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SMcCandlish's On the Radar

  On the Radar:  An Occasional Newsletter on Wikipedia's Challenges

— "Comments?" links go to OtR's own talk page, not those of the original news-item sources.
According to WashPo, WMF has tapped a South African nonprofit executive and lawyer to be its new executive director. While I've been saying for a decade that WMF has to stop hiring software- and online-services-industry people to run an NGO, and hire NGO people, this one – Maryana Iskander – is rather cagey and bureaucratic, or comes off that way in the interview.
  • First up is a belief that the WMF Universal Code of Conduct (drafted in supposed consulation with all WMF editorial communities but largely ignoring all their feedback) is the key to diversifying Wikipedia's editorial pool. (And as always in mainstream media, "Wikipedia" means en.wikipedia.org.) The entire UCC is basically a restatement of some key WP (and Commons, and Wiktionary) policies plus some WMF "vision" hand-waving. It's questionably reasonable to expect a largely redundant document, which was created for projects that lack sufficient policy development, and which has and will continue to have little impact on en.Wikipedia, to cause a sea change in who volunteers to edit here. That takes real-world outreach on a major scale. One would think a nonprofit CEO would already get that.
  • Next up, Iskander makes rather unclear reference to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This content-liability shield has been much in the US news lately, as a target of the Republican Party in its feud with "big tech", especially social media sites deplatforming far-right writers for anti-democracy propaganda and misinformation about the public health crisis. Iskander is correct that WMF isn't in a danger position in this, but the article strongly implies that Iskander and WMF are keenly interested and involved. Even when prompted, Iskander does not meaningfully elaborate, and just offers an education-is-important dodge. So, we need more actual information on what WMF is doing with regard to efforts to revise section 230.
  • Moving on, Iskander says something alarming: "Wikipedia has seen a huge amount of increased traffic around covid-19, [so has] worked on a very productive partnership with the World Health Organization to provide additional credibility to that work." That's hard to distinguish from a statement that WHO has editorial plants who WP:OWN the relevant articles. But it's cause for concern whatever the truth is. WMF should not be "partnering" with any external body to influence the encyclopedia's content (especially not one that has taken as many credibility hits as the WHO).
  • There's something potentially interesting in here, though devils could reside in the details: "a lot of the basic access issues might technically look different [between SA and US], but how people understand what information is available to them – how they access it – those issues exist everywhere". What is this going to mean on a practical level? Is MOS:ACCESS going to be better-enforced? Is Simple English Wikipedia going to be reintegrated into the main site as alternative articles? Is the mobile version of the site going to stop dropping features? Is WP:GLAM going to turn into a bigger effort? There are a hundred ways (sensible and otherwise) this statement could be made to affect policy, funding, and the end "product" (though one suspects nothing important will change for the better unless the internal culture of WMF's organizational leadership also changes in a major way, such as by diversifying the board of directors, toward more academics and nonprofit people instead of tech-industry rich people).
In short, I have hopes that Iskander's NGO background will make for a better exec. dir. fit than that last two we've had, but right out of the gate she's saying strange, too-vague, and even troubling things. And nothing in the interview actually suggests anything like a fix for WP's editorial diversity problem, which the headline suggested was going to be the focus.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:48, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
[Comments?]
"It is possible to detect eerie echoes of the confessional state of yore", and today's far left is recycling techniques from fun times like the Inquisition." I've been saying this for years, and the article is a good summary of how "left-wing" and "leftist" do not always align with "liberal". It's an observation too few mainstream writers have been willing to make, but the truth of it explains a great deal of disruptive PoV-pushing on Wikipedia. Illiberal left-wing activism is often harder to detect, and harder for the average editor to publicly resist, than far-right extremism, which we tend to recognize then delete on sight.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:51, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
[Comments?]
An Information Research survey shows that people's editing motivation is often "their desire to change the views of society", and also that they view Wikipedia as a "social media site". This isn't news to us, and the material doesn't have a huge statistical sample, but I would bet real money that it will be re-confirmed by later studies. This has systemic bias, neutrality, and conflict of interest implications (also not news). What we don't really think much about it is what this means for Wikipedia long-term, as everyone with an agenda becomes more aware that they can try to sneakily leverage Wikipedia articles to boost their side of any story, especially after the Trump 2016 US presidential campaign proved that powerful results can pulled off by organized manipulation of "social media" sites (whether WP really is one or not is irrelevant if the public thinks it is).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:28, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
[Comments?]
The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey has closed; the results are here, and as disappointing as in previous years. This process is fundamentally flawed, for numerous reasons:
  • Only the top-ten proposals will get any resources devoted to them, no matter how many there are, or how urgent or important they are.
  • It's a straight-vote, canvassing-allowed, no-rationale-needed, short-term "popularity contest" – normal Wikimedian consensus-building is thwarted.
  • This setup encourages people to vote for the 10 things they want most, then vote against every other proposal even if they agree with it. Proposals cannot build support over time.
  • There's no "leveling of the playing field" between categories. Important proposals of narrower interest (e.g. to admins, or to technical people) never pass, only the lowest-common-denominator ones do – and the most-canvassed ones.
  • Too few Wikimedians even know the survey exists or when it is open, which greatly compounds the skew caused by focused canvassing – the intentional spikes actually determine the outcome.
I've drafted some suggestions for making it work better.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  18:08, 19 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
[Comments?]
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23 This user talk page has been vandalized 23 times.
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Today's Events

November 20, 2024

Birthday
Ebe123, ilamb94, TomasBat, Wezzo
Adminship Anniversary
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First Edit Day
BubbaDaAmogus, Ish ishwar, L293D, NekoKatsun, Sallicio, WJBscribe
Other events:

Depiction of W?F destroying Wikipedia with Visual Editor and flow.

Thank you

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I am ashamed to say that I only just noticed your departure. Thank you for the numerous improvements you have made to Wikipedia over the years. We've ­worked together infrequently but productively, to the extent that I was once accused of being your sock puppet. We will especially miss your willingness to point out deficiencies in the WMF whilst others meekly admire the emperor's new clothes.

I remain unblocked merely because I have been more cowardly than you in submitting to Wikipedia's obsession with political correctness. I would certainly never dare to suggest that neuroscience of sex differences actually exists. I have learnt from the punishment administered to you, and will maintain my silence.

I will understand if you never wish to see another Wikipedian again, but I sincerely hope that you are able to return when the time is right. Thank you once more, and I wish you all the best with whatever fills your newfound free time. Certes (talk) 13:05, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For future reference I feel it’s important to mention this section was heavily refactored in this edit. Also: Chris Troutman is not blocked from his talk page; he simply doesn’t seem to care. We shouldn’t censor non-troll edits from people’s talk pages because we think they might be offended by them. Dronebogus (talk) 12:25, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Dronebogus: when an editor is blocked or banned site wide, they should only use their talk page for discussing an unblock. This can include reasonable discussion about the behaviour to help the editor understand why they were blocked and how they need to change, but there's very little room for arguing your behaviour was okay and especially not if it's not in the context of requesting an unblock. Some venting is generally ignored soon after a block provided it doesn't cross too far over the WP:NPA line but that's about as far as it goes. Okay they are also allowed simple technical maintenance e.g. removing any content they are allowed to remove, setting up or modifying auto archiving and perhaps to make other such simple requests without requesting an unblock. So while Chris troutman could have removed those comments if they wanted to, responding to them in anything more but a perfunctory manner likely would have lead to them losing talk page access. So User:Rhododendrites was correct that they could not have really responded to that discussion. I make no comment on whether this means they should have been removed. Nil Einne (talk) 14:48, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just Now Realizing You're Gone

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Can't believe you've been blocked since late April. I have barely been on. I am going to miss your kind Christmas letters & talk page posts, and friendly discussions overall. Your departure is a huge loss for the project. I wish you well with whatever you decide to do next and hope you can come back in some form soon. I usually try not to engage in those types of discussions (@Certes- I, too, am cowardly) and this type of bias has blossomed on WP in recent years. We are losing valuable editors over nothing. Certes said it best.

Thank you, Chris, and wishing you the best once more. — That Coptic Guyping me! (talk) (contribs) 02:40, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for sticking by me.

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Hey Chris it’s ARMcgrath. Sorry that political differences caused your blocking, but I wanna say from the bottom of my heart thank you for defending me and helping me out in September of 2023 when I was legally threatened. I know conflict of interests on articles are a pain in the ass and I appreciate that you stood up and helped me deal with this. Thank you for helping me stay on here because, when it happened I almost entirely left, I haven’t retired entirely as I feel like currently there’s a lot going on in the world. I wish you nothing but all the best in what you do outside of Wikipedia.

It hasn’t been hard to stay here since we went our ways. I hope you still have the private message I sent after the fact. I have gotten over the incident and I feel comfortable editing on here again but I feel that this place is also too toxic sometimes as some edit wars are always one sided on one end and I try to avoid edit wars nowadays. Anyways sorry this all went down and I wish you were still getting rid of unnecessary content and drama like vandalism. Anyways I hope you enjoy your life outside Wikipedia. Meep Meep 21:02, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Block reason

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@Just Step Sideways Could you point me (and others) to the AN(I)/AE/etc. discussion or any other place where there is a rationale and/or consensus to block this editor? TIA Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:29, 8 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Piotrus Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1155#Sexist comment by Chris Troutman Nobody (talk) 05:47, 8 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@1AmNobody24 Thank you Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:29, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for United Nations

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United Nations has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 07:49, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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