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Test for 1CA

This should go to Archive_232. Pldx1 (talk) 16:34, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Professional Manager Magazine

Just received my copy in the post today, a very fetching front cover sir! 82.20.11.154 (talk) 22:56, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Auto-archiving on this page broken? Providing a test case

Don't write anything in this section, this is a test... Pldx1 (talk) 19:12, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

This is just another test

If ClueBot III is working as documented, then this section should be archived very quickly! Wbm1058 (talk) 15:49, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Archiving

Could someone please manually archive this page and could other people please not revert it? If there's something still to be said on the old threads, let's start a new one. I am hopeful that the archiving bot will start working again once we reduce the size of the page. Alternatively, I wonder if there is a 200 page limit or something. I don't have time to properly investigate!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:12, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Done; I put the archivebot number at 202. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:28, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Alot of the archive pages are pretty small. Given they are low traffic, they could always be bundled together or something to make fewer pages overall. Mine are about 4 times as big so this archives could be condensed into 50 pages or so. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:28, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Had a look at the archivebot parameters:
  • removed "|index=no", which according to the User:ClueBot III documentation appears to be doing nothing in this case;
  • set "|minkeepthreads=" to 1 instead of 2
  • set "|maxarchsize=" to 350000 instead of 250000 per Cas Liber's suggestion above (which is not "4 times as big", but about the size of the archiving that I performed earlier to get the apparent stumbling block out of the way. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:53, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Suggestion by User:Casliber is typical of what shouldn't be done. Computer problems have to be solved by computer science, not by undocumented adhoc patches. If the archiving bots are in trouble, this is a general problem, that could mess a lot of pages, the administrative pages among them (ANI and the like) and could happen as well on other projects (like meta).
Changing maxarchsize= to 350000 will not result in 350000-sized archives (this is documented).
About the previous problem, I found that changing from MiszaBot/Lowercase sigmabot III to ClueBot III was done at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=next&oldid=482365272 (16:59, 17 March 2012). This was done for a not documented reason. Part of the changes were done using a pair of <nowiki>...</nowiki> to comment out the previous configuration. But this was wrong, since a talk page is a mix of code and data. The pair <nowiki>...</nowiki> disallows the inner {{User:MiszaBot/konfig}} to be recognized as a transclusion. No more, no less. This doesn't avoid this inner {{User:MiszaBot/konfig}} to be recognized as a configuration file by some Bots (at least by OneClickArchiver). And from there, the two counters lived independently.
It could be useful to undertake a full review of the archiving bots, especially a review of how they articulate with each other (auto, oneclick, indexing, etc.). Perhaps a skilled, professional, paid, accountable programmer (put in charge following the adequate commanding chain) could help ? Pldx1 (talk) 15:20, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Additionally I put the "|age=" parameter to 24 now (which equals Miszabot's prior "old(1d)" algo parameter I suppose.
I completely removed the commented-out Miszabot archivebot configuration. If that's undesirable for the OneClickArchiver functionality, I'd revert to the plain Miszabot configuration (without commenting out, without double configuration of a second archive bot: maybe that's where the auto-archiving went belly-up). --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:39, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

The solution from the skilled, professional, paid, accountable programmers (well, how accountable they are is a matter for debate) was a product called "Flow". How that handles archiving, I don't know.

I'm skeptical that the size of the page, in and of itself, is the problem. The longer we wait for the two sections below to get archived, the more apparent it becomes that the problem is on the back end. The bot was "sleeping" from 07:46, 24 October 2015‎ to 23:33, 9 November 2015‎, a gap of over 600 edits, while a dozen one-click archives were done. The page was briefly below 100,000 bytes during that timeframe, yet even that wasn't small enough to wake up the bot. It eventually resumed archiving when the page was just over 120,000 bytes in size. I'm guessing that we have a similar, as yet unresolved issue, this time. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:56, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, "The core got started on a broken Labs instance..." whatever that means. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:05, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Flow... I was more prudent in my requirements. Better have a chief of project who understands what will be on input, and what should be on output. Auditing a set of code is something else... and a good starting point for mutual confidence. By the way, {{User:ClueBot III/running}}
    The current status of ClueBot III is: Running
    (was Not running - last edit was Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard 41032s ago when posting) Pldx1 (talk) 18:39, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
    Special:Contributions/ClueBot III: last update as of this writing was 19:08, 25 January 2016 to archive Talk:Disruptive innovation. As I said, the bot is running, which makes it more curious why it isn't archiving this particular talk page. The archive of the BLP noticeboard was several edits ago for that bot. So the User:ClueBot III/running is kind of bogus. That is updated by DamianZaremba Scripts, not by CB3 itself. I'm sure that the bot is "not running" most of the time. It's likely scheduled to run at specified intervals. It runs at those intervals, performs whatever archives it deems are required, then sleeps until the next scheduled interval. If enough time passes between CB3 edits, perhaps because there is nothing yet ready to archive, then the DamianZaremba Script seems to arbitrarily decide that it "is not running", even though it is; it just has nothing to do. And what's the point of a script to monitor whether it's up or not, if the volunteer operators are unresponsive when it's down? Wbm1058 (talk) 19:24, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
    4492 transclusions of User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis. So I suppose it takes a while to walk through them all; perhaps the bot never does take a rest, but just begins another cycle through them as soon as it finishes cycling through all 4492. Would be interesting to run a test to see how long it takes to get back to a page that it's just archived. Wbm1058 (talk) 20:02, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I've just emailed Cobi to see if there is any update yet on what is happening with CB3.--5 albert square (talk) 23:40, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Pre-production starts for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons tutorial videos

We are excited that pre-production has started for a series of motivational and educational videos that will introduce Wikipedia and some of its sister projects to new contributors.

Over the past several years, many videos have been produced to train new contributors. This series will feature VisualEditor and the new citation tool called Citoid. Additionally, the series will include an introduction to the Wikimedia Commons repository of freely-licensed media.

The video series and associated materials will help students and instructors who participate in the Wikipedia Education Program. The series is also designed to assist the professional staff and volunteers of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) with understanding how their content gains exposure on Wikimedia sites, and how to document or upload their content for direct viewing on Wikipedia and its sister projects.

The video content will be available in segments that can be viewed, translated, or updated individually.

There are currently volunteer translators for Arabic, Armenian, Czech, German, Greek, Odia, and Spanish. Additional volunteers with high proficiency translation skills are welcome to sign up on the talk page.

We are currently seeking feedback on the outline for the scripts, as well as suggestions for an attractive name for the series. Please leave any comments on this talk page!

Regards,

Pine✉ 21:43, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Series director and screenwriter

Notes

This series is funded by an individual engagement grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. A big thanks to the community, the IEG Committee, and WMF for their support.

James Heilman

  • A continuation of this

So the James firing is all clear, solved and archived by now. There was no need to condense or conclude. Glad to know. (That is: not a broken archive bot decided so, but someone involved). -DePiep (talk) 20:51, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

It's clear to me. It has been explained to you. If you don't agree, that's fine. We don't all have to agree on everything.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:06, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

James Heilman: not trusted by the WMF board, but allowed to edit?

New/remaining question: if editor James Heilman/Doc James is not trusted by the WMF board then why is he still allowed to edit? -DePiep (talk) 20:51, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

DePiep, I'm certainly no fan of the WMF's current management but that's a ludicrous question. Around 99% of the people on Wikipedia are people I'd trust to edit Wikipedia, but not trust with decision-making for a global institution with $80 million in assets. ‑ Iridescent 20:56, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I found three fallacies in your reply. Prize? -DePiep (talk) 21:57, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
What fallacies do you see in the answer exactly?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:06, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
It's been answered clearly. As a quick review - my vote to remove him was because of a pattern of behavior and actions that I viewed as violating the trust and values of the community. One example of this pattern of beahvior emerged clearly after he was removed - he made a false claim about why he was removed, and I got a unanimous statement from every board member involved that it was false. The community deserves better than that.
James has made a lot of noise about why he was dismissed which is utter and complete bullshit. He wrote a nice piece for the Signpost about transparency which implied that the board got rid of him for wanting more transparency. Utter fucking bullshit.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:06, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
JW: "violating the trust and values of the community." - No, lack of trust within the board. As that was the (legal) base. Not 'values of the community'. And: "... emerged clearly after he was removed" -- Again you use a motivation that did not exist at the time of voting. The wording "complete bullshit" may be used, but not as you did. As long as the community is not to know the backgrounds, don't expect me to copy your judgement as my own. -DePiep (talk) 22:18, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
So, you don't object to James sharing your email to him of 30 December, 2015? HolidayInGibraltar (talk) 22:23, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I told you why I voted. And it was for violating the trust and values of the community, in my judgment. Which meant, as well, that I lost trust in him "within the board" whatever that distinction might mean to you. The motivation existed clearly before my vote and was my motivation to vote as I did. There was a pattern of behavior which I think continues today - there's just a nice public example of it. As to whether he should share that email - that's not for me to decide. It contained information that the rest of the board has chosen not to share.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:46, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
JW: you say "the rest of the board has chosen not to share". Has the board actually made a formal decision not to disclose that information, or is it more a case of that they haven't made a decision to share it? IMO it's quite a difference. HolidayInGibraltar (talk) 05:36, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
The community might deserve better than James Heilmann and his removal might be justified as well. However the community deserves certainly deserves better than the current board and its information policy, more importantly due a lack of information the community has no way to assess whether it gets what it deserves. At this stage from the outside perspective it seems to be nothing but claims, hints and (intentionally unclear) formulations from the board and Heilmann and it is largely impossible to assess the veracity of any of them.--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:28, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
As it turns out, I agree with you completely. I have pushed for more transparency and explanation from the board about this matter, but at the same time, I respect that this is not my decision to make. I will continue to recommend it. I would like to say, though, that it is generally false that the board does not favor extreme levels of openness and transparency. They do. The "culture of secrecy" that James claims is not true.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:46, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Doc James is keeping a timeline of what's been said here. I'm following what you said about what is appropriate Board of Trustees/staff communication and agree with the gist of what you said about a "huge gray area", though without knowing more details I can't say whether I would have sided with Dariusz or the majority on the matter, were I there. I understand the difficulty of being unable to provide answers that will satisfy people without revealing internal drama that shouldn't be revealed. But what I really find uncomfortable is your continuing talk along the lines of "he made a false claim about why he was removed". I have not seen him making any "claims" about why he was removed. He has said "The Board has not been forthcoming (publicly or to me) about the reasons, though they have (officially and as individuals) repeatedly stated that “mutual trust” was the main factor." What is false about that claim? I believe I have seen James speculating about why he was removed, as have many, many Wikipedians with no first-hand knowledge of the matter. By continuing to imply that this had absolutely nothing to do with the reason for James' dismissal, and that none of the speculated reasons are correct, you leave me resorting to truly terrible possibilities... I'm thinking O.J., Cosby, that Subway spokesman... this is beginning to seriously damage Doc James' reputation. Why can't you just leave it at, "we just had a disagreement over that "gray area", and the "cause" for which he was voted out was nothing more than that? Wbm1058 (talk) 23:51, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Keep in mind that Dariusz did not disagree on the substance, but thought that James had apologized to the degree that he was willing to give a second chance. I'm happy to leave it in the gray area, but I think the majority of the community wants more specificity.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:46, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Probably because he's one person out of the entire board and the board needs to approve a statement rather than have statements from various separate board members all over the place? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:30, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Exactly. I believe I've said more than any other board member about it, to the point that I'm uncomfortable and I'm sure some of them are uncomfortable. But if I had my way, we'd have simply "pulled off the band-aid" and published quite openly. There are good reasons not to do that, of course. And there are good reasons to do that. What balance to strike? It's very difficult to say for sure, but I'm pretty sure that we haven't struck it in a way that has been optimal.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:46, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Can you give us one "good" reason without citing the privacy policies?..and also, if you cannot, when can we expect James to be "Globally banned" by the WMF for his 'crimes'?--Stemoc 02:40, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
I believe the "good reason" referred to open publication. One good reason is that people have different recollections of events, and not everyone is in the same place at the same time so minor differences in the recollection of one person versus another until the group agrees upon it is not helpful. Those differences could be minor but just having separate statements leads to the minor difference being the story and not the main point. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:51, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Evidence supporting my statements

Following the recent statements by JW I am planning to publish my email to the board from Oct 7, 2015. I have given the board some time to redact anything they feel is confidential. I have also requested they send me information of what statute, bylaw, or board handbook item they feel would make details, if any, confidential.

Additionally I do not see anything in Jimmy’s 12/30 email that should be confidential, and since I was not a Trustee at the time he sent it, clearly he did not consider it highly confidential either. But I prefer not to publish it without his consent, and I have no plans to do so.

I hope for a reply from the board by Feb 8 and plan to release the email on Feb 15th. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:09, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Why more drama? What's the point of it? prokaryotes (talk) 06:23, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
free speech? ([1])....,all relevant information should be made available--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:04, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
If the community can join together to oust an unwanted board member, they can join together to bring one that was community elected back in..I will also be proposing to increase community elected membership from 3 to 6..community should have majority if the board is inept in selecting the right "trustees" (keyword trust)--Stemoc 13:40, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Thank you Stemoc, that is very encouraging. Do you have any citation to back up your statement that if Geshuri is ousted then Doc James is back in? MPS1992 (talk) 23:29, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Lol, I didn't imply that? I said if the community is right now joining together to oust Arrnon, if its successful (which i hope it is), then it means the community can have the power to bring James back in. The voting on meta was supposedly an 'informal' Vote of No Confidence, no one voting there for a moment thought that justice will prevail but if it does, then it will surely open a doorway which has been shut and locked for over a decade now, you are new to Wikipedia MPS1992, so you wouldn't know that WMF does what it wants, regardless of the communities desires so if this can change that...as in be the turning point, where Wikipedia becomes a foundation run by the community instead of vice versa then why the hell not?...--Stemoc 01:45, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Commons is broken (solved)

Someone's managed to redirect traffic from Commons.wikimedia.org to wikimedia.org, breaking every single commons link. Hopefully fixed soon Adam Cuerden (talk) 18:52, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

It is Commons and Meta. Staff know about it. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#WM Commons and Meta seem to be redirecting to the WMF site --Majora (talk) 18:54, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T124804
There are a number of individuals trying to unbreak everything at the moment. Wikispecies has also been affected by the same problem. I, JethroBT drop me a line 18:58, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Tracked: Tue Jan 26 18:44:45 UTC 2016 (https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-January/081419.html);
Solved:   Tue Jan 26 19:04:41 UTC 2016 (https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-January/081419.html)
Elapsed time: 00:19:56
Pldx1 (talk) 11:09, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 January 2016

Please help me

Hi dear Jimbo Wales. I have more than 15000 edits in armenian Wikipedia (since 2010 years). I'm now admin of the armenian Wikiquote (q:hy:Վիքիքաղվածք:Ադմինիստրատոր դառնալու դիմումներ#6AND5, since 7 august 2015 [2]), patroller in russian Wikipedia, russian Wikiquote, Commons (still watching it User:6AND5/Bot policy). In armenian Wikipedia is the law, by which the can't block the user if there is a conflict with him. In jule 2015 user Arman musikyan blocked indefinitely my account. He had a conflict with me in 3 wikiproject. Sysop user:Lilitik22 said support unblock. User Arman musikyan said will leave (go away) from Wikipedia, if they unblock me. I do several times asked the reconciled, but he don't agree.

Very very please help me remove the my block in armenian Wikipedia--6AND5 (talk) 14:09, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Perhaps help update Armenian topics on enwiki: It can be very difficult to overturn decisions on some other-language wikipedias, so meanwhile, consider updating pages about Armenia, such as lesser-known towns, here on English Wikipedia, until more people can support you at the Armenian WP. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:34, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
  • In armenian Wikipedia begin attacks against those who want to support me. Former sysop Erjanik in august said that if I want to return to the аrmenian Wikipedia, I have to go to the headquarters of the organization Wikimedia Armenia. If there are not working laws, how to resolve the conflict. If everything is decided at the headquarters of the organization of Wikimedia Armenia, and I refuse to go to the headquarters, how to solve it? I have several times said let's make peace, but they themselves say that Wikipedia is a platform war, where I am their enemy. This is the law by which it was decided that the administrator having a conflict with the user, can't block it -(Wikipedia/Poll/Block). --6AND5 (talk) 19:04, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
  • In armenian Wikipedia there are only 2 people, to resolve this issue, but they don't want --6AND5 (talk) 19:04, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
  • How can I work in the еnglish Wikipedia, when I was 7 months busy with this conflict?--6AND5 (talk) 19:08, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Philosophy of free culture at the WMF

You recently said the Foundation was "constantly steeped in the philosophy of free culture". However, I am not sure that WMF employees really believe in the Free Content mission -- currently some extensions, for example Special:Gather, use non-free images for decorative purposes (an example is here), and there is actual resistance to fixing this because it would "translate into a suboptimal experience for our users". The English Wikipedia community has decided long ago that Free Content is more important to us than "optimal user experience", and so we only use non-free content in special circumstances, and we not only never use non-free images for decorative purposes, we also prioritise free content over "the best content we can legally show", even if this means slightly worse articles. At the same time, apparently the iOS app has used incorrect image attribution for more than half a year after the issue was reported. So if you are right and people are steeped in the philosophy of free culture, it does not seem to translate into actions that promote Free over non-Free content, or even into proper respect for image contributors in the sense that correct attribution of images should be more important than a pretty end product. Do you as a board member have an idea what is going wrong here and why? —Kusma (t·c) 10:16, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree with you completely. There's no excuse for using non-free imagery except in some very exceptional circumstances. Everyone I have ever met at the Foundation was very much steeped in the Free Content philosophy. I don't know anything about Special:Gather nor who is responsible for it. It would be inappropriate for me to go around intervening in specific staff decisions, but I'm happy to ask at the appropriate time and place that staff be given guidance from management on this sort of thing.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:02, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for your clear statement. —Kusma (t·c) 15:06, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
(Coat-racking) This Puritan approach to Fair Use is one of the things I most dislike about the Wikipedia project. I believe we should make maximal rather than minimal use of Fair Use. Suppose we followed the same philosophy for text that we do for images, that is, suppose we had a policy that there's no excuse for using non-free text except in some very exceptional circumstances. The result would be that quoting from a source is essentially forbidden, unless the source is in the public domain or CC. Even more: we would be discouraged from using non-free-copyrighted sources at all. I can't see that our image policy is any more justifiable than that policy. Looie496 (talk) 15:23, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Here's the way I think about this issue - I wonder if you disagree. When fair use competes with free images, we should strongly prefer to avoid fair use. When no free image is possible, then we "should make maximal rather than minimal use of Fair Use". What we don't want to happen is to have free culture contributors disheartened when their perhaps slightly less-good image has to compete with a fair use image of slightly higher quality. And we don't want to say "Well, there's no free picture of X, so we'll grab one and claim fair use" when it would be easy enough to get a free picture of X.
Fair use is a really important principle that we should like to see expanded. Just because someone owns a copyright to something, does not give them absolute and final authority over every possible use - and we should be clear about that. At the same time, a too easy reliance on fair use can harm incentives to great free stuff. So balance is required.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:30, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
That strikes me as a sensible attitude. But there are a substantial number of highly vocal editors who aren't nearly so, um, sensible. The particularly annoying situation to me is biographical articles, where often there are publicity photos available that we would be able to use, but instead we have a sucky thing that somebody shot with a mobile phone, or worse, no picture at all, because somebody could in principle have taken a sucky picture with a mobile phone. Looie496 (talk) 15:37, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
I have to agree with Looie496, especially in regards to pix of BLP. The "we could theoretically get a free photo of him or her" never made sense to me when we don't actually have a free photo but do have fair-use photos available. Another case is with CC-NC media. If we don't have "totally free" media available, why should we prohibit CC-NC media? Another case is "no non-free photos in lists." What does that accomplish? Why not just replace the non-free photos when a free one becomes available? Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:05, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
What is the incentive to obtain free photos if we generally allow non-free photos? Why would, say, pop stars agree to give us free photos if we also accept their copyrighted publicity photo? It does happen under our current system, not often enough, but why should we stop committing to free content? —Kusma (t·c) 16:55, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
I think the main criterion has to be "are we improving the encyclopedia?" Not allowing any fair use photos of BLPs does not, IMHO improve the encyclopedia. Neither does the effective ban on CC-NC media and the actual ban of fair-use photos in lists. Would it decrease the incentives to get a fully free photo? Perhaps slightly, but who really knows what the incentives are. I'd think that if the incentive is to get the photo you've taken into Wikipedia, then mandating the use of reasonable quality free photos over fair-use photos would keep the incentives the same. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:11, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Back in 2006 or so we were a lot more lenient about using non-free promotional images. They were used a lot on biographies and free images were a lot rarer. There were discussions when a high-res promotional image was replaced by lower-res free-image (of course, nowadays even consumer cameras are so good that they tend to produce higher-resolution images than what tends to be released in press kits). And—although this is a very personal opinion, which is easily disputed—press-kit images tend to be photoshopped. Most free images give you the real deal, which I prefer.
But all this is somewhat besides the point, as I think it misses the most important benefit. Not allowing non-free content to be used too liberally strongly encourages the creation of new free content that would otherwise not exist. The non-free images that could have been there in its place in the encyclopedia are still only one Google image search away. —Ruud 17:32, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Well, we do only use non-free text in exceptional circumstances, for example to comment on copyrighted quotes or lyrics. When using copyrighted sources, we write our own summary and refrain from Close paraphrasing or similar violations of the source's copyright. I do not see your point. —Kusma (t·c) 15:42, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

I would actually like to flip this whole discussion the other way around. In a multiformat, adaptive, big-data world as we live in today, does the community think that our usage of non-free material (per NFCC or at all) still makes sense... ? This is not the web anymore that we started out with when we originally agreed upon en.wp's fair usage of non-free media. Stripping this content from all sorts of 'alternate' views creates design and usability challenges, that are not a good thing to have. To have one 'primary' image in one view, and another in an article will be confusing to consumers (image is a visual identity and identifier). To put the challenge of non-free content in this context purely on WMF (employees) is not really fair. Perhaps it's time the community had a good RFC on how THEY see the future of fair use content in this 'new' world. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:08, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

I would also welcome this discussion. I think it is wrong when different standards apply for non-free image use (and for attribution of non-PD Free images) in the desktop and mobile worlds. If non-free images (or images without proper attribution) as visual identifiers are found to be acceptable in the mobile apps, they should be acceptable in other contexts as well (if non-free images are OK as decoration for mobile search, album covers should be OK to use in discography articles). But the current division between what happens in mobile and what happens in the mostly desktop-based seems to me to be a result of mobile being developed and discussed mostly internally by WMF employees, while policies here have been discussed and adopted by the wider community. Is there something we can do to fix that and operate by common policies and principles? —Kusma (t·c) 19:32, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Gather

  • From my experience, the commitment to promoting freely accessible and reusable materials is pretty much universal within the WMF. However, like any other large system, many people tend to focus on their own particular areas, and aren't necessarily aware of impacts in other areas. WMF product/engineering staff are, in my experience, highly committed to the principles of free and open software; there is a lot of reflection undertaken whenever they must interface with non-free software (e.g., in developing apps for proprietary smartphone software). They don't, however, always have a fluent understanding of how their products can affect the use of content (including non-free content), or the requirement that information such as licensing of images be immediately clear. From my own perspective, the Gather/Collections extension is so problematic that I'm disturbed it has not yet been withdrawn from this production wiki. (I have no problem with it being on a test wiki, which is where tests of new software should be done until they meet minimal standards, which this extension will never be able to do in its current iteration.) The software meets the "free" standard; however, it can be used to create content that includes non-free content elements (i.e., permits inclusion of non-free images in an inappropriate namespace without proper licensing information). Ultimately, the problem with Gather is that it allows users to create publicly visible content in the "Special" namespace, where users and administrators cannot curate the content (including but not limited to removing non-free images). It shouldn't be in the "Special" namespace. (See phabricator task T94782, and discussions on Mediawikiwiki) Risker (talk) 16:35, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
    There is now a formal RfC that is likely going to end up with the English Wikipedia community asking the WMF to disable the Gather extension for the time being. —Kusma (t·c) 16:55, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
    I really *like* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Gather/id/105/Some_dams_are_cooler_than_others. And you? Perhaps, a better approach would be discussing about how to rescue this kind of nice thing ? Pldx1 (talk) 18:06, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
    Me too. It has already been suggested to integrate this feature with the Wikipedia:Books feature. This would make it more feasible to moderate these lists. But even then it is not clear if we could and would be willing to moderate all these lists. Google and Facebook would be able to hire some extra moderators to do this. But as a donation-supported non-profit the WMF likely isn't in a position to do this. Unfortunately, you can't always have nice things... —Ruud 19:14, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
    That is indeed a nice example (also because the images work well here, unlike in many other Gather galleries). My only real complaint is that the image attribution is two clicks away. As I said here, I don't disagree with the idea, but the more I look at it, the more I disagree with the implementation. I wouldn't even mind doing some cleanup work if Gather was well integrated with the rest of Wikipedia, and I could use my normal admin tools on it. —Kusma (t·c) 19:17, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree it is nice. *My* complaint is that if any of those images were non-free or "fair use", nobody who has posted to this page recently would be able to remove their inappropriate use. Nor would anyone, including me as an oversighter, be able to revert, delete or suppress anything on the page if they included suppressible "captions" (for WP:BEANS purposes I won't post the four that came to my mind in under 30 seconds). They're not even beta level when it requires a WMF engineer with direct access to the database to curate the pages. Risker (talk) 20:03, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Suppose the software was efficiently written (this is not absolutely sure, but who knows ?). Then GatherNameSpace is a parameter described by a single line of code. Presently, we have GatherNameSpace="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Gather/". Do you suggest changing this single line of code into GatherNameSpace="https://gather.NEW.org/" where acronym NEW would be chosen to imply "Not English Wikipedia" ? Pldx1 (talk) 13:11, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
I think you're missing my point, Pldx1. Nobody with any permissions on this project can manage "content" in the "Special" namespace. Gather is in the "Special" namespace. Anything that can be user-generated and publicly viewable needs to be in a namespace that the community can curate. We need to be able to edit, delete, suppress the content; it needs to show up in user contributions and in the checkuser tables. The WMF has created this publicly-viewable content creation tool in such a way that only their staff can manage the content, which is legally very, very risky for them. It's also very suboptimal for the rest of the community. User-created content must not be in the "Special" namespace, which was not ever intended to be used for content creation. The fact that there is already a nearly-identical extension that does almost the same thing, with its own community-curated namespace, just adds insult to injury here. Instead of improving existing software, they went out and wrote really poorly considered new software. For some strange reason there seems to be a mindset in a certain segment of the WMF "product" department that what happens on "Mobile" is completely separate from what happens on "Desktop". This is not true; it's all the same website - and the overwhelming majority of content management occurs from the desktop view. Risker (talk) 13:33, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict) This would both solve and not solve the problem. It would solve the problem in the sense that this would make it clear that this content is neither moderated, nor endorsed by the English Wikipedia community. This would not solve the problem in the sense that some of these lists are still very problematic from a legal point of view, and the Foundation would be responsible for this. Now it would no longer be my problem, but it would still be a problem that needs to be solved somehow. (I don't think this is exactly what Risker is suggesting, though.) —Ruud 13:38, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Probably not quite the same. I wouldn't mind if Gather pages wound up in the user's userspace or some other namespace that is community-curatable. I don't actually think this feature will be used all that much, so I'm not terribly concerned about major workload effects. I'm concerned that we have BLP violations, copyright violations, obvious spam and seriously problematic content (all of which are obvious on a 5-minute stroll through existing Gather pages) that the community has no ability to curate. It's not like I haven't been hammering at Engineering/Product for several years about baseline acceptability for new extensions to be applied to production wikis. Risker (talk) 14:22, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
If you want to see a boring thing, you can go to the preceeding version of User:Pldx1/Books/Sageuk. So, please, don't try again to sell me the "Book" feature. But I would like to use Gather on these pages (and some others). Repeat after me: boring/whaow, boring/whaow, boring/whaow, etc. Life is that way. Pldx1 (talk) 15:11, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
I don't know what you're on about there, Pldx1; I can't see anyone who has been involved in any part of the discussion about Gather saying that the Books extension should not be improved. In fact, quite a few of us have said exactly that. There's no good reason why most of the features of Gather could not be incorporated into the existing Books extension, which otherwise meets all the criteria for implementation (curatable, logged properly, etc.) that Gather fails to meet, and will never be able to meet as long as it is in the Special namespace. There's not even a good reason for Gather to be in the Special namespace; it could exist as it is right now in the user namespace. There's no reason that Books should be boring. Risker (talk) 16:27, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Dear User:Risker. I have already noticed that Gather is currently engulfed in a long lasting attrition war. This is not the first one, and the best forecast about a long lasting attrition war is that it will last some time more. I was only saying, as a non-involved passerby, that rescuing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Gather/id/105/Some_dams_are_cooler_than_others would be cool. Pldx1 (talk) 17:50, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Arnnon Geshuri

The discussion may have been archived away from this page, but the controversy surrounding the ill-advised appointment of Arnnon Geshuri to the WMF Board of Trustees isn't going away anytime soon. Joe Mullin, "Wikipedia Editors Revolt, Vote “No Confidence” in Newest Board Member," Ars Technica, Jan. 25, 2016. Time for somebody to do the right thing. Carrite (talk) 21:05, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Dude - it's archived. That means that there's nothing requiring further response, right?  pablo 22:03, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Excuse me? What are you trying to say? The archive bot issue has nothing to do with anything. Indeed, I specifically asked that we continue relevant discussions. Don't pretend things that aren't true - it undermines our conversation but more importantly, it undermines your own clear thinking. If you go around thinking "oh, and Jimbo tried to hide the conversation" then your thinking is not connected to reality and you'll misunderstand reality as a result.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:09, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Let's see if we can find a better start to this renewed thread. JW, is there anything you can appropriately say to update and further inform the community on this subject? Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:14, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Newyorkbrad. At this time I can only say that the board discussions about this issue continues. Part of what is going on is an analysis of how this happened in the first place, what it means now, etc. I have opinions about what should be done (on several related issues) regarding increased transparency around the reasons for the removal of James, increased transparency around the failure of the process here (which is not entirely unrelated), and how we should fix it. Beyond that, I think it would be inappropriate for me to prematurely reveal internal board deliberations.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:22, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. Is there a date by which you anticipate the current discussions will be completed and further information will be available? I can't exactly point to myself as a paragon of wiki-timeliness, after seven years on the ArbCom, but given the overall situation it might be helpful to have some timetable if possible. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:29, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm afraid there's no timetable that I know about. I could speculate on when I think something further might be available but then that would likely be misunderstood by some as a promise or deadline or timetable. Not soon enough is about all I can say. :)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:58, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Hi Jimmy, quick query, could you clarify what specifically you're referring to when discussing "the failure of the process here" if that's not too much trouble, as there's several things it could be construed as relating to. Thanks, Nick (talk) 22:32, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Sure. The subcommittee of the board tasked with finding good board candidates did not flag this issue to the rest of the board, and as far as I know, they were unaware of it. I'm not going to speak right now as to whether or not the board would have voted to approve him after a full investigation, and I'm certainly not going to speak about my opinion of whether we should have voted to approve given what we know now. My point is that the process of selection did not flag the issue and so we did not deliberate about it. That's obviously a failure of the process. (A plausible position is that it could have been flagged, investigated, and deemed to be fine. Another plausible position is that it could have been flagged, investigated, and deemed to be not fine. But it is not ok that it wasn't flagged at all.)
As to my own culpability here, I can say that I feel remorse. I googled his name, I saw that he had been at google and mentioned in connection to that story, and I didn't dig deeper. I should have and I'm sorry about that. My only reasoning is that I was just googling for the hell of it - I assumed (incorrectly) that the process was working and that there was nothing to be concerned about.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, that's an explanation that makes a lot of sense to me, and nobody's perfect that I've met, and to make things better after a mess up, and to not repeat the same mistakes, reality embracement is the best first step, imo. So, I think its cool that you said what you just said. Nocturnalnow (talk) 05:18, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
@Jimbo:, great work by you and the board...wow, what a commotion, reminds me of the 60s, "power to the people" and all that; you really got something going here(Wikimedia) that is people servicing, community creating and even self-correcting, and that's utterly amazing. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:49, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Jimmy, at http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/14/wikipedia-15-foundation-endowment/ you are quoted as saying "Wikipedia seemed like an impossible idea at the time—an online encyclopaedia that everyone can edit. However, it has surpassed everyone’s expectations over the past 15 years, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the world who have made Wikipedia possible.” Given the gross amount of money that the WMF rakes in every year, one would expect the Foundation to have a board which inspires and surpasses the communities expectations; instead it seems we have a mickey mouse board overseeing a mickey mouse foundation which doesn't surpass our expectations, but continues to disappoint. "Neither Geshuri nor the Wikimedia Foundation responded to Ars' requests for comment for this story." is quite telling in relation to how the Board and WMF has yet to mature to the level's seen in the product. Is there any reason that no-one at the WMF would speak to the press? Only makes it look like the issue is being avoided in an attempt to sweep it under the carpet. Portingmain (talk) 23:41, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I was not asked to speak and I don't work at the Foundation, so I can't really comment on why they didn't respond. But I can say that I don't necessarily agree that it "only makes it look like the issue is being avoided in an attempt to sweep it under the carpet". There are many other perfectly good reasons to not comment on a story. It's not something I'm personally all that comfortable with as a matter of my own personality, but I've not commented on stories before for lots of reasons when it makes sense. If you don't have a comment that is helpful, or that won't be very likely misunderstood, then it's sometimes best not to say anything.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Jimbo, if you look at my contributions at your talk page over the years, I do not think that you will conclude that my input has been unfairly critical. If anything, I have been an editor who has come to your defense on many occasions. I am also the editor who raised this issue on your talk page 2-1/2 weeks ago, after I noticed a Signpost comment by Fæ, looked into the matter, and wrote an essay about my concerns. Since then, two former WMF chairs have expressed grave concerns, a current trustee describes her anguish (in German), a Meta vote of no confidence in Geshuri is running over 90% in favor, another current trustee Guy Kawasaki may have damaged his reputation in our movement by ill-advised comments, and the board has not spoken. Now, we have a highly respected administrator and long term former ArbCom member, Newyorkbrad, encouraging the WMF board to speak. I appreciate your comments here in this thread which acknowledge the seriousness of this issue. Jimbo, I believe that you and most of the other board members must be taking this issue seriously. Of course, it is entirely appropriate that the board takes time to consider the issue. But please consider this: Arnnon Geshuri, according to his own words, took only an hour to end a woman's career as part of an anti-competitive scheme between Google and Apple. That's prompt. How much time is reasonable for the WMF board to either re-revaluate the poorly informed (in my opinion) decision it made in approving Geshuri, or to explain to the community precisely why that decision was right? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:59, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Argument to keep him: with Arnnon Geshuri aBoard, there is a better chance to have at least someone knowing how to conduct a recruitment. And also someone that already knows that a poorly conducted firing can backfire. Pldx1 (talk) 11:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
As we are talking about a WP:BLP issue, note this is what the judge said: "There is substantial and compelling evidence that Steve Jobs (Co-Founder, Former Chairman, and Former CEO of Apple, Former CEO of Pixar) was a, if not the, central figure in the alleged conspiracy. . . . Email evidence reveals that Eric Schmidt (Google Executive Chairman, Member of the Board of Directors, and former CEO) terminated at least two recruiters for violations of anti-solicitation agreements, and threatened to terminate more. " So, let's be fair, here. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:33, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Alanscottwalker;Good info but I think the more compelling issue re: Arnnon is that he did not ensure that the board was fully aware of the extent and details of the publicized material about his involvement in the anti-trust activities before he accepted the position. This issue is compounded by the fact, I think, that any reasonable person of his intelligence level would/should have realized the especially problematic nature of him being appointed at this time a trustee of a non-profit/charity foundation and compounded yet again by the fact that litigation naming him as a defendant was/is still ongoing when he accepted the position.
Also, "just following orders" or "just a part of the overall" is not usually an acceptable reason for bad behaviour, although it might be seen as a mitigating factor by some. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:54, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
So, you're arguing he should have gotten himself fired, which is a very easy thing for one to argue with no obvious human feeling or thought, 7-9 years after-the-fact. As for what disclosures he made, you do not know anything about that -- so, again the easy virtue of the accusations and assumptions is as apparent, as it is morally wrong. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:29, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
The vote is not balanced for several reasons, like the opposition is better connected organized, and when people see the voting results its creates an additional layer protecting majority opinion. If there were an annonymous vote by the entire community Geshuri has chance to prevail. Another thing to note about the BBC coverage, it leaves out the related organisation by the fired WMF trustee, and his group. Many voters appear to think that with their vote somehow DocJames could be welcomed again, possibly another reason for the results. Also i know of several editors who do not bother to vote, because they know it has no weight. prokaryotes (talk) 02:49, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Was it closed or moved ? Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:53, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

We can only hope that there is an announcement forthcoming. Carrite (talk) 18:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Commons and Meta are currently broken. Staff are aware of the situation and are working on fixing it. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#WM Commons and Meta seem to be redirecting to the WMF site --Majora (talk) 18:57, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
It was just a temporary software glitch. The correct page is on Meta (not WMF) and it’s functional. — Wlgrin 23:16, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Gayle Karen Young

Supporting the motion with the following comment:

Per Anthere, and complete lack of trust in board governance and executive leadership. GayleKaren 08:51, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I thought it was a spoof at first, but the trail leads here. Gayle Karen Young was director of HR at the foundation. Why is she saying no trust in board governance and executive leadership? Executive leadership is Tretikoff yes? I find this hard to believe. See also "Wikimedia Foundation welcomes Terry Gilbey as interim COO; bids farewell to Gayle Karen Young", by Lila Tretikov on March 20th, 2015" Peter Damian (talk) 19:30, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Its worse than we thought

His response, imo, is patronizing happy talk completely ignoring the wishes of the community or what may be best for WMF. I think the board is going to have a really hard time getting him out now, even if they decide they want to. He boils it all down to "I have a longer journey" and his use of the "I" word 20 times in 3 paragraphs says it all, imo.Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:02, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

And appears not to have had the desired effect. Peter Damian (talk) 22:23, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
  • The Linux community has also recently had a similar change. Perhaps we are ahead and they are just coming into line with our approach.[1]

References

  1. ^ Anderson, Tim. "Linux Foundation quietly scraps individual memberships". The Register. Vulture Central. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
MPS1992 (talk) 23:51, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Arnnon Geshuri's statement is, in my opinion, pure unadulterated corporatespeak utterly devoid of substantive content or responsiveness to the legitimate concerns of many sincere and respected members of our movement. Most experienced Wikipedia editors value frank words that clearly express actual thoughts and ideas, and almost instinctively reject self-serving gobbledygook. If he cannot comment substantively because platoons of corporate lawyers have told him that he shouldn't since he is a defendant in a Google shareholder lawsuit, then he should not be serving on the WMF board until at least he is able to speak freely, which he clearly has not done with this nonstatement. I remind the Board of Trustees and Arnnon Geshuri that transparency does not consist of issuing damage control statements carefully crafted by PR professionals that happen to contain the word "transparency" or similar synonyms three or four times. Transparency means, at least in part, frank acknowledgement of legitimate criticism and substantive response to the issues at hand. Weeks of dithering followed by an evasive, unresponsive reply is the exact opposite of genuine transparency. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:52, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
We have seen how a majority of the Board of Trustees can dump somebody they do not like by a simple vote. Let's see if they make use of functionality now that they actually have a reason to do so. Carrite (talk) 07:14, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
It's like we are at Arbcom and discuss a controversial edit from 2008. Judge him by his actions at WMF/Wikipedia. Assume good faith is a core principle of us. prokaryotes (talk) 17:09, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Let me get this right. You're saying that background checks are irrelevant? So we shouldn't bother with them because they are pointless and unnecessary. We should assume good faith of everyone, so for example we could hire Bernie Madoff for his financial expertise, as he could help us manage our endowment, and should only judge him by his actions after he is hired. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:36, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
You compare a convicted criminal who spearheaded company directions i a snowball scheme, vs someone who fired someone because it was his responsibility. The no poach agreement involved dozens of high class companies and their executives. Geshuri could have ignored the email from his boss, or he could have said something like, okay lets battle it out with Jobs... He actually acted responsible, based on existing agreements. Today he works at a company which pays among the highest wages in their industry. That speaks volumes. prokaryotes (talk) 19:43, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Getting the wrong signals...

So what do we have thus far?

  • A WMF board taking extensive time to figure out what went wrong – isn't finding out what went wrong something that could be delegated to WMF personnel, so that the WMF board do what they're supposed to do?
  • Arnnon Geshuri devoting extensive "talks" to securing his position, so also absorbing large amounts of time to something that is far from the core business of the WMF board.
  • Wikipedia editors (like myself in this post) devoting time to this non-issue, instead of writing an encyclopedia, !voting away at meta etc.

Geshuri's position in the WMF board is long past the point when it became untenable ("untenable" being an expression understandable in corporatespeak without needing further explanation, I hope) – so it can safely be called a non-issue.

So here's what should happen (if board members have half the qualifications I expect them to have that entitle them to their positions it already has happened more or less along such scenario) IMVHO:

  • Put a vote of confidence on the agenda of the next board meeting. Maybe Geshuri survives such vote, but would he take the risk to let it come to an actual vote of confidence?
  • Talks with Geshuri on this point should be devoted to safeguarding the miriad of engaging projects and ideas he promised to bring to the Wikimedia projects: find a way to realise such plans with a Geshuri not on the WMF board. If they can "only" be realised with Geshuri on the board I don't know whether I'd trust the plans to start with.
  • Looking into what went wrong during the appointment procedure is something quite independent of what needs to be done now: in other words a lame excuse to stall what needs to be done.

On a personal note I was offended by Geshuri's "next generation of editors, contributors, and users" – are his intentions to wheel out the current generation (like myself)? Please wheel out Mr. Geshuri when he appears to be clueless about what is going on. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:44, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

+1 to Your last paragraph. I stumbled over the same words: Another Board member, who wants to change the Community instead of being part of it. --Magiers (talk) 12:20, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
I’m not so sure that such wording was a mere personal blunder from Geshuri (nor do I believe that he put out that statement without approval from other board members). Reading the problem statement about “Reach” (with its ominous warning of probable demise unless something is done urgently about some poorly defined problem), I get the distinct impression that the WMF leadership does not believe in the successful continuation of projects as they exist today and instead believes (and wants to impress on the community) that a broad reform (likely involving serious changes in goals and methods, and therefore consumers and contributors) must be implemented at once. In that case, it’s only logical that they would be keen on recruiting agents from the more successful layers of the corporate world, bringing with them the shining promises of the Eldorado.
— Wlgrin 07:31, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
As a side note, because this question isn't really relevant to the Geshuri situation, this is not an accurate assessment of the situation: "WMF leadership does not believe in the successful continuation of projects as they exist today and instead believes (and wants to impress on the community) that a broad reform (likely involving serious changes in goals and methods, and therefore consumers and contributors) must be implemented at once". There is something important going on, and change is required - but not to our projects, our values, our goals, our methods. We should all be concerned about the next generation of contributors. We don't want to become an aging community without newcomers - that's not healthy for the encyclopedia and it is not healthy for our values.
There is a great paradox that we have to be careful about. I think most people agree that the Foundation should become more effective - software improvements are badly needed and desired by the community, as just one example. In order to be more effective, we need board members who come with key expertise (such as in hiring). We should not think of this as "bringing with them the shining promises of the Eldorado" nor should we think that there's some dark corporate conspiracy going on. I want the Foundation to get better at hiring, and I want them to have good guidance from the board.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:19, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes, agree with all of that. Sorry for my earlier bluntness: if it helped getting a non-issue (that was weighing down the community) out of the way, that's all I was aiming at. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:35, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

His resignation

this is an announcement of resolution it seems. Congrats to Arnnon and all concerned. Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:38, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

I thought they would make a real vote maybe, sad to see him leave. The 200+ votes only represent a fraction of the community, *sadface*. prokaryotes (talk) 21:42, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
It was running 11-1 or so and the situation was getting inflamed. Thanks to Mr. Geshuri for doing the right thing. Carrite (talk) 03:46, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
He did the right thing because he realized that he was in a no-win situation. The board wasn't going to defend him because he was making Jimmy look bad, and the board's mission is to make sure that doesn't happen (hi Doc!). Good luck finding the next potential sacrificial lamb, WMF board! --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 04:17, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps the board will consider floating nominees' names publicly next time before appointing them (since the people on the board of the encyclopedia-thing haven't proven to be very good at researching). --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 22:21, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. If you want to get people excited about Wikipedia and WikiMedia, involve them. Yesterday a guest at my club's lunch was a state senator who used to teach pre-school, a job she says prepared her extremely well to work in the legislature. The secret of working with toddlers is to give them control, but not so much control that you get chaos. I believe the same principle can be applied to Wikipedia. Before appointing anybody, post a slate of candidates (maybe just one) and ask for feedback. Then ask the candidate(s), based on this feedback, do you still want to serve? If you do that, I think the situation will sort itself out very nicely. Jehochman Talk 14:22, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
That would certainly be closer to ideal, though if the current members of the board don't take some steps towards mending relations with the volunteers (and staff, perhaps), the seats could become radioactive. Thus far their approach seems to be a concerted effort to hope that it all blows over. --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 18:34, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Today, the board announced that María Sefidari will fill the seat emptied by the removal of the community-elected James Heilman. Not only did the board not float the idea to reinstate a former community-elected member to the community before-hand. They picked a candidate who was voted out of the board by the community. Many of the opposing votes were backed up by the notion that she acted against the interests of the community with respect to the super protect. Unlike other candidates she did not express remorse in hindsight but chose to justify.
I hope, the board will understand, why its choice and the way it was implemented upsets a significant part of the community. This was not a step on a way to build trust and mend relations.---<)kmk(>- (talk) 22:37, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Google and Tesla

Hi Jimmy, in line with wmf:Conflict_of_interest_policy, would you mind disclosing whether you own shares in Google and Tesla, or any entities controlled by Google and Tesla? I am asking this question as part of research into the recent goings on.

If this question has been asked and answered, I do apologise. If not, I look forward to your answer. 124.148.192.60 (talk) 13:27, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

I own no shares in Google or Tesla, nor (to my knowledge) any entities controlled by Google and Tesla. I do have a retirement fund and a college savings fund for my children both of which are with large mutual fund management companies and both have a percentage of the funds invested in equities. I have no idea which equities, though. Tesla isn't publicly traded as far as I know, so there wouldn't be investments in that. Given the performance of Google stock in the last 6 months (which I had to look up just now, as I don't follow such things) I certainly hope they invested some in Google, but the returns on my fund would not suggest that they did. :)
I hasten to add that even if I did, this would not be covered by the Foundation's Conflict of Interest policy. That policy would be triggered upon 10% ownership. While it would be rather sweet if I owned 10% of Google or Tesla, I don't. :-)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:06, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for your response Jimmy. P.S. Tesla is indeed public -- it's traded on the NASDAQ. 124.148.192.60 (talk) 14:44, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I had no idea. According to this story it sounds like I should have invested. :)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:05, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
If you own mutual funds, you probably did.  ;) Jehochman Talk 16:54, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment Since you have no idea what you own, or where this project invests into, please consider to check for fossil fuel divestment. prokaryotes (talk) 17:04, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
    LOL, as if you could eliminate cigarettes from the planet by not investing in tobacco companies, or weed by making it illegal. Better approach is what Bill Gates is doing. Put money at risk if you can afford it. Most of these bets are likely to be losers. But, as Bill says, if a solution is not found, we will cook the planet, if people need to keep burning fossil fuels to keep their homes warm, put food on the table, and get around town without riding bicycles. Fossil fuels will only stay in the ground when either (1) energy returned vs. energy invested to extract them turns negative or (2) a less expensive solution is found. Wbm1058 (talk) 18:05, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
First off, many existing vehicles could be switched over to plug-in hybrids without requiring any new grid infrastructure (and 73% can be supported by the current grid, see also Electric vehicle conversion). Secondly, while you were concerned about a Tesla guy, i would take issue if donation money for Wikipedia would be invested into a fund which included fossil fuels. This would be a serious issue. prokaryotes (talk) 20:27, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps no new grid infrastructure, but wouldn't the infrastructure need to run at a higher percentage of its maximum capacity, i.e. need to burn more fuel? While wind and solar can be a bigger part of the mix, most grid infrastructure is still powered by fossil fuels. I actually didn't vote over on meta, and I was just making a "devil's advocate" argument above. If you had shares in an oil company, you would have a proxy vote you could use to ask them to get out of the business. Just sayin'. Wbm1058 (talk) 22:27, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Renewables need to be scaled up, and shareholders are ignored. "Investors now know that ExxonMobil is not considering a low-carbon scenario in its planning, which places shareowner capital at risk," said Natasha Lamb, director of equity research and shareholder engagement at Arjuna Capital. "We believe the company should protect shareholder value by divesting assets at greatest risk of stranding, diversifying investments into low-carbon alternatives, and returning money to shareholders that might otherwise fund future 'at risk' assets." (link) --- prokaryotes (talk) 22:36, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
"Shareholders are ignored." Tell me about that. Word just in that the WMF board appointed someone to fill the so-called "community-elected" seat. At least theoretically, if we were rich enough, we could buy enough shares of Exxon to put them out of business (while taking control of WMF isn't even theoretically possible). That would still be an exercise in frustration, as the remaining oil companies would just pick up the pieces. Unless we, say, still owned land with oil on it that we refused to develop, and others couldn't horizontally drill into it anyway. Heh. Wbm1058 (talk) 22:58, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
The idea of fossil fuel divestment reminds me of a previous thread about whether the WMF has any environmental policy. Jimbo didn't respond on that thread [3] and I asked Lisa [4]. I've had no response from anyone at the foundation about its own energy use let alone where it invests money. --Salix alba (talk): 09:25, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Please help me

Hi dear Jimbo Wales. I have more than 15000 edits in armenian Wikipedia (since 2010 years). I'm now admin of the armenian Wikiquote (q:hy:Վիքիքաղվածք:Ադմինիստրատոր դառնալու դիմումներ#6AND5, since 7 august 2015 [5]), patroller in russian Wikipedia, russian Wikiquote, Commons (still watching it User:6AND5/Bot policy). In armenian Wikipedia is the law, by which the can't block the user if there is a conflict with him. In jule 2015 user Arman musikyan blocked indefinitely my account. He had a conflict with me in 3 wikiproject. Sysop user:Lilitik22 said support unblock. User Arman musikyan said will leave (go away) from Wikipedia, if they unblock me. I do several times asked the reconciled, but he don't agree.

Very very please help me remove the my block in armenian Wikipedia--6AND5 (talk) 14:09, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Perhaps help update Armenian topics on enwiki: It can be very difficult to overturn decisions on some other-language wikipedias, so meanwhile, consider updating pages about Armenia, such as lesser-known towns, here on English Wikipedia, until more people can support you at the Armenian WP. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:34, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
  • In armenian Wikipedia begin attacks against those who want to support me. Former sysop Erjanik in august said that if I want to return to the аrmenian Wikipedia, I have to go to the headquarters of the organization Wikimedia Armenia. If there are not working laws, how to resolve the conflict. If everything is decided at the headquarters of the organization of Wikimedia Armenia, and I refuse to go to the headquarters, how to solve it? I have several times said let's make peace, but they themselves say that Wikipedia is a platform war, where I am their enemy. This is the law by which it was decided that the administrator having a conflict with the user, can't block it -(Wikipedia/Poll/Block). --6AND5 (talk) 19:04, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
  • In armenian Wikipedia there are only 2 people, to resolve this issue, but they don't want --6AND5 (talk) 19:04, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
  • How can I work in the еnglish Wikipedia, when I was 7 months busy with this conflict?--6AND5 (talk) 19:08, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Returned from the archive--6AND5 (talk) 18:39, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Users want a template for inflation of large-ticket items

We have a finance template for the small-item (food) inflation, Template:Inflation, but is there any research into how to estimate large-item inflation, such as the RMS Titanic costing $US10 million circa 1910? Are the estimates just too iffy for general use, as needing instead to quote a subject matter expert about the relative cost for each large-ticket case, such as the cost to build a particular skycraper? -Wikid77 (talk) 18:13, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Estimates are too iffy. More precisely, they depend upon so many factors that it's not mostly about the money. To give a simple example: the price of identical single-family homes depend upon their location – by an order of magnitude or more. A three-bedroom home in central London costs a lot more than a three-bedroom home in the middle of Kansas. What constitutes "a three-bedroom home" changes over the decades. An average three-bedroom home was bigger in the 1920s than during WWII. The average 1980s home is bigger than the average post-war homes, and the average in 2010 is bigger yet. There are also changes to features (no closets in 1920, no walk-in closets in 1970, and now walk-in closets as large as some WWII-era bedrooms – but the cabinetry and flooring in 1920 were made of solid wood, which is no longer generally true) and related costs (modern heating is much more efficient, but some of that requires increased building costs).
The same effects are seen in cars (the "luxury" standard in 1980 is middle-class now) and other large-ticket items. You'd need a separate template for every single type of object, and some of them, such as housing, would be simply impossible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:33, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Apples and oranges prices: I follow that line of reasoning where those older houses would not be built today for comparison costs, plus pay fines or remodel the house to meet current building codes for fire, wind or earthquake protection. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:43, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I've had this come up, and formed an opinion there is no meaningful comparison except over the relative short term. How do we compare the value of a dollar today, with let us say 1910, when even middle class families could have hot and cold running servants? If soldiers got a shilling a day, is it meaningful to go to the decimal equivalent (5p)? After much trouble and many discussions, I just set the figure and the date and the reader is free to do what he wants with it.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:18, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Is this project quite worthy of being hosted yet?

This wiki seems to be rather large for an Incubator wiki. Perhaps it could boil off the incubator? 96.237.18.103 (talk) 13:46, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't know what the policies or for that - I just know it isn't up to me!--94.0.162.122 (talk) 09:44, 1 February 2016 (UTC) (just to clarify, it appears that this message was left by User:Jimbo Wales while inadvertently logged out.) -- Ed (Edgar181) 19:52, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Many people still having fun

Despite all the recent negative comments seen on this talk-page, I want to assure everyone how many people are really happy to be working on Wikipedia articles. I have recently edited over 1,200 pages to copyedit and rapidly fix cite errors to count parameter patterns which could be autofixed by the Lua-script cite templates. Along the way, I've noticed many hundreds of users very happy to be updating pages, and adding more reference citations to support the existing text inside each page. In fact, my Notifications have been ringing off-the-hook with dozens of "Thank-you's" for helping each user to improve the pages they had been editing. The scope and breadth of coverage in those pages has been amazing, and it is clearly the result of massive support for Wikipedia. So, despite many negative comments in prior weeks, I want everyone to know numerous people are having much fun editing here. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:56, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

It's good to hear words like this. The thing that I always try to remember, throughout everything, is what we're here for... a free encyclopedia for everyone, in their own language.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:51, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
While Jimbo and I appear to disagree on a lot this is one thing we do appear to agree on. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:47, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Add "reliable" to that, and I'll pile on too. Reliable. It's the next big thing for Wikipedia. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:10, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Agreed. For me a goal of "reliable" is implied by "encyclopedia" but it's always worth repeating and emphasizing - particularly to help resist the pull of simple numbers. It isn't how many entries we have, it's how many good and great entries we have.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:13, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I just saw this, but my earlier comments above address your failure in this regard. I am very very over your platitudes. Do something or get out of the way. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:44, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
As a Wikipedian who has edited on an almost-daily basis for the past decade (my tenth WikiBirthday was a week ago), I would also like to join in support of the sentiments expressed in Wikid77's comment. Throughout most of my life, in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, I would go to my bookshelf a number of times each day to consult one volume or another of the Encyclopedia Britannnica, Americana, Compton's or other specialized references and frequently compare their entries on the same subject. With the advent of Wikipedia, the contents of all those encyclopedias which for so many years represented the sum of the world's knowledge can be seen, more clearly than even, to contain only a minuscule digest of it — a hundred-volume — any-volume — Britannica or any other longterm print source could not cope in the age of the Internet, with Wikipedia, for me, at the center of it. And for this, I say, thank you. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 17:50, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Yep, Many people still having fun, like me over here. And Google is making money out of our fun. Like a banker. (Why at all do we have so much Google.com in our Board?) -DePiep (talk) 20:54, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
If it wasn't fun...I wouldn't be here.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:22, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
If I wasn't here... Would it be so much fun? ϢereSpielChequers 10:17, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
For some it is, indeed, fun — an enjoyable hobby, for others — Wikiholics, an obsession, and for those such as the late journalist and historian Piotr Domaradzki, a mainstay of the Polish Wikipedia and (as User:Belissarius), an important contributor to English Wikipedia — a bequest to posterity. He made two edits to Polish Wikipedia on the day of his death, October 20, 2015 and, during the previous year wrote on his Polish user page, "When I depart from Wikipedia, and such will occur rather sooner than later, at least this writ will remain after me:", followed by the list of articles [over 1200] that he created or translated for Polish Wikipedia. Even while confronting all the unhappy historical topics he, along with other chroniclers of the past and, for that matter, anyone who continues to contribute over a long period, must have felt a sense of personal accomplishment, pleasure and, yes, even fun to see his words instantly appear and remain, hopefully, for future generations. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 22:40, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
Indeed. The research, the writing and what is left for future generations is very important to many contributors. The feeling of discovery when you find something truly new to add or creating an entire article. And yes, sometimes we do it while confronting all the unhappy historical topics and that can be difficult for many reasons.--Mark Miller (talk) 20:09, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Cite templates too large to fit on some pages

The Lua wp:CS1 cite templates are still too big for some pages, 10 years later (yes this is "SSDD", Same Subject Different Decade). Based on short-cite templates begun in 2006, the prior 2012 shortcut Template:Cite_quick (needed to format "Barack Obama" during the 2012 Presidential re-election) was wp:TfD-deleted (moved "Historical" non-functional) in 2013. Meanwhile, WP still has the same internal format limit, as a "wp:Post-expand include size" of 2,097,152 bytes. Case in point: the recent "List of The Simpsons episodes" has had 610 cites during 2015 (from combining 27 sub-lists), and people have marked even more "{citation needed}" but adding 1 more wp:CS1 cite template (~1,200 bytes each) to that list will garble the end-of-page navboxes as aborted templates. It has been scary, for months, to add cites to that list page. I can understand limiting cites for a nation article, such that article "Canada" should be sourced to 200 cites, else create Canada sub-articles for more detail. However, if an article is a list, of perhaps 500 entries, and it takes 700 direct cites to pinpoint the details in the list, then WP needs to have {cite_quick} or something to allow more than 600 cites on a large table-structured page. I guess we need some type of wp:RfC to authorize keeping fast, minimal cite templates to support huge pages where people want more cites to improve reliability. Every year, the huge cites have resurfaced as a problem, and many users just suffer in silence while the cite templates grow larger and larger. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:48, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Does a serious encyclopedia need such a level of detail about individual episodes of The Simpsons? MPS1992 (talk) 22:50, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Well, the level of sourced detail confirms the notability of each episode as watched by so many millions of people each week; hence each source also for Neilson ratings. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:26, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
The wp:Post-expand include size explains why US Presidents are limited to only two terms: a term more would blow up their WP article ! Concerning The Simpsons, it suffices to strip all the references from the assembled list. Since this one is obtained from the set of the lists by episode, a link to the template that ensures the transclusion is sufficient to allow the reader to verify what she is reading. If she really wants a reference from a Reliable Source for the factoid that Episode 398, i.e. "Stop or My Dog Will Shoot!" was really seen by 6.48 mega-viewers (and not by 6.47 or 6.49), the answer is only one click away (in the sub-list). Pldx1 (talk) 22:57, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Followup: what makes the difference between a serious encyclopedia and a crappy one ? A Cultural References Section explaining that "during his training, Santa's Little Helper destroys a bust of Ludwig Van Beethoven". The random pop-corn eater must absolutely know this was not a bust of Hong Gil-dong. Pldx1 (talk) 23:05, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
But documentation of that factoid is vital to my doctoral thesis (unpublished): Beethoven in the Key of D'oh: Toward an Understanding of the Animated Cultural Bust from Schroeder to Santa's Little Helper. Somewhat more seriously, you never know what facts may be culturally of interest in the future. It ain't paper; we're not going to run out of bits. 24.151.10.165 (talk) 23:42, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
It's possible that this indicates a need for using better (i.e., more comprehensive secondary) sources, rather than merely more of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:35, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

I formerly imagined the solution was to get a few sources that show the entire list, but whole-list sources evidentally risk a copyright violation, compared to compiling the same list from multiple sources ordered by date of episode or rank of awards. Hence, the list-copyright factor spurs the need for numerous individual sources, logically a count of sources as many or more than entries in the list. One whole source for top-ten episodes could be considered a copyvio for the first ten in a list by rank, but 10 sources which reveal 10 ranks is not a copyvio of the list. Hence, we're back to the original problem of needing hundreds of sources for a long list, and the MediaWiki software (thank you Jimbo for installing it) can format *thousands* of wp:reftag footnotes per page, but not with the wp:CS1 cite templates in Lua script which each consume over 1,100 1,600 bytes to show a 150-letter source entry+link, and that limits those huge cite templates to "610" when the structured, sortable list-tables fill the other 65% of the page. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:26, 30 January 2016 (UTC), updated Wikid77 (talk) 23:03, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Currently I'm compiling a list which, when completed, may flirt with wp:Post-expand include size's upper limit (List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach#Works in Bach's catalogues and collections).
The copyright that needs to be avoided for that list is primarily with BWV2a (Alfred Dürr, Yoshitake Kobayashi (eds.), Kirsten Beißwenger. Bach Werke Verzeichnis: Kleine Ausgabe, nach der von Wolfgang Schmieder vorgelegten 2. Ausgabe. Preface in English and German. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1998. ISBN 3765102490 - ISBN 978-3765102493).
Every entry in the list (or, row in the table) has at least one reference to an external source, that is:
  1. for most of them a link to the entry's description on a www.bachdigital.de page
    —and/or—
  2. a link to the entry's page at the IMSLP website
    —and/or—
  3. one or more footnoted references
I mostly avoided citation templates, for which I used some creativity: e.g. I created the {{BDW}} template which can handle most type #1 references; for the type #2 references I use the scores: pseudo-namespace functionality.
Personally I dislike many citation template implementations: there are a lot of reasons for that, but I'll name only one: when dealing with classical music articles and one wants to make a reference to a score edition it can get rather messy.
So in response to the concerns raised in this section:
  • For long lists it is in most instances possible to avoid the "bitspace" usurped by multiple citation template calls;
  • Indeed, yes, individual refs are best for list entries, don't avoid to use some creativity for producing clear straightforward systems of referencing that behave well in wiki-surroundings
  • Also, consider splitting off sublists: also for my list example above I need to constantly question myself: how much detail is feasible for the main list, how much can be moved to sub-lists (such as List of Bach cantatas)?
Did this help? --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:28, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes, those are excellent ideas. We could have a special cite template for TV Tango daily-schedule links as perhaps only 200 format-bytes, as 8x smaller than the current 1,600 bytes for using Lua {{cite_web}} for the long URL+titles. Then that TV-Tango template could be used in many other TV episode lists to also make them smaller and faster as well. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:10, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
There are many times when "list-copyright" i.e. database copyright doesn't apply on Wikipedia. The U.S. doesn't have a "sweat of the brow" standard for a third party source compiling a list of Simpsons episodes - the third party isn't doing any creative effort in compiling the list; they are faithfully reproducing a factual list of data. Now whether The Simpsons (or owner thereof) could (and therefore did) copyright that list is another question - my feeling is that, somehow, it isn't allowed for an author to copyright and restrict distribution of the list of works he's written, even though it contains a large amount of whimsical creative titles in order, but I have no idea what if any provision of copyright prevents that. But if that were a factor it wouldn't matter how many or few sources you cite for the list because the one that matters is always the same.
As for sourcing though, I think people are too dogmatic about not allowing a Wikipedia article to reference its sub-articles. I understand that often the decay and drift of articles makes that imprudent, but there could be cases like this where, with proper edit notice placarding, it might work to just tell people to refer to the referenced articles. Wnt (talk) 00:32, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Over 400 of the large cite templates in ("List of The Simpsons episodes") are coming from transcluding the 27 sublists, and so those 27 articles would need to be rewritten to not have cites inside those tables, or somehow use a table-template which could omit those cites when called with a special parameter, which could be a new parameter for the wp:CS1 cites, to omit the large cite data when called with that special extra parameter (perhaps name "{cite_websub}" or such), and so Eureka! we could have a way for large pages to auto-hide the massive cites when transcluded into a larger list. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:48, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Template:Citation_needed was larger than Lua wp:CS1 cite

I was finally able to hard-code the 2 requested source cites into that maxed-out page, "List of The Simpsons episodes" and in the process, noticed the total page-size dropped ~4KB from the wp:post-expand include size, where the 2KB Template:Citation_needed was using more template-expansion space than even a wp:CS1 cite template would have consumed. The hard-coded cites use no expansion space, because they do not use any templates to format the URL-link. // However, that list page still lacks the bottom navboxes, even though small, because they need more than 30,000 bytes expansion space while only 5KB remain available. The easiest solution will be to use efficient, smaller cite templates, to free over 90,000 bytes among the cites. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:48, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Community Representative

I asked not long ago (and apparently my question has been archived) whether there was a better place to post community concerns than this talk page, which has both reasonable editors and flamers and trolls. I was told that User:Mdennis (WMF) is the community liaison. I posted to her talk page. However, she answered that she is staff, not Board. She advised me that I can (and did) post to Meta. Since the Board and the staff don't appear to get along well (and, as far as I can tell, James Heilman took the staff's side), I don't want to address Board questions to a staff liaison. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:48, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

You seem to be misinformed. The board and the staff of the Foundation get along quite well. I don't know where this kind of misinformation comes from - although I can guess. If you could privately send your sources to speak to me, I'd love to dig into that to learn more. In terms of the best way to post community concerns to the board as a whole - "There is a Board noticeboard for sharing requests and recommendations. The Board can be contacted directly by either posting to the noticeboard, or by email to WMFboard@wikimedia.org. " [6] That's my recommendation. Email is probably the better of the two.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:05, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
I suggest to talk with "everyone" and then try to read between the lines, to get a broader overview of the issues. When the Lua script interface was being installed in 2013, I noted to several people how slow it was running the Lua-based templates, and a key wp:developer noticed those comments and optimized the Lua interface as ~2x faster within weeks. Ask around. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:12, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
First, if the board and the staff get along well, then I still would like a Board interface, because matters such as long-term strategy are primarily what should be the Board function. Second, if the board and the staff get along well, then that further indicates that the Board hasn't effectively explained why they removed James Heilman. I can only rely on what I see on talk pages and do not have time to interview large numbers of Board members and staff members. The Board hasn't done an effective job of explaining the removal of James Heilman, and merely saying that the Board has explained it isn't helping. Also, when Maggie Dennis states that she is staff rather than board, that appears to me to me that she doesn't plan to be the interface between the community and the board, and she shouldn't try to do that. She may be, and probably is, the interface between the community and the staff, but my concerns are not ones that the staff will handle. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:23, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes, so I can only repeat my recommendation to contact the board directly via the official paths set up for that purpose.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:36, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Appointment of María Sefidari to the WMF Board

Jimmy, I'd be very interested in your views regarding today's announcement of the appointment of María Sefidari to the WMF Board. Thanks. Jusdafax 00:50, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Just fixed the unicode errors in your post, Jusdafax - hope you don't mind. — foxj 00:58, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

IMO, the whole series of actions by everyone seem to indicate a strong disconnect between the wishes/needs of the WMF, as a corporation, and its corporate board, and the wishes/needs of the self-selected community here. If we assert that the community "elects" anyone, then such an election should be honoured by the board. If we assert that the WMF as the actual "corporate person" is in charge, then we ought not call the community actions "elections" at all, but rather call those who gain !votes in them "proposed members of the corporate board, providing a list from which the board can choose its own members." And in such a case, the community ought not have any voice in which persons are or are not chosen. Nor, in such a case, should the community even engage in discussions about the suitability of members of the corporate board. Collect (talk) 13:35, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, it is more nuanced, perhaps, than either of those alternatives. But yes, the !vote is a recommendation, and obviously, Selfidari had the most recommendations, but some more counter-recommendations than others, from that self-selected, generally anonymous group. There is a balance (and like all balances it is both subject to disagreement and precarious) to be struck between actual independence, so the organization is not over-taken by some mercurial anonymous interest, but is still open to influence by the wide-net of other volunteers. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:53, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
How is this different than a scenario such as the Republican-majority US Senate voting to kick out Bernie Sanders, and replace him with the second-place vote recipient in that election, who conveniently happened to be a fellow Republican. Anyone else find it odd that the community is now represented by people from the Spanish and Polish Wikipedias, and of all things, Wikidata, while the two elephants, the English and German Wikipedias, have no representation. The most active English Wikipedia editor on the board now is Jimbo, but most of his edits are in user-talk space. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:47, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
:(e/c)Well, the obvious difference is that this is not a republic, it is a corporation. I don't get the language centric concern. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:58, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
re Collect "we ought not call the community actions "elections" at all, but rather call those who gain !votes in them "proposed members of the corporate board, providing a list from which the board can choose its own members.", "the community ought not ...", "nor ... should the community" -- Isn't that exactly what already did happen? The Board picked a member from the list, and not the #1. -DePiep (talk) 14:54, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
If I recall correctly, the "election" was not presented to the community as a "proposed list of a bunch of candidates from which the board may choose any three it likes." It is was, kindly show me where that we expected the board to make the actual decision. Collect (talk) 16:20, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Here is the 2015 election announcement. It says "Members of the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to elect three candidates to a two-year term which will expire in 2017." Nothing along the lines of "The community has the opportunity to make recommendations to the WMF." Being charitable, perhaps the language wasn't deliberately deceptive, just inadvertently misleading. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 16:29, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
We have been deceived, plain and simple. The (appointed) board majority disposed of an inconvenient (elected) dissident and has now replaced him with a good ol' girl who has been on the Board of Trustees before. The community's democratically expressed wishes for new leadership has been undermined. Carrite (talk) 15:59, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
(ec)[7] refers to people "elected" to the Board of Trustees in 2013. Not "selected as possible choices." [8] 2011, same. [9] 2015 - same - with the specific wording "The 2015 Wikimedia Foundation elections will be held in May 2015. Members of the Wikimedia community will have the opportunity to elect candidates for Board of Trustees, Funds Dissemination Committee and Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson." In short - the community was told it was electing persons, not suggesting an extended menu for the WMF to choose from. Collect (talk) 16:31, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Whatever the intention etcetera was: the Board has picked intentionally #2 #4 not our #1. -DePiep (talk) 04:09, 31 January 2016 (UTC) (Number 4, not number 2. -DePiep (talk) 16:50, 1 February 2016 (UTC))
I think this is great background: "has been a contributor to the Wikimedia projects since 2006. She was a founding member of Spanish Wikipedia's LGBT Wikiproject, Wikimedia España, and Wikimujeres Grupo de Usuarias." Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:49, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
the Board has picked intentionally #2 not our #1[10] agree w/ this statement--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:24, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
Actually, the Board picked #4 not #2. And this unelected #4 was seated, so was actually voted *out* of the Board. -DePiep (talk) 16:50, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Honestly, I can't say this is a surprise. Our knee-jerk response one and all was and is to vote for Doc James, so they knew that they were in for a rough ride if they held a new election. The initial announcement pretty much hinted at this course of action. Even so, it is a missed opportunity, because if they had gone ahead and held an election admitting that Doc James votes wouldn't be accepted, then we would have had a chance to make a Aung San Suu Kyi type accommodation where Doc James specifically endorses someone he trusts to carry on whatever secret cause he was fighting for, and we probably vote them in as a defiant gesture. Which would have been a path to negotiation and eventual conflict resolution if they win, or a fair statement of trust in the board rather than James if they lost. The problem with this path is that it is addictive - now they're going to have to come back in 2017 and say they're not accepting Doc James votes and have this whole slugfest all over again then, or else they'll get tempted to just not have an election then either, at which point the community election process will be permanently dead. Wnt (talk) 00:41, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Doc James was not fighting for any "secret cause". That's a great fantasy and one which he has, I'm sad to say, encouraged. But it just isn't true.-- 09:47, 1 February 2016 (UTC) (just to clarify, it appears that this message was left by User:Jimbo Wales while inadvertently logged out.) -- Ed (Edgar181) 19:54, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
The "election" process has been revealed to be a fraud. Nowhere in the election process was it ever specified that the 4th place recipient of votes was the "first alternate" — they are simply making shit up as they go along. It is quite a scandal, actually, far bigger than the scandal which surrounded the ill-considered recent choice of appointees to the board. Some elected member pushes the wrong issues or asks the wrong questions? The appointed board just votes them out, QED. So much for democracy. So much for fiduciary oversight. So much for community control. Carrite (talk) 04:24, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
His termination from the board had nothing to do with "pushing the wrong issues" or "asking the wrong questions".-- 09:47, 1 February 2016 (UTC) (just to clarify, it appears that this message was left by User:Jimbo Wales while inadvertently logged out.) -- Ed (Edgar181) 19:54, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
It is always nice to see a new editor make it to this page on their very first WP edit... Actually, Doc James's "termination," as you appropriately phrase it, was precisely because he was pushing the wrong issues and asking the wrong questions. He became interested in the views of disaffected WMF employees in San Francisco and had the temerity to directly contact them and to bring forward their concerns about top leadership to the board. THAT was what started this process. What is surprising is that the board held community elections in so little regard that they were willing to remove an elected member of the board with neither valid cause nor explanation. Carrite (talk) 17:45, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
our votes for Doc James should count Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-06-03/News_and_notes and per our votes there should have been a new election (not just... "fill the Board of Trustee seat", w/out an election...IMO)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:10, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

The actual relationship between the WMF board and the community

Been thinking about this. Echoing what Collect wrote near the top of this thread - yes, the WMF is a corporation (a nonprofit, but a corporation nonetheless), and the Board governs the corporation and has a fiduciary responsibility to it. Its employees, its assets (the money in the bank, the servers, and all this perpetually CC BY-SA 3.0 licensed content), and its good will. It is responsible to and for all that. WMF is not a democracy. It is a company, with a corporate structure governed by its board. It doesn't even have members or shares that can actually vote to change things. It just has a board and its by-laws.

Who and what are "we"? We are a bunch of individuals who volunteer. The "editing community" has no legal existence. There is no organ that speaks for us. "We" are nothing, legally or in any other meaningful sense.

What is the responsibility of the WMF board to "the editing community", this non-entity? Nothing. It has no responsibility to the editing community, any more than it has to the public at large.

Does WMF absolutely need us? Heck yes, without us there is no content.

That is a funny state of affairs. But it is really no different than Bomis was, or any company that depends on user-generated content for its existence. All of them essentially exploit their users, who are just fine with being exploited. (I know that I am fine with it, on a day to day level. Because the Mission of WP.) That is the actual power relationship.

Is there a way we can make WMF be responsible or accountable to us? I think for that we would have to become some kind of entity, and negotiate like one. We would have to organize. In my view the likelihood of us doing that and getting meaningful participation is pretty slim - we are already volunteering our time just to build and maintain content and the community, and another layer on top of that seems hard to conceive. And again, getting any kind of specific consensus to actually take some specific stance and do something specific, also seems inconceivable to me. And what would we do, go on strike? Really??

So yes, the board can dismiss Doc James legally under its bylaws, and Jimbo can say that Doc James's perception of what happened is "Fucking bullshit", each with impunity, because of that. Sure the good will takes a little hit, but hey. They can do that, because "we" don't exist, and "we" have no power, and the WMF is not accountable to "us". It isn't. And all the hand-wringing and foot-stomping in the world, isn't going to change that. It is la-la land.

That is the bottom-line power relationship as far as I can see. Jytdog (talk) 07:45, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Yepppppp. Very well stated. We need to organize and this is something that is both difficult and a long shot. But we further need to work at not allowing ourselves to be bullshitted about "elected" "community seats" on the board. The way things now stand, this has clearly been exposed as a lie and a fraud. Carrite (talk) 08:03, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
well..... i wouldn't go that far. the elected seats are real. But they are a minority and so who ever we put there will need to be very effective negotiators and be aware of the actual power relationships here, until we have some kind of union. Then the elected board members would have actual leverage. Right now they don't. Jytdog (talk) 08:15, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
A bit wallowing in self-pity all that, not the way I feel. I can imagine that editors would generally agree that excess effort on top of "volunteering our time just to build and maintain content" would be perceived as overhead they'd prefer to avoid (at least, that's true for me). I don't feel underrepresented in the WMF board. That editors are not nothing at this point in time can be seen from the recent Geshuri resignation episode. Could our input to the board be more structured? Probably. How much more time do I want to put in achieving such goal of an optimized editor community / WMF board communication? Not much more than posting on this page every once and awhile I suppose. After all there's a lot of other "overhead" I'm already dragged into (excursions to WP:ANI and whatnot) that only somewhat indirectly contribute to my efforts to enhance mainspace content. When there's something thwarting the improvement or maintenance of the WMF projects and their content, or whatever great idea I may have to improve, and I want to communicate about that with the board, I don't feel the "anonymous masses" frustration Jytdog describes, and feel very confident I will get the point across when it's worth while. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:18, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
No self-pity and no frustration. Power has nothing to do with being able to chat with people - it has to do with whether you can actually make something happen, and whether you face consequences for your actions and from whom. There is a reason Jimbo can be as disrespectful to Doc James as he has been. That is power. You see it at times like this. And if the WMF actually was responsible to the community there would have been a joint statement by now about the fissure that opened between Doc James and the board that led to the board dismissing him. Those are all people, and people can work things out. But there hasn't been a joint statement and I doubt there will be. We can't make there be one. On the Geshuri thing, the WP community influenced that, sure. But we didn't make it happen. We don't have power. Saying all that is not self-pity, it is just reality. Jytdog (talk) 09:58, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
I do not believe I have been at all disrespectful to James. Indeed, I have been careful to be quite restrained in my remarks.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:05, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
<squeeze> If you don't consider fucking bullshit disrespectful, that's for me a new definition. You, and the whole board, have at least been disrespectful to the community, as up to now absolutely nothing of substance has been told about the dismissing of Doc James, just we didn't like him. Why not simply appoint all trustees, if the wishes of the community can be discarded with such ease and without any reasoning? It's now over a month, and no valid answer came from the board, none at all. A bit of fluffy nonsense, some blahblah without substance about no trust, but that's it. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ (talk) 12:58, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Jimbo, listen to yourself. Restrained??? You cursed out Doc James's explanation of the situation, using crude, bullying, obscene language. You rely on the credibility of a vote by a board that completely screwed up the Arnnon Geshuri appointment, largely because you failed to raise the red flag that was waving before your own eyes. Trust in the WMF board is at a very low state, and many editors remain upset that a trustee we elected was ousted by a dysfunctional board. Release all the relevant emails now. This situation is really disconcerting. My elected representative was ripped from office with no convincing explanation. That is terrible. Face the facts, please. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 13:28, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
These outbursts are ridiculous. They lack perspective. This is not an experiment in democracy, and it never has been. Moreover, not all certainly, but it appears far too many of those yelling, are just "people on the internet", who will yell no matter what is said to them, and insist and insist, that they have not been responded to, when they have (in Wikipedia, that's called IDHT) Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:30, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Jimbo, perhaps you are saying that you are very very frustrated and "Fucking bullshit" is actually the tip of the iceberg of what you really feel and you have been very restrained from that perspective? If so, don't you think that Doc James might perhaps have strong feelings of the same direction and magnitude? Your response here, as it has been in many ways with regard to the Doc James affair, expresses disdain for him and for us. Not "at all" disrespectful? Hm. I get it, you can say something blatantly incorrect like that (because power), and I also get it that you are choosing to do that. But it is in times of difficulty that ideals and values matter and are put to the test. Where are yours about AGF and trying to constructively work out differences? You are showing no evidence of that, in the behavior that we can see. You are demonstrating disrespect; I would even go so far as to say dehumanization, as the power dynamic plays out and becomes more clear, and you keep expressing this disdain. "Fucking bullshit", and not even responding to the request to release the email that James asked you to release. No more effort to put out a joint statement. Completely dismissing his perspective that the primary reason he was forced out was due to conflicts over transparency over where WMF is going technology-wise, and how that is being managed. You can do that. You are choosing to do that. The reason I wrote what I wrote about power, was to make it clear that you and the WMF don't have to respond to the editing community, and that you and the WMF are in addition choosing not to. And right now, there is nothing we can do about that, except take it, and call it out. Jytdog (talk) 17:45, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
I don't drool over prospects of power. Feeling confident enough leverage is there if and when it would be needed, e.g. to get an important point across, is a quite different matter. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:12, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Francis Schonken I hear you on that and neither do I. In the normal course of life power isn't nakedly wielded and the wheels turn generally fine if the system is working well enough for most people. But there are times when there is conflict and when that happens, the realities of power become very clear. That is the situation with the dismissal of Doc James, the community's reaction, and the nonresponse of the WMF, and disrespectful response of Jimbo. Jytdog (talk) 17:05, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Yawn. None of this makes Wikipedia any better. Others in this thread called it a distraction. I think so too. --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:01, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Francis Schonken Does how the WMF spends the technology budget matter to making WP better? Jytdog (talk) 21:11, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
"how the WMF spends the technology budget" did however not come up in this thread yet, did it? So how would you spend the WMF's technology budget? Or is that something you wouldn't explain before deciding it (if it were in your remit to decide it)? --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:30, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Francis Schonken So you stopped actually reading. :) Above I wrote that from what I understand Doc James' perspective is that

the primary reason he was forced out was due to conflicts over transparency over where WMF is going technology-wise, and how that is being managed.

In other words, from his perspective there were really sharp differences between him and the rest of the board about community input into the direction the WMF is going in actually spending the technology budget - in committing the WMF to a path. It appears to be something about this "Knowledge Engine" thing and what that means to the editing community (there are bits about that here and here and here and here. Doc James wrote at the Signpost: "This (transparency) means that strategy discussions are started early, that ideas are proposed, and that this is done before a year into a project or millions of dollars are spent. Our ideas around “search and discovery” were developed before April to June of 2015 and we presented them first to potential funders rather than our own communities." He is clearly dancing around the topic but one can get the gist. The Knowledge Engine was also discussed in This Signpost along with some other issues about the unhappiness of WMF staff which Doc James apparently also got involved in.
So I ask you again, Francis - does the way the technology budget is spent matter to making WP better? Should the community be involved in making Big Plans about where the software on which we all work is going - which is controlled 100% by the WMF?
From Doc James perspective, it matters a lot. Doc James is not a crazy person - he is a very respected admin who has done a ton of work to make medical information available globally. He believes in "the movement" which he talks about all the time - the community of volunteers who make this place happen. And he was our elected trustee - elected on a platform of more community input into technology. According to him - from his perspective - differences over that exact thing, are at the root of why he was dismissed.
In response, Jimbo is saying "fucking bullshit" and ignoring the request from Doc James to disclose the email he sent to Doc James (which Doc James says supports his view of the events leading up to the dismissal), and the WMF board is standing pat. There is no movement toward a joint statement. I consider this blowing Doc James off - trivializing him and through him, us.
So yes it has gotten all "meta" and removed from the work of improving the 'pedia. But unless we want to dismiss Doc James as a crazy person, it comes back to the software we all work on and how big decisions about that are made... and of course now these other issues about the dismissal and the aftermath. The gulf between the stories of the two parties is a problem for me and others. But whatever led to fissure and the ugliness now, Jimbo and the WMF board are blowing off reconciling the stories, and they can continue to blow it off. They have the power; they can dismiss Doc James from the board and issue statements dismissing what he says, and they control the budget and the software, and they can spend the money however they like to rework the software however they like, within the parameters of how they define the WMF mission, without consulting the community. There is raw power at play here. There is also messy human stuff. But there is raw power too. Jytdog (talk) 23:09, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Yawn. Not a single actual suggestion on how to spend the WMF technology budget, only about "who" decides on it, and that is, assuming all these speculations have a ground to start from. I don't think Doc James being no longer on the board has anything to do with "transparency over where WMF is going technology-wise". So its all speculations in thin air. If you'd really have something interesting to say on where you think the WMF technology budget should go to, you would have done so by now. But apparently you haven't, so I propose to hat this distraction. --Francis Schonken (talk) 23:30, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
I just want to add, that at this point I believe Doc James version of things. He is a movement guy - an idealist - and my ~guess~ is that he didn't recognize the actual power relationships and the board got sick of him and threw him overboard. I believe the WMF board has some vision of where they want the software to go. I am sure they believe that where ever they are going is aligned with the mission of making knowledge available to everybody in the world, for free. And I can understand a desire to form and execute strategy away from the messiness of the editing community. After all, great software companies in Silicon Valley don't make decisions informed by community consensus - they are led by visionaries who create new products that create new possibilities, that they unleash on the world in great flourishes and that consumers adapt like crazy. I am starting to think that the WMF board sees itself that way. I think they look at the software, and they look at their "customers" (the people in the world lacking free, reliable information) and that they look right past us. And if I am right, there is really nothing we can do about that.
To answer you, there are clear unmet needs in the software. First our internal search engine is ridiculously, embarrassingly bad. Second, page display on mobile phones is terrible, and the app to edit on a mobile phone is terrible. If they want to go really blue sky, automated translation is still really poor. The editing community has tons of unmet needs and has and will articulate them. Anyway, I appreciate your questions as they gave me the chance to say more. And if you remain bored, you can stop reading whenever you like. Jytdog (talk) 23:45, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
This is rambling all over the place: whatever your concerns are this kind of soapboxing connecting all topics (and so connecting really nothing) isn't a very effective strategy for whatever improvement you're aiming at. Yes I read it all, and am thus recommending to TL;DR it to all the others: it was kind of a waste of time afaics. I'd be happy to read some cogent remarks the next time you write something, can you please make it that way, tx? --Francis Schonken (talk) 23:58, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
I don't understand what is at stake for you in this discussion, but am sorry that you have difficulty using your time in ways that please you. Jytdog (talk) 01:26, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
The analysis presented in the OP of this subsection didn't agree with me (found it a bit preposterous), and I commented on that. The more far-fetched support for that original analysis was added (changing topic a few times), the less support it all got from me (for general fuzzyness etc). Or was this section only for comments by those who find these kind of analyses the nec plus ultra? I think this talk page shouldn't be used for such generally unhelpful soapboxing, that's what I came here to say: too far from working towards concrete solutions (which often are closer at hand than such diffuse reasonings let suspect). --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:52, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
First of all, the premise is incorrect, mobocracy (the power of we) is power, elemental power. Second, by consensus, per WP:NOT, it is basically useless distraction for editors. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:21, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Alanscottwalker Mobocracy is what you find here on Jimbo's page, where a bunch of people wring their hands and stamp their feet and nothing happens. The "mob" gets power when it organizes and can act with intentionality. I agree 100% with your second point - everything in the community is focused on managing content and behavior within community itself. We have no organ and we have created no policies dealing with how the community per se interacts with the owner of the site. There are of course policies defining what the WMF can do to us (e.g veto) If the community were motivated it could generate policy and practices "managing upward" - we haven't done that, for sure. Jytdog (talk) 17:01, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

back to Google and the WMF board

To get back to the Board's general role, recently it has been looking a lot like a back door. Wikipedia is a very valuable property to whoever who can take control of it. Specifically, Wikipedia is a close collaborator with Google, enhancing the value of its searches -- but it is also a competitor. Open up your copy of Firefox and navigate Tools->Options->Search. You'll see that Wikipedia and Google are items that can be checked or unchecked under "one-click search engines". That means we are in direct economic competition for Google's customer base, and we shouldn't expect them to simply be ignoring that.
We've actually seen Firefox - another open source nonprofit -- apparently infiltrated and subverted by Google. As part of a supposed "anti-phishing" feature, without even being told to visit the site, Firefox has applied a "PREF" cookie to users from Google that could track them around the Internet [11], on behalf of the NSA [12].
While the resignation of Geshuri addresses some of the recent concern, he was just one of five trustees with links to the company. Now I'm not saying I don't want our articles to enhance their search results, nor can I judge four people I don't know based on their having worked for a company, but we do need stronger assurances, beginning with the privacy policy, that Wikipedia will fend off Google's questing tentacles and avoid being dominated by it at a high level. Like fire, Google may be a wonderful servant but it is a terrible master. Wnt (talk) 15:36, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Links to the company -- that appears to be just conspiracy talk. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:39, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
I have to agree - "links to the company"? I assume this talk of "five trustees" comes from somewhere, but I'd really be interested to see what it means. But let's be practical - Wnt, what changes would you like to see made to the privacy policy? Since I've never seen any evidence of even a suggestion of Google having "questing tentacles" with respect to Wikimedia nor attempting to "dominate (Wikimedia) at a high level", I don't really know what it is that you are afraid of here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:30, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
OK, I admit I should have been more skeptical of this statement -- it comes from Wikipedia Signpost originally. The five are Geshuri of course, "Denny Vrandečić, who is a Google employee", "Guy Kawasaki, who has served as special advisor to the CEO of the Motorola business unit of Google", "Kelly Battles of Bracket Computing, which partners with Google Cloud Platform", and (quite dubiously) you, because you 'served as a member of Google's "Advisory Council"'. Still, some of those links sound meaningful.
Where the privacy policy is concerned, I already said most of what was on my mind at this discussion recently. I'm not really a legal or computer expert to be laying down the law here, but I can't believe there isn't a way to say that Wikipedia has a firm, short deadline for deleting IP information without opening up the Foundation to limitless financial liability. I understand some people want to do research but I don't see it as being particularly valuable or effective compared to the merit of simply having reliable guidelines for getting rid of abusable data and not collecting data with unusual means. (I still have no idea how or where Wikipedia even has tracking pixels, whether they're on this site or off of it) I want a firm commitment not to resort to Evercookie-like admin tools (per [13]); too much determination to identify the anonymous means turning Wikipedia into a spy agency. I don't have the skill to know, but I worry that the Wiki code might be being written with ulterior motives; for example, in this discussion recently, IMSLP was converted to a subscription model for accessing its music - but the site is a MediaWiki site. I don't know how much of the Javascript code needed to display ads to non-subscribers was originally written with WMF donor money. The problem with people from Wikipedia facing off against Google is that we're dealing with an opponent that we need to recognize is far more intelligent than we are. But this could be the sort of situation where we can't possibly outwit the demon, but we might have just enough cleverness not to read from the grimoire. Wnt (talk) 17:33, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Washington Post says the same thing as RT here - the Google "PREF" cookie is specifically mentioned. The stackexchange link is just for convenience on researching it; there are various technical links like [14]. It's a bit hard for me to follow which bugs concern "the same" cookie since it is a continually revised piece of software. But if you open a Firefox now and view your cookies you'll see Google gets one the moment you open a blank screen, whatever you disable; now however it appears deletable ... temporarily. I'm not a computer expert, but I am less than impressed. Wnt (talk) 15:50, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Regarding these alleged Google connections - very thin stuff. Yes, Denny works at Google - as a researcher, not an executive. I don't know but I have a strong sense that Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin have never even heard of him. I think we should value Denny's tech experience and not be paranoid. Bracket Computing partners with Google Cloud Platform? Here's a line I found on their website: "Today, we partner with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and we will soon be adding others." That doesn't sound substantial and if we are going to rule out having any board member who works at a company that uses Google Cloud Platform (or Amazon Web Services), we're basically saying we can't have anyone from Silicon Valley. Guy Kawasaki advised the CEO of a company that Google owns? How exactly is that supposed to be a path for Google to do something bad to us? Signpost should be ashamed of printing such drivel.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:52, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Nobody's saying "we can't have anyone from Silicon Valley", they are saying maybe Silicon Valley is over-represented. If you are troubled by the concerns in the community about connections to Google or Silicon Valley, a good way to address the issue would be to diversify the Board. Gamaliel (talk) 04:06, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Gamaliel, It only makes sense to be more diverse, to fit better with our diverse readership. Also, Liam Wyatt critically questioned the diversity of the Board: "I've always believed that Wikimedia is an education charity that happens to exist in a technology field. ... But these appointments indicate the Board and WMF Executive believe Wikimedia is a technology charity that happens to exist in the education field." So, there's probably room for improvement. Nocturnalnow (talk) 05:11, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

It may already be illegal in the USA

Cornell Law School's analysis tells me that the U.S.A.'s 4th Amendment clearly makes the practices Wnt refers to above illegal. The sooner Wikipedia gets ahead of this issue, the better. "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Just because the collection and tracking of personal/private information, like what Wnt talks about, is widespread, does not mean its legal. The 14th. Amendment was made law in 1868 and yet racism was in effect and widespread for 86 years thereafter. "The Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. This clause was the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision that precipitated the dismantling of racial segregation"

The only question in my mind is how long Americans are going to put up with the illegal invasions of their/your privacy. Americans are very fortunate to have the 4th. amendment and other strong laws in their constitution. Eventually, just as with racism, your constitution will override current illegal activities of convenience. At least I think and hope so. Nocturnalnow (talk) 20:42, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I hate to burst your bubble but the Constitution only applies to the federal government as a whole and local/state governments in part. Businesses and multi-national corporations unaffected. --In actu (Guerillero) | My Talk 21:42, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, but still, the current situation may be inclusive of a lot of government involvement of doubtful legality. In any event, I agree with Wnt that it would be best to do more to limit storage or use of reader's info as much as possible. But, maybe it is what it is and nothing should change. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:40, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

It looks like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights covers this in Article 12: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." and the USA is a signatory Nocturnalnow (talk) 02:56, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't know where you can go with this. Even if Google admitted collecting data with the 'pref' cookie for the NSA, they could say they were collecting commercial intelligence, then selling it on the open market. You can make ad hoc arguments for illegality, but you'd be up against the best lawyers on the planet, arguing that international law prohibits something that every country either does openly or does in secret. My attitude here is more non serviam, just a wish there were one little bastion not part of the New World Order. It's like some sort of Viking history: to protect Baldur from harm, the gods wanted cameras and microphones in the trees, and the stones, and the birds, and the fish, and the people; but Loki would not agree, and so he failed to report that mistletoe was harboring dangerous ideas. Though ever after he be reviled for it, at least he accomplished something. Wnt (talk) 13:47, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
A show on History channel about Einstein's brain 2 days ago really gave me an exciting perspective. All we really have to do to avoid the New World Order, at least for some of us, is to think more. Einstein wrote that his great works, like E=MC2 were not the result of higher intelligence, but were the result of a lot of persistent thinking about/figuring out the particular issue at hand.
He wrote that he was able to figure out his 4 great theories in 1905 primarily because he took lots of time to simply think about those 4 matters.
I was amazed at how many clear thinking comments there were at the Rfc re: A. Geshuri. I also noticed how Jimbo made references to the importance of clear thinking; "... more importantly, it undermines your own clear thinking..... then your thinking is not connected to reality and you'll misunderstand reality as a result." Up here in Ontario's Ministry of Education there is a stated objective to instill/encourage critical thinking in our public schools, but its getting harder to do because of gadgetitus and multi-tasking, both of which create/reinforce scattered and shallow thinking.
So, I think that every person who is trying to think clearly is like a strong little tree growing up in a field of weeds, and if there are enough tough little trees, we can over power the weeds. Not by trying to suppress them, but just by concentrating on growing ourselves. So that's where I'm going with this..just trying to think more and figure things out. But the main thing is, there are a lot of really alert people in and around Wikimedia, imo, and that's cool for the future. Pardon my long windedness.Nocturnalnow (talk) 20:23, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Equally important is that thinking people take action when our thoughts tell us to act. Cullen328 Let's discuss it and Fæ are 2 recent examples of clear thinking leading to action, I think. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:12, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

RfC: What would be a gender-neutral description for the Cook Islands royal representative? - pretty self-explanatory and you can just jump right in at "Section Break 1" with your !Vote. Cheers, Doctor Crazy in Room 102 of The Mental Asylum 06:05, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Intemperate remarks

This kind of language in a tense situation is like dropping gasoline on a bonfire. It's not going to help your case. You and the board have a problem with the community that can't be dismissed by calling it "utter and complete bullshit" or "fucking bullshit." Jonathunder (talk) 22:37, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

You really ought to be ashamed of that style of invective, Jimbo, and abandon it going forward. It damages your case, rather than advancing it. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 07:12, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
It isn't invective. It is just a factual statement. When I explain myself in clear detail repeatedly and someone keeps insisting that I'm dodging the question, I can only say: I've already explained that.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:03, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
"he made a false claim about why he was removed" is a "factual statement" you made above. (1) What, precisely, is the "false claim" that he made. Please provide a link or diff, if possible. (2) Prove that this claim is indisputably false. If you can't do that, then yes, this seems invective. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:00, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
This was all posted here a few days ago. I am in a rush at the moment and don't have time to find the diffs. I'll try to do it later tonight if I get the time, but in the meantime perhaps someone else can dig it up. He made the claim, and I ran it past every single one of the other board members, and they unanimously agreed to a statement refuting it, which I published here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:25, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Was it this on 6 January? You said "This had nothing to do with him [Heilman] wanting to go public about any issues", Heilman said "It had in part to do with me wanting there to be public discussion on our long term strategy." Peter Damian (talk) 19:01, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
He also discussed the same thing at greater length in the Signpost, which I think you called 'utter bullshit' or 'utter f---ing bullshit'. Peter Damian (talk) 19:05, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Heilman made the claims in the Signpost article that included:

His brief time on the Board was defined by tensions around transparency.
He advocated, 'forcefully at times', for publishing information that others felt should be kept secret.
'Our' [whose?] long-term strategy must be developed in genuine collaboration with our movement.
The transparency issue was around restricted grants.

Peter Damian (talk) 19:08, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Right, I've been following this, and I believe it's all in Archive 201, or Archive 199. I'm not sure which board statement you're referring to. Looking at "James Heilman removal FAQ", I'm not finding either the word "false" or "claim". I think you're more likely referring to the section in 199: "A short statement on recent comments by James Heilman". It links to this diff. You say, giving your opinion, "This had nothing to do with him wanting to go public about any issues." James replies, giving his opinion, "I would disagree with this statement. It had in part to do with me wanting there to be public discussion on our long term strategy. I recommended we introduce it in a Signpost piece and stated that I would be happy to draft something." At this point, this is all speculation, as neither of you know why your fellow board members voted the way they did. You're not mind readers. Then your statement: I wrote the following statement, which has been agreed to by the entire board at the time, names below: "The removal of James as a board member was not due to any disagreement about public discussion of our long term strategy. The board unanimously supports public discussion of our long term strategy, has offered no objections to any board member discussing long term strategy with the community at any time, and strongly supports that the Wikimedia Foundation should develop long term strategy in consultation with the community." Nowhere in that statement do I see the word "false" or the word "claim". So, the board has not, in effect, called James a liar. The board is merely informing us that his opinion that he was – mind you only "in part" – removed because he wanted "there to be public discussion on our long term strategy" is not an opinion that the board shares. Perhaps there is agreement that the "other part(s)" carry significantly more weight in the decision. In my mind the fact that he still hasn't written that Signpost piece about strategy, in spite of the board's implicit approval, and is still waiting for your explicit approval, shows exemplary trustworthiness to keep secrets, and deference to our Founder's wishes. Wbm1058 (talk) 19:30, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

While the words false' or 'claim' did not appear, nonetheless James said "It had in part to do with me wanting there to be public discussion on our long term strategy." By contrast, the statement agreed by the board was that "The removal of James as a board member was not due to any disagreement about public discussion of our long term strategy". Clearly one statement contradicts the other. Peter Damian (talk) 19:49, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Oh yes, certainly they are contradicting opinions. But my understanding is that at the time James expressed that opinion, he had not formally been informed of the rationale. So to imply that he had been informed of the rationale, and was lying by giving a different reason than he had previously been given by the board, is wrong. Maybe there was no intention to mislead in that direction, but nonetheless I'm feeling that words could have been chosen more carefully here... Wbm1058 (talk) 19:58, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Hmm. As a logician I would say that if A's opinion is contradictory to B's, i.e. only one opinion can be true, then A can reasonably say that B's opinion is false, and B can reasonably say the same of A. Anyway, the statements are contradictory, and either Jimmy is speaking truly, or James is, tertium non detur Peter Damian (talk) 20:17, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
But opinions can't be proven true or false, only claimed facts can. If my opinion is that 500 miles is a long distance to drive in a day, and Joe's opinion is "no, that's not far at all, 1,000 miles is a long way to drive", you can't prove either to be true or false, they're just opinions. I didn't read James saying "the Board told me that the reason was..." Wbm1058 (talk) 20:34, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Well there is Heilman’s statement on January 2, listing three things he had been accused of, the third being irrelevant because it occurred after his removal. Of course this is consistent with him believing that this was not the real reason for removal. The bit I am struggling with is the 'compete and utter bullshit' stuff. This accuses James of making stuff up, rather than having a misguided opinion. Peter Damian (talk) 20:48, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Exactly. "False claim" implies to me making stuff up, rather than having a misguided opinion. Wbm1058 (talk) 01:12, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
For me, there is no reason to speculate about what deep internal motives he might have. Misguided opinion? Making stuff up? It doesn't matter to me. It remains the case that he's been flatly contradicted by the entire board.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:06, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts." – Daniel Patrick Moynihan. "Deep internal motives"? I don't understand what you're getting at; why introduce that to this discussion? I guess the fact that he has been contradicted by the board on such a relatively insignificant matter of opinion doesn't matter much to me. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:00, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Again, James has asked Jimbo to release two documents:
As previously stated I support an independent review. Jimbo would you be willing to publicly share the email you sent me Dec 30th, 2015 as that was the clearest set of accusations I have received? My reply to that email is here. We obviously have different perspectives on what occurred and why. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:12, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
[...]Yes that email would clarify what JW has accused me of. The more interesting documents would be the application and associated documents surrounding the Knight grant that were requested Jan 8th. Not sure if those have been provided yet. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:30, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Whether or not Jimmy is justified in describing James's comment as "utter bullshit" might depend on the context (does the (apparently top secret) Knight grant have anything to do with future strategy?). Invective or no, it certainly appears to be evasive. --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 20:26, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
There is nothing "top secret" about the Knight grant. Here's some information.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:54, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales You replied to only one of the two things Doc James asked about. Would you please respond to the request to release the email? If you don't want to release it would you please explain why? Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 00:48, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Still no joint statement on what happened

There has still been no joint statement by the Board and Doc James as to what exactly transpired. In my view this is a failure of leadership, primarily by the Board and Jimbo. We as a community have no way to sort out the "he said/she said" of statements that were made after James' dismissal and the whole thing is getting ugly and petty (per the section above) and fester-y - where disputes over what happened after the dismissal have become issues themselves. The whole thing is an embarrassment to the institution. Wikipedia itself is a messy... whatever-it-is, but this has to do with WMF corporate matters. There are professional mediation services out there if that is needed; there is also binding arbitration. There are all kinds of ways to get a statement together. In my view, the community needs a clear statement of what led to the loss of trust and dismissal from both sides together. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 23:58, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree. There has been a serious lack of transparency and accountability. While it is true that legally the Board has no right to consult with the community, the fact that they have no legal duty to the community does not change the fact that, since the community maintains the encyclopedia and the other wikis, they have a moral duty to report to the community. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:14, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Any hobbies?

Jimbo Wales, again and again: yes you have responded, but still not by pre-decision arguments (inclusive but not for the first time by your "utter bullshit" remark).

  • Now who is blocking the reasons for JH's firing, today? WMF/Legal is my bet. (Of course, other real/prospective Board memberships were not an issue. How could I doubt).
I have responded multiple times with pre-decision arguments. I have never given a post-decision argument. I have talked about a pattern of behavior, which continues today, and which is easy to illustrate because it happened publicly and after the fact. His actions as board member were, in my view, not consistent with the trust placed in him by the community.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:22, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I imagine the reason neither Jimmy nor the board have provided any evidence of "wrongdoing" is that there is not any evidence of wrong doing. I would be supportive of an independent review of this matter. IMO our movement deserves one. While the board is well within its rights to remove me for "no cause" if they are claiming a cause I would appreciate if they would send it to me (doing so before removing me would have been even more preferable). Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:40, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Surgeon dropped notebook, coffee and 3 scapels, perhaps trust issues

If a saw my surgeon fumbling and dropping scapels on the way into surgery, then I would refuse the operation with her as the surgeon; that's just the way I think about trusting someone. Perhaps that word, "trust" has too many implications of deception, and so perhaps it would be better to note "reliability" as I would not rely upon her (the surgeon) to operate safely after dropping many items upon entering the OR. Another alternative word could be "competence" (rather than the word "trust"), but if someone's judgment or actions seem unstable, then there would be ample reason to change course. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:49, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

The Arbitration Committee disapproves of community members casting aspersions. These efforts to smear the doc's good name should stop. Wbm1058 (talk) 18:08, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

All of our efforts here will go to waste unless we take action

As I've explained on Meta here, we need to make a version of Wikipedia that explains all concepts in terms of physics and math to make the information in Wikipedia universally accessible to all forms of intelligence. Count Iblis (talk) 01:22, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I think that would be a great chance to take advantage of your right to WP:FORK Wikipedia content. The project so far has been geared towards humans, expanding it to include hypothetical AIs is probably not something likely to be adopted. Once the AIs start asking for it themselves it may be a different story. That being said, I cannot answer for Jimbo. HighInBC 01:26, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
I think the first step is to make Wikipedia's science articles understandable for all humans. Gamaliel (talk) 01:40, 3 February 2016 (UTC)


All articles should be readable by the readers we have - any "grade level" which is in the grad school category for readership is "not good". Note that I have even seen articles with "negative readability" <g> per Flesch-Kincaid score. And articles as long as a Harry Potter novel <g> are not any better for readers. Wikipedia has over 1,000 articles over 200K in size. Pharmaceutical drug with a readability of 26 ("very confusing") is all-too-typical of Wikipedia articles.[15] Collect (talk) 02:45, 3 February 2016 (UTC)


Hell, if we could make the physics and math articles understandable to our human readers, that would be a big improvement. Liz Read! Talk! 01:52, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
It's actually the articles about daily life things that we find the easiest to understand that will be the most difficult to understand for an AI. An AI won't have the same sort of feelings like we have, e.g. it probably won't have a notion of feeling hungry, so this must be explained. Count Iblis (talk) 04:57, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Your suggestion for a project that would make (some portion of) human knowledge accessible to non-human intelligence might be an interesting project—my initial, intuitive reaction was skeptical of this idea, but on reflection I can imagine having some intellectual fun with the idea even if one doubts that a non-human intelligence will be coming along anytime soon to enjoy or learn from the product. I have to agree with HighInBC that whether or not such a project would be interesting, it is not this project, on which NPOV hasn't yet been extended to species-independence (the comments on my article in last week's Signpost notwithstanding). Maybe you could create a page of what you have in mind as a prototype in your userspace sometime, to give a greater sense of what you are thinking of ... that is, assuming that the output you have in mind would be written in English. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 05:05, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
You might want to start with simple.wiki By using a limited vocabulary it has forced editors to work to a standard that is probably a much better starting point for machine usage. QuiteUnusual (talk) 14:07, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I would like to see an actual example of describing a human concept starting only with facts of physics and math. I think it would reveal just how little we understand about the concept and math and physics. I really don't think we are advanced enough to connect such fundamentals to complex topics. You see our brain takes shortcuts in understanding, it skips the parts it does not need.

If you ever want to know how much you know about, say walking, try teaching a robot to walk. HighInBC 15:49, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I already have -- or to be precise I was part of the team that did. See [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sknq2H4z0lw ] and [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHoJ2naN5HI ]. Fun fact: when the ODEX-1 legs stalled the power transistors would overheat, melt the solder holding them on to the board, and fall on the floor. After replacing the transistors twenty times or so I tried putting the old transistors back, and they still worked! --Guy Macon (talk) 16:48, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Didn't that team go on to form Bad Robot Productions? -Roxy the dog™ woof 09:59, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I've been thinking this over for a few days and I still can't quite get my head around it. It is far from obvious to me that to make Wikipedia understandable by machine intelligence it would need to be written in such a fashion that every concept would be explained in terms of physics and math. And it is pretty obvious to me that human beings don't really know how to do that. Per another discussion on this page, how to rewrite Booker T Washington so that his biography is expressed in terms of physics and math? I'm not even sure it is a coherent thing to desire!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:37, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Machines will lack certain primary experiences that we have (qualia) instead they may have other primary experiences. So, it's a bit like having to explain to blind people what it means to be able to see before you can communicate anything that involves vision. But we don't need to explain from first principles what we experience when see something (which is an unsolved problem). However, it is still necessary for a blind persons to know that there exists such a thing as vision which they lack, which has certain properties. The description of that will to them be rather abstract/mathematical in nature. In contrast, people who can see usually can afford to not know about this abstract description at all. Count Iblis (talk) 21:25, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Being hassled by Taichi

Despite being warned by an administrator in charge to stop, You get onto someone's talk page to restore, against all our guidelines,...Have you read WP:OWNTALK, the part where it says "users may freely remove comments from their own talk pages.... he seems just not to heed the call, which to leave my talk page alone. At 30th of last month, he went back to my talk page at Commons and did the same thing he's warned not to.[16] I have enough of it already, please do something about these hasslings. I don't want anything to do with these guys, why they just don't leave me alone? Plus, his accomplice went back to the administrator's talk page (the one in charge of noticeboard/Incident) the day after they insulted her for the decision she took which of course they didn't like, and in complete disregard of Wiki talk page guidelines Use English: It is preferable to use English on all talk pages of English Wikipedia so comments may be comprehensible to the community. If using another language is unavoidable, try to provide a translation of the comments. If you cannot translate the comments, third parties or Wikipedia:Embassy can help. left a note in language (Spanish) different that of the project (English)! No te preocupes, ya puse en mi anterior escrito las falsas acusaciones y palabras incivicas vertidas en este proyecto, no me voy a repetir. Salutacions cordials, à bientôt-- It's just unbelievable how uncivil these people are! (Mona778 (talk) 21:40, 3 February 2016 (UTC))

That last diff was more than two weeks ago. You are right that it was uncivil. But it was ignored. Uncivil people often get ignored. This is a good idea. About Commons, maybe rules are different there. MPS1992 (talk) 23:18, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Governance of the English Wikipedia

I have posted this to Meta, but am also posting it here.

Here is one more comment for the WMF, that is a component of other issues that I will identify shortly. It is my understanding that the WMF Board is currently preparing its strategy for 2016, and I would like this taken into account.

The basic problem has to do with the governance of the English Wikipedia. I am aware that the WMF Board takes the position that each language Wikipedia, and each WMF Wiki in general, is self-governing. That is a valid general principle, but common sense is needed. Because the English Wikipedia is said to be self-governing, it is ungoverned. It has an unworkable governance model, and, because it is self-governing, it is not capable of its own governance reform. The English Wikipedia is said to be governed by consensus, but consensus is often not feasible for a group as large and diverse and fractious as the English Wikipedia. Consensus governance doesn’t work in the English Wikipedia, at least not with regard to policies or conduct. It works reasonably well for content in the form of Requests for Comments. However, the idea that the English Wikipedia can, on its own, change its governance to something other than consensus is just unrealistic. We don’t have a consensus as to what form of governance we want. From time to time, editors have said that they would like a constitutional convention. There is usually agreement that a constitutional convention would be good. However, consensus, in the sense of supermajority, is elusive. Any constitutional convention for the English Wikipedia will anyway require some sort of support from the WMF Board. Does the WMF Board think that its responsibilities include helping the Wiki communities achieve effective governance?

To be more specific as to my assessment of the self-governance of the English Wikipedia, we do a good job on Requests for Comments. In my opinion, we are essentially always stalemated on any policy matter, because we are deeply divided, and the consensus model of governance does not work for a large, diverse, fractious community. (We have had a few policies enacted for us by the one body that we have that is exempt from consensus, which is the ArbCom, which was created by Jimbo Wales (not by the community), is elected by majority, not by supermajority, and acts by majority, not by supermajority.)

In short, is the WMF Board sufficiently satisfied with its own perception that each of its communities can self-govern (that they will ignore evidence to the contrary), or are they willing to work with a very large, nominally very successful community (but never successful at governance) to achieve practical governance?

Can the WMF Board help the English Wikipedia, which is very large, very diverse, and very fractious, achieve more or less effective governance, or do you have a principle that you can’t get involved in communities, or something else?

Thank you.

Robert McClenon (talk) 19:49, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

On which important policy matters are we "stalemated"? And is creating an entirely new framework for governance something that responds to an actual, practical, clearly-enunciated need? Making it easier to impose new policies on enwiki solely because (after more than a decade of evolution) we don't create much new policy these days isn't necessarily a good thing. That the enwiki community is sometimes fractious – a charge I certainly won't dispute – does not render it ungoverned or ungovernable. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:41, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Paid editing is an example of a policy matter where the English Wikipedia was stalemated, until the WMF imposed rules in its Terms of Use. Some sort of sanctions reform is another. There was a recent RFC concerning the right of users sanctioned by ArbCom to appeal to Jimbo Wales, but, to my mind, the real problem is not that there needs to be an appeal from the ArbCom, but that there needs to be a lower-level of adjudication (besides the single-admin block) that can be appealed to ArbCom. (One solution, which ArbCom could probably do by itself, would be initially to hear nearly all cases in panels of three, with an optional right to appeal en banc. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:11, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Paid editing is a fair point. One could argue that it's a sufficiently significant issue that its handling should be consistent across all projects, and really is properly handled at the Foundation level. But sure, as English Wikipedia we certainly didn't speak with any particular unity on the question.
  • "Sanctions reform" is something that sounds very open-ended; I also don't recall any recent discussion that would fall under the topic. Honestly, the evolution of standardized DS and AE processes has greatly improved our ability to handle disruptive editors in most of Wikipedia's perennial problem areas. Where do you see major gaps in current policy?
  • The recent RfC on appeals to Jimbo struck me as a teapot tempest of interest principally to policy wonks. Whether it's explicitly part of policy or not, people are going to go to Jimbo (publicly or privately) as a last resort. Whether it's explicitly part of policy or not, Jimbo has a bully pulpit from which to (publicly or privately) exhort Wikipedia's functionaries.
  • Regarding 3-arbitrator panels as a step prior to en banc hearing, it's an interesting idea, but it doesn't require some nebulous constitutional convention to bring about. Changes to the Arbitration Policy are passed by the ArbCom and ratified by community referendum, or proposed by petition and ratified by community referendum—requiring simple majorities in either case. (If anything, I'd suggest that the amendment policy is too easy.) That said, it's worth noting that subcommittees of ArbCom haven't had a good track record for being faster or more responsive than the ArbCom as a whole. Both the BASC and the AUSC are now defunct. (Actually, the motion to close the queue for BASC was passed in November 2015, but the last few appeals are still being processed.) What has happened in recent years is that the ArbCom has evolved to a more motion-based approach, which has greatly streamlined their handling of all but the most complex cases. Waiting for Arbs to vote has never been the slow part of arbitration case handling; it's been the mucking about with weeks of bickering across multiple phases (acceptance, evidence, workshop, proposed decision).
I guess what I'm saying is, of the four points you brought up, there's just one where we arguably failed in our duty (as a community) to come up with core, important policy where we ought to have. Of the other three, one didn't really clearly elucidate a problem, one was a philosophical battle of no practical consequence, and one can already be implemented directly by non-supermajority-vote policy change. The last time I recall seeing a top-down imposition of major policy was with WP:BLP all the way back in 2005; if we get one crisis that requires WMF intervention every decade or so, maybe that's okay. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:33, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
The paid editing issue was being handled before the Foundation became involved, via the WP:ADVERTISING and WP:COI policies. The Foundation's involvement came during the Banc De Binary episode, where there was a $10,000 offer from the company to anyone who could make some embarrassing information about lawsuits from US security regulators disappear from Wikipedia.[17] That pushed the issue over the top and prompted a more explicit policy. In practice, the official paid editing policy isn't too useful, because demonstrating paid editing involves "outing" editors. (See the ongoing discussion at WT:Harassment about dealing with this conflict.) Paid editing is still handled as a COI problem, at WP:COIN, by the community. There's no "paid editing noticeboard". There's an informal consensus to, if something looks promotional, apply notability and neutrality policies strictly. That allows deletion of promotional material without having to blame an editor. We thus don't have to examine editor motivation, just content. Overly persistent promotional editors are referred to AN/I, which seems to happen once or twice a week. Consensus governance seems to be working for this issue. John Nagle (talk) 23:06, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia doesn't seem to be putting up a convincing resistance to advertising... again today we see a Square Enix product featured on the front page, as occurs regularly about once every 180 days. Is that company 1/180 of the world? I think not. Are those articles really 1/180 of our best articles? I also think not. They're peeing on our faces and we're licking it up and saying thank you massa. And who can do anything about it but the gallows-crows of FAC? Wnt (talk) 15:54, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Are you suggesting that Square Enix benefit significantly by an article about a 20-year-old old-style video game that was never commercially released in English or even outside Japan, appearing as Featured Article for 24 hours on the English Wikipedia? Also, are you suggesting that they have any involvement in its appearance? MPS1992 (talk) 22:58, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
That's just systemic bias. Wikipedia has always been the place for long articles on politicians running for office obscure Pokémon and very short articles on important figures in the history of science. Guy (Help!) 17:01, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
I have examined the details and it seems that the Pokémon articles are the very short ones and the articles on important figures are often of sensible length. I mean for Featured Articles of course. You are almost certainly correct about politician articles. MPS1992 (talk) 23:00, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
  • There have been a couple of decisive interventions by WMF, the instigation of WP:BLP and WP:CSD#G11. Adding the ToS policy on paid editing was also transformative but there was already consensus that paid editing was unacceptable and a fudge was already in place (keeping to the talk page), I had already written standard guidance to article subjects for OTRS before the change of the terms of use. The thorny issue right now is around identifying those who refuse to self-identify, which skirts close to WP:OUTING. This is one area where I think there needs to eb some change, if only an area where obvious Google-able conflicts can be discussed without falling foul of that policy. Guy (Help!) 13:53, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
One constructive step would be for the Foundation to elevate COI into a policy for all projects. Currently it is a behavioral guideline and editors are free to disregard without penalty. Coretheapple (talk) 17:44, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
How did the WMF do at providing support to ArbCom in rooting out pedophile WP editors? Cla68 (talk) 17:12, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Did the ArbCom root out the pedophile editors at all, or was that done entirely by the WMF office? Those are global office bans, not ArbCom blocks or bans. Maybe an Arbitrator can say whether ArbCom was involved at all. I think that the WMF acted quietly behind the scenes. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:45, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Certainly the sitebans suggest that the WMF was rather less passive than the Sangerites seem to want us to believe. Guy (Help!) 17:59, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Who are Sangerites and what do they want us to believe is wrong with the WMF? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:02, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
They are people who believe that they and their friends are not in charge of Wikipedia. They also think that they should be. Maybe they are right, I do not know. MPS1992 (talk) 22:49, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Who is Round, and to what does he object? -- Sir Humphrey Appleby Guy (Help!) 01:56, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

On governance and making changes to Wikipedia

The Veche according to Sergey Eisenstein

Can the English Wikipedia govern itself? Does it do so effectively? I have to agree with Robert Mac that there are great difficulties in effective governance here, including using the consensus system for large discussions and the questionable enforcement of all rules other than WP:IAR.

But first, my interpretation of how en-Wiki governance actually works. This is taken from a tour guide in Novgorod the Great on how their democratic system, known as the Veche, worked in the 1200s. Undoubtably this is oversimplified, but I think you’ll recognize many similarities.

The Archbishop

When an important public issue arose in Novgorod, anybody could ring a special bell to call the Veche into session. All free men were part of the Veche, but there were leaders of various groups who would stand up against the wall of the cathedral and “organize the discussion.” Then everybody proceeded to yell at each other until a decision was made. If the issue was contentious, the Archbishop might have to decide who won, but the Archbishop had to deal with everybody in the course of his work, and might have been afraid of getting lynched by the losing side.

When nothing could be decided and the safety of the Republic was in doubt (e.g. the Teutonic Knights were invading), the Prince (e.g. Alexander Nevsky) would come riding into town, organize everything, win the Battle on the ice, and then give up power once everything had settled down.

In short, we’ve got a governance system where everybody is called to a certain page, precedes to yell at each other, and very often can’t reach an orderly, considered decision. There are a few institutions that sometimes help, but if we really need to pull something out of the fire we, at least sometimes, have to go to Jimbo or the WMF.

The consensus system usually works pretty well when only a couple of dozen editors are involved, but for much more than that editors can not read and process all the comments, nor can they make minor adjustments or compromises - the give-and-take of reaching a consensus. Discussion simply becomes yelling slogans at each other. Since effective decisions are so hard to make for big issues, the current system is extremely conservative, often nothing gets done. IMHO most editors (maybe 70%) try to avoid these discussions - just keep your head down and try to write articles and everything will ultimately work out ok, we hope. A dedicated group of about 10% of all editors can almost always stop a decision from going through, and then, since our enforcement of rules is so spotty, even if a decision is made, it is seldom enforced 100%.

This is not to say that crucial decisions are not made at times, e.g. when we dealt with libel on en-Wiki via WP:BLP, reducing (not eliminating IMHO) kiddy-porn on Commons, banning editors who simply refuse to follow any rules (and then re-banning and re-re-banning them), hidden and not-so-hidden advertising in articles, and systematic harassment of women. But all of these decision have had significant input from Jimbo and/or the WMF.

I’ve had some input on some of the above issues and believe that my input was effective in helping make some of those decisions. I will note however that it’s quite hard to tell how effective one person can be in these matters. Much of the work is done in odd corners of the Wiki, or occasionally by e-mail, and the first pre-requisite for any effective change on Wikipedia is that a large majority of editors agree with you. But these editors are also working in odd corners of the Wiki or by e-mail. It takes many independent actions by many people that slowly build up until a decision is actually made.

IMHO my most effective action was in the case of the paid editing amendment to the Terms of Use. That involved several years of challenging the most obnoxious forms of advertisement when I’d see it, comments and articles on the Signpost, AfDs, finding allies, discussions at meetings, and most of all, being prepared when the next paid-editing scandal happened. (And do be aware that there is another paid-editing scandal coming within the next six months)

After one paid editing scandal I made a very modest proposal, the “bright-line rule” should become Wikipedia policy. Editors of the Veche responded by shouting it down, making some very outrageous claims about how the bright-line rule would totally ruin Wikipedia, and making five (5) policy counterproposals on different pages. Nothing could be done by proposing a policy for approval by consensus, even when it was clear that the large proportion of editors was against most paid editing.

Nothing to do but keep plugging away. I believe (though I’m not sure) that I convinced the WMF that the then-current rules were encouraging people to break US and EU law by placing hidden ads in our articles. Miracle of miracles, the ToS change was proposed on Meta, WMF legal maintained order during the RfC and, after more than a month, the largest RfC ever had taken place with nearly 80% of the !voters in favor.

My point - even when 80% of Wikipedians are in favor of a change in policy, it is not easy to make a change.

There are other changes that will be needed from time-to-time on Wikipedia. Software has to be modernized, equal rights for women is still challenged surprisingly often (though I believe that this issue will be won once women simply realize that 90% of editors are with them), reliability (or accuracy) of articles has to be increased. Are we ready to deal with these issues, and others that will inevitably come up, through our governance system? It can be done, but it won’t be easy.

Nevsky and the Mongol

Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:38, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Smallbones, there are more reliable sources than tourist brochures. Based even on our unauthoritative but surely more NPOV enWP, Nevsky went on to conquer and rule the entire region, doing so in a subservient but mutually-supportive relationship role with a large multi-national empire. DGG ( talk ) 19:57, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Actually, I don't think it's all that relevant what really happened in Novgorod, what's important is whether it's happening here. The analogy could come from the Wizard of Oz for all I care. The tour guide's (in person) story sounded pretty iffy to me, until I saw how Wikipedia was governed. I'm not sure if Nevsky's alliance with the Mongols has any parallel here. Are you proposing one? Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:23, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm afraid that the metaphor has me lost, but I agree that the WMF can be more activist than it has been, if it can get its act together. Given its timidity, and the internecine politics that seems to plague the WMF, I'm not sure it's realistic to expect much fatherly behavior from that quarter. Coretheapple (talk) 20:54, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
I was hoping that the analogy was clear. At least it was what I thought of after reading Robert McClenon's comments above. You might look at your last major interaction on this page, something about article ownership. Just ask yourself - who rang the bell? who were the guys with the pitchforks (the Veche)? How much actual discussion took place? What did the archbishops do? Where was Alexander Nevsky?
My point is not that the WMF has to come riding to the rescue every time an issue comes up. In fact, I believe that you have to go through the whole shebang on Wikipedia, even on issues as obvious as hidden advertising and women's rights, before even considering an appeal to the WMF. But the WMF should help us have a system where the obvious decisions can get made in an orderly manner. Perhaps I'll offer some suggestions later (and on the Meta page as well), but I don't have any obvious solutions to what is the best governance model. Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:35, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
This sounds much more like the plaintive bleating of the peasantry (probably apocryphal) as recorded in the Primary Chronicle: "They said to themselves, 'Let us seek a prince who may rule over us, and judge us according to the Law.' They accordingly went overseas to the Varangian Rus'. … The Chuds, the Slavs, the Krivichs and the Ves then said to the Rus', 'Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us.' They thus selected three brothers with their kinfolk, who took with them all the Rus' and migrated. — It's all an after the fact origins myth of Kiev Rus', in all likelihood, but there you go. The fact is that we have a decision-making system and we all muddle along. Running to papa in San Francisco ain't gonna help... We don't need to run abroad for an emperor to rule us by fiat because somebody decided against democracy when WP was being set up over a decade ago. Carrite (talk) 02:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure what your "bleating" word choice is all about. The Chronicle refers to a period several hundred years before the Veche. Nobody is saying that we need an emperor or should go running to papa, but we do need a better governance system, one that can actually accomplish something in a reasonable amount of time. I'd guess you've heard many folks around here say that before.
Nobody should be against having an effective governance system. It's not in the interest of the WMF to have their flagship project flailing about, mostly unable to do anything even when 80% of Wikipedians agree that change is needed (as in the paid editor case). It's not in the editors' interest to have an unresponsive system. The current system is unlikely to be able to change itself - as noted by Robert McCLenon above, but that doesn't mean that the system can't be changed. Who, for example, would say that a new constitution for the community would be illegitimate if 70% of editors voted for it? Who would say that more democracy is a bad thing, if it made governance more effective?
There is one group that I can think of, but they complain about everything that Wikipedia or the WMF do. And they've been complaining for about 10 years now. Wikipedia is about to die - become a complete failure - according to them, and it has been for the last 10 years. My preference is just to ignore them, you can't satisfy everybody and if those folks are so against everything Wikipedian, they should just leave. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:30, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
I think I grasp your general point, but I see the WMF as basically a hands-off body with narrow interests and no great desire to assist Wikipedia in its arcane and bureaucratic methods. Better to be direct than utilize metaphors when dealing with those persons. Coretheapple (talk) 16:32, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
@Smallbones - Digressing a bit: Your error is assuming that Wikipediocracy is some sort of a monolith. It is nothing more than a criticism message board with a wide range of opinions expressed, running the gamut from current and former members of ArbCom to banned editors. Of course criticism websites are going to be unrelentingly critical — which is not to say that good deeds go uncommented. The site's function is very much that of an investigative newspaper, and it helps keep the mammoth multi-million dollar bureaucracy focused and to ameliorate some of the worst content and behavioral problems at WP. It is absolutely true that there are a certain percentage of "Hasten The Day" types there (a minority), but if we Wikipedians can't meet their fundamental argument with one of our own, this project is indeed doomed. It's not. Stop pretending that everyone at WPO thinks that it is, because we don't. Carrite (talk) 17:50, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

False consensus to force policies or delete templates

A detailed re-read of the WP project pages reveals how a small group of people had slanted decisions when no clear consensus actually existed. For example, I was stunned to read the background of forcing dashes into pages or titles which had used hyphens for decades or centuries, where a key person who exposed the false consensus was hounded out. Years later a group of 9 people who opposed the forced-dash guideline were hounded when ~7 supporters were outnumbered by a growing "new consensus" to reverse the rule. Meanwhile, the real world was even removing hyphens from words (changing "teen-age" to "teenage" or "world-wide" to "worldwide"), and mobile phone keyboards dropped dash in favor of accent marks, while a false consensus claimed the world required dashes to survive. Similar forced decisions have deleted templates when Keep support was clear as cases of actually "no consensus" to drastically remove a template wanted by active editors. In those cases, if the community consensus wp:TfD discussions had not been held, then the clear reasons to keep deleted templates would not have been on record. Now template authors are not notified of pending TfD debates, and a "Delete" decision can be closed by a non-admin user who wants to force a false outcome. True consensus decisions would not have caused those problems. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Oh come on now, Wikid77. No one is forced to use dashes. If you're editing on a phone that doesn't support them, no problem. If you want to add new content without using dashes, fine. Others may edit your contributions and add dashes or change hyphens to dashes where the consensus manual-of-style calls for them. The issue and controversy is with editors who continue to insist that dashes are incorrect and remove them against consensus. The "real world" removes hyphens from words all the time; it's a natural part of the process of evolution of the English language. When the world stops using hyphens in words such as "world-wide", Wikipedia generally follows that common usage, and removes them as well. Wbm1058 (talk) 22:33, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Certainly, WP editors and readers have been forced to use dashes, forced to search for text containing dashes, and if they run a global search-replace to put all hyphens to allow wp:Accessibility for further editing and searching the page as simple hyphens, then they are likely to be accused of fighting "consensus" as wp:DE disruption, when they actually just put hyphens so any user could easily search or edit the page from a modern device. When dashes were first forced into WP page titles, over 92% of wp:RS sources used hyphens in those titles. Someone even claimed the journal Nature preferred dashes seen in the journal, but it was revealed how each author could use dashes or hyphens or mix both wherever in a page. Ignoring those issues is just like ignoring the lack of consensus to force dashes into titles known for centuries to use hyphens. Count the many thousands of pages which were renamed to use dashes rather than just put dashes in a new redirect title. People even argued about dashing asteroid names which required hyphens by some international standards. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:45, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Your role as spokesperson for the Wikimedia movement

At Wikimania 2014, you claimed the role of spokesperson for the Wikimedia movement. You certainly don't speak to my concerns and aspirations for the movement. Who appointed you to that role and how long do you intend holding on to it? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:32, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Do you have a specific concern about a particular statement that I made? Which concerns and aspirations did you have in mind in particular?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:58, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
I'll be very happy to have that conversation. Would you mind answering my questions, though? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 20:28, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Who appointed me? I don't even understand what that question means. It's not a role that one could be appointed to, it's just a fact. That's who I am, that's what I do. I intend to continue my public advocacy for Wikipedia for the rest of my life. This is my life's work. I have no plans to retire.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:58, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Many of us advocate for Wikipedia. We don't all call ourselves the spokesperson for the movement. One could be appointed to the role of Wikipedia community spokesperson by putting oneself before that community and asking for the right to represent them. You just assume you have that privilege. But I don't even know how anyone could, possibly, "speak for this community". We are too diverse. I see this "spokesperson of the community" thing as a meaningless paper crown you don, that might help you get more speaking gigs where you can pose as some kind of internet guru. The problem with it is, people who don't know any better might actually think you represent us.
You were lucky. This bad idea you had for an encyclopedia morphed itself into a good idea, thanks to genuine creative steps taken by hundreds of people. Now you constantly claim the sole credit for Wikipedia. Sole founder. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?
Congratulations on being appointed to the Guardian board, by the way. And congratulations for the half million dollars the UAE gave you so you can set up the Wales foundatoun and do what dozens of other far better staffed and better thought-through foundations (that don't have your name on them) are already doing expertly and effectively. And congratulations for all of the very highly paid speaking engagements you get because you have so successfully positioned yourself as the genius behind Wikipedia. And, finally, congratulations on being appointed to the WMF board for another three years, when, as far as I can see, you have nothing of value to offer but incumbency.
I know I sound angry and bitter. I'm sorry. I guess I am. I'm just so disappointed in you. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:44, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
You're also mistaken about lots of facts here. It doesn't sound like you're in the mood to have a genuine conversation about it right now, so I'll just leave it. Thank you for expressing your feelings.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:50, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm quite capable of having a genuine conversation right now. I fully understand you not wanting to engage me in one, though. I'm not mistaken. Just think about what I've said; that's all I ask; particularly about what I've implied regarding your sense of your own importance and entitlement, Sole Founder. Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:52, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
That's one of the main things that you are factually mistaken about, actually. I emphasize constantly, hundreds of times per year, that the community is what matters. Unlike most people in a similar position to me, I'm very well known for not having a strong view of entitlement or control. I've made many decisions and taken many actions - not just words, going back to the act of placing Wikipedia into a nonprofit organization and before that and since then, which illustrate how seriously I take the fundamental mission of Wikipedia. Again I can ask you: what in particular are you unhappy about. Can you point me to a specific statement or action of mine which you found annoying in the sense of implying that I think of myself in a way that you think I shouldn't? I'm always happy to take friendly and helpful advice. Not so interested in fact-free rants, of course. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:57, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps I am mistaken and you can correct me. For starters,
  • You position yourself as some kind of internet guru, and speak with an authoritative voice on many topics in large part - only, really, if we're honest about it - based on the success of the encyclopedia. The most obvious creative step in the encyclopedia's early evolution was the adoption of the wiki. Who in the encyclopedia originally mooted the idea of using a wiki for collaborative writing of articles?
  • Above, you say, "I've made many decisions and taken many actions - not just words, going back to the act of placing Wikipedia into a nonprofit organization and before that and since then, which illustrate how seriously I take the fundamental mission of Wikipedia." You are sometimes characterised as the guy who founded the world's 5th/7th biggest website by page views who chose to give it away rather than monetise it, because it was the right thing to do. I think I've heard you use those very words, "it was the right thing to do." Is it the case that you had no choice, that you transferred the servers and licenses to the WMF only when it became clear the community wouldn't allow you to sell advertising, and the encyclopedia would never turn a profit?
  • Above you say, "Unlike most people in a similar position to me, (what position is that, exactly, Sole Founder?) I'm very well known for not having a strong view of entitlement or control." Regarding entitlement, I don't think I've ever seen or heard anyone say you don't have a serious sense of entitlement. You don't feel entitled to just assume, without asking, the role of speaking for this community? (As if anyone could.) As for control; you may characterise it as surrendering control, but I see it as failing to shoulder your responsibility. There's a great deal wrong, still, with the world's encyclopedia, and I've just been through the last four years of your board's resolutions and you, the board, offer no direction. You are out of ideas.
You, personally, happened to be there as the world's free encyclopedia exploded into being before your eyes, thanks to the creative efforts of hundreds and then thousands of good, generous people. And you're still here, claiming responsibility for this miracle, and shirking any actual responsibility for the mess it is yet in. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:15, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Actually, this is a distraction and a waste of our time. What's motivating this is, you have failed, and you should get out of the way. Our shared vision is free knowledge for all, but reliable information is what makes knowledge, and we are publishing unreliable assertions. The most persistent plea from readers (as opposed to editors) in the recent community consultation was for quality, accuracy and trustworthiness in our offering. By my estimation there are fewer than fifteen English language Wikipedia articles that have a version that meets our own definition of reliable. The board needs to recognise this as failure, and needs to aggressively empower the community and staff to prioritise making the world's encyclopedia a resource it can trust. It's nowhere on your radar. Improving quality was on the five-year-plan but to my knowledge not one staff member was appointed to address reliablity. There is no board committee tasked with monitoring the unreliability problem. No resolutions in the last five years address it. The board's collective head is deeply in the sand regarding Wikimedia's biggest flaw. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:17, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
It is not the job of the WMF to do anything about Wikipedia content other than keeping things that would get us sued off the site, and the community would not accept the WMF making content decisions if they tried. Improving the quality of our content is our job. I suggest that you go to whatever part of Wikipedia you think is unreliable and fix it. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:15, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
I might add that I have seen a lot of people who aren't getting their way in various content disputes call for the WMF to rule on article content, but they never seem to consider the possibility that the WMF content decisions might not go their way. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:19, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
I don't think Anthony (who I know personally, and is a deeply honourable person) is one of the people of whom you are speaking. I also think that there are serious problems with article content, and not because I am not getting my way in any content dispute. Peter Damian (talk) 16:59, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
I don't expect the WMF to make content decisions. I expect the board to highlight the unreliability problem, and mandate the executive director, the funds dissemination committee, the developers and the rest of the WMF to prioritise and enthusiastically support all initiatives that realistically address the problem. Without the express support of the board in the form of a resolution, or some other genuine acknowledgement that reliability is one of the foundation's primary goals, I doubt the ED or the FDC can ethically devote much in the way of WMF time and resources to supporting reliability initiatives. The board needs to DO something. Are you reading this, Jimmy? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:06, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
I notice that 5-10 years ago, Wikipedia was not seen as the first go-to place for information by as much of the general public as it is now and was criticized by academics etc. a lot more than it is now. Also, I think there have been some comparisons between Wikipedia and and other envyclopedias where Wikipedia is found to be more reliable/accurate. However, there is lots of room for improvement on lots of articles and if I was going to change anything, I would set limits on how much involvement each Editor can have with editing/reverting each article's content...I think "Own" is our biggest problem in terms of content.Nocturnalnow (talk) 19:21, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
You may be capable of having a genuine conversation right now, but what you are actually doing is insulting and baiting Jimbo, and in the process ignoring the facts. Jimbo has been guiding Wikipedia all along. Some may disagree with some of Jimbo's decisions, but as a whole that guidance has been wise, effective, and not too heavy-handed. Jimbo has gained my trust the hard way -- by his actions. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:52, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I concur with Guy Macon and although my opinion is not based on long term knowledge I am "over the top" impressed with the way he has handled recent important drama which I do not think was of his personal making.... I especially like the "utter fucking bullshit" quote, because phonies never write such things. So, he's not a phony, and that's the most important thing for a leader or guide in 2016, imo. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:56, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I especially liked the "fucking" part. I'm a big fan of fucking. Bus stop (talk) 16:43, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
So it's OK for Eric Corbett to use such language about other users, given he is not a phony? I thought most people were against that? Peter Damian (talk) 17:02, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Well, everything in moderation :), I chuckled when I saw it,..a bit of levity in an otherwise tense situation... one time I was being kindof bossy with an employee of mine and she told me to "fuck off"...I thought it was funny and still do. I doubt Jimbo is going to make a habit of it. I don't know anything about Eric Corbett, but in general, I don't mind profanity among associates; its a good way to get things off one's chest, imo. There's likely a rule against it, but I'm no big fan of rules. One thing's for sure, phonies are a disaster and good for nothing. They're almost always passive aggressive and are easy to recognise from that characteristic. Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:57, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
If anyone wishes to add some variety to future comments, they may find http://www.guymacon.com/flame.html to be useful. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 15:34, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

It is not the job of the WMF to do anything about Wikipedia content?

Why not? There are many things the WMF could do to help. For example by making it easier for specialists to work on the project. I have fretted on this very page, e.g. here about the problem. To my knowledge you have never replied to any of these concerns. See here in particular – a long thread about a 'stable Wikipedia' – an idea that Anthony flew to San Francisco to discuss with Lila. I am fairly certain you contributed nothing to that thread. Indeed I wonder if you will reply to this comment? The exam question is 'can the WMF do anything to address the problem of reliability in Wikipedia'? Peter Damian (talk) 17:31, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

It all ultimately comes down to the cult of anonymity. As long as there is no real name registration and sign-in-to-edit, there can be no effective banning of malefactors and no certification of expert content. Obviously, Citizendium — which emphasized real names — ended in catastrophe so this is not a simple thing. All we of good intentions can do is to keep plugging and to try to make things as accurate and verifiable as they can be. Carrite (talk) 17:46, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Tim, let's not try to solve the reliability problem in this thread. All I want is to see the board name the problem as a priority issue, and so encourage volunteers and partners to work toward a solution, and reassure the FDC and the ED that they may direct appropriate resources toward it. While the board ignores the problem, it is much harder to convince partners that we take it seriously. That is, while it ignores the problem, the board is a major part of the problem. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:16, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes. The question is 'Jimmy are you listening'.Peter Damian (talk) 19:18, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
There is no meaningful sense in which the board can be said to be ignoring the question of quality, so I'm not sure what you mean, Anthony. (As an example, just today, a board member wrote a long and thoughtful post on the mailing list about reliability and some ideas to improve it. It's very much on the radar. And I do agree with Peter Damian that this is the core question: "Can the WMF do anything to address the problem of reliability in Wikipedia?" I can think of several things that the WMF already does and could do more of, but I also think that the real power to improve quality rests here, on the wiki - what the WMF can do is support us with software features. We have one that we mostly don't use that I think we should use widely - flagged revisions. A good place to start would be to try to get consensus to either use it as it is, or to get consensus that we would use it if particular aspects of it are changed/fixed.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:25, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
One board member said something on a secret mailing list. Seriously?
Did you read my proposal for a resolution? How about sponsoring that?
I realise the board can only express wishes and intentions, and give overall direction and priorities to the ED and the FDC. But you're not even doing that. And I realise there are limits to what the WMF can do. But they will be restrained even in that already limited capacity without clear direction on reliability from you, the board. Please don't hijack this conversation by pushing at any particular proposed solution. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:47, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

It is very hard to take you seriously when you use absurd and dishonest rhetoric like "secret mailing list". I would be happy to sponsor a resolution urging a focus on quality. I don't think it would be meaningful, since there is already a focus on quality, but there is no reason not to do it. A better approach would be to take your proposal and submit it to the community for review and improvement, and get a strong degree of support for it (doesn't have to be universal consensus, or there would be no point in a board resolution) and then I can submit it to the board.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:13, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Dishonest. Cute. Would you please post here the last two months' emails on the trustee's email list?
I opened a discussion at the WMF board noticeboard earlier today, and invited comment on wikimedia-l.
I asked you to sponsor a resolution urging a focus on reliability. If you couch it in terms of quality, that blurs into such things as the clarity of our video rendition, the efficacy of our media viewer, and so on. I look forward to seeing your proposed resolution at the board board. Should I hold my breath? Let's see who's being dishonest here. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:09, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Just picking up on something you said above. "I would be happy to sponsor a resolution urging a focus on quality. I don't think it would be meaningful..." I'm one of the people competing for FDC funding and developer time, and I'm telling you that such a resolution from the board would be very meaningful to me. If I'm chasing a software fix that's essential to the expert review process, and I'm turned down because reliability isn't a concern of the WMF, then it matters.
You say the board cares about reliability. Well, the board should have the spine to say it. Not just mumble it to itself on secret email lists.
You've had fifteen years. Where's the reliable articles? What's your plan? When does it actually kick in and start producing reliable articles?
You're the guy who has presided over this same ol', same ol' untrustworthy pile of assertions for fifteen years. Fifteen fucking years. And if it's left up to you, it'll be the same ol', same ol' (but bigger, in more languages) pile of unreliable assertions in another fifteen years. "I don't think it would be meaningful". Of course you don't. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:31, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Seems a lot of bytes of editing regarding this, but it all stalled. Why? I'm not familiar with it as this was all happening before I became active here. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:10, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

The community explicitly asked for Pending Changes as opposed to Fragged Revisions, on the grounds that FR would result in a logistical nightmare. As for PC, discussion about including PC2 has stalled - and honestly, it needed to, what with 14 discussions on the topic in six years' time - after the failed 2014 RfC about including it. —Jeremy v^_^v Bori! 07:07, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
To Wbm1058: Go try do some improvement on the German language Wikipedia, then you find out why this is not a good idea. And regarding quality, as a volunteer I have enough problems without the WMF. What we need are more contributors and part of reaching that could be to move the disclaimer from the bottom to the top of each and every page, so more readers get aware of what Wikipedia is, and is not. Ulflarsen (talk) 22:34, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

It is absolutely not the job of the WMF to "do something" about Wikipedia content, with the sole exception of suppressing content that could get us sued (libel, copyright violations, violating privacy laws, that sort of thing.). The WMF can and does strive to make it easy for us to improve the content of Wikipedia with things like software features, but content is our job, not the WMF's job.

As of Sunday, 10 November 2024, The English Wikipedia has 48,241,290 registered users, 120,786 active editors, and 853 administrators. Together we have made 1,251,755,459 edits, created 61,811,611 pages of all kinds and created 6,908,434 articles. As of 2015, the WMF employed roughly 300 people, all of whom already have jobs to do. The WMF simply does not have the staff to make content decisions. Plus, of course, there is the problem that if they tried we would revolt. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:35, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

I said this above. I'm not talking about the WMF making content decisions. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:49, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
The problem is not so much that the community is revolting (pick whichever definition you please ;) ), but that the WMF needs to remain 'hands off' so that it can't be considered a publisher under America law. If it were a publisher, it could be liable for anything hosted on its sites, whereas in its current position it's only liable if it doesn't act on legally problematic content once it's made aware of it (for example by removing a copyright violation on receipt of a DMCA takedown notice). As I understand it, anyway; IANAL. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 02:47, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm not talking about the WMF ruling on content. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:49, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
Could you explain what...
"By my estimation there are fewer than fifteen English language Wikipedia articles that have a version that meets our own definition of reliable. The board needs to recognise this as failure, and needs to aggressively empower the community and staff to prioritise making the world's encyclopedia a resource it can trust. It's nowhere on your radar. Improving quality was on the five-year-plan but to my knowledge not one staff member was appointed to address reliability. There is no board committee tasked with monitoring the unreliability problem. No resolutions in the last five years address it. The board's collective head is deeply in the sand regarding Wikimedia's biggest flaw." Source: Anthonyhcole, edit of 04:17, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
...means? How, exactly, is the WMF supposed to "address reliability [of Wikipedia's content]" while at the same time not ruling on content, hiring someone to rule on content, appointing a volunteer to ruls on content, or something similar? --Guy Macon (talk) 04:06, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
I can't speak for other knowledge domains, but in medicine and bioinformatics there are a number of initiatives afoot, mostly efforts to get experts engaged in editing and reviewing, aimed at improving reliability. Some (most?) of them are scaleable so, if they work, each could have a significant impact on the reliability of Wikipedia's (and ultimately other projects') medical content. None of those (that I'm aware of) require much in the way of funding, staff time or developer input. But all require a bit of that, I think. That's not to say someone won't, in the future, come up with a killer solution that does require more resources than the current initiatives. On a practical level, that's the kind of WMF support I'm thinking of.
But on a broader level, a clear statement from the board identifying reliability as one of its key priorities would help me and others persuade outside institutions to offer us their help. This kind of symbol means a great deal when it comes to inter-institution discussions. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:53, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
Assuming that anyone outside of us and a few journalists pay any attention to announcements by the board (which I doubt), a "clear statement" from the Wikimedia foundation board is likely to persuade outside institutions to offer the Wikimedia foundation their help, and the WMF would then have to politely decline because they don't deal with content. Instead, if expert help is desired, Wikipedia should make an announcement asking for it.
There are people working on this:
Wikipedia:Expert retention
Wikipedia:Expert editors
Wikipedia:Relationships with academic editors
Wikipedia:Wikipedia editing for research scientists
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Guy Macon (talk • contribs) 07:00, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for your opinion. If I can point them to such a statement from the board, it will show potential partners that the WMF is there to provide appropriate support, as outlined in my first paragraph. Did my first paragraph answer your question? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:29, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Lets also remember that there are 280 active Wikipedias in a host of different languages. We may be the flagship project but we are one of many. There is a reason that the WMF does not focus on the English Wikipedia but instead focuses on software that can be distributed to all 280 projects. If they were to give us preferential treatment, then other Wikipedias would revolt. They would never directly help us with our content while leaving the other 279 to fend for themselves. --Majora (talk) 02:48, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm not talking about just en.Wikipedia, or just Wikipedia. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:49, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Addressing reliability of content

Guy Macon writes (04:06, 31 January 2016, my emphasis): “How, exactly, is the WMF supposed to "address reliability [of Wikipedia's content]" while at the same time not ruling on content, hiring someone to rule on content, appointing a volunteer to rule on content, or something similar?". Which reference works rule on content? I don't know of any. Typically you write something, it's sent to a small group of reviewers, and they submit suggestions or advice or so on. The responsibility for the work often lies with the original authors. What is to stop the WMF commissioning external specialist reviewers for the more important or significant articles, or the more 'educational' ones?

We are still awaiting a serious study of content reliability. This doesn't involve any kind of ruling. There was a study by the University of Oxford a few years ago. As I pointed out at the time, one flaw in the study, which compared Wikipedia articles to Britannica articles, was that it compared the current Britannica article with an article from Wikipedia largely copied from the 1911 Britannica article. Thus it was comparing Britannica to itself, and finding, weirdly, and wrongly as it happens, that Britannica was worse now than in 1911. What is really needed is a reliability study that doesn't rely on such clearly flawed methodology. Peter Damian (talk) 12:06, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

I think - at least in medicine - we'll be able to get independent experts to review our articles for free. From where I'm sitting, that's looking very likely: using the top medical journals in every field to recruit the world's most highly regarded researchers and scholars as reviewers. Also, given the promise of such review, I'm confident we'll be able to attract experts to prepare the articles for review, for free. Early days, though.
I agree we badly need serious independent research into the actual reliability of Wikimedia's offerings. Having the WMF commission such studies (pay for and choose the researchers) would be problemmatical, from the conflict-of-interest perspective. But WMF could evangelise among relevant foundations and academic institutions to catalyse or inspire such work. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:18, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
Do you envision the independent experts reviewing our articles doing anything other than what any editor does (either editing the article or suggesting changes on the talk page)? Would their opinions have more weight than that of Randy in Boise, and if so, how would that work? Please keep in mind the cautionary tale of Nupedia. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:31, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
No. Reviewers will just give opinions and recommend changes. Wikipedia policy, rightly, won't allow anything to go into an article that doesn't have consensus on the talk page. If the reviewers and editors can't reach consensus on important points of fact or emphasis, the article simply fails review. I'm familiar with the history. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:16, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
It would be an interesting exercise to have these experts review our featured articles and see how they tally with the experts' knowledge—whether anything was missing, whether there were any glaring factual errors, whether anything got far more weight than it deserved, etc. Featured articles seem like a good place to start as we would hope that our most thoroughly scrutinised content would be our most reliable. I'd be overjoyed for a subject expert to read over any of my featured articles and tell me where there might be room for improvement, and I suspect many featured article writers would be similarly enthusiastic. The only potential roadblock I could think of would be the expert knowing something that wasn't written down anywhere or where accounts in reliable sources differ. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:41, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
That's what's happening in this pilot. We're half-way through the review (offline) and it's on hold at the moment while I recover from the flu and have a think. I'm about to ask the reviewers to find reliable sources that support their claims. (Trying to find a form of words to break it to them gently. ) I expect the review to appear on the article's talk page in a month or so. Then the conversation will begin between the editors and the reviewers. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:16, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Ah the old Nupedia myth. Nupedia proved that it is always slow to develop ‘flagship’ style articles. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy proved it is slow to develop ‘flagship’ style articles. And Wikipedia proved exactly the same thing, although it is much slower. See SEP vs WP Peter Damian (talk) 16:31, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
It takes a while to get an article up to featured standard but, once it's there, expert review doesn't take very long. The present pilot is taking forever because we're making it up as we go. I think each reviewer has put in between two and five hours of their time, so far. And they'll probably put in the same again finding sources and discussing on the talk page. Once a routine is established, I expect the process to take one to three months, from nomination of the article to completion of the review. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:16, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I think that the reliability of content is exclusively related to the number and geographical location of editors. The more and broader the better. For now, I think the content is about a "C+" overall. I'd like to see Wikipedia editing become a part of high school curriculum as a way of improving content and also to provide a continual source of new and young editors. That would also be a great learning experience for the students. Nocturnalnow (talk) 20:48, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

The issue with Wikipedia content is not that it is good or bad in a broad sense, but that it is extremely variable. Some of our content is very good. Some of it is atrocious. Part of the problem is overemphasis on aesthetics and formalistic adherence to style guidelines in our assessments such as WP:FA and WP:GA. I've seen WP:FAs in my area of expertise that are rife with basic errors that any first-year undergrad should be able to spot. But they had beautiful em-dashes. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 23:53, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Based on my experience at Citizendium, though selecting the right expert editors can be as problem, the far bigger problem is getting approval to make changes. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy deals with relatively static subjects, for which updates at regular intervals is practical. That's not true for most of ours. DGG ( talk ) 21:49, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm responding down here because I want to address the substance of Anthonyhcole's request, and leave aside his fact-free insults. Anthony, I repeat to you what I already said: I am happy to sponsor a resolution if you proceed as I asked you to proceed: "take your proposal and submit it to the community for review and improvement, and get a strong degree of support for it (doesn't have to be universal consensus, or there would be no point in a board resolution) and then I can submit it to the board."--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:26, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
When you said this higher up the page, I said I had already opened a discussion on the board board and advised wikimedia-l. Since then, I've notified WikiProject Medicine and Village Pump Miscellaneous. Not much response, and what's there, so far, is nothing like strong support. Still, it's not a big enough sample, and I doubt it's the kind of thing that's going to get out the vote, so it looks like you won't have to recognise unreliability is a problem for our readers and urge the WMF to help us work on it. However:
That said, User:Asaf_(WMF) pointed me to the results of an IdeaLab survey which have prompted the FDC to focus its next proactive grantmaking campaign on content curation - including improving content review and content maintenance processes, and engaging partners and experts. This is exactly what I hoped would come out of the WMF's community consultation, and I congratulate all involved.
Do you know if anything similar is happening in the development team? That is, do the developers have a program that names expert engagement and article review as priorities? I don't actually need any money right now, and the solution I'm looking at is unlikely to need much in the future, but I will need some software development soon, to help with the presentation of reviewed versions of articles, and to help readers easily navigate between the current (editable) version and the version that passed review. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:33, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
As I have said, I think that the issue of quality (and I acknowledge that you prefer the more narrow term 'reliability' for a variety of good reasons) is central to just about everybody's deliberations, and I would include in that the product/development teams. My guess is that most of the work going on (and I'm not on top of everything being worked on of course) is not things that are different from what you are talking about but I am sure that ideas are welcomed. Despite the disappointing feedback that you got on your proposal to the community, I still support the general concept and urge you to think of an alternative presentation of the idea that is more likely to gain support. It seems that a lot of people had a knee jerk reaction because they thought you were proposing that the foundation get directly involved in content. Perhaps a more general approach, a simple statement like "The board urges the FDC and WMF staff to ensure that helping the community members who are keenly interested in the quality/reliability/accuracy of Wikipedia is considered an important factor in funding and staffing decisions." I just made that up on the fly, but I think that it addresses what you want to accomplish and seems like something uncontroversial for most people to support.
I'm happy, assuming I'm right about broad support for an idea like that, to sponsor a resolution about it to the board. But I also think that this is not likely to be very meaningful - I don't think we aren't already doing that, as you seem to be discovering as you dig deeper. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:24, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
As I said, it's great to see this new approach from the FDC. But I don't really need funds at the moment. I need software. I'll let you know how ready your software team is to support expert engagement and expert review. If they're as proactive as the FDC, you, the board, won't need to do anything. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:35, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
@Anthonyhcole: Hey Anthony, I'm glad to hear you're pleased with the results of that consultation for IdeaLab campaigns. Actively supporting folks who have ideas to improve the reliability of the content in our projects is a request I've seen expressed quite frequently and for some time, so I'm happy we are working to that end. I wanted to clarify something regarding the FDC, in that they're not directly involved in IdeaLab campaigns. The upcoming campaign on content curation and future ones will be run by the Community Resources team (and specifically, I'm more or less in charge of running them); my goal is to bring in and fund ideas from volunteers through all of the grants the WMF offers. While it's certainly possible for a group to start a proposal for an Annual Plan Grant during this time (that the FDC reviews) the proposals that get submitted are more likely to fall into Individual Engagement Grant or Project & Event Grant funding territory. Proposals for these grants are submitted by individuals and small groups, and are reviewed by volunteers. If there was some place on meta or elsewhere where it seemed like the FDC had some active role here, please let me know, as I'd like to make sure to make any necessary clarifications. Thanks again for your support.  :) I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:02, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying that, Chris. I thought the FDC reviewed all grantmaking. So the FDC only reviews the very big stuff, involving annual plans, the Grant Advisory Committee evaluates Project and Event grants, The IEG Committee evaluates Individual Engagement Grant applications, and the TPS Committee reviews travel grant applications, and your role is to help people and groups in their applications for (mostly) PEGs and IEGs. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:31, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
@Anthonyhcole: You got it. While we're on the subject of grants though, we had a consultation last year to change the structure of the grants program overall (results here). The basic changes relevant in context here are that IEG and PEG grants will get lumped into "Project Grants," later this year, and that we'll be offering Rapid Grants for low cost, low-risk needs and won't require a great deal of review. If you're curious about why these changes are happening, feel free to read things over or ping me if you have questions. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 03:35, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Conspiracy Unveiled

This is an extension of this earlier discussion.

Findings about how BLP/N is archived

When listing and studying [Special:Contributions/ClueBot_III], one can remark some patterns like

255 23:57, 24 January 2016 (+1,502) User:ClueBot III/Detailed Indices/Wikipedia:BLP/Noticeboard/Archive234 (Updating detailed index for Wikipedia:BLP/Noticeboard/Archive234. (BOT))
256 09:10, 24 January 2016 (-30,539) Wikipedia:BLP/Noticeboard (Archiving 6 discussions to Wikipedia:BLP/Noticeboard/Archive234. (BOT))
257 09:10, 24 January 2016 (+30,538) Wikipedia:BLP/Noticeboard/Archive234 (Archiving 6 discussions from Wikipedia:BLP/Noticeboard. (BOT))

(257)The selected section is copied to archive
(256)The selected section is suppressed from the file
(255)The detailled index updated. And we see where is the problem: this update takes a huge amount of time (several hours).
All of the recent disparitions of the bot are related to the building of the BLP/Noticeboard index. One can guess that, at some moment, a sorting routine is launched, that was poorly written and tested only on a small set of data (or poorly modified for any reason).
Il could be great to stop archiving this page during one day or two, and see what happens. Maybe this will start again with another page (general problem with CB3). Maybe not (specific to BLP).
By the way, it is amusing to see how the usual conspiracists are trying to rewrite the well-known conspiracy into a political one. Pldx1 (talk) 10:12, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Hey Sherlock, I think you've got it! Each run of the bot works through this list in sequential order. Observe that on this occasion, the BLP Noticeboard Archive 234 did not get updated:
  • 03:36, 25 January 2016 (diff | hist) . . (+10,517)‎ . . m Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive234 ‎ (Archiving 7 discussions from Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard. (BOT))
  • 03:36, 25 January 2016 (diff | hist) . . (-10,518)‎ . . m Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard ‎ (Archiving 7 discussions to Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive234. (BOT))
  • 18:56, 25 January 2016 (diff | hist) . . (+20,517)‎ . . m Talk:New Deal/Archive 6 ‎ (Archiving 1 discussion from Talk:New Deal. (BOT))
Talk:New Deal is close to the top of the list. It seems that at some point, when the processing runs past a certain time limit, it aborts further processing and starts all over again at the top of the list. Another run:
  • 00:15, 25 January 2016 (diff | hist) . . (+560)‎ . . N User:ClueBot III/Detailed Indices/Talk:Visa Inc./Archives/2015
  • 01:24, 25 January 2016 (diff | hist) . . (+40,710)‎ . . m Talk:Caffeine/Archive 6 ‎ (Archiving 1 discussion from Talk:Caffeine. (BOT))
Talk:Caffeine is very close to the top of the list, so this is the first item processed on a new run.
Talk:Visa Inc. is a little lower down the list than the BLP Noticeboard, but Jimbo's page is even further down the list. The processing is never getting to pages at the lower end of the list.
So, yes, the sorting of the BLP Noticeboard Archive234 index needs debugged. The source code is published at User:ClueBot III/Source.
I suppose that, if nothing is done, the problem will "resolve itself" when Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive234 fills up, and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive235 is started. That would explain the previous reawakening of the bot from it's vacation from Jimbo's talk page last November.
So the last successful archive here was at 14:36, 14 January 2016‎ and BLP Noticeboard/Archive234 was started 22:56, 16 January 2016‎ – Wbm1058 (talk) 14:21, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Reinstated Misza/Sigma for archiving, with these parameters:
  • | algo = old(1d)
  • | archive = User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive %(counter)d
  • | counter = 202
  • | maxarchivesize = 350K
  • | archiveheader = {{aan}}
  • | minthreadstoarchive = 1
  • | minthreadsleft = 1
Removed Cluebot.
Have been putting Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard on Misza/Sigma too (there also replacing Cluebot)
See also my comments above in #Archiving: if it ain't working, replace it. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:05, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Presumably that wasn't working so well either, or why would it have been replaced by ClueBot III at some point. You may be just reverting back to another bot that doesn't work either. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:22, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
(ec) Misza/Sigma clearly has less problems with the extended archive collections and was happily archiving them this morning (e.g. this one with over 900 archive pages)
Yeah, we can second-guess about why Misza/Sigma was disabled here ad infinitum: those who can explain didn't thus far – doing the experiment doesn't cost anything, and doesn't impede anyone from explaining and/or from repairing what is wrong with the other one. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:38, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
There have been three indexing systems used in the history of this page, with varying levels of sophistication. See User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive index. The previous HBC Archive Indexerbot index, which I moved to User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive index/HBCAI, was last updated on June 4, 2011. On August 19, 2012, there was a trial run of Legobot 15, which failed to index Jimbo's page, but was approved anyway. The reason it failed here seems to be explained at User:HBC Archive Indexerbot § Caveats. The switch to ClueBot III on March 17, 2012 resulted in the creation of the detailed index files, e.g. User:ClueBot III/Detailed Indices/User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive A. I suppose that Misza/Sigma doesn't have an indexing system? Another possible workaround might be to set the parameter index=no on pages that CB3 is not efficiently indexing. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:40, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Maybe it could be resolved (albeit without addressing the underlying problem) by forcing it to start archive 235, even though archive 234 isn't full yet. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:34, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
(ec) Well, let's try with Misza/Sigma for the next 24h on both pages; Maybe in the mean while knowledgeable botop people have figured it out, and we can test the two-tier Misza/Sigma + Cluebot archive bot instruction again. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:46, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
On the other hand, putting the Misza/Sigma template back up will prevent the one-click archiver from adding to the old archive 1. – Wbm1058 (talk) 15:39, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes. User:DePiep should revert (i.e. move this section from Archive_1 to Archive_201). Better check what is done when a problem has been detected. Pldx1 (talk) 16:34, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Tested 1CA with a fake section. This created Archive_202, and stored the snippet there: this part is working fine. Pldx1 (talk) 16:39, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Reverted as Pldx1 requested. The section is now on this page, see [[#Professional Manager Magazine]]. I'll leave it to the standard archiver for proper archiving now. -DePiep (talk) 19:15, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
This is most curious. In the middle of working on the detailed index for Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive234, it updates archives 91 and 116. Why? Oh, I see that archive 116 was edited. But this shows that it seems to work through all the archives when indexing the latest one; this helps explain why the indexing takes so long. BLP Noticeboard has over 30 more archives than Jimbo has. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:22, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

It's a shame that CB3 is going to all that trouble to create User:ClueBot III/Master Detailed Indices/Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard and nobody is even looking at it anyway. That page has landed itself into Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded, as have other CB3-generated files, as I now see. I'm not surprised. User:ClueBot III/Master Detailed Indices/User talk:Jimbo Wales isn't there yet, but it's getting close: Post-expand include size is 2,006,224 bytes; the maximum supported by MediaWiki is 2,097,152 bytes. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:28, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Misza/sigma working fine – what else needs to be done?

  • this (and this) seems to be working fine.
  • AFAIK it's safe to use OneClickArchiver again.
  • What else needs to be done? Indexing &c. is great (however not when it impedes the basic operation of archiving): is there still anything that needs fixing? --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:27, 27 January 2016 (UTC)


  • What to do when one receives an alert ? The Cluebot III problem became apparent here. But this is only a symptom of a general problem. This bot was approved in 2007, by acclamation (we love the author, how not loving the code ?). Two years after, the bot's author was tagged as inactive by the Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group main page. But no one else is in charge: no volunteer to come in, no staff to be assigned.
    ClueBot III was supposed to archive and index, and we are discovering that exactly nobody looks at these indices, and the code slowly derives. There are inactivity periods. Who cares ? Titles containing an html anchor are messed (cf supra). Who cares ? There are duplicates like at Wikipedia talk:Non-free_content/Archive_65. Who cares ? There is a huge queue at Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded, partly due to the indices generated by Cluebot. Who cares ? How many other problems are to be discovered before a serious maintenance ? User:Jehochman should modify User talk:Jehochman to avoid what is happening at User:ClueBot_III/Master_Detailed_Indices/User_talk:Jehochman Pldx1 (talk) 08:51, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
    • Right, but this user talk page seems hardly the place to sort that out. Maybe we could centralise that discussion at WP:VPT? I mean, I already posted at Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#Archivebot?, pointing to here, yesterday, but that appears a rather low-traffic venue – I don't think there would be forum shopping involved if we move the archiving bot(s) broad discussion to a more appropriate venue than this particular place in user talk space which seems hardly suited for that broad discussion. OK for WP:VPT then, and repoint all other partial discussions (on Cobi's user talk page, on Bot owners' noticeboard, etc.) to that new venue at VPT? --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:08, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
      • Dear User:Francis Schonken, this is not a technical discussion. And, in any case, moving this discussion to yet another very low-traffic corner will not be part of a solution, but a part of the perpetuation of the problem. The core of the present discussion is a political one: how to staff the set of people who deals, on a daily basis, with maintenance. Because there is a huge pile of maintenance problems. Perhaps asking Arnnon Geshuri for some advice about how to recruit efficient people ? Pldx1 (talk) 10:03, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Since we're having the discussion here now, and we don't want to be hoisted in our own petard, I posted a {{DNAU}} template under the section header, with a delay time set at 14+1=15 days. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:37, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Let's take the VPT as example

Let us consider: User:ClueBot_III/Master Detailed Indices/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical). Due to the technical, this page should be the best administered one.

  1. The end of the MDI looks messed, since the page, build by transclusion, is member of Category:Pages_where_template_include_size_is_exceeded. Anyway, sorting is strange (letters are between 92 and 93).
  2. If we cut into letters, num1-99 and num-100-x, we obtain three Masters that compile without overflow. One cannot exclude that the strange ordering was due to an ignoramus merge. These Masters are transcluding the various User:ClueBot III/Detailed Indices/Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive *** that were compiled by CB3 on 3 November 2013 (until archive 119), and then on a daily basis.
  3. The fifty lettered archives were rebuild 13 August 2011 using LivingBot. They cover the period (October 2004 – October 2007).
  4. The numbered archives were incrementaly build using MiszaBot from October 2007. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_1&action=history says created 28 Octover 2007. Reverted vandalism 2009. Four different WRONG archiving using 1CA (from June 2015 to Janv 2016). By the way, title of section #26 was wrongly coded (poorly protected curly braces). This has been fixed.
  5. Around Archive 119, some undocumented drama occured, and 1CA was used intensively, before switching to CB3.
  6. What links to the Detailed Indices ? Only the Master (transclusion). What links to the Master ? Special:WhatLinksHere/User:ClueBot_III/Master Detailed Indices/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical) says No pages link there.
  7. And http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/User:ClueBot_III/Master_Detailed_Indices/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical) shows that views are rather sparse... ( this § added 2016-02-05 12:46)

Pldx1 (talk) 17:22, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for checking. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:20, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Moving towards addressing the issues

Any chance we might move towards proposing solutions? Or is further analysis of the problems needed before any step towards addressing the problems is possible?

Here are some thoughts:

  1. right now: Fixing all the Cluebot III pages listed into Category:Pages where template_include_size_is_exceeded. These overflows are quite surely a part of the whole problem. For the involved files (a dozen maybe):
    1. Adding the line index=no in the call to Cluebot III
    2. Splitting the involved Master Detailed Indices in pieces that are below the template_include_size_boundary.
    3. Login what has been done
  2. short term:
    1. Migrate all Cluebot III archiving bot operations that involve collections of over 100 archive pages (back) to Misza/sigma (as was done with this page and WP:BLPN). Can anyone check whether there are still any archiving operations involving large collections of archives clogging up Cluebot III? And/or check whether there are still other causes that clog that bot?
    2. Prevent Cluebot from getting new tasks that would cause clogging. I proceeded with a first step in that sense yesterday ([18]); another step would be to disencourage Misza/sigma migrations by rewriting User:ClueBot III/Documentation#Example: Changing from MiszaBot to ClueBot III
    3. Find a tech person (a bot owner? BAG person? foundation programmer? liaison officer?) who would take responsability of the Cluebot III code, so at least there is someone to talk to who can address the issues (when User:Cobi continues to not step in)?
  3. mid term:
    1. Decide whether Cluebot III's indexing is worth the effort, should be abandoned completely, rewritten to something more practical, perform the same functionality with a more efficient code and/or...?
    2. Actively promote migrating all auto-archiving jobs to Misza/sigma, or would that clog up that system?
    3. Decide whether or not two competing archive bots are needed? Is it an advantage to have two systems, that when one becomes unoperational there is still another to fall back on?
    4. Find out whether or not this kind of auto-archiving should be managed at Foundation level?
    5. Is en.wikipedia the only Wikimedia domain where archive bots are implemented? What kind of collaboration could be possible with persons (or more bulletproof/more sofisticated code) managing similar systems on other Wikimedia implementations?

Please add more thoughts when thinking of anything. And most of all: if anyone can step in to start addressing issues I'd be more than happy. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:25, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

The right now part (added in orange, just above) is not so time consuming, but is rather enforcing and concerns rather sensible pages: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard ; Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) ; Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard among them. Deciding to proceed is rather the decision of an admin while the proceeding is rather "not a great thing", that I could even do myself. Pldx1 (talk) 17:33, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

I think you also need nogenerateindex=1 in the CB3 transclusion to prevent the bot from attempting to generate indexes, as well. -- Cobi(t|c|b) 00:38, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
It isn't the number of archives, I don't think. It has to do with the fact that it has to go through Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard, which is absolutely huge. The bot, for a given page:
  1. Identifies which sections are candidates to move
  2. Updates the archive
  3. Updates the source page
  4. Checks for backreferences to the sections moved
  5. Updates the detailed indices
  6. Updates the indices
  7. Updates the master detailed indices
  8. Repeat for next page that transcludes {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis}}
I think that step 4 is what is taking a lot of time on WP:BLP/N. -- Cobi(t|c|b) 01:23, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, Cobi. Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard, is absolutely huge because Template:BLP, which links to to this noticeboard, is used on 700,000+ pages. Wbm1058 (talk) 04:45, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
OK, let us take an example. Talk:Monty_Python is a member of Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard. Is there any functional reason for that ? No, absolutely no. Is there any computer reason ? Yes. When something occurs in computer science, it is because this MUST happen: computers are ever doing what they are programmed for. When a program is poorly written, computers are not guilty. And then why? File Talk:Monty_Python calls {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}} with blp=yes. This results into transcluding something that contains a link to Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons. That contains several links to the noticeboard, which are coded Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard instead of Biographies_of_living_persons%2FNoticeboard. I have changed that. But the same occurs with some templates, like {{BLP}}. This has to be changed also... if we really want to use Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard for discovering what are the functional links to BLPN, i.e. links that must be modified due to moving some section of an active file to an archive file. By the way, this is probably the reason why the links to the various drama boards are not maintained after archiving. Pldx1 (talk) 14:18, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
We're on the same page, thinking along the same lines, but "%2F" won't solve it. I'm not sure whether there is a stealth way to link to a page, without triggering an entry in "what-links-here" lists. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:35, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Solved. See User:Pldx1/LivingP. Pldx1 (talk) 16:44, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Hey, you've done it again! I think this makes a nice Wikipedia catchphrase: There's a template for that! – Template:Plain link. I think that template's most often used inside other templates, e.g. Template:Good article tools, and it's usually used to make plain links out of external links, but I see no reason why we can't use it to bypass wikilinking of internal links. – Wbm1058 (talk) 18:28, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
@User:Wbm1058. It remains to apply this patch to the {{BLP}} template... and become well known for messing all the BLP pages in one click if committing some syntax error. Greater than oversighting the Main Page, indeed ! Dear administrator, you are welcome to proceed (and modify the Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons page in the same manner). Pldx1 (talk) 22:10, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
As a matter of interest, User:Pldx1/LivingP has the same idea used in {{noping}}. Johnuniq (talk) 23:59, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
{{noping}} calls a Lua subroutine for writting the urls. Pldx1 (talk) 01:45, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Both use <span class="plainlinks">url</span> to accomplish the desired result. I don't see any algorithm here that makes using Lua preferable to an ordinary template. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:04, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
OK, the sandbox Template:BLP/sandbox is awaiting deployment. Testcases at Template:BLP/testcases. If one is a lighter shade of blue, the difference is too subtle for my eyes to pick it up. They look identical to me. I'll wait a while to give you a chance to review this, in case there are any objections or adjustments to be made. Wbm1058 (talk) 00:37, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Since it references the Noticeboard, template {{BLP_others}} must be rewritten too. Anyway, this will solve at least a part of our problem, and we will see what remains in Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard. Pldx1 (talk) 01:45, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
{{BLP_others}} is used on just over 2,000 pages, which is quite a bit fewer than {{BLP}}'s 700,000+. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:04, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
I updated {{BLP}} at 15:13, 30 January 2016. It appears to still be working through the Job queue. Best I can determine, it doesn't appear to be halfway through them yet. this link should tell me how many backlinks there still are, but it appears to time-out. I see the message: (1317, 'Query execution was interrupted') Wbm1058 (talk) 17:44, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for that. By the way, it seems that CB3 is on hold since 03:05, 29 January 2016 (no more contributions). Pldx1 (talk) 08:57, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

What conspiracy, and why here?

Can someone explain what this "conspiracy" is, and why it is a topic on this page? Thanks. -DePiep (talk) 23:37, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

That's a poor choice of words here, as it implies something bad was done intentionally. Please substitute a word like "mystery" or "puzzle" for that word, thanks. I think it's on this page to show Jimbo an example of something that we believe community consensus would feel is a system that is important to the core mission of the encyclopedia, which entirely revolves software, which the community would gladly see donor contributions supporting paid-professional support to keep it going. But the WMF board and staff ignore such things, and leave it to the community to fumble through and keep going as best as it can. Meanwhile massive resources are being thrown at developing science-fiction rocketships to take the community to places unknown. Most previous attempts at paradigm-shifting launches have exploded on the launchpad. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:25, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
While I agree that having to have user written and maintained bots to do simple tasks like archiving user talk pages is ridiculous (my views on using standard wiki pages for talk and user talk rather than a sensible modern system which preserves the wiki-nature of things are well known), I have to take issue with the false claim that "massive resources are being thrown at developing science-fiction rocketships".--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:38, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
OK "massive" may be a bit of hyperbole, but do you think your ED was making a false claim when she said her team was working on a TARDIS? Wbm1058 (talk) 14:45, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
You'll have to give me some context here. Since they obviously aren't working on a time machine and space craft, the context cannot have been literal. That doesn't make it a false claim, obviously. When and where was this said and in what context?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:53, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
See m:User talk:LilaTretikov (WMF). "an engine, or a portal, a TARDIS, that transports people on their journey through Universal Free Knowledge." I understand there is some basic research going on now, and several projects ongoing. But I am completely lost about the big picture here, what, in laymen's terms, the goal is here. Can this "portal" be explained in terms I can understand? Go ahead and use technical terms as needed, and I will try to figure it out, and ask followup questions if I'm still confused. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:05, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Oh, sorry, just now I see that you responded to me at mw:Talk:Wikimedia Discovery. Wasn't expecting to see you reply there. It's hard to keep track of meta discussions when they diffuse between the main English Wikipedia, m:, mw: and mailing lists that I lurk on. Ironic that sometimes I find the best place to not miss anything important is by following wpo: ;) Universal ping would be nice as I stick on en: most of the time. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:33, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Dear User:DePiep, here is a "résumé" of the story. At 04:36, 21 January 2016 (UTC), User:Anthonyhcole wrote: " I don't understand how auto-archiving works but it seems to be broken on this page. There are sections whose most recent date-stamp is 14 or 16 January". Then a discussion occured. At 14:12, 25 January 2016 (UTC), User:Jimbo Wales wrote: "Could someone please manually archive this page [...] I am hopeful that the archiving bot will start working again". This was done. And then some people went crying conspiracy!, describing the archiving as a dark attempt to silent them (if you really want names, you can dig the archives). Being one of those that tried to deal with the archiving problem, I gave the title that I have given to the present section. And surely, if the so-called community likes so much the present archiving system, it could be wise to maintain it seriously against the conspiracy (see Knuth, Searching and Sorting). You know, is increasing as time goes on, and behaves poorly. Pldx1 (talk) 15:15, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Black History Month

A reminder that February is Black History Month in North America. I'd like to take a moment to express the wish that all content writers try to create or improve a relevant article or three this month, especially since non-white editors and non-white topics tend to be underrepresented on Wikipedia. I'll try and post a few redlinks here as I come across them and hope that others will do likewise. Carrite (talk) 00:14, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

The biggest redlink, to my mind, is African-Americans in World War I. That's a huge topic with a number of monographs out there and a prime opportunity for someone or a few someones to strut their stuff going from redlink to Featured Article. One relevant piece already in existence (and pretty good at a glance) is 369th Infantry Regiment (United States) (the "Harlem Hellfighters"). Carrite (talk) 00:22, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Just to clarify: It would either be African Americans in World War I or Afro-Americans in World War I but not African-Americans in World War I. Only Afro is hyphenated. It could also be Blacks in World War I. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 11:49, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Obviously, there need to be redirects from all of the above. Carrite (talk) 15:07, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I think it would be a disservice to redirect Blacks in World War I to a page about African Americans in WWI, because not all black people who were involved in WWI were Americans. A proper page about black people in WWI would discuss not just African Americans but also have considerable overlap with African theatre of World War I, and possibly other articles about non-American dark-skinned people. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 15:56, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
The piece on 3 term Congressional representative Josiah T. Walls is flagged for sources and very weak. The same is true for the bio of Rep. Benjamin S. Turner (R-AL), another Reconstruction Era congressman. The bio for Charles E. Nash (R-LA) could be expanded. Carrite (talk) 00:27, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Booker T. Washington's seminal two volume work The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery (1909) is a redlink, although there is a stub for a children's book Story of the Negro. Washington's National Negro Business League is Start class and could be taken to a B with a little bit of work. Carrite (talk) 00:43, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Redlink biography requests on the African diaspora project page include William Warrick Cardozo, Samuel Lee Kountz, Jr., E. Luther Brookes, James A. Harris, Elgy S. Johnson. Another possible magnum opus is out there in the form of a request for African-Americans in Film. Another request is for a piece on the Institute of the Black World. That's a start... Carrite (talk) 00:52, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
To clarify: It would be African Americans in film or Afro-Americans in film but not African-Americans in film as only Afro is hyphenated and Film is not capitalized since it is not a proper noun. Could also be Blacks in film. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 11:53, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. And redirects from all the others... Carrite (talk) 15:15, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Oh, one more suggestion. There need to be state-level histories, such as Civil Rights in South Carolina — a topic about which there are several monographs. That's a pile of work. Carrite (talk) 01:02, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm sorry, while I agree that there is a notorious underrepresention of biographies of people with various different skin tones, Black History Month is based on the false premise of race and that you can define what a "black" person is and that it is a useful thing to even do so. DNA studies have proven that there is no such thing as race and that the average person in the US of african descent has at least 20% european ancestry. There are many notable persons who need biographies in wikipedia, but the color of their skin should not be the only criteria. Nyth63 02:20, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm sure Bernie Sanders will be delighted to learn this ahead of the South Carolina primary. Hurrah! Carrite (talk) 15:07, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
It should not be the only criteria overall, but right now that particular criteria is the subject of a very small and admirable effort to address a significant content gap, and it would be nice that for once, we could have a discussion about addressing this particular content gap without people immediately rushing in with false equivalences and personal theories about race. Why can't you just say "wow, we really should have an article about pioneering doctor William Warrick Cardozo" and leave it at that? Gamaliel (talk) 04:25, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Sorry again, but the fact that there is no such thing as genetic race is not a personal theory. Race is a social construct to sort people into groups based on physical characteristics. I certainly won't deny that there have been massive injustices done in the name of race which in turn has historically greatly reduced the number of non-caucasian persons who have become notable. My concern is that threshold of notability is somehow lowered just because of a persons skin color. Nyth63 13:34, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
All of the suggestions offered by Carrite are well within established notability criteria. There's no reason for concern other than whatever baggage about race you are bringing to this conversation. Gamaliel (talk) 14:20, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Oooh, I guess I should apologize for asking for equal treatment irrespective of skin color? Odd to label that baggage but I may have to add that to my list. By the way, have you seen the film Drumline? Nyth63 00:52, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Do you visit Wikiproject Video Games and demand "equal treatment" for board games? A temporary, voluntary focus on a specific topic doesn't mean "unequal treatment". Other people voluntarily creating content shouldn't be so threatening to you. Gamaliel (talk) 02:25, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Ahem. --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 03:50, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Video games? Really? That is about the silliest analogy I have heard in a while. And in addition to being falsely attributed things things like race baggage and feeling threatened, I am also being accused of trolling? Let me be clear here. My baggage with Black History Month is not the celebration of Black History however you define it, but it seemingly singular focus on civil rights and the almost complete neglect of artists, actors, musicians, scientists, etc. Do I really have to dig so deep to find inspirational people like Leonard De Paur, William Warfield, Camilla Williams, and Todd Duncan? The reason I asked about Drumline is because I was a band geek in high school and I really enjoyed the talent and artistry in the film. I was also a movie about black people with out being about black people so to speak. It also did not celebrate a type of hip-hop culture full of negative self portrayals, and profanity. If my baggage is a desire to see people work hard to be the best they can be irrespective of their skin color, and not be all poor me feeling sorry for themselves as the only victims of oppression, then I guess I will have to wear that label. Happy trolling. Nyth63 14:00, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Agreed. As for me, I just bought the above-referenced The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery and hope that I can read it during this month. I am completely unfamiliar with the secondary literature in this area, and it is hard to write an encyclopedia article about a book just by reading the book, but hopefully if that article gets written this month I can contribute in some small way - and I'm sure I'll learn from the article if others contribute.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:34, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales. Since it is not a biography of a living person (BLP) you have more leeway in verifying your sources. The requirement is that everything on Wikipedia must be verifiable. There is no requirement to actually provide citations unless something is likely to be contested. Here is the only thing I have found so far in a secondary source that was not a book review: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/06/the-black-church/ . The book itself is an allowable primary source as a self-reference. Booker T. Washington is a notable author, not just some vanity press Joe jobber. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 12:06, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
BTW: The Story of the Negro — Vol. 1 | Vol. 2. Carrite (talk) 15:04, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I like this idea a great deal, and guidance from good editors to find such interesting and good work is always welcome. I will load and read some of the pages you've referenced and try and pay a visit where it might be welcomed. :-) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:51, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

The rather amazingly diverse and accomplished, Walter E. Massey (which was actually nominated for deletion! a few months ago) needs attention, especially from science editors. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:41, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

John W. Curry was also nominated for deletion - when it was under a week old <g>. It appears too many editors do not really understand that each article on a notable person in black history is a strong step forward - even if they each only create a single article. Collect (talk) 13:06, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

  • There also remain a ton of Mississippi Delta high schools that have nothing. Just grabbing a couple at random: Lake Cormorant High School in Lake Cormorant, MS and Shaw High School in Shaw, MS. If anyone wants a practical way to understand that we have a long, long way to go on the race question in America, just start trying to source out a piece on a Mississippi Delta high school. I dare ya. Carrite (talk) 18:12, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Standard! Standard! Read all about it!

I was just riding home from the office on the Central Line, reading London's evening paper, the Standard, which was traditionally hawked with that raucous Cockney cry. Coming to the business pages, I was impressed to find a full page article about Jimmy Wales – an interview with a large colour portrait. The online equivalent doesn't quite have the same impact, as there's too many adverts cluttering up their online site, so check out the paper version while it's still on the streets... Andrew D. (talk) 22:03, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

User:QuackGuru/Reform_of_Wikipedia#Administration

Do You Support Reform? I'd like to offer to be a paid superadmin here. I would not let the power go to my head. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.170.45.121 (talk) 22:15, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

The draft is not ready yet. QuackGuru (talk) 22:16, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Page view stats

As many people know, Henrik seems to have disappeared from English Wikipedia. I can only hope he is alright. Unfortunately, there is nobody to monitor the page view stats, and the program seems to be breaking down more and more frequently. People really start freaking out when they are down for just a couple of days, but now we're on 2 weeks. Since I know of no better place to bring this up, I thought I would mention it here, because there are a lot of eyes on this page of people who are far more knowledgeable than I. Is this something that could be monitored and controlled by the WMF, or is there some other problem unknown to the rest of us? Zaereth (talk) 19:18, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

@Zaereth: As part of the m:2015 Community Wishlist Survey the WMF is going to take over page view statistics. They already have a demo set up, it is working, and up-to-date. It can also be used to compare different article views with each other. See https://analytics.wmflabs.org/demo/pageview-api/ for the demo. --Majora (talk) 20:25, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Thank you very much Majora. That is very helpful. Would you mind if I copy/paste this conversation to Henrik's talk page, so that all the users who go there to complain can see? Zaereth (talk) 23:27, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Of course. Copy and paste away. --Majora (talk) 23:29, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
@Majora: I can't get the pageview-api demo to do anything. Is this normal?--Kopiersperre (talk) 11:44, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
@Kopiersperre: That depends on what exactly you are doing. I just tested it again and it works fine for me. It will always open with cat and dog preloaded. You have to click the x's for both of those first. Then you have to type in the article name you are looking for. Apparently search is limited in this demo so just keep filling in the article name until you see it. Then click on it when it comes up in the drop down list. One you click on the title it should take no more then a second for the information to be displayed. I have only tried this for enwiki articles. If you are looking for page view stats for another wiki you have to change the project at the top. --Majora (talk) 18:51, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
I'd suggest to centralize all that at Wikipedia:Web statistics tool instead of spreading it at multiple talk pages. OK? --.js[democracy needed] 00:06, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Defective WMF harassment survey

The mystery of the obviously incorrect "revenge porn" results of the WMF Harassment Survey has been solved on Wikipediocracy by Belgian poster Drijfzand... Basically, this survey of 3,845 Wikipedians across a range of WMF projects (45% of whom were from En-WP) generated 2,495 responses to a question asking whether they personally experienced harassment. Of these, 38% (about 948 people) said yes. (pg. 15). However, on page 17, in what is purported to be a breakdown of the forms of harassment experienced by these editors, an astounding 61% (about 578 people) are said to have claimed to be victims of "revenge porn." This, to anyone who ponders the number for more than 6 seconds, appears patently absurd — bearing in mind that the survey respondents were about 88% male and that the great majority of Wikipedians maintain some degree of anonymity.

Drijfzand observed that the number of responses for doxxing, revenge porn, hacking, impersonation, and threats of violence all fell within a range of 5% of one another — which she or he argued "simply can't happen." I theorized that the problem was a software glitch and Drijfzand identified the problem as a set of defective sliders in the survey form which refused to accept a value of 0, a bug identified by Burninthruthesky on November 3 and which was apparently remedied on November 4. LINK. Unfortunately, the survey was not launched on En-WP until Day 5 (to allow more responses from smaller Wikis so as to reduce the weight of the large projects, see pg. 2), meaning that bad data was generated on some projects for nearly a week. Whereas the survey should have been aborted and restarted, it apparently was not, and so the data presented on page 17 (and any conclusions derived therefrom) is a case of Garbage-In-Garbage-Out.

Once again: a failure to adequately beta-test software is evident. There is one saving grace, and that is we have a very good snapshot of the magnitude of the gender gap based on survey respondents (a ratio 88:12 for those who indicated a gender, with some 7 % of survey participants declining to respond). Assuming a heavier-than-average percentage of women than men in the "decline to respond group," this means we are probably in the ballpark of 86:14 or 85:15. There is also, for the first time ever as far as I am aware, a decent survey of age of Wikipedians. Your takeaway numbers: 35% of respondents (and presumably Wikipedians in general) are age 45 or over; only 24% are under the age of 25. All the fresh faces, many on travel grants, at Wikimania are deceiving — it appears that the median age of Wikipedians is right around 31 years old, give or take. So the expenditure on the harassment survey wasn't a total loss even if it failed at its intended mission (at least in part) due to bad software (leaving aside the very real question of sketchy survey design). Carrite (talk) 19:50, 3 February 2016 (UTC) (male, age 54) Last edited: Carrite (talk) 23:00, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Very interesting. I actually suspect the median age of Wikimania attendees reflects the numbers pretty well. That is to say, I don't think Wikimania is dominated by "fresh faces, many on travel grants". I'd love to see some numbers on that, as I suspect they exist.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:24, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
I just go by the group photos that I see. I'd wild guess a median age of 25 or 26 based on that with a pretty big underrepresentation of the 45+ age group. You are right, that data should exist. Whether it is actually surveyed, preserved, and analyzed is another story... Carrite (talk) 22:55, 3 February 2016 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 23:04, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Re: "Once again: a failure to adequately beta-test software is evident", see my comments at Meta:Talk:2016 Strategy/Community consultation#Quality Assurance. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:05, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
The explanation may be even simpler than I previously thought.
From the qualtrics website: Regardless of starting position, participants will need to move the slider bar slightly for the question to count as answered as opposed to skipped.
The raw data, page 6 shows the number of responses to each option. The percentages in the report correspond to those numbers. What they represent, in other words, is the number of people who have touched the slider (not a eufemism), regardless of the position they moved it to.
And as Kalliope wrote: You will still get a reminder that "you have not answered all questions/statements" if some of the statements are unanswered but it should no longer prevent you from moving on to the next question. How many participants getting that warning message would have "nudged" all the sliders so they explicitly showed a zero value? Prevalence (talk) 02:03, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Drijfzand??? Carrite (talk) 13:22, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Oh no! I didn't want to believe those doxxing rates, but they're true! They're true! Prevalence (talk) 14:37, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Counting all responses instead of responses that aren't zero is definitely the cause of the inflated results. First 2 days of survey all harassm types required a value (Slider option "force response"). Was disabled by nov 4, 9:15 (Kalliope (WMF)) so entries could be skipped instead of having to enter zero. Percentages in report p.17 correspond to response counts in raw data p.6, those are total counts and include zero values. Proof: the 2 entries with lowest averages have standard deviations that are not possible for distributions in range 1 to 100 (with the given average). Prevalence (talk) 15:01, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
The age profile on the 2012 survey was much younger. That could mean that one or both surveys somehow had a skewed response. Or the greying of the pedia may be going even faster than I thought. My suspicion is the latter, with the rise of the silver surfers slightly more than compensating for the loss of twenty somethings of the smartphone generation. Wikimania having a younger skew could be in part an overhang, attending wikimania is not something silver surfers do early in their wiki careers. ϢereSpielChequers 00:22, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Median Wikipedian age was 22 then 27 but 31 in 2012

As I recall, the early 2001-2002 median age of Wikipedians was 22 years old, but then 5 years later (circa 2007), the median age rose 5 years to age 27 (as if all the same people were responding to the surveys 5 years apart). Another 5 years later, the Meta 2012 survey results] (of 8,827 responses) calculated the median age as 31 years old. Now, there are general limits to human lifespan, and so the median age of Wikipedians cannot keep increasing by 1 year every year. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:33, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Actually it can if new editors who are older than the prior median age arrive on the scene. Clearly there is a limit to how high the median is likely to go, but 31 is not an incredibly high value at all. Collect (talk) 17:41, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Collect is right. A lot of old farts like me did not get "into" stuff like Wikipedia until 4-8 years ago. Nocturnalnow (talk) 20:51, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
Dunno about the noun used - but I started programming over fifty years ago. My dad had two decades before that. Collect (talk) 22:10, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
That's cool. Both things. Nocturnalnow (talk) 02:42, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Directives are required

Dear User:Jimbo Wales. Due to the recent archiving problem, two things were done to your talk page.

  1. Originaly, the idle time before archiving a discussion on your talk page was two days. It has been changed several times to see the behaviour of the various bots. This parameter is now set to one day. What is your opinion about the long term value of this parameter ?
  2. Your talk page has been invaded by the Conspiracy unveiled section. In my opinion, having this discussion here could give it a better visibility and help to gather a solution about how, across the whole Wikipedia, talk pages and discussions are archived. In fact this rather leads to a consensus about someone (else) should do something, and maybe it's time to unpin and archive this discussion. I am quite sure that I could guess your opinion, but this is your talk page and waiting for an explicit directive seems better.

Pldx1 (talk) 10:06, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

I normally like it to be archived at 1 day. I think it would be good to archive the "Conspiracy unveiled" section - the title was confusing people and kind of a joke. And I really very warmly welcome a discussion of how talk pages and discussions are archived, but also a discussion of what software features we in the community would most value from the Foundation. For me, an improvement to talk pages which takes away some silly old behaviors that we have put up with for more than a decade is near the top of my personal list.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:04, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm thinking that ClueBot III isn't too far off from an ideal archiving system which also promotes search (of archives), and may just need some tweaking. It needs to handle the extreme cases better. Wbm1058 (talk) 20:56, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
Besides colons to indent, what other silly odd behaviors are you thinking about? Wbm1058 (talk) 20:56, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
Well, archiving is another big one. I think that our current situation with ClueBot III (as great as that bot is, and I'm not critical of it) is far from optimal. In what sense do you think the current system "promotes search (of archives)"? I see it in the opposite way - the current system makes searching archives more difficult than it needs to be!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:28, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Of course things can be improved, and it should be straightforward to add a "reply" button that made a best-effort guess at indenting the reply and added a signature if needed. However the deep mysteries of WP:Flow include "infinite scroll" with no archiving and no known method of finding old discussions for things like recalling why a particular template works the way it does, or whether a particular admin candidate is good at handling talk-page pressure. The current system allows an archive box which includes a "search all archives" box, and all that could be easily improved with software designed as part of MediaWiki. Johnuniq (talk) 21:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Markup templates now run 2-3x faster than 2013

Just FYI, about discussing WP software. I have been reviewing templates developed during 2013, and I noticed they were all running over 2x-3x faster in 2016 (than in 2013). Specifically:

Some people had advised to delete {cite_quick} by (falsely) claiming that it was not faster than the Lua-based cites (as not really being "quick"), but now it runs even 2x faster than Lua wp:CS1 cite templates, as perhaps another reason it should never have been deleted, because it would become even "quick-er" nearly 3 years later. Overall, some markup-based templates can run faster than Lua script, but not performing as many internal validation checks of the template parameters. Anyway, this is just a quick FYI to confirm how the markup-based templates are running much, much faster in February 2016 than they ran in 2013. Also: Despite numerous test-runs, at no time did those templates ever run near as slow as in 2013, always more than 1.5x faster. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:51, 6 February 2016, revised 23:44, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

For which there are likely two primary reasons. First of course HHVM, which is known to have increased performance significantly end of 2014, and secondly the work the performance team has been doing this year to optimize hotspots in the code base. Additionally, it is likely that there are newer servers (with general higher processing capabilities) handling the requests, but I suspect that that only contributes a few percents.. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:30, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for those details, as the edits are saved/formatted so fast now, a page can be saved and redisplayed faster than the MS Notepad editor can find-replace text. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:36, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 February 2016

Quora

Hey Jimbo! How do you feel about the amount of questions on Quora asking about you? There are plenty of them. Winterysteppe (talk) 21:55, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I enjoy Quora. There are a lot of nice people there. :)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:59, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Greetings from China Mr. Wales.

So I wanted to tell my Chinese parents-in-law all about where I come from in Europe - as I do not speak Chinese very well at all, I turned to the zh Wiki for some help in showing them - however, as you are very well aware the zh wiki is sadly blocked here in the mainland. Alas, reading the circumstances surrounding this current block, it would seem there is very little hope for the future in regards to the zh wiki and any potential return to mainstream PRC internet access. The last time I was in China I could access the zh wiki and it was a great help. I wonder if you see any hope for the future?--60.28.117.161 (talk) 11:04, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

I remain hopeful, yes. I met with Lu Wei in December and the talks were brief but positive. Talks will continue. But Wikipedia won't compromise on our principles, so obviously discussions are in that sense difficult.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:17, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Jimbo - Time to consider protecting your page on a more perm basis?

While its nice that you have an open door policy, the reality is that as you are a magnet for discussion, its more of a sometimes ajar policy. Someone who has time to do the math can probably work out the % of the last year that this page was unprotected... Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:05, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm happy to follow normal policy for other talk pages on protection levels as an experiment for awhile. Let's see how that goes. There is an important function here to allow for "whisteblowing" or people to come and raise concerns to me that have no other venue. But that function, while important, also has to be balanced against people who are simply trolling or being disruptive.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:26, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Might I suggest that a second talk page be started User talk:Jimbo Wales/IPs for IPs to edit. Most of the IP posts are pretty much real appeals, only some of them are really disruptive. There is only one banned editor that edits as an IP that I would systematically revert. Others could show whether they are disruptive on the IP talk page, which most people (other than Jimmy, I hope) would ignore. Not having an audience beyond Jimmy would limit the appeal to the trolls. In short, protect this page and create the new unprotected IP page. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:09, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
That's a very clever idea. It could be advertised at the top. What do others think of it?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:11, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Most "IPs" do not know that that is the term for them <g>. Perhaps "User talk:Jimbo Wales Open Forum" would work? I know it sort of creates a new username of sorts, but most folks would not care at all. Collect (talk) 18:59, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
"User talk:Jimbo Wales/Open Forum" would definitely work with no new user name required. In the explanation at the top of this page we could put "If you can't use a registered account name to edit this page, please use User talk:Jimbo Wales/IPs"
Thinking about it a bit more, I'd say almost all IPs who wish to edit this page would know what an IP is, since they (almost) all are familiar with Wikipedia. Most IPs who want to edit here are either banned users, or folks who are afraid of getting banned or harassed if they sign with their user name. About the only exception to experienced Wikipedia users (that I can think of) who would want to edit this page are those folks who have just discovered Wikipedia and have heard the name Jimbo Wales and want to say "Wow Jimbo, this is a really great site, thank you." Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:00, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm just trying to get the same result as user ODDE would get, but in a gentler way. I wouldn't want to give up this page, though, along with all the folks who watchlist this page. That would be telling the trolls that they've won. Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:01, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Re an open-door page, what is going to happen when trolling starts? What about our Russian friend who wants to tell the world about the Beatles? Or the refugees from Wikipediocracy who want to point out what a dreadful website this is? Or the WP:IDHT banned users who believe they will win if they repeat themselves often enough? Johnuniq (talk) 21:59, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
What happens when a troll blathers in the woods and only Jimmy hears him? Of course others could join in if they wanted to, but only the trolls would hear them. The Wikimediocrities could pretty much do what they want and nobody would care. Of course Jimmy would have to wade through the nonsense to get to the worthwhile IP appeals, but I think he has to do that anyway. My feeling is that almost nobody would bother, except for the true IP appeals, after the first couple of weeks. Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:16, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm not convinced that permanent semi protection is needed, but if it is my vote is to call the unprotected page User talk:Jimbo Wales/Unprotected ϢereSpielChequers 16:41, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm also not convinced that permanent semi protection is needed, but there are enough times that IPs are locked out that an unprotected IP page would be a good thing. Unless I hear otherwise from Jimmy or others, I'll start the page in about 2 days. I'll put a notice near the top of this pages saying:
Could somebody eventually set up an archive if it looks like it will be needed? Smallbones(smalltalk) 05:03, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I prefer Jimbo's first reaction, i.e. see how it goes "with normal policy for other talk pages on protection levels". There are so many editors watching out for the page, I can't see trolling or vandals getting much traction. It just feels more democratic to leave it open to all, as long as Jimbo's ok with that, imo. The second page idea, albeit a bit of a melodramatic analogy, reminds me of segregated buses. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:48, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

I think you are seeing a different page than the one I see. Trolls have lots of traction on this page, in fact they seem to assume that they can use it as an extra page of their own website, e.g. in December there was a 9,000 word section that was mostly a screed written by a whole pack of trolls.
You are also misreading Jimbo's comment. User ODDDE suggested just kicking off all IPs from this page permanently. Jimbo said he would be willing to try an experiment along those lines as long as it was within the rules for other talk pages, but there was a downside. I suggested keeping the extra page for IPs open. Jimbo seemed to agree. This would not permanently semi-protect this page, in fact I expect it would reduce the need to semi-protect this page, as IP trolls would know that they'd soon end up on the other page where few people would bother reading their nonsense. It helps IPs who have a real appeal, because they will always have a place to get thru to Jimbo. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:53, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
I see, I was misreading it. The way you explain it does seems like a good idea. Thanks. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:05, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

The page User talk:Jimbo Wales/Unprotected should be ready in a minute. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:57, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: just a friendly reminder to please watch that page. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:02, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

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