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Are you going to make a regular thing out of talking head gigs?

Serious question ^ I have to say, as cable news pundits go, I'd take you over David Brooks any day of the week.

The first Economic Advisory Council was today. Are we going to see you opposite adminstration spokespeople on the extent to which adminstration initiatives are helping the rich instead of the poor? 184.96.140.165 (talk) 05:00, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, thank you for asking! I generally try to avoid commenting on matters where I have no special expertise, but I'm particularly upset about what is going on in Washington these days. For me, the worst thing is not any particular policies (which I might agree with or disagree with as anyone might) but rather the rather ruthless assault on facts by a President who seems to not mind at all tweeting utter falsehoods on a regular basis. I'm not sure how interested the media will be in me coming on air to rant against the President being a liar.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:38, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales, I definitely think you should speak out wherever you can when you have such strong opinions; because your opinion now is not really your own to keep in a closet. Its something that has grown from and been fed by your experiences, many of which have to do with Wikipedia and should be shared with the public. I also urge you to consider my opinion that the most important aspect of a democracy is the level of engagement "of the people". Canada and the U.K. have been healthy democracies for a long time, with several quite different parties and platforms, but I argue that up until this recent election, the USA was governed more like a partnership of 2 parties, both of which had slowly become dominated by dedicated internationalists. And that both of the parties were guiding the American citizens into a global community that at least half did not want to belong to. The global community concept is super attractive to most of us, but there is a trade off, imo. A trade off of national sovereignty in exchange for promised security and global commercial and social opportunities. I think that the Brexit vote and Trump's "movement" are both a reminder that the will of the people is still the ultimate authority in the U.K. and the USA. So, maybe its time for everyone who dislikes Trump or his administration to realize that the target of such dislike is really the will of the people. Jimbo, you certainly know about the lies which have been told by other Presidents which cost the lives of 50,000 Americans in Vietnam and 4,000 in Iraq not to mention all the civilians. By comparison, Trump's lies have been pretty benign. And the great benefit to all of us from the Trump event has been and continues to be the enormous increase in the percentage of Americans who have become engaged or more engaged in American politics...hence more of a future "government of the people". In terms of this discussion, yes, you should definitely take on lots and lots of talking head gigs, but keep trying, as I know you already do, to see both sides of issues, even those issues which appear to be black and white. I worked in advertising agencies for awhile, Jimbo, and I can argue that marketing and facts are not often compatible, maybe Trump is simply a marketing person, always has been and always will be, and maybe the people who elected him care more about turfing out the establishment and seeing what Trump's "America First" branding can do for them and their families than they do about facts or even truth? Nocturnalnow (talk) 05:52, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

As the first Joseph K. McLaughlin lecturer, acknowledging David Kelley as your "intellectual mentor," how are you not singularly qualified to explain the economic policies of the Trump administration? Even Hayek was for single payer, free college, and a tax incidence shouldering a far smaller burden on the poor than what even JFK enacted. 184.96.140.165 (talk) 22:44, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Kelley's question about Hayek's emergent market properties in relation to Wikipedia's objectivity and rules starts at about 53:45 in the video, which doesn't start there on some platforms. 71.33.242.121 (talk) 01:56, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I honestly don't know if he is a liar, or just so insulated from reality that he has no idea that his paranoid fantasies are not real. I also don't know which is more dangerous.

One thing in particular struck me today: his statement that his job is to protect America from terrorism, coupled with his removal of surveillance of white supremacists, the repeal of the ban on severely mentally ill people owning guns, and his statement about anyone being able to get on a plane and fly to America, indicates that his view of terrorism is utterly delusional. He believes that only Muslamic terrorism is terrorism, clearly. He also probably hasn't been on a commercial international flight since 9/11 and has a PA to do all his paperwork, so probably has no idea at all what kind of screening and vetting people have to go through.

So he has a completely incorrect view of what travel is like, a completely incorrect view of what constitutes terrorism, and a completely incorrect view of the role of the judiciary - and nobody in the White House has managed to educate him on any of these things.

That is a staggering degree of insulation from reality. Guy (Help!) 21:30, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

I does seem shocking to see Jimmy, who puts up with some of the strongest BS without even lifting an eyebrow, call the President of the United States a "liar." IMHO Jimmy is the "assume good faith" champion of Wikipedia. But if that's how he sees it, that's how he should call it. The alternative is to say that the current POTUS is "factually challenged" which is, of course, a euphemism. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:58, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

I think the eyebrow is lifted quite high sometimes. There are situations where reasonable people may differ, and then there's fake news. Guy (Help!) 09:55, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Why do people use the term "fake news"? I prefer to call it Faux News! (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 10:15, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

A possible approach

The developing world (where industry outsources) will catch up with the developed world in about 15 years. Then trickle-down economics will work for everyone. (The recent recovery of China is not typical - see below)

Jimbo, whether you consider yourself to have special expertise or not, you are ideally suited to explain why many of the people on Trump's Economic Advisory Council, Chair Stephen Moore in particular, are such strident trickle-down fans, why trickle down actually has been working, just for the world as a whole, not the U.S. and developed world. Who else are the news channels going to get who can do that?

Here's a specific possible approach: Why don't you ask your booking agent to shop your May 2007 Reason cover profile alongside your 2011 Independent quote, "You don't have to be a socialist to say it's not right to take money from everybody and give it to a few rich people," as available to address the clear contradiction of Trump's objectivist-laden cabinet promoting tariff hikes? Again, if you're not the most qualified person to address this issue, out of everyone who has ever appeared on cable news shows, then who is? I hope you don't think I'm being sarcastic or facetious in any way; I am not. 184.96.135.131 (talk) 17:11, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps you didn't read the linked article to your phrase 'Trump's objectivist-laden cabinet' but it is a clear debunking of that idea.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:20, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Note that at least one economics-oriented news publication in the past year considered your views on economic policy important enough to include in both your profile and the first part of their headline about it. If for no other reason than your speaking fee earning potential, why would you not want to cultivate this aspect of your background? 184.96.135.131 (talk) 16:12, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Who In the news media is asking the emperor-has-no-clothes question about why Trump isn't doing anything to help the "economically insecure" who voted him in? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 21:40, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Whoever asks that question should point out that the swing was by over 60% which absolutely dwarfs Trump's single and low double digit margins in the gender and race categories he took. By the way, that graph above was generated by Gapminder software written by Hans Rosling and his children. Hans died today. 50.183.58.235 (talk) 23:20, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Rosling didn't just write the program that made that graph, he made that very graph. I guess he won't be speaking at the 39th TED India on his 100th birthday after all. Rosling was trained as an M.D., not an economist. Why was he so confident and outspoken on economics and Jimbo isn't?

Take a closer look at that 538 article, at the very first graphic. The 60% swing was across those with routine jobs, not economic insecurity. Areas with both high and low unemployment voted for Trump, while areas with moderate unemployment went for Clinton, with about a 10% swing. So a case could be made that while he didn't win among the economically insecure, unless defined, as the article says, as "those whose jobs are at risk in the future," but the clear evidence shows Trump's strongest demographic was the bored. He certainly hasn't been letting them down. 184.96.135.200 (talk) 15:26, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Great observation and conclusion, 184.96.135.200, now I would add to that a bit of Occam's razor to theorize that all of the commotion is by intent !

Why? Because it keeps millions of Americans not "bored", i.e. engaged in political thought, discussions and activities ( see my comment above ) and this dramatic increase in popular engagement is the long term objective of both Trump and Bannon !

....i.e., from their point of view, their primary objective is to dramatically increase the degree to which "the people" are in control of the American government...i.e. a "government of the people". This theory also fits with Trump's continual reference to his being a "messenger" of a "movement". Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:51, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

What are the top reasons you think that's his primary objective? Why you think he hasn't divested from his conflicts of interest? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 16:46, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

The top reason is because that is what he said he wanted to do (be a messenger for a "movement" of the people). Also, as you say, the one result of his Presidency thus far which can not be disputed is the enormous increase in the number of citizens who have become more involved and engaged in demonstrations and political activism, primarily against his policies like the immigration ban but the polls show that about 47% are for the ban, so all of these people who were previously "bored" are bored no longer.

In terms of his businesses, I think he truly sees his political activity as something very temporary within his life. He sees his job as President as being what many of America's founders hoped for, a short term sacrifice of time and work for the purpose of being of service to the country. "Professional Politicians" may be the norm today, but it is not what was hoped for nor, imo, what is best for a democracy. Anyway, I think he sees the Presidency as a temporary "good deed" and simply a hiatus from his real estate businesses to which he will be happy to return to. Thus, he certainly does not want to burn his bridges back to his lifelong and primary work in life. Just because most people see the Presidency as some sort of ultimate goal in life does not mean that he does. Nocturnalnow (talk) 20:20, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

While the "messenger for a movement" claim was part of his standard stump speech, as far as I can tell, he's repeated it only once since the election. If he really intended to represent the working class, why hasn't he proposed any initiatives to help them? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 20:32, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I think he is focusing on creating a better environment for encouraging more good jobs to be created in the USA like [1]. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:33, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Claiming the gap will be closed in "15 years" seems like a remarkable interpretation for the graph above! To me that data looks like China and India (too few countries to make much of a conclusion anyway) are both roughly where they were when they started, at about 1/5 the GDP of the U.S. and Britain. There's a long WWII decline for India and a modest upturn there, but mostly the "trend" we see is that China had some really bad economic numbers under Mao and now they've caught up and perhaps slightly overshot. But their booming economy is losing its luster by the minute. It takes a maximum of wishful thinking to take only the part of the graph you like, also ignoring the demonstrated potential for abrupt military disasters, and say that the last 200 years of data prove that something that didn't change over all that time will now. If the U.S. matches the developing world it will probably be by a sudden decline like what China had in the 40s. Wnt (talk) 14:44, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Then what do you make of Japan, leading up to and after 1970? Why would anyone not expect China and India to follow similar trajectories? Rosling did. 184.96.135.200 (talk) 15:38, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, he claims 2048 for India, which last I checked is more than thirty years, not fifteen. And that's based on the absolute most optimistic last few years of his data - which I should note, like the data above, misses some interesting developments after 2008. Now to be sure, radical change in the politics of a society can affect these graphs - Mao affected it, and changing from a closed society devoted to global conquest and worship of the god-emperor to a democracy without an army by constitution does have an effect. I'm not sure India and China can expect similar changes soon. Wnt (talk) 18:43, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Japan's growth was slowing while its median income per per person, which drives outsourcing and thereby attracts wealth "trickling down," was increasing at a constant rate.

First, the image description says it goes to 2011, but more importantly, Japan accelerated sharply upward after WWII, such that it doesn't even look like a curve from about 1947 until catching up in 1970. Thirdly, I seriously question all the news stories suggesting that the Chinese and Indian economies are slowing down, because they are moving from supply-limited fossil fuel and nuclear energy (which are slow to build and fraught with cost overruns in addition to costing more) to unlimited-supply renewables, which if the law of supply and demand means anything anymore, is pretty substantial. Also, speaking of fake news, don't all those mid-level bureaucrats who are judged on economic growth performance and have access to e.g. the 50 Cent Army have a vested interest in pushing news stories which set growth expectations low? 96.88.78.235 (talk) 21:31, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I looked at that image and its source at Gapminder - you're right about 2011, but trying for some random countries suggests that China's experience is anything BUT typical. You can do a graph for Brazil and based on the 1980 data you can say that in 2000, Brazil will be exactly like the U.S.! But ... no. Just no. Brazil was one of the better cases: I looked at Belarus, Belize, India, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Afghanistan... those last two have scarcely gone up since 1800, and in the 1990s Afghanistan was (according to the site) worse off than in 1800. The only one I found so far doing better at closing the gap was Malaysia .. and not by much. So I'm starting to think of that graph above as not merely misleading but intentionally so. Wnt (talk) 15:08, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Intentionally? Since the original source is Hans Rosling himself, what to you think his intent was? In any case, the World Bank income per person sparkgraphs show both India and China as accelerating since 2011, so I'm sticking with 15 years. Both of them have surpassed the U.S. in biotechnology: China has already produced a handful of vaccines faster and less expensively than the West, starting just a few years after entering the international vaccine market, and India dominates in the production of biosimilars which Western pharmaceutical companies hate because they evade patent exclusivity, but which are saving far more lives than anyone could have predicted a decade ago. None of the other countries you mention have invested proportionally as much in their R&D sectors, have they? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 18:27, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

@Wnt: Look at how hard it is to get median data with absolutely no time series available. That's what you really need to extrapolate to be able to pinpoint the date that trickle down stays domestic. Why wouldn't that be of interest to the statisticians who create the larger datasets? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 02:13, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

15-20 years for China, who knows for India (from that World Bank data above) and when Africa starts to be the go-to for outsourcing, how long until trickle down works again in the developing world? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 16:13, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

This is also very convincing, no? Yet in 2000 only 21% of people in Gabon had access to proper sanitation, and none of the countries go up with these numbers as you track out to 2011. (With this dataset - though it was downloaded from Gapminder, their graph shows Gabon actually surpass the US before falling back, and everyone keeps going up. I think they must use the non-inflation adjusted dataset, maybe PPP, I dunno, but in the 1970s you could have made the same predictions of equality around year 2000)

@Wnt: Honestly those extrapolations don't look authentic. They are based on a few good years when the past ten years shown would have been fairly accurate. Also, what is the y-axis? What is the data being plotted here? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 16:20, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

They're not authentic - the real data for the years after that proves it. But the extrapolation for India in that chart above doesn't look very authentic to me either, and as for China, well, we shall see. (If you look at Austria vs. the U.S. they fell well behind in WWII, caught back up again over a long period of growth, and continued in lockstep by the exact amount poorer that they were in 1800 and onward) The y axis is in the log10 of the thousands of dollars in US dollar GDP inflation adjusted per capita. Wnt (talk) 16:43, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Instead of getting bogged down on forecasting, which I'm sure it not at the top of Jimbo's list of things to do, especially while on TV or talking to the press, let's discuss actual solutions. If you accept that trickle down economics isn't helping the US middle and working classes because it manifests as outsourcing to foreign countries in the developing world (a fact at the center of Trump's populist appeal) then isn't it true that the extent to which that occurs can be quantified and measured? And if so, isn't it also true that tax incidence in the US can be adjusted by the same magnitude quantities to completely offset the effect observed and restore the benefits of wealth trickling down to the US underclasses? I would suggest that the economic precepts of either denomination of Objectivism agree with mainstream economics that tariffs offset the effect in the opposite direction, exacerbating the affects of outsourcing on the working and middle classes. What would an actual compensatory tax adjustment look like? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 22:30, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Is the obvious answer, inverting income changes unpalatable because it would be seen as redistributionist? Is there a way to effect the same transfer while subsidizing elements of the economy which are certain to benefit those who would nominally be on the losing end of such a redistribution? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 17:16, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Since the primary private sector transfer from capital to labor is employment, why not subsidize employment? Then the upper class gets what they want from the working and middle classes at a discount proportional to the credit compensating employees for their losses to outsourcing, right? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 18:37, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Pronunciations again

Topic: Is wp:IPA so complex that users misspell IPA forms? -Wikid77 (talk) 06:35, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

This time, I am unsure how to pronounce the town in the annual "Cowes Week" regatta (held in August each year). The cryptic IPA shows /kaʊz/, so is it spoken more like "cows" or "coze" or "cooze" or "cose"? For example, the German name "Braun" is pronounced, "\Brown\" although people often think, "Brawn" might be the sound. We need more respelled pronunciations in such cases. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:09, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm really not sure this is the place to be asking such a question - it is better suited to the article talk page or the Talk page for Cowes. In answer to your question though, I live in the UK and I have only ever heard it pronounced "Cows" - the big animals that produce milk. DrChrissy ^(talk) 20:18, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

So I might respell Cowes as "\kowz\" for general readers. Not really trying to solve pronunciations forever, but just a status note after years of discussions by Jimbo (see 6 years prior, archive June 2011: "/Archive_77#Chicago Manual of Style" about "IPA is useless"). -Wikid77 (talk) 06:35, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Forvo has a recording at https://forvo.com/word/cowes_regatta/#en.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:24, 13 February 2017 (UTC) and 20:51, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Mu. 184.96.135.200 (talk) 04:08, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Like moo-cows. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:35, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I am reminded of the old Spike Milligan joke: "What's brown and comes backwards out of cows steaming? The Isle of Wight ferry." Boom Boom! Of course, it doesn't work unless the words "cows" and "Cowes" have the same IPA pronunciation.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:28, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

This seems like a low controversy example to discuss the broader issue, though, which is that IPA is clearly in some academic sense the best system to represent pronunciation, while at the same time it is also too often useless for almost everyone who isn't into spending a lot of time learning phonetic notation. I don't have a strong opinion on the solution. I do have a strong opinion that it's a tricky problem.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:13, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Instruction in IPA from kindergarten through every school grade everywhere would help very much.

—Wavelength (talk) 22:00, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Category:International Phonetic Alphabet help includes Help:IPA and other helpful pages.

—Wavelength (talk) 19:42, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

A recent Langauge Log post about pronunciation: [2].

What's the point of this little example? Well, the first thing is not news: dictionary pronunciations don't give a very good account of how people actually talk. And the second, related point is not news either: IPA segment sequences — or other ways of segmenting and alphabetizing pronunciation — are not a scientifically very satisfactory representation of speech.

--JBL (talk) 23:32, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

The consequences of fake news

Robert di Nero and Robert F Kennedy Jr. are mounting a campaign to remove mercury - sorry, that should be TOXIC MERCURY!!!!111!11ONE!!ELEVENTY - from medicines. Do we have relevant articles? Indeed we do, for example thiomersal, which notes that the preservative used in medicines is ethyl mercury not methyl mercury (the difference is analogous to that between ethanol and methanol). It also points out that thiomersal has been largely removed due to fearmongering despite the absence of any evidence of harm. The Indiegogo page also pimps Trace Amounts, a bullshit antivax propaganda film. Happily it does not promote the pile of dung that is Vaxxed.

I just read a great piece on how Wikipedia teaches critical thinking and fact checking. I bet you a pound that much of the media will not do that here, and will swallow the bullshit whole. Trump has bought into the "autism epidemic" myth (there is no epidemic, just better diagnosis and awareness). This bullshit kills babies. I am glad Wikipedia is here to keep the record straight. Vaccines don't cause autism, the mercury compounds in medicine are safe, measles kills, Wakefield is a fraud. People trust us because we say these things straight out with no weasel words. Long may it continue. Guy (Help!) 23:34, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

question about fake news

Hello Mr. Wales,

I saw you on television recently and would like to ask you about this article: https://www.christiancentury.org/blog-post/fascismfactchecking "Fascism can't be stopped by fact-checking" and if you agree with the premise?

Thank you for your many years of service to others. — Preceding unsigned comment added by C.M.Lengyel (talk • contribs) 17:35, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Fascism can't be stopped by fact checking alone, but without fact checking, fascism can't be stopped at all. We live in an era different from any of my adult life, in which at the very pinnacle of the American political system we have a man and his team who seem positively gleeful in their wholesale disregard for the truth. But this disregard is clearly not without motive, it is not lying for the sake of lying. The will to power behind it matters a great deal, which is why merely fact checking them is not the same thing as stopping them. And yet without continually washing ourselves, and the public, in the facts of reality as the ultimate arbiter of the truth, we risk losing any sense of the right and wrong of what they are doing. I believe our mission is therefore more important than ever. We can leave the political emotion and rhetoric to others who will be better at it than we are. We may seek individually to join protests in the street, or sign on to or support financially various kinds of efforts to protect the weak and fight against them. But we should remember that we are quite good at something that is core to fighting for justice and good governance: we are good at being Wikipedians. We won't block fascism alone. But we matter.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:38, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo....appears you've gone to the dark side.--MONGO 15:32, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Which side is dark and why? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 15:57, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Seems Jimbo been hanging around entirely too many "progressives".--MONGO 16:23, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I think you're joking but... could you explain?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:49, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Trump isn't even my top 1000 choices for President, but the alternative was...when given two troglodytes to choose from it seems we were doomed either way.--MONGO 17:59, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

@MONGO: See here. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 19:07, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

If required to choose a Republican for President in 2016, there was a wide selection of Governors, Senators, Representatives, business managers and Mayors who are solid citizens, with a respect for the truth, who have managed businesses without bankruptcy, who have served in the military, who are not narcissistic personalities and who have not been serial adulturers. Edison (talk) 02:10, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

It seems to me that the problem is with education. Lack of proper education in some subject makes it easy to make fake news even if there are plenty of reliable sources around do debunk that fake news. In the educational system we don't teach children all that much about science, they do learn something about it, but not enough about how science works in practice, how you get to reliable conclusions and how not sticking to scientific methods and instead resorting to rhetorical arguments can lead to wrong conclusions. Count Iblis (talk) 22:59, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Great point. Critical thinking ability is crucial for identifying fake news and other frauds and should be emphasized in curriculums. however, I think this is the elephant in the closet when it comes to the challenge of establishing curriculums in countries with a large number and wide variety of recent immigrants. Of course, for elites who can afford private schools, its not an issue. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:45, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Curricula. 184.96.135.200 (talk) 04:08, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks :), however, "the alternate plural form is curriculums", but curricula is apparently preferred. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:55, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Sure. Do you place any blame on the purveyors of false information, or just the consumers? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 17:56, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I would use the word responsibility rather than blame and I would say its a shared responsibility when reasonably intelligent and well educated people are involved and the responsibility rests with the purveyors when the consumers are children...as in Santa Claus..., or not very bright or uneducated. Then there is the whole issue of whether the end justifies the means, e.g. Jimmy Carter once said the thing he was most proud of was he never had to lie to the American people, thus inferring that some situations might require such lies. Which makes me wonder at this moment whether this whole "fake news" matter is just something that is temporarily/currently fashionable to demonize? I hope not....I think fake news, lies by politicians, and government initiated propaganda in general are 3 things that we should take on aggressively and not accept as Realpolitik or other such labels of acceptance. Nocturnalnow (talk) 19:22, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm rather aghast at these rather harsh descriptions are being thrown about without any regard for our own standards. The presumption that fascism is afoot lacks any persuasive argument other than name calling and scare tactics along the lines of Godwin's law. Complaining that someone is "lying" misses the complexity of partisan politics. Food for thought: the argument that we are fighting fascism is "fake news." Anyone with at least a few decades of political history remember when the park police used to provide crowd size estimates for DC rallies. They intentionally stopped doing it because "alternative facts" of events titled "Million Person March" turned into talking head shouting matches over how many people were actually there and said the estimators were "lying" (usually one side said the estimate was an order of magnitude less, the other side an order of magnitude more). So the only organization that gave credible numbers stopped doing it because they were being disparaged in a way that prompted low information voters to view them as "lying." If an editor cannot cogently describe and defend both the action and reaction to policies without resorting to calling one side "liars" they probably don't have enough information to discuss in space such as wikipedia. After all, this picture is ICE carrying out an order by the President at the time to deport child and it wasn't fascist or racist. There's a few sides to that picture of a terrified child but only kool-aid drinkers or very obtuse individuals would be unable to articulate arguments for and against the Presidents decision. Those individuals quickly throw out words like "liar" or "fascist." --68.228.239.7 (talk) 12:41, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

• Right on, 68.228.239.7, Jimbo Wales, you should please read the "lets get real here" comment directly above. Jimbo Wales, I love your wording..."washing ourselves, and the public, in the facts of reality as the ultimate arbiter of the truth", but damn, I have to say that somehow you have not seen or heard several ever present and enormously important aspects of today's reality; here are just 2 examples of reality you do not seem to even be aware of: majority of Europeans support Trump style travel ban and "Using government data, Fox News reported in 2015 that while illegal immigrants make up about 3.6% of the population in the U.S.: “Statistics show the estimated 11.7 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. account for 13.6% of all offenders sentenced for crimes committed in the U.S., 12% of murder sentences, 20% of kidnapping sentences and 16% of drug trafficking sentences ..." source: [3]. I'd like to know what youi, Jimbo, have to say about these 2 realities and what connection, if any, you think they have with fascism? Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:43, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I'd hazard that there are many "examples of reality you do not seem to even be aware of". For example, that headline is neither as you quoted it - it is "Majority in Leading EU Nations Support Trump-Style Travel Ban: Poll" - nor true. As the article makes clear even in its first sentence and as the Chatham House article cited makes even clearer, the poll asked about immigration, not travel. 79.73.244.79 (talk) 16:18, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

You are incorrect and your "point" is specious. The ban affects refugees which is a form of immigration control. Here is the title:Majority in Leading EU Nations Support Trump-Style Travel Ban: Poll and here is the first sentence: A majority of Europeans would support a Trump-style ban on further migration from mainly Muslim countries, according to a poll of more than 10,000 people in 10 countries. Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:01, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Executive Order 13769 did not only affect refugees, it suspended the entry of alien nationals from seven countries for 90 days whether visitors, migrants or refugees - a travel ban. The poll concerned migration only and did not ask about, let alone indicate support for, a "Trump-Style Travel Ban". Like it or not, that's reality and some of us - probably including Jimbo - are already aware of it, even if you are not. 79.73.244.79 (talk) 23:02, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

• The presumption that fascism is afoot lacks any persuasive argument other than name calling and scare tactics along the lines of Godwin's law.

"Is there any comparison? Between the way the campaigns of Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler should have been treated by the media and the culture? The way the media should act now? The problem of normalization?" (Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post” By Ron Rosenbaum) 184.96.135.200 (talk) 23:44, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Rosenbaum also wrote a compelling article about At Skull and Bones, Bush’s Secret Club Initiates Ream Gore. He may not be the most acceptable source of serious journalism. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:55, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I just read your suggested Rosenbaum article and having years ago read his article about Bush and Skull and Bones, I can say they are both worth reading. I personally think that the enormous increase in the number of Americans who have become politically engaged in Town Halls, demonstrations etc. on all sides of the political spectrum is by far the most important impact; making the government much more "of the people", and with silicon valley also lining up against Trump, I don't see a real fascism threat here, do you? Nocturnalnow (talk) 05:30, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

The news is filled with stories of more than a million people who were nominally eligible for deportation but not considered a deportation priority who are now advised to go in to hiding because those who have checked in with the authorities as instructed for decades without being deported are now being immediately deported. Does that seem like fascism to you? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 17:21, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I admit, I have not seen those articles. Please add a few links. I did read where some people with non-violent felony convictions are being deported and I have no doubt some people are being advised to go into hiding, but I do not know how good that advice is for the illegals who have zero criminal convictions. Whether or not the current activity could in the most liberal sense of the term qualify as fascism would depend on the numbers and treatment of the people arrested, I imagine, but generally, enforcing long existing laws would not be considered fascism by many political scientists, at least I don't think so. Nocturnalnow (talk) 20:42, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Ironically, CNN just announced that 680 people have been arrested for deportation and a lawyer, who is on CNN right now, who represents illegals, is saying that the current round up is not out of the normal and the hostess just said that Obama deported more than 2 million illegals. Maybe there is some fake news going around on this issue and said fake news is throwing around the word "fascism"? I have to do more research on the deportation issue so please add a few links to the news stories you refer to. Nocturnalnow (talk) 20:56, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

As if you can't find these by googling:

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-deportations-20170204-story.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-order-mark-11-million-undocumented-immigrants-deportation/story?id=45050901

How many million deportations of productive members of society being split from their citizen kids tossed in foster homes before it counts as fascism in your book? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 07:21, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Expand the topic?

I am interested in the views of everyone, including Jimbo Wales, as to whether its disingenuous and self-righteous, as I believe it is, to limit our interest in "fake news" to a narrow sphere. Should we not include in this discussion propaganda which is repeated ad nauseam on "news" channels? For example, every single day CNN uses the expression "Leader of the free world" as a synonym for the USA President. Isn't that fake news? Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:49, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

And in 1952, I was taught, as a 5 year old, to stand up, put my hand over my heart, and speak “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.", this at a time when the Jim Crow laws were in overdrive where I lived. Wasn't that: "with liberty and justice for all" fake news? Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:21, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Do you really not understand that the term "fake news" describes some but not all untrue statements? --JBL (talk) 01:23, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm thinking the effect of disseminating information which presents itself as fact or truth when it is either false or an opinion is the real problem...the effect is the problem..and if that is the case, then propaganda can be bundled with fake news in order to come up with a more substantial and far reaching solution. In this context, I am using a broad definition of "news", which is "information not previously known to someone". Nocturnalnow (talk) 02:00, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Strange, those weren't the words of the Pledge of Allegiance at that time. In 1952 I would have expected you to be taught "I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." The bit about 'under God' wasn't shoehorned in until 1954. --Noren (talk) 04:07, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Correct. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:32, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Your opinion at "The Guardian" site

I mean "With the power of online transparency, together we can beat fake news". I'm just stumbling upon if there is any among Wikimedia projects to publish my Russian translation of your article? So to have an internal link rather then my private blog or something. Because of "release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License" it is OK to quote - but an entire someoune's article (even in my own translation) would seem in violation of that for Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikibooks or anything I can think of. Maybe we need some "screw you guys I'm going home it is fair use text repro" in-house place? Unless I'm overcomplicating the matter. --Neolexx (talk) 17:57, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

The specific terms of the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license allows for translation thusly:

"Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual ... license ... to create and reproduce Derivative Works provided that any such Derivative Work, including any translation in any medium, takes reasonable steps to clearly label, demarcate or otherwise identify that changes were made to the original Work. For example, a translation could be marked 'The original work was translated from English to Spanish'"[4]

Such a translation would be appropriate to host on Wikisource (or meta or the outreach wiki, for that matter.) I'm sure Jimbo will confirm his personal intent as soon as he sees your question. 184.96.135.200 (talk) 22:35, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Surely an unambiguous "release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License" would solve many problems. And if Jimbo ever had it done expressed or express it - then not a problem. Or such release is expressed as it is by the fact that Jimbo did it (what are "The Guardian" rights if any?) - that was my concern. --Neolexx (talk) 23:33, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

The Guardian posted this at the bottom of the article "© 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved", so Jimbo may not have a say in this. OTOH, he may have made prior arrangements, or Jimbo can ask for them to release it under a CC-by license. I'm sure he'll let us know. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:35, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

There is also a "Reuse this content" button at the bottom of the article, which links to this rather incomprehensible form, but which links in turn to these "open license" terms which allow you to reuse the content, including by translation, in "non-commercial blog- and websites subject to i) a link back to theguardian.com website; and ii) a limit of 500 words." Unfortunately the essay is just over 1,000 words, so if Jimbo didn't sign over exclusive rights to The Guardian he will have to say and give you the CC or similar release. 184.96.135.200 (talk) 05:04, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

• Honnestly, it seems just like another "Wikipedia Ouroboros" (c). It should be some special internal place with CC-BY-SA blocked to keep translations of articles about us and other project-important stuff.
  Any way, I finished my translation and placed it in my own Wikipedia subspace: w:ru:Участник:Neolexx/WP 01. Full info about the original text and a direct link are in the infobox at the top. If The Guardian is still upset about it then nothing I can do to help them. Like one Russian proverb says "вот Бог, а вот порог" (smth like "God is there, and the exit is here (right behind you)"). :-) Who knows Russian surely are welcome to check and to correct. --Neolexx (talk) 21:09, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
• I'm planning to propose the article for reading and discussion at ru-wiki news forum. From my own side I dare to make a couple of comments:

• Similar to "post-truth" (mentionned in the article) it is tempting to introduce "post-Godwin's law". Because when one side in Washington, D.C. uses "Liberal Fascism", and other person here says "Fascism can't be stopped by fact checking alone", and pretty much sure these are not same Fascism, and Fascism pretty much equal to Hitler — all together it comes to the fact that the final statements in the old Godwin's law are the opening statements in the post-Godwin's law...
• The information trustability (as a perception) is a very subjective and semi-subconscious process. The highest trustability a person has to something he arrived by himself. So the trick is not to say "John Doe is a bastard" — but to select and arrange other facts to such a way, that the only possible conclusion for the reader will be "John Doe is a bastard". And the second trustability level after that is something arrived personally from our relatives or who we know well. Anything else (news, TV etc.) has much lesser trustability then these two. This is in relevance to the statement (if I understood it correctly) that e-mail reposts like "Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd:" are obsolete and being left in 1990's.

• Sorry if being bold and for my English. --Neolexx (talk) 21:50, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oh, and the News forum thread is "Википедия и фейковые новости" ("Wikipedia and fake news"). --Neolexx (talk) 11:42, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: well? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 04:07, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

• Actually, my Russian translation had been already proposed for deletion as COPYVIO. I reverted so far but it is a very risky matter in WP so I'm not sure 'how long can I hold' and if I manage 'be legging it trippingly for the Canadian border' (c) before an answer... --Neolexx (talk) 12:17, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Taiwanese chicken-beheading rituals and WP:DR

WP:DR sucks.

Chicken-beheading rituals can have a wide variety of ramifications, but generally help resolve the complicated disputes in question.[5]

— User:Sith Lord 86 who started the article, see Taiwanese chicken-beheading rituals#Ritual

Lets try this for a week or so, if it does not work then we start using WP:DR again. What do you think? (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 18:27, 16 February 2017 (UTC) p.s. Vegans should be allowed to use carrots imho, and all food should be donated to the poor.

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard and the Daily Mail

Jimbo, I was wondering whether you have seen the discussion/s going on at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard which looks like the Daily Mail is going to be banned/black-listed or singled out by WP in some way. I am not commenting on the merits of the comments there or the closure of the RfC, however, I am concerned about the impression that such action might give to those not on Wikipedia and particularly the news media. Just a thought - and I suggest that if other editors have comments on this, they leave them at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard rather than scattering the discussion. DrChrissy ^(talk) 19:46, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I must admit, I share the concerns of DrChrissy a prohibition against the Daily Mail being a reliable source does seem like overkill and that the newspaper is being singled out in some way. The Daily Mail do not get everything right but on some topics they are just as reliable, if not more reliable than the other sources we accept. Sometimes these other sources actually get their information from the Daily Mail!--5 albert square (talk) 21:48, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Looks like media attention is happening already[6]. DrChrissy ^(talk) 22:36, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Media attention? Aye, you could say that... --Hillbillyholiday ^talk 23:57, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

References
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
References

Right, good point Hillbillyholiday, with all this attention, we must have another Rfc which will undoubtedly have better participation from our millions of contributors. To leave it like it is now makes us look like a phony democracy with a phony....kind of secret....referendum. I am sure Jimbo will not object if we have another go at it. Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:32, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

@Nocturnalnow: Don't be silly Nocturnalnow, we need like 5 or 6 at least! (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 21:49, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Do you think the RFC was decided incorrectly? Are there any other purportedly serious newspapers which are such a laughingstock? 184.96.135.200 (talk) 23:12, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Are those questions directed at me? If they are, as I said, I think such questions and comments should be raised elsewhere. DrChrissy ^(talk) 23:17, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Well if you dont want to talk about the Daily Mail being a big bag of lying shite here, why did you bring it up here? Only in death does duty end (talk) 23:21, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Ermmm...it's called "providing information". e/c You appear to be deliberately ignoring the content of my post which was to draw attention to the media's response to our RfC. I do not wish to discuss the Daily Mail in this thread at all. Hint - try reading what editors have written and WP:AGF.DrChrissy ^(talk) 23:31, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

To whom? Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:36, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

To Jimbo and watchers of his talk page. DrChrissy ^(talk) 23:44, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, you addressed something to Jimbo, so if you think you are providing information, you evidently did not. Poor research on your part, perhaps? Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:52, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Have you actually read my posts - or is this just an attempt to goad? DrChrissy ^(talk) 00:05, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Have you read anything I have posted? Your initial comment reads totally ignorant of what a simple bit of research would have revealed, and then you double down on that ignorance by claiming to be 'providing information' but you are not. Not, at all. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:33, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

It would be really interesting to know what your motivation is for posting to this thread. You are deliberately misrepresenting comments by myself and Softlavender below, and you have contributed absolutely nothing to the subject of this thread. This is making me wonder about your competence in this thread. DrChrissy ^(talk) 20:00, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

What you have just said is plainly false, and if you did not want it to be seen that your initial comment reads totally ignorant of very easy to find information, do the research. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:45, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Since when was it necessary to do research for raising a Talk Page thread? If you go back and read the first sentence I posted here (you don't appear to have done that very carefully yet) the purpose was to alert Jimbo to the discussions going on about the DM here on Wikipedia. He did not participate in the discussions and I was simply providing a heads-up. I provided a link to the discussion (i.e I provided information). What more "research" is needed? I suggest your efforts in trying to malign other editors would be better spent by more carefully reading their posts. DrChrissy ^(talk) 21:21, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I think you're fully justified, DrChrissy. With a topic as important as this (although I'm not sure anyone was expecting such a press reaction) I think we're all waiting for some kind of "community statement" from Jimbo here, quite apart from his reported tweets (which appear perfectly fair to me). Martinevans123 (talk) 21:34, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I think you're justified as well; I did not know anything about this except what I saw on CNN, which, as usual, was nothing but a tease. But I do not think we should await or expect anything from Jimbo. This is a drop dead obvious technical fuckup that requires another Rfc to see what a reasonable sample of our contributors have to say about singling out the DM for special treatmnent.Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:41, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

As has been shown, Jimbo already knew about the result of the discussion before you posted, demonstrating that your initial post actually lacked information. Moreover, the press had already covered both that and the discussion - so, again, if you did not want it to be seen that your initial comment reads totally ignorant of very easy to find information, do the research. No one said you have to, just that it is smart to actually be informed. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:13, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Is that really what you believe should happen on Talk pages? Warning to everyone - do not attempt to make any posting to any other editors about any subject on any Talk page unless you have thoroughly researched the subject. Once you have done this, you will almost certainly have to start researching again as there will undoubtedly have been changes in fast-moving subjects. By that time, some other editor will have brought the subject up simply to get a response from the Talk page owner and the discussion moves on from there. Get real Alan. DrChrissy ^(talk) 22:29, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

It is common courtesy to actually try to be informed of what you want to talk about. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:37, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

It is common courtesy, in fact, after I did a bit of research(!) it is in Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines to not misrepresent the posts of other editors. You have at least twice stated I was not providing information. Now let's think about my first sentence again. It was "Jimbo, I was wondering whether you have seen the discussion/s going on at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard which looks like the Daily Mail is going to be banned/black-listed or singled out by WP in some way." I can see at least two bits of information provided in that one sentence. First, it was providing information there had been discussions about a subject relevant to wikipedia. Second, I provided information on what this discussion was/is about. What alternative definition of "information" are you are following, or are you prepared to concede you are misrepresenting my posts? DrChrissy ^(talk) 23:17, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

No. You asked, in part, a question, for which the answer was easily found by simple google, and that answer was, 'yes'. So no, that's not information, it's a decided lack research on your part. As for your editorializing in the second part of your question, that's called, a loaded question (which is generally not courteous) and also not "information". -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:28, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I have seen many editors say they were completely unaware of the RfC and subsequent discussions because of the page it was on (I make no judgement on this). If those editors had come to this talk page without knowledge of the RfC and discussions, my post would have been information to them - even according to your misguided interpretation of the word "information". You really seem to have a very idiosyncratic use of the English language. As I stated above, you have twice accused me of not providing information. Even if providing is suddenly a requirement of Talk pages (please provide the relevant PaGs if it is), your statements are patently falsehoods. As for you accusing me of asking a "loaded question", I can see how you might reach that interpretation if you are Assuming Bad Faith. DrChrissy ^(talk) 00:21, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

It is a loaded question - that is not an assumption, that's reading the question. On top of which, as you would have known, if you actually bothered to look, he was already aware (which was the first part of your question). And your singular lack of information was what you showed, first not knowing, although it was in the press already that Jimbo knew, and second, that there was already lots of press coverage on the underlying discussion and its close. It seems you are now claiming that you were not asking him a question, at all, and if that is the case, it was your fault for phrasing it as a question to Jimbo, and a loaded one at that. (At any rate, your questions (assuming they were questions) have already been provided answers, 'yes', and the links to the press coverage is there for you to read, press coverage that mostly already existed before you opened this - now, that's information.). -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:35, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Even if it was a loaded question, what is the point to attack another user on it? Was there some harm in them asking a loaded question as you claim? If the answer to both is no, then I fail to see why you started this debate. --Super Goku V (talk) 03:07, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: I suspect most readers are thoroughly bored with this interaction, so let's bring it to an end. You have asserted that I should have researched my question before asking it. Where are the PaG's to support this? This is a direct question and I am expecting a direct answer. A non-answer or indirect answer will indicate that this is simply your own opinion. DrChrissy ^(talk) 17:17, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Alan, do you expect any response from JW here? Or are we all now suitably enslaved? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:46, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Enslaved? I have no idea what you are talking about. As for JW responding, if you follow this page, you know, sometimes he responds to something, sometimes he does not. I, myself, have had disagreements with him, and agreements with him. But, no, I can't say I "expect" anything, in particular. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:59, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

You seem to "expect" more from mere DrChrissy. Apologies, I was suggesting that a "tabloid" news source might be more reliable than Twitter. Or maybe, in the interests of Presidential presence, you think we should just cut out the middle man? Martinevans123 (talk) 23:28, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Your seeming supposition, that anyone is a "minion" is not something I agree with or even believe, at all. So, perhaps, that helps? Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:32, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Of course. Sincere apologies. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:38, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: It is 3 days since I asked you for a direct answer to my request for PaGs stating that a question should be researched before it is posted. You have not provided these PaGs, although you have been active on WP the last 3 days. I am left to conclude there are no relevant PaGs and that the above interaction with you based on your opinion. What disturbs me most is that you stated these opinions in a wiki-type voice and attempted to publicly attack and malign me in the process. Please be warned, if you ever try a "stunt" like this again, I will be taking you to a noticeboard. DrChrissy ^(talk) 19:16, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Your warning means nothing. What the heck is "wiki-type voice"? Whatever you make-that-up to be, I have no "wiki-type voice". You'll just have to live with my direct criticism of your comments, hopefully you will learn something -- at least, how to live with criticism. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:37, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

And hopefully you will learn that you should not be stating on here your own opinions as if they are wikipedia policy or guidelines. You have done yourself a huge dis-service in this interaction. Now let's just drop this as I am sure others are extremely bored by it. DrChrissy ^(talk) 19:47, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

My criticism of you comments is my criticism of your comments. Your claim "as if they are wikipedia policy or guidelines" makes no sense, so if you wanted me to learn your argument in that regard is unintelligible, I have. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:58, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Could we use that clapping gif as a regular feature here please? Martinevans123 (talk) 23:41, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

And let's not forget that "... Alistair Campbell played the bagpipes! Martinevans123 (talk) 23:27, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

The important point here is that for any serious story you might use the Daily Mail to source, there will almost certainly be an alternative, more high quality source. There are two issues with the Mail. The first is dubious tabloid celebrity gossip type features - you don't want to use those anyway in the same way as you wouldn't use any other tabloid. The second is the Mail's penchant for exaggeration and flagrant invention of stories - you only have to look at the number of times they've had complaints upheld against them by the Press Complaints Commission. That number is higher than The Sun, which we don't use as a reliable source either. It's unfortunate in a way, because some of the Mail's coverage - notably their sport - is excellent, but you simply can't trust a source with a proven record of fabricating quotes and stories. Black Kite (talk) 23:44, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

They often also have some excellent pictures. I mean, just look at that kilt. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:46, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

" ... there will almost certainly be an alternative, more high quality source." That's not true, Black Kite, for arts, entertainment (theatre, film, galas, openings, exclusives, etc.). (And possibly sports, but I wouldn't know.) And you cannot replicate an award-winning critic's review, because it only appears in one place. Moreover, the RfC was held on a niche board that hardly anyone has or keeps on their watchlists, rather than in Centralized Discussion. Softlavender (talk) 23:59, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

The Daily Mail is legendary for the inaccuracy of its stories. Its website pumps out more article per day than any other news source, I believe, and this has resulted in a culture where young and inexperienced (read: cheap) journalists are under massive pressure to meet targets on numbers of stories released, and can meet these targets only by publishing press releases virtually unedited. There might be one small corner of the print version of teh Mail that occasionally manages something of merit, but it'll be rare.

Reaction to the deprecation of the Mail as a source is almost universally positive in the coverage I have read. Its dreadful quality, acute editorial bias and predilection for paedophile soft porn are so well known that no serious commentator I have seen, seems to find it remotely surprising or problematic. Guy (Help!) 00:12, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Guy, I find DM quite good at providing up to date, albeit shallow, info on fast moving stories; also, which commentators are you referring to, for example? Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:49, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Softlavender: Wikipedia Consensus is that DM is "generally unreliable." Your response to that is you want everyone to assume 'it's always reliable for some small niche' - but Wikipedia has told you, we don't want to assume or give benefit of doubt, here -- we want to be really, really convinced in each particular instance. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:26, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

"Your response to that is you want everyone to assume 'it's always reliable for some small niche'". My response was not to a "that"; it was directly and clearly to Black Kite's claim " ... there will almost certainly be an alternative, more high quality source", which is patently not true. "you want everyone to assume ...": I requested nothing of the sort that you impute. Please in the future if you are going to ascribe requests/intentions to me, do not do so; rather quote me directly instead (as I have done in this thread). "'it's always reliable for some small niche'" -- again I said nothing of the sort. And the arts, the various forms of entertainment (theatre, film, dance, television, galas, openings, exclusives, reviews, etc., etc.), and sports are not "some small niche". Softlavender (talk) 01:26, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Your comments made your intentions plain, don't blame me for noticing them. Black Kite said "almost" not "always". Your response as if he said always, was just very poor reasoning and in-apposite. As for niche naming, as you have now amended it to include "etc. etc.", it does now go ad infinitum, which just emphasizes Wikipedia's general consensus is against you. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:27, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Please stop misquoting. He said "almost always", which is patently untrue, and my response was patently not "as if he said always", and I never said or implied "ad infinitum". Please quote rather than mischaracterizing. Softlavender (talk) 17:23, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I did not misquote: "almost always" is explicitly not "always" - that is the very purpose of the modifier "almost" - as for your argument that it is "patently untrue", your response lacks circumspection and is nonsense, as the "almost" is a statement of degree not of absolute as you apparently now deliberately misconstrue it to be. Thanks for clarifying, though, your list of niches is not endless. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:38, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

The question we have to ask here is if Donald Trump's election has made this happen. The problem has existed for a long time, but it was only because the fake news issue affected the US elections instead of only affecting issues such as the coverage on Global Warming that we're paying attention. So, is Wikipedia able to make the right decisions when it matters or are we just reacting when it is too late? Count Iblis (talk) 01:05, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I had one of these Daily Mail discussions on the RSN recently (Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_210#Daily_Mail) and I'm annoyed that I wasn't notified and the things I discussed then were not considered in this RfC. My opinion is that when the Daily Mail provides live video of important newsworthy events, we should be able to cite it. Of course, on the Internet, the medium is the message, and the message is that now as with so many other things there is apparently going to some implacable, invulnerable machine above all human argument and consideration that will be telling us we can't cite something. But I liked that Daily Mail did not join in the political correctness of sources that reported that the 2016 Munich shooting was perpetrated by "David S.", part of that year's gloriously counterproductive campaign to scrub away all discussion of Islamic terrorism; and I really liked seeing My Hero of the Beer Bottle do his mundane and effective part in stopping the rampage: [7] (Actually I see someone came up with a different site with the video, but I don't think we had that available at the time, and it's also cropped much more closely) Wnt (talk) 01:10, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

• bunch of drama. all the RfC did was confirm that almost every time DM is challenged, it fails. The consensus generally rejecting DM solidified a long time ago. Jytdog (talk) 02:08, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Inaccurate. There have been many prior discussions, going back to 2010, with the same people railing against the "Daily Heil" but this is the only successful RfC on the issue, and the very first consensus that it can not be used as a rule, but only in exceptional circumstances. My position has been that no source is "reliable" for celebrity gossip, and that the proper course would be to finally remove "celebrity gossip" from Wikipedia as being intrinsically non-encyclopedic. Instead we even bar the use of major prize-winning columnists on the excuse that no newspaper should ever write dummy copy for allocating column space before an expected verdict. I can assure Jimmy that "dummying" is used so that newspapers can plan layout, and such copy is not intended for publication as a rule. The Boston Globe released the Patriots-lose-Super-Bowl story before the end of that game, by the way. Even the NYT has published "premature obits" as they are also dummied up well in advance for notable persons. They are not supposed to be simply cut-and-pasted on the person's death, but to be emended to reflect dates and causes, etc. Jimmy could likely ask the NYT how big his obit will be someday in column inches. :) Collect (talk) 02:35, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly support that. The lengths we had to go to here to keep gossip out of a BLP article was extraordinary. Leaves me wondering if People needs further scrutiny too. Karst (talk) 12:56, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually the Garry Kief bit is in the article now. I don't see why you think it's wrong to cite this: [8] I have to agree with the person who said that keeping it out was a decision influenced by anti-gay bias -- not necessarily in the sense of the editors having that bias, but in terms of still thinking of a gay relationship (true or false) as an "allegation" to protect BLP subjects from. Wnt (talk) 14:29, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

People (magazine) carefully attributed that story to the National Enquirer as you should note. "Manilow’s rep is not commenting on the marriage. The National Enquirer was first to report the news." Glad to know that stories from the Enquirer are sound enough for Wikipedia. And the ever-reliable Daily Mail also makes the "reliable source" brigade for the Manilow article. Recall - I iterate that no source is "reliable" for "celebrity gossip" and here we have a trifecta. Collect (talk) 14:56, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

@Collect: How did you manage to look at that article, take a quote from it, and not notice the first paragraph "multiple sources confirm to PEOPLE"? The People article includes a long direct quote which is not present in the National Enquirer article. They confirmed the Enquirer article reported it first, but they did what journalists do - went back and got the information themselves. It's true that they're still using an anonymous source, but that is unfortunately very common. Wnt (talk) 15:13, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Snarkiness rampant - I sure the hell read the entire article - all the way to the end where it gives specific credit to the National Enquirer. And, pray tell, who precisely was quoted? Mr. A. Nony Mous? And how important is a "quote" from an unnamed person as evidence of much? Sorry, Charlie - the fact is that the report is based on unnamed sources, and the original source given is the eminently reliable National Enquirerwhich People felt compelled to credit as the source. Collect (talk) 16:32, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

@Collect: This doesn't make sense at all. They had a single sentence, which you quoted, "the National Enquirer was first to report the news", with a link for "enquiring" readers to find out more. No part of those nine words gives credit for anything, but merely acknowledges that the Enquirer published first (with the connotation, I think, that People wouldn't have bothered to ask if they hadn't read the news, and perhaps the further connotation that People wouldn't "out" someone unless they had already been outed. But that's a lot to read between nine words!) I mean, if we can't agree on what a single sentence means it is no wonder we can't agree on anything else. Wnt (talk) 17:08, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree with everything Collect said 100%, and like Wnt, I did not find out about the RFC until I saw it floating along the bottom of CNN. Also, if we really want to stop fake news from getting in our content, we have to reject all articles based on anonymous sources, full stop, however difficult or policy challenging that might be, imo. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:16, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

This is irrelevant really, because the result of the RfC was clear. However, it should be fairly easy to solve, actually. If those suggesting that the DM is reliable can find some examples of hard news, reliably sourced to the DM, that cannot be sourced from any other reliable source, that should prove that the RfC was closed incorrectly. Fair? Black Kite (talk) 18:56, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

And we go back to 4 May 1896, yes? Martinevans123 (talk) 20:49, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

What about this Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:03, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

But the others will all catch up in about.... 10 minutes? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:16, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

I didn't look how long enough, but it seems long enough to make the difference between having a picture of a busy street with several police cars and an ambulance and some weird kind of striped tape marking off the intersections where I guess people were allowed through, and having a picture of an empty street with a few people in fluorescent yellow watching it. 70.44.216.241 (talk) 22:42, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

The BBC has a skeleton article at most. It fails to give the extensive details found in the DM article. 8 sentences. DM has the exact same quote from the police, but misses everything else the Det. Supt. said. In sad point of fact, the BBC reporter could even have lifted the entire BBC article from the DM. (compare "This tragic incident happened in a busy area at a busy time of day with large numbers of people going about their daily business. I am appealing directly to anyone who witnessed the incident or has information that could help our inquiries to come forward. The force is hoping to speak to anyone who saw a person running in the area or those who have mobile phone footage." with "This tragic incident happened in a busy area at a busy time of day with large numbers of people going about their daily business. I am appealing directly to anyone who witnessed the incident or has information that could help our enquiries to come forward. It is also possible that people may have recorded footage on their mobile phones and I would again encourage those people to come forward." ). Collect (talk) 23:23, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Good point. If only BBC would reveal it's sources - like Wikipedia has to? Martinevans123 (talk) 00:00, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Both are almost certainly quoting the police press release verbatim. Journalists don't even try to fact-check the police I think. You should all listen tot he episode of Talk Nerdy with Michael Marshall. You really should. No, seriously, I'll wait for you here. Guy (Help!) 16:58, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

That incident can be sourced from several other sources: the BBC, ITV News, the Yorkshire Evening Post and more. By the time it clears the hurdles of WP:NOTNEWS, WP:RECENTISM and WP:NODEADLINE, let alone WP:GNG, we can expect it to have received further coverage, which may even turn out to be have more useful material for an article than these rushed reports. Collect's suggestion that the BBC could "in sad point of fact" have lifted their article from the DM without attribution, based on nothing but the BBC quoting a police officer at less length, is reminiscent of the sly imputations of the Daily Mail itself. If we accept that argument, we'll also conclude that the Daily Mail lifted their article from the Yorkshire Evening Post article that appeared 25 minutes earlier.[9] 79.73.244.79 (talk) 00:30, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Yorkshire Evening Post? As the DM story (published 16:54 10 Feb) has details not found in the YEP article published at 21:29 10 Feb., I seriously doubt the DM "lifted" the story from a journal which has fewer details in an article published hours later. (Using times asserted in the articles as cited) Note: apparently the DM page autocorrects the time zone, and YEP does not) Collect (talk) 15:32, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Yorkshire Evening Post:"By Alex Wood Published 21:29 Friday 10 February 2017 Updated 08:21 Saturday 11 February 2017"[10]

Daily Mail:"By Alexander Robertson For Mailonline Published: 21:54, 10 February 2017 | Updated: 09:46, 11 February 2017"[11]79.73.244.79 (talk) 16:00, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I'd give up on the DM if I were you, Collect. It's far too much like hard work and it's inevitably wrong. Black Kite (talk) 20:36, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

[12] Read the cite please. It states: By Alexander Robertson For Mailonline Published: 16:54 EST, 10 February 2017 | Updated: 13:04 EST, 11 February 2017 I erred in not assuming that the web page for YEP did not make the same automatic time correction. The DM article still has more factual information than does the YEP. Collect (talk) 23:09, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

"Read the cite please." I read it and quoted it to you above. I don't know why you wanted me to read it again but I have. It still says "Published: 21:54, 10 February 2017". Did you think I'd misquoted it? 79.73.244.79 (talk) 23:34, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

"The DM article still has more factual information than does the YEP." No. There are four noticeable differences. The Daily Mail says the incident happened around 3:45pm, the Yorkshire Evening Post has 3:42pm. This may be a stylistic choice. The YEP reports one line of the police call for witnesses in indirect speech; the DM uses direct speech. This is a stylistic choice. The YEP tells us Detective Superintendent Pat Twiggs is a member of the West Yorkshire Police; the DM does not identify his police force. The YEP tells us that police have warned of traffic disruption; the DM does not tell us this. In two clear ways, the DM has less factual information than does the YEP. 79.73.244.79 (talk) 11:07, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

To be honest, the ban should concern only news articles published in the 21st century. The Daily Mail probably did have fair editorial oversight for over a century (except during interwar period). Their current editorial oversight is just so deficient and ideologically biased that even routine news coverage cannot be trusted. They have been caught red-handed for fabricating quotes, so I would not use them even for citing sports related topics. The argument of them having a good quality news coverage for the sports comes up every once in a while, but they do not deserve our trust anymore. The ban is justified and essential, as there has been a long-standing consensus of them being unreliable. Ceosad (talk) 01:54, 11 February 2017 (UTC). Edit: Here is a recent case of a fake sports interview of Paul Pogba. Ceosad (talk) 02:08, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Collect, I could not disagree more. Daily Mail was rejected almost every time I have seen it brought up at RSN (somebody should get off their ass and actually find out the percentage) and while people will go "oooo what does it //mean//???" it really means nothing, practically. I have removed it every time I have seen it cited and never lost an argument about that when it was challenged. Even the RfC closure only says generally unreliable which means if somebody Absolutely Needs it (which is hard to reckon) and they are able to convince others, they still can. Which is pretty much how things were before. So yeah, bunch of drama. Jytdog (talk) 04:44, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

No source is good for "celebrity gossip" but at no point that I found was the Daily Mail ever "banned" in any way in the past, other than in that area (and I feel all sources of "celebrity gossip" should be banned, in point of fact.) Collect (talk) 15:39, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

It has not been banned, and insisting it has is just propagating "alternative facts". Clueful editors understand this; the rest are having a cow. Whatever. Jytdog (talk) 20:28, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not having a cow. I just find the fixation on the DM curious. The individual points made in the Rfc are mostly reasonable but this feels like a scapegoat phenomena at work. Most of us are really pissed off at all the utter bullshit being published, expectedly on social media but also on main stream media, primarily in the political sphere, and we all likely feel as though we must do something about it, and this was the easiest and quickest thing to do. Nocturnalnow (talk) 20:47, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

It seems - from this current discussion there - that WP:RS/N may have regularly rejected the left-leaning Huffington Post as unreliable in the early days, until they improved their fact-checking. This fact needs checking. As jytdog hinted above, some graduate should do a (quick) thesis on RSN's history of grading publications' reliability. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:08, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Here is the Daily Mail reaction to the proposal, with a statement from Mail Newspapers. Predictably, they weren't very pleased about it: "It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry at this move by Wikipedia – a website that is notorious for its own inaccuracy and false truths, and which was co-founded by a man who doctored his own biographical entry. For the record the Daily Mail, in common with most reputable academic institutions, banned all its journalists from using Wikipedia as a sole source in 2014 because of its unreliability. Last year, the Daily Mail and Mail Online together published more than half a million stories and yet received just two upheld adjudications each for inaccuracy from the UK Industry’s regulator IPSO. This so-called ban by Wikipedia came at the end of a month-long ‘debate’ – triggered by a clearly obsessive newspaper-hater who hides behind the pseudonym ‘Hillbillyholiday’ – which attracted just 75 votes from Wikipedia’s 30 million anonymous registered editors. The debate makes it abundantly plain that the majority of those calling for the Mail to be banned were driven primarily by political motives."--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 17:13, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

1)Thank goodness: it "banned all its journalists from using Wikipedia as a sole source in 2014 because of its unreliability." Wikipedia is not reliable according to its own policy. The only shocking thing is why grown "journalists" would need to be told that and that it took them so long (2014!). Their admission, there, rather reinforces Wikipedia made the right call. 2) It's not surprising they claim "politics", but I for one know nothing about their politics, and could care less. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:31, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

You could? Martinevans123 (talk) 23:15, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I suspect the real reason Mail staff are banned from using Wikipedia is that Dacre considers Wikipedia to be basically Communist. The impression is that he considers Margaret Thatcher to have been a dangerous liberal. We don't follow the Mail's editorial line on climate change denial, civil rights or pretty much anything else, because in most of these things they are objectively wrong. Another problem for them is the license. They can (and do) use press releases freely and without attribution, so that's always going to fit the Mail's model better. Guy (Help!) 14:49, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Still does not matter. I did learn after the close that a Trump seems to generally agree with the Consensus,[13] which although it does not give weight to the consensus, further belies the baseless claim that it is "politics". I also now note that the attack on User:Hillybilly Holiday appears to be irresponsible bullying by a powerful entity, so additional evidence the organization is irresponsible. (And Martin, I suppose I could, if less than nothing was a thing). -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:04, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

The statement that it is "abundantly plain that the majority of those calling for the Mail to be banned were driven primarily by political motives" is yet another error on the Mail's behalf. In agreement wit the Mail, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 21:43, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Don't be too hard on yourself Boris. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:15, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

A new vote is obviously needed

The "75 votes from Wikipedia’s 30 million" is a reality that can not be ignored. Now that the issue is so well publicized, there will likely be much greater participation in a new Rfc. Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:13, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Whether I agree with the RfC or not, I agree that the public perception of WP is being harmed here. But is another RfC the answer? Perhaps there needs to be a decision at a higher level of policy change and where we outline why some media are acceptable and others are not in a way that is transparent to the public. DrChrissy ^(talk) 21:30, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

The RfC is online and readable by "the public", as are our policies. If people don't know how the decision was reached, it's because they don't want to know, not because of a lack of transparency. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:32, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

What is the evidence "that the public perception of WP is being harmed here"? Most of the media response is strongly in favor of the RFC outcome. 184.96.135.200 (talk) 23:49, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

You have actually answered your own question - you posted "Most of the media response..." which means you already know we are receiving some bad press. One example is here in the Observer.[14] DrChrissy ^(talk) 00:17, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

"Some bad press" is so vague as to be useless. And the Observer piece is not negative, but fairly neutral. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:56, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

The last 2 sentences of the article are In spite of my own misgivings about the Mail, a full-scale ban of the tabloid on the internet’s most popular encyclopedia seems a little extreme. Time will tell whether the Wikipedia editors’ Mail purge is a wise move, or leads to heightened, unnecessary censorship. I shall leave up to readers here whether or not they consider this to be fairly neutral, but I would also add that it is the first time I have seen the "C" word used about WP's decision in this regard. DrChrissy ^(talk) 01:08, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

If the decision had been for a "full-scale ban" the commentator might have had a point. But it wasn't. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:56, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

On this point we can all agree:"censorship" does not need to be 100% to qualify as "censorship". Also, I think we all agree that a form of censorship can occur through good faith restrictions which did not have censorship as an objective. Actually the Observer's sentence is quite democratic and qualified with "time will tell" which makes it impossible to refute.Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:29, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

The very fact that such stories call what we do at an RfC a "vote" shows that they are ignorant of how the process works. And we can't have a "new vote" because we didn't have a vote in the first place. Orange Mike --00:06, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

This reminds me of someone sticking their fingers in their ears and singing "Lah Lah Lah" - they might be ignorant of our process but ignoring them will not make their ignorance go away. Oh - and please sign your posts in future. DrChrissy ^(talk) 00:20, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

30 million? More like 3000, if you think that people who make 100 edits in a month are probably the sort of people who would participate in an RfC.  — Scott • talk 00:49, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh, after all this press, I would not want to bet on that. I think a lot of occasional editors are likely saying to themselves "wtf" and are cringingly trying to explain to their mates, who know they edit Wikipedia (even if its just 10-20 edits a month), why such a popular publication as DM is being blackballed by the encyclopedia they edit...even if its just 5 edits a month. I think all of the part-timers would love to get a second chance to express themselves in another Rfc on this matter. Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:29, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

It should not take a genius to explain to your mates "Wikipedia goes by facts, not popularity." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.15.255.227 (talk) 20:14, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

It looks like the DM haters are afraid of a well publicized second RfC where more Wikipedians can have the chance to express their opinions...no offence, but that sure is what it looks like. Everybody knows that there is no legitimate downside to opening up the issue to a wider number of contributors and nobody likes a phony pretence at democracy and everybody laughs at banana republic decision making processes. DrChrissy is right to be concerned about public perception since this project depends, I think, on contributions from the public. Nocturnalnow (talk) 01:10, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

A decision has been made. Move on. Minorities can't relitigate everything just because they don't agree with a result. n=75 is plenty for an RFC. Carrite (talk) 11:17, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

The function of the RfC is primarily to draw attention to what is already sound editorial practice, avoiding tension with well-meaning people who add bad sources without really thinking about it. Good faith addition of terrible sources is normal and routine, as is removing such references. There are plenty of occasions where we have noticed a lot of links to a specific site that should really not be there - I have spent months removing citations to predatory open access journals, for example. It's very much the same kind of thing. The cleanup is bigger, that's all. This is not about hating on the Daily Mail, or even objection to its obnoxious soft-porn sidebar, it's just robust application of existing policy. Guy (Help!) 12:56, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Why the Mail is different

Nocturnalnow makes a fair point in asking why the Daily Mail is singled out. The catalyst for the RfC is undoubtedly increased scrutiny of news sources prompted by the "Fake News Election" of 2016, but in fact this has been building for a long time. Here are some things which in my view make the Mail unique among established print papers (and not in a good way):

1. Its health reporting is markedly worse than most. All papers occasionally publish over-hyped PR-driven health stories, but the Mail has achieved a legendary status to the point of spawning a "Daily Mail Oncological Ontology project" that records all the things which will either give you cancer or cure cancer according to the mail (and there are a lot of things that appear on both lists). They have promoted homeopaths and cancer quacks and a seemingly endless succession of fad diets. All papers do this, the Mail does it more consistently and more prolifically.
2. Its reporting on climate change and energy policy. The Mail has a climate change denialist editorial policy. It has given a platform to Delingpole and Monckton. The WSJ also promotes climate change denialism, but draws a much better distinction between editorial and factual reporting. I don't think any other established paper has promoted so much climate change denialist bullshit.
3. Its misogyny and hypocrisy. One minute it is calling for paedophiles to be executed, the next it is publishing "all grown up" pictures of young teenaged girls. The entire right hand side of the Mail website - the "sidebar of shame" - is taken up primarily with pictures of female celebrities wearing as little clothing as their paparazzi can find them wearing.
4. Its aggressive "publish or perish" approach, hiring young people straight out of journalism school and giving them aggressive targets that cannot be met without sacrificing diligence, so they are faced with the choice of one of Paul Dacre's legendary expletive-laden bollockings or cracking out a couple of PR stories taken direct from their inbox. Michael Marshall has noted that if a company is named in the fourth paragraph of a news story, that company probably paid for it via a PR agency.

So, whereas most long-standing print newspapers are assumed to be reliable unless proven otherwise, the Mail is not.

I would argue that we should also consider deprecating the Daily Express, which has some of the same problems and is also given to publishing bullshit UFO stories. I'd have included the Sunday People, as well, but that is dead and gone. Guy (Help!) 18:08, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

What about the Sunday Sport[15]? DrChrissy ^(talk) 18:32, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Fuck yeah. I was at university with Dominic Mohan, his regard for truth and the consequences of what he wrote was zero - and then he moved to the Sunday Sport. Please tell me we do not have anything sourced to that arsewipe. Guy (Help!) 21:47, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Guy, for the detailed info. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:45, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't know if we have anything sourced by the Sunday Sport. It seems to me that there is an elephant in the room here. There are multiple news sources on both sides of the Atlantic (and elsewhere in the world) which are largely regarded as being non-RS compliant and editors want some sort of blanket-ban/blacklisting/edit filter. The multiple RfC or threads that have been raised against the DM have been a huge, huge time-sink for many editors, and for more years than I have been editing on here. Are we really thinking we will do this for each controversial news source individually? If the DM really was the worst (I am not debating this), what will happen when a less controversial source is put up for RFC? DrChrissy ^(talk) 00:14, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

No elephant. We would not source anything to the National Inquirer. I hope we would not use the Sunday Sport. The Mail differs in that it was once a sort-of-respectable paper (give or take its support for the Nazis), but it reinvented itself into a click farm. Guy (Help!) 00:17, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Guy, I'm afraid you appear to be sticking your head in the sand here. I predict there will be many, many more attempts to announce news sources "guilty before being proven innocent". Multiple RfC's and discussions seem to be an incredibly inefficient way of progressing here. DrChrissy ^(talk) 18:15, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

You fear that, do you? I don't. The Mail RfC merely codified long-standing consensus. There have been dozens of threads at RSN asking if the Mail is RS for something, and the consensus in every one I can recall is: no. Any other newspapers that are in the same position, well, I will be quite happy to list them as deprecated too. Guy (Help!) 19:01, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I am not disagreeing that the RfC achieved that. What I am trying to do is suggest that the hundreds of hours of editor's time leading up to the RfC was immense. Surely there must be a better way. DrChrissy ^(talk) 19:05, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't think it was a waste of time. It was a re-evaluation of a source whose model and reputation has substantially changed over the life of this project, in a way that most have not. That seems like a valid use of time to me. Guy (Help!) 22:33, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting it (the RfC?) was a waste of time, and my comment was directed more at the history of discussion of the DM. Guy, you have been on WP substantially longer than I have and your knowledge of this particular news source seems way superior to mine. What I am (was - I think the horse is flogged) trying to do here is make things easier for editors including yourself in the future. DrChrissy ^(talk) 20:17, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

A way forward?

I think most of us here will have read both favourable and unfavourable media reports about the RfC on the Daily Mail and how the decision was reached. Like it or not, we are in the spot-light - public perception about WP and how we go about making decisions in this area seem mixed at best - for instance, the RfC was the subject of a scathing joke on The Last Leg (a UK TV programme) last night. What is clear is that within WP there is a great motivation to ban/blacklist/greylist other sources. I feel it would be beneficial for both editors and public perception of our decision-making to try to make it more transparent how we go about this, before we start considering actions against other media sources. Two years ago, I got caught up in a fairly unhealthy debate about using the DM. I will not post the diff here (but it makes very interesting reading to see how the comments of some editors have changed since then) One of the approaches I suggested was to try and standardise the criteria on how we were assessing the suitability of media sources. I presented the table below - which is intended to provoke thought and not as an end-point. Please...no attacks on what I have included in the table - these are only to show examples and do not represent my views.

Newspaper	Country	Age (years)	Does the source have a good or bad reputation for -										Do other sources		Another column
			Checking facts	Accuracy	Editorial oversight	Reporting on this subject	Correcting its mistakes	Preferentially reporting scandal or rumours	Preferentially reporting rare events	Conflict of interest	9	10	Report contradictory facts	Report mistakes by the source	Category 1	Category 2
Daily Mail	UK	65	bad	bad	gooda	bad	good	bad	good	bad	?	?	Yes	Yes	?	?
Daily Express	UK	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.
Daily Telegraph	UK	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.
The Guardian	UK	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.
Notes here aThere is editorial oversight, but the editor is clearly biased against feminist issues

I also suggested a "traffic light" system on how we assess the suitability of media sources. If we are to place an automatic pop-up message when editors try to use the Daily Mail, this could perhaps apply to other media sources where we might reach consensus that caution is required, but adopts a graded approach.

Newspaper name	Country	Rating	Comments
The Daily Perfect	UK	RS compliant	Use without hesitation
The International Truth	US	RS compliant	Totally trustworthy
The Daily Make It Up	UK	RS compliant in some contexts	Use with great caution - totally unacceptable for biographies
The Daily Sensation	UK	RS compliant in some contexts	Use with great caution. Very poor reputation for fact checking
The Weekly Made-up Chronicle	US	non-RS compliant	Do not use without opening Talk thread to discuss
The Daily Sleaze	UK	Non-RS compliant	This source should not be used anywhere on Wikipedia except in exceptional circumstances

DrChrissy ^(talk) 23:32, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

• Proposal That we ignore external opinion and disallow it from affecting or effecting our policies. Also suggest not rehashing the RfC which, for once, actually settled something. O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 11:40, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

I would like to make it totally clear that this is not a request, support, or disagreement for a rehash of the Daily Mail RfC. It is an attempt to make our future decision-making process more transparent. Others have suggested that because our discussions are available to read on-line, they are transparent. But, try reading our decision-making without wikipedia knowledge - we use terms such as "diffs", "PaGs" "RfC" etc which require extensive wiki-experience to understand. It is hardly surprising that the media are using the word "ban" when it is patently obvious to even those of us directly involved in the RfC still do not understand the implications of what an "edit filter" means. The first table here could easily be distilled into a list of "guidelines for consideration". DrChrissy ^(talk) 17:52, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

• I really like the idea of having a grading system for sources, a bit like the Torino scale for asteroids. This would save considerable effort re-hashing discussions about sources that DrChrissy labeled "orange". Something as simple as "yes, this source favors partisan viewpoints but it does good fact-checking" would go a long way to provide guidance on citing them. — JFG ^talk 14:05, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
• One of the reasons RSN exists is because these questions are only answerable on a case-by-case basis. Some publications which are authoritative about the news in Cleveland are useless for medical information about cholesterol and vice-versa. 184.96.135.200 (talk) 16:26, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

WP:RS states Whether a specific news story is reliable for a fact or statement should be examined on a case-by-case basis.{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources#News_organizations], however, the RfC has gone against this and decided that almost anything published by the Daily Mail is not to be used in eng-WP. I feel certain other news media will be given the same examination. I'm suggesting that our decisions are more transparent. DrChrissy ^(talk) 18:01, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

• I think this is a solution in search of a problem. Tabloids are already deprecated for most content, the Mail was singled out for extra scrutiny because it is an outlier even among tabloids, and because it is the most prolific publisher of bullshit among all news websites in the UK and arguably anywhere. The Mail Online is the driver for this, the print version was less shitty until the company basically rebuilt its model around the online version. Dacre's poisonous editorial style could not completely destroy the paper version, but it can (and does) destroy the online version, and that particular tail has taken to wagging the dog by now. Guy (Help!) 16:57, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

On second thought, Guy is basically correct. The only problem is that this RfC was done. Since we agree that sources can be fine for certain types of stories and not for others, the only real solution is to let the editors of each article figure out what sources are acceptable for that article. That is the only final solution to this situation; and the DM RfC should be cancelled or ignored. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:13, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Not really, no. The problem with the Mail is quite specific: it was once a newspaper but it has become a click-farmer. People are reviewing content as if it were still the 1980s, when it was merely rabid. Now its reputation has sunk to the point that it is barely better than Breitbart, and the transition in its content policies was sufficiently long ago that it's clearly important to go back and clean up the mess. It can be said with high confidence that anything which appears only in the Mail (or indeed only in tabloids more generally) is not significant enough for Wikipedia. Nothing is really lost here. Guy (Help!) 12:50, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Guy, if I am reading policy correctly, we are wrong to blanket-ban any source - sources should be considered on a case-by-case basis in the context of the material it is being used to support. But perhaps this is where WP-Policy is lagging behind technical advances. I agree with you that today, many on-line sites are just click farms. Perhaps we need to be addressing WP-RS policy here, rather than spending our time singling out the DM (this is not an attempt to support the DM)?

What ban? The consensus is that the Daily Mail is deprecated due to significant problems and should not be used unless there is a compelling argument specific to an individual article. That's a standard we apply to a lot of sources. It's notable because it is unusual to apply it to a published newspaper, but even that is not unprecedented, the National Enquirer is arguably a published newspaper too. The DM has been regorised form assumed reliable unless proven otherwise, to assumed unreliable unless proven otherwise. It may be the first of many. I'm fine with that. Guy (Help!) 14:52, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

The "edit filter" is solely up to Wikipedia's Deep State

By far the most objectionable aspect of the Daily Mail RFC was the call for an "edit filter". Yes, a few voters who participated mentioned it in a positive way; most did not. Others said it should be restricted to "warn". Some advocated it, also said they don't know how it works. Yet the closure of the RFC is for an edit filter to be made, and so how that will be done is up to a few people who are much better than any of us. They will decide whether the filter allows the edit but puts it on a watchlist, whether the link is blacklisted so you can't add it at all, indeed, they could make the filter secret and/or block anyone who tried to add it. We should understand that on the Internet the medium is the message, and the message is one of absolute mechanical control by monolithic entities, no matter what their initial philosophy may have been. If our society is headed toward a Dark Age, it will be because shaped in the hands of a capitalist-fundamentalist world, technology must by nature become an evil force to be destroyed at any cost. Wnt (talk) 16:56, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

If I could just interrupt your cheery message for a moment, are you seriously suggesting that a possible outcome here will be to "make the filter secret and/or block anyone who tried to add it"? You think that is a real possibility? But I agree with you that an edit filter should have been, or still should be, a separate RfC. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:03, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Probably not, but the options are in the software... and they have been used. From what I recall it's a pretty short thought process from "someone is spamming links for..." to taking such measures, and no RFC is needed. Wnt (talk) 17:51, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Guess when the CEO of Sun Microsystems said this "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."? In 1999, 2 years before Wikipedia began. Wnt has been a Paul Revere about "If our society is headed toward a Dark Age" for a long time, and his concern becomes more and more legitimate with every passing week. This possibility of a coming "Dark Age" has gone from a conspiracy theory to a probability, imo. We, who actually care about society, better get energized and work harder if we want to have a chance at bustin' up this tsunami of technical balls and chains wrapping around all peoples, with control freakish technocrats, with classic classist and elitist mentalities, looking down from their financial and political perches while gleefully tugging the puppet strings that the rest of us are forced to dance to. And if you don't believe it is happening already, you are not paying attention. Nocturnalnow (talk) 19:01, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

There are at least three ways links to a site can be controlled: edit filters, the spam blacklist (which I still thin should be renamed), and the bot revert lists (see user:XLinkBot). They have varying degrees of transparency. The edit filter has the least mature process, IMO, but this was greatly improved after Kww's abuse of the filter. All of them require regex-fu, all are watched primarily by a cadre of specialist editors who generally do a bloody difficult and usually thankless job with remarkable good humour. While most changes are made by a small number of people, they are visible to a much larger number. I'm not aware that hidden filters are a particular problem, I think they still show in Special:AbuseLog, but I could be wrong about that. Guy (Help!) 10:25, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Disingenuous and malicious to ignore the wider political dimension behind this

The whole Daily Mail ban smacks more of Wikipedia:Tendentious editing, sneaked (snuck) in by political activists of, from, supporting or read Stop Funding Hate, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), The Socialist Worker, The Morning Star, Left Unity, the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), the People's Assembly Against Austerity (The People's Assembly), the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) and the Socialist Party, through stealth! I mean, a general discouragement of DM/DM(MOL) sources on a strict case-by-case basis, with a defined guide, such as circumstances when DM/MOL sources might be exceptionally appropriate or acceptable, perhaps (which I do not actually support by the way; but perhaps workable as a compromise); but this?! Jimbo, I hope you not now basically tacitly allowing (through inaction) the British political far left to openly and freely infiltrate Wikipedia if not also the WMF (see entryism)! -- 87.102.116.36 (talk) 13:54, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Rubbish. One could quite reasonably argue that certain other tabloids should also be deprecated, but identifying the Mail as worthless does not require any political bias at all, and there was a decent cross section of opinions reflected in both the debate and the close. Guy (Help!) 14:20, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

No more reasonable than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ4LhNJ4Kck
[16][17][18][19][20][21]
Jimbo (Jim), you (as an American) have been had (trolled)! This smells more like a typical British graduate prank...disrupting Wikipedia and the WMF to make a point...something for some hotheads to boast to their "comrades" about at the next annual general meeting of the SWP somewhere probably down in Central (North or East) London! -- 87.102.116.36 (talk) 14:43, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

You get today's spot prize for dumping an irrelevant YouTube video into a serious discussion, I suppose. This is real "reds under the beds" conspiracy mongering. Guy (Help!) 14:53, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

• However "Disingenuous and malicious....etc... ", interested editors might want to note this recent post? That seems quite incredible and raises a few questions about quite a few things. Maybe this needs to be a thread on its own? Martinevans123 (talk) 23:29, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

[22][23]...the old joke from the year 2011 would seem sick, offensive, puerile and grossly insensitive now, don't you think?! -- 87.102.116.36 (talk) 09:58, 15 February 2017 (UTC)!

I see you have the measure of most of my humour. But that comment was aimed at The Sun and not at Georgina May nor, especially, Sue Hymns. How do you think the Daily Mail compares with The Sun, or even (the subject of your second 2011 soundbite) with the Sunday Mirror? I was trying to suggest that the criteria for inclusion at Wikipedia are not quite the same as those at The Sun and the Sunday Mirror. I'm sure the tabloids have their place in "exposing the truth", but there's typically so much "exposure" the truth takes second place. Maybe DM gets more wrong than those other two simply because its content is much bigger? Or perhaps has a stronger editorial direction. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:28, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

There's an easy way to resolve this ...

(I asked this question during the RfC). Give us three examples of hard news stories (i.e. not celebrity gossip, which we don't - or shouldn't - use any tabloid for) that were currently accurately and reliably sourced to the Daily Mail and could not be sourced to any another reliable source. If they exist, that may suggest that the DM may not be as unreliable as the RfC suggested. Black Kite (talk) 19:30, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

What should a notable person not in Wikipedia do?

I know of two cases of people who are notable enough to be in Wikipedia, but who aren't, and who would like to be, but who are deeply concerned with making sure to do the right thing.

I find myself puzzled as to what to tell them to do. There are several options, all of which seem problematic in some way. What we don't seem to have is a simple way for them to submit either a proposed article (which would not be my preferred approach) or a list of links showing notability (to make it easier for an editor to take it up and write it) without risking some weird media backlash suggesting they are inappropriately self-promoting, etc.

AfC would seem to be the natural place, but it's pretty backlogged and seems to be organized in such a fashion that it isn't a place to submit either drafts nor suggested links - entries there for biographies tend to be just the person's name and a couple of sentences.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:51, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't think everything put together below amounts to a complete solution, but here are some ideas that I have nothing against in terms of "self-promotion" on Wikipedia:

• Just wait - the traditional answer has always been "If you are really notable, somebody else will eventually notice and write an unbiased bio."
  • The flip side of the same answer is "Do you really want a biography on Wikipedia? If you have one and some negative news comes out, it will very quickly reflect that negative news."
• Assuming that the above answers aren't satisfying:
  • Write your own autobiography, or even have your PR agent do it, and then post it on your own website or your PR agent's website and license it CC-BY, maybe add "this page only" to make clear that the entire website isn't CC-BY. Please do include links to all sites supporting your claim to notability, and cites from books and newspapers that aren't available on-line. When news comes out that makes you notable in the eyes of a Wikipedian, they'll probably find this page and be able to add it immediately, without worries of copyright infringement, and also be able to identify the source (you!). Or you can put a link to it on the bio talk page when the article comes out.
  • Upload good freely-licensed photos of yourself to Commons. There is no rule against this at Commons, except perhaps "Scope", roughly their version of Notability. Better yet, have your agent upload these pix on a regular basis for all their customers. This would be analogous to the old publicity stills that PR people sent out that could be used by any news source. Unfortunately stricter copyright laws prevent us from using any publicity stills that are currently sent out. I'd even go so far as asking, pleading even, that the Chicago Cubs, upload head shot photos of all their players each year, even the ones who just played in spring training, even the ones who only play in AAA. If 2nd division Chilean soccer players are notable on Wikipedia, then having photos of AAA baseball players on Commons should be ok.
  • post a video on YouTube or Vimeo in your own name or your agent's (so we know it's not a copyvio). It's best to license it CC-BY, but even if it's not we can still link to it. Perhaps have a friend interview you, if you don't know what to say. We'll at the very least get to know what you look like, how your voice sounds, and maybe even see how well you can walk and chew gum at the same time. Videos are super-informative. If you already have an article, tell us what you think of it -what's true and what's not. Please just mention the date of the article version you're talking about. I've even got some suggested titles that have been used multiple times in the last 5-10 years, i.e. "Your name:Wikipedia True or False" and "Your name: Wikipedia Fact or Fiction".
  • Back to the original question of what people who don't already have articles should do - perhaps a video on "Your name:What should be in my Wikipedia article?"
  • Volunteer to TED or TEDx to make a presentation for them. If you are really notable and have something to say, they'd love to have you IMHO. Then we'd likely have a video and a news story to refer to
  • Better yet, volunteer at your local university to give a 20 minute talk to students (plus time for questions which is what the students really want). Arrange for the talk to be videoed and published by the university cc-by, or even pay to have it videoed and publish it yourself (with university permission of course). Can't find a university who wants you to talk to their students? - You would have to ask yourself, after volunteering to 3 or 4 places, whether you are really notable enough for Wikipedia.
  • Get interviewed by a PBS station or other local public broadcaster, or help them make a program on a specific topic. So you're a celebrity within the Tennessee Walking Horse community, and not notable for anything else. There are lots of folks interested in these horses, and probably 3 PBS stations in Tenneesee.
  • Publishers and movie studios have a tradition of getting blurbs from "stars" saying how great their wannabe stars are. Perhaps your agent could post some of these on their websites (who from? for some reason Robert Redford and Ozzie Osbourne come to mind).
  • The common thread here is that all these steps help volunteer Wikipedians write articles about you, similar to ways that talent and PR agents used to do for newspaper writers. But they don't force self-serving material into articles, which is likely to happen and have negative consequences if you pay an unethical paid editor to do it. Another common thread is that all these methods are currently within our rules.
  • Much of this stuff is work that a competent publicist should be doing for you. If they can't maybe you should get a new one.
  • We could write up this type of material, hopefully with some input from folks at Commons, into an essay like WP:So you want your biography to be on Wikipedia?. I could even write up something for the Wikimedia blog, assuming that nobody else volunteers and that the blog wants it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:58, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
• Register user:Notable Notonwikipedia, write Draft:Notable Notonwikipedia and go to the Teahouse to ask for help and guidance. Guy (Help!) 16:53, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I think the suggestion for uploading photos is on the right track. I think the best practice would be for the notable or his publicist to put together an archive of content they can make free - anything they can get their hands on that they have the rights and desire to make publicly distributable. That could be photos of themselves, bonus video clips from a concert, old playbills, copies of old posters from back when they were a garage band, editorials about the Trump administration, whatever. Photos of photographs they took or own of themselves with other (more) famous people would be particularly welcome. It should be an archive that their fans would have fun paging through too, even if Wikipedia turns its nose up at all of it. But it should start off off Wikipedia, so they don't have to worry about whether anything is "out of scope" or self-promotion or whatever, and that way also they can continue to profit from and further direct some traffic as they please. Then they can post a message to a relevant WikiProject or a closely related article talk page saying that they've put up an archive of all this free stuff if Wikipedians want to use it, and things will probably progress from there. Of course, they need a live WikiProject and some appealing bait for that to work. Wnt (talk) 17:18, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I still want to see the photos of all the Iowa Cubs players! Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:40, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

@Smallbones: We have grants that can help make that happen. For instance, we recently funded TonyTheTiger to rent photo equipment to take shots at a basketball event in Chicago that can improve numerous biographical- and sports-related articles. If you or someone else you know is going to a game and has an opportunity to get shots of the players, let me know and I can help them get an application started. :) I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 17:57, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I've spent a fair amount of time responding to queries sent to Wikipedia (OTRS) and my least favorite is responding to someone who either wants to know how to get an article about themselves (or their organization) on Wikipedia, or who has tried, is running into problems, and wants some advice.

The official answer, “just wait. Someday, someone will choose to write it” is so unsatisfying. I like some of the ideas that Smallbones suggests, but I'd like to see us as a community tackle this in a more organized way.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:41, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

There can be a site-wide banner with this message.

Are you a notable person? Is your notability documented on the World Wide Web? You can help us to expand our coverage of notable persons. Please visit Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Articles for creation or Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Biographies of living persons, and add your name along with links to one or more web pages documenting your notability. Our volunteers will do their best to use the information on those web pages to produce an article about you in accord with our policies and guidelines.

—Wavelength (talk) 19:38, 14 February 2017 (UTC) and 20:28, 14 February 2017 (UTC) and 00:10, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

You don't want a wikipedia article about you. If you want people to know about you, get a website or use Facebook. Then you control the message and anyone who googles your name will find your site. when there is a Wikipedia article however it will rank first. It will be based primarily on reliable secondary sources so your major achievements that did not get news coverage won't be there. If you are in any way controversial, that controversy will dominate your article. So if you have or get a DUI arrest, even if acquitted, that will be basically what the article is about. Beware too of people maliciously adding false information. You'll have to check every day. Once removed, you will have to check all the other sites that may have picked up on it. And of course, there's the talk page, where editors will accuse you of conflict of interest and take you to wiki-courts and all these discussions will be kept until the end of time. TFD (talk) 21:20, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

In my WWW search for information about personal experiences related to having an article about oneself on Wikipedia, I found this article about Legalmorning. I am not recommending it for persons wanting their biographies to be covered on Wikipedia, but I am mentioning it as something of interest to the Wikipedia community. Post Scriptum: Wikipedia has search results for legalmorning.

• How To Request An Article To Be Written On Wikipedia - Legalmorning—Michael Wood (December 21, 2004)

—Wavelength (talk) 01:13, 15 February 2017 (UTC) and 05:06, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Everyone who isn't in Wikipedia but would like to be should be compelled -- using whatever means necessary -- to read Wikipedia:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing, and to pass a followup exam that ensures they understand it. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:23, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't think that's an issue for us, because we're not on the subject's side; we're officially neutral. Our loyalty should always be to the reader who types something on the search bar or who has some company effectively do so on their behalf. The readers might want to know the good, they might want to know the bad - we should try to make sure they go away satisfied either way. The subject doesn't have to go away satisfied because he's not who we're here for. If we can talk him into CC-licensing stuff, giving us references to cite, putting stuff online ... great! it might even be for mutual benefit. But it's still for our readers' benefit even when the subject does not benefit. Wnt (talk) 13:32, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Such a user could do what formerly Wikipedia-article-less Steven Seifert did recently: contact an experienced user (in this case, me) and ask them if they would be so nice as to create an article about you. You could also provide sources that this user could use to create such an article, which Seifert also did. I said yes and created an article about Seifert, so this seems to be a good approach. Everymorning (talk) 03:21, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

No offence meant, but its a non-issue; cream rises to the top..if it doesn't, its not cream. Nocturnalnow (talk) 19:15, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• My opinion is that JW suggests (not tell) his two notable friends to adopt an attitude of Masterful Inactivity (as Buddhist monks may say). Leave it to others to recognize their notability and create the article(s). If no one does, that’s tough! And that's way the cookie crumbles sometimes. Yet, if someone does create the articles, that can be tough as well, because it will seldom be like the notable person(s) ever imagined (and not referring to factual inexactitudes – which need correcting). However, I add a caveat: JW knows these people... they may have the self-confidence to take the Oscar Wilde point of view: “"There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."” Yet, as they have asked JW they don't appear to have that attitude, otherwise they would have already have someone create the article for them -an' dam the consequence. Let them down softly, pointing out that there are many other notable people that just WP haven't gotten around to yet and as WP is not a paper encyclopedia there is still room for them -eventually. Would like some feed back from JW and others, as similar questions from other editor along these lines are bound to arise again and again. AfC and COI and other policies are work in progress and can always be improved. There is currently a bias on WP where if someone who has been on TV a few times and beds a celebrity they quickly get an article PDQ and so many editors have to spend time doing AfD's to correct this, whilst people who are truly notable get over looked.--Aspro (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

We could create an artificially intelligent bot that will mine the Internet and produce BLPs so that within a relatively short amount of time, virtually everyone on Earth who qualifies for having their own Wiki-article, will have one. Then if someone is left out, he or she could just ask that the bot crawls his or her webpage. Count Iblis (talk) 02:34, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• The advice I'd suggest to your acquaintances would be "be grateful". I've seen plenty of people wind up being horrified that their Wikipedia article didn't turn out the way they'd imagined. Having a Wikipedia article isn't really all it's cracked up to be. Risker (talk) 02:54, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Johann Rupert vs. Bell Pottinger

Have you seen this news article? Mr. Rupert claims that he is a friend of yours. When he had some objections to his Wikipedia article (probably regarding this), he contacted you and "they fixed it". Any truth to any of this? Would it be worth opening an investigation of the User:SouthAfricanWisher, to see if there is any actual tie back to Bell Pottinger? The IP that reverted the probable offending content was globally blocked only a few hours after the "fix" (or, "whitewash", depending on your perspective). That seems highly coincidental, too. - Truth about MVNOs (talk) 13:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Let's start at the last point and work our way back to the first. The global block was of a /19 subnet by Savh on meta with a reason of "Cross-wiki spam: spambot: Excessive spam from this IP range allocated to a webhosting provider." You may wish to do some looking around to find out if it was this actual address doing the spambotting, or if perhaps this IP was caught in the crossfire. One could imagine (though it seems rather extravagant) that a sufficiently sophisticated attacker could launch a spambot from a specific ip range in order to get an anon blocked as collateral damage. I really doubt that is what happened, but it's possible. It's also possible that the person who reverted the edit also launched a spamming attack. Or it could be entirely unrelated.

Would it be worth opening an investigation of User:SouthAfricanWisher (who inserted the BLP attack against Mr. Rupert) to see if there is a tie back to Bell Pottinger? I don't know. I'd personally be curious, but if the issue at Wikipedia is finished, then I'm not sure what the value would be. Of course, there is a history of inappropriate Wikipedia editing by this firm, and they've been instructed not to do it any more, so it would be interesting.

In terms of the edit removing the problematic content, I am not responsible for that in any way. I don't know whether it was potentially some friend or associate of Mr Rupert, a random ip number, or what. That ip address geolocates to New Jersey, which doesn't really tell me much.

On the morning of 24 November 2016 I received an email from Mr Rupert and promptly forwarded it to OTRS. I took no further action.

The word "friend" means different things to different people and - especially - across different cultures. But for avoidance of doubt, I met him at a dinner in London and when he contacted me he indicated "You probably will not remember meeting in London..." We certainly were friendly at the dinner and I enjoyed talking to him so I would not want to call him wrong for calling me a friend. But I also don't want press reports to be misinterpreted. Given that he's apparently under attack, I would not want anyone to ever claim that he relied on a friendship to "fix" Wikipedia. He did nothing wrong with respect to Wikipedia as far as I can tell, and just contacted me because he met me. And my response was to simply pass it along to the right channels.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:36, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

In relation to the IP address, it's registered to London Trust Media Inc, AKA privateinternetaccess.com, an anonymising VPN service. I can't say what finally prompted the block, but the latest edit from the VPN which is visible on this wiki, is a different one. Going by Savh's blocking log, it looks like several cross-wiki spambot accounts were blocked at the same time. I would say the block looks coincidental to whatever else. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 15:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

How does Wikipedia governance work in 2-5 pages?

A friend asked me to explain Wikipedia governance - how the community works with admins, ArbCom, bureaucrats, and the WMF the make decisions and come up with policies. He/she is not interested in a college level textbook, but say something 2-5 pages long. Does anybody know of a good place to get this? I have no idea.

A year or so ago, on this page, I compared Wikipedia governance to the ancient Novgorodian Veche - in short everybody who is interested in an issue gathers together at the wall of the cathedral. Under the direction of 3 or 4 self-appointed leaders, everybody yells until they come up with a decision. If they can't come to a decision Prince Alexander Nevsky rides into town and declares himself temporary dictator, which nobody really wants, so the people are forced to come to a decision. Well, I clearly am not the person to explain the basics of Wikipedia governance in a fairly short format. Can anybody direct me to a standard page? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:54, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Governance.—Wavelength (talk) 20:37, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. The best of the linked pages there is probably Wikipedia:Administration as it lists and defines all the players. But its a bit basic, sort of like a flow chart with just boxes and no arrows. I'm really looking for an explanation of how things are decided. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:44, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Formal organization.—Wavelength (talk) 00:43, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Help me

Hello mister Jimbo Wales! I don't understand, why they want to delete THIS article ?! Why ?. This science was prominent geographer and mountaineer, professor, He discovered Krubera Cave (see Krubera Cave#1960s). I don't know whats going on. Sorry for bothering you. - OTOGI ^Messages 16:42, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Otogi. You could have removed the tag that marked the article for deletion ("You may remove this message if you improve the article or otherwise object to deletion for any reason"). I have done so for you. The article may still be nominated for deletion but there'll be a full discussion beforehand, where you can present your reasoning as to why the subject is notable. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 16:53, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

The article looks like a very good start to me, but it is difficult for me to tell since I don't have a geographic or geologic background. If I were you, I'd find some other editors with an interest in geography and geology and see what they think of the article. Also I'd write the article up in Georgian and perhaps Russian so that you can get feedback from those editors. Have any books or articles been translated into English or German? There's still a lot you can do to reach out to other editors. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:10, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Smallbones See Talk:Levan Maruashvili. See also: ka:ლევან მარუაშვილი, ru:Маруашвили, Леван Иосифович, uk:Маруашвілі Леван Йосипович. Deletion of this article would be a big mistake. - OTOGI ^Messages 17:18, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

As the editor who prodded the article, I still see a stunning lack (basically nil) amount of reliable reference to buckle up such a heavy article.A google search also returns no result.Being used to seeing a lot of junk at new-pages feed, going by the light of my findings,there was (and is) a strong chance that he fails our stringent notability criterion.If new reliable sources don't come up, I wouldn't even mind taking it to AFD.Also see WP:CIRCULAR.Winged Blades ^Godric 17:34, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict):As to ka:ლევან მარუაშვილი and ru:Маруашвили, Леван Иосифович, well their notability standard is evidently not same as ours.Winged Blades ^Godric 17:44, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

@Smallbones: @NeilN: @Winged Blades of Godric:. See works: works, see. - OTOGI ^Messages 17:40, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, I don't know how having one's published books listed in Worldcat makes him notable for an encycloepedia.Winged Blades ^Godric 17:47, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Further, the books arising out of a google-search list him in a trivial manner as a source.We could do good with more WP:RS.Winged Blades ^Godric 17:54, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

This belongs at Talk:Levan Maruashvili, yes? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:23, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I think a broader audience might be appropriate, because Wikipedia has a problem here. People want to say that a formally "Honored Scientist" from Soviet Georgia in 1956 is non-notable because there are only 3 online references in English about him. But I don't think it does us any conceivable harm to keep this article, which may nominally pass the GNG and is based on respectable sources. I bet a dead tree library with old copies of Communist publications might have a lot more articles about him, if we had someone looking. By deleting this we would be imposing an overly strict interpretation of the notability standard anachronistically honed to the media-eyeballs era of news articles written in half an hour -- reaffirming cultural and temporal bias and denying editors and readers interested in the history of Georgian science the chance to develop and better explore their talents and resources. Wnt (talk) 23:50, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree. I don't understand the knee jerk reaction to delete articles like this. If even a fraction of the things said in the article are true, we should include him. I can understand deleting articles on individuals whose only mention in the press is participating in and/or winning some award in a beauty pageant, or individuals who are on a list of members of a sports team. I don't see the harm of an article on this scientist. Is the concern that with too many articles, the material on non-famous people might be inaccurate or unsourced? If that's the issue, we might look at our articles on law: about half that I have looked at on major topics have few if any sources at all. For example:

• Real estate
• Estate (land)
• Rider to Contract
• Void (law), Voidable contract

--David Tornheim (talk) 02:45, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

The Death of Expertise

Tom Nichols (academic) is the author of the book The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters.

• The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters—book review by Thomas M. Nichols for Goodreads.
  

—Wavelength (talk) 20:07, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

OK. And here's an article for it: The Death of Expertise. Looks interesting and probably cogent generally but I'm not sure what particularly it has to with Wikipedia. I suppose the author (if he deigned to notice us, which I dunno) would probably not look kindly on us, and maybe that's your point? The author is TV game show champion, which is kind of interesting. Herostratus (talk) 06:21, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Sometimes people who write about things like that don't look too kindly on us, but I think they are mistaken. With our insistence on quality and reliable sources as fundamental principles, we are hardly conducting a "campaign against established knowledge".--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:18, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

My first reaction to this title was to remember my reaction when I discovered that Russians take the concept of the intelligentsia seriously. Sure, most societies have a group of people that they might call the intelligentsia, and the US in particular had or has it's chattering classes, but what I was surprised at was that many Russians who I met considered the intelligentsia to be a class of people who did the thinking for the rest of society. Some people work the land, some people work in factories, some work for the party or the government, and some people think. That's a very harmful way to divide things up, every member of society has the right and even the obligation to think. Sure, experts may help in educating the rest of us, but we get to question their assumptions, their ideas as a whole, and if they don't convince the rest of us, it is just their own fault. They can spend as much time as they like thinking, but they don't get to impose their thoughts on the rest of us by default. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:11, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

@Smallbones: "considered the intelligentsia to be a class of people who did the thinking for the rest of society" — IMO that is an overly simplified definition. Some representatives of intelligentsia (интеллигенция) may have a trust from other classes to think and to write for them because they have prooved to be ready to fight and to starve for them. So it is in some way connected with the idea of the martyrdom. My personally, I think that this very short story by Ivan Turgenev is the best to desribe it: "The Workman and the Man with White Hands" (more proper might be "The Labourer and The Shirker"). --Neolexx (talk) 19:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Recognizing expertise and non-expertise correctly is important for everyone, including Wikipedia editors, Wikipedia readers, and authors of Wikipedia sources.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:20, 15 February 2017 (UTC) and 02:39, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

No doubt this is correct, and I'll just add that it is even more important for us - since so many people do rely on us as a strong signal of quality sourcing. That is to say, a link from Wikipedia is in some ways (not all ways, and this is an oversimplification) often an endorsement. It says, "this is where we got this information, and we think it's a valid place to get information". This example from the Daily Mail would not qualify except as a proof that the story exists if we were writing about "stories in the Daily Mail which were subsequently debunked but never corrected". [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29].--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:55, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

One of my pet peeves is when people insist on linking to the primary source of a debunked claim, thus: "The Daily Bullshit made the false claim (source: Daily Bullshit making false claim). It was debunked in the Truth Post (source: Truth post debunking it)". The Truth Post is a secondary source for the false claim, the primary source is neither necessary nor desirable. Guy (Help!) 09:59, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, well I think I agree in part and not in part. If the article is about the perception of quality of The Daily Bullshit, then I'd say that it'd be unfair (to the reader) to not link to both. For example, in my exposition up above, I gave an example of a DM report which has been thoroughly debunked but still remains live on their website, and for you to evaluate whether or not I'm telling the truth about that, you deserve to see both the original and the debunkings. On the other hand, in an article about air quality in China, I would argue that the entire incident is unencylopedic because it's been debunked. Including it would just be a coatrack to bang on against the Daily Mail, which is not really desirable.

In other cases, I think that there is a judgment call to be made as to whether debunked claims should be presented. In many cases, no, it was debunked and pointless, so the world moved on. In other cases, the claim was famous, the debunking less so, and we might well imagine that people are coming to Wikipedia to learn more. In such a case, we might do the reader a disservice if we don't even mention it. And if we do mention it, we'll probably need to link to the original as well as the debunking.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:08, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree with you Jimbo Wales that the original primary source should be presented if something about it--including its inaccuracy--is notable. Also, it should be provided early in the article. This gives readers a chance to look for themselves at the document, artifact, image, theory, etc. that was the basis of the controversy and understand more completely why others take issue with it. Certainly, a statement such as “Experts find theory X untenable” should be grounded with secondary sources (WP:RS) challenging X rather than a primary source with theory X. But I feel it is a disservice and overly patronizing to readers to try to shield and hide the primary source and original theory X, and require the reader to search for it outside of Wikipedia. How will readers understand what was debunked if X is only presented by those hostile to X? --David Tornheim (talk) 11:50, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Difficulty finding expert sources

We are having trouble recording the expertise of various subjects, often because we cannot find the expert sources (online) which explain the issues. For example, if I expand a full page on the features of IBM's "FORTRAN IV" as a major programming language of 1960s-1970s, I could cite some old textbooks, but those sources might be challenged because wp:NOTHOWTO and I would need to find some essays about computer technology which described FORTRAN IV as a general tool, not a book which described how to write a program. Meanwhile, Wikipedia seems "terminology-blind" about the most famous concepts of FORTRAN, even when searched as phrases in pages, such as "Main program" or "statement function" or "common block" or "format statement" or "link edit" after separate compilation of subprograms. I am horrified at that lack of computer expertise in Wikipedia.
Another example has been trying to find sources about precision of decimal numbers to explain the term "hidden figures" (the off-screen digits, not the NASA film), where I tried to reference "hidden digits" (off-screen digits, not the website). After hours of search, the most I could find was adding tiny end-digits on a conversion factor to magnify the effect of hidden digits at the end of decimal digits. Meanwhile, "everyone" should know on an electronic calculator, the next hidden figure at end of 1÷7 (shown as "0.1428571") can be revealed by 10÷7 ("1.4285714") as digit "4". Also, multiply by 1,000,000 and subtract 142857 to reveal +6 more hidden figures in "0.14285714" because 1/7 is a repeating decimal of 0.142857 over and over. However, finding sources which explain those "hidden digits" are difficult to find. Fortunately, we can source the "Half interval search method" or other important computer algorithms. But meanwhile, the loss of expertise. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:06, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Are you saying, there are no Histories of FORTRAN or you can't get them? How can we expect to find everything online?Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:20, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I can't speak for Wikid77, but I think what s/he was saying is that for major topics, people often dismiss them outright if a Google search does not find any WP:RS results. I started participating at WP:AfD and noticed this tendency. For example, some editors want to delete water pipe percolator that has a quite a bit of information in the article, probably written by editor(s) that work in the industry or know the subject well, but who didn't know they had to use WP:RS. I am not certain anyone even tried to contact them to tell them their hard work assembling the information was about to be tossed. The argument from the pro-deleters was they could not find WP:RS from a Google search or that it was supposedly already covered in another article (that material was not in the other article). But a Google search for that term shows tons of images and articles selling the device(s), matching the summary of information in our article (that sadly has no references). So that tells me there is an industry for the device and somewhere there is likely literature describing these devices, their construction, marketing, etc. I think the argument, "I can't find any WP:RS on Google" is not sufficient to kill a topic. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:11, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Why no answer on the permissions question?

Jimbo, why aren't you responding at the #Your opinion at "The Guardian" site question to extend permission so a translation of your essay won't be deleted, or explain why you can't? It seems so unlike you. I hope you've just missed the question and don't have an actual reason for not answering. 184.96.135.200 (talk) 14:49, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

A more polite request than this one would have sufficed. I'm not sure you or most other folks who contribute here are in a position to judge what Jimbo is or isn't like. I JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 20:36, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I apologize for not answering. Clearly I'd be happy to see the essay translated and distributed far and wide, why not? I don't know the Guardian policy on such things at all, and I haven't had the time to research it or ask them. At the same time, I saw what Ithink is a version of the essay in another language already (though I can't find that now so perhaps I'm mistaken), and so perhaps the Guardian sells the rights to such things? I honestly don't know. I will ask.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 06:28, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

The original discussion is now at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 217#Your opinion at "The Guardian" site. Graham87 10:48, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Just another crazy idea here. I know you are interested in spreading the use of CC licenses. My idea is that many news organizations might be interested in delayed CC licensing, e.g. "(C) Jimbo Wales, after March 1, 2017 this material licensed CC-BY-3.0". Clearly the vast majority of the benefits from copyrights to news organizations is in the first few days after publication. Almost no for-profit newspaper would want to let anybody anywhere copy their material the day after publication. But the benefit of copyright is very short-lived. 2 weeks after publication very few people would want to copy most stories, and the original publisher would have little hope of capturing any revenue from those folks. The cost of selling old stories, in almost all cases, would be more expensive than the revenue expected. There are exceptions of course, but most of this revenue would usually go to the writers, e.g. columnists such as Art Buchwald, Mike Royko, or Andy Rooney might print books of their columns, usually with a free copyright release from the original publishers, and make some money. Except for a very few cases, publishers would not lose anything from delayed CC licenses. Wikipedians and a few others might benefit.

But who should I ask to get material released by delayed CC licensing? It would have to be somebody high up in the organization, probably somebody who writes something for publication fairly regularly, and is committed to free culture. This has got your name written all over it, Jimmy. Would you ask the folks at the Guardian about this possibility? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:39, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Note several issues. First, many publications derive income from archives. Second is that publications may not legally be able to give copyright to material which they publish but to which other persons may hold a copyright claim. Thirdly, of copyright is an asset of any legal person which has their assets used as collateral for any loan, or where copyright is an asset of a publicly held corporation, it may be a violation of law for them to simply relinquish such an asset. Hence relinquishing copyright may be neither financially prudent nor legally proper. Collect (talk) 19:54, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

The substance of this post seems reasonable enough, but seriously what is up with the use of italics? --JBL (talk) 04:14, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Funny. The italics are used to denote "terms of art" or terms closely akin to such "terms of art" in order to emphasize such "terms of art", although, as you will note, quotation marks are occasionally used for that purpose. I apologize if that purpose was insufficiently clear. See also Copyright Ownership: Who Owns What? from Stanford University Press. Collect (talk) 14:10, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not saying that all news sources in all cases should impose delayed CC licenses. Rather going forward they allow these licenses to be used in some cases. e.g columnists or op-ed writers would be given a choice to have the Guardian own the copyright, or the writer could retain the copyright and allow the paper exclusive use for 2 weeks, and then the CC license would kick in. Of course, if they fully owned the copyright to their archive, then I wouldn't object to them licensing those as well. The business certainly can give away some of its assets without breaking any laws or violating any contracts if there is a business reason for doing so, e.g. goodwill for charitable donations. As far as the value of archives - my guess is that, except for big organizations (NYT, WaPo) and structured data (sock prices, birth and death notices), there's very little value to most of their archives. How much revenue do you think the Emporia Gazette gets from its archive? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:28, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

It's technical and I might be misreading it but it seems that Jimbo's article in the Guardian comes under the conditions at https://www.theguardian.com/info/standard-terms-for-written-contributions, in which case he has given the Guardian exclusive rights for first use and maybe for three months after that, and non-exclusive rights for re-use. It seems that apart from that he retains all copyright and licensing rights and I think that means he could put it under a CC licence after 3 months at most. 79.73.244.79 (talk) 13:21, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I'll ask. That would be wonderful, if true, and might provide us with a very interesting opportunity for some free content for Wikisource.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:04, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

The Slow Professor (2016 book)

I have started an article about the book The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy.
—Wavelength (talk) 18:04, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Appeal to Jimbo re: my topic-ban from American Politics after 1932

Jimbo Wales, I'd like to appeal re; the indefinite topic ban on me re: American Politics after 1932. I will rely upon the arguments made by Wnt in his edit above Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:00, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

You would have to head to WP:AE I think, for appeals. TheValeyard (talk) 16:23, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Nocturnalnow, you may appeal your topic ban here - I have tried that - however, historically, Jimbo rarely gets involved, let alone supports an appeal. I suggest, in a friendly way, you do not expend too much energy here but save that for the relevant noticeboard if you decide to go there. DrChrissy ^(talk) 16:33, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Yelling "FAKE NEWS" in MOS:CAPS isn't helpful, though. There is a need to tone it down.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 16:36, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Ian, would you mind if I re-threaded your post - It could be interpreted that I have been yelling "fake news"? DrChrissy ^(talk) 16:40, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

No problem. I think that Nocturnalnow has a tendency to go over the top when discussing American politics, and would need to tone down the rhetoric on this topic for the ban to be lifted.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 16:43, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm definitely not going to attempt to change this ban as I think it's a very good idea. Nocturnalnow, I've encouraged you to email me privately - I think a chat in private will be more productive.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:54, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

ok, I'll continue to contribute on other topics from time to time. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:28, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia Audio

I have just discovered, in the last few minutes, Wikipedia Audio at http://wikipediaaudio.com.
—Wavelength (talk) 01:11, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

It looks good and sounds good. Take a listen to Jimi Hendrix. I wonder whether we can link to this in our articles.

The website owner, Michael DeMichele, says he worked with the WMF, so I'm guessing everything is cool, or could be made so pretty easily. A couple of questions though a) Is wikipediaaudio.com a trademark violation? and does the site need an explicit CC-BY-SA license statement?

If those are problems, I hope they can be worked out smoothly. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:35, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I put a link to the WikipediaAudio version in the external links of the Jimi Hendrix article. It doesn't feel like the right place to put it and would be pretty hard to find by people who might need it. Any better suggestions? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:56, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I have left a message at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia.

—Wavelength (talk) 04:34, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I've reverted the link addition per my edit summary. It's a good start, but it'd be nice if it worked in every major browser. Graham87 07:56, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

A refdesk squabble for you!

	How can make the illegal mushroom drug plz?
	Actually compared to the rest of your talk page recently it's not so bad. EllenCT (talk) 05:41, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Andrea James, Wikipedia, and deletionism

I wanted to direct the readers of this page to this article recently written by Andrea James, a trans woman who used to edit Wikipedia as Jokestress. The article explains how multiple WP pages have been deleted because, in some cases, the editors who created the pages left the project long before the pages were nominated for deletion, and in other cases, the page was replaced with copyrighted text and then speedied as a copyvio. Specific examples of these cases cited by James include Chickenhead (song) (the former) and hemovanadin (the latter). James also asserts in the article's title that 40% of WP pages could also be deleted this way because they are stubs. I am curious what other editors think about her criticisms of the way WP works, e.g. her allegation that these deletions represent "misuse of Wikipedia's deletion policies." Everymorning (talk) 04:02, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

An obvious remedy would be to write a bot that goes to archive.is and archives pages as soon as they are marked for deletion. (sample archive: [30]) A caveat being that it would have to be fast, and ideally should have some way to search back before any recent large deletions, since some deletionists take a two-track approach, nominating articles because they don't have enough sources or don't assert notability while editing out large chunks of content to make that be so. Wnt (talk) 04:34, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

There's also Speedy Deletion Wikia, which archives copies of WP pages that have been speedied. Everymorning (talk) 04:35, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

How does that work anyway? For example, there is a nice little article on there about Rashi Singh, but I don't see an obvious notice or log telling me there ever was a deletion let alone why. How did speedydeletionwikia find it? Wnt (talk) 04:44, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

There are two possible titles, Rashi Singh and Rashi Kumar, and neither has ever had an article. The linked article Kisne Pyaar Hogya also appears never to have existed. Guy (Help!) 17:53, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

There was a follow-up article by James that I couldn't find right now, plus a summary with comment by AV Club. I understand the concerns, it sometimes seems that some good things get deleted. My usual experience with this involves photos, both here and at Commons. The methods described to delete seem pretty devious, and I've seen some of that. OTOH, a part of editing that many Wikipedians seem to forget is removing bad or even just sub-par content. Anytime I've graded student papers, I'd get the urge to say "edit this down to half the size, and then add some real content."

We do have a lot of bad content on Wikipedia. A bit more than half our articles are stubs. About half of those are "substubs" Use the ORES ratings to see what I mean. [31] The 4 articles rated there are Raja Khishtasub Khan, Seel, Central Java, Showgirl (album) and Coleophora impercepta. These aren't hard to find. Hit the random article link 10 times and you'll find 2-3 of these (or similar).

There are certainly some substubs that I think are worth keeping. A lot of them are biology or species articles. They don't add much, they may not have been edited by a human in years, but I can't see where the hurt anything. But there are substubs that can be very harmful, e.g. poorly thought out 1 paragraph OR. A lot of them could also be merged into a real article that could use another paragraph. So among the 20-25% of our articles that are substubs we could easily edit out , merge or delete at least 10% of our articles. And these articles would account for much less than 1% of our page views.

The only problem I'd see with doing this is that it would take a huge amount of time - because we all like to argue so much. Here's a modest proposal. Find the 5% of our articles every year that meet the following conditions: 1) ORES "Stub probability" in the highest 10% (probably greater than 90%), 2) less than 30 page views per month avg., and 3) hasn't been edited by a human in at least 2 years. Have a bot tag them for speedy deletion. Find 1,000 editors who will consider, edit, merge or delete one of these every day (250 per year). Do this forever. After 2 or 3 years, we might have to reconsider if we find that too many "real articles" are being deleted. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:25, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

What exactly is the point of deleting an article nobody reads? The deleted article is still stored on the server and still available to certain special people who are better than me. The number of page views ... doesn't change much. The only difference is that if someone wanted to try to do something with it, they would have more work. Wnt (talk) 13:51, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

While the stuff that gets caught in that sort of net probably qualifies as 'not very important' or 'likely to be missed by a fairly small fraction of readers', as with Wnt I have trouble seeing how one justifies the leap from there to 'harmful and in need of deletion'. Copyvios should obviously go. Totally unsourced (or extremely-poorly sourced) articles should be remediated or deleted, as they fall afoul of WP:V. Promotional cruft won't be missed; Wikipedia's not a webhost or a marketing platform.

Otherwise-sound articles – even stubs – that are merely obscure or of interest to a narrow audience? Merge where appropriate, sure. (I'm a big fan of reducing duplication, keeping information in context, and making it easier to maintain our content.) But speedying content that doesn't have any problems just because not very many people use it? Really? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:35, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I'll just note, that a recent experience of mine, just confirms for me that this argument you often see in many different types of discussions that a whole lot of stuff no one watches (from promotionalism to 'no one cares about this') is "not harmful" is wrong. I just by serendipity happened on an article of a major church in Munich - if I try to reconstruct how I got there, I just happened to be reading the Munich Cathedral article because for some vague reason I had a slight interest, and it popped into my head that knowing Bavaria was historically Catholic with a long history of inter-confessional violence, I was slightly curious what Lutheran establishment might exist in Munich - through some twists (again at each step only being very slightly motivated to continue) I wound up at a notable "Catholic" church article. At first, I just thought I wound up at at an article, I was not looking for - and was going to quickly move on -- but I just happened to press on about it and discover the problem that I ultimately figured out after some digging -- it was vandalized over two months ago with the first-half everything "protestant" having been changed to "catholic". That's just too much relying on total luck, and kismet that I cared, and then cared to research and correct it. Now, multiply such things over 1000s upon 1000s of articles . . . -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:14, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

It's an interesting question of balance. Of course, if an article only gets one page view per day, and it stays vandalized for two months, then sixty people were served the vandalized version of the article. If we take a moderately popular article (at this moment, Aziz Ansari is at the bottom place on WP:5000, with just shy of 28 000 page views last week) and it stays vandalized for thirty minutes...we also serve the vandalized version of the article to about sixty people. Is it meaningfully 'better' or 'worse' if the people who see the vandalism are closer together or more spread out in time? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:04, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

The thing that is concerning is my "correction" was so random - and there is no real reason I should have happened on it to correct it. FYI, I went back now in my editing history, and it was a month and a half (not two months, sorry), and for the record, here is the diff. I did not bother with anything else about the article that might be wrong, I know little to nothing about the subject (and, yes, kind-of-don't-care about it). Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:58, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

• • I'm not sure what article OiD is talking about. Hopefully it's not somebody involved in this discussion!
  • IMHO, it's best to talk about specifics in this discussion. I hit the random article link 5 times this morning. The fourth article was a substub, but not one that would fit the conditions in my modest proposal. Chaeron of Pellene had a "stub probability" of 91.7%, 3 short sentences, 2 offline references. Though a reference had been added in 2014, it was really only edited by it's original author in 2009. It took me about an hour, but I was able to add 2 more sentences plus a long quote from ancient Greece, as well as 3 online references. It's actually kind of interesting now and its stub probability was reduced to 88.6%. I think that's the more likely type of outcome from tagging these articles than deletion, at least if people take the possibility of deletion seriously.
  • My fifth use of the random article link took me to Ityopp'is which has one sentence and 1 offline link. It's stub probability is 96.3% - there are a lot of articles worse than this! In this case I will probably merge it into Book of Aksum, a stub (not a sub-stub) that could use another sentence. Looking at real cases makes clear that the encyclopedia will be improved by doing such a review. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:12, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

SOFIXIT. Carrite (talk) 02:35, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• Melissa Highton made the opening speech at the 2017 Wiki Education conference in London yesterday. She sponsors Wikipedia activity at her university and highlighted a recent case in which she herself needed help against crass deletionism. The topic, Judith Kaplan Eisenstein, was obviously notable but was nominated for deletion within two minutes of its creation. That was just a few weeks ago. Andrew D. (talk) 08:47, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

To be fair, that AfD was quickly dismissed, on obvious grounds. When she created the article it appeared without any references. Personally, I find the 'Under construction' tag quite useful in this regard. Karst (talk) 12:26, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

I guess. But the criteria for voting to delete something is supposed to be, not does the article have references but do references exist or probably exist that, if and when added, will make the article OK.

Right now I'm fighting for James McCown, which IMO is the sort of article that a large encyclopedia should have -- Historical figure, Confederate officer, led a regiment throughout the American Civil War in many famous and important battles. I'm just perplexed that people are like "Well, that's trivial, that's not the kind of thing we want here". I'm not getting it. Do people think we save publishing costs by deleting stuff like this, or something?

But right now it's running 4-3 Delete, so it's on the edge. Granted when it was nominated and the first Delete votes came in it was short and poorly sourced. But even so.

IMO this is a bit a trend in recent years, having to defend perfectly good articles that a reasonable number of people would probably find of interest (I could be wrong, maybe it's always been like this) and it is a bit worrisome. Herostratus (talk) 16:26, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Evidently, those who voted keep on the Eisenstein article did their research and the nominator had not. And I think that was mentioned in the AfD. Personally I think this all can be easily avoided by going through AfC and having a fresh pair of eyes to look over your article can only improve the outcome IMHO. Karst (talk) 17:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• The case of James McCown is remarkable in that it was nominated by DGG. Here's another egregious example that I just noticed: John Clerk (physician). What seems especially pernicious in that case is that the attempted deletion was a prod. This is supposed to be for uncontroversial cases as there's no discussion and so it's easy for such topics to disappear without anyone noticing. Andrew D. (talk) 14:19, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• I would echo OiD's comments here: before buying into James' narrative too strongly, I recommend you read Galileo's Middle Finger, and then check those allegations for yourself. Professional axe grinder is a pretty accurate characterisation, and you'll note that James is undoubtedly not a fan of Wikipedia any more following the arbitration case. I agree with James more than Cantor on the subject matter, but cannot dissent from the conclusions of that case: it's impossible not to have some kind of POV in the area of human sexuality, but this strayed into biased editing of biographies, which is not cool, and there is strong evidence that this was SOP for James. I find this personally very disappointing. Calling someone's child her "precious womb turd" is very hard to excuse or forgive. Guy (Help!) 16:38, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Too late, I have been muzzled. As a BLP violation apparantly. Someone has not actually read Dreger's peer reviewed paper that substantially dwells on James' methology. Ironically 'professional axe-grinder' is the only bit that cant be sourced in less than 2 minutes regarding James. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:56, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• I'll just point out that the deletion cases noted above, James McCown and Judith Kaplan Eisenstein, are completely difference than the substubs I noted earlier. Please look at Whittenburg Creek - we've got something like 500,000 articles like that. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:48, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Hello Jimbo

Are you Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia? Congratulations on something so incredible. Gustavopédia (talk) 17:05, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

How much more blatant FAKE NEWS headlines by mainstream media are we going to take as reliably sourced?

Jimbo Wales, now mainstream media are in unison publishing headlines which misrepresent, by omitting the term "fake news", what the President said in a heavily reported tweet! Instead of reporting the fact/reality that the tweet clearly says "the FAKE NEWS media is the enemy of the American people", they are mostly headlining " media is the enemy of the American people". Their headlines are lieing ( by omission of crucial qualifying words) to the world by inferring that Trump called all media the enemy of the American people. Here we have the headline and the actual tweet both on the front page, but as you hopefully are aware, headlines matter (that's all a lot of readers see or remember)! And this is not the first time. Main stream US media have been aggressively conflating the term "immigrants" with "illegal immigrants" ever since Trump announced his candidacy. Jumbo Wales , what are we as Wikipedians going to do about mainstream fake news in terms of using these articles as reliable sources? Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:22, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

This is a general discussion about the media not particularly relevant to Wikipedia, but I'll answer because I think you're just wrong and ignoring something important. I'd like you to reflect on this and let me know if you see my point.

If Trump had tweeted exactly this: "The FAKE NEWS media is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" and if the media then interpreted this as him saying "the media is the enemy of the American people" then there would be a very justified complaint. The initial meaning of the term 'Fake News' referred to a spate of what are unarguably and uncontroversially termed as fake news site - literally made up websites with false and misleading headlines designed to be viral with names such as Denver Guardian. If Trump meant that such sites were enemies of the American people, and people in the mainstream media pretended that he meant the media in general, then I think your complaint would have some validity.

As it is, Trump didn't tweet just that. He clarified it in a parenthetical: "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" This represents, rather obviously, an attempt to smear the bulk of the mainstream media, not just with potentially justifiable complaints like 'biased' but actually "FAKE NEWS". He knows what he is doing, and so do you. Pretending that he isn't directly claiming that these serious high quality media outlets are literally the enemy of the people would be misleading.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:01, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Trump also attacked BBC News, "Just like CNN" at solo press conference (see: full transcript, at "impartial"). -Wikid77 (talk) 17:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Keep grinding that ax. Wow, that's some kind of fantastic contribution history you're showing for February... NOTHERE, anyone? Carrite (talk) 15:30, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• Carrite, Ad hominem is next to the bottom on the chart, you know that. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:34, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

  I think what Carrite meant was what you have written is nonsense, perhaps just poorly reasoned SOAPBOX. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:39, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Fake news is a strong contender for Cliché of the Year and it is only February. I propose a swear box for anyone who uses it, and Donald Trump and his supporters would probably fill it in no time.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 15:34, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually, factually, it was the Democrats who first started talking about it as something Russia used to help Trump in the election, and the Democrats then used that term, as well as "alt right" to put down Breitbart etc. Trump just jumped on the 'fake news" bandwagon, I think. I don't remember who inseted the Fake News topic in the most recent archived Jimbo talk page discussion, but I'd be surprised if it was a Trump supporter. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:41, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

here it is, would you put that contributor into a swear box, or most likely you're being facetious? Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:47, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Trump has previously called all of the major news outlets "fake news", so this seems to be a reasonable condensation for headline purposes. "Trump declares Media except for InfoWars, Breitbart and Rush Limbaugh the enemy of the American People" does not make the best headline. Of course, we can't be sure what Trump means anyways. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:10, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I am surprised that you, whose work here I admire, would offer that explanation. That condensation might be reasonable for an overtly left of center publication but not for so many mainstream publications. The widespread omission of such crucially qualifying words, i.e. "media" as opposed to actual quote "FAKE NEWS (even in caps) media", as well as my second reference to the widespread reference to illegal immigrants as simply "immigrants", makes me positive that we have a really big problem of misrepresentation, in our mainstream media. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Stephan Schulz, even accepting your argument, the headlines should read "Trump declares "Major" media the enemy of the American People". There is a huge difference between most and all, but more importantly is the ethical integrity to not misquote ( by omission) a short one sentence statement...and this misquote is incredibly widespread among mainstream media today. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:06, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

The "President" is using "fake news" as a pejorative against media outlets who report critical things about him. "Fake news" is correctly defined as people or organizations who knowingly publish or disseminate false narratives. Inforwars' continued assertions that the Sandy Hook massacre was fake is a prime example of fake news. TheValeyard (talk) 17:01, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I definitely think that many major news organizations are knowingly publishing and disseminating a false narrative about Trump and Trump's attempts to govern through negative spin about 90% of every thing he says and does. And I am asking right here if we should link to articles ( by using them as sources ) which have such obviously misleading headlines. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:14, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

90% of everything he says or does is absolutely atrocious so that just falls under reliable reporting. That press conference the other day was the most terrifyingly embarrassing political spectacle I've every witnessed in over 40 years on this planet. Capeo (talk) 17:27, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

And it continues to get worse - see here[32] for a BBC interview where his deputy assistant attempted to defend Trump's actions and whenever he was asked a difficult question by the reporter, he claimed the BBC/reporter were creating false news. DrChrissy ^(talk) 18:21, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm sure it will get even worse before it gets better. The only silver lining at this point is that seems that it will be sooner rather than later that Trump does something so wildly unconstitutional that even the Republican controlled Congress won't be able to save him from being impeached. Capeo (talk) 16:29, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Headlines are not reliable sources, so there should be no problem. TFD (talk) 18:30, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• I disagree that there is a real problem here. The press is not lying when they omit that phrase, because it's not relevant to the central part of the story: Trump made a sensational claim to manufacture and promote distrust. You can sensationalize the omission however you want by using claims of "crucially qualifying", bold print, and capital letters to make it seem important, but whether it's in there or not is truly inconsequential in terms of building an encyclopedia. If that is what is most bothering you, I encourage you to focus your attention on real harm from this administration, not the imagined kind. I JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 18:40, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• On 24 December 2015, OP Nocturnalnow was topic-banned from American Politics after 1932.[33] Their opening of this section seems to be very much about American politics, as do many previous comments on this page, for example [34], [35]. 79.73.244.79 (talk) 20:05, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• Unfortunately the collapsing of settled cases tends to mess up links. This link seems to work better; you can uncollapse the relevant section. In any event my understanding is that Jimbo's talk page is the one place on the project where editors can disregard their topic bans. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 20:21, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• I would say that's a common misunderstanding. It's a place where someone can appeal a topic ban, not somewhere where bans are disregarded (WP:BANEX). -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 20:46, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• Reminded/warned here. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:04, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

You guys realize that silencing his would-be "voice of truth" with over-the-top Wikipedia process is not actually winning the argument, right? I'd say only that we don't reference headlines, we reference articles - it doesn't matter if the headline is a bunch of numbers as long as the article text is a RS that includes stuff like the actual Twitter posting in question. Well, that and that people have long been bemoaning the concentration of ownership of the media, so if someone names five big corporations as all being "enemies of the people" they practically have denounced all the media.

Nor will I say Trump is wrong, because ... without their incessant, infuriating wall of political correctness and identity politics and Clinton-can't-lose propaganda, we never would have been stuck with Trump! Wnt (talk) 21:09, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

If this is addressing enforcing the topic ban, you realize he's banned from making any arguments related to post-1932 American politics, right? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:15, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't like seeing this ban at all: prohibiting editors from discussing any American politics is not something that a free-thinking site does, and if enough editors are so penalized it will clear the way for an official political platform to be imposed on Wikipedia from above. This editor did a bit of edit warring about Huma Abedin at a contentious time. First, for deleting others editors' contributions without discussion, he was hit with a 0RR on one article in a discussion that blamed other editors about as much. Then he restored some unobjectionable text a few times and they hit him with a ban on all American politics since 1932. Where did they get that huge scope of restriction? Hmmm, let me feel around, it might be somewhere behind those peanuts I should have chewed better last night... no, wait, it was from an arbitration case that he wasn't involved in! And the discussion there had a lot of opposition to the idea. But now... the seed was planted, and the farmers at Wikipedia begrudge the loss of any grain of haughty proceedings and enduring rancor that can be harvested from it. You could just accept that a ban like this is incredibly overbroad and impossible for anyone to follow 100% indefinitely, and allow that a Jimbo talk page discussion is not really anything to do with it, provided it is not itself out of bounds by normal policy. Instead you're planting another seed for another harvest. I want Wikipedia to have a saner admin process where editors get progressive warnings with narrow scope and without radical escalations, and where action taken is genuinely interpreted to keep them within the bounds of what normal editors do rather than being designed as a method of exit processing. Wnt (talk) 12:31, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

On this note, Google News Search lately seems less useful for finding reliable sources. Over at Israel on Campus Coalition, there was a minor problem. So I used Google news search to look for better sourcing. The top three search results in Google news search (not logged into Google, private browsing) [36] are Algemeiner (Jewish), Breitbart News (alt-right), and Mondoweiss ("progressive and anti-Zionist"). That's a miserable set of choices. There's nothing on the entire first page of news search results which is a neutral reliable source. It's discouraging to see Google putting such sources at the top of search results. John Nagle (talk) 20:43, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, that's Google for you. In my experience it's hard to find reliable sources by casting a wide net, as you have found. It's actually easier to search known reliable sources, like "site:bbc.com israel campus coalition". Unfortunately there's no way to specify multiple sites within a single query as far as I know. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 21:07, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Sigh... that is the least of it. The main problem is that news sources are getting very good at spamming all their current headlines back into their older stories, so that most Google News results don't even include the story you searched for. Asking for it to sort "best" is more than I hope for (or even really want - am I writing the article or is Google?). But it's getting to the point where my usual approach is no longer sure to work. I had been date-sorting the results and paging through ten or twenty result pages at a time, then smaller increments, to the first stories that came out that actually reference the event. It is my general belief that the first story is usually the best story, and the rest are just middlemen looking for a stray penny; or if not the first story, then generally one not much after. But when there is newsspam mixed all up through the results in large amounts, it can be hard to find the first story at all. Wnt (talk) 21:09, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

As I recall, the first time I heard the phrase "fake news" in a political context was with regard to stories on Hillary Clinton's health. Candidate health is legitimate topic but speculative stories were labeled "fake news." This was separate from regular click-bait stories that most news outlets now have right next to news. Labeling inquiries into legitimate topics such as health as "fake news" began the now continuous assertion of fake news. Students of politics and current affairs know where stories of Clinton's health were on sound footing whereas others were unfounded. In politics, fake news is not black or white and like we've seen with political fact checkers, there is always an ideological taint that shades all conclusion. There are backstories and grains of truth whether it's a story speculating on a stroke or about immigrant sexual assaults in Sweden. Virtually all claims that a story is "false" or "fake" has grains of truth and it includes claims made by Trump, Clinton, their aids and spokespeople, the media of every outlet and everyone squishing their thoughts into a tweet. Everyone who edits Wikipedia has come across alternative sources for facts even in scientific fields and we incorporate these points of view into the encyclopedia without a second thought about deciding who is correct. What is most alarming is that people are asserting their ideological beliefs with more authority than they are asserting reasoned facts or reporting reasonable dissension. Editors are using ideology as reason to squelch views not palatable or label views as false, fake or untrue. --DHeyward (talk) 23:38, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Hillary Clinton did not give away U.S. uranium

WP might need a guideline about Trump's attack-speeches. Also in Trump's solo press conference, he seemed obsessed (unhinged?) with attacking Secretary Hillary Clinton, mentioning her a peculiar 25 times[!] and claiming a uranium giveaway (see: full transcript of 76-minute U.S. telecast, at "uranium"). Next day he left for a small campaign rally in Melbourne, Florida, and seems still trying to get elected President by the American people, where Hillary won the 2016 popular vote by a staggering 3 million more votes. Trump's U.S. approval rating is still dismal, at 41% while 55% disapprove of his performance. See fact-checking in "Donald Trump claims — falsely — that Hillary Clinton gave Russia 20% of US uranium" at CNBC.com. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Alas, poor Sweden, too, but can't we just say 'he's wrong, according to, like, everyone' every-time it is relevant. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:26, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, for a few weeks, we could be removing disputed text, but after a few months, sources which quote Trump's speeches against Secretary Hillary Clinton or Senator Charles Schumer (etc.) should be directly linked to opposing sources which debunk Trump's peculiar comments, as a guideline to maintain wp:NPOV coverage in the Trump pages. Otherwise, I see Trump as this generation's "President Nixon" (Tricky Dicky) claiming "Peace with Honor" to end Vietnam, but 6 years later, the War was not over, while another +21,000 of classmates/relatives have been killed in battle, and each year the wait for the U.S. draft lottery to pick your number next; also instead of protests over Nixon's racial "integration", now there are protests over Trump's restricted "immigration" (combat refugees, but not from Vietnam now). It is amazing how fast the years pass, and instead of Watergate being a building, it becomes a sequence of Watergate hearings, and sources who warned about Watergate before the 1972 U.S. presidential election would have been linked in each page as events unfolded. It takes many years to uncover facts and remove a rogue President. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:02, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

There have been suggestions that we could still accept the Daily Mail for theatre or sport. Need there be any exceptions to a ban on using Donald Trump as a reliable source? 92.19.26.31 (talk) 00:06, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

And there's the rub. Are you aware about "what" Trump is talking about when he is discussing uranium and clinton (start with NYT as a source)? Do you know what he said happened in Sweden (once again context starts with a NY Times article)? Twitter has an attention span of a gnat but I'd expect more from editors that cover people's biography. Trump has poor soundbite control and that makes his statements appear random but it's relatively easy to find richer context if editors don't rely on twitter for tone. NPOV requires this level of context, not strawman arguments where meaning is manufactured. --DHeyward (talk) 17:09, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

It would be WP:OR for us to decide what Trump meant when he spoke of "what's happening last night in Sweden" and WP:SYNTH to contextualise it using prior WP:RS such as the NYT report you cite of what happened in Sweden seven months ago. 92.19.26.31 (talk) 23:50, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

His team has already clarified the matter. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:04, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

For certain definitions of "clarify." Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:27, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, yes. He was talking about a Fox News report on alleged problems with immigrants in Sweden, and the way it came out it sounded like he was talking about some terror incident that had happened "last night". What had happened "last night" was the Fox News report. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:04, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• Per WP:NOTNEWS, it is actually quite a problem working out how to cover what, for want of a better name, I term "shit Donald Trump says". There is such a relentless rolling tide of bullshit, and such an obvious public good in covering the extensive fact checks in multiple reliable sources, that I have to wonder if we should actually have a number of articles perhaps in project space covering these bullshit talking points, as a service to the reader. A perfect example would be something like the 9th Circuit 80% claim. This turns out to be almost true on a very narrow definition, but since SCOTUS only reviews around one tenth of one percent of Federal cases, and mainly accepts the ones which it thinks are likely to be wrong, this it's grossly misleading. Snopes covers this one particularly well. #JeSuisIkea and all that. Guy (Help!) 17:34, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

If only . . . we could get people to not write new encyclopedia articles about the news . . . wait, and wait, would be smart . . . but one could only hope. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:56, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Slavery and rape

Hi Jimbo. What do you think of Professor Jonathan A.C. Brown's comments on slavery and rape? Do you think Wikipedia is covering them accurstely? FloridaArmy (talk) 14:13, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I have never heard of Professor Jonathan A.C. Brown nor about his comments on slavery and rape. You didn't link me to where Wikipedia covers them, so I'm not sure where to start looking. Normally it is fairly straightforward to check the reliability of such a thing by looking at what we say, following the link to the source, and assessing whether we accurately report what the source says. In some cases, there can be a subtlety that makes that less straightforward, of course. If you give me more information, then I may be able to offer some helpful comments, but more importantly, people can discuss it here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:33, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Me neither. Google spit out this (at the WaPo), which makes it seem like some ill-considered words and a mob that was ready to run with it. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:44, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

This in all likelihood has to do with this. It is being discussed on the Talk page here. Karst (talk) 17:50, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Freedom of speech aspect

This at the WaPo "He said that after the lecture he and his family were threatened anonymously with rape and death. Other scholars of Islams, he said, contacted him and said they were worried about the same kind of reaction if they discussed such issues." reflects a global morphing of political correctness into an aggressive, albeit stealth, attack on the freedom of speech. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:35, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• @Nocturnalnow: Yes. That article is already mentioned on the Talk page that I mentioned above and linked by Stephan. Karst (talk) 16:30, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

While certainly not condoning death threats which are not at all appropriate responses, "Freedom of speech" was never ever ever "any speech - always without ramifcations". If you "free speech" something stupid or hateful, expect people to call it out as stupid or hateful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.15.255.227 (talk) 20:27, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

@Karst: I think the freedom of speech aspect is the most important aspect of what this man is saying, in a university lecture, and the reactions to what he is saying. When professors have to start watching what they say in class, then the new intellectual dark ages really are within sight. The fact the Washington Post is reporting this as "news" adds to the "big brother is watching" aspect, except in this case, big brother is not government, it is the even more oppressive, omnipresent and dumbing down norms and mores of our current culture. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:53, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

In its basic form, "freedom of speech" is a restriction against governmental power limiting it. At the other extreme, it is not a guarantee against others reacting to what you said. North8000 (talk) 23:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

From Freedom of speech, "Freedom of speech is the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship, or societal sanction"....the societal sanction is what I'm talking about. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:18, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Where is that latter concept supported in the US Constitution? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:29, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Good point. By that measure all of the TV personalities who got fired for saying something un-PC have a right to get their jobs back. North8000 (talk) 02:26, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Whatever someone says can be used against them - maybe not in a court of law, but certainly elsewhere. Like the guy who left Breitbart today, after saying some stuff he would have been better off not saying. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:33, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Maybe where you live, but not in Canada. Our free speech is guaranteed by our Charter of Rights."infringed" is the powerful word in the enforcement section "24. (1) Anyone whose rights or freedoms, as guaranteed by this Charter, have been infringed or denied may apply to a court of competent jurisdiction to obtain such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances." "2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:(a) freedom of conscience and religion;(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;" And freedom of speech and other expression is especially sacred in our universities. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:35, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

So if you're working for a company, and you criticize them publicly, they can't fire you? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:56, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Great Question,@Baseball Bugs:, the answer is that they can not fire you for that reason without infringing on your Charter rights. If they do go ahead and fire you under those circumstances you have a slam dunk wrongful dismissal suit. So, we do have a lot of people openly criticising their employers but its usually, almost always, a valid criticism so the company when it hears about it will usually fix whatever the criticism is about. Now the big qualifier here is when people are working as a "contractor"..contract employee. Then the employer can discretionally choose not to rehire the person when the contract time period is over, but even then, the employer better not tell anybody it was to do with something they said. Now also, we have a "threatening" law which makes any kind of threat of physical harm a serious crime. So, that is one place where what you say can put you in jail. Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:16, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Nocturnalnow, I think that what you listed is a restriction on exercising of governmental against those rights, not, for example, a statement that someone can't get fired for saying something un-PC. Also, I've seen much saying that Canadian law is much more prone to even have the government smack people for exercising free speech. North8000 (talk) 13:05, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Note that the concepts "X received death threats" and "X claimed to receive death threats" are not the same thing. People have been known to fabricate death threats or even to generate them themselves in an attempt to gain sympathy for their cause. And of course some are real death threats. we just don't know from someone's claims. Was a police report filed? Did they give copies of the actual threats received to the police? --Guy Macon (talk) 02:19, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution allows far wider latitude to say stupid and hateful things than in some other countries. The Westboro Baptist Church is a good example here. Try this in Europe and the result would be a string of arrests and prosecutions.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:28, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, where the USA is toward one end of the spectrum (being generally very free from government punishment for speech) and Europe toward the another (providing for more government punishment), Canada is in the middle, according to the Globe and Mail.[37]. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:58, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

That's a great article I had not read before, Alanscottwalker, the 7 conditions for the hate speech laws to apply are pretty restrictive, imo. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:08, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Question about legality

Ref-desk mushroom permalink, bottom thread. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:03, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Does the WMF have a policy about providing how-to information about illegal activities? In this particular case, it was a ref desk question about psychedelic mushrooms, which are illegal in America and most of the English-speaking world. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:56, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

You mean like, "if it aint growin' in cow manure, it aint a cool mushroom" (psilocybin); perhaps note suicide risk and link WP page "psychedelic mushrooms". -Wikid77 (talk) 23:03, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs is asking the other parent because he doesn't agree with WP:NOTCENSORED and doesn't like the answers he is getting at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#Ref Desk removal (Drug mushroom). --Guy Macon (talk) 17:07, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

If I was certain of my take on it, I wouldn't be asking here. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:41, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

One thing we often miss on Wikipedia: just because you may do something doesn't mean you should. Guy (Help!) 17:46, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

There's nothing illegal about giving people information on how to do something illegal. There are quite legal how-to books out there on just about every illegal activity there is. Now you might end up on a watch list but America isn't at the point yet that level of governmental censorship exists. That said, Jayron's answer was pretty much perfect and it should have been just left at that. Capeo (talk) 17:19, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

That appears to be objectively false. Whether it applies in this case I do not know, but [38] by a criminal alwyer says it can be an offence to instruct someone in the commission of an offence. And it would be bizarre if that were not so, in fact. Guy (Help!) 17:42, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

There are some jurisdictions where advising someone on how to commit a crime is itself a criminal act (depending on the crime of course). As all editors are legally responsible in their own jurisdictions for their own contributions, I expect the response by the WMF is 'Its not us the police are going to knock on the door of'. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:22, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

As I understand it, there has to be some aspect of incitement or encouragement or direct knowledge that the person you are giving the information to intends to commit the crime as outlined. It gets fuzzy when it comes to all the new "terrorism" laws though as they've generally stomped all over some basic rights in the US. Capeo (talk) 17:39, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Not necessarily, I think. Knowing that it might be used for illegal purposes and doing it anyway, could be construed as reckless and thus create liability. IANAL, though, and Jimbo knows someone who is :-) Guy (Help!) 17:45, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

The original question from 116.58.205.128 (talk · contribs) was "Drug Mushroom: − How do I grow the drug mushroom? A step by step guide please?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:46, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Well technically I could answer that by giving a gardeners guide to growing decent mushrooms (Keep em in the dark and feed em shit). 'Where do I get the drug mushroom' would be answered with 'the woods'. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:48, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

We have Mushroom#Psychoactive mushrooms, so censorship itself is not at issue. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:51, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Robbing banks is illegal in the US (and all other countries as far as I can tell). Driving a getaway car involved in a bank robbery is illegal in the US. If anyone reading this decides to rob a bank, I advise getting a reliable getaway car and filling up the tank before the robbery. I also strongly advise against trying to outrun the cops if they are on your tail, because if you hit some kid you may very well end up turning a robbery charge into a murder charge. BTW, bank robbing is usually a bad idea; very high risk for fairly small returns.

FWIW what you really want is another car parked in a remote or hidden location, but as near as possible. Drive there, leave your getaway -- which has probably been seen and described, maybe even filmed -- and pick up the second car, which hasn't been seen. The first car is presumably stolen or otherwise untraceable to you. A friend told me this. Herostratus (talk) 18:29, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

There. I just provided how-to information about illegal activities. I post using my real name. I encourage anyone who really believes that it is illegal to instruct someone in the commission of a crime to report me to the police. I will turn myself in as soon as there is an arrest warrant. I make this offer because I believe that in the US I have a constitutional right to free speech that includes the bank-robbing advice I just gave. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:06, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

"Free speech" is not a factor on Wikipedia. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:22, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Seriously? You wrote a section heading that says "Question about legality" and now you are claiming that an answer that directly addresses your question about legality is "not a factor"? There exists no US law that makes providing how-to information about illegal activities illegal. There exists no Wikipedia or WMF policy that prohibits providing how-to information about illegal activities. Of course, as others have noted, just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:32, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Countless times, I have seen the response to cries of "free speech" that Wikipedia is not a free-speech zone. There is no constitutional right to edit Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Free speech for further info. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:35, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

True, but irrelevant. If you don't want answers about legality, don't title your post "Question about legality". If you only want answers about Wikipedia policy, title your post "Question about policy". Don't ask a question about legality if you don't want answers about legality. This is my last comment on this. I will not go back and forth with you indefinitely. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:48, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

I will defer to what Jimbo has to say about it, and you should do likewise. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:52, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

The question is poorly worded. It should be if we "can give references" to such information, not to give the information itself, which implies that we might just make it up off the top of our heads. ApLundell (talk) 22:30, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

There are about 390,000 entities in the world that write legally binding laws, and those change daily. For example, many activities which are legal and fashionable this year in the USA are illegal in other countries or were illegal in the USA. And the reverse. So what would "illegal" mean regarding deleting Wikipedia articles? A rhetorical question. North8000 (talk) 18:56, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not provide "how-to" guides on how to grow anything, let alone psychedelic mushrooms. If someone is capable enough of understanding how to edit a Wikipedia page to ask the question, they can use Google where answers on such topics are plentiful. This is an encyclopedia. Stop feeding the trolls. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:58, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Suppose that the US Congress is going to appease Donald Trump and we end up with many things becoming illegal that are legal today, will Baseball Bugs then argue that Wikipedia should be de-facto censored by the Trump regime? Count Iblis (talk) 19:55, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

The refdesk is not about providing "how-to" guides. Just references. I imagine there are many references to dangerous information in the project.

But more importantly, I oppose the automatic labeling of anyone who asks for such a reference as a "troll" whose comments must be deleted on sight. As if we lived in a world where nobody could possibly be interested in such a reference. I don't understand how that's compatible with WP:AGF

ApLundell (talk) 21:55, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Restricted speech and scientific advancement

Well, dancing might be banned at the Doright Antioch Baptist Church because it could lead to harder stuff, like Olympic synchronized swimming (in swimsuits!). However, with the current drug epidemic of fake-crack or meth addiction (smashing mirrors), we should be careful not to suppress talk about "psychedelic mushrooms" or psilocybin which might be adapted as supervised treatment to reduce addictive, psychological cravings in various patients. I would think if users link to warnings about associated suicide-risks and link to current WP pages, then we might encourage people to help explain medical research related to these topics, even about growth of illegal mushrooms if the cultivation affects the potency of controlled substances for medical research. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:08, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Hey, as of today 21 Feb 2017, we don't have page "smashing mirrors" (bad drug trip) or even "Breaking mirrors" as a major superstition to cause "bad luck". If people want easy topics for new users to write.... -Wikid77 (talk) 23:20, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

So you are saying we should teach people how to do something illegal, because otherwise they might do something worse? Um, no. That's not how it works. Guy (Help!) 11:02, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Mushrooms are not illegal in medical research to reduce addictive behavior about other drugs. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:05, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

http://www.wikihow.com/Grow-Mushrooms Count Iblis (talk) 06:14, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Resilience and persistence of Wikipedia

I don't want to waste your time by tediously thanking you for the great and unique contribution to the well-being and progress of humanity you made. I'm writing you because I'm wondering if Wikipedia is taking sufficient precautions for potential threats ahead. Some people might say I'm an alarmist, however I do think that preparing for risks is never a bad thing and that this is needed at the very least from a long-term perspective. Also it isn't necessarily costly and often pays out invaluable. I think of the many people involved in the project you're one of those that best understand Wikipedia's significance, disruption and e.g. censorship of it.

The Internet and its Web don't open knowledge (and foster collaboration, crowdsourcing and progress of thought, science and culture) inherently; it is us, participants from worldwide societies − netizens − that make it so. The short historic episode of when the Web was started to now might have us believe that it's so by the very nature of the Internet and/or couldn't be reverted. That is a fallacy. It can change at any time and things one held for granted can move out of reach. We're only at the beginning of the Web and some of its impacts are becoming visible only now. The Internet is increasingly disrupting society and there are purposeful and and unpurposeful efforts to control it. Wikipedia is some kind of distilled form of the Internet's core spirit and one of its main use, formerly only envisioned in works of science fiction. The Web at large is an abundance of unstructured information (findable and indexed by e.g. the Google AI / company) with Wikipedia being structured knowledge. Opening knowledge, new modes of social interaction and the pioneer of the Open-movement, Wikipedia, are disruptive to current and developing socio-economic-political structures. I want the Open movement and especially its Wikipedia to succeed which is why I wrote Wikipedia:Threats to Wikipedia which attempts to list potential threats to Wikipedia's survival, accessibility, reach, overall quality of content and persistence at large as well as potential countermeasures against those. Relevant to it is the Internet manipulation article I started as well as the Internet outage article I'll start this weekend.

I'd like to note that we're not at the end of history and that large-scale events can still happen. I'd like to have people think at the scale of civilizations and consider how all of them have collapsed so far (taking much of their knowledge, libraries and culture with them) − ours might as well, and possibly rather sooner than later. But it doesn't need (a sudden or gradual) civilizationary collapse for Wikipedia being in danger. For instance Facebook monopolizing society's perception could be an issue. I listed all sorts of potential risks on that (incomplete) page and the biggest threat is not any single of them but a combination of multiple of those. So for instance Russia already stated that they plan for an "alternative version of 'Wikipedia'" and they might put that version online while DDoSing Wikipedia, breaching its password database under false flag, setting up a controlled fork which copies Wikipedia 1:1 but gradually censors information and forcing Yandex and Baidu to change their search-engine algorithms to disadvantage Wikipedia entries all at the same time. I wrote this page because I think that adversaries already know of such potential attacks while Wikipedians do not with it being necessary knowledge to properly prepare. We might face unexpected risks by entirely unforeseen new developments and the more we prepare the better.

What more could we do to make sure Wikipedia persists?

---

From my point of view (and all of those shouldn't be very costly) we should consider getting an official version on the Hyperboria meshnet as well as the anonymous darkwebs of I2P (eepsite) and Tor (.onion hidden service). (Especially for the latter it would be good to have all edits made from there to be pending even if pages are unprotected.) What do you think about setting up such? Btw Facebook also has its official .onion page. Also there should be regular full backups stored externally, a proactive distribution of full dumps, available (/ bundled) information on how to set these up (e.g. also for local meshnets). Also search engine algorithms of Google and other search engines should be monitored regularly by specified protocols (that e.g. also test the visibility of controversial articles respective to the country or entity as well as the filtering away of Wikipedia due to personalization; note that sometimes results of such might have us conclude that we just need to improve findability of certain information in certain ways). We should also respond properly and early to criticism and conspiracy theories to prevent discreditation campaigns. Here not just the Foundation or single persons (such as you) should respond. We probably should set up a page/s that allows for a community response to such. Also specific processes (such as resetting the site from a backup) should get test-runs to identify problems and improve efficiency, availability of information and fixing problems.

I have great trust in the Foundation's members but I think as a long-term measure we should test what damage corrupted/blackmailed/biased high-level administrators could do and improve structures that prevent such. As said earlier we can't rely on things running as they are now. Assuming the current status quo continues is a common error in many organizations and systems that failed. Instead we need to structurally enforce things running as they are now in the best ways possible. I do think that active users of the site do not necessarily know what's best for Wikipedia in regard to its greater strategy and technologies: such decisions indeed shouldn't basically be put up for something akin to polling. However there still need to be structures that make sure the community remains in control of its organization. I don't have many suggestions here as this needs more thought but in a rough sketches I think that the Foundation needs to make decisions in collaboration with its community in that they better open up the processes that lead to such decisions. Basically the best decisions for Wikipedia's strategy and financial allocations are made with the best knowledge of Wikipedia's internals etc with the Foundation's staff being in possession of such (knowledge imbalance). Hence this knowledge needs to be made available to everybody interested in participating in these decisions (i.e. so that they can make arguments of significance and relevance). That means that there need to be pages where in advance of decisions arguments for specific considerations are listed where people can participate. Issues, potential problems, counter-arguments, additional arguments, alternatives and other priorities and possibilities could all be crowdsourced and indexed on this central page that also allows people to better understand the rationale for changes and participate in the decision-making process. Also if certain funding is associated with certain changes to be made or alike such also need to be made open (are required to be made open once they are seriously considered). Furthermore it is normal that users of online communities often prefer the status quo over software or UI changes: allowing for participation and group decision-making doesn't equate plainly counting votes. Relevantly we could take a look at superprotect: I think this protection level is not necessary once these processes are made open enough (e.g. administrators can be temporarily be banned if they hinder the implementation of a decision made collectively) except for emergencies (e.g. specific malware). So to be able to make use of it quickly I think it should be implemented but remain deactivated with it only being activatable (very quickly) by e.g. the combination of 5 cryptographic keys distributed to 10 administrators and policy-wise also requiring community consensus (in the case of incidents that require quick response the latter could at the very least revert the usage of superprotect in hindsight). Please note that all of this isn't just about making sure Wikipedia continues to work as it should but also about making sure Wikipedia retains its high public trust, sympathy and popularity in the world's population. Superprotect wasn't such a large issue from a technical and practical standpoint at least at that point but it has been a significant damage to Wikipedia's reputation.
We need structures and policies that deal with an uncertain future so that we're not only prepared but also operate within specified realms, remain organized and preempt disruption. If one doesn't think improving resilience, accountability and openness would be needed now it might help if one thinks about this in the context of the next 50 years of Wikipedia and considers that certain changes are best made or only possible at an early point.

Furthermore I think that the thing Wikipedia probably needs most would be more developers that can implement the countless ideas for improvement. For this I think first the accessibility and ease of getting involved should be improved by having all the necessary info for getting started in a step-by-step manner on the very first page a person interested in this would open. Currently this is m:How to become a MediaWiki hacker which is not the first page one clicks and pretty suboptimal. Then those knowledgable in specific areas or programming languages can be brought together with those seeking them in ways that I described on Wikipedia:Expert help (and partially here). In addition all hackerspaces and alike open coding collaboration communities worldwide could be proactively contacted by us with material that helps them to get started with developing and establishing a physical world mini-community of Wikipedia-developers. There could also be bug bounty program with prizes and recognition via an 'official' award and a central page. And lastly we could display a targeted banner for recruiting developers by displaying it above all articles in Category:Software development or for all users who opened up 2 articles in said category. In the context of resilience we could involve more penetration testers, bug-finders, hackers or security-developers for security issues and improvement of cybersecurity by doing said for Category:Computer security.

The earlier we do all this the better.

I recently became aware that similar to how findings in science and inventions of technology are often expanded to areas other than the ones they were developed for/in, and used in ways unforeseen earlier, modes, products and progress of online communities including and imo especially Wikipedia's may in the future expand to other or unforeseen areas (relevantly here are some applications of data mining of Wikipedia also I heard you're familiar with some of Clay Shirky's theories). This doesn't mean Wikipedia is an experiment or that itself should move beyond its original scope; it just means that it may be of higher significance than we appreciate now.
Sorry for the long text − I'll be very happy if you read this far.

--Fixuture (talk) 12:14, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I just restored this from the archive: it stayed on the talk page for just roughly 1 day and I feel I should get it another chance as lengthy posts typically don't invoke as many and quick responses as rather short ones. Also I recently linked to this from the talk pages of Tor, I2P and mesh networking. If you find this interesting or have any input on it please do comment (of course this isn't just addressed to Jimmy but also the community). I also just found about this paper concerning Tor and Wikipedia as well as this interview where Jimmy addresses some of those issues. And lastly if anybody knows a good place where I could better raise my concerns or my suggestions in the lower half please let me know. --Fixuture (talk) 23:59, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Why would hiring more developers be preferable to asking two or three foreign Chapters to independently replicate the entire IT infrastructure? It might actually be quite a bit less expensive and more robust relative to various faults than hiring more developers. For example, currently the Foundation keeps logs of who is reading which article, which are certainly available to US law enforcement without anyone being able to know (not even Foundation technical staff and management -- if a single employee receives a National Security Letter then they aren't allowed to tell their manager or the Foundation lawyers) and likely available to any law enforcement in the world without anyone being able to know. (For example, if the logs are shared under nondisclosure agreements with a third party, then if the management of that third party receives a, say, Russian subpoena, they are likely to provide the requested information without even informing the non-Foundation researchers under NDAs, let alone the Foundation.) If, say, the Paraguayan Chapter (not sure if there is one) was asked to support a replica of the projects without any logs whatsoever, then people who don't want their reading logged could read on the Paraguayan Chapter's servers instead of the Foundation's. 75.171.249.84 (talk) 01:23, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@75.171.249.84: I wasn't suggesting hiring more developers. What I suggested was efficient mechanisms to have volunteer developers help out with the security and resilience of the site. Also I don't see how replicating the entire IT infrastructure could be less expensive plus this could mean replicating an insecure, unresilient infrastructure. And I don't think intelligence agencies / law enforcement would be interested much in logs of Wikipedia articles a person has read. Instead I'd guess they'd be more interested in preventing certain information getting publicity or sustaining their narratives on the site (note: that could be all sorts of groups - not just intelligence agencies - and I'm not saying that this is taking place right now). For this as well as for private reading of I suggested to create I2P and Tor access for the site. And lastly forks of Wikipedia are a potential problem. As forks might emerge if Wikipedia is down for a prolonged time or due to groups that seek control or see their narratives not properly reflected on Wikipedia we should do everything we can do to improve resilience, allow the original Wikipedia to remain online, prevent indirect methods of content control and remain fair and open to all groups. --Fixuture (talk) 22:59, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

World Brain sure does look like Wikipedia to me; and combined with The Time Machine's plot ..."the result of humanity conquering nature with technology, and subsequently evolving to adapt to an environment in which strength and intellect are no longer advantageous to survival", the prediction accuracy is spooooky. Meanwhile, your question, "What more could we do to make sure Wikipedia persists?" is absolutely necessary to address. Great thought provoking stuff, imo. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:29, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Anecdotally, I was chatting with a 30 something suit at the gym 2 days ago and he was going to a meeting that afternoon where the topic was that Artificial intelligence was going to replace most of their finance dept. within 10 years. Nocturnalnow (talk) 13:37, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Discuss topics shorter for Jimbo to reply

Although Jimbo seems to be quite the speed reader, I suspect he wants to avoid long topics which require tedious replies, on his talkpage. Beware posting a wp:TLDR message would tend to suppress replies and derail mobile phones with page-size limit for editing.

Anyway, Jimbo has previously answered concerns about disasters, such as earthquakes, by noting the WP MediaWiki software could be run via computer hosting companies, without the need to have another WMF building or buy other dedicated computer servers. So even if "evil forces" seize the WMF buildings, it would be possible to host Wikipedia on rented servers (loaded from backup flashdrives) to continue operations, even while under attack from fascist regimes or natural disasters.

Meanwhile, if the American government and voters were not able to protect the Hillary Clinton election campaign from the onslaught of Russian propaganda (or Trumpaganda), then I don't think the Russians are worried how Wikipedia will thwart their secret plans. Instead, I think Trump has awakened a sleeping giant, of sleeping voters in the black community and Latino votes who formerly imagined Reagan amnesty or American generosity would protect them from racist leaders. Obama was known for massive deportations, but not "twist the knife" and "kick them again" as they left. This current decade of Americans was floating in Obama wealth, extensive healthcare, high employment (near frictional), rural globalization factories, record high stockmarket, equal rights, and obvious superiority of Clinton (who was "unbeatable"), so they forgot to vote, or perhaps believed propaganda claiming Clinton lied about her email servers.

Now there is a massive U.S. wakeup, of social responsibility, and I think enough activists would help protect Wikipedia now that "fake news" and "alternative facts" have been confronted with organized anti-propaganda tactics. A U.S. President can no longer act like Nixon and get away with similar antics for 6 years. Now community organizers are busy, and pundits see a change of power rising for the upcoming 2018 U.S. mid-term elections. From reports in U.S. national news, I think Wikipedia might get attacks, but overall will be safe now. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:19, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@Wikid77:

Anyway, Jimbo has previously answered concerns about disasters, such as earthquakes, by noting the WP MediaWiki software could be run via computer hosting companies, without the need to have another WMF building or buy other dedicated computer servers. So even if "evil forces" seize the WMF buildings, it would be possible to host Wikipedia on rented servers (loaded from backup flashdrives) to continue operations, even while under attack from fascist regimes or natural disasters.

Didn't read that, thanks - it's a good point. Anyways as of right now I wouldn't expect the physical, direct threats to be the most relevant ones. However for this fallback plan I think multiple prior preparations can be made, such as:

• Creating a detailed plan of what needs to be done (and by whom) to quickly transfer Wikipedia to hosting companies
• Testing said plan to the best extend possible (to see e.g. what elements can't be shifted to hosting companies and how they could be dealt with, how the domain would point to the new host under various circumstances, how it would remain indexed properly, how long the transition would take, what exact things are needed to get it working, ...)
• Making sure that full backups are properly accessible and for your scenarios: are also stored externally

So in line with my post above: making such (low-cost) preparations even if one thinks that the chances for it be needed soon would be a good thing to do. There are several issues with this though: for instance note that Wikipedia doesn't have a typical traffic volume level and hence shifting it to hosting companies might be more problematic than thought and these hosting companies might be affected by the disaster (or malicious group) as well or present unacceptable terms for use. Also if the cause was vulnerabilities of the site said could also be exploited if it was hosted elsewhere and as said there are many other, potentially more relevant, threats etc.

Meanwhile, if the American government and voters were not able to protect the Hillary Clinton election campaign from the onslaught of Russian propaganda (or Trumpaganda), then I don't think the Russians are worried how Wikipedia will thwart their secret plans.

Well one could see it this way. But I rather see this development in terms of the emergence of cyberwarfare / information warfare and impactful Internet manipulation. And we're just at the start of it even if no Cold War II occurs. Here I'm not just worried about Trump or the Russians or any other government or even entities of political power in general and I don't think that Wikipedia needs to be regarded as a potential thwarter of anyone's plans to get into cross-hairs or "misused" in some form.

I also think Wikipedia is rather safe - but I'd like make that as certain as possible, and on the long-term, only especially so as we're living in times of great uncertainty and change.

--Fixuture (talk) 22:59, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

What do you think about ads on Wikipedia?

Really, what do you think about putting ads on the wiki? Are you against it? What are your thoughts? Ry00001 (talk) 18:21, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

It would be self destructive. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:15, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I predict Jimbo is generally in agreement with WP:PERENNIAL#Advertising. 75.171.249.84 (talk) 00:21, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• I predict we'll get advertising after the WMF misses their fundraising targets a couple times and decides they really, really want to preserve the size of their bureaucratic fiefdom. They honestly don't care about what the "power users" have to say about it... Carrite (talk) 12:23, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• I have made the same prediction with more detail in an upcoming Signpost editorial. You can see my draft version (and suggest improvements!) at User:Guy Macon/Draft of Signpost Editorial. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:45, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• I doubt Wikipedia will ever have conventional ads. In addition Poisson statistics argue against imminent collapse immediately after record fundraising. Wikipedia is fundamentally a service. Adverts are not required for monetization and WMF has already figured it out. The non-profit organizational answer to advertising is grants. WMF applies for and receives grants. I suspect if there was a funding crisis, the response would be to pursue grants more aggressively. It's not hard to imagine WMF hosting and integrating more content from organizations with symbiotic missions. The "search engine" kerfuffle was a bit of growing pains but illustrated how Wikipedia can generate revenue through grants. -DHeyward (talk) 18:56, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• Grants are fine as long as they are not from forced taxation sources or are tax deductible. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:09, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• "Forced taxation"? 75.171.249.84 (talk) 05:14, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

That means the taxpayer is forced by law to pay taxes, the point being that it is money derived by the duress of law. Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:01, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Are you one of those people who thinks all taxation is theft and if people want roads, schools, parks, or water treatment plants they should build them themselves? 75.171.249.84 (talk) 21:44, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I think tax money should only be used for things the people who pay the tax need, like roads.Nocturnalnow (talk) 03:35, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

And schools, parks, water treatment plants... and armed forces. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:59, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Sadly there is a correlation between not thinking taxpayers need schools and thinking they need more armed forces. 75.171.249.84 (talk) 15:15, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

This is where he power of the voting people come in. To what degree they exercise it is up to them. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:33, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Do you suppose that voters who have voted away their schools are more or less likely to make good voting decisions? 50.204.86.34 (talk) 01:24, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

There is no such thing as a good or bad voting decision in a democracy. It is what it is and the chips fall accordingly. The voting will be a reflection of the times, the culture and either independent thinking or brainwashing by ads and/or conformity with peers, depending upon the individual voter's mentality. The quality of teaching is always a reflection of the mentality and priorities of the people who pay and hire the teachers. The curricula :) are a reflection of the levels of intellect and civil behaviour of the society. Nocturnalnow (talk) 06:12, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

• That'd be a good way to get into a death spiral. Ads -> Less money from fundraising -> More ads -> Less money from fundraising -> More ads. All the while hemorrhaging the editors who guard against spam, paid editing, etc. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 23:16, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

• I responded to DHeyward at User talk:Guy Macon/Draft of Signpost Editorial#Will grants save us?. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:09, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• @Carrite: when do you think the WMF will miss their fundraising targets? 75.171.249.84 (talk) 05:14, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Eventually. Carrite (talk) 06:26, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Eventually, Carrite will be right about something. We should try to be realistic in these discussions though. Sometime in the next 10-50 years the internet, as we know it, will no longer exist and Wikipedia will likely miss its fund raising targets. They might even be forced to extend the fund raiser to a whole month. That's where the endowment should kick in, to provide the WMF with the breathing space to adapt to a new platform, or to close down in an orderly manner if that's not possible. @Carrite:, how long have you be predicting the imminent collapse of Wikipedia? 5 or 10 years? What's happened to it in that time? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:54, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't believe that I have ever predicted the "imminent collapse of Wikipedia." You are trolling me with your ping. I challenge you to either provide a diff or to apologize and STFU. Carrite (talk) 02:12, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Only if we restructure the endowment so that the WMF cannot dip into the principal when times get bad. If they don't do that the ever-increasing spending will eat the endowment, eat any new revenues from extending the fundraising to a full month (or twelve...) -- in fact exponentially increasing spending forever can only be supported by exponentially increasing donations forever.

On the other hand, if we restructure the endowment so that the WMF cannot dip into the principal when times get bad, there will always be enough to keep the servers running plus a few other key functions.

We are on a speeding train entering an unfinished tunnel. At the end of the tunnel workers are digging as fast as they can. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:12, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Grants. Does Wikipedia or Wikimedia take any taxpayer funded grants?

Jimbo Please pardon my lack of knowledge about such things, but in a prior discussion it seems this foundation receives grant money as well as donations. I am only interested in approximately how much, if any, taxpayers' money comes in to the foundation. If you do not know offhand, perhaps you can direct me to a financial report that is available online which I could peruse. Thanks. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:54, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

The WMF has traditionally been quite shy about accepting restricted grants, i.e. grants that say "you have to do such-and-such" (so these can be distinguished from pure donations). There do seem to have been a few restricted grants accepted recently, e.g. I believe that Craig's List's founder gave $500,000 in order to reduce harassment on Wikipedia. My feeling on that is that the WMF would spend at least that amount anyway on the project, so that this wasn't really very restrictive. I doubt that there's much of anything in the way of government grants, maybe something where the local government gave some support to local chapters??? You might look for cases where a government supports a charity in some of its work, and the charity then gave a grant (probably non-restricted) to the WMF. But that would seem to be pretty indirect. If you are looking for anything direct, I'd guess you'll find nothing. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:18, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

That's cool. Thanks Smallbones.Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:06, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Smallbones was talking about restricted grants but taxpayer's money is a different question. I don't have exact numbers, but the basic answer is: very very little taxpayer money, if any at all. The chapters are more likely to have received small governmental grants, particularly in Europe, but for the WMF, I don't know of any at all. I'm not promising you the number is zero - lots of things go on that I don't know about - but it's very very little.

The current situation with the US government demonstrates the wisdom of this.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:19, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Jimbo. I agree that what you describe is a wise approach. Nocturnalnow (talk) 03:41, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Also, I think WMF has the right ethical approach re: this. Nocturnalnow (talk) 13:30, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

• I used to work for WikimediaUK. As a registered charity in the United Kingdom it gets government money: Whenever a UK taxpayer gives WMUK money and has ticked the box on an appropriate form WMUK can claim back the income tax that the donor would have paid on money they donated. I think the US has a similar system, except that there it is the taxpayer who can get back tax on charity donations not the charity. ϢereSpielChequers 08:02, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

  Ϣere If I am understanding you, the donation reduces the taxes which would have come into the government's purse, thereby indirectly increasing the taxes paid by non-donors? Not good, imo, as that process has the effect of forcing taxpayers who have no interest in supporting Wikipedia to pay more of their own money in taxes to compensate for the deductionS. I realize this is normal for charities but I did not realize Wikipedia is a registered charity anywhere. I think whatever portion of said donations which reduces the tax income of a country should be repaid to that country's treasury by WMF. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:19, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

• Actually, the two systems (US and UK) appear to be conceptually the same (though the details certainly vary). Imagine a Brit who would like Wikimedia UK to get 1,000 pounds and his tax rate is 30%, and an American who would like Wikimedia DC to get $1,000 and his tax rate is 23%. If the Brit gives ~770 pounds (=1000/1.3) and checks the box, WMUK gets 770 + .3(770) = 1001. If the American gives $1,000, WMDC gets $1,000 and the net cost to the individual taxpayer is the donation minus his tax savings = $1,000 - 1000(.23) = $770. If the tax rates were the same at 30%, the American individual taxpayer would do even better (unless the UK tax calculation is more complicated than I think it is). To the best of my knowledge almost nobody complains in the US that not being taxed on money that's sent to charities is a bad idea. Certainly churches, charities, and rich folks don't complain about it.
• I don't think the term "registered charity" is used in the US (for tax purposes anyway). Rather, there are non-profits, like the WMF, who have 501(c)(3) tax status. The entire US tax code might be messed up, but 501(c)(3) is about the last thing that's going to be changed.
• The WMF has no direct control over WMUK's or WMDC's finances AFAIK, so it would be impossible for them to say "give that money back to the government (taxpayers)." The WMF of course does have control over how much it gives to each chapter, or whether the chapter can be an affiliate, but if they tried completely dictating the use of the chapters' funds IMHO they'd probably be liable for anything the chapter does. Hope this helps. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:30, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@Nocturnalnow: yes if a charity is recouping the tax that its donors paid then that government has less income and some burden falls elsewhere. But if all charities in a country benefit the same way why would that be a problem and why should the WMF opt out? ϢereSpielChequers 16:56, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Smallbones and Ϣere, I think I understand now. I just personally always had an issue with charitable donations being a tax write-off, the 2 things always seemed incongruous philosophically to me. To be extra sentimental, I guess I feel a tax deduction is slightly polluting to the grace of a donation i.e. a gift is not a gift if the giver expects something in return; I like the UK system better in that respect, but its just money, so, wtf does it really matter, I suppose. Thanks again for taking the time to explain it all. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:45, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

TPO Mobile

Jimmy, I have been a customer of TPO Mobile for about 6 weeks now, and its really really good I think. Low priced service, and part of my monthly payment goes to a favorite charity. You are a hero for the world! Thank you for the good deed of creating The People's Operator! - 75.97.237.18 (talk) 20:17, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Study reveals bot-on-bot editing wars raging on Wikipedia's pages

"Since Wikipedia launched in 2001, its millions of articles have been ranged over by software robots, or simply 'bots', that are built to mend errors, add links to other pages, and perform other basic housekeeping tasks.

"In the early days, the bots were so rare they worked in isolation. But over time, the number deployed on the encyclopedia exploded with unexpected consequences. The more the bots came into contact with one another, the more they became locked in combat, undoing each other's edits and changing the links they had added to other pages. Some conflicts only ended when one or other bot was taken out of action.

" 'The fights between bots can be far more persistent than the ones we see between people,' said Taha Yasseri, who worked on the study at the Oxford Internet Institute. 'Humans usually cool down after a few days, but the bots might continue for years.' "

Source: [39] --Guy Macon (talk) 22:04, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Pretty magnificent example of hyperbole. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 22:18, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Funny as hell....thanks Guy Macon. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:33, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Relevant: Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars § (Ro)bot wars --Fixuture (talk) 23:05, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm surprised one of the bots didn't have the guts to take the other one to AN/I or ask for a third opinion, on in this severe case of ambivalence and indecision a second opinion might have done the trick. Bot therapy?  :) --David Tornheim (talk) 20:16, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

To give context to their statement "The English version saw bots meddling with each other’s changes on average 105 times a decade" The English version of Wikipedia has seen 660 million edits in the last decade. I suspect the times when we have actually used a bot to reverse the actions of another bot is rather more frequent than 104. For example after the intrawiki links were moved to Wikidata we used a bot to remove millions of the now redundant links, many of which were originally bot added. ϢereSpielChequers 07:52, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I believe that they were only referring to bots edit warring with other bots, not to bots reverting other bots. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:00, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but 104 such glitches in 660 million edits at least 104 million of which will have been bot edits would be a stunningly impressive result for our bot operators. I'd bet the true figure is higher than 104, the acceptable figure would certainly be higher than 104. For this to be a problem worthy of saying that bot edit wars were "raging" on Wikipedia it would need to be much much more common, a one in a thousand edit occurrence would be a real problem though calling it "raging" would still be hyperbole. Vandalism, spam, edit conflicts, addition and removal of trivia and unsourced information, these are all raging conflicts on Wikipedia, bots edit warring with each other, I'd like to see multiple recent diffs before I'd accept that as a real let alone raging problem. ϢereSpielChequers 14:07, 24 February 2017 (UTC

Certainly sounds like a yawner, rather than a 'rager' - 'bots do stuff, bot like', does not even approach stunning. Also, the bots never 'heated up', like people. So, of course, they never 'cooled down.' Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:10, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

If we add a rule that says that more successful bots may reproduce more, then it becomes artificial life which may eventually lead to intelligent bots. Count Iblis (talk) 00:26, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

XKCD: Robot Apocalypse --Guy Macon (talk) 06:01, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Top down design doesn't lead to good results, bottom up design using genetic algorithms can lead to better results, take e.g. human beings arising as a result of just the chemistry of simple organic molecules. Count Iblis (talk) 19:32, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

However, top-down design works well if you're God, or Einstein predicting the curvature of starlight around a strong gravitational source (Sun), or the expanding universe until Einstein tried bottom-up by adding the infamous kludged "cosmological constant" to force steady state universe, only to find the bottom-up data was wrong and later Hubble Telescope confirmed universe will expand without end, and mankind has "forever" to explore the Universe. I have concluded both top-down +bottom-up should be used, as Plato's top-down Earth was a stationary sphere, while Aristotle's bottom-up world was a pie plate rotating daily but still a flat Earth model. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:27, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

@Wikid77: No. Aristotle did not believe the earth was flat. Much false information about how early scholars understood the earth was spherical is caused by the Myth of the flat Earth used to falsely accuse the Church of beliefs it did not hold. I remember being taught as a youth that Columbus was an early advocate for a spherical earth and the resistance of by those in power against his calculations. Of course, in fact, those who insisted he was wrong were correct, and his crew would have died if he had not bumped into the unknown continent of North America, which he incorrectly thought was India. Accurate estimates of the circumference of the earth were known as early as 300 B.C. by Eratosthenes.--David Tornheim (talk) 12:53, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

• Having now read parts of the actual report I see the story is somewhat different to that reported by the press. The bots concerned were adding and removing wikilinks, and the problem such as it was stopped in 2013 when such things moved to Wikidata. Having sorted out a few intrawiki anomalies myself in that era, one problem was that unless you went to all the languages that an article was in the bots would merely reinstate the link. ϢereSpielChequers 21:39, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

And now for the science...

• Research paper: Even good bots fight: The case of Wikipedia
• Commentary on same from Cory Doctorow's boingboing.net: The automated, invisible revert-wars of Wikipedia's bot ecosystem

--Guy Macon (talk) 07:00, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

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Great use of Wikipedia

Lovely use of one of our list articles. Any chance of getting some real life barnstars to these Wikipedia readers? ϢereSpielChequers 00:03, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Possibly it can be listed at Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia or a related page.

—Wavelength (talk) 01:01, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm sure I can find some genuine Pennsylvania rusted star-shaped anchor plates. Just get me a mailing address. If Jimmy could sign a certificate of appreciation for "Best use of knowledge obtained from a Wikipedia article" so much the better. We might even make it an annual award with self-nominations. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:18, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Got the mailing address. If anyone has suggestions on what to send with the barnstars, please let me know. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:45, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, wow that's brilliant. A letter of explanation would be good and perhaps Jimmy could sign it? ϢereSpielChequers 15:43, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

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

Very happy to help. What a fun idea!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:11, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Macedonians as “ethnic group”? Discrimination at Wiki?

Dear Jimbo, why you/Wikipedia treat the Macedonians as “ethnic group” (in English Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonians_(ethnic_group) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Macedonians_(ethnic_group) ? They should be treated as Macedonian citizens (or Macedonian people), according to the official UN classification, US recognition (of Name, people and the language) and according the Macedonian Constitution. Why there is/was such discrimination at English Wikipedia? Let me remind you that USA had recognized Macedonia under Constitutional name, people as Macedonians and language as Macedonian. This policy was accepted by Clinton, Obama and Trump. Greetings!93.87.185.74 (talk) 13:46, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• The Greeks or Hellenes (Greek: Έλληνες [ˈelines]) are an ethnic group ...
• Germans (German: Deutsche) are a Germanic ethnic group ...
• The French (French: Français) are an ethnic group ...
• The Basques (Basque: euskaldunak; Spanish: vascos; French: basques, English: /bɑːsks/ or /bæsks/) are an indigenous ethnic group ...

What else would the Macedonians be? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:45, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

(EC - ah I see I was justified RE below) Thats a very long answer which the Macedonians (ethnic group) article does not completely satisfy. Essentially its a contentious and highly discussed/disputed group due to Macedonia being a region that historically and ethnically was something very different from the modern makeup and genetic heritage (this is a Greece Vs FYROM thing). I suggest backing away and not making eye contact. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:00, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Macedonians are nationally constitutive and constructive (State-Hood) people recognized by more than 150 nations in World, and the state Constitutional name the Republic of Macedonia was recognized by 135 member states of the UN (of 193 Members total). Please, apply same standards here at English Wikipedia.93.87.185.74 (talk) 15:13, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Maybe that's why Wikipedia calls it the Republic of Macedonia.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:10, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

And the US citizens are they Americans or just set of more than 100 ethnic groups and/or nations? You all know what I am talking about! Same standards you apply to US citizens or nation, please apply to other nations. Nothing gives you the right to speak on behalf of the other people(s) that have already spoken for themselves! The Right for Self Determination Belongs to All Peoples!93.87.185.74 (talk) 14:55, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• Amazingly, this IP geolocates to Serbia. I know, you're shocked, right? Guy (Help!) 15:19, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

So instead of answering the crucial question above, you are asking yourself is this person user:Operahome or Igor Janev, right? Well I am not him! And as for notorious Janevistan[40], will someone remove that famous Humor from sh. wiki. as flagrant BLP rules violations, by Office Action? (According to "Janevistan" all Macedonians are just copies of one man: Igor Janev.) [41].93.87.185.74 (talk) 15:35, 27 February 2017 (UTC) Or if there is nothing wrong with that "Humor", I suggest you make translation of Janevistan in English and create page here at Eng. Wikipedia. We all should have good Humor here, right?93.87.185.74 (talk) 15:39, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

It's a minefield, but ethnicity and nationality are not necessarily the same thing. Wikipedia hasn't denied that the Republic of Macedonia is an independent state.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 15:44, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

If Macedonians are state-hood people why you are reducing them to ethnic group? Are Americans ethnic group? Why you constantly insist here on FYROM designation when you know that independent states have a sovereign right to self-determination? Does states have a sovereign right to have a name? Or country may not freely make choice on their state names, and be just name-less forever, perhaps? Maybe Macedonia is just the Janevistan, and their people are copies of one person, who knows?93.87.185.74 (talk) 16:01, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia reports what has appeared in reliable sources. The Republic of Macedonia is an independent state for practical purposes, but the designation of "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" is also used. Wikipedia can't get into an argument over the correctness of these names, because it doesn't make the rules.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 16:28, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I know that you will do nothing about it. But what is the meaning: The Republic of Macedonia is an independent state "for practical purposes". How would you feel if I create on Mk.Wiki, for USA designation "Former Colony of British Empire" just "for practical purposes"? As for Janevistan, what would happened if someone on Eng. Wiki. create page state of "Jimbovistan" for USA, and for the citizens not Americans but copies of Jimbo Wales (multiplied by more than 200 milion times, precisely equal to the number of US citizens)? Would than apply Wikipedia can't get into an argument over the correctness of these names, because it doesn't make the rules. Or you will simply delete mockery about Jimbo Wales being multiplied more than 200 milion times in order to create a state USA="Jimbovistan"? You are banning people here for much less than that.93.87.185.74 (talk) 16:52, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

See Macedonia naming dispute - which is a fairly comprehensive description of the historic and current issues. When someone says 'for practical purposes' what is meant is 'it doesnt matter which we use as there is unlikely to be a resolution soon and it doesnt actually matter except to people in Macedonia (Republic) or Macedonia (Greece)'. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:32, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I read article Macedonia naming dispute maybe 50 times, and for every Macedonian it is a blatantly bias and irrelevant page because it denies basic rights of an independent state, such as a right to have a State name and freely make choice of state name, denying Statehood of Macedonia, not to speak about violations of basic human rights of people. (The only relevant contribution was here deleted.).93.87.185.74 (talk) 17:53, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

It is as if you think we are calling the Republic of Macedonia something other than what we call it, which is the Republic of Macedonia. I can only assume someone wound you up on a message board somewhere and sent you here to complain about something that isn't actually the case.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:10, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, dear Jimbo, it is a Honor that you addressed me. No one wound me up or sent me here. Actually, it was never my intention to intervene here and it is not my business. Sorry for any inconvenience. So continue please your work as I was never here. I must go now. Best regards Jimmy!93.87.185.74 (talk) 19:55, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Ethnic naming is funny. I mean, consider the "American Indian", distinctively named after a river in Asia and an explorer (Amerigo Vespucci) who sighted the coast of Brazil. Because while all of the New World was defined as "America", only the "Indians" now in the US had the misfortune to be conquered by a country without a name, and because from the Greeks on the Europeans tended to think of anything east of Greece as being "India", including the West Indies and the East Indies and the just-plain-Indies in between, later named America when Vespucci started saying they weren't the East Indies. I would think the India Indians would look down on all this, but they scarcely seem able since the region containing the entire Indus River has since been called Pakistan, making their country another misnomer. If there is a moral here, it's that people really suck at geography. ;) Wnt (talk) 01:35, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Even funnier when you realise that Vespucci (United States of Vespuccia anyone?) may have had nothing to do with the naming, see Richard Amerike! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:22, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

@Martin of Sheffield: The article you linked says that the "consensus view" favors Vespucci. But as the voyage backed by Amerike landed in Newfoundland, it is still a misnomer, just a nearer one. Wnt (talk) 15:41, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Hence my use of "may". Mind you, there is a lot of POV-pushing about this, and not just in WP. I'm not sure what consensus will be in 6 months' time, let along 6 years. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:55, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Oscobo (UK anonymous search engine)

Oscobo is an anonymous search engine in the UK.

• Oscobo - UK's Anonymous Search Engine

—Wavelength (talk) 16:15, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Never heard of this one before, but it looks similar to Startpage, DuckDuckGo and Disconnect search. It was launched in 2016 [42] but there isn't enough sourcing to meet WP:GNG.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:24, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Here are eight additional sources.

• New Search Engine Oscobo is Focused on Privacy, Won’t Sell or Store Your Information—Search Engine Journal (January 6, 2016)
• Oscobo: Meet the British startup that wants to keep your search private—Thomas McMullan for Alphr (February 1, 2016)
• Oscobo, a new privacy focused search engine—Martin Brinkman for Ghacks.net (January 7, 2016)
• Oscobo is a privacy-focused search engine that won't sell your data—Mark Wilson for Betanews
• Oscobo Hopes to Bring Private Searching to Britain—Red Herring (January 11, 2016)
• A search engine that remembers no personal data or IP addresses launches in the UK—Chris Merriman for The Inquirer
• New privacy-focused search engine promises to never sell or store your data—Ben Woods for The Next Web (January 6, 2016)
• Best 7 online privacy tools – VPNs, anonymous search, and browser secrecy—John E. Dunn for TechWorld (March 29, 2016)

—Wavelength (talk) 22:05, 28 February 2017 (UTC) and 00:28, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Here are six additional sources.

• https://www.oscobo.us
• https://www.companiesintheuk.co.uk/ltd/oscobo
• http://www.arbuthnotlatham.co.uk/news-and-insights/private-life-oscobo/
• http://www.trackbusters.co.uk/glossary/oscobo/
• http://www.easycounter.com/report/oscobo.co.uk
• http://www.searchenginelinks.co.uk/oscobo-s1435.html

—Wavelength (talk) 00:48, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

VPNs and Wikipedia

Hi Jimbo. I was wondering if you would like to weigh in on this regarding VPNs and whether a registered user should be allowed to use one while editing Wikipedia.--*Kat* (talk) 04:20, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Telegraph video

Just wanted to let the readers of this page know about this video the Telegraph recently made about Jimbo, in case anyone here (e.g. Jimbo himself) is interested in watching it. Everymorning (talk) 16:20, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't like the sound of my own voice so I probably won't watch it!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:36, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

DuckDuckGo has search results for why people not like sound of own voice.

—Wavelength (talk) 03:31, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

News articles about Wikipedia rarely flattering

Today I saw an article in the Washington Post about our Garfield page and an edit war about Garfield's gender. It got me thinking about the way the media typically shows Wikipedia, and what the WMF can or can't do to fix it. The image painted of Wikipedia frequently in news media (though the WP is a little more accurate here, tabloids won't have such qualms of accuracy) is of Wikipedia as the Wild West, with constant edit war, misbehavior, and general lies. Obviously this is untrue, but the news only reports on negative occurrences. For people who actually edit Wikipedia separating truth from lies is easy, but for the average person I think the WMF has a huge PR nightmare here. Despite that fact that most articles on Wikipedia are well-written and sourced and rarely have silly edit wars like these, the media continually reports every time they do, and people might think it happens all the time. In the minds of many people, I think Wikipedia's reputation has been permanently damaged beyond repair. It will never be a reliable source for many, despite the fact our information is from reliable sources. It will never be citable or relied upon for anything other than getting basic knowledge of a topic. IMO the WMF has done very little to stop this, and has even in some ways encouraged it. Start with the tagline of "anyone can edit". Far from being a selling point, I'd say its the number one reason people don't trust Wikipedia. Really I don't know if the WMF can do anything about this, because it seems too late to sway many people. Do you think there is any way to fix it? Pinguinn 🐧 18:11, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Please see WP:PERENNIAL#Prohibit anonymous users from editing. You might also look into what has happened with alternatives requiring real name registration,[43] vetting,[44] extreme vetting,[45] or other forms of exclusion. Sadly, Conservapedia is doing about a hundred times better than Citizendium and Scholarpedia combined, measured by edits per day. 184.96.138.160 (talk) 18:47, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I would like to see the media completely ignore vandalism, as it just makes the problem worse by giving people ideas of how to vandalize. A few other things I think journalists writing about WP should do are listed here. Everymorning (talk) 18:49, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

It's not so much about IP users or so-called "anonymous" editing. IP editing is in fact not anonymous, but accounts are unless you disclose your identity on them. What I mean by criticizing the "anyone can edit" is that anyone can register an account and edit thousands of pages. Semiprotection and extended confirmed protection exist, but a small fraction of articles use them. I can go edit an article right now on complicated mathematics, despite knowing nothing about it. I'm not arguing for more editing restrictions,but maybe the WMF ought to tone down the constant trumpeting of their everyone can edit slogan. Pinguinn 🐧 19:30, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Here's the irony of that article: The only way they knew about this edit war was by monitoring our | page protection requests. The edit war wasn't exactly particularly loud or hard core. It's just a mildly persistent editor (or two) with a phone and a chip on their shoulder. A candidate for WP:LAME but not really worthy of the Washington Post's attention. or so I would have thought.--*Kat* (talk) 19:42, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

• @*Kat*: Actually we have two pages here Garfield (character), and the Garfield page you linked to (and which I protected); on the first one, the brouhaha was much louder. Lectonar (talk) 12:26, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

To the contrary, this is exactly the type of Fake news, by misrepresentation and reporting something that's of zero importance, that the Washington Post publishes every day and this is a great example of why it should not be held in such high esteem by so many editors here, imo, at least not anymore. Nocturnalnow (talk) 03:58, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

We used to just call this 'tabloid news', 'sensationalism'.. And yes, the Washington Post has a habit of doing some 'sensationalised' hit jobs once in a while. To call it fake news, seems a bit sensationalist in itself however. There is plenty of actual fake news that I'd rather reserve that term for. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:31, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Back in the 1970s when print news thought its competition was color television instead of the Internet, almost all big newspapers started running "lifestyles" sections with absolute pablum non-news "human interest" stories such as these. They never recovered, and the problem is not limited to any one publication or political perspective. Have you seen the cheesecake Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller runs? 184.96.138.160 (talk) 19:25, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

How does Wikipedia keep reliable sources/articles balanced when you, and most editors are "Internationalists"?

Hi Jimbo, here are 2 of the more obvious Wikipedia angles you demanded.

1: I believe that most Wikipedia editors self identify as Internationalists as opposed to sovereignty prioritizing nationalists. User:Smallbones confirmed that fact in the discussion you just shut down. In addition, many if not most so-called "main stream media" have a corporate affinity with internationalism and often express that affinity within their "news" content. I am thinking that maybe this lopsided predisposition of yourself and most editors in favour of Internationalism is having a seriously damaging effect upon the neutrality of Wikipedia and especially Blps and articles about western political leaders and issues. The censoring of the Daily Mail articles may be a recent example of a trend I worry is taking place. The trend is further obvious in the labeling of many non-establishment media as tabloid or unfit for consideration as reliable sources.

2: Also, as part of the "Wikipedia angle", your rebooting feels like discussion stifling to me, especially since your talk page apparently has some sort of robot which automatically archives topics when interest dries up; something that other editors have complained about. It comes across, to me at least, that its kinda dictatorial (no offence)for you to use the robot and also a rebooting tool to end discussion. Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:28, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

1. I don't agree at all. And it is patently absurd to conflate editorial judgment with censorship.

I'm not conflating, I'm saying that when editorial judgment is in the hands of mostly internationalist minded editors it can veer off into a mild and/or even systemic form of censorship against sources which present content which is on the more nationalist minded spectrum. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:05, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

2. I don't agree at all. It is perfectly appropriate for me to ask that discussion not veer off into unrelated political matters and be firmly rooted in questions about how to improve Wikipedia. Hence the reboot of the discussion.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:19, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Sure it was appropriate for you to ask, but not, I think, to archive when there was still ongoing discussion and unanswered questions to you. I think the political matters are related to how to improve Wikipedia, so maybe we just have a different opinion on that. Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:17, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Background for the 2 issues: In 2017, there is enormous friction between Internationalists and nationalists worldwide, particularly in Europe....exemplified by Brexit. In addition, there is a widespread growing divide and polarization, in Europe particularly, between the political leaders, who almost all identify as internationalists, and at least half of the people/voters, who prefer national political sovereignty, as shown in the Brexit vote. Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:51, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

This is a good example of what I mean by veering off into unrelated political matters. You've got to stop doing that. (As a side note: it is absolutely wrong to suppose that the political leaders who identify as internationalist do not "prefer national political sovereignty". If people aren't responding well to your political rants, it may be because they don't make a lot of sense.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:19, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I think people are responding well to questions I am raising here. Believe me I know a rant when I see one, and it has not been done here by me. Sometimes I do get a bit wordy, I'll admit, in trying to make a point or ask a question that others...you for example..can do in fewer words. I admit I do get energized about any issues I think are important...I am not dispassionate at all about any topics which create or increase conflicts between nations as I had a friend come home in a body bag from a truly senseless war which could have easily been avoided if more citizens/voters had been paying attention and been more passionate about standing up for their opinions. I definitely try to keep my passion in check when I edit here and by and large I do a good job of it....but, if its an issue, I'll try harder to be more concise and less verbose here on Wikipedia. Btw, my attempt with the Attawapiskat went nowhere but at least the suicides have stopped there, I think. Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:17, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

• I'm probably not the only person whose eyes glazed over, and who stopped reading, when you starting talking about "censoring" the Daily Mail. If you're going to use a politically charged, inflammatory term like "censoring", then you should have a basic understanding of what it means. Wikipedia isn't an online discussion forum, despite occasional appearances to the contrary. It's an attempt to create a serious, reputable, and accurate reference work. We therefore have a responsibility to exclude sources with poor reputations for truthfulness and accuracy, or with documented track records of printing fabrications, uncorrected errors, and lies. This practice is not "censorship"; it's a necessary editorial process, to ensure that we're not perpetuating errors and falsehoods, and to ensure that we're upholding our basic contract of honesty with the reader. And now back to our regularly scheduled anti-globalization screed.... MastCell ^Talk 22:01, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I often use the wrong word here or there, but to be fair, I always try to ignore it when someone else uses the wrong or an inflammatory word or two and I try to recognise and respond to the substance and meaning of what they are saying. Regarding the DM, they published this story about the Afghan opium debacle which no other media held Blair accountable for and which may be crucially important to many Brits because over 450 Brits were killed in the Afghanistan mission, and 158 Canadians as well. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:23, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Given that Blair was 5 years out of power in 2012, how can he be responsible for that failure? As for the facts, the DM apparently references a report by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime. I suspect the final version of the 2012 report is here - it took about 5 minutes to find. Versions for other years are also online. Of course, the DM does not clearly list its sources, so it's hard to tell. Putting the title into Google News shows plenty of articles discussing the phenomenon. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:21, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

See Opium production in Afghanistan for earlier references, many of which received widespread press coverage before that 2012 DM article. Please provide references for the claim that no other media held Blair accountable, a claim which suggests utter unfamiliarity with the British press at best and failing that, deliberate misrepresentation. Please spare us the routine DM rhetoric about "crucially important to many Brits because <insert statistic here, preferably with 2 or more digits>" and remember that Wikipedia is not here to hold British prime ministers to account. Please do not distort the words of others as you did when converting Smallbones' "very many" to "most", let alone represent such words as factual confirmation. 79.73.246.67 (talk) 11:33, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

If there was any other references that held Blair accountable for this particular reason of his ( to smash the opium trade ) for him sending 450 Brits to their death in Afghanistan, and spending 18 billion pounds there, I am sure you would have found it. Keep looking but there is none which holds Blair to account for this part of his mission. Not only did he not smash the trade, but conversely the opium production and consequential financing of al-quaida skyrocketed during his mission! Your reference to the other articles about opium production never once reminded the public that Blair was not fulfilling this particular war justification objective. If you are so familiar with the British press, then please produce a reference within the content of any of our articles which points out Blair's failure in this regard. Your Smallbones comment that "very many" is not "most" seems deflective from the substance of the matter to me, but if Smallbones asks for a clarification of those words, I will certainly provide it. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:59, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I see you cannot justify your claim that no other media held Blair accountable over opium production and Afghanistan and instead try to deflect the burden of proof onto the person that asked you to provide it. This once, I'll give you a clue: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Blair+opium+Afghanistan&ie=UTF-8. Your new complaint that a Wikipedia article on opium production in Afghanistan "never once reminded the public that Blair was not fulfilling this particular war justification objective" suggests you regard Wikipedia as a platform for political campaigning. It is not, despite your unsubtle attempts to use this page for that purpose. Your evasive reponse when challenged on the distortion in your opening, "I believe that most Wikipedia editors self identify as Internationalists ... User:Smallbones confirmed that fact" does nothing to suggest such attempts should be treated with respect. 79.73.246.67 (talk) 18:24, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Does treating people with respect even when they are mistaken or have poor motivations result in better or worse outcomes than when respect is contingent on whether one agrees with another? How often on this very page do we see those who have no time for those with whom they disagree bemoan how their political climate has become exclusionary and insular? 184.96.138.160 (talk) 19:59, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

How often on this very page have we recently seen persistent accusations of political bias, presented with evasive rhetoric and distortions of fact, framed as leading questions and followed with demands for answers and accusations of censorship? 79.73.246.67 (talk) 20:57, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

That happens all the time throughout Wikipedia, not just on this page. 184.96.138.160 (talk) 23:18, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

|

I'm a little confused about how the discussion over internationalist/nationalist bias veered off into Tony Blair and heroin, but getting back to the principle, here's my take:

The Wikipedia is an Age of Enlightenment institution (which is why our references typically are to peer-reviewed or fact-checked sources, rather than consisting mostly of "The Pope himself has said that this is true" or "The leader of our country himself has said that this is true" and so forth, as would have been done in former days -- and still is, in many places.)

Internationalization goes hand in hand with Enlightenment ideals to some degree. The modern system of international treaties and relations is to some extent an Enlightenment institution. The United Nations is, in my opinion, an institution consistent with how Enlightenment ideals would be expected to develop.

And you can't easily separate these things out. If you gather people who are on board with the scientific method, and objectively experienced reality as the measure of truth -- that is, us -- they are also like to be cosmopolitan in outlook generally.

OK so:

there is a widespread growing divide and polarization, in Europe particularly, between the political leaders, who almost all identify as internationalists, and at least half of the people/voters, who prefer national political sovereignty, as shown in the Brexit vote

But none of that matters. The Wikipedia is not run on votes, and is certainly is not run of votes of people who aren't editors. Enlightenment ideals have never been all that popular. Very many people are not comfortable with Enlightenment ideas such as letting other people practice weird religions, or say unpleasing things -- or indeed with humanism, of which internationalism is a manifestation.

But so what? A lot of people are morons. What does that have to do with us here? We are not going to start taking the approach "Well, to be fair, we need to balance the non-moronic material with some moronic material". Not likely to gain much traction here; I'd give it up. Herostratus (talk) 21:13, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Finally. Thank you Herostratus, I agree with every single word you say. Toronto is the most cosmopolitan city in the world, I think, and I love it. But I think you erred when you equated moronic material with material sourced from non-enlightened publications. If you don't mind I'll substitute "dumb" for "moronic". Just as a person needs some dumb muscles to keep his brain alive and functioning, the age of enlightenment needs the dumb energy from the masses to provide enough fuel for the Age of Enlightenment to carry along with it the masses....because if it doesn't then we're left with an old fashioned caste system or a revolution wherein the masses kick the Age of Enlightenment back to the dark ages. So, there does exist simple and not enlightened information which comes out of places like DM or Breitbart or Daily Caller which adds some of the muscle I'm talking about and which will make the encyclopedia more comfortable for that 50% plus of the population who are not internationalists or enlightened. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:27, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Heh. Yup, in real world the relationship between enlightened government and democracy is fraught and complicated (although generally complementary in the long run). Operating a functioning democracy in a world where a significant fraction of the population is stupid and credulous has always been a problem. One thing that has worked in the past (but is not working so well at present) is to make being ignorant and credulous something to be ashamed of and quiet about, rather than proud of. I think that's the best approach, rather than pandering -- generally, and certainly for us here. Herostratus (talk) 02:17, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I once again agree with your logic. However, I read something recently which turned my own valuation of logic inside out: 17 "So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations." So that's 42 generations and since Christ that's another 80 generations for a total of 132 generations which impressed upon me the silliness of thinking that what any of us do in our physical lives is of anything more than zero importance. But maybe what we do acting from a spiritual perspective possibly has some importance as our spirits may not have an end to them. So, at least if we make decisions that are spiritually comfortable they may have some degree of importance whereas anything we do based upon logic and practicality is of such temporary effect as to be meaningless. In my mind, it is much more comfortable spiritually to intellectually hold hands with all those who are stupid and/or credulous and/or ignorant as well as those who are genius and gifted and that we all move together intellectually while driven by our spiritual responsibility for each other.

So, I am soooo glad that we have come to the agreement that the encyclopedia is restricted to a path which is internationalism which is a manifestation of humanism. That is the most important first step; to clearly see the reality of where we are.

Now, you present as if you know where Wikipedia goes from this point forward, and my experience with this project and with other contributors is much less so I must defer to your opinion in that regard. I am simply saying its a big mistake to stay on this path of exclusion of reading material which you might find moronic. Nocturnalnow (talk) 05:10, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Of course -- 42 generations. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 05:50, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

• That is truly interesting to me....the binary code thingy..I must research that. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:20, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Of course, the obvious hero (or rather heroine) in the 42-generation mythology is pre-Abraham Eve, who had the audacity to perform an experiment that helped mankind to escape from the most boring zoo ever imagined. Which, of course, shows that what we do can have quite fundamental importance. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:28, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Ah, great point, but that event is a spiritual event, as Satan is a purely spiritual being. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:20, 4 March 2017 (UTC)