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Hoaxes

FYI:

In this Daily Telegraph article, writer Michael Deacon admits to adding a false fact to Muhammad Ali which survived 8 years (until 28 March when his confession was published). Michael's Wikipedia biography - a stub - was created last December by User:Mabelina, an author with 74 extant articles to their name. Michael says nearly every fact in his BLP is wrong. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:31, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

I always find it funny that journalists, who could publish false information in their own publications, are gobsmacked when false information can make it into other media. --TeaDrinker (talk) 20:50, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Particularly in this case, in which the lie appeared in a print publication thanks to him, if I understand the story correctly. Well, nevermind. We are Wikipedians and ought not to waste time being bothered by his confessed lies. All we really should care about is making sure that Wikipedia is correct. Are his claims that his year of birth, school, and university are all wrong correct? --Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:54, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Year of birth has been corrected using a reliable source and the place of birth, that he was educated at Gravesend Grammar and that he went up to Cambridge University have all been removed as unsourced.[1] I'll be interested to see whether anyone looks into the veracity of (the now-retired) Mabelina's other 73 articles. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 09:01, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
Mr Wales, how are we making sure that Wikipedia is correct? If this journalist did the same thing tomorrow that he does 8 years ago, what would be different? Mr Muffler (talk) 22:08, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
In other hoax related news a banned user decided to do some very interesting vandalism as part of an experiment, and managed to get away with it for the most part.[2] Kind of depressing when you think about it. Although probably not as depressing as the fact that a hoax article created by someone for the sole purpose of accusing their friend of being Nazi, existed for over 5 years.Bosstopher (talk) 12:30, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
Given what appears to be unfolding here, I think this link is relevant. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:51, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
Aww, deleting that must have been an April fool joke. Ha ha! It's the 2nd, now, where I am, so here it is, restored: ↓ Begoon talk 14:00, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

One man's poignant example of Wikipedia's perpetual failure can be another man's "confessed lies", I guess. I happen to be in the process of unwinding a series of 30 vandalisms of creative misinformation deliberately inserted into Wikipedia as part of an experiment that I hope will forever disprove the myth that "falsehoods are usually quickly reverted within minutes on Wikipedia". Once I have finished reverting these tidbits of misinformation, I will memorialize the experiment in a blog post at Wikipediocracy, which I hope will spread to the wider media, so that unsuspecting readers of Wikipedia will learn that it mostly should not be trusted word-for-word. - Saint Kohser (talk) 11:51, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

So long as he continues to revert vandalism please do not block him. User:Fred Bauder Talk 14:28, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah. OK. Here it is. (I don't usually read that thread.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:52, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I am bemused when critics of Wikipedia think that they can advance their cause by attempting to insert subtle, plausible falsehoods into the encyclopedia. We already know that no human venture, including this encyclopedia, is perfect. Not even Wikipediocracy, if that can be believed. In my mind, such "experiments" make the deliberate vandals look very bad, not this encyclopedia. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 04:25, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
There were several difference between the modus operandi of the those vandalisms and the vandalism that we are used to, aside from the ones that we don't want to highlight, this is presumably the same editor who once laid their hands on a list of unwatched articles - I don't know if this used that list but this should serve as a reminder if twere needed that we need to prevent vandals from knowing how many watchers an article has. It's a bit like discovering that a sacked copper is doing burglaries in ways that differ so much from the typical burglar that he has got away with several because he knows enough to be hard to catch. Finding that someone else has drawn moustaches on pictures in several books in the school library would be one thing, but "formerly trusted user knew enough to do vandalism that snuck past our defences" is less troubling. Now a critic who can find stuff that others have done and that we aren't spotting would be more interesting, as would be someone who selected a random thousand factoids and tried to verify how many were actually true. ϢereSpielChequers 19:55, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
Stuff that others have done and that hasn't been spotted (until we do spot it) pops up daily. Selecting a random thousand factoids and verifying them is the kernel of a good design for a worthwhile research project.
I'd like to know if Greg referred to the unwatched articles list when selecting his sample articles. That will affect the interpretation of his results. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:48, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
Hi Anthony, Yup we get hoaxes and vandalism every day, what was embarrassing about this bunch was that they had stayed up for years a couple of months. Things that only last seconds before a bot reverts them, or the things that last a minute or two before a newpage patroller reverts them are pretty much controlled. Stuff that gets resolved in a few days or weeks when someone checks their watchlist is a little more embarrassing, we do have a system that catches them but watchlists are our backstops, and false info can be up for days before a volunteer who checks in weekly spots them. This got past all of that, and while other longstanding vandalism does sometimes show up I didn't think it was a daily occurrence. Some of the typos I fix have been up for years, but that's usually a lesser issue. Thanks for your comments re my random sample idea, I think I've floated it a couple of times in the past, but I've written it up again now. meta:User:WereSpielChequers/spot_checking happy to have your feedback there. ϢereSpielChequers 12:16, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
WSC, which "bunch" "had stayed up for years"? Just trying to follow along, here. Begoon talk 17:12, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
The bunch reverted by this user, and discussed near the top of this thread. ϢereSpielChequers 17:26, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
As I understand it, these items of intentional vandalism were not up for days, but weeks, created by that same editor using IPs, as an "experiment". JoeSperrazza (talk) 19:46, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
Apologies, I was confusing this with the previous breaching experiment by allegedly the same person. ϢereSpielChequers 20:42, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
For creating Wikipedia. Royalmate3 (talk) 02:56, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

jawp:blocking and global lock. #＝> deadlock!?

Return is impossible . Really?--61.125.88.208 (talk) 14:42, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Marin-Blue was deleted. http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AMarine-Blue&diff=11741456&oldid=11735651

Marin-Blue had been discussed with me. But,Marin-Blue was blocking to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.125.88.208 (talk) 14:01, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Fist, Marine-Blue was party,Why did he block to me?--61.125.88.208 (talk) 16:54, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

英語が下手ですいません。日本語で書きます。

  1. Marine-Blueは議論の当事者であるにも関わらず投稿ブロックを実行した。
  2. メーリングリストでの議論にも応じなかった。
  3. デッドロックについても私を騙し続けた。
  4. Marine-Blueよ。違うなら議論に応じろ。

--61.125.88.208 (talk) 17:14, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

A pie for you!

You won a pie Bettifm (talk) 08:04, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Wiki Wiki Buses

Watching 60 Minutes this evening, Jim mentioned that Wikipedia was named after the Wiki Wiki buses at the airport in Maui. Incorrect.

The Wiki Wiki buses are at the Honolulu Airport on the island of Oahu. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.116.143.48 (talk) 00:07, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

It wasn't named after the buses but the word/phrase wiki wiki.--Mark Miller (talk) 23:52, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
In any case, it was a very impressive broadcast. The entire movement looked very good in it. Congrats to all who appeared in it. Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:20, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
He's only human, he can make mistakes :)--5 albert square (talk) 00:23, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Try watching at http://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/ (maybe a few hours from now) if you missed the broadcast. It's about 20 minutes long. Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:34, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

All I'm seeing is a photo of Bashar al-Assad. Is that the founder of Wikipedia? Coretheapple (talk) 02:29, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
That was last week's show, within a few hours it should move on to this weeks show (sorry). In the mean time, please see the better link provided by Jimmy Wikimania. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:45, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the link @Smallbones:, I'll try that later on.--5 albert square (talk) 00:46, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
I love Wikipedia. Yes, Honolulu, not Maui. Persnickity ("requiring a particularly precise or careful approach") as Sue said. I am the same, so cringing at my error. This is probably the best link for viewing it: Wikimania. It's the best snapshot I've seen about us.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:03, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Ah thanks for the link Jimbo, that was a very good broadcast indeed. Wow, I didn't realise that we were at 12,000 articles a day now. Yes we are a bunch of persnickity geeks haha!--5 albert square (talk) 01:31, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
English WP is running just under 900 articles a day (not counting probably a couple hundred deletions). I believe this number is probably inaccurate. Carrite (talk) 02:13, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Well that was easy to confirm. In February 2015 all Wikipedias combined added an average of 6,882 new articles a day LINK. This doesn't include a deduction for deletions, so far as I am aware. So the "12,000 new articles per day" number is indeed heavily inflated. Carrite (talk) 02:25, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
P.S. Let this be an object lesson about the nonsensical notion that there are such things as "Reliable Sources." There are relatively more and relatively less reliable sources in this world. Use them all — with appropriate discretion. Which is more accurate: the "60 Minutes Sez So" or the "self-published, primary source" link? Carrite (talk) 03:06, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Addendum: I see that there was a spike during the summer of 2014 due to mass machine translations in Vietnamese and Swedish. So the 12,000 number didn't fall from the sky, it was plausible. But it is still a distorted figure if one is actually speaking of the real level of content creation. Carrite (talk) 03:39, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Yes, in 2014, there was a monthly high of 21,469 articles (July 2014) and a low of 6,707 articles (December 2014) so 12K/month average is plausible. And these wide swings in article production across Wikipedias doesn't seem unusual, in 2013, there was a high of 32,619 articles (August 2013) and a low of 6,505 (November 2013). Liz Read! Talk! 16:33, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't know. After all the filming that was done, I was disappointed that the interviews with most actual contributors wound up on the cutting room floor; I guess the interviewees weren't considered telegenic enough. I was also disappointed that the very people commenting on the limited diversity of Wikimedians would use an enormous international platform to characterize the kind of people who edit Wikipedia as persnickety geeks wearing t-shirts with Dorito stains, and how women don't have "social permission" to wear dirty t-shirts, so they don't edit. At least we're supposed to be smart. Honestly, I just shook my head. Risker (talk) 03:51, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Pretty much "per Risker". As far as one-sided fluff pieces go, it did make Wikipedia, and those presented, look good. As far as true "Investigative journalism" goes however, hardly very accurate from an editor's viewpoint. The spin doctors and PR people certainly did an excellent job, and kudos to Jimbo who seemed very comfortable and relaxed. I do have to say however, that from any "in the trenches" view, I suspect that both Jimbo and Sue will appear to be somewhat "out of touch" with the editing environment. The "Really smart?", "careful?", and "cautious?" quotes certainly had me scratching my head in amusement. My compliments for getting this on 60 minutes rather than having to pay advertising fees for a commercial. Hopefully it will benefit the collection plate where readers are concerned. From an editor's standpoint, well, hopefully many got a good smile out of it. — Ched :  ?  04:17, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
I'm not really sure that there's a huge intersection between readers of Wikipedia and watchers of 60 Minutes; not even my elderly relatives take Morley Safer seriously. Risker (talk) 05:31, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
[3] --Bob K31416 (talk) 07:22, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • @Risker. Two points: (1) Sue Gardner doesn't know the nature of actual Wikipedia volunteers in the trenches because WMF hasn't done even the most elementary databasing and polling of its core contributors. There were hints in the recently-released "State of Wikipedia" report that this shortcoming is at least recognized. Whether WMF actually does something about it is another question. (2) As for the "social permission" theory of the gender gap, if you take away the obvious dirty t-shirts and Doritos flourishes, that at least is a new idea about how we got to 80-20 and why the problem is so hard to fix. Considering that the theories accepted by some as axiomatic are clearly horsefeathers — that Wikipedians are sexist meanies and that Wikipedians and their pottymouths have created a culture not conducive to female participation — at least that idea is something. Carrite (talk) 14:18, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
    • Don't know why you think it's a new theory, Carrite; it is a variation on something Sue had been saying for years. The "social permission" comment is all about the dirty t-shirts and Doritos, in my view. Almost none of the characterizations that were made about Wikipedians in this piece are demonstrably true, largely because there's been insufficient research into the actual participants (or people who avoid participation) to figure out what is and isn't true (I think we agree there). Risker (talk) 15:08, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
We do agree on the main issue. As for SG's comment, I focus on the "sit around and edit Wikipedia" part, not the food and apparel... Carrite (talk) 15:27, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I thought it was a cute piece, a little treacly, and doesn't do much to offset the view of Wikipedia as a cult. It talked a bit about gender disparity but not at all about age disparity, that there aren't enough older, seasoned people editing Wikipedia. Also I could not get over the thought of thousands of people flying to London just to celebrate a hobby. Something weird about that. Coretheapple (talk) 14:31, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
There are published numbers bubbling around about how many of those were WMF peeps (150-ish) and paid "scholarships" (200-ish, those numbers from memory, take with salt). Now add in the fact that London is a huge city and the UK is the source of a really big chunk of volunteers and the "thousands" of people flying in out of pocket for the convention becomes more like "hundreds." Carrite (talk) 15:32, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Honestly, there wasn't much to the piece. It's kind of like how they've handled Internet-related stories before, if you remember the rather fluffy pieces about Facebook and Amazon. I think they're kind of afraid of the topic, so they treat it rather gingerly. --Philgomes (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 15:59, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
@Carrite: I am glad to hear of the existence of such statistics. Any persons who would fly over oceans, at their own expense, to attend a Wikipedia conference would be so unstable that I would not trust them to edit Wikipedia. Coretheapple (talk) 19:05, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
That's really sad, Coretheapple. Having said that, in my experience almost everyone I have met at Wikimanias who have flown over oceans to get there have combined the Wikimania experience with normal holiday activities, come early and/or leave late, and do the touristy thing. On the whole, I'd suggest that, much like many people who attend conferences related to their hobbies, the conference is the 'excuse' for the trip, but they also do much more. I've attended the last 3 wikimanias, and my most cherished memories from the trips are (a) taking in the museums and memorials in Washington; (b) spending time exploring the New Territories with a friend in Hong Kong; and (c) punting down the River Cam and touring Buckingham Palace in the UK. (In fairness, I'll take just about any excuse to visit the UK, and I spent as much "tourist" time there as I did Wikimania time.) Risker (talk) 20:23, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
I might be more affectionate toward Wikipedia, and willing to travel over the oceans to attend Wikimaniac conferences, if it took a firmer stance against paid editing and stopped being so namby-pamby over that. If Wikipedia is not for itself, how do they expect me to be? (That's paraphrasing a philosopher from antiquity). Coretheapple (talk) 23:59, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Was heartened to see the outtake (albeit with the unfortunate headline) where the concession is made that there are good folks in my line of work (PR). Difficult to imagine such a statement would have been made in such a broadcast a couple of years ago. --Philgomes (talk) 14:33, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Watching the segment made me feel proud to be a Wikipedia editor. I'm a retired person and even as a young girl I had figured out that the right to information is one of our most precious freedoms. Thanks Jimbo for all you have done to give me a place to do volunteer work that promotes the free flow of information. Best, Gandy Gandydancer (talk) 16:12, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Love Wikipedia! Love that the name is derived from a word from the Hawaiian language. Gotta tell you Jimbo...if it was not for Wikipedia I would never have learned how to do serious research and genealogy work. Wikipedia actually helped me rediscover my Hawaiian culture again and find myself...literally. Thank you to you and everyone who has ever taken a moment to edit on Wikipedia in a positive manner!--Mark Miller (talk) 19:19, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
OK...just watched it on CBS.com...not to plug them or anything. There was some irony in sitting through the mandatory commercials to see them mention how Wikipedia doesn't use ads like other mainstream sites. LOL!--Mark Miller (talk) 23:51, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Today's articles for improvement

You're invited to join WikiProject Today's articles for improvement. This week's voting for TAFI's upcoming weekly collaboration has begun at Week 18 of 2015. Thanks for your consideration! North America1000 19:42, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

The pie is lame silly archived out of sequence

Hey Jimbo, I'm, replacing this "report on economic growth and goals for you and your editors" because the pie in the previous section is silly, the section was duplicated in your archives for some reason, and you might also enjoy Herzera and Vollmer (2013) living as an "elder statesman of the internet" in England, where equality is collapsing. EllenCT (talk) 16:27, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Ad-hoc Working Paper Series Group
Hi! You have been awarded this "Literature review on fundamental concepts and definitions, objectives and policy goals as well as instruments relevant for socio-ecological transition". There will be a take-home, open-book test administered in the form of reality. I suggest reviewing pp. 55-58, in particular the first sentence of the paragraph citing Baumol (2007) at the bottom of page 55, and consider a transition from means-tested benefits which remove incentive to work more than universal basic income, universal health care, and housing first assistance which would not be lost if the recipient finds a job, unlike typical welfare which is lost upon employment. The rapidly declining cost of energy is likely to offset what would otherwise be inflationary effects. EllenCT (talk) 23:38, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Well Ellen there is a long tradition of virtual food sharing on WP, see Wikipedia:WikiLove for example. However, whether it is lame or not: well I can see both points of view really... --Mrjulesd (talk) 17:51, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
I agree with you, but Art Okun's mistakes have real world consequences that are threatening the health of the United Kingdom, and it's up to every one of us to save them from social decay. Parliament must be informed of the relation between cooperation and competition discovered by game theoreticians at the University of Pennsylvania studying genetic algorithm approaches to the iterated prisoners' dilemma, and Jimbo is the only one who can pull that off, at least that I know of. Maybe Cambridge has an endowed chair in "We are truly very sorry to have gotten this wrong for so long" or some such but I still say Jimbo has a better chance of capturing the hopes, dreams, and imaginations of the MPs' constituents. EllenCT (talk) 02:21, 7 April 2015 (UTC)




A cookie for you! --Bob K31416 (talk) 03:00, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
I don't deserve a cookie. That Quanta Magazine article lacks the results in this peer reviewed paper (popular treatment) because the researchers are trying to milk their results. The mere existence of conditions where cooperation is a winning strategy is all that is necessary to show the Theory of Games and Economic Behavior and Nash equilibrium point that income inequality is a terrible evil. EllenCT (talk) 13:29, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

This paper is pertinent too, although "are inadequate for them to develop" at the top of page 2 should be replaced by "hinder the speed and ease with which they develop". Onward and upward. EllenCT (talk) 04:12, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

In the year 2546

By the year 2546, Wikipedia Talk pages and the rest of the world have merged into some kind of ....whatever. --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:05, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

According to Irreligion in the United States#Growth, agnostics have increased from 0.9% in 2008 to 4% today, so I seriously doubt atheists will dominate. All theisms will be about the same sized minority as agnostics have recently been. 97.118.27.105 (talk) 18:50, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Jimbo just won a Beautiful Kitten

Bettifm (talk) 01:06, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Happiness For You!

Chalcid (Torymus Spp.) (9958986555)
 Happiness For You!
Share Ted, he gives happiness to everyone... Who aren't allergic to Red-pterodactyl-like Cassowaries

-- Shirugaki (talk) 01:35, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 April 2015

Kazakhstan

Hi Jimmy. Would you be able to give us an update on what you or the Wikimedia Foundation are doing about the capture of the Kazakh Wikipedia by the Kazakh government? This initiative by Wikipedia volunteers is important, but I'm curious to know what initiatives you, personally, and your foundation have taken so far.

I'd also be curious to know whose idea it was to give an award (2011 Global Wikipedian of the Year) to Rauan Kenzhekhanuly for the work he was doing on Wikipedia there; and who did the investigation into him and his work before the decision was made. You mentioned in your presentation of the award that Ting Chen "went to Kazakhstan and he came back and reported on something amazing that was happening there." Did you suggest to Ting that he visit Kazakhstan? You met with someone from the office of the Kazakh PM in Davos a couple of months before Ting's visit, I believe, and spoke on the phone to someone from the PM's office. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 22:32, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I emailed Anthony with the details of my research from the book, including an interview with Wikibilim, but I never got to see Ting Chen’s report on the Almaty press conference in June 2011. It’s clear from Ting’s comment here that the trip was on expenses, i.e. presumably paid out of public donations to the WMF, and he mentions writing a report. When I asked Jimmy in July 2013 if I could see the report, he told me to contact Ting directly. Ting declined to reply, as did Kat Walsh. I dared to suggest that the WMF was being ‘secretive’ Jimmy replied “it's just laughable to say that the WMF is secretive at all. Just laughable. It's evidence of your total disconnection with the facts of reality that you would even suggest such a thing.”
So Jimmy, if I am totally disconnected with reality, how is it so hard to get public disclosure of an official report sent to the WMF board nearly four years ago? I understand WMF is a private organisation, and that it has the legal right to withhold information. But then don’t say it is ‘laughable’ to point out the secrecy, and don’t say this is evidence of “total disconnection with the facts of reality”. Ha. 5.80.83.4 (talk) 18:40, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Peter also sent me an excerpt from an email from WikiBilim. So with Ting's comment linked by Peter above, and the email comment from WikiBilim, I'm now satisfied that Ting's visit was in response to a request from WikiBilim, that WikiBilim seemed to all at this end to be a worthwhile project, that Rauan had not disclosed his roles in government, that Jimmy's position on the regime has been consistent, and (especially considering the first sentence of his presentation speech in the above-linked 2011 video) no one from the WMF other than Jimmy was involved in the decision to give the award to Rauan.
This is a very big and difficult question - how to deal with Wikipedias in languages whose speakers mostly live under a repressive government. My first question still stands. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:28, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps they met this person to talk things over? Count Iblis (talk) 02:46, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

The big and difficult question

Anthonyhcole says "This is a very big and difficult question - how to deal with Wikipedias in languages whose speakers mostly live under a repressive government. " As it happens I have just been contacted by someone who is close to dissident sources in Kazakhstan (now in exile). She told me about two attack BLPS on the Russian Wikipedia. "Russia is a long-established ally of Kazakhstan, especially, when it comes to opponents of the regime." The problem is that she and other dissidents have no expertise in navigating the wiki (in particular the page history tool), whereas I have no knowledge of Russian. A further problem is that not many people in Kazakhstan, especially in the dissident community, understand Kazakh, so the Kazakh Wikipedia is doubly removed from the forces of due diligence.

Anthony's question still stands, of course. Jimmy: would you be able to give us an update on what you or the Wikimedia Foundation are doing about the capture of the Kazakh Wikipedia by the Kazakh government? That's the question. 31.49.92.222 (talk) 08:00, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

You won some paperwork!

Request for Public Comment on Activities under Executive Order 12333
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/03/23/2015-06537/request-for-public-comment-on-activities-under-executive-order-12333

Please ask all your friends to do this. EllenCT (talk) 15:52, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Regarding Wifione ArbCom case

Three years ago I noticed this thread on your talk page and I wrote: "...this issue should be properly investigated/clarified." Later, I notified you and others watching this page repeatedly about my concerns regarding Wifione's editing, but I was largely ignored. Now I'm letting you know that the case has come to an end, see this. There is a good off-site summary and broader context described in the current issue of the Newsweek magazine. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 07:02, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I consider this one of the worst (slowest) failures to tackle a problematic editor that we've seen yet. It's good that we reached this conclusion in the end, but the question that should give us a sense of desire for change is: why did it take so long?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:49, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
No one cared, and I would also say that Wikipedians hesitate to 'take to court' a kind, polite and respected member of the community who has many friends. User:Tinucherian, a WP administrator from India, responded to my questions regarding Wifione in March 2012: "I did also inform some of the members of Arb Com. They feel that there is no credible evidence as such." Well, I presented more evidence at Wikipedia:Editor review/Wifione but the case went to ArbCom only after I repeatedly attacked Wifione and s/he complained at ANI. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 12:39, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
So you've raised two points. (1) No one cared. (2) " Wikipedians hesitate to 'take to court' a kind, polite and respected member of the community who has many friends" I think both points are valid but the first one is incomplete. I'm interested in the question of *why* "No one cared". Overall, it isn't true - lots of people care a lot about manipulation and COI editing. So I'm curious why no one cared *enough* and *in this particular case*.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:01, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Jimbo, Vej resigned as a sysop out of disgust at not being able to get this addressed. (Thankfully he has been willing to pick up the tools again, after the case. Not all would have). At the start of the arbitration case there was a chilling atmosphere towards those seeking to provide evidence against Wifione. Only as the evidence was presented, and it started to become obvious that there was a mountain of compelling evidence, did this attitude start to shift. Several of those presenting evidence openly told others that they were afraid to present evidence in case they were sanctioned. They should have had no reason to fear, since they were helping to expose malfeasance, but the culture here is not welcoming to "whistle-blowers". Not at all. Begoon talk 14:23, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
@Begoon: Agree that the issue lingered for years without action, mostly because there are too few editors and hardly anyone cared about an article on an obscure Indian college. Agree that Wifione's polite manner got them a long way. Also agree that the 2014-15 Arbcom case rested very strongly on Vejvančický's evidence and would never have succeeded without it. But disagree re any chilling atmosphere in this most recent case? There was opposition to unbanning Peter Damian so he could directly take part in the case. There was opposition to outsourcing the /Evidence page to an external website. But that's it, at least from my perspective. I've also not followed Wifione much longer than the last few months, but I don't feel there was any reason for anyone involved in this case to fear they would be sanctioned for presenting valid evidence. And as it turned out, nobody was sanctioned for this or any similar reason. I appreciate the point about Arbcom procedures being long and messy, and maybe they need reform. But not seeing why there's a "fear of reprisal," and would welcome evidence that this fear has any practical basis (plus suggestions on what to do about it if proven). -- Euryalus (talk) 07:20, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
I'm speaking from my own personal experience of how the case unfolded. You are correct that nobody was sanctioned for giving evidence, but that was certainly a fear I heard from people considering participation at the time. It would be difficult to deny that Arbcom has a reputation for "sanctions all round" solutions, deserved or otherwise, and this makes people nervous. Read the first 3 sections on the case page at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Wifione/Evidence. The atmosphere is clear - people seeing big, scary templates about possible sanctions, confusion about what is permitted. I'm not a lone voice here - there are several comments broadly agreeing with me below. Now, I've already said that this atmosphere improved once the massive amount of compelling evidence started to be examined, and I've said elsewhere that I was heartened overall by the case and the result. This is true, but you need to consider that fears like these can prevent cases from ever being brought. I can't give concrete evidence of a "fear of reprisal" other than reporting it exists, and that I have experienced it first hand, and asking you to read other comments on this page. What to do? Well, a less "officious" environment around Arbitration could help. The guys at DR strike a good line. Maybe a group of editors available to help those wishing to bring cases to tiptoe through the minefield is an idea? Maybe others have better ideas? Begoon talk 10:44, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
It occured to me you might like an example of unnecessary, discouraging officiousness at Arbcom cases. Ok, here's one. I recently made a very brief, hopefully helpful, uninvolved comment at a request for arbitration. As a consequence, I was added, as a party, to not one, but two arbitration cases, received 4 talkpage messages and pings, and had to post to 2 separate case talkpages to have myself removed from 2 cases I was never a part of. All my "reward" for offering a helpful, brief comment, in passing. There are perhaps between a dozen and 2 dozen people in the same position. This could all have been avoided by the 2 cases being properly considered and drafted before posting, instead of a hurried, ill-considered copy/paste to be "fixed later". Please ask yourself if that kind of thing encourages or discourages participation. Begoon talk 15:39, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
@Begoon: Can't argue with that. --Euryalus (talk) 08:16, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. I should also mention that I do appreciate the good humour and efficiency which you personally brought to removing the incorrectly added parties. It was a breath of fresh air, and, quite honestly, just a lot more of that approach from the Arbs and clerks involved on those pages would be a huge help, in my opinion. Begoon talk 16:53, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
I completely agree with the sentiments above. Fear of retaliation is a common problem when dealing with admins on Wikipedia because there are no checks and balances against admins. This case shows it as others have. It's the admins word against everyone else and the admin is given a 10 to 1 offset automatically. The Arbcom purposefully makes the process of addressing admin problems so complex, so long and so burdeonsome that most just leave the project in frustration rather than deal with it. Problems take years to address if they ever are at all. If anyone thinks Wifione is the only problematic admin...or the worst, they are kidding themselves. Administrative oversite of the admins is a very much needed thing in this project and the Arbcom has shown time and time again that they are both unwilling to do it and don't have the skills to do it. There needs to be a higher level of authority, preferably at the WMF, that gives editors a chance for review and allows admins actions to be reviewed and dealt with outside the protected class status they have on the projects. Unfortunately, just like this case wasn't taken seriously for years, the overarching problem with the admin culture and us and them mentality will also not be taken seriously I fear regardless of how much damage it does to the project with editor retention and the longterm success of the project. Not as long as editors have no voice and admins are allowed "broadly construed" discretionary ability to do whatever they want. 138.162.8.57 (talk) 14:49, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
@Jimbo: It was a sophisticated work what Wifione has done for years and I guess that the opaque 'jungle' surrounding his activities on Wikipedia + complicated context of the topic (higher education in India) have discouraged most of editors from doing a detailed research or review the extensive researches made by others. People edit Wikipedia for free and few of them are interested in spending their time on investigating complicated cases of manipulation in areas completely unknown to them. That might be an explanation of 'why no one cared *enough*'. As for your 'why *in this particular case*' - I would say that it was partly because by his friendly and cordial attitude and socializing skills Wifione managed to persuade many of the core community members that his intentions are honest. Wikipedians act often more like members of a group of friends rather than independent editors-encyclopedists. Wifione knew that perfectly and found an ellegant way of how to get to the 'club', in my opinion .... and while I'm thinking about the Indian families potentially misled by Wikipedia and about the inability of this big open project to defend itself against sophisticated attempts to 'game the system', some other editors mourn Wifione's fall on his talk page. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 15:46, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
@Begoon:: I would say that good and honest people should follow their own conscience and ethical standards without being afraid of sanctions imposed by a 'culture' of an anonymous online environment. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 15:46, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Indeed, they should, and in this case you and others did. My concern is equally for the occasions we may never discover, where a user has concerns, expresses them, gets a lukewarm or discouraging response, looks at the stress and effort that would be involved in an Arbcom case, and says, basically, "meh - screw that. I've led them to the water - not my fault they won't drink it". If the culture doesn't encourage people to express concerns, and help them through the barbed wire and minefields, we lose valuable input, and people, and serious problems go unaddressed.Begoon talk 16:06, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Any honest discussion of why it took so long to deal with Wifione, and why a chilling effect exists in examining conflicts of interest, needs to start with the one previous ArbCom case that dealt with the issue. The message from that case could not have been clearer, at least to me. It's not surprising that Wifione thought he could beat the rap by being unctuously polite and by casting himself as a victim of unjust persecution and WP:OUTING, because that exact strategy worked brilliantly for the COI accounts in the previous case. (One of the Arbs even compared the COI accounts to Martin Luther King, Jr., which left me literally speechless).

    The Newsweek article on Wifione is pretty well-done; the quotes from Jayen466 were extremely fair and provided good context. Frankly, if someone wrote up the Transcendental Meditation COI issue, we'd come out looking equally bad or even worse, but that's another story. The bottom line is that the chilling effect is very real, from my perspective as an admin, and it comes from the message sent by ArbCom in its handling of the TM COI case. Vejvančický deserves a huge debt of gratitude (and frankly, so do some of the people who put this material together on Wikipediocracy) for tackling this issue despite the confusing and downright counterproductive direction that the community's leadership has taken in previous COI cases. MastCell Talk 16:35, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Correction: I found the MLK comparison, here, and it was not related to the TM editors. Rather, an Arb compared Newt Gingrich's PR man to Martin Luther King, Jr. I stand corrected, although no less appalled. MastCell Talk 17:19, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
  • I suppose the burning question, MastCell has to be: If someone declares a possible COI, does this mean that their colleagues, friends and/or family can then be contacted by anyone who has decides to investigate them?  Roger Davies talk 06:35, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
  • And MastCell, if someone campaigns against certain ideas in their real life occupation or activities, does this give them just as much of a COI as the editors they try to get sanctioned for operating on the contrary side of the topic as them in WP, especially if they are an admin? Cla68 (talk) 07:07, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
  • No, Roger, the burning question is how to balance "outing" and harassment concerns with the need to protect the project's integrity against obvious COI-driven editing. In the TimidGuy case, ArbCom tackled the first part of the equation, but did worse-than-nothing about the second. Suppose I stipulate that WillBeback was a horrible person who deserved to be cast into Outer Darkness. OK, done. That still leaves the question of how to deal with a group of editors with an obvious COI, who engage in inappropriate block-voting against perceived opponents, and who consistently use Wikipedia to sell their product by hyping its purported medical benefits. Again, ArbCom completely ignored that concern, and implicitly validated and supported the actions of these accounts, which was seriously demoralizing to those of us who care about COI editing and about the quality and accuracy of our medical coverage.

    The case also explicitly wrote into law that "outing" and harassment concerns took absolute priority over any potential COI issues. The decision left us with a very tough needle to thread, since under these terms virtually any mention of a potential COI could be interpreted as a form of "outing" or harassment, at the whim of ArbCom. It would have been simple enough in the case to terminate WillBeback with extreme prejudice but also to insist that the COI accounts adhere to our basic best practices (for instance, avoiding article edits). By completely punting on that question; by implicitly endorsing the editing of the COI accounts; and by creating an expansive standard for sanctioning COI concerns as a form of "harassment", the TimidGuy decision did a lot to create the chilling effect that people have cited here as a factor in our response to Wifione. If that can't be acknowledged, then I don't see things going a lot differently the next time around. MastCell Talk 19:23, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

  • Re: "I consider this one of the worst (slowest) failures to tackle a problematic editor that we've seen yet. It's good that we reached this conclusion in the end, but the question that should give us a sense of desire for change is: why did it take so long?" — I suppose the facile answer is that too many people are obsessed with potty language or copyright violations or having fun fighting with "enemies" about topical topics in order to spin a "win," and not enough are doing the hard, boring work of verification and improvement. There are insufficient boots on the ground to adequately police content of everything or really much of anything... In addition, Wifione was — nice. Carrite (talk) 18:52, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
@ Jimmy Wales. You might also consider ending the ban you've imposed on JN466 from posting on this page. It's hard to hear with fingers in the ears, I have found, and this page is as close as anything Wikipedia has to being a WP version of Wikipediocracy. He can say his piece here or there (or as a contributor to Signpost) but it seems like banning him from this place is counterproductive to WP's ultimate best interests. Carrite (talk) 19:03, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Banning is always a way to silence criticism one doesn't want to hear. A couple of editors have been banned form editing, costing the project countless edits, merely because the message was a threat to those in power here on Wikipedia. Personally, I really don't feel like Jimbo cares nor do I think he is willing to do anything about this problem so commenting here merely makes us feel better and that we have tried to do our due diligence, but doesn't really do anything to fix the problem. Those that are the problem, got that way, because of the tendency for the community, admins, Arbcom, Jimbo and the WMF to look the other way and pretend they don't see what's going on and anyone who brings it up is banned, blocked, accused of something or other to discredit them or otherwise bullied into place. I could personally name half a dozen admins right off the top of my head (including at least one on the Arbcom) that the project would be better off not being admins and a list three times longer of editors who are a net negative. Stating them openly would lead to a block as a personal attack and not listing them leads to insinuations of "Proove it with links" whereby, once provided, accusations of personal attacks are made and the cycle continues. This is largely due to the lack of oversight of the project, the failure of those in leadership positions to do the right thing and a general attitude, as stated above, of not caring. 138.162.8.57 (talk) 19:35, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
According to a quote in the Newsweek article, "Admins have a huge advantage in Wikipedia....The default assumption is that they are ‘good guys.’” Invariably, the best advice for honest and talented people who are thinking about editing Wikipedia is this: "Don't touch anything remotely controversial until you've become an administrator."Anythingyouwant (talk) 21:58, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Queries

  1. Was the any discussion of Wikipedia Zero (the appropriateness, use of resources, et. al.) on English Wikipedia before roll out?
  2. Are article talk pages accessible using the mobile interface? NE Ent 01:57, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Why no one cared

You say:

I'm interested in the question of *why* "No one cared". Overall, it isn't true - lots of people care a lot about manipulation and COI editing. So I'm curious why no one cared *enough* and *in this particular case*.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:01, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps you could answer this. I emailed you on 3 December 2013 with a link to this article (which I co-authored). I received no reply. I emailed again on 6 December pointing out the administrators slurs against Mahesh Peri (who I interviewed for the article) were unforgiveable, as was the article he created on Ashok Kumar Chauhan, with the sole purpose of slandering him. I copied the Arbitration Committee, not one reply. I asked an arbitrator later about it, who said “That's not something I'm going to be worrying about I'm afraid, it's not an area that I feel a lot of passion about”. He pointed out that he had won a prize of £25 in the "core content competition", and had also received free Wikipedia T-shirts. “Are these problematic? At what point do you draw the line?”. That, and your failure to act, speak volumes. 81.147.132.55 (talk) 18:53, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Oh pardon me, you did mention it later (email of 14 December) when I asked you to comment again. You chided me for "keep[ing] company with other dishonest trolls rather than being respected and appreciated by good people", and accused me of being intellectually dishonest, and as for the Wifione case "It is not generally reasonable to assume that someone not commenting on something is an approval of it, particularly when no one has actually inquired about it in any normal venue." Ha 81.147.132.55 (talk) 19:07, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

[edit] Of course you are expressing concern right now, but that is because it has reached Newsweek, I suspect. But you failed to act in December 2013 because it was not an issue in the mainstream media, and because the offender was a highly placed, well-liked and well-respected administrator, who it was not in your interest to offend. Much easier to accuse me of 'keeping company with dishonest trolls" and not being "appreciated by good people". Who are these good people? 81.147.132.55 (talk) 19:31, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Personally, I think some do care, but those people are either afraid of reprisal, or they would rather focus on building content than get sucked into a month long mud slinging contest at Arbcom and risk getting banned themselves when Arbcom does their usual punish both sides so there are no winners approach. A lot of the fault lies squarely on the shoulders of the Arbcom and their failures to police the project and the WMF for completely ignoring the problem unless its a piece of new software they want to force onto the community. They make the cases so long and complicated no one wants to do them and then the end result is either nothing happening to the admin in question or the invoke a bunch of penalties all around to make sure that A) no one wants to submit and will avoid it at all costs and B) there are no winners and they can be passive aggressive and not choose a side. Its already a fact that if they choose a case they then they know the person is guilty, so once the case is accepted, the person may as well just leave anyway, unless they are an admin that is because although this admin did get punished, that is an extremely rare exception. 138.162.8.57 (talk) 19:40, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
The real question is why don't we have more editors like Antonín Vejvančický's running and maintaining this site instead of what we have now? Viriditas (talk) 20:51, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
If you want to know why, read the preceding comments from Begoon and MastCell and 138.x.x.x. I know of one very definite recent/ongoing case of COI editing. But I dare not report it, or I'll be accused of outing and being a horrible person in general. Even if I were eventually to be cleared life is too short to have to mess with stuff like that. So I try to minimize the damage and figure what the hell. The quote on my user page sums up the problem as well as anything. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:23, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi Short Brigade Harvester Boris Perhaps the thing to do in these circumstances is not to focus on the perceived COI but look instead at POV-pushing, misuse of sources, revert warring etc that are usually the hallmarks of someone with an agenda,  Roger Davies talk 06:39, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Roger. Up to now the sense that arbs (or recent arbs) think COI per se doesn't matter has been inferred indirectly. I appreciate your stating it explicitly. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 12:06, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Don't be too hard on him, Roger is just passing the majority view of Wikipedians along — it's not the editor, it's the edits (however you want to phrase that). For all the pious expressions of shock and horror when one POV-pushing sock puppeteer after another is revealed and neutralized, there is nothing to be surprised or horrified about so long as the cult of anonymity reigns and anyone anywhere can start editing with or without an account, without limitation on account creation, backed by anti-outing rules and the mantra of Assume Good Faith. It's just the way it is going to be forever. So don't worry too much about who is affected by what degree of COI or nationalist feeling or loyalty to their employer, etc. Concentrate on the edits, not the editor. When those go bad, that's when you've got a case. Carrite (talk) 16:37, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes, that explains the length of my block log. When I see a problem, I act. According to at least one IP up above, Jimbo and arbcom were contacted about the problem and failed to act. Is this true? Viriditas (talk) 05:02, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi Viriditas. Wifione was active on the articles in question from about Apr 2009-Feb 2013, so this is largely historic. There were on-wiki allegations in numerous places, (often with little or no actual evidence) both from 2009 and, after a long gap, from late 2013 onwards: Jul 2009, Dec 2009, Dec 2009, Dec 2009, Dec 2013, Dec 2013, Jan 2014, Aug 2014, Aug 2014, Sep 2014, Dec 2014. It is also worth mentioning that Jimmy reopened one of the discussions here to get the issue aired. Once the issue was raised at ArbCom in Dec 2014, it was accepted with alacrity and resulted in a desysopping and siteban.  Roger Davies talk 06:54, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
The IP commenting above (81.147) is User:Peter Damian. Both Peter Damian, who is banned from the English Wikipedia, and User:Jayen466, who is banned from this talk page, did exemplary and professional research and played fundamental role in exposing the scale of Wifione's manipulation, from what I can say. It is in the best interest of this project to listen to constructive criticism and judge the validity of arguments rather than where they come from. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 06:49, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
I agree completely. This situation was laid out for all to see in a Wikipediocracy blog in December 2013, but I have no doubt that without Vejvančický's wholly admirable pertinacity no action would yet have been taken. Dislike of the messenger should not lead us to stop our ears against the message. Rules like "holding the person introducing the link responsible for all the content of the link" are undoubtedly a deterrent to pursuing cases like this.
I wonder whether, in the light of the danger to Wikipedia of widespread undeclared paid editing and the problems in dealing with it, we should rethink the rule that "the outing policy takes precedence over the Conflict of interest guideline." Fear of being sanctioned for outing is certainly another deterrent to whistleblowers. JohnCD (talk) 17:07, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
It's interesting you say that. "the outing policy takes precedence over the Conflict of interest guideline." was one of the specific concerns pointed out at the time of the Wifione case as a "chilling" equation for potential whistle-blowers, and its prominent inclusion on templates for the case was a cause for concern raised among those contemplating involvement. (I discussed this concern a bit with Euryalus, above). If it doesn't need the "rethink" you suggest, then perhaps it at least needs some refinement and clarification? Similarly, "holding the person introducing the link responsible for all the content of the link" seems, as you say, problematical. Here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk I am now doomed. Begoon talk 15:15, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
@Roger Davies The most recent examples of manipulation are from August and November 2013. Wifione stopped only because the scrutiny became more intense so they couldn't proceed, in my opinion. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 07:17, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes, there were a trivial number of edits after Feb 2013 (that's what I meant by "active on"). Why do you think the articles stayed uncorrected after Wifione had effectively withdrawn from the topic?  Roger Davies talk 07:41, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes, it is still a mess. I tried to fix some of it. During my editing of the article Ashok Chauhan I had to go to WP:BLPN where I received no independent comments or support but only sharp attacks, see Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive204#Ashok Chauhan. Editing in this area requires expertise which our editors don't seem to have, and even if they are familiar with the topic they often edit in a biased way. In the online reactions over this expose I can see many cynical comments by Indians pointing out that this is only the tip of the iceberg, and that the competition between Indian higher education institutions is a very dirty business. There's also a problem in this area with what we call "reliable sourcing" - IIPM is/was one of the largest advertisers in India, which means that the major newpapers and media may hesitate to publish negative stories about a company that pays them, and it might then influence the shape of our articles. Editing in this area requires very high level of competency and neutrality and we simply don't have competent editors doing that. The most troubling thing is that uncontrolled, irresponsible and biased editing might affect negatively important decisions of real people living in real world. This example also shows that Wikipedia might be an important tool deciding about where big money go. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 08:25, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

As several folks said above, it's not a case of not caring, but just that there is not enough time in the day to correct all the articles that appear to be written by paid editors. I don't know that Wikipedia is set up so that we can expect this type of editing to be reverted or even all reported somewhere or even noticed in some cases.

The ultimate problem was noted in a quote in Newsweek "by letting this go on for so long, Wikipedia has messed up perhaps 15,000 students’ lives.” That is very likely correct.

Now I understand that the WMF, or you, or me, or other Wikipedia editors are not legally responsible for this, but it does seem that we all have some moral responsibility. I'd have a very difficult time getting the system changed to deal with it, you might have a slightly easier time, the board could do it (if they knew what to do). Maybe we should spend some time giving concrete steps that would help stop this. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:26, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

The issue is that the English Wikipedia hosts 4 700 000 articles. This is far too many to be effectively monitored by a slowly diminishing number of editors. An obvious step is to (i) greatly raise the bar for notability and (ii) raise the bar for reliable sources. Both these criteria are far too complicated, with far too much wiggle room. However, neither of these would solve the problem of a well-funded organisation using its treasure/influence to achieve positive media coverage in high quality publications. (The recent furore involving The Daily Telegraph and HSBC being a case in point.[4], [5]).  Roger Davies talk 07:04, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Well, that's opening a fine Pandora's kettle of worms there. I don't think that I could possibly agree less that the solution to POV editing relates to changing notability and sourcing standards. Our deletion policy is one of the (very few) things at Wikipedia that really works well, in my opinion. Operations there are backed by long term consensus, by elaborate sets of guidelines, and a certain dispassionate and objective climate has emerged. Compare and contrast to early AfD debates which were dominated by "seems important to me" and "not important enough" types of arguments, which are a sure recipe for food fights and the rule of ignorance. There are half a dozen changes to things at WP that do not work well to be tried first (including the structure and purview of ArbCom, the establishment of binding mediation for solution of content disputes, tightening of registration and requirement of account use to edit, limitation of new starts to established accounts, etc.)
As for so-called "reliable sources" — that's a relic of the bad old days of Verifiability Not Truth. The fact is that the "best" of sources are wrong sometimes and the most sketchy of publications sometimes include important and irreplaceable true information. Good editors must learn to marshal and balance the factual evidence dispassionately. The obsession with using only a set of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval sources assures POV fighting over inclusion of sources rather than measured discussion about inclusion of truthful information. So-called "reliable sources" are a myth — everything has bias, explicit and implicit. Those who write content have to be smart enough to use the whole range of available information and the ability to do so dispassionately and fairly. End of spiel. Carrite (talk) 17:01, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
@Roger Davies: it's very possible I'm missing something important, but what does your response have to do with the problem? It looks like many warning signs were ignored about Wifione, before he even made it to RFA. I'm referring to the old SPI. Now I've been told there was a COI incident report that apparently didn't go anywhere. And now we find out that Wifione was instrumental in gaming Wikipedia Zero which preyed on the financially poor, captive audience of thousands of people in India looking to improve their lives. Something is seriously wrong here. Viriditas (talk) 20:47, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
The WMF should buy a second hand Watson from IBM and let that system monitor our articles. Count Iblis (talk) 17:45, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
See automation bias and The Machine Stops. Viriditas (talk) 20:51, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
We had one major change to our deletion process a few years back when we introduced BLPprod. Something similar for "Commercially trading organizations and their products" might be an appropriate response to this case, and a rule of one independent reliable source for any commercial entity would reduce the workload on our editors whilst putting a bit of extra work onto those who write about businesses. Apologies to anyone who does that as a hobby. ϢereSpielChequers 21:01, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
Well, it's quite possibly a good idea, but I don't quite see how it would have helped in this case. Nobody is suggesting IIPM does not exist, or is not notable. Perhaps I'm missing the point? Begoon talk 05:58, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
There are some subjects and areas within Wikipedia where the volunteer crowdsourcing model works less well than others, articles about businesses being a case in point. I'm happy to assume that everyone writing about funghi, canal restoration, sport or Milhist is a hobbyist, but, and I know this will sound cynical, I have a suspicion that some of the people who write about commercial organisations have an undeclared COI. So if we raise the bar in that area, we use our volunteer's time more efficiently, and hopefully increase the time available to deal with things like overly promotional articles and POV pushing. Begoon is of course right, this is an indirect rather than direct response to the Wifione saga, but I suggest it would be a useful response. ϢereSpielChequers 14:03, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

A plea

Jimbo. Above, Peter Damian, posting as an "anon", asks you a question. I think it's a fair question, and the comments here seem to support that. Will you answer it, please? For reference:

Perhaps you could answer this. I emailed you on 3 December 2013 with a link to this article (which I co-authored). I received no reply. I emailed again on 6 December pointing out the administrators slurs against Mahesh Peri (who I interviewed for the article) were unforgiveable, as was the article he created on Ashok Kumar Chauhan, with the sole purpose of slandering him. I copied the Arbitration Committee, not one reply. I asked an arbitrator later about it, who said “That's not something I'm going to be worrying about I'm afraid, it's not an area that I feel a lot of passion about”. He pointed out that he had won a prize of £25 in the "core content competition", and had also received free Wikipedia T-shirts. “Are these problematic? At what point do you draw the line?”. That, and your failure to act, speak volumes. 81.147.132.55 (talk) 18:53, 25 March 2015 (UTC) [edit] Oh pardon me, you did mention it later (email of 14 December) when I asked you to comment again. You chided me for "keep[ing] company with other dishonest trolls rather than being respected and appreciated by good people", and accused me of being intellectually dishonest, and as for the Wifione case "It is not generally reasonable to assume that someone not commenting on something is an approval of it, particularly when no one has actually inquired about it in any normal venue." Ha 81.147.132.55 (talk) 19:07, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Begoon talk 18:07, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm afraid it is not clear to me what I'm being asked. I stand by my statement very strongly that it is not generally reasonable to assume that someone not commenting on something is an approval of it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:06, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
I guess the thrust of the question was: with hindsight, do you regret not acting on the concerns brought to your attention in 2013, are you disappointed that Arbcom members similarly dismissed the concerns on more than one occasion, and do you think these things contributed to this becoming one of the worst (slowest) failures to tackle a problematic editor that we've seen yet? Additionally, do you accept that these failures led to innocent people being financially duped, and that taking them seriously rather than dismissing them could have mitigated that? Whatever your answer to those questions, I have a question of my own for you: what do you think you can personally do to help the community learn from this? And what should others do? Begoon talk 18:25, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
In order to "regret not acting" there would have to be some action in particular that I might regret not taking. What would that be? I don't personally ban people just because, as I wrote at that time on an internal mailing list, "It is abundantly clear that Wifione should be banned." We have a system, and this was a failure of that system - the correct response to a systematic failure is surely not for me to take up the mantle of personal master of bans that I stepped back from years ago.
Second, as for the ArbCom, again the issue was premature at that time for the ArbCom to handle, and certainly within our current operating parameters the ArbCom wasn't really empowered to act. They don't normally pro-actively initiate cases based on emails from banned users. So I'm disappointed in the outcome, yes, but I don't consider it a personal failure of myself or the ArbCom that we didn't step outside our normal roles. I don't know what the best change is but I think we do need a change.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:01, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
So you wrote, on an internal mailing list, at that time "It is abundantly clear that Wifione should be banned"? And this was ignored? If so, I apologise for suggesting you "failed to act". Was there a reaction to your recommendation (other than to not do it), and did you follow it up? I'm sorry to keep banging the drum, but I'm keen to get past "I don't know what the best change is but I think we do need a change", and potential failure points like this are important in that analysis, imo. Oh, and wrt They don't normally pro-actively initiate cases based on emails from banned users., maybe consider the content rather than the contributor? I think it's a rule, or a guideline, or something... Peter's evidence, however it arrived here, was crucial to removal of this bad actor. Thanks are due. Begoon talk 19:21, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
Well, I don't think my comment should really satisfy you as me "acting" - I made it in a discussion on the communications committee mailing list where we were discussing the issue. I did not make that comment to the Arbitration Committee mailing list, and perhaps I should have, but the point is - that isn't really my role in general. So yes, I have been thinking about whether I should have lobbied ArbCom to take a closer look at the case. But that's not really where a solution to this is going to be found.
One thing that's important to note: this discussion in early December was followed by him taking a wikibreak (about which I publicly commented that it'd be best if he just didn't come back). He fell silent on the 13th of December and many likely thought ok, he's gone, so problem solved. When he came back his first edit was to start Wikipedia:Editor_review/Wifione. Many might have taken that as a good faith effort to do the right things.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:36, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
It may not be "your role in general", but I strongly suspect that had you, as a community member, "kicked up a stink" about it on this page, or attempted to raise an arbitration case, great notice would have been taken. We all have the power to comment - look how much more seriously you took me than you did Peter Damian, because I'm an editor "in good standing". With our relative credibilities and standings comes commensurate responsibility. I agree that isn't a good solution long term, and better processes need to be found, but we act in the situation we find ourselves. Utopia comes later. Begoon talk 19:55, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

It's not like this type of information is difficult to uncover

If you're willing ot hold your nose while you read. [6] Hell might be other people (talk) 02:01, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

There ya go... That's one important function of Wikipediocracy: the ability to discuss problematic editing in a manner that would get a person censured or blocked if it happened on wiki... It should also be noted that Greg Kohs is really good at ferreting out COI editing... Carrite (talk) 07:42, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
The collection of information looks quite good, and should be used by someone to examine the edits and take appropriate action. To state what should be obvious, however:
  • Information from WO in general would be easier to deal in a collaborative way if the environment there felt safer from doxing, for example - there might be more editors here willing to create an account and engage productively. I am not saying it is a pervasive problem, but I think it fair to say it has occurred.
  • Additionally, Greg Kohs' information about COI editing would be more palatable if there wasn't the sense that he was doing this, at least in part, to out his competition, while keeping his own socking on the QT. No offense intended, but at least one post suggested the latter (perhaps he was kidding).
Regardless, I reiterate that someone should act on the information provided in a systematic way. Who will do so?
Thanks, JoeSperrazza (talk) 19:47, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
I think i heard that some guy named JoeSperrazza wanted to volunteer for just this sort of thing. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:44, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

An answer

You asked: It's good that we reached this conclusion in the end, but the question that should give us a sense of desire for change is: why did it take so long?

What is this "us"? The project is privately owned by WMF, which has made it clear that although it will make good faith attempts to receive input from the politically active portion of English Wikipeida (en-wiki), it considers such input neither binding necessarily representative of the readership nor the entire editing community. Based on my limited interactions with WMF staff, it seems to me their understanding of en-wiki is like that of tourists getting a view of forest from a low flying plane -- they may see the forest but you have to live it it for a while to really know what's going on.

WMF made the decision to provide a filtered view of a desktop oriented, First World encyclopedia to a population that lacked the cultural and educational background to critically analyze the information presented. Whereas the bottom of every desktop view (e.g. Cheetah) contains the Disclaimer link to Wikipedia:General_disclaimer:

WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY

the Wikipedia Zero view, [7] contains no such disclaimer, nor does the mobile view https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheetah . Wikipedia Zero was an arrogant, the road to hell is paved with good intentions decision.

We are volunteers. Per policy our individual responsibility is simply to not knowingly contribute misinformation and to try not to act like jerks. Period. We are fortunate that there are those motivated to identify and remove misinformation when they can, and it works well when volunteers have the real life backgrounds to be effective. As an American, I not only don't know anything about Indian educational instructions, I don't even know what sources are the Indian Washington Posts and which are their National Enquirers, or even whether that type of distinction makes sense.

Do I feel sad that some folks in Indian got ripped off? Of course, in the same general way I feel bad about folks being decapitated, stoned, burnt, stuck in a plane with a suicidal pilot, or I may have purchased fish produced by slave labor [8]. Am I going to lose sleep over it tonight? Nope.

Meanwhile, WMF continues with ridiculousness like some myspace / facebook like nonsense: "Gather"

Bottom line: While the Wifione / Indian Institute of Planning and Management fiasco does raise questions, the responsibility for the damage done via Wikipedia Zero as indicated by the Newsweek article lies with WMF, not English Wikipedia.

Thanks to Jayen466 for the Wikpedia Zero link and Jehochman for stepping up and filing the arbcom case. NE Ent 11:53, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

@NE Ent: I am disappointed to see an editor I have a good impression of trade in some ugly cultural stereotypes ("...First World encyclopedia to a population that lacked the cultural and educational background to critically analyze the information presented"), but setting that aside I want to address a couple of points you made:
  1. The disclaimer you quote may absolve WMF from the legal liability but it does not absolve it from the ethical responsibility to present accurate and neutral information. More importantly (since I don't answer for WMF) the disclaimer does not impact my personal desire to achieve the same goal. If ever the community/WMF decided that as long as the disclaimer is present on every wiki-page, we should not even try to get things right, I'll find another hobby. So I think the disclaimer issue is a non sequitur in some ways: if Wikipedia Zero were a bad idea for some reasons, it would have remained so even if it had had the pro forma disclaimer.
  2. Individual editors of course can't be knowledgeable about every subject-area covered on wikiepdia, but the community on the whole does have expertise to evaluate sources, even from India. For example, I among others, twice commented at RSN on the reliability of the main critical source Career360 that was used in the IIPM articles: in July 2009 and again in November 2009 (as far as I know these were my ever edits/comments related to the article). However, the company was persistent enough to contact User:Sphilbrick through OTRS, who acting in good faith and perhaps unaware of the earlier discussions, opened another RSN query about that same source in Feb 2013 to which (voila!) only Wifione replied disparaging its reliability. So this was not an instance of editors not caring enough (as Jimbo proposed) or of editors not knowing enough (as NE Ent proposed), but rather volunteers with-no-axe-to-grind not being as single-minded about the subject as persons whose livelihood depend upon it (kudos to User:Vejvančický for being an exception).
Question for @Jimbo Wales:: In light of the Wifione debacle, how do you think we can avoid such off-wiki/on-wiki tag-teaming and deal with problematic COI-editors more swiftly? For example, in the Naveen Jain case mentioned below, how should wikipedia deal with Wiki-expert-edit (talk · contribs) who:
  • created an account in 2008 and made exactly 10 edits to unrelated articles (enough to get auto-confirmed) before jumping onto the Naveen Jain article. In the next 7 years the editor has not made a single edit in any other subject area.
  • the editor has edited from Jain's company IP and has claimed to be Naveen Jain himself (later denial).
  • while Jain, or his representative, probably contacted you off-wiki recently (judging from your intervention), the editor revived his account on-wiki after a 4-year hiatus. he is currently blocked for a short period due to edit-warring.
Is this enough evidence to establishing problematic COI/paid-advocacy? (To be clear, I have no "evidence" that actual money was exchanged; don't see how I could have such evidence; and certainly won't go looking around for it)
Also note that I have no involvement with Jain, Ronz et al, and have never (afaik) edited any of the related articles/talk-pages and only happened to look at the page-histories after seeing the subject mentioned here. But I do strongly believe that wikipedia has to handle COI and paid-editing issues more swiftly and firmly if it does not want uninvolved, good-faith, editors to walk away from the problematic articles with a c'est la vie. Regards. Abecedare (talk) 04:16, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
"ugly cultural stereotypes" Yea, I knew that was going to happen regardless of how I phrased it. On the other hand it's a conceit to pretend that every person on the planet is "the same." There is a difference between individuals devoting what free time they can spare to trying to make Wikipedia as good as it can be and pretending that, or ever expecting it to be, 100% accurate, or sufficiently accurate that it's appropriate to market to unsophisticated users. The are about 140,000 active editors ... and the criterion for "active" is pretty low ... and nearly five million articles, an article per editor ratio of 57.195643534847. There are a quarter million [9] articles tagged {{Unreferenced}}. The scale of Wikipedia is such that we should never pretend it is anything other than a free encyclopedia written by amateurs with no guarantee of veracity. NE Ent 12:27, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
It’s not as bad as you say. Many articles simply don’t represent an obvious threat, and bad apples are easy to spot, especially when they work assiduously on the same set of articles. There is also a wicked offsite forum of people who can crowdsource the problems. The real problem is that this is not happening on Wikipedia, and the reason is that criticism is seen as negative. Not so in the real world: you can get a savage review, and sometimes these are unwarranted, but mostly they are not. They improve your work. Similarly, a free press set in opposition to the government (which the government hates) is the best means of improving government. Wikipedia needs a cultural change to allow people like me to work without damaging Wikipedia. Our strategy is simple: look for bad actors, research them thoroughly, write it up nicely, and then place it in the mainstream media (in this case, Newsweek). This helps Wikipedia by waking people up and thinking about ways to reform. By the same token it harms Wikipedia because of the negative publicity. Think how much better it would be if we weren't regarded as 'trolls' and 'dishonest manipulators', and if our emails were not sent into some spam filter and Wikipedia sticking its finger in its ears singing 'la la la can't hear you'. All it needs is a change in culture. Criticism is good: encourage it and help those who want to help you in this way. Simple, right? 81.147.135.211 (talk) 12:47, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Solutions

This is an interesting string, but not very focused on potential solutions to better-handling similar problems in the future, which I think would drive a more productive focus of discussion. CorporateM (Talk) 18:36, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely. What are your potential solutions to better-handling similar problems in the future? If you think they are substantial enough, maybe a new thread would be appropriate. Begoon talk 19:39, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
part of it comes down to the fact that people who believe everything they read on the web are going to be taken advantage of - whether its by dubious content in Wikipedia articles or e-mails from a Nigerian Prince or that "free" ap you just tapped. What is Wikipedia's role in fighting global il-weberacy? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:52, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
That's... astonishing. Among the many thousands of words I've read on the Wifione saga I think that's the first attempt I've seen to shift the blame for our years long failure to prevent a corrupt administrator from manipulating content to benefit a company and place a portion of the blame on the reader. Honestly, that leaves me pretty speechless. If we think our readers are incapable of critical thinking and analysis that would give us more of a duty of care, not less. Best bit of "victim blaming" I've seen on WP for a long while. Begoon talk 02:43, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

@Begoon: Well, I would probably break it up conceptually into three problems:

  • Sockpuppeting
  • Tenuous editing
  • Astroturfing

I haven't participated in many SPIs, but it does seem like we need better methods and tools for it. Personally I would support the use of analytics to automatically detect socks using IPs and device IDs (while keeping the private underlying data confidential). But I don't think such a proposal would be popular around here. CorporateM (Talk) 03:38, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

It is an excellent idea but we need the WMF to take this on. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:35, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
For "tenuous" I assume you mean tendentious (I noticed you used the same term in a section below, too)? One of the particular (systemic) problems in this case was the enormous reluctance to contemplate that a popular admin had been doing that. Addressing that should certainly be a separate item on the "list".
One of the problems with "automatic" sock detection (there are many) is that not all "socks" are illegitimate. Unless an automatic tool could consider the context of the edits (and I don't see how it could) then it seems to me that it would generate a mountain of "false positives" that a human would need to wade through. I don't entirely rule out the possibility, because software can be very clever (see Cluebot), but I think it would be a huge undertaking to create such a program, as it would need to "learn intelligently" from its errors in much the same way Bayesian spam filters do. Begoon talk 05:09, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
@Begoon:I think it could be done merely by adding a notice when two accounts edit the same page from the same device within 30 days of each other. There are not very many situations I can imagine where two people are editing the same page from the same computer and it is not at least some kind of off-wiki colluding and there could always be an opt-out process for those rare exceptions. Yes, it would require some work and innovation, but nothing worth doing is easy and no problem that hasn't already been solved can be fixed on a whim. CorporateM (Talk) 17:21, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Example: KEEP: This company is notable! CorporateM (Talk) 17:22, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
SOCKBOT: The following user's have edited this page from the same computer: CorporateM, Sock2, Sock3
Perhaps it is easier than I thought after all. See you at WP:VPI. Begoon talk 17:29, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
@CorporateM: - see e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam/Local/outletstoresmalls.com .. even cases that do not require sockpuppet investigations stay unchecked, guess what happens when you add to that workload. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:38, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Wifione worked hard to evade detection. It took a long time because she was trying hard to mask the activity. Nobody should get too upset. It's just the statistical outlier. Usually we spot and fix this stuff sooner. This time we didn't. Other media also have their problems. Jehochman Talk 22:14, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
We have a ton of problems. I would estimate we catch about half of them. I have a list of dozens of cases but cannot post them on Wikipedia. If our policies change we might be able to address them. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:38, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
@Jehochman: - you say it is the statistical outlier. It is however what 'SEO'(-type) activities on Wikipedia are doing: stay under the radar - they are even specialised in it. I have in my 'portfolio' 2 big companies that do just that - try to stay under the radar (and there are likely many more), and have been doing so for 7-8 years (every now and then they stick their heads out too far or independently problems are identified).
It is not thát hard to stay under that radar. As Doc James says, we catch about half of them (and actually, I think Doc is very, very optimistic). Our possibilities are limited (of those 2 companies, I blacklisted a large string of domains last year, (and many of their domains were already blacklisted) only to be met with massive opposition from the community: find other ways of stopping it .. eh, how for example). And you have to be even careful with outing, libel, etc. (I presume this is what Doc James means when he can not post cases to Wikipedia). As suggested throughout here, editors do not do anything to curb these problems, and are not willing to have hurdles in their editing in order to stop the problem, and enforcing the ToU is simply down to us; nor the foundation, nor ArbCom is willing/capable to set examples (nail a couple of big ones), let alone provide a means of really helping with such cases. It pays your bills to stay under that radar .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:38, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
There's a difference between a business that creates a largely factual Wikipedia page about themselves, perhaps with a bit of puffery, that everybody can see and understand, and a business that's scamming people by using Wikipedia to spread disinformation. Jehochman Talk 13:30, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Or to prevent the spread of genuine information which casts a bad light on their business. That's when it can get really ugly. Begoon talk 15:25, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Jehochman - and those are again different from companies that use Wikipedia to promote their business throughout Wikipedia on multiple pages and wherever they see fit. Unfortunately, the companies that make a page on themselves are just the few, the ones that are blatantly promoting themselves throughout Wikipedia, or who are deliberately spreading disinformation, or which prevent the spread of genuine information that casts a bad light on their business are by far the largest numbers (though the number of 'largely factual Wikipedia page[s]' about companies, created by people with a vested interest, is also rocketing sky-high. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:23, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Could you provide examples? I haven't seen too many scams on Wikipedia. Most of what I see is garden variety self promotion that is fairly harmless. DGG suggested tightening the notability requirement to help reduce the problem. I think that'd be a good first step. Jehochman Talk 03:41, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

And that sometimes gets to the problem that Doc James is mentioning - outing, libel, etc. I do not disagree that real scamming is too usual, and that is really a problem if it occurs. Though, as I said, SEO is a real business that aims to stay under the radar, and what I note is that there is a lot of real spamming going on (and some of that may even include scamming). We only see the surface of the spamming (and even that gets washed away ..). Companies go on for years doing that, even after having been detected in the past (they lay low for some time/dive back under the radar, and then pick up where they left). Going through the archives of Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam gives you numerous examples of companies that managed to stay under the radar that now violate our ToU (and before our pillars) for a long, long time, and some of those are way, way beyond 'garden variety self promotion'. If what I see happening with large scale spamming, and how that stays sometimes for years undetected, then I hope that that is not a measure for the amount of scamming that stays undetected ... --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:08, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Your extraordinary email

In the interests of transparency, I am noting here (a) your incredible insinuation that it was “dishonest and manipulative” of me to notify you/the Arbcom of the Wifione problem in December 2013 in the knowledge that an email from a banned user would probably be ignored, and (b) your suggestion that you could ‘solve’ this problem by placing my email address into a spam filter that deletes emails from me “the moment they arrive”. 81.147.135.211 (talk) 09:03, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

See also my comment here. It doesn't have to be this way. Wake up. 81.147.135.211 (talk) 12:47, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

(For the benefit of those as baffled as I was by the above, Peter is referring to an email he received from Jimmy in the last day or so. In a comment at Wikipediocracy, Peter says among other things, "[Jimmy] said that in general, anyone who emails him or the arbcom about a real problem, in the full knowledge that their email would probably be ignored because they are banned or an unperson, was using 'dishonest and manipulative tactics'. That's exactly what he said. I say 'insinuated' because a reasonable inference is that he was referring to me when I emailed him and the Committee in December 2013." --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:11, 29 March 2015 (UTC))
Peter is very badly misrepresenting that email exchange. I was not even addressing him, but a different banned user also on the exchange, who had put forward what is quite clearly a dishonest and manipulative tactic. In his words, "Years ago, I was involved in a pretty bitter dispute with the Arbitration Committee. Once when I was in a bad mood, and this wasn't very nice of me (they hadn't been nice to me either,) I decided to set them up. I'd informed them of a particularly nasty problem, realizing that the fact that I'd emailed them about it would most likely make it politically unfeasible to act upon it, lest they give into the evil banned user. It worked." I called *that* which had nothing to do with Peter (as he well knows) dishonest and manipulative - which it clearly is. And I did not say anything resembling "in general, anyone who emails...". What I did say is: "So what you are saying that people who use dishonest and manipulative tactics can cause trouble. Noted." This entire exchange proves, once again, why these users are banned, and why I actually should just shove them all into a spam filter.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:18, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
A very late reply. In your email you referred to "dishonest and manipulative tactics". I assumed you were referring to the tactic of emailing you or the arbcom about a real problem, in the full knowledge that their email would probably be ignored because they are banned or an unperson. Was that a mistake? My apologies if so. But then, what were you referring to? 86.132.248.123 (talk) 22:38, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
"I decided to set them up"--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:12, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Exactly. How does this differ from in the full knowledge that? And this was a clear insinuation that my email to you and the Committee in December 2013 was a similar tactic, was it not? Otherwise why copy me? 31.48.57.33 (talk) 07:32, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Stop misrepresenting. I didn't copy you, he did. I have no idea why.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:31, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
(inserting) In the Wikipediocracy Jimboland section, in the thread 'Contradicting himself', a screenshot of your email header seems to show that it was you who copied him. Writegeist (talk) 20:40, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
He will of course claim that he pressed 'reply all' by mistake. However there are other details that suggest his remark was directed precisely to me. I will leave that to him to work out. 86.148.134.5 (talk) 22:08, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
It's not inherently a bad idea to discard emails from banned users even if they point out real problems. Banned users are banned because their contributions cause, on the average, more harm than good. Sure, in this case, a banned user said something that was good--but you only know that in hindsight. It's impossible to make a policy of "listen to banned users only when they say good things"; any policy that would have led to Wikipedia listening to this banned user's useful information would also have led to Wikipedia listening to an endless list of things said just to cause trouble. And that isn't worth it. Ken Arromdee (talk) 16:38, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
It's "inherently" a bad idea to automatically discard any potential source of information without examining it if you're creating "the sum of all human knowledge". Once we start applying prejudice to our sources that'll be one of those "slippery slopes" I keep hearing about. Just saying. If a guy "banned" from my local chamber of commerce tells me I have a loose tile on my roof, I will still check. It's prudent to do so. Your "even if they point out real problems" argument is silly, and holds no water at all. We ignore warnings of real danger based on a prejudice against the messenger? Seems an awful lot like cutting off the nose to spite the face. Begoon talk 17:41, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Begoon, I often receive over 1000 spam emails in a day. It is of course possible that if I checked in enough depth one of them would genuinely have my Great Aunt Mavis's missing £240,000,000. But it seems to me better to leave such emails unopened, and allow the spam procedures to take their course. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:50, 31 March 2015 (UTC).
Agree with Begoon. It's absurd to automatically discard any potential source of information without examining it. If the evidence I, and other editors, presented about Will Beback in 2008 had been examined instead of ignored Wikipedia and dozens of editors would have avoided a lot of unnecessary damage. Unfortunately, he was a "good editor" and I must therefore be a "bad editor". I was and still am, regularly shot as the unwelcome messenger of inconvenient news. My talk page is full of impeccable evidence of Will Beback's dishonesty, harassment and battleground behaviour. Here, if you can spend 10 minutes, is evidence I submitted to a 2008 Arbitration and Jayen466's excellent analysis of Will Beback's "evidence". [10][11] Ignore it at your peril.MOMENTO (talk) 01:44, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Get real. We aren't talking about crude spamming here. Our work is taken seriously enough to be placed in mainstream media. There is a list of articles here. The Newsweek story was only the most recent example. Ignoring emails simply because they are from a 'banned user' is irresponsible. You might also ask why they are banned. Perhaps because they were drawing attention to conflicts of interest? Why is this considered 'disruption' on Wikipedia? 109.145.57.84 (talk) 08:25, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

In a perfect world, a website would be free to just shut off the email and do what it wants, but so long as censorship is heeded there has to be someplace like legal-reports@wikimedia.org that listens to DMCA takedowns, reports of obscenity, etcetera to the thousandth power. And that place cannot afford to miss real reports whoever makes them. This means that if people are determined to spam WMF they are always going to be read - just as if they want to post here, they're always going to find some unblocked IP address and either post directly or register a sock. The question then is not whether you want to deal with banned user comments (including taking reports of real issues with legal implications seriously), but only where. Some accounts, including of course any user, may be free to arbitrarily block all such comments because their time is precious; but whatever they block off will come flowing through somewhere else. The best solution then, I think, is that all the main non-personal addresses where email is received need to consider comments from any source equitably. Wnt (talk) 13:53, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

NPOV

What ultimately brought Wifione down on the face of the arbcom decision ( i recognize that there were all kinds of outside discussions and pressures that are not visible in the actual case), was the irrefutable evidence of a long-term pattern of NPOV editing. It was a genius solution to the problem.

Vejvančický I too want to commend you for sticking with it, and doing the hard work of gathering really killer diffs in the evidence you presented, that clearly showed the long-term pattern of violating NPOV. Really awesome work. I have some questions for you (and anybody else who lived through it and has answers), related to the discussion above, if you would be willing to answer.

  1. Ballpark, how much work (like how many hours) did it take you to pull that evidence together?
  2. the difs range in date from 2009 to Feb 2013 and you presented this evidence in Jan 2015. Here is the question - why did you (or anybody else, as far as you know) not bring a case for NPOV violations two years earlier (or even earlier)? (maybe you or someone else did, and I don't know that - if so, I am sorry). (and please don't take my question as any kind of blaming you! opposite. i am just trying to figure out the history and thinking.... really.)
  3. If you didn't bring one earlier, is it because you were focused on the paid editing aspect, and going after NPOV just didn't occur to you? I am asking this because in retrospect, it is just so clear that it was a slam-dunk case, and things look different in hindsight than they do living through something.
  4. Was there much discussion of focusing on NPOV during all the conflict leading up to the arbcom case?
  5. Where did the idea of focusing the arbcom case on NPOV actually come from?

I am focusing on NPOV, because although the community has been terribly divided about how to deal with paid editing (per the endless debates in the five parallel proposals to ban paid editing that followed the Wiki-PR scandal), due to the tension in the guts of Wikipedia between anonymity/OUTING and the valid concerns about the corrosive effects of paid editing on NPOV..... everybody agrees that NPOV is what matters at the end of the day. And as the wifione case shows, it is possible to prove an NPOV case. To slam-dunk it. And that we can catch paid editors (not to mention unpaid advocates) using NPOV. In any case, thanks again for your hard work, and thanks in advance for answers (to the extent that you wish to answer) Jytdog (talk) 22:35, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

It's not quite true. While NPOV matters at the end of the day, it is not the limited understanding of NPOV demonstrated by some. Take two examples:
  1. "X corporations paid agent writes that the study shows X's product is safe. [cite]
  2. "X's product is safe, according to the study. [cite]
Those two statements contain similar but also different information - the first provides more information by focusing on the relationship of the writer to the subject and attributes, the second does not. Some Users don't seem to realize, it does sometimes matter what the relationship of the writer is to the subject - that itself (the relationship of the writer to the subject - not the identity of the writer per se) is encyclopedic information. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:17, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
yeah we can get all in the weeds on that. but i mean NPOV, the heart of it, as arbcom applied it to the evidence presented. i am really interested in answers to the questions above. Some of them will (in my view) answer Jimmy's original question at the start of the thread. I am also trying to better understand the model that has been created. Jytdog (talk) 00:01, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
I spent days or weeks researching Wifione's activities on English Wikipedia and familiarizing myself with the broader context of the topic. I presented the first (more detailed) draft of my evidence to the community in January 2014. The page was followed by some established editors and I thought that my evidence is sufficient to provoke broder investigation. But nothing happened. I thought that my "wrongdoing detector" is maybe more sensitive than that of others. But I wasn't sure how to proceed. I'm not an "ANI person" and I rarely participate in disputes between editors. I repeatedly "attacked" Wifione on highly visible forums (such as here or WT:BN) to be sure that many eyes will watch and some reaction will follow. It was not the cleverest thing to do, I admit. But still nothing happened. Wifione then went to complain about my "personal attacks" at ANI where another established editor (User:Jehochman) noticed that the issue is more persistent and suggested me to take it to ArbCom. I agreed but it was finally Jehochman who has filled the case. Biased editing was the most solid part of my investigation, that's why I focused on it. I was 100% that I don't accuse Wifione unjustifiably. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 08:10, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks very much for your answer. So that was a lot of work! It is too bad that you brought it to forums where there no official action that could be taken. The posting here and there, in non-actionable forums does start to look like harassment. I understand why you did it, however... but yes, that was not good for anybody, i think. What is great, though, is that it finally was brought to the right forum (I reckon AE was better than ANI, as ANI is subject to all kinds of vagaries that AE is not). In any case, you and those working with you have established a model for situations like this (not so much for dealing sock-making paid editors, but rather for long-term paid editors who establish a trackable record), which I think is really great for the community. It will be easier for others going forward now. I think the answer to Jimmy is that things can take a long time in WP - we are a messy community, not a lean corporate machine. But we got to the right answer in the end. So really, Vejvančický, thanks. Jytdog (talk) 08:26, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
@Jytdog: says "It is too bad that you brought it to forums where there no official action that could be taken. The posting here and there, in non-actionable forums does start to look like harassment." That does not sound correct to me. On what grounds do you claim that AN/I has no authority to take action on problematic editors that are not following NPOV and are slanting an article? And that ArbCom has exclusive jurisdiction to handle edits that appear like COI editing when there is no proof of a business or other COI connection? And why is COI/N not an appropriate venue to raise such a case? It is my understanding that ArbCom is more like an appellate board to handle the worst of the worst cases where conflict cannot be resolved, not the first step. @Vejvančický: and @Jehochman: What do you think? David Tornheim (talk) 04:51, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Some recent efforts

So I have been trying to address COI issue regarding paid editing via armies of sock puppets. What I have found is:

  • Jimmy Wales is supportive of us doing something / blocking them
  • We have TOU that does not allow undisclosed paid editing
  • The WMF is not interested in enforcing the TOU. They want us to do it.
  • Arbcom does not see it as a problem. And does not feel the TOU apply to them / En Wikipedia.
  • There appears to be little desire to run check users when evidence is reported in private
  • It appears likely that reporting evidence publicly runs the risk it will result in a permanent ban by Arbcom
  • The WMF has not agreed to provide support to editors if they are so banned by arbcom due to this
  • Elance and Fiverr are willing to comply with our TOU by deleting account there.
  • I have proposed to the WMF the creation of a specific group of functionaries to deal with TOU enforcement. The WMF has not replied after more than a month and a fair number of emails.
  • I recently deleted promotional content added by very experience brand new accounts with evidence they wrote them for pay. Rumors are circulating that arbcom is thinking of taking action against me. Recently the accounts have admitted they are paid and one has admitted to having another account.

So where to from here?

  • I have proposed a panel on the topic in Mexico [12] (Jimmy Wales has agreed to introduce it, no one from Arbcom has agreed to be on it; legal at the WMF is still thinking about it.)
  • If there was community support to create a new group of functionaries to enforce the TOU then the WMF may be willing to support the creation of one.
  • We need to elect arbcom members who care about balancing issues of COI and OUTing. Very few of the current bunch do.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:31, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks so much for your work on this, Doc James . How is that working with elance and fivver.. Have they agreed to self-police that, or do we need to ask them to do it on a user-by-user basis? Thanks again Jytdog (talk) 00:08, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Haven't pursued it that far. Was hoping for at least moral support from the WMF. I guess one concern is is User:Roger Davies / Arbcom going to attempt to have me banned for doing this? Does this count as contacting someones "work"? These people do make a living selling Wikipedia writing services. Are we allowed to interfere with people's livelihood like this? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:12, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Elance and Fivver won't be able to self police - as the issue is undisclosed paid editing, they can't tell if the paid editing was disclosed or not. - Bilby (talk) 00:50, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes certainly. The request would be that users who do Wikipedia work would have to disclose there Wikipedia accounts on their Elance user pages which would allow verification of disclosure. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:27, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
That would effectively be a request that users are required out themselves. I can't see that getting through. - Bilby (talk) 01:33, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Unlikely to get through here at Wikipedia I agree. Elance; however, has been very helpful and might be willing to add the requirement that all those doing Wikipedia work through there website must list the Wikipedia accounts they are using so that we can verify that they are complying with our terms of use. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:03, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
There is something that feels ugly about this approach. On Wikipedia we could never insist on outing, so having another site insist on outing on our behalf is a really ugly solution. - Bilby (talk) 10:10, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Doc James, "no one from Arbcom has agreed to be on it"? First I have ever heard of it, so "not agreed" seems a bit premature as I've never been asked. That said, I reckon like most people I'm not wealthy enough to up sticks and fly to Mexico for a panel discussion. So thanks for the invite, but alas I will indeed have to watch it from afar. Second, you are concerned you will be banned? What have you done that would justify being banned? Euryalus2 (talk) 02:59, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
What Euryalus2 said. LFaraone 04:43, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Maybe my emails to the arbcom mailing list do not make it through? I never heard back from arbcom so I guess this could be the case. Legal at the WMF has declined to be on it. The proposal is here [13] Is anyone from arbcom interested? User:Euryalus2 and User:LFaraone were should I post the invite?
I have heard rumors that my deleting of a promotional articles created by undisclosed paid editors using a sock is not allowed. And through the grape vein been warned to be careful. These rumors could all be false and confirmation of their falsehood would be reassuring. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:59, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

I'd just like to deconstruct some of the things being said at the start of this section:

  • Jimmy Wales is supportive of us doing something / blocking them
    • Well yes. He's entitled to this point of view, and it is shared by many people; and lots of those accounts *do* get blocked for clearcut policy violations such as failing to maintain a NPOV.
  • We have TOU that does not allow undisclosed paid editing
    • Yes we do.
  • The WMF is not interested in enforcing the TOU. They want us to do it.
    • They leave it to the individual projects to determine how they wish to enforce it and what steps they want to put into place to prevent it. They even allow projects to "opt out" provided there is a consensus to do so. Mediawikiwiki and the developer group as a whole have opted out, for example.[14]
  • Arbcom does not see it as a problem. And does not feel the TOU apply to them / En Wikipedia.
    • I'm not seeing "Arbcom" saying it isn't a problem, or that it does not believe that the TOU applies to them or to this project. What I am seeing is Arbcom saying it is outside its scope to enforce this problem, because Arbcom is a dispute resolution body, not a police force. As can be seen on various pages where this issue is being discussed, the members of the Arbitration Committee have varying perspectives on the most effective means for *the community* to address this issue, which is entirely appropriate because it's a community issue, not a dispute resolution one.
  • There appears to be little desire to run check users when evidence is reported in private
    • That's not entirely correct; there's little desire to run checkusers based largely on off-wiki information that is submitted in private. The evidence for checkusers, regardless of whether the request is public (SPI) or private, should indicate that there are multiple accounts involved, otherwise there isn't really a valid reason for running a Checkuser.
  • It appears likely that reporting evidence publicly runs the risk it will result in a permanent ban by Arbcom
    • It depends on the evidence. Non-public personal information or personally identifying information from off-wiki is generally a violation of the harassment provisions, because there is plenty of evidence that fraudulent accounts and claims are made off-wiki that do not correspond with on-wiki information. Nobody has problems with evidence that is available on-wiki, as far as I can see, although there are proscriptions to prevent people from using "COI" as a club.
  • The WMF has not agreed to provide support to editors if they are so banned by arbcom due to this
    • The WMF doesn't agree to provide support to any editors who are blocked or banned by Arbcom or communities. There's no difference here.
  • Elance and Fiverr are willing to comply with our TOU by deleting account there.
    • Excellent work.
  • I have proposed to the WMF the creation of a specific group of functionaries to deal with TOU enforcement. The WMF has not replied after more than a month and a fair number of emails.
    • Why are you proposing it to the WMF instead of the English Wikipedia Community? The WMF has no control over whether or not a project decides to appoint people to do certain things, provided that there is no violation of global policy. And what, exactly, would these functionaries be doing that current functionaries, administrators, and users don't already do?
  • I recently deleted promotional content added by very experience brand new accounts with evidence they wrote them for pay. Rumors are circulating that arbcom is thinking of taking action against me. Recently the accounts have admitted they are paid and one has admitted to having another account.
    • It's really unfortunate that *any* editor is the subject of rumours for deleting non-encyclopedic content. Whether or not those edits come from people paid to make them or people who are simply advocating their personal position, they're problem edits and should be removed. We as a community could afford to get a lot tougher on advocacy editing.

The English Wikipedia community has lots and lots of ways to reduce the volume of promotional/advocacy/paid advocacy editing that doesn't involve special police forces or rewriting critical policies that have protected many outstanding editors from harassment for years. There seems to be a realization after many years that our notability standards, especially for businesses, need to be significantly upgraded; I'd suggest we also look at BLPs in the same light, as there are lots of "COI-type" BLPs being generated. We can reconsider how easy or difficult we want to make it to delete these articles and keep them deleted: if they're deleted by PROD, they can return with just a simple request for example. We can consider whether we want to take a page from German Wikipedia's method of dealing with "corporate accounts" - they've had a lot of success with it. We can re-examine our username policy, which seems to have the effect of thwarting the ability to effectively address a lot of advocacy issues. I'm as disturbed as many other people on this page about what seems to me to be obvious promotional material; however, having fought some battles where it took a huge amount of work to get the accounts blocked and the content deleted because our policies favour keeping the material and the editors, I know that all the functionaries and checkuser investigations in the world won't have any effect on fixing this problem. Risker (talk) 15:22, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks User:Risker for the clarifications. Yes I agree increasing notability requirements for businesses and people is an excellent idea. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:36, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Doc James is doing some wonderful work here. His list above of the contradictions in the community's positions is telling. I'll add just one more:

  • Nobody enforces our prohibitions (in WP:NOT) against advertising, marketing, promotion, and PR. The problem with paid editing is that paid editors insert advertisements, which is a type of promotion, which is part of marketing, which makes the ads 3 violations in one.

I guess people would enforce these rules if a Super-Bowl-type ad was put in an article, but it doesn't appear that any less will trigger enforcement. Note that an advertisement is simply a communication from a business or other enterprise that is intended to increase sales or help achieve another business objective. For example, consider the following classified ad in a newspaper, "Hay for sale. Inquire at MacDonald's farm." That's an ad and it would be an ad even if it was hand-written and nailed on a fence post. Paid editors usually put much more obvious ads in our articles. Let's do something about it. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:21, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

We do. Advertising is already prohibited and articles that are irremediably advertising-based can be speedy deleted, alongside articles that lack notability. Surely what this discussion is about is not catching people who put advertising on articles, but seeking to catch people before they put advertising in articles by linking their alleged identities on (say) elance with their alleged identities on Wikipedia. -- Euryalus2 (talk)| — Preceding undated comment added 03:29, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
While I know that advertising is prohibited, nobody enforces that prohibition. I think the problem is not when we catch advertisers - it is so easy to catch an advertiser that you can catch as many as you want whenever. The problem is admins who don't enforce the rules. I just picked out an ad in about 10 seconds as an example. I went to Category:Foreign exchange companies, where I know there are lots of advertisers, picked one with an interesting name InstaForex and sure enough it's all "Hay for sale" without a single reliable source. Smallbones(smalltalk) 05:32, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
So at this point the most useful thing is to delete such articles. This is best done by doing it. I would at this point even suggest increasing the notability requirements for commercial organizations in general, such as a requirement that there be more than local coverage, & a statement that sub-national awards do not show notability & that articles only about funding are non-substantial, (and possibly a restriction of crowd funding showing notability, on the basis that everything that gets crowd funding also gets PR & is non-discriminate) -- similar restrictions have worked on other subjects. This can be done either by passing a guideline, which is slow &difficult, or by simply interpreting by accumulated consensus at Afds, which is easy and can start to happen even as we are talking. DGG ( talk ) 06:09, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
We've got an industrial sized problem, we need an industrial scale solution. AfDs are often argued about forever. I believe you (DGG) participated in the 2 (or 3) AFDS about the new "publisher" who was planning to issue about 3 books, but hadn't yet issued anything. The argument eventually shifted to the article about the owner, who was your basic drug company exec, with alot of material on his new publishing company. The process took several weeks and I'm not even sure of the outcomes. Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:36, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
It's definitely an industrial-sized problem. One analyst found that maybe 30% to 45% of articles about businesses likely are either started by or most-heavily edited by a COI editor (see pages 7-8). While the previous IP was too insulting, I do agree with his question -- in any round-up of advertising disguised as articles, we will have to plug our nose and take a careful look even at donors to the Wikimedia Foundation, many of whom ([15]) have repeatedly stretched the spirit of our guidelines against self-promotion. - 2001:558:1418:0:0:5EFE:AA8:BDEF (talk) 14:19, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
You would have more credibility if you didn’t refer to yourself in the third person, likely in a poor attempt to avoid scrutiny (“an analyst” - hah! You mean a fellow-traveler in paid editing). Expecting you to stop evading your ban is clearly a lost cause. I question the statistical significance of your results, as well (they could be quite good, or could be lousy, depending upon information not apparent in the presentation). JoeSperrazza (talk) 14:46, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
I believe Jimbo recently said that his Talk page should be considered an "open door", even for banned users, if they can conduct themselves thoughtfully and in a considerate manner. Though, I think he also said that if others wish to enforce WP:DENY, that he would support that, too. Statistical significance (really, margin of error) on a random sample n=100 is fairly easily calculated, at whatever confidence level you choose. At a low enough confidence level, and a high enough margin of error, any probability sample over n=30 can be described as "statistically significant". - 69.57.233.20 (talk) 15:01, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
There is such a drawerful of socks (some banned, some blocked, others who knows) posting here that it would be disruptive in itself to simply revert them (and have them and their enablers unrevert, ad nauseum). Regardless, I agree that, in general, Jimbo has supported a more enlightened approach as to who posts here, as long as they are non-disruptive. A bit more honesty and civility would go a long way in making their points be taken seriously. Otherwise, it is just eye-rolling lunacy. JoeSperrazza (talk) 15:15, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Actually those numbers are pretty close (a tad low) to what the Public Relations Society of America's survey data[16] seems to imply. However, they surveyed whether PR people felt it was common to edit their client/employer's page, as oppose to whether they have themselves, which could explain the statistical difference. They found that about 60% of PR people feel it is common to edit the page and 13% felt it was common to pretend to be someone else to make edits.
  • Is there anyone from WMF watching this page that can update us on the legal recourse? The court case in Germany was very influential in educating folks in the region and it seems like the legal path was suddenly dropped after WMF's own employee was found engaging in similar tactics.
  • Doc James, in your work on this issue, have you found any ideal examples of misleading product claims I can send to the Federal Trade Commission? They seemed potentially interested in very specific types of examples of successful, non-disclosed edits that were misleading regarding a commercial product.
Disclosure: I do quite a bit of sponsored editing in a more wholesome way, for anyone that doesn't know. CorporateM (Talk) 15:24, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Only have a few for medical products. We have much less issues in the area of medicine with paid editing than in the area of BLPs and companies. Lots of alt med stuff but the FDA do not regulate them. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:40, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Re the extraordinary claim that "no one enforces the prohibition against advertising" can someone get some statistics on the number of G11 deletions we have in an average day? Personally my focus at newpage patrol is more on things like attack pages, but I know there's a whole community of people tagging article with {{Db-spam}} and deleting them. I suspect there's also lot of spam simply reverted at recent changes, but "articles deleted per G11" should be easy to measure by anyone who has the requisite tools/nowhow. ϢereSpielChequers 06:09, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
Having made some slight attempt to "tighten" Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) [17], I am as yet unconvinced that what User:Risker says ("There seems to be a realization after many years that our notability standards, especially for businesses, need to be significantly upgraded") is true. Perhaps User:WhatamIdoing can respond, here. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:25, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
Hi Alanscottwalker. What I mean is that there are people participating in this thread and in similar threads elsewhere on the project who are quite active in deletion discussions that closely relate to notability, and they are now coming onside to the point of view that higher expectations are required for businesses and organizations. It took me literally 3 minutes last night to participate in a couple of deletion discussions and PROD a couple more articles on businesses/organizations/events/products that display no significant notability. People consistently holding those sorts of articles up to a fairly strict reading of the current notability standards (let alone any increased standards) could make a big difference. If everyone in this thread went and participated in, say, 10-20 AfDs on related topics in the next two weeks, that alone could start to turn the tide. Risker (talk) 13:19, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
Good suggestion. A dynamic I have seen is that when one non-notable company has a Wikipedia article, its competitors feel that they too need to have a Wikipedia article, just to keep up. If that first article is deleted, half a dozen more won't be created. Jehochman Talk 13:36, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

On Notability Guidelines

There's a bit of "who's ox was gored" at notability guidelines. We have people who show up at the guideline recommending that the advice be relaxed for their area of interest, but maintained for others. Schools and restaurants are the most common areas under discussion at ORG (aka CORP).
The requirement that a local business or charity be able to produce evidence that at least one (1) reliable source that writes about material outside of their immediate backyard ever mentioned the org (see WP:AUD) really distresses some people. Particularly with charities or professional associations, there are even regular requests to waive the requirement for any WP:INDY sources at all, even sources written by small-town or neighborhood newspapers, because they're obviously so important to the world (so important that the world never writes anything about them).
AUD is also opposed on more philosophical grounds: if a subject meets the GNG but not CORP (e.g., because the only sources were written by the business owner's next door neighbor, who happens to own the local newspaper), then some people believe that the weaker GNG should always be applied, and are angry when the editors at AFDs instead choose to apply the slightly stronger CORP instead (which they do quite frequently). These editors read the "or" in WP:N as meaning "whichever guideline is least restrictive" rather than "whichever guideline the AFD participants believe is more relevant". It also doesn't help that some SNGs, like PROF, are written in a way that makes it seem like an editor's assertion that the prof is really important or that a lot of the prof's papers get cited is all that's really necessary, because you can write a neutral encyclopedia article from what the profs' employers say about them, since universities would never engage in puffery or POV pushing, and surely the profs never write those pages themselves. You never see that argument advanced for CEOs and their corporate websites, but the level of naïvete about university websites is a constant problem with BLPs about academics.
I think that some of the challenge is that people come to the guidelines with preconceptions based on their field of interest. For example, a student at a large, government-run high school might well think that all high schools are notable—but he probably hasn't thought about what it means to be "a high school". When you ask him whether each of the thousands of "private high schools" in California that enroll exactly one student (it's a common method of getting around some homeschooling regulations) should have articles about them, they're often surprised to hear that this even exists. What they really mean is "a school like the one I attend", not "any kind of school at all".
We also have a few people who are so dogmatic that when I give them a (real) example of a school that existed for two years in the 19th century should have an article, they only want to know whether it issued high school diplomas. According to this group, if the school issued diplomas, it qualifies for a separate, stand-alone article; if it didn't, then it doesn't. Nothing else matters, and the existence of independent reliable sources is especially irrelevant. Other considerations, like whether the name of this school is known (answer: no), never even occur to some of our editors. But for other subjects, say, elementary schools, these same people take exactly the opposite stance: there must be a truly extraordinary level of sources to justify an article. High schools get a free pass with this group, but an elementary school needs to be able to field so many non-local independent sources that a blue-chip stock would be jealous. The next person might be reasonable about relatively famous elementary schools, but might think that restaurant reviews should never be cited, even from a professional restaurant reviewer and for the purpose of talking about the food at three-star restaurants in the Michelin Guide. This is what happens when people apply their own values and best judgment: we end up with different people genuinely coming to opposite conclusions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:52, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
One more thought: If I were going to try to improve the inclusion/exclusion situation by recommending one absolute, non-negotiable rule, it would probably be something like this: Whatever the subject, whatever the sources, you must be able to find enough information between all of the WP:INDY sources (and only considering what information is available in the independent sources) to write an WP:IDEALSTUB of more than a couple of sentences. If you can't pull together the most basic facts and write 200 words about the subject without resorting to the org's (or BLP's) own website, then it doesn't qualify for a separate article. NB that I'm not saying that you must actually write 200 words and cite independent sources (although that's much easier to do in VisualEditor now, because Citoid reached this wiki two days ago); I'm only saying that it must be possible to write 200 words and cite independent sources to back up every word.
TLDR: I would make WP:WHYN a requirement rather than an explanation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:04, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
Re: "We also have a few people who are so dogmatic that when I give them a (real) example of a school that existed for two years in the 19th century should have an article, they only want to know whether it issued high school diplomas. According to this group, if the school issued diplomas, it qualifies for a separate, stand-alone article; if it didn't, then it doesn't. Nothing else matters, and the existence of independent reliable sources is especially irrelevant. Other considerations, like whether the name of this school is known (answer: no), never even occur to some of our editors. But for other subjects, say, elementary schools, these same people take exactly the opposite stance: there must be a truly extraordinary level of sources to justify an article...." — I'll take that one.
Yeah, and this is a good thing and perhaps something that can be applied to businesses. For example, if a company is listed on NYSE, NASDAQ, etc. etc. it is automatically in, and if it is not so listed there are some high set of hurdles that must be cleared to presume notability. Now I digress to answer WAID. The reason the consensus at AfD on schools has developed along the lines you state is as follows:
(1) Most good biographies at an advanced level of depth will include mention of a high school by name. These links should be blue, not red. No such mentions are made of elementary schools. Secondary schools and universities are plainly more important in this way.
(2) Most high schools include sports teams, orchestras, drama clubs, debate societies, organize events, etc. which generate media coverage. Elementary level schools do these things at a far lower rate. Secondary schools, on average, may be presumed to generate such coverage.
(3) We treat many things as of presumed notability on the face of it: populated places, mountains, rivers, highways — even professional athletes. It is not exceptional to "presume notability" for an entire category of articles, as we do for secondary schools.
(4) Secondary school articles can be informative and good, dealing with civic events and alumni. They are historic. Primary school articles invariably deal with current personnel and even school menus. Yeah, school menus. "Mr. Jones is the principal and Mrs. Aldridge teaches 5th grade." Their content is ephemeral. The anticipated "final form" of articles relating these categories of schools is different.
(4a) Addendum: High schools are civic landmarks. Elementary schools are neighborhood landmarks. There is a difference.
(5) AfD has a limited number of participants with limited time to volunteer investigating deletion cases and offering opinions. There are literally hundreds of thousands of primary schools around the world that could potentially swarm the gates with articles. The number of high schools is much smaller and feels more finite. It is an expedient use of volunteer time to treat these levels of educational institution differently, redirecting primary schools to their school district but auto-keeping high schools as freestanding pieces. We don't need to spend tens of thousands of volunteer hours fighting over this crap. The deletionist lions and the inclusionist lambs each have something to like and something to hate. That's pretty much the size of it. So yeah: if a secondary school of the 19th Century can be proven to have existed: it is kept. And if an ordinary primary school from a rich district in Orange County, California has a really pretty article with lots of fawning local sources and pictures, it is almost invariably redirected. The greater good is being served in this way, we are saving volunteer time at AfD for investigating, you know, corporate fluff pieces and such... Best regards, —Tim Davenport //// Carrite (talk) 16:19, 4 April 2015 (UTC) pinging WhatamIdoing
  • Also: GNG is the higher standard, the Special Notability Guidelines are low bars to ease inclusion to to clarify inclusion for certain categories of articles which may have trouble meeting GNG otherwise. See, for example, scholars and porn stars. SNG is also sometimes a high bar to filter spammy spamminess. See, for example, unelected politicians. And thus we come full circle: there could be tweaks made to the Special Notability Guidelines for businesses and entrepreneur BLPs that make inclusion more difficult without harming the vital ecosystem that is our deletion process (one of the things at Wikipedia that works really impartially and well and which generates relatively little controversy, I emphasize again...) Carrite (talk) 16:29, 4 April 2015 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 16:54, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
Those are great answers, Carrite. I think you're absolutely right, and it would be hard to argue against them without wondering what I was doing, and why. Begoon talk 16:40, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
I, too, endorse Carrite's analysis regarding notability guidelines. His insights come from long experience and hard work at AfD. Thanks, Tim. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 17:05, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

You're all Americans, aren't you? High schools aren't the same all over the world.

Actually, I think the reason the consensus at AfD on schools includes (average) high schools is primarily about what Carrite lists as reason (5): it's just easier to apply a blind rule instead of individually evaluating everything. It occasionally produces silly results, and it frequently produces ignorant !votes at AFD, but in terms of community effort, it’s not a bad approach. However, I think that the rest of the reasons are irrelevant or invalid.

  1. A few biographies mention elementary schools (e.g., Prince Charles and Bill Clinton), and the only biographies that typically mention high schools are not just "advanced level of depth" but also on especially famous (e.g., Prince Charles and Bill Clinton) and mostly dead people (i.e., back when high school was a somewhat unusual achievement). In BLPs where advanced degrees are normal, high schools don’t usually get mentioned.
  2. I believe you mean "Most American high schools include sports teams...which generate media coverage” in local newspapers (and Canadian ones, although somewhat less so). Many reliable sources in the rest of the world don’t spend as much time tracking the teenager’s sports exploits.
  3. There is a difference between "presumed" notability and "inherent" notability, and I've seen plenty of AFD comments claiming the latter rather than the former for high schools, and an inherent non-notability for elementary and middle schools.
  4. Any article with enough reliable sources can be informative and good. However, I find that most articles about high schools are pretty lousy and include mostly ephemeral information about the sports team.
    • Normal, government-run high schools may be a civic landmark in your opinion, but if I had to go to the one nearest me, I'd have to look it up on a map. And that doesn't begin to address the problems with non-traditional, small, or private high schools—or of elementary and middle schools which actually are landmarks.
  5. There are about 75,000 elementary schools and about 25,000 secondary schools in the US. I agree that simplistic rules are an expedient use of volunteer time. But if you are creating an article about an ephemeral school, about which almost nothing, including its name (how are you going to title the page?!) is known, then the greater good is not being served. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:06, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I'll note in passing that high school articles are one of the most commonly vandalized article types, with a very high frequency of BLP violations, use for harassment, inaccuracy, and generally being out-of-date. Oversighters spend a lot of time dealing with problems on high school articles. High school IPs are amongst the most frequently blocked for repeated vandalism and BLP violations (both to the articles on the schools themselves and throughout the encyclopedia), and it is common to have the system administrators from schools and school boards actively request that those IPs be blocked. The majority of high schools *aren't* notable outside of their immediate area. The diplomatic solution that was arrived at even before I started editing has not stood the test of time; these articles are poorly maintained and require far more RC patrol, administrator, and oversighter time than they can justify for their level of notability. GNG was intended to be a solid floor; however, it has been so terribly weakened by the interpretations at AfD that almost nothing is considered "not notable". So, geez, let's pull up our socks and recognize that local-only coverage (e.g., below at least state-wide) of just about anything or anyone really isn't sufficient for GNG. Risker (talk) 00:09, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
The GNG is fine as it is. There's no reason to discriminate against publications based on whether their readers are in one place or not - some magazines target a county, some target fans of a particular sport, what's the difference? We should look at the editorial process, as usual - yes, it's possible that a columnist in a free ad flyer you picked up outside the supermarket might have just filled some space without anybody double-checking his or her work, but I don't see a reason to start saying that one town's paper is "too local" while another's is a "national newspaper" based on what amounts to guesswork and prejudice. Wnt (talk) 01:37, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
That said, the 'special notability guidelines' are a plague. Much if not most of the time they are totally misunderstood (accidentally or intentionally) by AfD voters who use the 'alternate' guidelines as a way to try to shoot down articles they don't like. Even when used correctly, they are ... useless. I mean, just try to work through the logic in WP:Notability (people). It says follow the GNG -- but if you don't like that, use your own prejudice and POV to decide whether the person won a "signficant" award or was "notably influential" -- then at the end it says oh by the way, if it fails the GNG and meets the additional criteria... merge the article! Seriously!
What I want done with the special guidelines, all of them, is to nuke them. To compensate, replace with general principles that restore any gaps they were trying to plaster over. I can only think of one such thing we'd need to compensate for them: we should say that a topic is notable if it is a member of a well-defined, enumerated set of topics, most of which are notable, which is useful to complete. For example, if most Olympic athletes or British hereditary peers are notable, and we can better cover the core topics by having (for example) a table with a bluelink for every single entry to which details can be deferred, then we have articles for all of them. Wnt (talk) 01:47, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Strongly support Wnt's comment against specialized notability guidelines and WhatamIdoing's "one absolute, non-negotiable rule... Whatever the subject, whatever the sources, you must be able to find enough information... (available in the independent sources) to write an WP:IDEALSTUB of more than a couple of sentences." I would replace "couple sentences" with "couple paragraphs". My experiences have been that PROF is used as a blanket KEEP on any and all academic BLP AfDs, while CEOs are held to a much higher standard. The various guidelines tend to be abused and/or written to cater to the community's biases. CorporateM (Talk) 01:57, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Suggestion

The Terms of Use are a heavy club to be wielded by lawyers when there is a severe of systematic abuse of the site. English Wikipedia policies and guidelines, on the other hand, are nuanced rules designed to enhance content quality, and these are best enforced by knowledgeable editors acting through site channels. Of course, there can be communication between the two groups responsible for enforcement of the two sets of rules. If editors observe significant ToS violations, these should be reported to the lawyers. I think the status quo is just fine, and that people should carry on with minimum fuss. Over-reacting to a single incident is a bad idea. See moral panic. Jehochman Talk 14:05, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Of course. Making a fuss leads to things like this, and none of us want that, do we? Begoon talk 15:42, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
I don't understand the point of your comment, but I think resorting to shrill rhetoric, exaggeration, half-truths or outright propaganda to wage battle on Wikipedia isn't the way to solve a problem. It is more effective to remain calm, polite, and rational. That's what I meant by "minimum fuss". Jehochman Talk 19:56, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Quality control is not moral panic, although it is interesting you use the term moral, since at its base, non-disclosure is about dishonesty and lack of ethics. The reader simply should have access to the encyclopdic information that an article is written by the subject, or by the subject's agent. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:48, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia doesn't require users to disclose their identity. Until we do, people need to focus on the edits rather than the editor. Jehochman Talk 19:56, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia requires users to fairly and thoroughly represent encyclopedic information - as long as an article writer fails to disclose that they are the article subject or the agent of the article subject (it's not about their identity, it is about their relationship to the encyclopedic subject) - they are misleading readers, providing incomplete information, and being dishonest. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:09, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
The real world is rarely clear cut. What if I own property at a resort and work to improve the article about that resort. Is that a conflict? Would I include negative info that might damage my investment? Am I required to disclose my life story so that other editors can audit my work looking for conflicts? It's much better to look at the tone of edits rather than the editor. We don't want people to engage in doxing activities. Jehochman Talk 20:48, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
We ask editors all the time, why they want an edit, the very least they can do is be honest, indeed they are expected to be - that is the sole basis for 'assume good faith'. (Moreover far too much of the discussion of such blatant acts of dishonesty, suffers from the logical fallacy of whataboutery. There is no basis to claim that clear conflicts are not clear conflicts). Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:07, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Let's say somebody says, "I'm the PR person from this company and the article is all wrong. It has the wrong person listed as president, the year of foundation should be 2005 instead of 2004, and we don't sell wiggly widgets anymore. I just want to correct the record because our customers are reading this page and getting confused." Will the Wikipedia community reply in a friendly way, or will some admin indef the account for COI editing and then report them to ANI? Not all COI editing is so horrible. I suggest that this PR person could be welcomed, and things could be explained to them. What I don't want is the hysterical response that some on this thread seem to advocate. Jehochman Talk 11:42, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
In my experience, having responded to editors like that, the community will be grateful for information. And why should the community not be? The editor has been upfront, honest, and helpful. Most importantly, the reader will be able to know where such information came from. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:52, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Alan; I've never seen a COI editor given a hard time for correcting anodyne factual errors. We have the opposite problem—we are overly deferential to COI editors even when they make substantive changes. The layer of scrutiny between a PR person with a declared COI and a Wikipedia article is razor-thin, often just 1 editor. Take, for example, Tom Graves, a US Republican Congressman. His political consultants came to Wikipedia and declared a COI. Their goal was to promote Graves' role in attacking Obamacare (since this plays well with his constituency). The talkpage thread is here. Basically, the political consultants' text was approved verbatim by an editor with little or no experience in US politics, who stated that the additions "were to my eye factual and not blatantly promotional or non-neutral; some references were checked to see they supported the suggested text". That text now appears, verbatim, in our encyclopedia with absolutely no indication to the reader that it was written by Graves' political handlers. Is this an acceptable level of review when dealing with paid political consultants—that is, people who make their living off their ability to favorably manipulate media coverage? MastCell Talk 18:56, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
I have seen (properly disclosed) COI editors given a hard time, but it's unusual. However, I don't think that I've seen it except when the "regular" editors at the article are POV pushers in the opposite direction. I have specifically seen one case of "we discontinued that several years ago" being opposed because some newspaper (from several years ago) said that they were doing it, and the editors wanted to keep it because it placed the company in a bad light. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:11, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
Editors are given a hard-time by other editors regularly -- that's not an excuse. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:54, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

No. We don't have the editor hours available to deal with COI editing properly. The only real solution is to warn readers that anybody can edit Wikipedia, and that people connected to subjects often do. I'm sure an article like Barack Obama is watched by hundreds of editors and stuff like this would be reverted. For less prominent topics, the risk increases greatly that the topic could have been spun by somebody connected with it. I could invent a reliability heuristic that would score a page based on the number of editors, page watchers, and page views to give some indication how reliable the page is likely to be. (e.g. "This page has had X editors, has Y people watching it, and has Z page views per month. It is likely to be [very reliable, reliable, not so reliable, dodge, a steaming pile of poo].") Jehochman Talk 21:28, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Mastcell, true. But at the least, the record of all that is now and forever publicly there - that is still better than it not being made available at all. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:42, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

At one time, several years ago, there was a script that would highlight sections of text and say who last inserted it into the article. If you saw lots of big blocks that was an indication to look at the editor - lots of chopped up blocks indicated the text had been well worked over. That script was the main reason I would log into my account, years before I did any editing. The only problem is it slowed the page load/parse so I stopped using it. Now it appears to be gone/not working anymore. Jbh (talk) 14:31, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
Jehochman talking about "surveillance tools"/heuristics, what is the deal with User:COIBot? our vandalism bots work pretty well. can we train a WP:PROMO-bot to work (to catch puffery... articles with X% of press releases or own-website citations... and give it whatever coibot had too? can we automate some of the surveillance? Jytdog (talk) 02:20, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
We could talk to Cobi about this. There are telltale signs, as you mention, press releases as sources, the word "leading", and high percentage of edits by a single editor. A bot could score business articles and file automated reports at COIN. We still need editors willing to go through this reports. COIBot is looking for more obvious signs (last time I looked at it), such as Username matching article title, but it could be tweaked to be more sophisticated. Jehochman Talk 15:35, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
Regarding "The only real solution is to warn readers that anybody can edit Wikipedia, and that people connected to subjects often do," Jehochman, do you mean a prominent disclaimer on each article? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:28, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
Jehochman thank you for replying! having a bot automatically file at COIN, is extra genius. Great idea. Cobi is this do-able? I would be glad to advise on "tells" and I am sure others would too. DGG has plenty.Jytdog (talk) 14:05, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
Jehochman - User:COIBot is slightly more sophisticated than that already, though indeed it 'does the simple algorithms' (username overlap with pagename edited, username overlap with domain added). The off-wiki m:User:LiWa3 is monitoring and storing link-additions, and has some COI-like-statistics also built-in (and when triggered these domains are reported by COIBot - see e.g. the abovementioned Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam/Local/outletstoresmalls.com) - this includes ip of editor in close range with ip of domain-hosting-machine, links mainly added by a close range of IP-editors, links mainly being used by one single editor (who is not using any other links), editors adding one link to multiple wikis (handled on meta), and some more of that. It is easy to build in a bit more within the limits of machine speed (some can be done with clever SQL-statements, some need multiple statements to get to a number). Some of those are tell-tale signs of spamming (though it does give false positives like a new editor being enthusiastic and using mainly one source-domain). Unfortunately, spammers are more sophisticated than that, but it does take some down.
Meta has some manpower to keep track of the XWiki-reports (the backlog of cross-wiki spam is generally small; see m:Category:Open_XWiki_reports and ), here the backlog on en.wikipedia (Category:Open_Local_COIBot_Reports) is massive because there is really nobody keeping track of these (even with COIBot will automatically closing reports when all links were independently removed, or mark them stale after some time (see Category:Stale_Local_COIBot_Reports) - still we see spam-cases being reported that were already detected early on by LiWa3/COIBot). --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:12, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
So then what we need is a template that kindly points people to the COI reports backlog. When somebody complains about COI editing, we can template them in the spirit of WP:SOFIXIT. As I often say, "Don't complain about something unless you want to be put in charge of it." Jehochman Talk 11:20, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
That is not really a resolution, is it User:Jehochman? I blacklist and block spammers, SEO-editors and COI editors (after talking and warning etc. if appropriate/deemed helpful), ánd provide tools to find (and revert) them. However, it does not really help, because it pays their bills, and some companies go on, even after having been detected. And if you blacklist links after a years-long spam campaign the whole community jumps onto you because 'hey, that link is useful' .. The consequences (and at the moment the chance) of being caught are not sufficient (not is the willingness of the Foundation to provide us with tools and/or help not very visible, if it is there at all). And that is what precipitated this whole thread as well - problems are being detected early on but ignored. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:27, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Grant?

I wonder if rather than rely on WMF to develop the features the community wants, if someone could propose a grant to help the community develop and maintain some of them itself. For example, these citation tools need maintaining and the NY Times citation tools has been broken for ages; a grant could sponsor an editor to fix it. Many of the tools at Wikipedia:Tools are broken. I bring it up here, because there are probably quite a few tools that could be developed or improved to help detect socks (such as bots mentioned above) that wouldn't require WMF's access to the core software. I have no idea how the grants actually work or if that is an appropriate use for them, however it seems already proven that these features are not maintained on a volunteer basis, despite their wide-spread use and need. Just throwing ideas around. CorporateM (Talk) 14:54, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Good idea, CorporateM. It's much quicker just to pay people to do this stuff directly than wait for the WMF technical people - the people who should be doing this very important work. I paid someone at Village pump/Technical to create a citation template for me. (When you hover the mouse over a footnote marker, the bits of the article that are supported by that source are highlighted - it's really cool!) I got exactly what I wanted immediately and it was cheap. You can put those jobs you mention out to tender at VPT and send the Foundation the bill a grant application. I gather the grant-making people are very responsive to sensible proposals. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:32, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
@Anthonyhcole: Who is the editor you paid previously? It looks like we would need to identify one or more technical people to complete the work, before a grant can be submitted. Based on the grant documentation, it looks like this kind of technical work is a very common type of grant request and I'm surprised it hasn't come up sooner. CorporateM (Talk) 15:43, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
CM, that was User:Makyen. The Village Pump/Technical discussion is archived here. It's worth at least scanning that discussion. I made the (apparently) classic newbie mistake of not defining the brief totally unambiguously, but Makyen was very gracious and professional about it.
Perhaps begin with just one fairly straightforward, time-limited task like "fix this bot" to make your early mistakes on. Maybe ask for quotes on WP:VPT and take the discussion to a sub-page. If you find the grant-making process too slow and cumbersome, don't hesitate to speak to senior management at WMF to see if a more agile process for these sorts of requests can't be designed. I think WMF technical would be stoked to see lots more of this.
Consider writing an op ed for The Signpost if this becomes a thing. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:04, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
@Anthonyhcole: Thanks! Reading now and multi-tasking on BLPN. I would prefer not to become financially entangled with WMF in any way, such as through a grant, for the obvious reasons. But I might help write it and get it started and just pass on the grant money to the actual developer. CorporateM (Talk) 01:09, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

COIN and followups

I want to note that me and a few others (no admins, currently) are kind of holding down the fort following up on postings at COIN and additional experienced hands there would be super-helpful, especially if the bot discussed in the section above, does get going. John Nagle and Joseph2302 have especially been doing great work there - kudos to them. While getting a bot going would be amazing, it is also somewhat terrifying, as we barely keep up, and the more we work we do, the more we find. And working COIN takes time and attention -- in my view, persistent and truly civil followup to COIN postings is really, really essential for getting COI managed. We can deploy the Terms of Use and COI without being heavy-handed and lawyerly about it, but instead by just being human and trying to communicate what WP is about and how following COI and the ToU is better for everybody involved. I generally find a correlation between people with a COI who are responsive and want to follow policy and guidelines (but are ignorant, or maybe a bit scared), and those with a COI who are not responsive, and don't care about our PAG. The latter generally end up getting site banned pretty quickly for policy violations (not for COI). I have wondered if Wifione would have been brought down sooner, if folks working COIN back then had been more tuned to follow up. (which is very different from harassment/hounding! there is a difference) Jytdog (talk) 14:06, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

COI Ducks Essay

A user recently wrote this essay with the goal of addressing COI problems. Now some of the same people who have been accused of creating industry slant are the ones trying to have the essay deleted here without any effort to address concerns they have about the essay. What can we do to address the kind of COI that happened with WifiOne and avoid the intimidation tactics of those who protect industry slant? I thought the essay--although a bit premature for publication--is a helpful approach and that the brainstorming that has gone with it is very healthy. It seems that efforts to address COI will be vigorously opposed without helpful alternatives proposed. I would like to see others who are concerned about COI help make this essay into something we can all be proud of that actually does make a step in the right direction of addressing COI problems (like with WifiOne) and helping users who suspect COI to be able to do something about it without finding themselves banned from an article for mentioning what they believe edits might be from COI. David Tornheim (talk) 17:51, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

yay more WP:SPIDERMAN. There is absolutely nothing wrong with handling COI appropriately. There is a lot wrong with campaigning and hounding. For pete's sake. Jytdog (talk) 17:58, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
^Ironic that your post is right above this one. Should I use ad hominems and accuse you of WP:REICHSTAG climbing? No thanks. Talk about an essay in need of deletion. I would nominate that one in a second. David Tornheim (talk) 18:23, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
The problem is that there is nothing about the article that is salvagable, as it consists mainly of encouraging violations of WP:GF and WP:CONSENSUS, along with encouraging editors to treat edits that are explained in terms of compliance with Wikipedia policies and guidelines with skepticism. The central thrust of the essay is at loggerheads with the Pillars of Wikipedia. Formerly 98 talk|contribs|COI statement 19:07, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I think the essay is quite valuable as a starting point, and have supported the effort to keep the essay, and improve on it. Interestingly, within minutes, an editor found it needful to issue me a templated warning regarding "personal attacks" on my talk page over my !vote to keep the essay. This certainly seems like the type of intimidation noted by David Tomhelm. Speaking of essays, WP:DTR is a pretty well-established unwritten rule. It's additionally worth considering. Jimmy, it's shaping up to be a real policy dispute. Jusdafax 19:47, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Yes Jusdafax, I over-reacted to your characterization of my nomination for deletion as "suspicious" and have apologized for that. But there has been plenty of harsh behavior on both sides. I recieved a threatening message on my talk page when I nominated the article for deletion, and article supporters have characterized me as a "POV Duck", a "spindoctor", a "tendentious editor" and a "whitewasher", as well as the epitome of all the ugly behaviors attributed to "POV ducks" in that essay. Might be best for everyone involved to try to chill out a bit. Its only an essay after all. Formerly 98 talk|contribs|COI statement 14:19, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

It seems there is a not-uncommon confusion among some editors about the difference between having a point of view and having a conflict of interest. The essay seems to further that confusion. The latter suggests (but does not prove) the former (in the area of conflict), but not the reverse. Furthermore, having a point of view is not prohibited. Rather, our challenge is to write articles that have a neutral point of view. Moreover, just because one has used a self-published source (such as an annual report) as citation for some information does not prove (or even suggest) that you have a COI. For most organizations, the best source (and sometimes, only source) of some information (e.g., annual revenue, or # beds in a hospital) is from the annual report. I don't think it is controversial or a conflict to use such sources. IMO, the article needs work and should not be a formal essay. I think having it userfied would be a reasonable approach so that it could be repaired (I'm not sure WP:TNT applies). JoeSperrazza (talk) 15:02, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Isn't this week the anniversary of the "Wikipedia:Lunatic charlatans" email that I loved so much? This essay is like a charter for them. -Roxy the Viking dog™ (resonate) 18:23, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

COI in Nature News

I just saw this article, which says that 3% of a sample of 30,000 scientists admitted to editing their own Wikipedia biographies, and 9% to adding references to their own work. To be sure, I sympathize deeply with people who want to share information that few others in the world know, but as the article speaks of "salesmanship" and "reputation management", I see genuine scientific interest giving way to just more salesmanship (with its twin, cyberbullying, never far away). Wnt (talk) 00:33, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. Just consider this article: Pamela Ronald, scientist which is filled with blogs and other sources from the University where she works that are doubtful RS. Apparently, she had indeed edited her own page, mentioned on the talk page here:
I am a research scientist working in the field of plant innate immunity for several years and have been managing the Pamela Ronald page. I sent the page to Professor Ronald for some feedback and if she wanted to edit anything. I believe she made some minor edits...
Note that no mention of this article of her withdraw papers is mentioned in the Controversy section, and I have good reason to believe that any attempt I would make to add it would be vigorously opposed. Now compare that to the prominent GMO critic Jeffrey M. Smith's Wikipedia page which has this quote:
Bruce Chassy, a molecular biologist and food scientist, wrote...that Smith's "only professional experience prior to taking up his crusade against biotechnology is as a ballroom-dance teacher, yogic flying instructor, and political candidate for the Maharishi cult’s natural-law party."
And the movie mentioned in the Wikipedia article (high point here) of course was deleted too. His page at one time was as long as Ronald's (see for example, this old version). Virtually anything written by or about him by supporters is categorized as WP:Fringe or from "activists" or "advocates", so no voice for anything like that. So does a GMO proponent's puffery get the same treatment as a GMO critic?--quite unlikely. Too much $ at stake there. But don't worry, no COI editors on any of those articles. Suggesting as such is likely to get you blocked or banned. Nothing to see here... David Tornheim (talk) 01:04, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Wnt, in the interests of accuracy, can you check your figures - from what I can see the poll states that 3 respondents (0.4% of the sample) stated that they had "created, written or edited text" in their Wikipedia biography in the last 12 months. [18] And of course, as you are presumably aware, there are sometimes legitimate grounds for editing one's own biography. Certainly COI editing goes on within the academic biography field - but I see no reason to single it out as particularly prevalent, if only because unlike say industry, politics or 'alternative medicine' most promotional claims are relatively easy to verify, and accordingly less likely to be faked. Unless of course , you subscribe to the conspiracy theory that says that they are all in it together - in which case why should you trust a poll? AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:10, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Heather Bresch

Hi Jimbo. I initially pinged you about this article in January and afterwards you emailed me asking for a copy of an off-line source, saying that you would look through my first draft and consider incorporating some of the content on a sentence-by-sentence basis. I've pinged you again each month since then, in February, in March[19] and now with this posting in April.

I don't blame you if you don't have time for it, as getting involved would probably be a fairly involved effort at this point and there are no longer any really severe BLP problems. However, in March you suggested that you were still interested in the article[20], so I wanted to bring it to the top of your inbox sort-of-speak, assuming we are still on a friendly basis despite my disagreeing with you.[21] I still want to bring the page up to GA, as I do on most articles where I have a COI, but I don't see a productive path to getting there, when there is so much resistance to adding sourced content. CorporateM (Talk) 15:49, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

FYI, I have started a COIN post on it here. My post is somewhat similar to yours on the Naveen article actually, except I think the diffs are more compelling and I am asking that more editors get involved, as oppose to asking the editor to recuse. Given how riled up everyone is after the wiifone case, it'll be interesting to see if that will lead to an assumptions against the editor with a COI. CorporateM (Talk) 08:00, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Your thoughts on whether information is a basic human right

Another annoying theoretical about your personal beliefs, if you have time to respond, and others to comment on as well. Basically I've never believed that the "right to know" or "right to information" is a basic given, a right handed down by a deity or by any written or unwritten constitution. I live in the USA so I'll stick to this country, the right to information does not exist in the US Constitution and in my opinion not in the "penumbra" of what the forefathers intended through inference of what they actually did list (as if they were a uniform monolithic group with one mindset!). My opinion is that any freedom of the press is freedom for the press to publish what they find out, and not a carte blanche that the press, and by extension the People, MUST be told.

That is my opinion. I feel I probably know yours will be on the opposite side of the coin and that is why I ask this question, to get a competing view of the world and make me question my prevailing thoughts and opinions, to either force me to justify my opinion or open me to the fact that I'm wrong and to therefore change my view and grow. So basically I'm wondering from where and how is it that there exists a "freedom to know" and what would you say are the "natural" boundaries of such a freedom.Camelbinky (talk) 15:25, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I guess that Jimbo is a classic liberal, with his views deriving from John Locke, David Hume, and (from a bit later) John Stuart Mill, and in general from the time of England's Glorious Revolution. I haven't read these sources recently, and never read them thoroughly, but here is my take on them. Not speaking for Jimbo of course.
Speaking of "God-given rights" is a bit of an exaggeration, "right" is a human-born concept from the 1600s, but it is meant to be as absolute as can be, though different people's rights often come into conflict, necessitating upholding one person's rights and restricting another person's.
The basic concept is that if a person or government doesn't respect a person's true "right" then he or she is justified in taking extreme action, if only to protect his/her very life, thus causing social disruption and calling into question the legitimacy of any government. An overly obvious example - everybody has the right to breath. If the government tries to stop someone from breathing they'll almost certainly protect themselves to the extent of killing the government's officers if need be.
The right to think, which includes the right to communicate with others so that you can properly think about what is going on, is just as important as the right to breath. If you can't properly think, you can be easily be led down the garden path, straight to the gas chamber. So freedom of thought, conscience (e.g. religion), speech and press, assembly, to gather information (not to be given information) are all so important to maintaining our very lives that the government (or anybody else) cannot be allowed to take this away from us.
But privacy is also a right. If the gov't can be allowed to take all our information, such as bank passwords, records of who we've communicated with, etc. we cannot protect our property, our livelihoods, our right to communicate, our very lives. There's obviously some contradiction between the right to gather information and the right to privacy, but for individuals and private groups rather than governments, it seems the most important side is the right to gather information. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:15, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
I don't think there exists a general "right to know". There are plenty of things that are perfectly appropriate as private information. We can start with the easy cases: bank passwords, private conversations, etc. I actually think that starting the analysis from "What do I have the right to know?" is an inversion of the proper logical hierarchy, and that's one reason it's so hard to go about it in a sensible way.
The right way around, I think, is to start with a general right of freedom of expression and take it from there. The right to know is simply a corollary of the right to freedom of expression. And we must always remember that the right of free expression includes within it the right to remain silent - the right to not express something or to keep it private.
My view on the right to freedom of expression is that it must not be limited by law except under "strict scrutiny". Governments need to show a compelling governmental interest - not just an interest but a compelling one. The law must be narrowly tailored to cover only the specific narrowest range of speech to be suppressed. And finally the law must be the least restrictive means of achieving the compelling governmental interest.
This has implications for the right to knowledge, of course. It is inappropriate for the Chinese government to suppress speech about Ai Wei Wei and this can be expressed either way: people have a right to express their opinions about him, or we could say that other people have a right to know. It's the same thing in this context.
My thinking on these issues is pretty mainstream in the United States, less so in many other places.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:01, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
I was just reading about this topic last week.. found the following a good overview Shashi Motilal (2011). Applied Ethics and Human Rights: Conceptual Analysis and Contextual Applications. Anthem South Asian Studies. pp. 253.... ISBN 978-0-85728-849-3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) -- Moxy (talk) 19:25, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
That source cites Wikipedia's Applied ethics article as it's first reference on page xii, but the word "education" occurs only ten times in its hundreds of pages, which is only one more time than in the entire Universal Declaration of Human Rights (please see its Article 26.) The UDHR is a ratified treaty of the United States, and each State has long abided by the federal mandate to implement universal education, some more successfully than others; for example, college loans are guaranteed by Oregon. The simple English version has an Article 26 which reads, "Everyone has the right to an education. In the early years of schooling, it should be free of charge and compulsory. Education at a higher level should be equally available to everyone on the basis of merit. Education should develop the full human being and increase respect for human rights," which I prefer strongly to the original's "(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children," because there are a lot of parents who think, for example, that the universe is thousands instead of billions of years old, which makes study on many very important biology, radiochemistry, and physics topics impossible. You can see that fissure reflected in contemporary American society. All rights imply concordant responsibilities, so please see also Articles 37 and 38 of the Declaration of Human Duties and Responsibilities:
Articles 37 and 38 of the Declaration of Human Duties and Responsibilites

Article 37

The Duty and Responsibility to Promote and Enforce the Right to Education

1 Members of the global community have collective, as well as individual duties and responsibilities, to take appropriate action to promote, respect and enforce the right to education for all.

2 States have the primary duty and responsibility to take measures to respect, promote and ensure, to the maximum extent possible, the right to education of all within its territory or under its jurisdiction. Such measures should include:

(a) developing, maintaining or providing for an adequate system of schools and other educational institutions;
(b) ensuring access to educational institutions at all levels without discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, disability, property, birth or other such similar status, and ensuring equality of opportunity and treatment in education;
(c) ensuring the right to free and compulsory primary education for all children;
(d) making secondary and tertiary education available and accessible to the maximum extent possible;
(e) protecting the academic freedom of teachers;
(f) respecting the right of individuals and other legal entities to establish and maintain their own private educational institutions;
(g) promoting vocational and technical training;
(h) promoting adult education and more particularly adult literacy.

3 Parents have a duty and a responsibility to encourage and facilitate the education of all their children, and have a responsibility in this regard not to discriminate between male and female children. States have a responsibility to ensure this.

4 States have a duty to ensure that all levels of education are directed towards the full development of the human personality without discrimination in particular on the basis of sex or gender; respect for and understanding of human rights and a culture of peace, and enable all persons to participate meaningfully in a democratic society based upon tolerance, understanding and respect for racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity.

5 Academic institutions, teachers and academics have a duty to promote and develop human rights education and awareness, as well as education designed to promote and develop a democratic and peaceful culture based on respect for racial, religious, ethnic and cultural diversity.

6 Competent inter-governmental organisations have a duty to promote and contribute to developing the educational capacity of States, in particular developing countries.

7 Competent inter-governmental organisations have a duty to promote international cooperation in the development and implementation of human rights education, and education designed to instil and develop a democratic and peaceful culture based on respect for racial, religious, ethnic and cultural diversity.

8 Non-governmental organisations have a duty to work with States and inter-governmental organisations in the promotion of the right to education and, in particular human rights education, and shall develop and implement their own human rights education programs.

Article 38

The Duty and Responsibility to Foster Arts and Culture

1 Members of the global community have collective as well as individual duties to provide a framework for and to foster the arts and culture.

2 States have a duty and responsibility to respect, protect and promote freedom of artistic expression, the right to culture and cultural diversity. In accordance with this duty and responsibility they should:

(a) ensure free access to the arts and culture on a non-discriminatory basis;
(b) encourage creativity and protect innovations and artistic works through intellectual property laws at the national and international levels;
(c) ensure and promote, within the framework of universal human rights and fundamental freedoms, the right of individuals to enjoy their culture in community with others.

3 Competent intergovernmental organisations have a duty to promote international collaboration and exchanges among artists from various cultures, to disseminate knowledge and information about different cultures and to take appropriate steps to protect and preserve the cultural heritage of humankind.

We measure the success with which countries have developed by how well they are able to uphold such responsibilities. Wikipedia has a Right to education article, too. EllenCT (talk) 17:20, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
The question can be expanded to ask "How much of what versions of what aspects of what topics do what persons have a right to know, at what times, in what places, and in what circumstances?" It reminds me of nutrition facts labels, California Proposition 37 (2012), "Right to know", employment applications, early childhood education, funding of science, HTTP cookies, spyware, countersurveillance, sperm donation, adoption disclosure, jury integrity (version of 23:49, 8 April 2015), informed consent, alternative media, sex offender registries, HIV confidentiality, and several Bible passages (Genesis 3:4, 5; Leviticus 5:1; Deuteronomy 31:12; 1 Kings 3:11, 12; Ezekiel 3:17–21; John 16:12; 21:25; Romans 10:13–15; 1 Timothy 4:16; 2 Timothy 3:15; James 1:5). In the case of confidence tricks (Category:Confidence tricks), how does one warn potential victims without enabling potential villains? (WP:BEANS)
—Wavelength (talk) 20:04, 7 April 2015 (UTC) and 02:05, 11 April 2015 (UTC) and 02:37, 13 April 2015 (UTC) and 03:07, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
For general publications, the word is that crooks are the most likely to read the advice in "10 Easy Ways Crooks Steal Your Stuff" while most victims only read "How the Burglars Emptied Your Home" because many people cannot believe a thief could be so greedy as to steal everything, and then come back again. Many storekeepers are unprepared for the (stolen) truck that drives into the store and loads all valuables within minutes. Thankfully, on Wikipedia, we often see how vicious, petty, and greedy people can be, so we know, if they could, they would knife you in the back and take everything. Perhaps people should be warned in private (as a "right to privacy") so that others cannot read the details of those warnings. -Wikid77 (talk) 16:17, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
[My latest revision to my first reply followed your reply to it, but did not change its content in a way that would conflict with your reply to it.
—Wavelength (talk) 03:28, 14 April 2015 (UTC)]
I would suggest the "right to know" is often, but not always, best analyzed in terms of freedom of expression. It ought to be clear that copyright infringes on freedom of expression, but even among those who accept copyright, many do not wish to see people actually unable to learn the underlying information, as distinguished from the specific way in which that information is expressed. So Wikipedia upholds the right of a person to look and see if current medical opinion is, say, that salt causes cancer, even if many of the reviews that discuss that question in the most comprehensive manner are locked up under copyright.
This is probably associated with conventional scholarship and the radical, if dated, notion that even though you don't have the money to subscribe to the journal, someone might buy a copy and put it in a library and not stop you by force from reading it, or even facilitate copying under the guise of interlibrary loan. (We see with software, or even with special library subscription fees and restrictions on access to electronic journals, just how fragile that past understanding is; it is truly a crumbling ancient ruin) And there is an ever-growing list of exceptions: for example, whether the 'plot' of a story can be copyrighted independently of its expression, thereby restricting whether we can tell readers what happens in various movies with any useful degree of detail. Or worse, database copyright, which would essentially ban Wikipedia from relaying informative statistics in any useful way, which comes very close to banning knowledge itself, regardless of the means of expression.
There are other senses in which a "right to know" might be used, e.g. Freedom of Information Act, based on the notion that government should not be keeping things secret arbitrarily, or a more expansive sense of freedom of inquiry, in which we say that Copernicus can look at the position of the stars or Kawaoka can play with the 1918 flu pandemic in a lab in Wisconsin without interference. (Whether you think that should yield to some other rights is another question) But on Wikipedia these are seldom the focus. Wnt (talk) 21:14, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Mr Wales, User:Wnt (as your answer will be quite informative as well), and any others- Each of us framed this discussion on what other individuals and the government have a right to know about other individuals; but now what about what individuals have a right to know about the government? Do Sunshine laws go far enough, just enough, not enough? (in the US, as I am unaware of the British or international equivalent's names where they actually exist) When is it acceptable for the government to say "No, you don't have a right to know, you elected us to make decisions for you we did something or authorized something, vote us out and elect some one else if you disagree and want different results".
A tangential example is that on a local level I have seen public authorities and other political bodies skirt the spirit but not the letter of state sunshine laws by going into "executive session" for instance, and I've seen public authorities claim after getting caught not putting out certain information on a yearly basis or being open to the public at all (or having their meeting space in a handicapped accessible location)- "Oh, we're covered by Sunshine Laws? I didn't realize accepting tax money meant that we're actually a 'Government'"; as if the fact the body was created by the state, and the members are appointed by a county and/or city elected officials didn't give them a clue they were actually semi-government officials beyond the fact they get a percentage of a sales tax collection as their budget (We don't live in the days of Robert Moses anymore thank goodness). Ignorance of the law on a local level is what I see on a daily basis as the main obstacle to giving the public their needed knowledge of government, I see much less a problem on a daily basis of the Federal government holding information that really impacts my businesses or daily life. As I believe it was Tip O'Neill who once said- "All politics is local". On a more Federal level- how much of that information Snowden gave to the public did we really have a right to know? (thought that's not a question as important as the local one in my personal opinion).Camelbinky (talk) 20:18, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
@Camelbinky: Where an ostensibly democratic government is concerned, the theory is that they are public servants, and hence have a duty to share relevant work information with their employer, the people. Of course, governments (like those who actually work for you, like your doctor or accountant) sometimes are expected to keep confidences. Where I draw the line is that a government secret is actually supposed to be secret, i.e. it is supposed to be kept genuinely safe from determined opponents. If the Germans genuinely cannot find out where the troops are going to land, or the Iraqis don't know who the confidential informant is, that's a secret. However, when information is shared among a large group of people, too many to plausibly believe that they can keep it secret (i.e. SIPRNet), and most characteristically, when information is actually posted to Wikileaks and the government is still running around telling people that it's wrong for them to look at it -- that's not secrecy, that's a caste system. Some people are just better than other people, allowed to know real things, while others (say, members of Congress who don't sit on any subcommittees) simply don't rate to be told what all those well-connected people know. They are simply supposed to vote, sight unseen, in a way that shows that they have a religious faith in the NSA that is as deep and unshakeable as the faith people used to have in Jesus.
So I believe the right to know does not cover responsibly managed, genuinely private information (including military know-how) that is truly not accessible for anybody to start looking at, when the government has an actual reason (as endorsed by the citizens) to keep it secret. But once that information is compromised, including effective compromise by too much sharing within the government, then we all have a right to know, and the government has the responsibility not to pretend it is still secret no matter whether they do it to suppress political discussion or to save themselves the embarrassment of admitting they fouled up. In other words: government secrecy is supposed to keep information from the enemy, not from the common people. Wnt (talk) 23:38, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Norway reportedly publicizes the income and paid taxes of each of its citizens.
—Wavelength (talk) 22:56, 8 April 2015 (UTC) and 23:51, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
I think we generally object to a "right to know" when it means that we don't have a right not to tell. It's one thing for a government official or an office-holder in a private organization to lose that right, because (s)he always has the option of resigning; it is surrendered in exchange for payment. But when we speak of the ordinary person who is simply born in a certain country, that is another matter. Wnt (talk) 23:42, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
See The Right to Education | Education | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
and "Right to education" and Right to Education Project and other search results for "right to education".
—Wavelength (talk) 01:21, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
I think the taxpaying public has a right to know how its collective money is being spent. Families have a right to know exactly why their husbands/wives/children are putting their lives at risk whenever there is a possibility of war. Parents have a right to know how well or poorly schools are performing before choosing to move to a new neighbourhood. Perhaps, we don't have the right to know what pop star or royal family member is having an affair with whom... but sometimes the 'privacy victim' has a PR team that's actually the person leaking the news to the press. I'm a American living in England and I've been in Europe long enough to see the cultural similarities and differences. I guess, I would rather live in a nation that reveals too much than too little information to its citizens. Rhondamerrick (talk) 11:27, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

You have mail

Hello, Jimbo Wales. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Jbh (talk) 13:46, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

You won an opportunity to talk about legislation!

Call Congress to Stop Mass Spying
The part of the Patriot Act which the NSA says authorizes their mass surveillance of telephone and internet communications without a warrant expires June 1st, and the renewal is currently being debated. Please ask your US associates to contact Congress and express their opinion on it:

http://www.stopmassspying.com/

Please see [22] and [23] for important background information. Thank you Jimbo! EllenCT (talk) 14:07, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Hillary Clinton

An IP asked on your user page to copy this over as it is semiprotected. I have moved it here as it seems to be inoffensive. KonveyorBelt 15:11, 14 April 2015 (UTC) There is currently more discussion at Talk: Hillary Rodham Clinton about moving Hillary Rodham Clinton to Hillary Clinton. Although a lot of the arguments are based on WP:COMMONNAME, some users also wish to consider Mrs Clinton's own preferences. Your edit here has been often cited, but questions have been raised about its reliability and validity. There does not seem to be much evidence to go on. You might wish to provide a fuller account at Talk: Hillary Rodham Clinton to those users with questions. A CTRL-F search for "Jimbo" should highlight some relevant parts for you. 31.54.156.31 (talk) 13:30, 14 April 2015 (UTC)i

What kind of page protection do you want?

Hi Jimmy. Currently this page is protected so that only "autoconfirmed" users can edit it until April 26. I'm going to undo that after I finish writing this post.

One of the things I've always respected about you is that you've made it a point to keep your talk page open to all comers, and have made an effort to engage with newbies and outsiders when they post a question or comment here.

So a simple question: I've generally assumed that this page should be left open to edit, unless there's an acute problem with a persistent troll in which case limiting access for 12 hours or so would be OK. Am I correct in assuming we're on the same page about that? --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 00:48, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

As always, I have mixed feelings about it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:03, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Wow, that's a helpful response! --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 01:56, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Given that you go out of your way to insult me on a regular basis, you should be happy that I responded to you at all.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:27, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Well, I do defend you when you're in the right. Just try to be in the right more often! ;-).--SB_Johnny | talk✌ 02:53, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
It is easy to consider why one might have mixed feelings:
  1. On the one hand, it is nice to allow unfettered access to genuine editors who happen to use IPs or who are not auto-confirmed.
  2. On the other hand, there is a parade of banned and block-evading editors, many trolling, others beating their own personal dead horse (with overlap between these) who simply won't stay away, and, when reverted, are almost always un-reverted by supporters (usually, although they all claim "COI, heavens no, not me") or "frea speech" advocates (rarely, although the former often pose as the latter).
Category 2 is boring at best, and generally lunatic. Either way, they are disruptive. JoeSperrazza (talk) 02:14, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
That's exactly right.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:28, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Right indeed. There's probably a way to do actual analysis of this, but as a long-time Jimbo-talk stalker, it's pretty clear that the vast majority of the category 2 types could probably be discouraged by a 2 hour protection. There's also at least several thought-provoking or otherwise interesting comments per week here from IPs or new accounts.
I wasn't asking a philosophical question though. Just wondering if the 12-24h protection is better (in Jimmy's opinion) than longer protections, since I think the longer terms are overkill for the targeted contributors and of course prevent the category one contributors.--SB_Johnny | talk✌ 02:53, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Given that some of them have been around for nearly 10 years now, wasting their lives obsessing about me, it seems unlikely that 2 hour protection will have any meaningful impact. By the same token, semi-protection isn't a lot better, since the burden to post is pretty low in that case as well. I don't have a strong opinion - it seems like an empirical question really and we've not done any relevant testing.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:10, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Why not make another Jimbo (talk) page to be used by only those people who cannot post here? Trolls will be discouraged simply because on that other page no one else will post. Postings there by regulars or other IPs who can post here will be removed. Count Iblis (talk) 16:16, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Extending the policy/rights of living people for up to two years after their death

Have you noticed that at WP:BDP we have extended the policies/rights of living people for up to two years after their death? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 05:52, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

idon't see a blanket statement in that section like that, but it seems to me to be rather poorly worded and I found it difficult to interpret. Nyth63 14:14, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
I think this is a great idea. Some of the worst "nasty" violations tend to come around the deaths of prominent people. The dignity of their family and other loved ones remains important.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:27, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
I agree that it is probably a good idea, but the criteria questionable material and implications for their living relatives and friends are vague and undefined as is the time period that the policy would apply. Also, where does the arbitrary 115 year age criteria for presumed dead come from? Is it really 113 years with a indeterminate period added? This whole section could be better structured. It's is actually dealing with two separate issues, a life-span realated presumed dead and recently dead but they are mixed together in an arbitrary fashion. Nyth63 17:26, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposed new permissions group: Auditors (A direct appeal to Jimmy)

Jimmy with your indulgence I will move forward with my proposals which have been roughed out in the section above.

To very briefly recap: we have a crisis at Wikipedia that has been illustrated by the Wifione Case and the international attention drawn to the encyclopedia regarding the demonstrated fraud and abuse. Something concrete must be done now to regain user trust, and editor retention and confidence that the WMF Board and employees are willing to take prompt action to prevent further damage to people who rely on the encyclopedia as a source of respectable information. Specifically, paid COI editors are demonstrably slanting articles for financial purposes, some of which are fraudulent. Some of these paid COI editors may be administrators, as was the case with Wifione. The proposals are:

  • Paid COI editing must be banned by the Wikimedia Foundation as a Terms of Service requirement, without exception.
  • A new Usergroup, "Auditors," will be created as an Office Action by the WMF. Auditors would be unpaid volunteers with demonstrated Wikipedia editing experience, specially selected by the WMF, and required to be interviewed and disclose their identies. They would serve for two years, then be required to step down. Current Administrators would not be Auditors. An Auditor would investigate any and all edits and actions by Admins and regular editors that are arguably questionable as COI violations with a financial or political impact, or a blatant abuse of power. There would be a public Auditor's Page, open to editor and public input. Auditors would have no special powers aside from being able to raise questions and investigate and publicly discuss article edits without fear of reprisal, under the auspices and guidance of the WMF. Auditors would report to ArbCom or, in sensitive cases, privately to the WMF where Office Actions could result in remedies.

There you have it, Jimmy. This is still very much an ad hoc proposal, shaped in brief discussion in the section above. I guess this is the point to say I obviously need to disqualify myself from being an Auditor, as the proposal is my creation.

Frankly, without your blessing and backing, this proposal will likely die a quick death. I therefore take the extraordinary step of asking you if I may contact you by email with my personal information and further discussion for clarification, as I am a past volunteer at the WMF in San Francisco and already identified to the Foundation. Again, as I see it, you will need to guide and oversee this proposal, to firm it up, make it official, and push it past the predictable resistance it will draw from some quarters. For the record, I am personally utterly uninterested in debate with prominent Admins or editors here or elsewhere, as we are way past that stage in my view. At the risk of sounding officious or pedantic: Wikipedia is broken, and steps must be taken. Thanks for your consideration. Jusdafax 05:57, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

How do you go about proving that someone is a paid editor though? Easier said than done. This question is addressed at User:Jimbo Wales/Paid Advocacy FAQ, which says:

Q: If someone writes a well-balanced article, including criticism of the company they are working for, and the article was vetted by veteran Wikipedians, would they be considered a paid advocate? How would you be able to tell, and would anyone find out about it?

A: Wikipedia has millions of articles which have been written by people who give their time free of charge. Conflict of interest editing is generally confined to articles where someone has the money required to influence the editing process. It is almost impossible to prove that someone has received money for editing, but the style and tone of edits, combined with repeated insistence that things must be done in a certain way, and gaming the system rather than complying with the letter and spirit of policies, are often a good indication of a conflict of interest.

Frankly I am surprised that User:Wifione got away with it for so long, and this shows that the real problem is detecting this type of editing in the first place. Sometimes it sticks out like a sore thumb, sometimes it does not.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 09:13, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Which is the whole crux of the issue. Once detected, the problem was dealt with satisfactorially via existing rules and procedures. What Wifione was doing was already prohibited by the terms of service, (and on-Wiki policies, though the TOS require you to obey policies, so that's a bit redundant). No rule change could have prevented it. But instead, we're again deluged with calls to ban librarians and math professors from editing, with new rules which wouldn't have caused any difference in a problem case like Wifione. WilyD 09:31, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
"calls to ban librarians and math professors from editing". I think you're just making this up. Please give recent examples. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:59, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Calls to ban paid editors (rather than paid advocates) are quite common - and given that our rules already ban paid advocacy, such calls are calls to ban librarians and math professors from editing, since it's the only change being proposed - to claim I'm making it up is an obviously baseless personal attack coming from someone who's familiar with the subject. WilyD 15:47, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
You can't show anybody who is calling for "banning librarians and math professors." Your bluff was called and you got zilch to show. Rather than saying I'm making a personal attack, you should just admit that you were wrong. There's a lot of material on this page about misbehavior of admins. You've just added a perfect example. Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:02, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Here's you calling for the banning of librarians and math professors (paid editors) from article space. To claim you're unfamiliar with your own advocacy stretches believability beyond it's breaking point. Your continued baseless personal attacks and outright lies are unhelpful here (and probably everywhere). WilyD 16:06, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
Absolute nonsense - I am using the term "paid editor" in exactly the same way that the Terms of Use define "paid contributor": anyone who makes "any contribution to any Wikimedia Projects for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation," [24] with wording in the FAQs that specifically excludes librarians (and other GLAM employees) and university professors, editing in the normal course of their work, from this definition.[25]
Now you've been shown to be wrong. You can't come up with any example where people have called for "banning librarians and math professors." Please admit that you were mistaken and withdraw both your claims that I've engaged in personal attacks. Otherwise, there is nothing left to say. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:02, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
The proposal reminds me a bit about Représentant en mission, which was one of the steps on the way to La Terreur. In general, hard but rare cases are not a good guide to create general policy. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:29, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
How do you know the Wifione Case is "rare?" Jusdafax 09:59, 10 April 2015 (UTC)\
It's certainly rare that it was detected. How do you know your neighbour is not a secret mad axe murderer? Do you have any evidence of a systematic problem? WP:AGF is there for a reason. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:18, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
...and there, Jimmy, is how, in my view WP:AGF is being, and will be used, against those asking questions or advocating reforms such as creating the Auditor Usergroup. Jusdafax 10:28, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Also note how gravity is being used to hold down those of us who want to fly (and me more than most!). More seriously, you might want to phrase the above more carefully - it's not used against you, it's used against one of your arguments. I would also like you to see a substantial response to the argument - do you have evidence of widespread problems that your proposal would address? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:34, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
I think the Wifione Case is more than enough. As has been globally noted, the financial distress among certain Indian users of the encyclopedia is not negligible. If Auditors are in fact enabled, they can look into some of the more problematic business and political areas; if they find nothing, that would be useful too. As it stands, obviously anything I point at without ironclad proof won't be useful in this discussion and quite possibly deleterious to me as an editor. Which goes to the heart of my proposal, as Auditors would be free to openly scrutinize such areas of Wikipedia editing. Jusdafax 10:56, 10 April 2015 (UTC)


  • Hmmmm, a secret police force. Since those who are of fanatical inclinations are a clear minority on this site, we are to just set aside community decision-making in favor of WMF fiat. Do you also propose to set aside outing rules, or do you just wish to make ArbCom a bigger star chamber than it already is? Perhaps we can just set aside ArbCom altogether and the secret spies can report to some nameless bureaucrat in San Francisco who can impose non-appealable sentence without testimony. All this kind of nonsense will do is accelerate the rate of socking and drive the problem deep underground. And hey, if somebody is banned, they come right back anyway — since there is absolutely zero control over new account creation. Carrite (talk) 10:02, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
    • No, not secret at all, nor police. Merely editors enabled to ask questions without harassment. Transparent to the max, in fact, and dangerous only to those with something to hide, like admins or editors who edit with an agenda at odds with fair play. Wifione was a good example what what goes wrong without scrutiny of such editors. Jusdafax 10:21, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Have you learned anything at all from the way Russavia has been "banned" from Commons? Carrite (talk) 10:25, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Extreme cases of harassment can be handled as the WMF sees fit. Jusdafax 10:31, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
"dangerous only to those with something to hide" - The very same statement made by every inquisition in human history. Resolute 22:19, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
  • @Jusdafax: I think that your idea is a good step forward. However, I think that what's needed is a paid, not an unpaid, group of people who can do what you are suggesting: professional editors with stellar records. Sort of like a newspaper ombudsman. Otherwise I think there tends to be the same kind of issue that resulted in the Wifone scandal, which is a reliance on amateur editors who lack basic standards of ethics. That's not to say that you just hire any old editor off the street, but people who have distinguished themselves elsewhere, who might or might not be new to Wikipedia, but who can give the project a bit of a lift. The volunteer model works up to a point, but I think it requires adult supervision if we don't want more Wifones. The public needs a place to go if an editor like Wifone is pushing a private agenda, and who uses his position as admin, checkuser etc. to his or her own advantage, or to the advantage of friends/cronies/employers. Sure, ban paid editing and paid editors completely. But provide a mechanism so that the slimeballs who continue to push their paid agendas can be caught by pros who can detect such machinations. Coretheapple (talk) 15:55, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
As Humbert Wolfe so wisely put it:

You cannot hope
 to bribe or twist,
 thank God! the
British journalist.
 But, seeing what
the man will do
 unbribed, there's
no occasion to.

Not sure why paying someone makes them more reliable than an unpaid volunteer. Most Wikipedians are constantly on the lookout for signs of paid editing.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 16:07, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

If you can find eminent editors to work for nothing in such a responsible and high-profile position, by all means. But I'm assuming they'd want to be paid for their efforts. True, it could be viewed as a "dollar a year person" situation. Coretheapple (talk) 16:15, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Core, I disagree that Auditors would need to be paid. The invaluable moral weight of those acting from conviction, rather than gain, would give Auditors a distinct "karmic" edge, if you will. I do agree that the job would be difficult, so much so that members of my proposed Usergroup would have a two year term, and then be asked to step away, having served the world's free encyclopedia with distinction, as opposed to those seeking to exploit the website for personal gain. Thanks for your input, which I find friendly, thought-provoking and useful, but on this point I have to take a firm stand. However, it's all moot without the backing of our Founder, who I hope will see fit to speak out on this proposal, as well as the urgent need for the WMF to just unilaterally ban all paid editing from Wikipedia. Jimmy, I await your input with hope and good humor, as well as deep determination to urge concrete immediate action to detect and remove the Wifione's of this website. Thanks. Jusdafax 18:07, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
To me payment or not is secondary to the idea of having professionals do the job, people of good reputation who are not currently steeped in Wikipedia culture. I think that's the key. People like Steve Coll, head of Columbia J-school. Or a newspaper ombudsman type, or an editor of the Brittanica if one can be found. Coretheapple (talk) 20:42, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
As a practical matter, I find it hard if not impossible to imagine that there would be few if any, qualified individuals willing to take on the tasks involved here. Reviewing the entire history of other editors, which can at times extend into tens if not hundreds of thousands of edits, is an almost overwhelming task for anyone, and very few people would be willing to expend the time involved to do that sort of thing. John Carter (talk) 18:53, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Strongly Support: This is an excellent idea. I'm not sure who would be qualified, but I would certainly be willing to contribute to such work as an assistant (not a full-time unpaid of only 20 auditors--who would be overwhelmed with work) as it is so serious in my opinion, the entire reputation of Wikipedia is in jeopardy, causing us to loose good faith editors who are scared off by bullying. I do also support CoretheApple's proposal to have such auditors be paid: The key is that the auditors cannot be COI editors themselves, which is why the problem is so severe and intractable--foxes in the hen house. Protecting auditors from harassment of those they suspect of COI editing is crucial. Also, I agree there is no need for it to be a "secret police". The point is that when slanted and baised editing takes place one should be able to raise the issue without being banned by those doing the slanted editing for simply talking about the problem. That's what is happening right now and this is the best proposal I have seen to address it. David Tornheim (talk) 19:17, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Well, that's an interesting Freudian slip. When you wrote "Protecting auditors from harassment of those they suspect of COI editing is crucial", did you mean,
    • "Protecting auditors from harassment by those they suspect of COI editing is crucial", or
    • "Preventing auditors from harassment of those they suspect of COI editing is crucial"?
    I expect that the latter is likely to be as serious a problem as the former. A group that aren't trusted enough to have the admin tools will be encouraged to dig into editors' identities and employers? I know that I regularly get accused of being a pharmaceutical industry shill because I insist on following WP:MEDRS when dealing with crank topics like homeopathy. Will I be forced to out myself to these "Auditors"? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:11, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
I think that if you get the right people, outsiders, they are not going to care about the so-called "harassment" that takes place. People like that are familiar with the Internet and are not going to care about anonymous trolls. As for corporations and persons complaining, they would give them a fair hearing and would be familiar with best practices in such situations. That's why I would suggest using persons of as high a caliber as possible. They might agree to do it for free but I have doubts. Coretheapple (talk) 20:46, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
I did not see in the proposal that the auditors are supposed to do any kind of "outing" and/or research on the editors. Perhaps @Justdaxax: can clarify. My impression is they are supposed to do the kind of work that User_talk:Vejvančický did in the WifiOne case, and that they will be respected for their work rather than have to deal with the deaf ears User_talk:Vejvančický had to deal with or having those guilty of COI editing getting the auditor into trouble for trying to address COI problems.
No Freudian slip. Without protection, the auditors could not do their job: I have seen a number of cases where a group of editors who want a particular slant are protected by those who want that same slant. They can take any person who sees their problematic editing to ANI and get them banned by all chiming in together to say the editor's talking about the problem is the real problem, making it look like the "community" wants them banned, when, in fact, those who want the slant self-select to be judge and jury--something those not familiar with the subject will not know. Those who want the slant by chiming in together make a wall-of-text in the ANI disputes, so neutral 3rd parties are unlikely to take any interest and comment, making any challenge to their hegemony virtually impossible. It is my belief the auditors would be able to articulate the concern to the full community where they will not be banned for doing their job--something ordinary users cannot do, because of what I describe.David Tornheim (talk) 21:46, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
You've described to a T what I've experienced in one of the articles I'm currently editing. Editing to make the a puff piece neutral were reverted by an administrator, personal attacks against me ignored by that same admin, and editors forming a kind of Praetorian Guard to keep the puff piece puffy. A friendly editor offered to take the attacks against me to ANI but I know better; as you say, the wall-o-text will be erected. ANI is simply not suited for people who feel that admins have abused their power. The wagons are circled and an ordinary editor doesn't have a chance. I think that this auditors idea has some potential if it is handled properly, as a check on administrator abuse as there currently none whatsoever. Meanwhile I think tht there should be a moratorium on new admins until we figure out some mechanism for making it easier to deal properly with admin abuse. That's thorny because good admins might get chopped up by such a mechanism if the auditors are poorly chosen. Coretheapple (talk) 22:19, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Well described, David and Core. I will say that I have seen ANI work fairly, from time to time. OK, as I see it: Auditors would be chosen by Jimmy and the WMF Foundation from a pool of volunteers and editors contacted by WMF Auditor Overseers, paid employees of the WMF. There would be a period of training involved. The WMF Auditor Overseers could withdraw Auditor Usergroup membership at any time, though that would be rare due to the vigorous vetting process. The whole process has to be top-down, I submit. Some members of the admin community will protest vigorously if this proposal gains an ounce of traction. (Ten, I could mean my phrase either way.) Other admins will welcome the idea. But none of this is going to matter without Jimmy's backing, and the crucial step of the WMF banning all paid editing as part of our Terms of Service. If Wikipedia is not to drown in an increasing flood of fraudulent articles and those writing and protecting them, action must be taken. Jimmy, we need you and the WMF to take a stand. Jusdafax 23:29, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Why not have the committee elected on an annual or biannual term, by the community, but with a requirement for candidates identify privately to the WMF, with the onus of proving they have no conflict of interest, thus discouraging applications from those who do have such a conflict? 81.147.133.38 (talk) 10:47, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

pseudorandom break

Jusdafax's approach has obviously has something to it. A group of editors is already calling this proposal a "reign of terror" and a "secret police force". He must have struck a nerve.

Please note that this topic is is also being discussed at The Signpost "We are drowning in promotional artspam".

2 facts that are often ignored by those who accuse reformers of being "secret police"

  • This is all about advertising, advertising has never been accepted on Wikipedia. Just call up the WMF and ask for their advertising rates and you'll be told that you can't place an advert here. Oh, so you want to put in a free hidden advert? No that's not allowed either under several policies.
  • We know who the advertisers are, there's no need for an extensive or secret investigation. If the article on XYZ Corp reads like an ad, the XYZ Corp is by far the most likely force behind it. In many cases a simple polite letter to the CEO could take care of the whole matter. "Dear (sir or madam): Did you know the Wikipedia does not allow advertising on its sites? Our article on your company has been nominated for deletion because an editor believes that it is advertising. If you have any information on this feel free to contact this committee in private or you may comment directly (and publicly) on the "Articles for Deletion" page ..."

I'd suggest an expedited AfD system for commercial spam articles to go with this.

Now, this approach may or may not be the simplest or best approach to dealing with those folks who want to put free adverts into Wikipedia, but at least we can say that there are reasonable ways to deal with them. The problem is not insolvable, the solutions don't have to be reigns of terror.

I'll suggest that the WMF tackle this situation head-on. Please get some input from editors on how we can solve the problem (without a "reign of terror"), form a committee of interested editors (in much the same way that the FDC was formed). Then have them sort out the proposed solutions and make recommendations to the Board. A straightforward vote of editors may be needed as well (but not one of those RfCs where, if Carrite is right, banned editors participate). We can solve the problem,despite what all the nay-sayers claim. Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:02, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Do not get the Board to vote on it and do not have a "committee of interested editors". Those sorts of things bypass consensus-building, and from the size and scope of this proposal, much consensus will be needed to even get it off the ground. KonveyorBelt 23:43, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
I will be blunt and say again, this proposal will never be built properly, much less get off the ground, if it has to gain community consensus. The community failed to enact even the mildest community de-Adminship reforms back in 2010. Even a cursory look at the process at WP:CDA shows systemic admin resistance to that proposal. The idea of Auditors is much more radical, by comparison. Meanwhile, any thoughtful person is digesting the Wifione Case and the Newsweek article that includes the line "Wikipedia can be cynically manipulated by companies and... ...the credibility of the website is, especially in the developing world, a powerful and potentially dangerous tool." This is not about advertising, this is about fraud. So, the community can't solve the problem, as it is compromised and divided, and we are now a party to worldwide fraud, our credibility starting to unravel and legal and political clouds looming. Only a fast, top-down solution, designed to show clearly that the WMF will have zero tolerance for further gamesmanship, will remedy the situation. In my view, we are running out of time. Jusdafax 00:24, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Hidden advertising is a form of fraud (theft by deception) - you're right about that - but it starts with the advertising. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:35, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
The WMF has every right to protect Wikipedia's brand. Remember that it is the WMF's property, not the volunteers', any more than the Salvation Army's reputation is the property of the guys who volunteer to play Santa Claus at Christmas on streetcorners. The question is whether the WMF will take this step, and the history of this is not encouraging. Wikipedia volunteers are anonymous, so our own personal reputations are not tied up in the project (unless one uses his own name to act like a buffoon on-wiki, and that does happen). At a certain point proposals like this, which are commonsensical, tend to fail because of the WMF's timidity. Coretheapple (talk) 00:42, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
The WMF certainly does have the right, and a moral obligation as well, to protect Wikipedia's reputation. Some folks seem to think that they can sign up for an account, write a few paid articles, make a few !votes, and then they have the right to dictate WMF policies. The WMF has every legal right to deal with this matter as they see fit. They should also remember that their moral obligations extend, not just to current editors, but to readers, including future readers, as well as future and past editors. They should do everything in their power to ensure that future editors will have an acceptable working environment - not one dominated by paid editors.
Where I disagree with Coretheapple and Justdafax is that I believe that current editors overwhelming support removing paid advertising from our articles. And the WMF will eventually come around to realizing that they have to do something about the problem simply because it will not go away if they don't. Paid editing scandals will keep appearing every 3-6 months. So let's just ignore the nay-sayers, they obviously don't know what they are talking about - there are many possible solutions to this problem, and we're going to keep on trying until we find one that works.
That said, the current decision making process, RfCs seem designed to completely destroy the possibility of making a reasonable decision when more than about 20 editors are interested in the question. Folks just scream at each other and engage in shameful manipulations. Nobody can make sense of all the comments, and there is no sense of "we can work this out so that almost everybody will be satisfied."
Consider the multiple RfCs that followed the Wiki-PR scandal. Rather than have a simple up or down vote of the well understood Bright Line Rule, some editors spun off about 5 separate RfCs on the issue. That's a sure way to come to "no consensus." Rather than have 100s or 1000s of editors and readers mark their opinions, they just screamed at people who disagreed with them, posted outright lies, and drove reasonable people away, so that 30 or so people could control the outcome. Mass RfCs on important questions conducted like that simply do not work.
Now consider the RfC on the Terms of Use change a year ago conducted by WMF legal. Order was maintained. People were encouraged to record their views. One basic question was decided - one very similar question to those discussed in the 5 earlier RfCs. The result - the largest RfC in history with 80% of people in favor of limiting undisclosed paid editing. BTW, that proportion was nearly constant throughout the long comment period - nobody could possibly manipulate that result.
We should have a process that will come to a decision that will reflect the views of all editors and readers. To do this we need to gather various opinions in a systematic way. Then get a select group of people together who will work in good faith towards a solution that can be acceptable to nearly everybody. Then have a well designed RfC or vote on a single question with the entire community invited to contribute. Please have faith in the community - a couple of dozen manipulators will not stop a process like that. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:30, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
There's no doubt we want NPOV i.e. not salesmanship on our articles. But I fail to see a new solution in "auditors". So far as I can see, auditors would be the same as Wikipediocracy, except that instead of many being formally banned, and therefore able to question Wikipedia editors without fear of consequences, they would be formally impunitized, with similar effect. The problem of course is that WMF would take a lot of flack when editors under their aegis start taking on the wrong vested interests. Some religious institutions and affiliations are easy to make an inquisition into; others would assure certain doom to whatever discriminatory enterprise would make the suggestion. Some companies are readily questioned as spammers; others need merely rest on their massive ad budgets as proof that they have millions of devoted fans. Now it might be interesting to start an off-wiki club with more popular principals than Wikipediocracy, but I don't know if its evolution would end at a different place; in any case, entangling WMF just seems useless.
I would far rather see if people can think of ways in which ordinary editors in the course of ordinary editing could get a better shake here. Wnt (talk) 12:27, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of auditors, but I feel Wnt is making a lot of sense here. Whistleblowers should be protected from arbitrary mistreatment.→StaniStani 18:48, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
@Jusdafax: If the proposal will "will not be built properly and will never get off the ground" in a RfC or similar consensus building exercise, I think it says something about the quality of the proposal. KonveyorBelt 19:14, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Well, you ignore the fact that groups can organize off-wiki and easily create faux consensus, be they PR reps or ideological zealots, they can outnumber and completely blindside independent editors during consensus-building (particularly if they've got admins on their side). Quoting Atsme:
Paid Editing Proposals - In November 2013, there were three main discussions and votes on paid editing: No paid advocacy - (closed: opposed) Paid editing policy proposal - (closed: opposed) Conflict of interest limit - (closed: opposed) petrarchan47tc 22:22, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
None of those proposals had any fake consensus or groups collaborating. Can you find some real examples? KonveyorBelt 00:39, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

I think the problem is that we can't have individual editors here harrassing others whom they decide have an undisclosed COI based solely on the fact that they disagree with that editors POV. There is a basic asymetry here that is reflected in a lot of our articles about corporations: If you add poorly sourced and or WP:OR material that is negative, or remove properly sourced material that is in some way positive, its just a "mistake". If you make such a similar "mistake" that is favorable to the company, you can count on someone accusing you of being an undisclosed paid editor or shill of some sort. Hell, that happens a good fraction of the time when the negative information is poorly sourced and demonstrably false. The likelihood of facing sanctions should not depend on the politics of the edit, or else the fear of sanctions will drive our articles into NNPOV. Formerly 98 talk|contribs|COI statement 23:10, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

A question

So, these "auditors". Do they have any special powers or don't they? I'm not merely talking about user rights here; I know they won't have extra user rights. But are editors obliged to answer questions the auditors asked them? Do editors have to disclose to auditors personal information like real name and employment history on request, lest they be blocked or banned? If yes, then I fully agree with the concerns of Carrite and TenOfAllTrades above. If so much as one bad apple got onto that committee, they could use their power as a club to silence people they're involved in disputes with, or to push their preferred version of an article. And if they don't have those powers? Then they're just regular editors who have the right to investigate things and ask questions. Which isn't really a right at all; people can and have been rooting out paid advocates for years. A WikiProject for interested editors seems like the most reasonable thing to do, and it doesn't require the WMF's approval. --Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 01:29, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not speaking for Jusdafax here, but IMHO, this committee if that is the form that emerges, should focus on expeditious deletions of all the obvious advertisements we have now. Obviously they can ask questions of editors - just like everybody else can. And obviously they cannot force editors to answer. Think 5th amendment here. But if an editor doesn't answer or gives a non-credible answer then the committee can make their decision with the best facts they have available. Think 5th amendment again - you don't have to testify against yourself, but that doesn't mean you're automatically innocent. But I think the committee should focus on the advertiser, not so much the editor. The advertiser cannot hide its connection with the advert. "Special sale on XYZ widgets" - who do you think is responsible for that advert? So a polite email to the CEO is likely to work wonders. He/she may say "Oh, I'm sorry, we didn't know back then that advertising is not allowed on Wikipedia." Or they may say "But the DEF PR firm said that they'd guarantee that the article would stay in WP." I think in general responsible firms (most firms are responsible) would in general cooperate at least to the extent of saying, "please pull the advert, we don't want to be part of breaking the rules." Now we don't want dozens of individual editors writing to CEOs, though in theory they have every right to. One organized committee with proper training and trusted editors could probably do this very well though. The committee would likely receive some information about editors, just in the normal course of evaluating articles, e.g. they can see a certain pattern. Or perhaps they'd be allowed to investigate the advertising websites where editors advertise their writing services and the committee might notice a pattern there. The committee should be able to report this type of info privately to the ArbCom and expect to have the ArbCom take it seriously (rather than banning them for outing an editor!). Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:17, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
I am 100% in support of blocking and banning undisclosed paid editors, and every single editor here is empowered to remove any and all "Special sale on XYZ widgets" content at any time. I have recommended deletion of promotional articles at AfD hundreds of times and have never taken a penny from anyone to edit anything here, so please do not accuse me of being a shill. But I consider it hilarious that those who want to ban paid editing also want to set up a special squad of WMF paid editors to root out the paid editors. Bizarre. This is an encylopedia approaching 5 million articles. Some editors here find it incompehensible to believe that that unpaid editors without any overt conflict of interest, acting entirely in good faith, might be willing to write or improve articles about notable business enterprises. So, editors can focus on Japanese anime, or butterfly species, or 1970s video games or whatever floats their boat, but if they work on an article about a business enterprise, they are suddenly beyond the pale, and we need a squad of paid "detectives" to investigate them. I grew up in an environment of radical socialism, and fully accepted the distrust of corporations. My off-Wikipedia social media comments are often harshly critical of corporations. But when I started editing Wikipedia, I accepted the concept of the neutral point of view, and that means corporations and businesses deserve NPOV coverage here. We wouldn't allow an editor pushing the point of view that rock and roll is terrible music to tendentiously edit Eric Clapton, so why would we hire a squadron of editors to wage war on our articles on businesses, and the editors who work on them? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:05, 11 April 2015 (UTC)


(ec) In my proposal, Auditors would be free to investigate and ask questions without intimidation and fear of being blocked, and would file cases with ArbCom as needed. In highly sensitive cases, they could report to the WMF. Sound excessive? Here's what Newsweek states in the article regarding the fraudulent business school IIPM, that impacted so many people financially:
Students paid up to $15,000 for IIPM’s courses. “What IIPM was really selling was aspiration,” says Mahesh Peri, publisher of Careers360, which has successfully defended itself against two libel suits over its reporting on the school. ... In 2013, IIPM got an unexpected boost for its page. A new initiative launched by Jimmy Wales's Wikimedia Foundation offered free access to Wikipedia from mobile phones. The program, Wikipedia Zero, launched in India and other parts of the developing world, including Thailand, Myanmar, Morocco, Ghana and Malaysia.
"In my opinion, by letting this go on for so long, Wikipedia has messed up perhaps 15,000 students’ lives,” Peri says. “They should have kept track of Wifione and what they were doing—they were just so active."
Tonda Vejvancicky, another veteran Wikipedia editor, says there could be many more stories like the Wifione-IIPM case. "Often nobody notices, or nobody cares. The project has become too big to be manageable by its current editorial staff.”
15,000 students! It's my sense that all of us, from Jimmy on down, are responsible. We have not done enough, and a horrible stasis has paralyzed editor ability to ask questions. User:Coretheapple and User:David Tornheim have illustrated above some of the diffculties faced by investigative editors attempting to make changes. Doubtless there are numerous other such incidents. A team of Auditors, exempt from pressure but careful not to recklessly accuse others of wrongdoing without cause, would in my view be a good place to review cases that prove difficult to detect, as was Wifione's. We owe it to those we have failed, as well as future users of Wikipedia, to enable due diligence. To fail to act decisively now is, I feel, unconscionable, and I continue to hope the Jimmy and the WMF agree that office action is needed swiftly. Jusdafax 04:44, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Jusdafax, the Wifione situation deserves sober reflection and analysis by every serious editor here. Those who raised red flags about this editor, those who opposed their RFA, those who gathered the evidence - they all deserve our accolades, and we should request their insights about how to prevent such debacles going forward. Those who defended Wifione, and dismissed their critics should apologize, reflect and learn. But to blame Wikipedia and Wikipedia alone for the bad things that happened to those 15,000 students is a step too far. This was primarily a failure of the legal system and of investigative journalism in India. Yes, Wikipedia failed in our coverage of this specific school in India. We are not perfect but should always strive to do better. But flogging ourselves on the back so aggressively that we die of blood loss is not the best solution. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:20, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
@Cullen and others. I wrote the original article about this in December 2013. All the points I made there are valid. They include the fact that, through its financial power and the peculiarities of the Indian legal system, IIPM was able to block even government sources critical of it. This meant that there were few 'reliable sources' supporting criticism of IIPM, which Wifione deliberately used to her advantage. Another issue is that administrators are almost invulnerable to criticism. In one instance, another administrator said that Wifione was not compelled to answer conflict of interest questions, and that “repeatedly insisting on it could be considered harassment”. Later, when I politely questioned her by email, she was able to complain of harassment as an administrator on the English Wikipedia, and asked for my account to be blocked from Wikipedia meta. "Administrators are held in such a degree of trust on Wikipedia that it is almost impossible to challenge them". Perhaps you don't need a special class of auditors, but why not a general principle of cutting slack for those who challenge conflict of interest, and not treat them as pariahs, or ban or block them? Think also why that article had to appear on Wikipediocracy, and why it couldn't appear on Wikipedia itself. All companies and government organisations have an audit department of some kind, as a check and balance against abuse of the system by insiders, or small groups of people who have usurped power. That's the reality of human life: we can't assume good faith, particularly when there are powerful forces wanting to exploit good faith. You can't repeal human nature. 81.147.133.38 (talk) 10:33, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Re "cutting slack" etc: No, there is no practical way to ensure that a group of thousands of people change their behavior. But your point on the audit departments is correct. What's needed is a mechanism outside of ordinary Wikipedia channels and not consisting of other Wikipedia administrators to deal with instances of conflict of interest. In the "Newsweek" thread I just quoted from that article that you mention, which by the way is applicable to the current situation in Talk:Wikipediocracy. There, unlike with Wifione, there is an undisputed conflict of interest among two administrators editing the article, and it's the same "if you don't like it you can lump it" mindset. Those kinds of attitudes won't change overnight. They might change if admins with COI begin to realize that the party's over, that auditors can be contacted who can take action, and those auditors won't be their buddies. Coretheapple (talk) 13:29, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
By the way it’s a bit unfair to say that Wikipediocracy is a venue for COI editors. I contribute there, and I have no conflict of interest regarding anything I ever wrote for Wikipedia (I contributed on medieval philosophy, on which I am a published writer, on set theory and a bunch of other theoretical topics). WO is a good alternative venue for people like me who are banned. And if you ask why I am banned, it was for challenging a then very senior and respected Wikipedian about his conflict of interest. I don’t agree with paid editing at all. Even when you are writing in absolute good faith, it is terribly hard to be neutral when you are being paid to promote something. 81.147.133.38 (talk) 14:36, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
I was referring to the article, not the site. Coretheapple (talk) 14:56, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
I know, but elsewhere you have criticized the site. You need to ask the question why ex-editors such as myself need to use such a site at all. It's simplistic to say we are all banned trolls or paid editors or whatever. 81.147.133.38 (talk) 15:03, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
The message boards are a bit of an echo chamber that support commercial editing. That's not only my observation but that of a regular there (Herostratus?) on this page or somewhere else. I think that if you guys were less of an echo chamber, were less obsessed with "der Jimbo," you might have more credibility hereabouts. As for why you need to post there etc.: if there was a functioning bunch of auditors, unaffiliated with the current power structure here, and if it worked, there would be less of a need to let off steam offsite as the only alternative. That's why, although I had my doubts originally, I think this proposal has merit if a firewall can be established between the auditors and the current power structure. Coretheapple (talk) 15:17, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
A forum is a forum. As for ‘echo chamber’, it was for that reason we introduced external campaigning: researching a problem, writing about it, then placing it in the media. You can see it has had some effect. Note this section about paid editing. For example " One of Wikimedia's largest donors accused in paid editing scandal" (The Daily Dot, 14 April 2014). The problem with this form of 'auditing' is that it potentially hurts Wikipedia. It would be better to internalise this in a way that is less damaging, but until the internal culture changes, this will not happen. 81.147.133.38 (talk) 16:50, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
All I'm saying is that even to a person who is not especially well-disposed to Wikipedia, some of the posts have a demented quality to them. Running around saying that such-and-such is "evil" etc etc doesn't say much about the target but makes the speaker sound unhinged. You can always tell when a person drifts over from those forums because of the gusto of their paranoia and generally crackpot quality. Sometimes they go around with their real names, boasting about how they edit from work. Now that's the dictionary definition of "dumb f---k." Oh and then there's the doxing, as I recently noticed was directed at me and an admin viewed as "evil" because he blocked a friend (the genius I alluded to who uses his RL identity). That's just creepy. I've noticed that before, by the way: An attitude of strong opposition to administrator abuse, Wikipedia "corruption" and COI, unless their friends or themselves are involved. Then it's OK. Don't you find the hypocrisy repulsive? Coretheapple (talk) 16:57, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • (multiple ec) Core once again nails the point and the IP posting is quite relevant. The Wikipedia community, and the power hierarchy in particular, needs to be held accountable, and we regular editors need to hold said hierarchy accountable by every peaceful, legal means necessary to effectuate change. It starts by thoughtful discussion on this page, which is a safe haven courtesy of our host, who holds the bully pulpit of the Founders Chair. The Gordian Knot of abusive editing for personal gain can only be cut by Office Actions from the WMF. They indeed have the power to create a check, and balance, to our currently broken system of Wikipedia governance by creating Auditors to oversee Administrator and regular editor actions and editing patterns. Admins like Wifione need to know someone is empowered to look over their shoulder, and that their actions have consequences. (I should also again emphasize the need to end all paid editing at Wikipedia, period. It's a slippery slope.)
The alternative to creating Auditors is to deeply change the way admins are made, and to make it much easier to de-admin them, as Jimmy has suggested above, but as I have also pointed out above, we as a community missed our best chance in 2010 with WP:CDA. The list of admins !voting against it is of interest. Many admins, created when standards were much lower and possessors of lifetime tenure, are obviously deeply resistant to any change whatsoever. They control the block button and can silence their critics by intimidation, threats, and finally a click. A pretty good lifetime deal! Auditors would level the playing field. A set term for Auditors would add additional insurance against corruption and influence, and the mere existence of Auditors may prevent fraud and corruption. I say yet again, I do not believe a majority, or even a sizable minority of Admins are anything like Wifione. But without some mechanism urged by Jimmy and installed by the WMF, Wikipedia will likely lurch from further crisis to crisis, shedding editors, influence, and ultimately the most important aspect a free encyclopedia can have... credibility. Jusdafax 15:45, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
I think the key is that ordinary editors have to have a comfort level in bringing charges against admins, without the feeling that they're going to start World War III, that will be a time-suck, that it will WP:BOOMERANG, that the admins won't band together and defend their own, as they do. The current systems simply don't work where admins are concerned, especially in COI situations. I've had two admins, both with acknowledged COIs, at Talk:Wikipediocracy. Off-wiki there has been a bounty placed on my RL identity and the RL identity of an admin who blocked one of their regulars. See [26] All that took place in a discussion started by a founder of the website, who is a moderator and administrator there, who has been editing Wikipediocracy to insert puffery, and who is not just an administrator but a checkuser here. I think it's pretty scandalous that a person in trust at Wikipedia behaves this way, but they can, because they know they can get away with it. There is a feeling of entitlement. In this case, there might be a belief that since the article in question involves a website that they are involved in, and which they feel performs a public service, and since they have toiled so many hours on behalf of Wikipedia, their involvement in the promotion of that website on Wikipedia is excusable.
Similarly, some months ago an editor who engaged in paid editing (drafting an article for pay) insisted with great indignation that he'd toiled away in the vineyards of Wikipedia and was disgusted that his COI was being questioned. He went on to actively, aggressively and successfully oppose efforts to strengthen the COI guideline in the real of paid editing, refusing repeated entreaties that his COI, his involvement with paid editing in the past, at least be acknowledged and disclosed. In the real world such an attitude would be a one-way path to the unemployment office. Here, it's typical. Coretheapple (talk) 16:14, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
The harassment you speak of highlights the importance of David Tornheim's earlier comment, "Protecting auditors from harassment of those they suspect of COI editing is crucial ... The point is that when slanted and biased editing takes place one should be able to raise the issue without being banned by those doing the slanted editing for simply talking about the problem. That's what is happening right now". Harassment is definitely a favoured tool of spindoctors here, from my experience. The fact that it can potentially extend into RL is a serious concern.
I would also agree with an earlier statement from Core that whether or not the auditors would receive compensation is of secondary importance. @JusDaFax, we owe you a deep debt of gratitude for crafting the proposal and seeing this through. I agree that a solution cannot depend on community consensus, as discussions (and articles) on WP can be quite easily hijacked. petrarchan47tc 23:37, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
Petra, thanks, but I certainly have not seen anything through. I have created an informal proposal and answered a few questions about how I imagine it could work. As I say, I don't see this going through the community, as in my view we are past that now. I also say again, the WMF and Jimmy need to be on board, and if they choose to ignore this now, well, I and we could come up with a formal proposal and pitch it as a first draft. We could try pinging Maggie or Philippe. But at some point it will be obvious that it's dead for the moment. But who knows, if (and probably when) the next Wifione is detected, perhaps this idea would be revived. That's a worst case scenario. The best case is that Jimmy and the WMF publicly get behind it soon. The reality may be somewhere in between. Thanks again. And Jimmy thanks for hosting this page. It's kind of a virtual City of Refuge. Jusdafax 05:56, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Section break - Vejvančický on the Wifione Case, and where we go from here

This page is watched by more than 3,000 editors, and I believe it is watched by most of the members of the "core Wikipedia community". Multiple editors (including myself and Jimmy Wales) notified the community repeatedly and directly on this page about Wifione at least since the late 2013, see:

One would say that so many people interested in Wikipedia and watching here would notice, investigate properly, and form some independent assessment/conclusion. But reality was different. After many notifications, Wifione resumed editing as if nothing happened and nobody said a word. Not a single editor (out of thousands watching here, including Wikipedia co-founder) cared because (almost) all of us are volunteers, we have a lot of things to do, and we don't want to waste our time investigating things that are too complicated (what Wifione did was a sophisticated business) or things we are not interested in. But then, who is responsible for real world damage and consequences for the poor families in the third world? Unaccountable anonyms maintaining this website even in the highest "positions of trust"? No. Nobody. Nobody wants to get their hands dirty. There's also another aspect. This particular case has been noticed and might have been handled earlier by competent Indian editors, but, as one of them told me, they didn't want to "fight this case" as the consequences could threaten their real world existence. I would even say that many editors/anonyms here may think that I am a kind of a madman - I'm editing openly, under my real name, and by initiating this exposé I threatened a really big business of a powerful man. Please note that in the past, the IIPM filled lawsuits against Google and Indian government websites. Who would criticize them openly and for free? Only a madman. This weekend I showed the Newsweek article to my cousin and explained him the context. He told me that I'm crazy and asked if I'm not scared. But I digress. It doesn't matter whether we handle serious problems with the help of "auditors", at ArbCom or ANI or COIN. In my opinion, this website needs to change completely its attitude to uncontrolled anonymous editing, as it is too big and its impact on real world is gradually more and more important to be left in the hands of "anyone who can edit". Our "open" and "free" attitude is great, but also laughable, when we realize that PR companies are making millions under the veil of our openness. We are naive and irresponsible and we may believe in noble ideas, while they fully realize the real opportunities and money this project offers. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 08:47, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

  • Well Vejvančický firstly, we all owe you thanks. Sometimes you do have be be crazy to get things done, here or anywhere. That said, you have done something I didn't think possible, which is make my proposal look moderate by comparison. A forced outing of all editors is something even I had never thought of. I'll be blunt, it would take a lot more than this to bring that about. Whereas, in my proposal, Auditors would be tasked to look into allegations of this kind. I agree that something has to be done, and quickly, to prevent fraud and corruption in Wikipedia. But I suspect a big percentage of Editors would walk away if outing was mandatory. And I doubt the WMF would stand for it. Which brings us back to Auditors, as I see it. Trained to ask the right questions, effective in detecting crime and major policy violations, free from obstruction by block or threats. In my view, that's why no one cares. Because if you do, and you dig around, look under rocks, and name names without solid proof, you can be silenced and shut down. I salute you, and your bravery as pretty darn unique. I'd nominate you to be our first Auditor, in fact. Jusdafax 09:22, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I thank you too. When I read the WifiOne case, I was very impressed with your high quality work and its results. I have recently become very concerned about pro-industry editing which only came to my attention recently. Since editing in 2008, I did notice some articles were owned, but it seemed relatively slight and not big problem, and I used to trust Wikipedia to be NPOV with reasonable criticism of industry, but now I notice it is being erased and replaced with PR, and it appears nearly impossible to do anything about it, as so doing will lead to bans and other intimidation by the pro-industry editors. I hope that we can push for reform to curb this behavior. Although I was glad to see the restriction on paid editing, I think we can agree it has done little to solve the increasingly bigger problem. I hope you can be active in helping to work on proposals like Justdafax's auditors to address it. I believe your voice will be crucial in getting any substantial reform taken seriously. And again a big thank you for your excellent work. And now, let's hear from everyone who thinks nothing substantial needs to be done... -David Tornheim (talk) 11:11, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I'll jump into the snake pit I suppose as a disclosed paid editor and run the risk of being accused of some kind of corporate manipulation of policy discussions. My mind at first blush went straight to where this conversation is just now reaching. Consensus as a decision-making tool is too easily gamed by POV pushers of all kinds. This includes not only paid editors, but legal antagonists, self-citation academics, a teacher's students, open-source enthusiasts, fan-boys, persistent critics, and even extortionists. "Consensus" and "anyone can edit" leaves Wikipedia extremely vulnerable to manipulation by anyone with the motivation to do so. This will always be the case; the question is not how can we eliminate it, but how we can reduce it, make it more difficult and marginalize its impact. There are a few different directions one could take in finding solutions (a) attempt to attract more quality editors with more diverse interests/demographics (b) Create alternative decision-making processes that are less easily gamed than consensus (Arb-Com is one example of a consensus alternative) (c) Make it more difficult to sock and easier to detect socks. CorporateM (Talk) 14:40, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Thanks to Vejvančický for readdressing the issue, but do our efforts at Wikipediocracy get any thanks? I spent a lot of time putting together the article published by WO in December 2013. Others put in a lot of work correcting some of the errors in the original article. Another contributor (still in good standing on-wiki) contacted Alastair Sloan at Newsweek to feed him the facts, the links and contacts, which he supplemented with interviews (e.g. with Roger Davies, Mahesh Peri of Outlook). The rest is history. The Newsweek article achieved more impact on Wikipedia than any other scandal, (although user:Qworty came close), judging from the threads here, and has the potential to achieve real reform on Wikipedia. Of course it's crazy that we had to go externally to a major publication, causing negative coverage across the web. @Wnt ("auditors would be the same as Wikipediocracy"), well partly. The difference is that Auditors would not publicise their investigations in mainstream publications, causing damage to the reputation of Wikipedia. You can have it either way. 86.148.130.13 (talk) 18:15, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
    • I think Peter has identified the elephant in the room: virtually all of the major successes in handling serious conflicts of interest have come from Wikipediocracy. Aside from the evidence compiled there against Wifione, Wikipediocracy was also responsible for identifying serious conflicts of interest in the cases of User:Qworty and User:Little green rosetta/User:Fasttimes68, not to mention a few other such cases. In contrast, our record at handling COIs on Wikipedia is pretty poor; the most recent case I can remember that we (Wikipedians) handled ourselves was Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/TimidGuy ban appeal, which ended by validating questionable COI editing and releasing an additional COI editor onto the topic area in question. Not exactly an encouraging moment. If no one else will do it, I will: Wikipediocracy deserves our thanks and is currently the closest thing this site has to a functioning process for dealing with COIs. MastCell Talk 23:18, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
MastCell can you clarify what you mean by "serious"? I think I know but would be interested in hearing what you mean. Jytdog (talk) 23:47, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
By "serious", I mean "real" or "substantive". That is, the kinds of things that a sane adult who lives in the real world would consider a conflict of interest. In contrast, much of the Wikipedia discussion about COIs is centered on a hypothetical math professor who edits mathematics articles, or a physician who edits medical articles. Neither of those examples remotely constitutes a COI, but somehow Wikipedians can't seem to understand the distinction between these examples and a real, serious COI. MastCell Talk 16:34, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
You could compare Wikipediocracy to a free press operating completely free of government, exposing corruption both of the main actors and the internal controls. But is that how the project wants to operate? I joined Wikipedia (back in 2003) because I was impressed by the ideas of openness and transparency that it represented. I never quite imagined it would turn out like this. 5.80.82.33 (talk) 06:00, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
I've said it previously and I'll repeat: This case would be nowhere without Wikipediocracy and particularly without banned User:Peter Damian whose integrity, firm ethical stance and also competency should be model for any Wikipedian.
Negative mainstream media coverage of Wikipedia, such as the Newsweek article, help to inform public about the Wikipedia's shortcomings and contribute to public awareness about the problems our project faces. It is something Wikipedia should value immensely, if it claims to be a free and open project striving for accuracy, impartiality (and transparency?). At the end, valid criticism should serve as an inspiration for improvements in any environment seeking to improve its quality, it is not just a thing we should be ashamed of, or try to hide from public view. Also, substantiated criticism and valid arguments have to be judged per se, and cannot be dismissed just because of their originators.
--Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 07:39, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Another question

This proposal is justified in part in terms of the putative need for a group who can raise questions about COI without "fear of reprisal". What exactly are the examples of legitimate raising of questions under the process described under WP:COI that have led to "reprisal"? Can we get the input of some editors who actually work the COIN board on this question (@Ronz: @Ronz: @Ukexpat: @Jytdog: @Smartse: @MER-C: @Athaenara:? I see plenty of examples of people taken into ANI for Talk page violations, and for repeatedly and abusively bringing up unsupported COI allegations on Talk pages in order to gain the upper hand in a content dispute. But I am not personally aware of examples in which reprisals occurred against editors who raised their concerns via the WP:COI pathway of politely raising a question on a user talk page followed up by an inquiry at COIN. If anything, I'd say we have the opposite problem, which is that WP:GF and WP:NPA are not adequately enforced. Formerly 98 talk|contribs|COI statement 15:49, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

This from the person who is working with others on Bayer to keep this kind of criticism out of the controversy section, supporting @Kingofaces43: to edit war out that criticism: here, here, here and here, along with @Jytdog: who accused me of canvassing here for talking about the 3RRR violation (but sees no problem with the 3RRR violation). Talk about foxes in the hen house... David Tornheim (talk) 22:52, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
David personal attacks like this are not OK. Jytdog (talk) 23:02, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Don't worry. I brought the behavior to the right NB here, although I have no doubt you consider it canvassing to raise an issue with such pro-industry slanted editing. There is no ad hominem. I provided evidence of the behavior. David Tornheim (talk) 23:32, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
ridiculous. when will you start editing and stop grandstanding? Jytdog (talk) 23:37, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
Yup, pretty much taking my edits out of context,resorting to personal attacks, and making false claims about going past 3RR. This is a good example of the kind of behavior and pitchfork mentality we want to avoid considering Formerly 98 and I were actively working on how best to wrap controversy over products into the article, not remove it. The talk page conversation shows enough in that regard. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:56, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

David, thank you for providing a brilliant example of the problem I was attempting to highlight. The behavior you have provided evidence for is "Formerly 98 makes edits that are not in accord with my political beliefs". It does not logically follow that this is evidence of biased editing, unless one assumes that your own beliefs are the universal standard of Truth. Is that your position? Formerly 98 talk|contribs|COI statement 00:00, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

^It's not "off-topic". It's called Witness_impeachment. David Tornheim (talk) 21:14, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
Timidguy has already been mentioned, so not much else needs to be said. We need to focus on content: We need to be better at recognizing the quality of sources. When there is a need to focus on editors, there better be good reason to do so: We need to be better at differentiating between legitimate complaints (those made with strong evidence to back them) from the illegitimate ones. --Ronz (talk) 20:55, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Alternate proposals

I should put a header here where people can make other suggestions than the "auditors" to deal with COI/paid bias. My thought is that Wikipedia could easily do better in terms of tools to examine bias that should be readily available to all users. For example, there's a WP:Wikiblame tool, but people don't use it much because it's not handy on a page (erm, whoops, actually it is now if you enable Javascript! But it's still offsite). So there are often stories where one person added a few sentences of hoax, but only one was removed by an editor, because no one bothered to go back and figure out where the hoax went in. We might also have a link to "contributions" from history edits that dumps us immediately in the contributions of the editor at that time, the 25 before and the 25 after and a bolded entry in the middle for the edit in question. The tools readily at hand for the ordinary editor are the ones that really make a difference - the rest is a lot of drama with little real effect on the encyclopedia. Wnt (talk) 01:48, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

We need all sorts of ideas and alternatives here. Folks have been concentrating on just 2 choices - 1) keep everything as is, or 2) a committee of auditors. I suggest we let a thousand flowers bloom and don't be afraid to list possible solutions that seem to contradict other possible solutions. Some suggestion already made in the extended discussion:
  • make notability requirements for businesses much stricter
  • enforce the notability requirements we already have
  • make the Bright Line rule (no paid editors on article pages) a policy
  • enforce the rules we already have against marketing, promotion, PR, and advertising
  • have an express deletion policy for articles on commercial topics, if no consensus is reached in AfD, then delete these commercial topic articles.
  • prohibit paid-editing by admins, arbs, checkusers, and bureaucrats (we have to know that these folks are not being paid off)
I'll add a few more
  • Have the WMF communication folks let all media know that we don't accept ads or paid-for articles. There are too many articles in newspapers and on the web that suggest otherwise. Challenge them!
  • contact the advertised businesses about adcruft articles.
  • allow editors to present evidence from those publicly-viewable websites where advertisers hire writers (closing our eyes to this just doesn't help)
  • ban every editor/writer who solicits business on those websites
  • prohibit paid editing on BLP articles (exception for removing libelous material) - BLP articles are sometimes used as a way to push the subject's business.
  • and sure, have some sort of committee to enforce these rules where our current admins and arbcom do not.
  • let all new editors know when they sign up that paid editing is not allowed.
  • makes sure all participants at AfC know that paid editing is not allowed.
  • declare a moratorium on all new articles on commercial topics until wee can properly review all of our current articles on those topics.
Please add more. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:14, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Jimmy, what's the next step?

WMF legal has been clear that they would like the community to be the main force in enforcing our rules against undisclosed paid editing. Believe it or not, ArbCom has said that the Terms of Use are not Wikipedia policy and that they have no mandate to enforce our rules against undisclosed paid editing. They've said that they can't or won't enforce this. One admin has been caught doing paid editing, and another bragged on this page how he did it (over a year ago). Any attempt to show that somebody is doing paid editing is met with a warning not to do anything that might possibly out someone (even on a private list).

So we've got a rule on paid editing that nobody can enforce. We've got an obvious problem with paid editing. And we've got various proposals for new rules on paid editing and for a mechanism that should help enforce the rules.

2 straightforward questions:

  1. Will you put this on the agenda for the next Board meeting?
  2. If you can't or won't, what's the best way forward for concerned editors to do it themselves?

Sincerely,

Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:12, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

I call the question. Let's put it to a community vote. (What, now we're not so enamored with pseudoparliamentarism, are we?) Carrite (talk) 12:52, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
Are you hyperventilating again? This is a simple request for Jimbo's help in getting this issue on the Board of Trustee's agenda. Why not make the changes through a simple RfC? Frankly, I don't think any major issue can be resolved by RfC anymore. There are too many people like Carrite who try to shout down any proposal they don't like, e.g. with cries of "It's a secret police force" or "it's a reign of terror". The manipulations used in the RfC to make the Bright Line Rule policy is a good example of what can happen. 5 separate proposals were made, almost ensuring that nothing would pass. But just a few months later, with the Terms of Use amendment, run in a fair manner by WMF legal, a watered down proposal passed with an 80% majority. I would expect that any proposal generated with Board approval would go through community approval, and I'd expect it to pass with a similar majority.
That said, I have no problems with folks who want to second my request, and I can't stop folks who want to say "no this is not a good idea". Please do it in a responsible manner however. Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:39, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Strong support with thanks to SB and JusDaFax. petrarchan47tc 18:49, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment. Most Wikipedians don't like undisclosed paid editing any more than the WMF, so why not just ratify the statement from the Terms of Use as policy? Go to WP:Paid editing (i.e. WP:COI) and propose to add one sentence at the bottom of the "WMF position" section, after the quoted text, namely "The Wikipedia community has ratified these terms as community policy." You can have a discussion/centralized discussion/RfC/whatever on the WP:COI talk page. Once that is done, Arbcom should be able (and required) to act as you wish. I can't actually complain about ArbCom not acting before that is done, because I would worry about a form of governance where ArbCom gets text straight from the WMF terms of service and is free to twist interpret it to mean what they want. The community would be cut out from having any say over the policy if that were done. But since the community wants a say, it has to use it - to ratify that those terms are OK with us. I've seen WMF do some things communities don't agree with, and there is a time when editors may refuse to help with that, but I don't think this should be one of those times. Wnt (talk) 21:40, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
    • The Terms of Use are policy on Wikipedia as stated in multiple places, e.g. WP:List of policies and WP:Terms of Use, and essentially always have been. Policies don't need to be re-ratified to become policies. The entire Wikimedia community supported the change in the terms of use in the largest RfC in history by a 4 to 1 margin. Some might object that non-en:Wikipedians !voted but it is clear that most participants were native English speakers. Cut the supports in half if you want to eliminate participants and you'll still get a 2 to 1 margin of supports. Now the ArbCom has said that they won't enforce this policy (also, in effect, the WP:COI guideline which contains the terms of use changes in full). So we need to have a way to enforce the current policy. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:14, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Renewed assistance in a repeated manner

Your Majesty:
If it pleases Your Majesty, I should like to give a suit that I hope you can address. Your Majesty may remember a certain discussion of about a year ago, whereby there was an attempt to move the article Hillary Rodham Clinton to "Hillary Clinton". As many here may be aware, others and I opposed the proposal for divers reasons. At a certain point, the discussion boiled over into Your Majesty's chamber, as matters of this sort often do. Being most helpful, as Your Majesty is by both design and desire, you contacted the staff of the subject of the article in question. Your Majesty revealed that the aforementioned communication was granted a reply, whereby the subject's preference was said to be for the appellation "Hillary Rodham Clinton". Whether this shred of information had any impact on the result of the move discussion is far beyond my knowledge, but I do believe that such knowledge, granted by Your Majesty's grace, built a strong foundation on which to build the necessary defensive fortifications.
As it happens, certain subjects of Your Majesty, led by a certain wayward Minister of the Crown, intend to apply themselves to this matter again in the near future. My opinion remains as it was, and I imagine that the same is true of most others who participated in the prior dialogue. However, as those of Your Majesty's subjects who wish to charge forth against the likes of "Rodham" show no sign of relenting, I believe that it would be useful for Your Majesty to once again contact the staff of the subject of the article in question. Does her expressed preference remain as it was, or have years of fighting to retain that name in the midst of an endless torrent of slander and libel given way to acquiescence? I wonder, as it is, but I am granted no such right to wonder on these matters. That is within the purview of Your Majesty, and it is for that reason that I bring this suit to your office. If it pleases Your Majesty, I should ask that this petition be granted.
I have the honour to be, Sir, Your Majesty's humble and obedient servant,
His Grace The Duke of Gloucester [ RGloucester — ☎ 22:38, 14 April 2015 (UTC) ]
And when her PR people inevitably tell us she still likes Rodham, maybe tell them to update her official website and social media accounts to reflect that and tell hundreds of news organizations this as well before we bend our own rules. Calidum T|C 00:39, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
Lowly behaviour in the King's chamber! Never! This is not the place for such disputes. One will find, Your Majesty, that your subject who commented above is in a state of error, in addition to being quite coarse. Not admirable qualities, as one might imagine. The lady's name, as used by "news organisations", reputable biographies, &c., is "Hillary Rodham Clinton". As I said above, however, such matters are not meant for this place. The associated arguments can be found where one might expect to find them. RGloucester — ☎ 01:06, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
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