed here. --NeilN talk to me 20:06, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

And another epic LOL for the level of "competence" of WMF devs: [23] There was an easy hack around the superprotection. And the solution to that was another quick code hack by the WMF which fucked up the intended design of permissions: [24] All while the WMF is posturing about code reviews being necessary for what admins do. The hypocrisy is astounding, but I've come to expect it by now. JMP EAX (talk) 19:48, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Just FYI: the account of the WMF person behind all this mess, Erik Möller, has now been blocked on :de [25]. --Túrelio (talk) 21:01, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Let's hope he'll soon be blocked here as well. Eric Corbett 21:06, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Is ignoring the consensus of the community incivil? Hm. - Sitush (talk) 21:08, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Quite so, yes. The kicker is that what these developers are developing lately is such absolute rubbish lately that the WMF may wish to reconsider their employment. Tarc (talk) 21:16, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
What's difficult to understand is why it takes them so long to develop rubbish. Developing rubbish is surely very easy. Eric Corbett 21:22, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
One would think so, and an answer may be found in that these projects are likely not failing at the developmental level but at the organizational level. It seems that WMF management believes that list to be a guide to successful software development. 208.76.111.243 (talk) 22:05, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
You must have forgotten TAURUS! In my experience, developing rubbish can be very time-consuming. --Boson (talk) 15:35, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

It is stunning that this happened. I see no respect for the community or consensus, let alone "love" or "kindness" here, this is the very behaviour that we relied on developers not doing - implicit trust in the devs, virtually implicit trust in the stewards and 'crats, moderate trust in admins. Code is Law, but Content is Power. The probability of a serious fork grows by the day. We need to re-think the community-foundation interface as I have said in many places over the last few weeks. To some extent super-ing the German Wikipedia is worse than doing it to the English. Here we vacillate and argue about everything, but the German Wikipedia has a good record in standing as a group when the Foundation "comes the heavy", and it grieves me to see them treated this way. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:05, 11 August 2014 (UTC).

I have a feeling that this would've been implemented immediately on the English Encyclopedia if the admin who initially disabled it would've reverted WMF's edit just one more time, and if he would've been desysopped, and another admin disabled it they would've implemented it here to prevent us from doing it here again. I feel that they considered the situation at the de.wiki as more importance because we stopped reverting after the initial threat of desyssopping, whereas they continued (and maybe forgot) to issue the same threat to them, only citing it as a 'WMF action'. Oh, and there was more than one admin involved at de.wiki. Anywho, I'm speculating, but I don't like it one bit; this specific right being shoehorned specfically to prevent people from disabling it. Tutelary (talk) 01:21, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

The problem here is essentially a social problem: for whatever reason, WMF engineering and some of the larger communities do not see eye-to-eye on the desirability and usability of certain software projects. (Others, like Echo, have basically gone smoothly, excepting the usual "Eek! Change!" complaints.) The WMF decided, in a rather cack-handed manner, to treat it as a technical problem. Now they have a bigger social problem. Choess (talk) 23:31, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

The normal course of action here is to have an opt-in thing in the Preferences, like what happened with MediaViewer (after the initial shitstorm made it clear that it sucked), but with a user right like this, I'm not seeing anything other than a yes-or-no option, which, the way things look right now, could be bigger than the WMF thinks. Supernerd11 Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 02:01, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
I think you mean Visual Editor. I don't disagree with the ostensible rationale for superprotection, that we can't just have anyone noodling with common.js, and I think the Arbitration case here was a pretty stupid idea, Erik and Pete having shook and made up, as it were, and left (IMO) nothing arbitrable. But what just happened on the German Wikipedia strikes me as very much analogous to an administrator protecting a page to win a content dispute. That would make for a great deal of agitation on the drama boards here, and it's not surprising that the WMF using tools to "win" a dispute has aroused a similar reaction. A little conciliation would have made this go down a bit easier, e.g., Erik saying, "Look, I meant it when I said no more JS hacks, and we're going to fix things so people can't do that. But we recognize there's a problem, so we'll delay opt-out Media Viewer for 6 months here out of respect for your community processes and the decision they've reached. That will give us a deadline to find some modus vivendi between the WMF and the community." The rushed implementation of "superprotection" may not have been intended as a slap in the face to de.WP, but really, it doesn't take that much social acuity to realize that it would be perceived that way, and I'm amazed that no one on the WMF side seems to have given much thought to making the action a little more palatable. Choess (talk) 03:18, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
I think you miss part of the point of being a bully: making it clear that you don't care what the person you are bullying thinks and letting him know that you can do anything you want and he can do nothing to stop you is part of the fun.—Kww(talk) 04:18, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
We need to unionize. The relationship between the volunteers and the paid staff in San Francisco is unequal and only going to get worse. Carrite (talk) 04:34, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
How do you propose we do anything after unionization, though? We're just volunteers working for the WMF, we hold no rights against them. Supernerd11 Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 04:52, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
We may not be able to effectively go on strike, but we can certainly plaster a prominent banner across the top of every page. If the English Wikipedia does this in concert with other-language Wikipedias, the effect will be stronger. We should start working on the wording.  — Scott • talk 12:57, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
(ec) Great idea- that way, we can collectively bargain for the death of superprotect next time our volunteer employment agreements come up for renewal! </sarcasm> Seriously though, check your San Francisco privilege and take a fucking hint: if you don't want to use the software the WMF is choosing to run on their servers, you're welcome not to. betafive 04:55, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for the Thoughtful and Loving reply, Mr. 241-Total-Edits. Carrite (talk) 04:59, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
You're welcome! Please don't presume to know how many edits I have; the only reason I finally made an account is because of abuse by individuals like you who are "against IP editing." betafive 05:11, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
I don't presume to know how many edits you have made. I only presume to know that you have failed to link transparently your former IP account and the current one which you have used here. Carrite (talk) 09:54, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
For the record, I estimate that I've myself made between 50K and 80K edits since 2008. Just because some of us don't believe in gamification (which is what the big edit count associated to one account is really all about), it doesn't mean we edit less than you. And your user page looks like a good measure of the lenght of your e-peen, dear Carrite. JMP EAX (talk) 07:38, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
@JMP EAX. You miss my point entirely. Carrite (talk) 13:36, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
You sure about that bro/ladybro? betafive 16:14, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
I am not your "bro." Carrite (talk) 18:27, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Please respect the collegial atmosphere: we're all bros and ladybros here. betafive 19:25, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
I ask you not to call me that again, in the spirit of Forgiveness and Love. Carrite (talk) 21:18, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
As a brogrammer and a brofessional, I find that personally offensive. Can you not? betafive 05:51, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
We must all strive to remind ourselves of the inspiration of Compassion and Respect. This is not the WP:BRO you are looking for. —Neotarf (talk) 21:46, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Carrite's jibe about my edit count made me feel very insecure about the size of my e-peen, so I awarded myself a compensatory Rhodium Star. I feel so much better about myself now! betafive 09:30, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
That is precisely something that a new user would do! Welcome to Wikipedia!!! Carrite (talk) 09:51, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
That must explain yours, lol. Welcome to Wikipedia!!! betafive 10:03, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

The answer is simple. Appeal to the Board of Trustees to reverse Erik's bad behavior. Also request that they instruct staff not to implement technology changes without the consent of the Community, and that they remove Erik from a customer-facing role. If the Board fails to execute these policies, then let them go the way of Chancellor Valorum: Now they will elect a new [Board]... a strong [Board]. One who will not let this tragedy continue. 2601:7:1980:BF6:7440:4B16:768B:EE69 (talk) 09:00, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

There is an RFC at Meta regarding superprotect and its use. I think it would be helpful for everyone to comment there so that the community liaison team at the WMF can more easily see the full consensus across all projects on this issue (although I am sure they read this Talk page too). QuiteUnusual (talk) 10:01, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Adjusting how editors view the site it up to the foundation. How the user views the encyclopedia is an editorial decision and should be left to editorial consensus.
If fiat tools are used to override the consensus on how content should be presented I would recommend that we coordinate a day off every Monday, then Mon-Tues if that does not work. Lets see how well Wikipedia works when those whos consensus is ignored decide to let the vandals and POV pushers run rampant for a few days each week.
They may have the software but the true value of this site is the content and maintenance of the content. As an unpaid volunteer I feel taking a day or 5 off every week in response to this is perfectly valid method of collective bargaining. Chillum 16:26, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
It's self defeating; just doubling (tripling, etc) the amount of work for everyone the day they come back. betafive 16:46, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Not necessarily because people only have so many hours/minutes to spare, so a lot of the bad stuff that happens would not get picked up for quite some time. If even 20 percent of admins, for example, did as Chillum suggests then the WMF would soon be staring at a legal morass regarding copyright and BLP issues. - Sitush (talk) 16:50, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
That is a side effect of every strike like action. Though as unpaid volunteers I would call it a coordinated vacation rather than a strike. The revision history will make it easy to fix when we are back, it will just look like a joke of an encyclopedia on those days we are on vacation. The foundation would learn that they need the volunteers to have their encyclopedia have credibility and that they should be more respected.
The original WP:OFFICE was accepted easily because it had a strong basis in protecting the foundation from legal issues. This is about controlling content and presentation. If we all take coordinated vacations then the number of legal issues will increase rapidly. The foundation may have to choose between using its fiat powers to keep them legal or to control how the site appears to viewers. Chillum 16:54, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Maybe admins could enforce the "coordinated vacation" by blocking WMF accounts for the duration? And maybe a site-banner such as those employed during the donation drives and the SOPA debacle? betafive 17:08, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
@Chillum: any reason you chose Monday? I would have thought that there was more editing traffic on a weekend. - Sitush (talk) 18:29, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
To make the point with the least damage which having the most flexibility. I feel a that we need to come back weekly and clean up so that the contrast can be seen. I figure the weekdays give us 1/7th through 5/7ths of the time to play with.
This is all very preliminary though. This is the sort of thing that will be set off once the tool is actually used to go against a strong community consensus.
Not even sure why the tool is needed when you can just threaten to desysop anyone who edits the page. Chillum 03:43, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
I think some solution was needed because if any of 1000 admin accounts could mess with the site javascript, someone who could hack into any of them might activate them, put in some live javascript for a zero-day vulnerability, and cause a major problem. However, I don't think that giving the WMF people an unlimited ability to lock down any page was the right solution. Wnt (talk) 04:16, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Yeah because the historical record shows that this kind of attack happened a lot before (or after) this MV conflict. Can you cite one incident when an admin added an exploit to the site's JavaScript? You may want to read what some admins wrote about the issue. You seem to write a lot of nonsense about technical matters, both here and (more worryingly) in article space. JMP EAX (talk) 08:40, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Ummm, I don't think the "let's get hacked first and then worry about security" mindset works very well. You know full well that there are zero day vulnerabilities out there. You know full well that groups like the Syrian Electronic Army have been able to hack people reading multiple newspaper sites simply by adding some javascript to ads bin some middleman like Outbrain. So it makes sense to take action preemptively - but this particular action creates a strong potential for further "invasion". Wnt (talk) 22:11, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
(ec) Superprotect is needed to prevent german sysops from martyring themselves in wheel wars, it seems. betafive 04:18, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech help required to improve categories

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#CatVisor and User:Paradoctor/CatVisor#Planned features if you are willing and able to assist this innovative WP project move along it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 23:42, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

This is a no-brainer. Have Wikipedia software organize the presentation of Categories in alphabetical order and take it out of the hands of editors. Well, for me it is not a no-brainer, because I wouldn't know how to accomplish that. Bus stop (talk) 16:52, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
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