User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 224

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Jimmy Wales lookalike

Some years ago I was looking up the author Thomas Hardy on the excellent site that is Wikipedia. The results appeared with a personal appeal from Jimmy Wales and a picture of him. By a rather remarkable coincidence the two portaits were almost identical! I would like to send the screen shot I took to Jimbo but I do not seem to be allowed to add it here. Please can someone contact me away from this post? Ajlholt (talk) 21:53, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Not so similar I think? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:12, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

• 
  Jimmy Wales
• 
  Thomas Hardy

They look basically the same to me, except the Hardy one is a bit outdated and makes him look younger. -- Begoon 15:27, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

If there's a "Jimmy Wales lookalikes on Commons" contest going, I'd challenge anyone to beat this. ‑ Iridescent 19:20, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Challenge accepted. Neutron (talk) 19:31, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

My submission --S Philbrick(Talk) 19:39, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

The guy on the left. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:25, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia graphic designs

Hello

I am a Farsi (Persian) Wikipedia user. So forgive my language flaws!

I've designed some designs for Wikipedia. To promote wikipedia and its users. I've written more in here about this.

Thanks, Seyyedalith (talk) 23:16, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Cooperation in Wikipedia Community	Taking care of wikipedia	Unity of the Wikipedia Community
Wikipedian at night

Like especially 'Cooperation in Wikipedia Community' and 'Wikipedian at night'. The later makes me wonder if many (but not all) Wikipedians belong to a small cohort of the population that don't live in the rat-race of 'Nine to Five jobs' – and can thus burn the midnight oil, during which times, many of us, are in our most creative and productive work mode. On tenterhooks here, because I don't wish to suggest that we are superior from the average Jane & John Doe -who also contribute – just that some of us are different and work through the night - 'cause we are Night owl (person). It would be interesting to know what time JW goes to bed and what time he arises etc. My guess is he is flexible and can even sleep on long haul-flights. Aspro (talk) 15:13, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

"Taking care of wikipedia" is visually pleasing to me. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:30, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Turkey block

Tomb of the Kings, Dalyan

Hello. Attached is a picture I took on our September holiday in Turkey. Despite my moaning about Wikipedia from time to time, it is a valuable resource. Bristol stool scale is useful for foreign food attacks, and I wanted to look up Kaunos while I was there. But Wikipedia is blocked, as I found out. It is quite subtle. When you try to access Wikipedia, there is a long wait, and the server gives up, so you think it is the internet connection, which is not brilliant in most hotels. I only found out when I Googled 'Wikipedia block'. Google returns articles like 2017 block of Wikipedia in Turkey which you can see, but cannot access of course. So many people in Turkey will not realise there is a block at all.

I understand the block was following an article dispute. Is there any prospect of resolving it? As I say, it is a valuable resource, and it seems wrong that access to nearly 80m people is denied. Is the WMF still working on this? Best wishes Peter Damian (talk) 18:16, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps Turkey could, oh I don't know, stop supporting terrorists? That'd go a long ways towards resolving the issue. TheValeyard (talk) 03:02, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the WMF continues to work for a resolution of the situation through both legal and diplomatic channels.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:37, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

If someone can suggest the principal culprits, I go fairly near Saylorsburg on occasion (where Gulen lives); I could try mailing out some random crap (I wonder if Gulen's convention center has a gift shop?) from there to those guys or their family members and see if they get sent to gulag over it. Wnt (talk) 13:27, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

I often appreciate your iconoclastic comments, Wnt, or at least consider them thought provoking. Sorry, but this one strikes me as irresponsible. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:43, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, to lay out some ideas more directly: (a) Done right, terrorism is not illegal; (b) a totalitarian society is a vulnerable society; (c) when people are being rounded up in large numbers over nothing, it is not really about their behavior any more, which means that if one person is unjustly sent to jail another will not be taken for some unjust reason, which means there is no sin in setting someone up; (d) none of us are ever far from the front line of a war today, and it is our decision minute by minute whether to put our heads up or not. You might also reasonably infer (e) that I'm not extraordinarily serious about the proposal, or else I'd have done my own research and not spoken about it where Turkish intelligence might hear ... caveat being there is fair reason to be skeptical that exculpatory evidence would matter anyway, and of course, if the thing were suggested publicly here and they still took the bait it would be much funnier. Wnt (talk) 12:05, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Maybe I'm confused, but the block is by the Turkish government, not by Wikipedia. So it is of course up to the Turkish government to lift it. I'd be very much pissed off if we would let political censorship influence our editing process. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:57, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the block is by the Turkish government. And yes, I'd be very much pissed off too if we would let political censorship influence our editing process. This is what makes these situations both easier and harder for Wikimedia! Easier in the sense that our principles mean we won't bow down, so at least there are no tough decisions to be made. But harder in the sense that we really have little to offer to people who want to prevent dissemination of knowledge.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:10, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

In a sense, we offer them the same thing we offer everybody: Participation in one of the best general knowledge sources in the world, and with that, all the benefits of more knowledge in an increasingly knowledge-driven world. It's very small minds that reject knowledge because they don't like it. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:08, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, last night I was amazed again at what Wikipedia offered....after watching another way out episode of American Horror Story (cult), which I thought was total fiction, but it caused me to be curious about whether it might have some basis in fact, so I came here to check out the 2 people involved with Andy Warhol in the episode, and it was, surprisingly to me, based on reality. It was about the gal who tried to kill Warhol, Valerie_Solanas, and, her article, being interesting as all hell, led me to another interesting character, BillyBoy*, who now lives in Delémont. I acquired brand new knowledge (for me) about the 2 characters and a town I never heard of. It was kinda like watching an incredible documentary following the dots in the Wikipedia articles. As a perhaps less important aside, I think that the matter of restricting knowledge is more about people with control freakish minds than small minds, and that problem is here as well, in spades. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:19, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Relationship between different Wikipedias and the foundation ?

Hi Jimbo, sorry to disturb. But if possible, who decides whether a new Wikipedia may "be released", and who decides if a Wikipedia simply tracks out ? Can the foundation do anything about it ? Let's for instance take North Korea. If they had a Wiki (I must assume that isn't the case, but if), and it becomes totally abused. Can a such Wiki be shut down by the foundation ? Thanks. Boeing720 (talk) 23:31, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Note that there is an important difference between a Wiki and a language edition of Wikipedia. A Wiki is any running instance of Wiki software (which includes MediaWiki, the Wiki software used by Wikipedia, but also Twiki and arguably SharePoint). Wikipedia is a particular project, . Nobody can stop Kim Jong-un or Donald Trump from setting up a MediaWiki server and create their own encyclopaedia project. If they call it "Wikipedia", they violate a trademark of the foundation - this may be harder to stop in the case of Kim, and slightly easier in the case of Trump. Neither would be an official Wikipedia edition. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:07, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Also note that the foundation wikipedia's are language-specific, not country-specific. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:11, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Btw, there is such a [place] where official versions of Wikipedia or its sister websites are nurtured till they are ready to face the harsh hard world of Google hits .-Forceradical (talk) 09:51, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your replies. I referred to Wikipedias managed by the Wikimedia Foundation and who "releases" them (not MediaWikis), or (if necessary) stops or corrects them, if our rules and guidelines are completely disregarded from at a such language-Wikipedia ? North-Korea was a bad example. Boeing720 (talk) 01:54, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

I think there are still some minor terminological confusions, but I'll try to answer what I think the question is. First, all language versions of Wikipedia are under the umbrella of the Wikimedia Foundation. All of them are hosted on servers owned by the Wikimedia Foundation. In terms of "release" - I'm not sure what you mean by that term, but basically if there is a new language there is a community process involving the incubator mentioned above, and a language committee, and so on. Now, let's suppose a new wiki (or an old one) started completely ignoring the norms and values of the broader community or the rules set down by the Foundation, I guess you are asking what would happen? It hasn't really ever happened, in no small part because the Foundation and the broader community both accept that some local variations in policy are valuable. So for example, in English wikipedia we have WP:3RR but this isn't the case in every language. That's fine, because different language communities are different sizes, in different cultural contexts, etc. However, it is at least conceivable that a language version could decide to throw out the rules on neutrality. For example, suppose French Wikipedia decided to become a massively pro-Macron project, mentioning him in every article, crediting him with scientific advances, etc. I think that eventually the Foundation would step in and start removing adminship from people who were not willing to comply with "NPOV is non-negotiable". But fortunately, that hasn't ever been necessary, not even in small languages.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:13, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for my own misconceptions, but yes, you answered just what I was hoping for. Huge thanks for this effort, and you made it indeed very clear. Much appreciated and thanks again Boeing720 (talk) 22:13, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Rotten Tomatoes

Martin Scorsese has drawn attention to the crappiness of this website as a determinant of anything whatsoever about a film. Wikipedia would be better served to cease treating this idiotic thumbs up/down metric as meaningful data, included in a virtually automatic way (because it's so easy) on almost all film pages. It is meaningless data that does not need free promotion on thousands of Wikipedia pages. Here's the Scorsese article: Scorsese on Rotten Tomatoes. This has been brought up before, responded to with ridicule by users who seemed to somehow assume it was sour grapes on the part of some film industry person: hardly. I write this as someone who cares both about Wikipedia and about culture in general, as should all Wikipedia users. 49.194.0.243 (talk) 06:16, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

I know a lot of Wikipedians aren't fans of Rotten Tomatoes. I'm not a great fan either, but an outright ban on saying "Film X has a score of Y on Rotten Tomatoes" would be difficult. This should be raised at WP:RSN or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:31, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Ever since the movies became big business over a hundred years ago, there have been directors, producers, stars and screenwriters who despise film critics. The ticket buying public actually reads movie critics, in their never ending quest to avoid wasting hard earned money on big screen turkeys. Rotten Tomatoes raises special ire from those disposed to hate film criticism, because, somewhat like Wikipedia, it summarizes what the full range of professional movie critics (AKA reliable sources) say about a movie. The funny thing is that Scorsese is also defending mother!, a film that enjoys a generally positive 68% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps he could not find an indisputably great film with a really bad Rotten Tomatoes rating to use as a rhetorical device. IP editor 49.194.0.243, you are as entitled as Martin Scorsese (a great director) to despise Rotten Tomatoes, but do not expect the rest of us to ride along with the two of you. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:54, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Space Jam is an example of a movie with genuine critical acclaim (getting positive reviews from Siskel, Ebert and Maltin) but a wretched RT rating. I very much doubt Scorsese is a fan, but Rad is probably the canonical example of a movie that was universally loathed by critics but which was hugely popular with audiences (0% rating on RT, 91% audience appreciation rating); Scorsese would probably find Rise of the Footsoldier (14% RT rating, 83% audience rating, successful enough to spawn two sequels) more to his liking. ‑ Iridescent 07:19, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Every database of 10,000 items will have some statistical outliers. As for Rad in particular, its self selected audience almost self evidently differs "rad"ically in personal taste from professional film critics. That is part of the reason why we do not rely solely on Rotten Tomatoes when discussing the critical reaction to movies. Are those three examples enough to ban references to Rotten Tomatoes from Wikipedia, Iridescent, or are they just interesting anecdotes? Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 08:05, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Geez. It has nothing to do with directors, producers or stars despising film criticism (and Scorsese does not despise film criticism either, so it's really totally beside the point). The discussion I attempted to start had nothing to do with removing criticism from Wikipedia. The question is not that at all, but whether Rotten Tomatoes has anything to do with film criticism and whether it counts as meaningful and relevant information deserving of inclusion in thousands upon thousands of Wikipedia articles. The moronic thumbs up/thumbs down metric is the question here, and it is what I discussed. Providing examples, whether mother! or Space Jam, simply makes no difference. In my view, there is no justification for doing so, and the same applies whether it is "all critics" or "top critics": whether a film gets a thumbs up or a thumbs down, and counting them up, is simply a completely useless and mindless way of evaluating works of art or entertainment (one simply cannot imagine such a formula being used for great works of painting or literature or any other form of art). If users can find critical opinions that a consensus tends to find worthwhile and just, then that should be included (as is currently the case), but it would simply be beneficial in all respects for Wikipedians to agree that, as I said, almost completely automatic inclusion of this non-data and non-knowledge does not benefit Wikipedia, cinema or culture in general. One can only hope that Wikipedians are capable of thinking about those kinds of questions, rather than simply being preoccupied with defending their castle. 49.194.0.243 (talk) 21:54, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

The answer to your question about whether Rotten Tomatoes has anything to do with film criticism is, "Yes, it does". It aggregates professional film criticism. I consider that meaningful and relevant, and check Rotten Tomatoes every time I am considering whether to spend hard earned money on a movie ticket. Obviously, you disagree, which is your right. But I submit that you will need to marshall far more compelling arguments if you hope to end the use of Rotten Tomatoes here on Wikipedia. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 01:00, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

In the August 2, 2017 issue of the Hollywood Reporter, Paul Dergarabedian of ComScore offered this sage assessment: "The best way for studios to combat the 'Rotten Tomatoes Effect' is to make better movies, plain and simple." Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 01:26, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Clearly you, Cullen328, are someone determined to talk about something other than the issue raised, and about an issue not relevant to this encyclopedia, so no further discussion with you need be entered into at this point. If the mindlessness of the thumbs up/down metric escapes you, then I can only recommend a bout of self-reflection away from this encyclopedia. I would simply add that your smug response provides an example of the kind of approach taken by self-satisfied users that has the effect of driving others away. Best. 49.194.0.243 (talk) 01:35, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

I am mystified by your response, IP editor. I have attempted to engage you in conversation about Rotten Tomatoes, the subject that you raised. It appears that you do not like any disagreement. Your opinion that my comments have the effect of driving anyone away is pretty strange to me. As for the "mindlessness" of the thumbs up/thumbs down model, let me make two observations: That method of briefly summarizing film criticism was created by the highly respected team of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and the thumbs are a tiny part of the rich critical evaluation available on Rotten Tomatoes. I self-reflect constantly, but will continue working on this encyclopedia, as is my right. Good luck to you! Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 01:54, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, Cullen, but you know not of what you speak. "It aggregates professional film criticism". Only it doesn't. Taking a balanced and thought-out piece of prose and crassly dumbing it down to a meaningless "score" or percentage will only ever pander to those who are too stupid or lazy to read reviews and who just want to look at a number, without really understanding what is behind that number. Let the prose of the reviewers tell the story, not an artificially forced "score" that has absolutely no input from the critic, and is, in many cases, highly dubious (I've seen reviews that are generally positive but include genuine criticism, but RT have graded that review as 100% - utter useless and misleading crap). How anyone can consider their scoring system as in any way "encyclopaedic" really does need to have a long hard look at encyclopaedia is supposed to be. I'm entirely with the IP and Scorsese in thinking RT is useless crap. - SchroCat (talk) 17:04, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

SchroCat, Looks like you're giving RT a score of "useless crap" on the kitty litter scale. --Bob K31416 (talk) 21:06, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

SchroCat, are we talking about the same website? I just looked at the Rotten Tomatoes page for a newly released film I want to see, Only the Brave (2017 film). That page features prominent prose excerpts from six reviews and links to a total of 14 reviews. You are entitled to claim that the website does not aggregate movie reviews, just as I am entitled to point out, with evidence, that it actually does. Dislike it all you want, but please do not misrepresent it. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:25, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

FFS, no wonder admins are no longer held in esteem when they throw round such nonsense as accusations of misrepresentation. Does the turgid site turn balanced prose into a rather crass percentage, yes or no? Yes is the answer, and it does so badly. It is the main thing the site is known for, and is only one of the problematic approaches taken by the site. If you think that is encyclopaedic, then your definition of what is encyclopaedic differs from mine. - SchroCat (talk) 05:32, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

You said that Rotten Tomatoes is not an aggregator of film criticism, SchroCat, while any neutral party can look at that website and reliable sources discussing it, and see that it is an aggregator of film criticism. Perhaps you are correct that they do a poor job of it, but that is what they do. Yes, they use a percentage scale, which is far more granular than the usual "thumbs up or down", or four star rating systems. As for my status as an administrator, I am expressing my personal opinions about a source, rather than using or discussing administrative tools. What does my admin status have to do with this conversation? Am I muzzled because I passed an RfA? I hope not. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:59, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Wow... where did that straw man come from? No-one has said anything about you not expressing your opinion, or that you are in any way "muzzled". Way to go in side-lining a discussion away from its point. - SchroCat (talk) 06:05, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

One of the problems is ubiquity. It has become routine on Wikipedia to say "Film X has a score of Y on Rotten Tomatoes" even though it is far from clear what this type of aggregated score actually means. It's rather like assuming that the results that come up first in Google are the most important ones; they may be, or they may not be. As I've said, it's unlikely that Wikipedia would ban Rotten Tomatoes, but it does need to be careful about giving it a free plug in every film article.-♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:31, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree with all you have said. It's a particular problem with older films, as RT still counts modern reviews towards their rather crass "score" alongside the small number of original reviews. Some will consider the RT "score" to be a valid judgement on a film, when the standards and expectations of reviewers and audiences have changed over time; the language used by reviews has also changed which is another factor not taken into account by RT, nor is the difference in the use of language: on the whole British reviewers are more restrained than their American counterparts, and reviewers from the 1940s and 50s were less given to the hyperbole favoured by modern reviewers - none of these factors are taken into account by RT when slapping their one-size-fits all guess percentage. (And a pointless thing it is too: what is the difference between a 59% review and a 60% review: there is absolutely no way that any sense can be applied to such a crass and ridiculous decision as applying a percentage "score" to prose). - SchroCat (talk) 07:32, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, do you have a similar disdain for other polls, for example the percentage approval rating for US presidents? --Bob K31416 (talk) 13:36, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

What on earth has that got to do with it? It's a ridiculous parallel to try and draw. - SchroCat (talk) 13:48, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Your criticisms seem to be applicable to polls in general, of which RT is but one. --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:18, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Then you have utterly missed the point of what both I, the IP and ianmacm have said. I suggest you re-read the thread, particularly the point about the stupidity of trying to give an equivalent numerical "score" in place of a prose review. - SchroCat (talk) 14:27, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

FWIW, I'd characterize RT as useful but fallible. Regarding your comments, I'd be less generous. --Bob K31416 (talk) 19:28, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks fr the baiting, but I've ignored far better than yours. - SchroCat (talk) 19:32, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure how Rotten Tomatoes turns text reviews into a percentage rating. It's far from obvious how you would do this. There is also the question of how the perception of a film can change over time. Stanley Kubrick's career might have been ruined if the film studios were a slave to Rotten Tomatoes ratings, as critics hated many of his films when they came out. The Internet has developed a fascination with Rotten Tomatoes ratings which is far beyond what they actually deserve.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 13:51, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Indeed. I'm old enough to remember a universally-panned flop called Blade Runner struggling to compete with more critically-acclaimed movies released at the same time such as Conan the Barbarian, while this is how Stanley Kauffmann reviewed 2001 on its release. ‑ Iridescent 16:39, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

It is pleasing to see that there are other users willing to reflect on whether a meaningless number (or a one or two word summary) from Rotten Tomatoes really merits inclusion in a virtually automatic way in an encyclopedia. And obviously: even if one believes that the RT website, as an "aggregator", has some kind of merit as a way of viewing a range of opinion (which I do not concede), the point is that is precisely not how it is used on film pages in this encyclopedia: in short, the way that Wikipedia uses RT is even worse than the site itself. Nevertheless, the fact that a longstanding user and admin persists so doggedly in arguing irrelevant points about the merits he perceives in RT is disheartening: rather than a real discussion about whether the encyclopedia or culture benefit from the automatic inclusion of this stupid metric, one sees just another instance of the useless and disingenuous bickering that drives so many contributors or potential contributors away (the other user's equally disingenuous query about whether this translates into "disdain" for all polls does not merit a response). And what is so clear is that such strategies are undertaken purely as a means of unreflectively maintaining a status quo, for no good reason. Such strategies work, of course: who could be bothered engaging over and over and over again with such nonsense? Someone with far more energy than I have for these kinds of futile games would be required to effect this kind of change. For myself, it is just one more symptom of Wikipedia's greatest problem, insufficiently recognised: the insidiousness with which users facilitate the process by which it falls prey to entropic tendencies. Best of luck. 49.194.25.173 (talk) 19:36, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Reminder, the first editor responding to your opening post wrote, "This should be raised at WP:RSN or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film." Any plans to follow-up there? --Bob K31416 (talk) 19:50, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

IP editor 49.194.25.173, it is striking to see you continue to spread incorrect information about Rotten Tomatoes, as when you describe their content as a "one or two word summary", when the current page for Only the Brave that I mentioned above includes about 150 words of quotations from six different reviews plus links to 14 reviews. Your caricature of this website that provides far more comprehensive information about criticism of many thousands of films than you acknowledge does nothing whatsoever to advance proper and nuanced use of this source by Wikipedia editors. As for your attacks on me, they are like water rolling off a duck's back. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:03, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Cullen, I take the IP's "one or two word summary" to mean our use of Rancid Tomatoes, not the coverage RT has on any one film; our article on Only the Brave has one sentence summarising the "information" from RT, not the list of quotes and reviews from their selected sources. They have not "spread incorrect information" about RT at all. I would also say that 99% of references to RT in our articles fall a long way short of "proper and nuanced use" of RT as the crass use of the RT "score" is normally all that is used (c.f. Only the Brave (2017 film)#Critical response for the typically lazy approach to the use of the site - not an iota of nuance in sight). - SchroCat (talk) 09:37, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

At Only the Brave (2017 film)#Critical response, the first paragraph gives the trend of the reviews by using Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. The next paragraphs give example excerpts from some reviews. In this way, the reader is given a summary of information about how the film was received by reviewers. --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:01, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Well done for stating the obvious. The point here, however is the one-sentence use of RT, which is not "nuanced". Feel free to work on developing a few film articles to get to grips with how to pull together a good review section. I suggest you read the comments of others properly in future before pushing the thread off topic. - SchroCat (talk) 14:24, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, SchroCat is correct: I was referring to the ubiquitous use of RT on this encyclopedia, which usually takes the form of "a score on RT of XX%, which equates to universal acclaim", or some such idiocy. Apologies if this was not clear, but I cannot help using it as what it has become fashionable to call a "teachable moment": see, Cullen, proper judgment involves interpretation and care. Interpretative deficiencies, deficiencies of care, lead to misinterpretation and misunderstanding: to poor judgment. The reduction of interpretation to a number is inherently careless. Wikipedia should not be involved in such a reduction. Furthermore, there is no reason in the world why they should. 49.194.53.90 (talk) 07:27, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Although I agree with you 100 per cent, IP, there is one point upon which everyone is (probably) agreed: nothing will be done about this. Partly because this page is the wrong venue to bring up the discussion (JW doesn't tend to deal with matters such as this), and the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film (or possibly WP:RSN) would be a better venue. I suspect the Film Project would be hostile to a total ban (I've written several film GAs, and trying to educate people on the unencyclopaedic nature of RT is a seemingly endless and thankless task), but they could be amenable to a different approach (it should be used on no older films; the wording about how the crass RT "score" is reported could be improved, etc). Partly it's because many of the people who write on these pages do so without thinking things through fully. Try taking an RT "score" out of an article and see how quickly it is returned with the comment "oh, but all the other articles have it". It's not ideal, but that's what happens when people have a different standard of what an encyclopaedia is or should be. - SchroCat (talk) 14:52, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Throwing verbal hand grenades and throwing down the gauntlet never leads to any useful improvement of the encyclopedia. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:03, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Odd comment: no-one has done either of those things. - SchroCat (talk) 07:37, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

One challenge, of course, is that we can't simply say "XYZ is universally acclaimed", due to WP:V. Saying "According to Rotten Tomatoes, XYZ is universally acclaimed" is OK, not perfect, but probably better than just saying nothing. I think that readers can figure out whether to trust RT scores or not. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:51, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

I essentially agree. I think that Wikipedia uses RT percentage to characterize the reviews of a population of professional film critics, which is appropriate for our encyclopedia's summary of the information. --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:08, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

No, the percentage "score" is the very worst part of RT and is utterly unencyclopaedic in any guise. Carl, I disagree that readers can figure out the score: even members of the film project have not put sufficient thought into what the number entails, and a casual reader will have absolutely no idea as to how that figure has been achieved. Only the Brave (2017 film)#Critical response gives "On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 90% based on 70 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10". That's so far off the mark is's untrue: the score isn't an "approval rating", and most of the critics haven't given a numerical equivalent to their prose - its nothing but dumbed down crap for those to lazy to engage their brains. - SchroCat (talk) 14:41, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

I made an edit there (diff) so that it now is, "According to the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 89% of 77 reviews were positive, with an average rating of 7.3/10." --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:20, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Update – It was reverted twice by the same editor without explanation. Here are the diffs of the edits and reversions: [1] [2] [3] [4]. That's about all the time I care to spend on it. --Bob K31416 (talk) 03:50, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

All Critics vs Top Critics

We should only use top critics score. Example for the new Star Trek. The top critics RT value in this case is close to the user value at IMDB. prokaryotes (talk) 11:05, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

No we shouldn't. They differ from market to market, and are still an artificially created nonsense devoid of intelligence. How does anyone put a sore on a piece of balanced prose? It's just not possible, and Rancid Tomatoes are very, very bad at doing it. - SchroCat (talk) 17:04, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Reference desks

Hello Jimbo, I (and probably a few others) would be most interested in your opinion on the RfC on closing down the reference desks / splitting them off as a new project. The discussion is here. Thanks, – filelakeshoe (t / c)  08:15, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm afraid it would be unwise for me to offer a firm opinion given that I seldom visit there and I don't therefore have a view on what the best way forward is. If the reports that this is an area with excessive bickering and acceptance of insulting behavior / BLP violations are correct (I don't know) then clearly there should be some solution. Closure is one possibility, of course, but so too might be some kind of reform. But I don't know enough to say much more than these rather bland and obvious generalities, sorry.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:16, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

It's a fun joint and sometimes helpful, except for that Nazi that keeps showing up there. I wish a good band, like the Dead Kennedys, would make a song about it. Drmies (talk) 00:35, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Could use Elvis in "Suspicious Minds" ("I'm caught in a trap... can't get out..."). -Wikid77 (talk) 09:04, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo, the actual problem on the reference desks isn't acceptance of BLP violations. Actual BLP violations always get nuked within minutes. The problem is that a handful of editors are deleting things that they don't like, falsely claiming that they are BLP violations. It is a classic case of WP:BLPZEALOT and WP:CRYBLP; they think that by saying the magic phrase "BLP" they can do anything they want and violate any policy that they want. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:58, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Some editors want to tolerate BLP violations, and falsely claim that attempts to delete them have to do with "not liking" those violations. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:31, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

There's really not that much politics on the Refdesk, but when there is, it isn't a violation of BLP. I mean, not everybody thinks Trump was backed by Russia, but as long as some reliable sources do, it's not a violation of BLP to say it, even if it may be unnecessarily contentious to take things that direction. It is a best practice to direct and attribute any such thing that comes up directly to a third party source,^[5] but the various Special Emergency Powers people claim over BLP do not rightly come into play if you don't. And above all - even if someone gratuitously violated BLP in one in a hundred questions, how does that possibly invalidate the good work of the people who actually answer the majority of those questions? Wnt (talk) 12:26, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

WP:RD still amazing proof of expert editors

Beyond the vast ocean of minor topics, the Reference Desks (wp:RD) still reveal the amazing scope of knowledge of many of WP's expert editors, even as anonymous IP users, and could be a great method to retain subject-matter experts who might otherwise get burned out in the tedium of expanding the article pages. I wondered if the expert users had finally become bored about all things WP, but a recent quick look across topic pages under WP:RD will confirm how various experts are still actively assisting Wikipedia readers with a staggering array of detailed topics. I recommend reading WP:RD periodically to remember how fascinating the range of knowledge can be. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:47, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree. Despite an undergraduate degree in math, I took a brief glance at the math pages recently and was both humbled by my inability to answer many questions and impressed by the ability of others to provide answers.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:41, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

There are interesting math questions at wp:RD/Math, but I was also curious about topics in wp:RD/Sci or wp:RD/Lang for languages, or wp:RD/Misc for miscellaneous questions. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:48, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

self-spi

There's an admin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Yamla) who seems convinced that I'm a sock when I'm not. Should I make an Spi of myself to prove him wrong? He reverted me twice today. 79.67.91.250 (talk) 13:49, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

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Not just maths articles

I was intrigued by the idea that Geordies do not use the dark L and went to learn what a dark L was. The article says this:

The velarized alveolar lateral approximant (dark l) is a type of consonantal sound used in some languages. It is an alveolar, denti-alveolar, or dental lateral approximant, with a secondary articulation of velarization or pharyngealization. The regular symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent this sound are ⟨lˠ⟩ (for a velarized lateral) and ⟨lˤ⟩ (for a pharyngealized lateral), though the dedicated letter ⟨ɫ⟩, which covers both velarization and pharyngealization, is perhaps more common. The last symbol should never be confused with ⟨ɬ⟩, which represents the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative. However, some scholars[46] use that symbol to represent the velarized alveolar lateral approximant anyway - such usage is considered non-standard.

I still don't understand. Peter Damian (talk) 11:27, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

I get that it is something to do with the way Geordies speak. But I'd agree even with the links it isn't written for a general interest audience. Perhaps some embedded sounds would help? ϢereSpielChequers 11:59, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

This article explains it much better. Geordies pronounce 'milk' in a way that sounds like 'milluk' to a southerner. That's all. Peter Damian (talk) 12:02, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

I just now added that link to the article as an external link. (diff) --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:59, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Peter Damian: Excellent example! (and thanks to WereSpielChequers for the clarifying article.) I had thought to ping you earlier, because I know you had major concerns about this same issue as related to philosophy articles. Any luck with that? (I used to work on Argument from authority and gave up, but it is better than it was. I doubt that will last long. :) ) --David Tornheim (talk) 17:18, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Need Micropedia project with wp:Clarity pillar

I've tried for years to improve clarity, or readability, of common topics, but the resistance comes from many angles: "need consensus first" or "simpler text is too long for lede" or "wp:BLUE links are there to clarify elsewhere" or "common meaning is recentism, must use terms from 500 years ago" etc. To better sort out the priorities, then new pages should be written, as concise and clarified text, into a new "Micropaedia" project, with new wp:Pillars to set new priorities for clarity and innovation. A pillar to emphasize wp:Clarity (or Readability) should be defined to empower editors to add clarifications to pages, even if longer text, to avoid wp:data hoarding of trivial details which could clutter and confuse the basic wp:COMMONNAME topic beyond simple wp:COMMONTEXT descriptions. As a separate project, the Wikimicropedia could have different policies or guidelines from the WP rules, allowing for clearer text as a higher priority. I've even been reverted by editors removing sourced, clarified text from Plot sections, which had emphasized key plot points (mentioned by critics), by claiming the Plot does not need sources as excuse to revert all changes to the prior cryptic Plot text. WP's unreadable-text problem spans many topics, including: films, songs, sports games, inventions, science topics, math terms, medical procedures, language or grammar, and plant/animal descriptions, etc. At least a Micropedia could emphasize a focus on readability, while providing wide-open spaces to write new clear, concise and simple explanations of many mainstream ideas or topics. -Wikid77 (talk) 04:22, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

• Great ideas here. --David Tornheim (talk) 05:05, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
• Re your comment, "I've tried for years to improve clarity, or readability, of common topics, but the resistance comes from many angles..." – Could you give an example? --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:03, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

It would take me a while to remember more cases, but a horrific example mentioned the term "relative prime" where I tried to insert the simple explanation "(have no common factors other than 1)" as a phrase used in some tutorial webpages about "coprimes" but there was a huge fight about cluttering the text with those 7 extra words, even though tutorials favored them. That instance proved the resistance was excessive, as refusing 7 words and refusing a common explanation found in several tutorials. For many terms, the typical teachers or tutors have standard, rote explanations (in a "nutshell") which could be inserted to clarify text, but there has been extreme resistance in various cases. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:09, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Halloween cheer!

Happy Halloween!

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Hello Jimbo Wales:
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WP:CLEAN

	Hello Jimbo Wales: You are invited to join WikiProject Cleanup, a WikiProject and resource for Wikipedia cleanup listings, information and discussion. To join the project, just add your name to the member list. North America1000 15:25, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

How social media is killing Wikipedia

See How Social Media Endangers Knowledge. The subject heading isn't my interpretation, I copied it from the LinkedIn email I got with telling me about it. Doug Weller talk 16:54, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Not the first time someone has assumed we went through difficulties because of as they put it a "panicky fundraising campaign". They are correct that we are now financially healthy, but I don't share their analysis that this is because American liberals responding to Trump's victory by pouring money into wikipedia. Truth is that WMF finances have been healthy for several years, including some of the years when the annual fundraiser did look a little panicky. As for the claim that Wikipedia editing levels have been tailing off, the article references a June 2015 article. By that stage the rally was underway, but it wasn't publicly reported until my article in the August 2015 Signpost. However still repeating stories about the 2007-2014 decline in real edits now in 2017 is a sign of not being aware of Wikipedia's current issues. ϢereSpielChequers 00:31, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

How true. But we know that once the media get hold of a WP story, they like to keep it rolling for several years, with little variation. The "anti-women bias" one has been going strong since 2010, though of course that is at least partially true. Johnbod (talk) 02:30, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

There isn't much new in this article, which I saw a few days ago when it was featured on Google News. It is recycling two old and dubious ideas:

• Wikipedia is written and run by a bunch of liberals (include me out here).
• Wikipedia is in crisis because the number of editors is declining.

Wikipedia isn't in crisis due to either of these things, and it looks like the author was trying to find something negative to say and recycled these old canards.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 04:31, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but you have to admit this is the first article to say that the Wikimedia Foundation's current financial health is due to American Liberals funding the project as a response to Trump. A jaw droppingly silly and wildly inaccurate bit of fake news, but one that hits enough hot buttons that it might circulate. The long series of successful Wikimedia fundraisers goes back well before Trump announced his candidacy for the US President, so I just wonder why if those American Liberals who were presumably using their time machines to boost Wikimedia, why didn't they go back more than ten years to when the Foundation was relatively skint? ϢereSpielChequers 09:09, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

I looked up the definition of social media and it looks like the title is referring to Wikipedia as a social medium that is endangering knowledge. It's not clear to me what the author is trying to say in that regard. --Bob K31416 (talk) 09:45, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

It's probably a rehash of the "Wikipedia is written by non-experts, Britannica is so much better" argument. Various studies have questioned this.[6] Wikipedia isn't perfect, but when it is a wet afternoon and a journalist has been asked to say something negative about Wikipedia, they tend to come out with the same old arguments.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 14:51, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Reading the article again, it appears that it is presenting the idea that there is "a flattening growth rate in the number of contributors" to Wikipedia because potential editors are drawn instead into social media such as Facebook, etc. The author may also be trying to use Wikipedia like a canary in a mine for detecting an incipient reduction in the growth rate of knowledge in society in general. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:02, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Influential websites

This is a couple days old, but I didn't see it posted:

The 15 Most Influential Websites of All Time --S Philbrick(Talk) 21:44, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

The top 6 are pretty hard to argue with

1. Google 2. Amazon 3. Wikipedia 4. Facebook 5. YouTube 6. Craigslist

although the order might be pretty much a personal choice. What shocked me most was that 7-15 all seem to be essentially historical or "failed" (Yahoo!) or a niche (perhaps a pretty big niche) (Drudge Report, Match.com). If these were considered to be the "best" rather than the "most influential", the only thing I could say is "Without Wikipedia, the internet would suck." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:23, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

I think Altavista was much more influential than Google - they did the search first, and I always felt like they were an honest site. Google perfected the art of giving you lots of hits that don't contain your search term. I can't swear that they invented SEO but they also sure seem a lot better at serving you up a page custom-made to spam you your search terms than Altavista ever was (indeed, I don't remember them doing that at all). I still don't know how they got so many instant converts - there was a whole cool crowd at the university whose sense of coolness seems entwined with reacting to the latest ad campaign or something, but Google wasn't even really advertising then.

I also would say Sci-Hub is more influential than The Pirate Bay. It's not that TPB doesn't do good work, but there have always been lots of different ways to pirate files, whereas Sci-Hub's challenge to systematically cover interlibrary loans of the entire scientific literature on an international scale is much more impressive, and much more useful. Wnt (talk) 22:29, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Science and math articles

Michael Byrne, a science writer at Motherboard has an article Wikipedia’s Science Articles Are Elitist, subtitled "Maybe Wikipedia readers shouldn’t need science degrees to digest articles about basic topics. Just an idea." I agree with much of what he says, though my experience is more with math/stats articles. Even though I really haven't kept up very well with the subject, I almost certainly have taken more math and stats courses (mostly stats) than 90% of the US population. But unless I specifically remember a topic from way back when, I can't even start understanding the 1st paragraph of 80% of our math and stats articles. Thus, I conclude that for a very large majority of our readers, most of our math articles might as well not even exist. Apparently it's the same for our science articles as well.

I'd love to see more academics writing and editing Wikipedia articles, but not if the articles are merely aimed for other academics. Any ideas how we fix this problem? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:37, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree with this 1,000%. Our math and statistics articles do a remarkable job of making the simplest concepts nearly impenetrable. And I make my living by solving nonlinear partial differential equations. I can't imagine what it must be like for the average reader. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 20:38, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

It's very hard to address blanket statements - part of the FA process is making articles as accessible as possible, which we try and do without sacrificing accuracy. Many experts aren't particularly good at this though some indeed are. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:05, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

I have no suggestion to address this, but this gave me a chuckle, so to perhaps lighten your Wikipedia day, from the link: "I have no idea who the article exists for because I'm not sure that person actually exists: someone with enough knowledge to comprehend dense physics formulations that doesn't also already understand the electroweak interaction or that doesn't already have, like, access to a textbook about it." Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:36, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

I do have a suggestion, for the math articles at least: in these articles it is kind of habitual to cite little or no sources (per a WP:BLUE reasoning if I understand correctly). I'd have these sources nonetheless in these articles, and preferably sources that explain the concepts in a more generally understandable language, which would (hopefully) still be more or less understandable without a degree in mathematics when summarized. --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:08, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Very good idea, and also often an issue with physics articles. prokaryotes (talk) 22:39, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

There is a big difference in the citation styles in academic literature and textbooks between history and mathematics. In history virtually every statement is someones interpretation and needs citations. In mathematics most basic information, like trigonometric identities are backed by mathematical proof so are not controversial. All text books will cite these without reference. For a lot of articles the same identities can probably be found in 100 of sources and anyone of these sources can cover 90% of the information in an article. Indeed close referencing tracing individual formula back to their original sources would be a major work of scholarship and detract further from the accessibility of the articles. These are some of the reasons why the Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines was written. --Salix alba (talk): 12:12, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Plimpton 322 is an example why newer findings need to be considered (Babylonian mathematics), and why reference help to shift through existing content while being updated. prokaryotes (talk) 19:36, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Another suggestion: in the top right of an article we can have a sidebar, which is usually a navbox to articles on similar topics. For mathematics and similar high-tech articles, I'd propose another type of sidebar, one with "concepts used but not explained in this article", e.g. containing links to Boolean algebra and differential equation if that are concepts one needs to be acquainted with for a good understanding of the article you are reading; not too much detail: the "useful concepts" boxes on the articles referred to can in turn contain links to articles with the building blocs for that concept (e.g. "infinity (mathematics)" would be one that could figure in the box in the differential equation article).

This way one would always have a step down to something a bit more easily understandable, and a guide "where to start" if the article is too indigestible for the reader's level in math. --Francis Schonken (talk) 23:09, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

One thing to keep in mind is that a math/science article should be written for readers who would be looking for information on the subject of the article, which may naturally limit the readership to those who have a relevant technical background for understanding the subject. However, sometimes an article is written with language that is needlessly abstruse that makes it difficult for even a reader with a relevant technical background to follow. --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:36, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

And that's already difficult enough, as you need to simplify things so that people who don't already know the stuff will find it a useful read. It means that you need to use sources other than the best sources (e.g. you can use books instead of scientific articles, but often the books will assume the reader has some background that you don't assume the readers of the wiki article have). Gong further than this is without violating Wiki policies regarding sourcing, can only be done for popular science topics. So, topics like black holes, particle physics, string theory are more easy to write articles for that are accessible to lay people because there are a large number of popular science books on these topics. But there are many more subjects that can be explained even more easily to lay people, but we're not allowed to do that here. What's also a factor here is that even when there exist sources that are accessible to lay people, the wiki community will prefer basing the article on more rigorous scientific sources.

This problem has persisted here on Wikipedia for quite long time and what we're seeing now s that other websites such as StackExchange are filling the hole. E.g. how to derive $E=mc^{2}$, Wikipedia doesn't explain it well, that's why people ask this question on other websites and the answer ends up there instead of here. Count Iblis (talk) 01:01, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

It wouldn't work. Those articles are guarded heavily and any simplification invariably means excluding details that underpin the theory. Hilbert space is one of my favorites and they are well-behaved. It's a technical article dedicated to the mathematics needed to establish a complete description. But at least it has pictures. A Hilbert space is a complete metric space which is just as technical but with no pictures. Non-mathmaticians would find them tedious. --DHeyward (talk) 04:09, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

• It seems to me that what might be required are intentional forks, in which basic content is dealt with in the main article, linking to the ultra-esoteric specialist treatment in an "advanced" article on the same topic. Gibberishization of math articles has been a long-running complaint. Carrite (talk) 11:27, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

gib·ber·ish – Unintelligible or nonsensical talk or writing.[7]

Be careful not to cross the line into anti-intellectualism. --Bob K31416 (talk) 12:17, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Mathematics#Suggested_structure, which may be helpful and includes the advice, "A general approach is to start simple, then move toward more abstract and technical statements as the article proceeds." --Bob K31416 (talk) 12:45, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

First, this is not a problem only Wikipedia has: most general encyclopedias struggle to explain topics in math & the sciences to the general reader without lapsing into intimidating jargon. (Yes, the author of the piece Smallbones links to above says the EB does a better job of it. But EB hasn't always been a model to follow.) IMHO, the problem has two causes: (1) Mathematicians (& scientists) aren't taught how to explain their ideas in plain language -- which is a difficult challenge, no matter how one approaches it; & (2) people who write Wikipedia articles have no idea who their audience is -- what they can expect their readers to know before beginning to consult the article. To use an example totally unrelated to math/sciences from my own experience, lately I've been writing articles on Roman consuls, & have been struggling ways to express the idea of a given person assuming the office of consul that an average reader will understand; but I can't expect one common phrase used by Classicists -- "X held the fasces" -- to be understood by the average reader. (I suspect a fair number of readers who saw that phrase would puzzle over what Neo-Nazis have to do with ancient Rome.)

I don't have any answers for these problems, but if the regulars in these topics areas are aware of these issues, they might better respond to efforts to minimize jargon & target content to a general audience -- if not provide the solution. -- llywrch (talk) 23:52, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

• Very difficult to write in lay. Even the notations are different in different technical fields. How mathematicians write complex conjugtes, for example, is different than physicist and engineers. Even at University, there are course "content forks" for notation, approach and applications. Consider the following notations and difference in techical fields.

${\overline {x+y}}={\overline {x}}+{\overline {y}}$ Mathematical notation for complex conjugates ("+" is a sum, not logic operator). Note the plus sign on both sides which is always true for complex conjugates
${\overline {x+y}}\equiv {\overline {x}}\cdot {\overline {y}}$ Engineering notation for DeMorgan's law (note the same notations describing completely unrelated topics and are not the same. "+" and "$\cdot$" are logical operator
$\neg (X\lor Y)\equiv (\neg X\land \neg Y)$ Mathematical notation for DeMorgan's law (same as Engineering equation above. "$\lor$" and "$\land$" are logical operators in mathematics, just different than what's in Engineering).

• It would be difficult to make it all readable for technical people. ${\overline {x+y}}\equiv {\overline {x}}\cdot {\overline {y}}$ isn't more or less accurate than $\neg (X\lor Y)\equiv (\neg X\land \neg Y)$ or even the mathematical set notation version. But some people are more comfortable with different notations based on their backgrounds. For physics, there is another notation style called Bra-ket notation. We wouldn't even pick a style to serve very technical people so writing for lay people would be extremely. --DHeyward (talk)

DHeyward, you make some interesting points, but none relevant to what I wrote. It's as if I were to say that language dictates I communicate a mood or feeling differently--

• Latin: sunt lacrimae rerum et mentum mortalia tangunt
• French: Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan
• English: The world is too much with us, late and soon

yet neglect to explain exactly what mood these three lines communicate, or the history & context of these lines. And in plain language, which was my point. (FWIW, Wikipedia has articles explaining each of these. I don't know how well they answer non-expert questions, though.) As difficult as it is, I know it can be done for math topics. Two examples of complex math being explained successfully in plain English from my own library shelves are Constance Reid, From Zero to Infinity (Third edition, 1964), & Calvin C. Clawson, Mathematical Mysteries (1996). -- llywrch (talk) 05:30, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

No, I'm saying that language already does dictate the science/math/engineering articles. Mathematics articles use Mathematical language. Engineering articles use engineering language, physics articles use physics language. They are all different. That is the Wikipedia we have today. Imagine that we had an article on Napoleon Bonaparte but it was only in French as it's a French Topic and zero English because francophones wanted to capture the French experience that loses something in translation. DeMorgan's law has applications from math to science to engineering to philosophy but that article uses mathematical language. Engineering notation might be gibberish to a mathematician and vice versa. Heck, many years ago I took a philosophy course on logic. The instructor made it very clear that if he caught anyone using math to solve his logic problems, they would be graded down. In philosophy, true is not 1 and false is not 0. These are issues that affect readability just keeping Frnch articles as French would create readability. We could try and ban technical language but that's not acceptable either. --DHeyward (talk) 19:45, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Smallbones that this is a problem in many math and science articles, which I have also seen in philosophy articles--although I have seen some progress on articles that were formerly incomprehensible to the lay person. I have a Masters in Electrical Engineering and I find it truly amazing how difficult to read some of the math and physics articles can be, and ownership issues if you try to simplify them.

I have proposed this solution whenever I see it: Start out with lay terms and explanations, and then separately have a section that is precise in the jargon used in the field--and assume the lay person will not attempt to read the precise definition which they will have no hope of understanding. I have heard it argued that anyone who does not understand the jargon can look up the jargon by clicking on the Wikipedia hyper-link. That seems unreasonable, as the reader is not seeking to spend hours clicking through wiki-links of technical jargon and symbols to try to understand a complex subject: They probably want only a very limited and vague understanding of the subject, and likely will want to know its significance, its history, the major players who did work on it, any major events regarding its development, fields and theories that were affected, created or discredited because of it, etc. Technical experts in the field can easily forget the human element and the importance of context. Plate tectonics, for example, is an incredibly interesting technical subject, but its development an impact on geology is just as interesting. And we all know that large cultural, religious, legal and educational significance of evolution.

If a lay person wants to understand exactly what an integral is in precise mathematical terms, I think there is no hope of that: they will need to take a class and learn about limits, Riemann sums, etc. Incidentally, the Riemann sum lede looks pretty reasonable (and somewhat takes the approach I suggest, although it immediately becomes far too technical following the lede and does not follow the basic rules of WP:LEDE, whereas integral quickly leaps into unduly technical language and symbols. --David Tornheim (talk) 03:18, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

With the exception of the immediately above comparison, I see a whole lot of general moaning with very few specifics. Until then, this is pointless --Deacon Vorbis (talk) 12:32, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

When you say comments lack specifics, do you mean specific articles? How about this one: System of bilinear equations

We can make a list of articles that have the problems described if you with. --David Tornheim (talk) 16:28, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

I find suggestion that science and math articles are the way they are because the editors are ignorant of their audience or worse because they are elitist and purposeful want to alienate part of the audience, insulting, (and very much against the spirit of WP:AGF. Writing articles on technical subjects that are both accessible and correct is not an easy task. Even less so do to the ever existing tension with the core policy of verifiability. The easiest way to write verifiable statements is to stay close to the source, which for technical subjects will often be very technical documents. Of course, one will usually try to put it in more simple language than the source. But given how big the gap is between the language in the source and the ideal level of accessibility here, simplifying the language a lot may still not be enough. Moreover, the more the language is simplified the hard it becomes to verify that the source actually supports the statement. To really bring an article to a level of accessibility suitable for an FA article, ultimately requires a very holistic approach to editing the article. This requires a large time investment from a small number of editors, and is not easy to achieve with lots of contributors adding many tidbits over a long time. TL;DR I think science/math articles are mostly so because nobody has (yet) invested the time and effort to make them better. Since it is so much easier to create technical article which is correct and verifiable, but hard to read this typically happens first.TR 13:31, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

• I think that there are two problems here. The first one is: which is the intended public of the article? An article about a technical mathematical subject can definitely not be understood by everybody. For example, Scheme theory is a fundamental part of algebraic geometry, which is used, among many other applications, in Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. However, it seems impossible to write an article about scheme theory, such that more than the first sentence, and a part of the history section, may be understood by someone who has not, at least, the level of a graduate student in mathematics. Thus the best that can be done is that every scientist or engineer who has encountered the subject of an article in his work can understand what it is, and what is known about it.
• The second problem is the difficulty for filling this objective, difficulty that lies in the competence of the mathematics editors: many of them, often PhD students, have only a partial view of their subject. For this reason, they tend to write only for people who know it already. A similar problem occurs with elementary articles, which are often written for a classroom audience, ignoring that there are many other kinds of readers, with different backgrounds. A typical example was, until March 2013, Simultaneous equations. Until this date, a reader were not told that there are other cases than two linear equations in two unknowns, or that systems of thousands equations and thousands unknown are routinely solved by computers (I cannot provide more recent examples because, when I encounter one, I try to fix it.) D.Lazard (talk) 15:42, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
• "I find suggestion that science and math articles are the way they are because the editors are ignorant of their audience or worse because they are elitist and purposeful want to alienate part of the audience, insulting, (and very much against the spirit of WP:AGF." I agree.
• "The easiest way to write verifiable statements is to stay close to the source, which for technical subjects will often be very technical documents." I do not generally agree. It depends on the article. If the subject is so obscure that no one but experts in the field will have heard about it, then it really doesn't matter if it is too technical.

The concerns I have--which I believe are what this thread is about--are with important areas of math and physics that lay people will almost certainly have heard of. In those cases there will almost always be non-technical sources that are written for lay people. I gave examples above: calculus, plate tectonics. Other examples: Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle, Theory_of_relativity (this Wiki articles starts out reasonably) and can rely on sources written for lay people such as [8]. An above comment talked about systems of equations: In System_of_bilinear_equations it immediately launches into symbols that people with a high school math education would not understand, unless they had taken a linear algebra or matrix methods class--that is completely unnecessary. --David Tornheim (talk) 16:28, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Observing that there are several "pages" in our perview that even in the introductory paragraph, which as I understand it should be the simplest, require at least a collegiate level grounding in the discipline to begin to understand it. This means that the average reader or volunteer cannot make heads or tails of the subject. I suggest that pages like this be strongly encouraged (if not required) to provide a simplified explanation so that we don't become a permanant repository of abstract post-graduate knowledge that belongs better in academic journals or textbooks. Hasteur (talk) 16:40, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Agreed that intro should be the simplest. We don't even mention that the last digit of pi is a three (pi is a palindrome). But seriously, look at these two articles Gaussian beam and Helmholtz equation. A Gaussian beam is an engineering or physics topic that involves solutions to an approximation of the Helmholtz equation under boundary condition. The Helmholtz equation is a mathematical one. Trying to pull the engineering form out of the mathematical article is difficult without knowing mathematical jargon. But the only way to make it palatable to engineering is with engineering jargon. Physical constructs like a resonant cavity are easier to describe but once it delves into abstract mathematics and is an application independent proof, word description are much more difficult to write and convey meaning. The two articles above are some of the easier ones. --DHeyward (talk) 18:36, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing to those two articles that indeed have problems.

I agree that simpler (language) is better.

"Trying to pull the engineering form out of the mathematical article is difficult without knowing mathematical jargon." I am not convinced of that, but I am not concerned with engineers understanding the article--I want lay people to get it. How many people with a high school education have any idea what $\nabla$ means? How many people with a college education know?

"But the only way to make it palatable to engineering is with engineering jargon." Again I disagree. Instead, it would require more words. I think the problem is that whoever is controlling the article wants it to be short, precise and exact, which makes it impossible to understand for lay people who don't know engineering or advanced math symbols. Maxwell's_equations can all be expressed with $\nabla$s, but fortunately the introduction to our article is far more reasonable than that--that's an article that has improved since I first saw it. I do think even that article can be simplified by changing partial differential equations to equations, because most high school grads don't know what a differential equation is, much less a partial differential equation. --David Tornheim (talk) 19:44, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

As this already is a topic here. I find our mathematical articles to be just fine. But they sadly lack examples. For a complex formula, at least on example ought to be given. Examples would help (some or not so few perhaps) of our readers. Of that I'm absolutely certain. Boeing720 (talk) 23:05, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Further, I have studied math at secondary school. And that includes everything from trigonometry to differential calculus. And from complex/imaginay numbers to statistics and probabilities including use of for instance Pascal's triangle and variations of that tranle. But I neither understand that tringle ("nabla") and I must totally agree with User:David Tornheim Boeing720 (talk) 23:15, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

• I have the impression that quite all of the people in this thread know nothing about teaching. Otherwise, they would have known the power of a generic example (g.e.). Obviously, the choice of such a g.e. is a matter of skill, and is highly subjective. Without a prior knowledge of a topic, how to make a distinction between a random example (like in e.g., i.e. example gratia) and a genuine g.e. ? How to know that $3,4,5$ is a g.e. of a rectangle triangle, and that $6,9,13$ is a generic example of the generic triangles, as imbedded in the Kimberling's search key... when you know nothing about triangles ? Let us try with the Simson line article. What is it's largest flaw ? This article says nothing about the Steiner's lines. Another flaw ? The method of proof is to show that $\angle NMP+\angle PML=180^{\circ }$. Who are L,M,N,P ? Another ? Giving an equation before and independently of proving the existence. Another ? Giving the equation and not using it (e.g. to compute the Steiner's deltoid). Another ? A picture is given, and labeled as a "projective generalization". Without any details... and the reader is not confident enough to investigate further. Not to mention the most encyclopedic question: why should we ever care about Simson's lines ? Pldx1 (talk) 15:57, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Connecting this input to my first contribution (way up above) in this thread:

• Re. "why should we ever care about (such-or-such math/science topic)?" – seems another reason to call in references to reliable sources, i.e. (in wiki-speak) to prove the topic passes WP:GNG, and thus is worth caring about.
• Also, using good g.e.'s is a practical criterion for selecting sources that help explaining complex subjects in a broadly understandable way (it doesn't solve all the issues but is a good step in the right direction).

Of course Wikipedia isn't supposed to be a math or science handbook, but that shouldn't prevent us from explaining complex topics in an as understandable way as possible. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:27, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Examples will help, but if the examples use the same level of jargon and advanced symbols as the definition, then it's not a great improvement. Explaining the subject, its significance, its application, its development, etc., and everything possible in plain English makes a big difference. Throwing out a bunch of symbols in technical jargon whether in engineering notation, math notation or philosophical logic, etc. will confuse the lay person. Changing complex numbers from math notation of a + bi (with general example of 1 - i) to electrical engineering notation a + bj (with general example of 1 - j) will not make any difference in readability.

Example: How to improve the Complex Number lede

This is the kind of improvement I would like to see (for Complex number):

Original:

A complex number is a number that can be expressed in the form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers, and i is the imaginary unit (which satisfies the equation i² = −1). [ref omitted] In this expression, a is called the real part of the complex number, and b is called the imaginary part. If $z=a+bi$, then we write $\operatorname {Re} (z)=a,$ and $\operatorname {Im} (z)=b.$

Revised:

A complex number is a special kind of number that is composed of two separate values, the first of which is called the real part and the second of which is called the imaginary part. The general form is a + bi or (a,b), where a and b are real numbers, and i is the imaginary unit (√-1, the Square root of -1).

It starts out with something readable by lay persons, before diving into the more precise definition, rather than starting with the precise definition. I don't see any real loss in precision, but I do see a real improvement in readability for first timers. --David Tornheim (talk) 17:29, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Don't like "special kind of" in the revised example (compare, we don't start the article on "actor" with "An actor is a special sort of person...") – if it weren't "special" in some way we wouldn't have a separate article on it wouldn't we?

But, as it happens, I do like "(√-1, the square root of -1)" better than "(which satisfies the equation i² = −1)" (would avoid "satisfies the equation" as a too verbose way to express this).

In fact, both what I said about the "special..." and the "satisfies..." phrases can be reduced to merely applying the WP:WTW guidance (so not even specifically mathematics-related). What do others think? I'm sort of knowledgeable on some math topics, so I might not be the best reference person to assess this. --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:07, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

I was torn on adding "special kind." The reason for possibly adding it (or some other similar phrase like "unusual") is that it is so rarely used, even by engineers like myself, who have studied it and learned how it can be used for analyzing electric circuits. It is in no way meant as a compliment, which is what WP:WTW is about. Lay people are far more likely to have used or encountered countable, real, negative, rational, irrational, integer, double-precision, continuous, discrete, etc. numbers, which are all taught in high school. It might help the lay person deal with the fact that the second part is called "imaginary"--an unfortunate label, or that it involves the seemingly erroneous √-1. I don't have strong feelings about trying to differentiate a complex number from the kinds of numbers lay people are more likely to have encountered, but I would think some indication that the numbers are only used if very specialized applications (or in advanced math) in the first sentence might be helpful.

I would oppose the "special kind", because, in a certain sense, complex numbers are the most general kind of numbers normally encountered (certainly the most general kind mentioned in the introduction to Number). All the other "normal" numbers (well, or structures isomorphic to them if you want to be fiddly) can be obtained by restrictions of the complex numbers (imaginary part 0 gives the reals, real part rational gives the rationals, real part integer gives the integers, real part non-negative integer gives the proper naturals (as described by the gods K&R for array indices), and real part positive integer gives the old-fashioned integers) . --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:35, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

My main suggestion is to take out a+bi as the starting point, and use pure English for the first sentence. Even if all a lay person is able to understand is the first sentence I proposed, that would leave them with a far better understanding than if they immediately stopped reading when they saw the equation a+ib.

Thanks for the other support. --David Tornheim (talk) 04:10, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

FWIW I strongly dislike your proposed change, because it states outright that complex numbers are pairs of real numbers (false), rather than that they can be represented by pairs of real numbers (true, and helpful when describing them to people who already know about reals but not yet about complexes, but otherwise misses the point). It's like you had an article about fountain pens, and you wrote in the lead that they are mechanical pencils whose refillable lead is liquid — yes, it's a helpful analogy that gets the right idea across, but it's not really what the thing is. Broader point: writing about math and science is hard and writing about it for a general audience is harder. Glib quick attempts generally fail. And you can safely assume that many of us are trying hard at it, and nevertheless frequently failing. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:09, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Please look more carefully: The revised definition does not say that a complex is composed of two real numbers. It says that it has two values, parts, or pieces (or in more technical jargon vector components): one is real and one is imaginary. Of course, it can also be represented in polar form as an angle and a magnitude--but the current article doesn't put that in the lede either. So I agree that a+bi is one representation. I am open to adding the word "represented" which is more technically accurate, especially given the issue of Cartesian vs. polar representations, even though it then adds a level of difficulty in reading, given that most texts start with the Cartesian representation.

Editors might reasonably complain that this discussion should be at the article. If my goal was to improve the complex number article I would make my comments there. The reason I am having it here is because I want to show two things:

(1) The problem as described by Smallbones can be addressed without loss of precision and accuracy. Using this complex numbers as an example.

(2) This kind of fix is opposed at the articles by editors who want the concise version that is incomprehensible to lay people. (Which basically confirms the initial claim that Wikipedia is being elitist by needlessly making article inaccessible to lay people.)

Unfortunately, I think commentators will insist that (1) is impossible as a way to avoid claims in (2) that we are being elitist. --David Tornheim (talk) 20:08, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

The revised version is simply wrong though. If you want to get your ideas off the ground, you need to use an example which is not only "simpler" than the existing but is also accurate. For what it's worth I find the original easier to understand than the revised version, but I did spend five years studying complex analysis so I'm not a lay reader in such matters. I think it would perhaps be useful if the first paragraph included the idea that complex numbers are not part of the number line, but that's for Talk:Complex number. -mattbuck (Talk) 09:47, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Is i = √-1?

• Saying that i is the imaginary unit (√-1, the Square root of -1) would be as wrong as possible. When looking on the plane from above, you see $a+ib$. When looking from below, you see $a-ib$. This is not a definition of $+i$, or of $-i$. This is a definition of above and below (the Amper's choice of orientation). If you don't understand why equation $x^{2}+1=0$ has two solutions, each of them being as good as the other, perhaps you should write about base-ball or literature rather than writing about maths. At a higher level, the Morley's projective plane is obtained by using together the two representations, i.e. using $x+iy:1:x-iy$. This amounts to take full advantage of the existence of the two roots. Pldx1 (talk) 22:25, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

When I studied it in college it was defined by my professors as √-1 and a quick Google search shows articles that agree with that definition. (e.g. W., Weisstein, Eric. "i". mathworld.wolfram.com. Retrieved 2017-10-20.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)). However, there are certainly articles that agree with you too. (e.g. [9]). I agree that $x^{2}+1=0$ has two complex solutions: {(0,1),(0,-1)}, also written as $0+i$ and its conjugate $0-i$, or simply ±$i$. It's an interesting thought to consider $i$ simultaneously as both roots, and based on so many solutions being conjugates, I could see how that also would make sense, but that's not how I was taught. Seems like there is some divergence on this issue. --David Tornheim (talk) 05:19, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

How many numbers are solutions of the equation $x^2+1=0$ ? From this discussion, we can deduce that some blogs are saying one and that other blogs are saying two. When discussing about bolts, we can also say that part of the people are saying that tighten a nut or loosen a nut are two different things, while other people really don't care. In this context, it seems difficult to converge towards some sound and clear article. Pldx1 (talk) 22:02, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

"How many numbers are solutions of the equation $x^{2}+1=0$ ? ...some blogs are saying one and that other blogs are saying two." No. I didn't see any blogs or articles that made a claim that there can be only one solution to that equation. Have you seen any that say that?

What I saw were different definitions of $i$. Some insisted, as you do, that $i$ be defined as the set of both solutions to i² = −1, and others said calling it simply √-1 is fine. --David Tornheim (talk) 22:26, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Since there is an intrinsic clarity problem regarding i, √-1, square root of -1, etc., using the beginning of the article Complex number for an example of how to simplify, may have been an unfortunate choice. --Bob K31416 (talk) 00:32, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

It is equally wrong to say that three is the square root of nine. Wnt (talk) 08:38, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Is $i^{i}=e^{-\pi /2}$

It's going to be real hard to explain how $i^{i}=e^{-\pi /2}$ and with multiple valid solutions without Euler's identity and mappings to the sphere (BTW, there is no cooler equation pulling $e,i$ and $\pi$). --DHeyward (talk) 09:20, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Funny, I was thinking about $e^{i\pi }=-1$, hoping that might clarify. Then I saw someone at the coffee house studying with numerous books cracked open on the theory of relativity with a shirt (like this) that said "√-1 $2^{3}\sum \pi$ ... and it was delicious!" That settled it for me that it is okay use √-1 as the definition. I almost asked him his thoughts on $i=$√-1. I'm adding that shirt as WP:RS. Just kidding. :) --David Tornheim (talk) 15:11, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

I think this example illustrates another problem, which is not really technical vs less technical or less abstract vs abstract, but that editors simply disagree on what a better readable (and still correct) description is supposed to look like. Better readability (even that for wider audiences) is also in the eye of the beholder.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:22, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Indeed. --David Tornheim (talk) 15:14, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Simple Wikipedia's version of Complex Numbers

Now that I have had a chance to look at simple:complex number--which is written with language very similar to what I proposed--I now agree with commentators in #Head-ish_links_to_or_transclusion_of_the_intros_of_Simple_English_articles.3F that directing editors to simple wikipedia is the way to go. I don't know about other editors, but I almost never look at Simple Wikipedia, except when someone specifically mentions it. I know of very few people who are aware of it. This appears to be what it is for. --David Tornheim (talk) 15:22, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

@David Tornheim: This article on complex numbers at simple wikipedia is absolutely horrible. If it's any indication of the quality of articles there, please don't ever refer people to it. --Deacon Vorbis (talk) 04:24, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Geordie language Wikipedia's version of complex numbers

Might be this from Viz. Since this may well baffle people who are not Geordies, it should be pointed out that "Why aye" is a standard Geordie phrase.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 08:15, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Some of those are very cute. I liked the Safari one in particular. --David Tornheim (talk) 17:09, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

arbitrary break

• Regarding a discussion earlier in this section about a reader not knowing the meaning of a mathematical symbol, the Wikipedia page List of mathematical symbols is useful. --Bob K31416 (talk) 19:11, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

I think that part of the issue is that some people expect Wikipedia to teach them about a new subject, like a textbook would. That is not the goal - we are meant to provide a reference work (cf. WP:NOTTEXTBOOK). It isn't that the people who write technical articles don't know about teaching - it's that we specifically are not writing our articles to teach, on purpose. There are several reasons for this. The first is tone - the tone of a textbook is not that of an encyclopedia. The second is related to WP:V. Teaching typically requires making up examples and re-organizing a topic into a new, coherent picture. Our articles are not meant to create new pictures, only to report what is found in the literature. So, if all the literature on a topic is written at a postgraduate level, there is typically no direct way to create a verifiable narrative at an elementary level. The third reason relates to the collaborative nature of Wikipedia editing. Teaching a class requires a perspective, a vision of the field which the teacher conveys. Even two experts in a field will often have subtly different visions about the best way to look at a complex topic. On Wikipedia, we have to arrive at a text that everyone who edits the article can agree on. This requires keeping a very encyclopedic tone and not making certain kinds of interpretive statements about meaning that would be crucial to teaching (these interpretive statements often also go against WP:V). The final reason is that textbooks are intended to be self-contained, to begin from the beginning. Encyclopedia articles are not expected to repeat all of the background necessary to understand a topic - particularly not in the lede. This results in the common complaint that the lede is not understandable to someone who doesn't have the right background, but including that background in every article wouldn't work. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:54, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

• We actually have a Wikipedia mechanism already, as exemplified by Introduction to quantum mechanics. We have a number of these "introduction to..." articles and I think they serve a useful role. I don't think it strays at all from Wikipedia's mission to have these, because if you went and looked online for "introduction to quantum mechanics" you'd easily find a GNG-worthy set of sources to choose from. Wnt (talk) 11:32, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

• • Those "introduction to" articles are content forks, and as such are not really in line with our policies. But, in any case, quantum mechanics is not a particularly "advanced" topic - it is covered in numerous undergraduate level textbooks and there are many popularizations. For articles like that there is no real tension between accessibility and verifiability. The real issue is with topics which are only treated in postgraduate monographs and in journal articles. For example, if nobody has every published an "example" of a particular result, we can't make one up for Wikipedia, even though we would certainly do so in a classroom setting. Even in lower level articles, we would not present as many examples here as we would in a class; our primary goal is to be a reference, rather than to teach for the first time. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:36, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

• • • They're no more content forks than having separate articles for the Beatles and their albums. One an introduction, one to cover the details of a specific process. As I said, there really are sources introducing quantum mechanics. And indeed, if the article cites them, this means that it's not just some Wikipedian trying to think up the easiest way to explain the topic, but a verifiably sourced way of introducing it, and that's a good thing. I will admit that for some topics in current research no proper sourced introduction exists, and there this may not be a good approach. Wnt (talk) 21:03, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

• • • • When we have two articles on the same topic, that's a content fork. Unlike the Beatles and their albums, both quantum mechanics articles are presumably about the same thing: quantum mechanics. There certainly are sources introducing quantum mechanics, and this should be done in our main article, rather than in some secondary "introduction to" article. The typical motivation for the forked "introduction" articles is that someone refused to compromise at the main article and decided to start their own new "introduction" article instead. // At the same time, we should remember WP:NOT - it isn't our goal to teach someone about a topic, our goal is to provide an encyclopedic reference to a topic. Sometimes people use a reference to teach themselves, but that is not the main purpose of our articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:20, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Head-ish links to or transclusion of the intros of Simple English articles?

I've noticed the same issue, but in almost all cases the corresponding Simple English Wikipedia article is really good. I want to propose linking to them for maths and science articles, but frankly I would go further and put the first two or three paragraphs of the Simple: intro in some kind of an automatically-included text box or such. 185.13.106.236 (talk) 21:04, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Great idea! I have also been directed to the Simple-English version, something that no one I know actually uses! People use what Google directs them to--if there is data that says otherwise, I would like to see it. Having our incomprehensible articles direct to, quote from, have an info box quote from, etc. to Simple-English version sounds great. Again, I like your suggestion--and maybe that would solve the problem. So how do I get to the Simple English Wikipedia? That's too complicated for me to figure out!  :) --David Tornheim (talk) 04:45, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

For example, https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_unit or simple:Square root. Someone needs to write {{Simple}} as a blue type=notice {{ambox}}, and then ask on WP:BOTREQ as to which subset of math and science articles it would be best to add it too. It's certainly a non-empty set, and appropriate for a bot because otherwise it would be seen as a personal badge of shame. On the other hand, perhaps there should be a flag to upgrade it to an orange type=content "content warning" for articles where there is consensus that {{simplify}} has been tried without success. 2A02:C7D:45A:1900:3569:4AC7:197D:9E79 (talk) 08:17, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

That sounds like a possible plan. I don't fully understand it. If you try to do it, please let me know, where and I will watch and see if it works out. Maybe propose in the math WikiProject and see what is said there? --David Tornheim (talk) 19:34, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

• There is no doubt that there are some bad mathematics articles out there. But I am more concerned at what seems to be an anti-intellectual undercurrent in this thread. It is genuinely hard to write mathematics in a way that is both correct and understandable to a lay audience. (If it's so easy to write mathematics, why don't the editors here try to simplify some mathematics articles, while staying close to sources, instead of complaining about them? Isn't this the encyclopedia anyone can edit? So go and edit, don't whine that others aren't doing your job for you.)

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics is a standard benchmark for making difficult subjects in mathematics accessible, as is the What is column in the Notices of the AMS. Many topics are made somewhat accessible there, but very few of them would be accessible to the lay audience of a typical Wikipedia reader. I suspect that at least half of the complainants in this thread would level the same complaint against that exposition. Consider, for example, Nigel Hitchin's article What is a gerbe?] Yet that book and column are written by some of the most knowledgeable mathematicians of this generation, and the most talented expositors of difficult concepts. Wikipedia, in contrast, is written by volunteer editors who are often not well-versed on the subject. Generally, Wikipedia editors must err on the side of correctness, and close adherence to sources, often at the expense of felicitously glossing over certain details. We simply don't have as much freedom as the authors of The Princeton Companion or Notices. While there are some really good popular expositions of certain subjects in mathematics, this is the exception rather than the rule. And there are some mathematics articles whose subjects are inherently very complicated things that cannot be expressed easily. That doesn't mean that they should be deleted or dumbed down. But an administrative solution, like more stupid nag templates, is not going to improve matters, and is just going to add visual clutter to articles and piss off a lot of people. If editors had the skill to write this stuff in a way that was understandable to typical readers, while also adhering to our policies and guidelines, they would be doing it already.

Truly, a better approach than attempting to get blood from that stone, would be to try to reach out to some expert mathematicians to assist in writing articles. But I guarantee that this approach is likely to be dead on arrival if you pitch it in the way that this tread comes off, which is dismissive of the "elite" (that is, experts who know things about the subject that they write about). The problem with bad Wikipedia math articles is not that editors know things. On the contrary, it's that they don't know things. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:14, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

The audience for the Princeton Companion according to our article is described in The_Princeton_Companion_to_Mathematics#Target_audience: "The core sections of the Companion are aimed primarily at readers who are already familiar with mathematics at the undergraduate level." That seems to me too high a level for us. I find it interesting that The_Princeton_Companion_to_Mathematics#Target_audience describes our math articles as "concise," which to me is exactly the problem. I don't know the volume well enough to say whether I think we should use its approach or not.

"Generally, Wikipedia editors must err on the side of correctness, and close adherence to sources...." That is fine, but that does not prohibit simplicity.

"Wikipedia, in contrast, is written by volunteer editors who are often not well-versed on the subject." That's a different problem. I do not believe that is what we are discussing.

"anti-intellectual undercurrent" I don't think anyone here wants to make the articles anti-intellectual--I certainly don't. I want lay people to have a portion where they can have some minimal understanding of key aspects of the subject without having to first get specialized knowledge in advanced math or physics material. I do support 100% precise an accurate definitions, but not in such a way that the lay reader will see nothing but an incomprehensible article of jargon and alien symbols that make them run for the hills. We can do BOTH. [I see you made some revisions while I was writing this reply.] --David Tornheim (talk) 19:31, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

"That is fine, but that does not prohibit simplicity." No, indeed it does not "prohibit simplicity". But it does mean that our treatment is directly constrained by existing sources on a subject. For example, you seem to have prejudged the Princeton Companion as too advanced to rely on for our exposition, but I know of very few other expository sources on (say) the ideal class group. Do you know of a source on this topic that is aimed at the audience that you have in mind? Furthermore, I speak from experience that it is often true that by writing things without using the correct language, one often does say things that actually are wrong (or easily construed wrongly). I agree that it's a worthy goal to attempt to make things as understandable as possible, but not at the expense of stating things properly and correctly (and in accord with sources). It's not a question here of "doing both". We do only one thing: summarize sources. The extent to which sources make things clear to a lay audience is directly related to the extent to which our articles do. That's the way it should be. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:57, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

"But it does mean that our treatment is directly constrained by existing sources on a subject." True.

"We do only one thing: summarize sources." Yes. We also quote from them.

"You seem to have prejudged the Princeton Companion as too advanced to rely on for our exposition...." No. It sounds like fine WP:RS. If you can read and summarize it, that's fine. But the summary of material written at a level above the lay person should be made accessible to our target audience. According to the Manual of Style Guideline:

The goal is to make using Wikipedia easier and more intuitive by promoting clarity and cohesion, while helping editors write articles with consistent and precise language, layout, and formatting. Plain English works best. Avoid ambiguity, jargon, and vague or unnecessarily complex wording.

Of course, in this case precise does tend to conflict with Plain English.

"Do you know of a source on ideal class group that is aimed at the audience that you have in mind?" I'm not familiar with that subject or what the Companion says about. The Companion is probably fine WP:RS for the subject, given the publisher, and may be the "best," but extensively quoting it directly would not just be a copyright problem, but might be too high a level. If you have a section you want to quote as an example, that might be interesting especially in comparison to how our article handles it. If you wish to do that at the article, that's fine with me--just provide a link so we know.

"Furthermore, I speak from experience that it is often true that by writing things without using the correct language, one often does say things that actually are wrong (or easily construed wrongly)." Yes, I agree. That's why I was very careful in writing what I did on complex numbers and I see a number of people have attacked!  :) Nevertheless, if we have enough eyes on an article as there is in this discussion it shouldn't be a problem if the Plain English is reworked.

"The extent to which sources make things clear to a lay audience is directly related to the extent to which our articles do." I don't agree. An expert in the field can summarize a complex source in simpler language--ideally Plain English. However, I agree with you that if there are good sources that are simpler, then we should try to include them. I see no problem with referring to complex sources--if they are the best and most accurate that is available on the subject, just as would be done in a journal article. One goal to consider is to always have a section that directs lay readers to introductory sources on the subject, if they exist. That might, in fact, be the Companion. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:05, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

"Avoid ambiguity, jargon, and vague or unnecessarily complex wording." Absolutely! Let's avoid vague and unnecessarily complex wording. Let's use precise wording that is exactly as complex as needed to convey the matter, and no more. But, to say what a compact space is, we must say that "A topological space X is compact if, for every collection of open sets whose union is X, there is a finite subcollection whose union is also X." This is precise and exactly as complex as needed to say that thing is, and it can readily be sourced to any of dozens or hundreds of introductory topology textbook. There is already a perfectly precise language for doing exactly what you are asking for. It seems to me, however, that you wish to advocate for editorial practices that encourage vague wordings, and novel interpretations that are not found in reliable sources, or perhaps to present things in a substantially different context than found in sources with the goal of improving exposition. Our leeway in doing those two things is highly constrained by policy. Our articles should be close to the original sources, and novel interpretations and explanations must be kept to a minimum, even those that are for the sake of making the matter easier for readers. I don't personally have a problem sometimes suspending the usual rules, WP:IAR dammit, if I think I can get away with it here or there to improve the exposition. But I believe it is wrong to encourage this in our editors: policy is on the side of scrupulous adherence to sources, in all circumstances. Sławomir Biały (talk) 00:37, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Another example: "The field of complex numbers is the algebraic extension of the real numbers generated by the imaginary unit. The imaginary unit $i$, satisfies the equation $i^{2}=-1$, so that a complex number $z$ can be expressed as a sum $z=x+iy$ where $x$ and $y$ are two real numbers called, respectively, the real and imaginary parts of the complex number $z$. Complex numbers can be added and multiplied as polynomials in the variable $i$, with the rule $i^{2}=-1$ imposed. They can also be divided, so that the set of complex numbers forms a field. The most important aspect of the complex number system is that every non-constant polynomial equation with complex coefficients admits a solution, the fundamental theorem of algebra, a property that the real number system lacks." Sławomir Biały (talk) 00:48, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Please participate in the RFC on automatic transwiki links to Simple from {{confusing}}. 83.137.1.217 (talk) 22:51, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

The Simple Wikipedia article on complex numbers [10] is confusing in its own way. The first sentence refers to normal numbers - but normal numbers have nothing to do with complex numbers, and moreover complex numbers are "normal" in the informal sense (cf. NPOV). So the use of the word "normal" in any way should be avoided there. The second paragraph says complex numbers were "invented" - the issue whether things are "invented" or "discovered" is not important enough to bring up there, but in any case there is no reason to say they were invented (again, cf. NPOV). The sentence "With exponentiation, there is a problem" is POV and moreover is not found in the cited source. I could go on, but it is important to keep in mind that one reason that articles do not use flowery language is that we need to follow WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:WEIGHT. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:52, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

A broader point is that Simple has different standards for content than En. It should not be linked to as if it were a subset of En, because the target of our links may well not meet our standards (as it appears this example doesn't). And of course the reverse is true: we should not require our articles to meet the standards (e.g. for vocabulary) of Simple. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:10, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Use of clarifying example in lead

Sometimes the use of a short simple example can clarify the lead for those less comfortable with abstractions. [11] --Bob K31416 (talk) 21:00, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Update – It was reverted as not helpful. [12] --Bob K31416 (talk) 21:10, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

I'll ping the reverting editor User:Deacon Vorbis to invite a comment here. --Bob K31416 (talk) 21:13, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

quotation: "the complex number system is the field extension of the ordinary real numbers by the imaginary unit i". Once again, we have a pompous writer of empty sentences. What could be a field extension ... except from the concept obtained afterwards by some generalization from how the so-called complex numbers were obtained from the real ones ? Pldx1 (talk) 22:01, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

It's a succinct description in the modern language of mathematics. Just because you don't understand it doesn't make the writer "pompous", or the sentence "empty". Instead, you could keep reading and find out more; that sentence doesn't underpin what follows. Or, you know, you could just make vague anti-intellectualist complaints instead. --Deacon Vorbis (talk) 23:55, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

The sentence is neither empty nor pompous. It concisely and clearly defines the subject of the article (the complex numbers), unlike the vague way in which the first paragraph describes them. Furthermore, one can infer how the algebraic operations are performed on complex numbers, which is done at greater length in the rest of the paragraph (which, incidentally, does describe what is meant by the first sentence of that paragraph). In any case, I have changed the word field extension to the word algebraic extension, which is also correct, and probably easier on the reader. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:08, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Indeed; it wasn't helpful. Saying 3 + 2i is a complex number gives no actual insight into what one is or how to work with them. If you had looked as far as the first section, you would have seen just that. The lead is not the place for a superficial example. --Deacon Vorbis (talk) 23:55, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Here's the 1st paragraph of the lead of the article Complex number that we are discussing, including the simple example that was later removed.

A complex number is a number that can be expressed in the form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers, and i is the imaginary unit (which satisfies the equation i² = −1).^[1] In this expression, a is called the real part of the complex number, and b is called the imaginary part. If $z=a+bi$, then we write $\operatorname {Re} (z)=a,$ and $\operatorname {Im} (z)=b.$ A simple example of a complex number is 2 + 3i, where 2 is the real part and 3 is the imaginary part.

Without the example it is perfectly clear for readers who already know what a complex number is, but for others it probably isn't. The description in terms of a's, b's, and using terms like real numbers, imaginary units, $\operatorname {Re} (z),$ and $\operatorname {Im} (z),$ may not be that easy to understand for those who don't have much experience using these terms. Numbers like 2 and 3 are more understandable than terms like a, b, real numbers, etc. I think that a concrete example in the lead really helps in this situation, i.e. the statement, "A simple example of a complex number is 2 + 3i, where 2 is the real part and 3 is the imaginary part." And again, the example is not for those who already know what a complex number is, but for those who don't, who may not even read past the first paragraph of the lead without the help of the example.

Thanks for your opinion and I hope others will express theirs too. --Bob K31416 (talk) 04:44, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Wow. It really shows just how difficult it is to make things easier to read. Maybe try an WP:RfC? I will be happy to comment on one. I would be curious to see what happens if you did. --David Tornheim (talk) 05:01, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Update – A different editor restored the example to the lead. (diff) --Bob K31416 (talk) 12:12, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Update – The example was removed by a different editor (diff) and a discussion section on the article's talk page was created, Talk:Complex_number#Examples. --Bob K31416 (talk) 19:17, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

To emphasize concretely how the committee nature of Wikipedia writing makes things challenging, and not only the "example" issue, look at the overall lede of complex number. At some point today, I swapped the second and third paragraphs, thinking that the paragraph about the geometrical complex plane is more introductory than the one about the algebraic definition. Another editor switched them back because they have the opposite opinion. Neither of us is objectively "right" - it is simply a matter of opinion about how to present the material. This trivial issue is just the tip of the iceberg compared to many other decisions that would need to be made to write a genuinely layperson accessible article on the topic. The kind of coherent vision that a single author can bring to a pedagogical treatment is very difficult to maintain here, and to establish it requires, essentially, for a single Wikipedia author to write an article rather than a group. What we can all agree with is to follow WP:V and WP:NPOV, and to use those as a standard to avoid injecting too much of our own personal interpretation into articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:25, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

It looks like the editing there has degenerated from a simple consideration of whether or not to put an example in the lead to a major rewrite of the lead. It's as if the lead has contracted a mental disorder. --Bob K31416 (talk) 08:13, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

The problem is simply too few articles

Above I mentioned introduction to quantum mechanics as a good option; but with complex numbers the problems are even more apparent. We have too many people thinking that things don't "deserve" separate articles, who leave a mountain of stuff crammed into a sardine tin, and then wonder why people can't follow the details. Things we should have for complex numbers include:

• History of complex numbers. Incredibly, the article actually applies WP:summary style with a history section in brief --- that links to a longer history section in the same article! No, no, no, no, that's not how you do it, guys.

• Operations with complex numbers. We should do this in summary style in the main article, giving examples and relevant high-level information, but this should be pursued at length in a proper sub-article.

• Polar form of complex numbers. Note that a number of the complex operations need to refer to polar form to make sense. In the main article, this section follows the other, but once properly split, it can be referred to more conveniently as needed. We may also want a separate article on the complex plane.

• Complex field is a different, more specialized topic.

• We should also have a separate article encompassing the various ways at points in the text in which the complex numbers are treated as a mathematical set.

• Matrix representation of complex numbers, with some more informative examples to show why this is useful.

• Complex analysis is, thankfully, a separate article, but the summary style relationship (what is covered and how) might use a reexamination.

• Physical applications of complex numbers are described in a grab-bag format. There is some risk of it being called a "coatrack". If split as a separate article, this would help to emphasize that we should have secondary sources that enumerate these applications. Each application typically has its own article, but there is definitely room for a high-level article considering them all.

• Generalizations of complex numbers should work the same way - we ought to have sources beyond Wikipedia that make the statement of what is considered one of these, which we can use to navigate the sub-articles.

Once we split the complex numbers article into these ten components, we will have room to both give a rigorous mathematical statement and to explain what that statement means. Wnt (talk) 11:52, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Do you intend to work on any of the things that you mentioned above? --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:42, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Those forks all sound great. For organization, I would prefer something that looks more like the classification system you would see used in index cards in card catalogs, such as [13]:

• complex numbers--history
• complex numbers--operations
• complex numbers--polar form
• complex numbers--matrix representation
• complex numbers--applications
• complex numbers--generalizations

However, I have never seen this done for any articles, so it probably violates some style guide.

Do I intend to work on these? Possibly. Creating them and plopping in the appropriate text shouldn't be too hard, although we would probably want consensus before creating any new fork, rather than creating it only to see it get merged back to complex numbers. The problem for me in working on this subject, is that although I learned certain aspects thoroughly decades ago, I have little familiarity with the sources. There were no on-line sources back then!  :) I looked in some of my math books from college and I can't find anything, not in my Calc. book or even my 26th CRC (which apparently is now collectible!). My Signals and Systems book probably uses it, and very likely my circuits book in storage. But I doubt ancient E.E books are appropriate as refs.

So, I am happy to work on simplifying (into Plain English) the stuff that is in the article that no lay person would have a hope of understanding, especially if we have the sources already. However, adding new material that requires new sources is not something I would be interested in delving into, unless someone can point to excellent sources that are easy to use for our purposes. For me making the material accessible to lay people is important, whereas making it only comprehensible to math majors does not interest me at all. And, of course, I was not a math major--I just used the complex numbers to analyze sinusoidal functions in circuits, with systems and various transforms to the frequency domain (like Fourier transform, Laplace transform and Z transform), and E-M waves) (e.g. Analysis of E-M waves) and perhaps also in modern physics with the Schrödinger equation. I had forgotten just how incredibly useful complex numbers are for so many things.

I just found this: WikiUniversity's Complex Numbers. --David Tornheim (talk) 19:10, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

@Bob K31416: I don't see any reason not to do something with this article - that internal summary style bit is ridiculous, and some of the other reorganization may be similarly easy to do. An issue with splitting all the sections is that some have unreferenced tags, which is not good for a section but even worse for an article. @David Tornheim: The library of Congress thing you link doesn't actually have all those headings, so I'm not sure if you simply want titles with two dashes in them, which indeed seems like the wrong style. I think renaming articles if need be is a pretty minor issue, though a lot of people love to discuss it - probably best just to make a good split that leaves a good standalone article and proper summary style links and let someone else argue over what to name it. All this said ... I've had bad luck with math articles; there seem to be a fair number of people about who don't want anything touched, and I mean anything, but I suppose it's worth a try. Wnt (talk) 22:40, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

I raised this suggestion at Talk:complex number and got almost unanimous opposition to everything except possibly the history section split. The good news is that while I doubt I'll do much to touch that article, I might still feel free to start some other article and let that be argued at AfD. If I do I might steer closer to my preference though and take on a few narrower, more basic, GNG-able categories like multiplication of complex numbers with the idea in mind of something closer to a hundred-way split. ;) Wnt (talk) 11:58, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I would advise strongly against creating the article multiplication of complex numbers, for two reasons. Firstly, a discussion of the product of complex numbers is elementary and belongs at the main complex number article. Secondly, such a proposal goes against the very clear and explicit consensus at complex number. I doubt very much that it would be subjected to an AfD. In the unlikely event that you have anything significant to say about multiplication that is not already mentioned in the main article, it would be merged in. Otherwise, such a newly created article would simply be redirected to complex number as a WP:REDUNDANTFORK. In any case, the proper place for such discussions is not Jimbo's talk page, but either WT:WPM or Talk:Complex number. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:26, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

@Sławomir Biały: Respectfully I have no interest in being told what articles I can't try to write on Wikipedia. The complex numbers article fails to explain basics like the addition of angles in polar coordinates, nor will it allow room for exploration of specialized topics like computer algorithms. Most importantly, it will never be comprehensible to the average reader who actually wants to learn how to multiply complex numbers. The topic passes GNG and any proposed merge should readily be contested. Just to start with the first two or three pages of search results [14][15][16][17][18][19] Wnt (talk) 19:03, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Is one free to edit against the solid consensus of others in the discussion? Sure. But what's the point? You're edits will simply be ondone, and might possibly be construed as disruptive. Yes, you can find web tutorials on how to multiply complex numbers. A reader wanting to learn that skill should do some exercises. We don't do tutorials or exercises, we're a reference work. Sławomir Biały (talk) 19:08, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

You make a point that a project you participate in really would be best off without other contributors. Also that WP:NOTTEXTBOOK, like most parts of that policy whenever they are mentioned, is applied with scrupulous disregard for what it actually says. Nonetheless, pursuing this exercise might be instructive, if it helps establish that the math articles are incomprehensible by design and intent. Wnt (talk) 22:51, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I.e., WP:POINT. I should add that I am somewhat alarmed at the lack of quality of the sources you have brought to this discussion. They consist of five self-published web tutorials and one self-published paper on the archive. Such sources are not considered to be reliable sources. A further, more nuanced discussion of the sources that you wish to turn into an article can be made either at Talk:Complex number (in a separate section), or at WT:WPM, or at WP:AFC. But an article based on sources such as these is very unlikely to be suitable for Wikipedia, under WP:NOT policy and other editorial policies and guidelines (WP:POVFORK, WP:RS). Sławomir Biały (talk) 02:04, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

It alarms me that you are so eager to run through and dismiss my illustrative sources from universities, companies, and academics as "self-published" and unsuitable, yet you are unperturbed by the two "completely unsourced" main sections, with six subsections, that have been tagged on complex number since June 2013. How is that? Wnt (talk) 10:31, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

This would be a tu quoque fallacy even if it were true, but I am not "unperturbed". I already noted in my reply to your proposal that the article is not very good as it is. These sections should have sources. Indeed, most of the article is lacking sources, and lacks source-content integrity. But the sources you have found are not reliable sources for this sort of thing. And, as far as I can tell, nothing about your proposal would improve the sourcing situation. On the contrary, my forking out the better sections, your proposal risks leaving behind an article with even poorer sources. Perhaps you would like to address that actual problem with the article rather than creating new problems with this proposal. Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:20, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

One reason that some things remain unreferenced so long is just that nobody has taken the time to add one of the many published references. When references are added, though, they need to be to reliable sources, which for basic articles like complex number will usually mean textbooks and possible intro-level magazines such as Mathematics Magazine published by the MAA. Random webpages, blog posts, handouts, etc. are not the kind of high-quality sources that we should use on these articles. There may be other fields where those are the best sources available, but fortunately in mathematics we have many professionally published book and articles that we can use. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:56, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

If it's good enough for a college class or an educational site, it's good enough for Wikipedia. Any source is better than no source at all. Even if the article had professionally published references the readers couldn't access, it would still be highly desirable to add college-based handouts that the readers can actually access. Wnt (talk) 18:43, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Wrong. Once again, please see WP:RS. Reliable sources under these circumstances are, as Carl notes, textbooks published by scholarly publishing houses with a reputation for scientific accuracy and peer reviewed secondary sources. Just like any other science, really. I have given some examples of reliable sources in some of the previously unsourced sections of the complex number article (reliable textbooks, reference works, and peer reviewed secondary sources). Self-published sources should generally not be used if there are other sources available, even though they may be more accessible to some readers. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:51, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

The problem is simply too many articles

Adding subsection for discussion, any takers?

It's an encyclopedia, not a place to post your favourite "how-to" or personal "simplification" to "compete" against the main article. Edit that article. -- Begoon 12:19, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, a massive effort was made to fork the tensor article, resulting in three separate articles: tensor, tensor (intrinsic definition), tensor field. Editors are insistent on artificially specializing the main "tensor" article to "tensor on a vector space", even though such a distinction really does not exist in any reasonable sense in practice. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:44, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Yang–Baxter equation will either need a good rewrite or if that's not going to be allowed, it will need quite a few new articles to allow the topic to be explained from the point of view of the different ways it is used in practice. The whole point of Wikipedia's advanced math and theoretical physics articles is to present topics from textbooks and make these accessible to the lay public, but that may mean giving the perspective from different textbooks that use the Yang-Baxter equation in totally different ways. The fact that all these different ways are different versions of the same underlying mathematical framework may be true, but that's not helpful to the readers. The current article gives the perspective from quantum group theory, which is quite hard to understand for lay people, even those with a scientific background who would be willing to study the topic for a few weeks. But it is also explained in this book in a way that's much more accessible to lay people, but that requires a "physics writing style" that most math editors here do not like. Count Iblis (talk) 19:38, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that article is written from a very narrow perspective. Sławomir Biały (talk) 02:14, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Mathematicians are to blame too

Mathematicians unnecessarily made math infinitely complicated. Count Iblis (talk) 01:44, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Help me

Hii Jimbo sir, sorry to disturb, My name is Naman Mishra, and I am from Shahdol Madhya Pradesh India, my account has been closed in sockpuppet, account this Nm52664 saying that you are a sockpuppet, but I have no other The other does not run the account, even if I did not make any mistake, my account was closed, saying that your account meets it I do not run another account Please explain to someone I'm very upset Or you help me. But this not my account virajmishra please sir please help me😭😭 please unblock my account, i can't login and don't understand your any administrator.. block my ip address again and again... please You help me now, please sir Even if I did not make any mistake, I was blocked, and neither did I run another account besides Nm52664 please help please Tell me in detail.

A comedy of errors and vicious policy.

To begin with, it is kind of silly to try to deceive us by saying that you are not User:Virajmishra when you yourself (on that account) have identified yourself by this name. You obviously don't understand how Wikipedia works or what it can track, though it seems a bit late to figure out now.

But the other half of that is that everything I feared from the "global lock" proposal has come to pass. The proponents said we had to deal with mega-spammers who were going to deluge the projects in ads. What we have here is one guy who made an attempt to write an article about himself, thinking that was something you could do on Wikipedia. That was a misunderstanding, but did you have to go from the first "welcome to Wikipedia" to the final "global lock" just over two months over this? I feel like we could have done better - there are some legitimate ways to promote yourself on WMF projects, including the user pages he keeps trying to make -- PROVIDED they go with some public-interest NON self promotional editing. If he uploaded a bunch of photos of people other than himself and things other than what are connected to him, then he would have the credits up on each image page. We are underrepresented by Indian editors - there are all sorts of things he could have photoed that we would have wanted. So I mean this is a tragedy in the sense that both he and we could have settled on a deal -reasonable visibility as a user in exchange for good work- and instead we have a bureaucratic wasteland. The fault certainly is not all ours but it isn't all his either. Wnt (talk) 11:35, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

For knowledge

Example taken from Swedish Wikipedia
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndardiskussion:Skottniss#Ingen_DANs_p.C3.A5_rosor.2C_men_tillsammans_.C3.A4r_vi_starka.21
Direct in Swedish from one admin to another:
Headline: Ingen DANs på rosor, men tillsammans är vi starka!
Hej
Kul du fortsätter som admin ett år till. Vi behöver ett starkt team som kan samarbeta när det blåser. Jag har skickat ett mail till dig. MVH "an admin"

Translated:
Headline: No DANce on roses, but together are we strong!
Hi/Hello
Nice you continue as admin one year more. We need a strong team which can collaborate when it blows/are blowing. I have send a mail to you. (MVH =a greeting) "an admin"

The capitalization of DAN , I guess relates to their successful ONE YEAR blocking of one of Swedish Wikipedia's true pioneers, User:Dan Koehl. It's difficult to see any other reason for the capitalization. That user has caused me some (technical) troubles at a talk-page, I presume he lives in Stockholm, I don't. But that "an admin" and another one (not the receiver of message above) , have recently, both with less than 600 edits here, began some kind of campaign here, which well may include some kind of "chain" to "friends" in order to establish consensus for their tasks (or quest) here at English Wikipedia. All in my personal opinion, naturally. I think and hope this information at least can be noted somehow. Sorry if I disturbed. Boeing720 (talk) 18:05, 27 October 2017 (UTC) (Swedish by passport and "look")

Well, a lot of good users get blocked, on various wikipedias, but User:Dan_Koehl can still edit on enwiki (English Wikipedia), even though blocked on svwiki (Swedish WP) since 21 Jan 2017. There have been several inter-admin disputes on svwiki, hence the one-year admin term limits imposed since 2006, and some Swedish users have been very picky about only 99% correct Swedish translations, but with {NUMBEROFADMINS} on svwiki as "68" then there should be enough admins to sort matters there. Plus some of the other-language wikipedias might welcome translators to their pages, such as the Kiswahili Wikipedia has been welcoming. There are lots of opportunities in many languages.-Wikid77 (talk) 19:33, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps not all admins there function the same way as here ? Boeing720 (talk) 00:27, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

What is the alt-right?

Everyone is talking about "fake news" and the "alt-right". But what is the alt-right? When I do a Google search, the first result is alt-right, which says the term is "loosely defined". As Wikipedia is not a dictionary, there should be some other source that defines what it is; but the world is what it is, and Wikipedia must say something definitive to the effect of what the alt-right is.

I'm extremely unhappy with that article, and have been for a long time. It has WP:COATRACK sourcing that doesn't really evaluate the quality of the references, links such as Sailer Strategy are promotional for largely-irrelevant people. Overall, it's unclear whether the alt-right is an internet movement, a political philosophy, a white-nationalist movement, or something else. The inclusion of 25 references in the first 3 paragraphs of a Wikipedia article is also highly unusual.

As a result, it is almost impossible to determine what the implications of saying someone is part of the alt-right, or associated with the alt-right.

While this page is "not a place to publicize arbitrary on-wiki disputes", due to the high-profile nature of the dispute I feel I have no other choice. For better or for worse, many people believe the "alt-right" is what Wikipedia says it is, Wikipedia must either say it is something, or make clear that it is a nebulous term used primarily for emotional impact and linguistic warfare rather than a coherent concept. power~enwiki (π, ν) 17:27, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

PS. While the discussion above focuses on the coverage of natural science topics, I find the coverage of social science topics overall to have similar problems. In particular, Government is in a disgracefully incomplete state for a 15-year-old encyclopedia. power~enwiki (π, ν) 17:29, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Re "the first result is alt-right, which says the term is 'loosely defined' " – I think that article is referring to a loosely defined group of people, i.e. not cohesive, rather than a loosely defined term. Also, I tried pressing alt-right on my keyboard and nothing happened. :) --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:51, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, Bob's right. But if this question is about how to improve an article, the response is the same as everywhere, do research eg. [20] and write it up. Discussing whatever needs to be discussed on the talk page. (At any rate, the term "alt-right" was invented to be decidedly un-emotional) -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:37, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

It's the nemesis of the current political system based on freedom and democracy. Count Iblis (talk) 01:57, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

It seems somewhat alarming to categorize the men's rights movement under the "alt-right" banner and then make that general statement. After all, saying that men should not be subject to register for the draft if women are not, or that male soldiers should not be subject to any grooming requirement or physical criterion that women are not, is simply plain vanilla liberalism. Now yes, I did check, the people they listed are sourced as "alt-right", and you can surely source the overall generalization also, though the article doesn't actually give a cite for that. But stack enough vague generalizations about political groups, eventually it all goes completely crazy. I mean, never forget the heroic Jewish soldiers awarded the Iron Cross for fighting for the Axis. (see Continuation War) Wnt (talk) 11:44, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

In many circles, "alt-right" is just the latest political pejorative. It is the heir to "tea party" and "neocon." That is the loose definition that is liberally applied even though the actual politics are quite different. --DHeyward (talk) 13:14, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

• Alt-Shift-Delete-right is more dangerous: Wait, it's Ctrl-Alt-Del that might reboot your computer. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:55, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

But pressing Shift-right (the righthand shift key) and holding for 8 seconds could turn on/off the Filter Keys slow-input mode for the keyboard. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:09, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

No article on yesterday's JFK files release

Jimbo, notwithstanding the "not news" policy, with "JFK files released" being the #1 trending item right now, I think many if not most readers might come to Wikipedia to get some info on yesterday's release. Something is wrong with our project, I'm not sure what, since we do not have an article specifically on the release as yet. There is some info updated to President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, but most readers will likely not find that. Maybe our main page should have a box for suggestions as to current affairs topics that obviously deserve their own article "today"? Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:09, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree on "Something is wrong with our project" and I think we are overwhelmed with biopages about every person who ever kicked a ball, wrote a book, sang a song (etc.), where perhaps our categories need to separate and triage the biopages from others, and prioritize for celebrity coverage. Just too many millions of people, and it is a vast flood of pages. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:10, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree. Its ridiculous that we have such a low bar for Blps. They should have to go through a much more stringent approval process as the self promotion usage is obvious. Also, there should be a special site wide cull of Blps by admins, imo. Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:26, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

The newly released files [21] aren't all that exciting and don't need their own article.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 15:21, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I hate to use this link, but WP:SOFIXIT. We're not a news site, but if articles lack content, just add it. Also, agree with Ian above that no new article is necessary. -- Begoon 15:29, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

♦IanMacM♦ and Begoon, it'll definitely have its own article after more people read the content of yesterday's release; that's for sure, when even CNN has a front page paragraph about White House discussions re: sabotaging airplane parts that were being sent from Canada to Cuba. Re: WP:SOFIXIT, I'd love to but I am not allowed to edit USA politics articles, which this might be seen as connected to...like most everything else in 2017. Anyhow, my point is that I can't figure out why we're so slow out of the box with new articles, and I still think the "suggestion box" on the main page is a good idea, but I want some feedback on that idea before I do that box, if, indeed, the main page is changeable by a non-admin. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:48, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

You do all that. I'll just watch. -- Begoon 15:55, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

You know about WP:NOTNEWS, so surely you know about WP:DEADLINE, yet you still come here asking this question? Jauerback^dude?/_dude. 15:57, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

The "#1 trending item" on what? Twitter? Facebook? The Pirate Bay? xHamster? World's Lamest Critic (talk) 16:22, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

The date of the release and the ability of a president to pick and choose what was released was a direct consequence of this particular law, so I don't see why that is a bad article to use for a review of the content subsequently released. I mean, an article about an Olympics can include everything from the construction of the arena to its inevitable status as a decaying public eyesore, and this is the same way. Just give it some good redirects. As a bonus, the inevitable AFD nominators will really have to do some gymnastics to make their argument this time. Wnt (talk) 17:05, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

I have created redirect "JFK files" etc. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:10, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikid77, great, thank you. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:02, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

We're NOTNEWS. I think that means we are still not trendy news. --DHeyward (talk) 17:37, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

This release contains 6,685 items and is much more historical and encyclopedic than trendy. I just find the time lapse weird and illustrative of a vacuum of editorial interest and I can't figure out why that is. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:32, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

And if they add anything to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, it should be added there. Same for Lee Harvey Oswald. The release itself is inherently encyclopedic and it sounds as if you are implying there might be some sort of fringe conspiracy theory by noticing nits of detail that are not encyclopedic in any shape or form. We hardly cover conspiracy theories and we certainly shouldn't be creating them with that kind of mindset. --DHeyward (talk) 01:13, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

The most remarkable thing about the release of the files is that there's nothing remarkable about them. As one news source put it "No one will remember in years to come where they were when they heard about the JFK assassination classified document dump of 2017." A sentence or so in the relevant articles is all we need at this point. If it eventually turns into a big deal it might merit its own article at that time. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:11, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

"MR. BELIN: Is there any information involved with the assassination of President Kennedy which in any way shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was in some way a CIA agent or an agen---EOF reached---". Yup, nothing to see here folks, move on, the mice have belled the cat and report complete confidence in the results. As if. Nonetheless, reporters report, they found a bunch of this and that to put in stories, and now we can stick it in our articles. We may not find what we're looking for but there's always a chance some reader finds what nobody looked for; that's our purpose. Wnt (talk) 14:29, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

@Wnt: Regarding your suggestion that the remaining redactions about CIA involvement are still suspicious, I suggest there is a more benign explanation. It's well known that Oswald's visit to the USSR and his communist activism in New Orleans and Texas attracted a lot of FBI and CIA attention at the time. I suggest that if CIA agents tried to get close to him, through his friends, family, work, or otherwise, then the details in such testimony as you quote are likely descriptions of operational methods which are probably still considered too sensitive to release. The idea that Oswald took any direction from the CIA has been uniformly rejected by everyone who has seen all the testimony and investigation products. If you know of counterexamples, I'd like to see them. Some conspiracy theories are so draining on public attention and such a waste of time that it's not good practice to try to sensationalize the slow ark of moral freedom of information with every drop of new releases as involved parties move off duty. There are far more important actual conspiracies in the present than the worst conspiracies old enough to be subject to declassification releases. Not that there's anything wrong with integrating the new releases into existing articles, it's just a waste of time in my opinion, and questionable placement of effort at best. 185.13.106.209 (talk) 13:50, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

You're telling me that, like other Gods, the CIA is something that I have to take on blind faith. Wnt (talk) 14:39, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Not at all, it's just that theories implicating the CIA have been rejected by everyone who has ever seen all the documents, so I'm only suggesting that covering up such evidence would involve a far larger conspiracy than the CIA working with Oswald in the first place, by people with compelling motives and easy opportunities over the years to replace such pertinent documents with forgeries, so we wouldn't even be having this conversation, and is many times less likely than that the remaining witheld portions describe getting close to Oswald by the old pretend-to-be-long-lost-classmate trick or looking through his things while he was at work by the old invite-the-wife-to-a-Tupperware-party trick or some such that the CIA still does, and this would tip off current investigation subjects who think they've met a long lost classmate or get invited to a daycare-provided Tupperware party. I mean, how much incremental information can we possibly get on the question when everyone who has seen the redactions all says the same thing? 185.13.106.209 (talk) 16:30, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Just a side comment but it's been recently declassified that the following film was used by the FBI for counterintelligence training. [22] --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:51, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Lots of articles about the new contents, whether anyone here thinks its important should not really matter in terms of the encyclopedia. Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:31, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Trouble in Portuguese-Speaking

I seriously recommend that you check the conduct of administrators in Portuguese-speaking WP, you will end up with legal problems if you do not act.

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[[30]] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.9.162.251 (talk) 12:45, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

WMF budget 2005

Quite a contrast

Peter Damian (talk) 17:46, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Successful things grow.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:50, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

But to what end? That's really the question. Carrite (talk) 02:23, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

For Wikipedia, I always prefer my original formulation: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." For Wikimedia, "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment." I'm sure you've heard these expresssions before.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:41, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Sounds good to me and I expect that requires financial support. --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:34, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Are you also working on making a figure for the corresponding table for the current budget? --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:30, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Springer Nature blocks access to certain articles in China

[31] According to this Reuters article, Cambridge University Press did the same in August, but later reversed the decision after an outcry. Springer says: “This action is deeply regrettable, but has been taken to prevent a much greater impact on our customers and authors ...This is not editorial censorship...” —Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:25, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

On this theme, Facebook’s spokesman just told the US Senate Intelligence Committee they heve developed the ability to stop certain content from surfacing in specific geographic regions where it is illegal, like Holocaust denialism in Germany and criticism of the government in China. Presently, Facebook is blocked in China. —Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:01, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

A key difference between them and Wikipedia is that they control where their articles go using the censorship apparatus of copyright. By contrast, Wikipedia (1) cannot prevent its articles from being mirrored into China and (2) can suffer being blocked with the consolation that other parties could mirror those articles into China if they want.

The scheme of geolocation seems very crude and temporary to me. It is obviously defeated by any sort of tunneling, and it lacks the resolution that these "authorities" are looking for. China has now officially announced its plans for mandatory "social credit", the thing I was going on about Facebook patenting last year. I would assume those of a high reliability with a good reason would be allowed the access to the disputed scientific articles whereas others would be denied; they would want granularity. Indeed, they'll probably want real time tracking of what the good reason is. Similarly the advertisers will want granularity -- it's not enough to have their ads playing muted to the bit bucket; they're going to be demanding that they can actually hear you singing along before they unlock their precious TV entertainment. So I would expect these big companies are already filing patents on stuff like using their facial recognition to check that a person is an authorized user on a cryptographically trackable system in the right country with the right voiceprint probably with the right state of mind confirmed. (There's no idea too obvious to patent, so probably each of those is a billion dollars if you have a billion dollars worth of lawyers behind you to begin with) And I expect the geolocation to be gone with the wind.

And when civilization falls, it will be for good reason. Wnt (talk) 20:40, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Women in Red

Thanks, Jimmy, for your supportive comments on Women in Red in your Irish interview. It comes just at the right time now we are embarking on our World Contest.--Ipigott (talk) 21:31, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

WikiAlpha

Jimbo, I recently came across WikiAlpha, a site that encourages users to "save" articles tagged for deletion on Wikipedia. It provides a tool to copy them from here to there. The trouble is that WikiAlpha is not respecting the licensing terms of the content that is copied. It is not copying the history (only the latest version) which means that it is not crediting the editors who worked on the article. In addition, the content of WikiAlpha is licensed as "public domain" which is not compatible with our CC-BY-SA licensing since there is no attribution requirement. Perhaps someone from the WMF could contact WikiAlpha to help understand what needs to be done to comply with the licensing and terms of use? World's Lamest Critic (talk) 16:29, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

It's "PD unless noted otherwise"; maybe they hid the otherwise really, really well. meanwhile... If Wikipedia content can only be reused if its history remains publicly accessible, then no publisher can reuse Wikipedia content with any confidence unless it has the entire history in its possession. Furthermore, no one can reuse the reused content without having the publisher's files. And as the lack of re-reusability means that the CC license is invalid, that means there is no way to publish a book with material from a Wikipedia article. Indeed, maybe the whole project is legally invalid because WP could license admin-grade access to deleted article history to make their content commercially distributable, so we should all go home now, eh?

Suggestion ... maybe citing the source of your CC content in a "convenient" way, at the instant, should be enough to make it attributable even if it is hard to do so? Wnt (talk) 00:03, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Systemic bias within Wikipedia.en

Jimbo, we have a huge problem of systemic bias in the content of many of our articles and that fact just became obvious to me in a round about way. I was thinking about how the term "conspiracy theory" has become the most prevalent "shiny object" that can be thrown into a discussion which has the effect of distracting or blocking critical thinking discussion about any topic. This happens even when there is no conspiracy or even theory being discussed. The "shiny object" usage of the term reminded me of something that I could not put my finger on until just now. It is being used in exactly the same way the term "communism" was used as a "shiny object"in the USA in the 50s. e.g., Any thought of universal health care was decried as being "communism". Even worse, in the South, school integration discussions were often shut down because any form of integration was said to be promoted by communists. In fact, MLK was widely denounced as being a communist as later on JFK was. This taboo (of which the distracting shiny objects are only one part) on critically examining any issue which reflects negatively upon "the establishment" has severely infected the Reliable Sources in the USA. CNN reporters even refer to themselves as the Fourth Estate meaning they are a part of the establishment, and their reporting reflects that systemic bias. Just today a CNN show about the 4 Americans killed in Niger was typically filled with weasel words like "appears to", "believed to" and the only unqualified thing in the report was that the soldiers wore t-shirts and baseball hats. Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:23, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

You've probably saved wikipedia, just with this one insightful post. I can't see why you'd be banned from anything, though you say you are, above. Illegitimi non carborundum. -- Begoon 18:48, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

• Wait. Would it be more concise to say that there is a conspiracy to maintain systemic bias by pointing out conspiracy theories? Or are you saying that systemic bias is a conspiracy to deny conspiracy theories? Or are the conspiracy theories just systemic bias that trigger more conspiracies? Personally, I like my word salad shaken, not stirred. I'll be here all week. Try the veal. --DHeyward (talk) 08:53, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
  • "Veal" you say? I'll stick with the yummy tofu, thanks... The t-shirts and baseball hats are the dead giveaway here - I'm surprised you missed that. -- Begoon 14:52, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Giveaway to what? That you are the one making things up? US troops had only one heavy machine gun, no body armor and were driving unarmored 4x4s while wearing "t-shirts and baseball caps," the Nigerien soldier said.. What's wrong with you 2 guys? Scorn is just as stupid now as it was 2017 years ago, and I guess I have to spell out that I'm comparing the scorn, not the target. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:00, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

How many heavy machine guns and how much body armor do you have? Do you carry and wear in every instance of when you may be attacked? In the Las Vegas shooting, many off-duty police attending the concert have body armor and machine guns that they left at home. Circumstances, not conspiracies are what drive these decisions. Heavy machine guns and Level IV ballistic vests stick out like a sore thumb in a small unit. Not every death is preventable or foreseeabl, let alone a conspiracy. --DHeyward (talk)

I'm sorry, I must not have explained well enough the issue. I am not suggesting anything at all to do with a conspiracy nor that there was anything lacking in the military protocols of the USA military unit. I was trying to say that the reporting we are getting from USA main stream media, on virtually all topics which relate to U.S. government activities, is next to useless for an encyclopedia because the reports are too much/almost all speculation and theorizing, couched in qualifying phrases ("weasel words") which by definition means the conclusions reported are not actual facts, e.g. "The US officials said it was "quite probable" that someone in the village tipped off the ISIS-affiliated terrorists that US forces were in the village, setting up the ambush"and "more likely a target of opportunity". The only reported "facts" are often secondary and often unimportant or much less important aspects of the topics, e.g., the fact in this case that they were wearing t shirts and baseball caps. I used this particular article only because I happened to see the TV version 2 days ago and I thought it supported my point. Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:51, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

• Implicit comparisons to Benghazi: The coverage in U.S. reports seems like a "Trump's Benghazi" of a diplomatic massacre while Trump controlled the U.S. State Department. So he gets to see how Secretary Hillary Clinton felt, except no formal investigation yet, and Trump gets to be President and write hundreds of Executive orders by President Trump, to reverse numerous federal decisions, while tweeting about Obamacare or tax-breaks-not-for-the-wealthy (ya right). So perhaps WP editors will write paragraphs about shiny distractions, while listing the erstwhile executive orders issued during those Niger events. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:34, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm afraid this entire discussion doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It feels like this is actually a conversation about something else, something unspoken. If there are particular examples of us calling something a "conspiracy theory" when it is inappropriate to do so, I'd be interested in us chewing on that for a bit. If this is an indirect discussion about someone's conduct, then let's just have a direct discussion about conduct?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:05, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi Jimbo, it is not about anyone's conduct. I will respond with examples later. Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:58, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm saying that the vast majority of USA reliable sources, as a collective, have a strong bias supporting whatever the USA "establishment"/Liberal International Order (usually alligned with the USA federal government) messaging is, similar but not as extreme as Pravda's pro USSR bias 40 years ago. The fact they refer to themselves as the fourth estate supports this observation. Therefore, when our editors rely mostly on these biased publications the resulting articles are themselves lacking in objectivity and neutrality. It is no fault of our editors. I'll give 1 important, if not maybe the most blatant, example in a minute, but first I'd like to say that the solution is simple; A Reliable Sources cull should be undertaken annually by an elected or appointed committee of editors and I'd guess less than 10% of our existing USA reliable sources would qualify as unbiased. Right now the Guardian, Reuters are the most neutral sources for USA news, imo.

My example relates to our articles...thus sourcing..for how the Iraq War started and how General Wesley Clark's crucial report of the fraudulent justification for the war has not made it into our articles in any substantive way. Just to emphasize how vehemently main stream media was pushing the Administration's bull shit, just have a look at the CNN's anchor's ridicule of one of the former weapons inspector's pre-invasion view that there were no WMDs "People out there are accusing you of drinking Saddam Hussein's Kool-Aid". Only the Guardian, a non-USA media, gave a good account of this inspector's view.

General Clark's shocking whistle blowing happened in 2007, but only Salon picked up the story in print whereas over a million people have viewed his interview on youtube, yet a google search of "Wesley Clark 7 countries" shows virtually no USA main stream media published his revelations. Our articles on the Iraq War and Iraq and weapons of mass destruction do not include anything about Clark's revelations, and even Clark's own Blp just mentions it in passing at the end; but as I say, this is understandable given the extreme bias in MSM reportings. Nocturnalnow (talk) 19:27, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

I have to say, I’m a bit confused about journalists qualifying statements. That’s generally considered good journalism when simply quoting sources. Capeo (talk) 16:30, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Nocturnalnow, Sometimes bias is in the eye of the beholder. You wrote, "Right now the Guardian, Reuters are the most neutral sources for USA news, imo." Perhaps they will lose that distinction when they write something that you disagree with. --Bob K31416 (talk) 19:59, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Nocturnalnow, it's tough to take your reservations seriously when you misrepresent your links. Ritter was quite clear, at the time, that he had no idea what WMDs were in Iraq. That was his point. There hadn't been inspectors in there for far too long to make an informed action, certainly not going to war. Also, "people are accusing you of" is simply a statement of fact and Ritter gave his response. I also don't get the issue with Clark's treatment. By that time an anonymous conversation confirming what we already knew wasn't much of a bombshell. It didn't get much coverage because Clark was a bit late to the game and was light on specifics or any actual, you know, evidence. Actual memos, etc. And he was trying to sell a book.

Lastly, you keep bringing up the Fourth Estate when historically in America it represented the power of an independent press. The derogatory term, in America, would be the Fourth Branch. This isn't to say there isn't strong bias in MSM. There is and always has been. This is nothing new. Even prior to TV every major newspaper, European and American, was always editorially biased towards one party or another. The problem with WP isn't MSM sourcing. It's trying to cover every MSM report the second it comes out before history has time to shake the facts out of the matter and qualified secondary sources present broader, evidence based, summaries. The problem is editors treat articles, particularly political articles, as extensions of the news cycle. Capeo (talk) 22:24, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Of course articles are "extensions of the news cycle". There are two ways we can run Wikipedia. In one, we let every editor add each new fact as it comes out... together with other editors who add the sources that show it's not a fact. The other way we can run it is that the editors get together on the talk page and have a straw poll -- whichever of the two main parties has more adherents then proceeds to write a "consensus" party-line version that carefully decides which qualified secondary sources will be echoed and which will be unceremoniously consigned to the dustbin (ideally with any editors still advocating for the other side, who can be dismissed as disruptive). Personally, I prefer the first way -- but it seems like we're pretty close to right in the middle on this one. Wnt (talk) 11:38, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

• Outdent and bold bit because, well, look at me... - so, Wnt, you prefer the model that allows every unsupported allegation made by any nutjob with an internet connection and a grudge to be included in the world's number one search result for a living person until a vote of wikipedians is held? I'm sure you couldn't really have meant that, but that's how it parsed for me at first glance. -- Begoon 12:12, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

I prefer the model that allows every supported (i.e. secondary sourced) allegation made by any nutjob with an internet connection and a reliable editing process to be included. Wikipedia isn't here to render "history's verdict" -- we're here to summarize the existing literature.

I should add that I support this even when I don't think it's right because the entire media, "both sides", is biased or foolhardy. Notably, I am disgusted that Republicans so eagerly lined up to glorify the acts of terrorists in Libya in order to score political points against an Obama administration that did what every administration in a war does -- get attacked in a way that might have been avoided. I am equally disgusted with anyone who tries to turn a terrorist attack in Niger or elsewhere into bait against the Trump administration. But I can't spout off like that in the article. Best I can do is say, I want all sources included, so just in case some lone notable person ever goes on about how dumb it is to let a faction fight extend to siding with people who want to kill us all, there's a chance people will be able to include it contrary to whatever particular partisan party line prevails at the present. Wnt (talk) 19:33, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

I think that there is a systemic bias in English Wikipedia relating to US politics. As a result it is trusted far less on discretionary (spin, wording, inclusion, exclusion, weight) content on such articles / topics than it is in general. The remedy is further refinement of content policies and guidelines. Some are unusable or inadvertently biased in key areas, others are too easily mis-used by biased people, and there are other huge blind spots that need to be fixed. North8000 (talk) 20:27, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

• In the 1st message of this section was, "the term 'conspiracy theory' has become the most prevalent 'shiny object' that can be thrown into a discussion which has the effect of distracting or blocking critical thinking discussion about any topic." I just encountered that shiny object from User:Geogene in a discussion. diff --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:22, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

• Bob K31416, yes and it happens all the time. Just a few minutes after you encountered the shiny object from User:Geogene, it was used again diff by User:SPECIFICO in the same discussion.

What is particularly disturbing in your cases is the way the "conspiracy theory" term, albeit completely misapplied (no conspiracy nor theory being mentioned in the discussion), is part of arguments/threats? to hat/censor? diffdiffdiffdiff

that discussion thread, even though there appears to be thoughtful interest and discussion from many editors on both sides of the issue of that thread.Apparently they had already hatted it once before being unhatted. Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:42, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

That was a pretty crazy section. It appeared to me that some editors were so inclined towards combat, or had such limited reading comprehension, that they didn't even recognize when I made a point that helped their position of being against using a statement from a Reuters article. My statement began with, "On second thought, the statement in Reuters may be misleading." diff --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:34, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I was pinged here. It also looks as if a link to my comment in that thread was more or less tossed in the soup without much regard to what I said there. I said we should strictly adhere to the WP policies that prevent UNDUE and fringe and conspiracy theory stuff from consuming huge amounts of editor time. I did not say that Bob was promoting a conspiracy theory. I note that Bob seems to have belatedly come around to understanding that the Reuters bit didn't belong. Good for @Geogene: for trying to focus on article improvement. This thread is a waste of time just like the one Geogene hatted was a waste of time. SPECIFICO talk 15:59, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I made my comment critical of the Reuters statement before you made your last comment over there.

Re your above comment, "I did not say that Bob was promoting a conspiracy theory." – Geogene said so (diff) and in your above message you supported his comment. Do you now disagree with Geogene's comment, "...this post by Bob K31416 is another example of how Wikipedia talk pages are being hijacked to spread conspiracy theories..."? --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:38, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Not talking about any specific instance, but mis-characterization of someone's views as alleging a conspiracy is a lot worse than a shiny object, it is a deliberate mis-characterization as a way to bash the person and/or whatever they just said. North8000 (talk) 16:44, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I'll talk about that specific instance. Bob's participation on that thread was not constructive, it could not possibly have led to article improvement, and it was rejected after a lot of tail-chasing and nonsense. We've been going through this for a year or more on the Russian interference artilce. Some of the denials of Russian interference may have been more credible early on. With the abundant evidence from RS reporting every day now, it's bizarre to see us still going through that, especially when new or infrequent editors visit the articles. I don't see that Geogene deliberately misrepresented anything, and I suggest you drop the stick, North. You're kind of on probation with all this politics stuff anyway after your ban. SPECIFICO talk 17:00, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

You say, "I don't see that Geogene deliberately misrepresented anything", after Geogene had accused me of spreading a conspiracy theory. So does that mean that you think that Geogene made an honest mistake regarding me? --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:14, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Misrepresenting my statement, especially after I specifically said "Not talking about any specific instance" as a "stick" to be dropped is not good. North8000 (talk) 17:21, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Well, even though you did qualify your statement, considering the context, Specifico may have made an honest mistake. --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:27, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Either way, other than reacting to my post being improperly characterized, my only interest was to contribute to the general discussion, not to deal with anything regarding a specific individual, so I'm bowing out of this sub-thread. North8000 (talk) 17:58, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

This may be another example of how combative editors may be suppressing work on Wikipedia. I think it takes an extraordinary temperament to continue with someone like that, but there are limits even for the most hardened when they simply ask themselves, why am I getting involved in this time sink. --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:08, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Asking myself that question, that's enough time spent for me, so I'll call it quits. --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:17, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Need help reporting user

How can I report a user who is constantly vandalising articles? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SevenIndicus (talk • contribs) 21:25, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

WP:AIV. Happy to help. 83.137.1.209 (talk) 23:07, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	You are my inspiration!! บุญพฤทธิ์ ทวนทัย (talk) 08:38, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	You have idea, for your webside (Wikipedia). บุญพฤทธิ์ ทวนทัย (talk) 08:40, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	You are good adminstator and idea people. บุญพฤทธิ์ ทวนทัย (talk) 08:41, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Schools (again)

I was wondering if you'd changed your mind regarding the notability of secondary/high schools. Is it not the case that many schools in many places around the world are unlikely to have the kind of coverage we'd expect to see for other topics, and that if we allow AfD to routinely kill schools because of a lack of online sources then we're in effect promoting cultural bias on WP? To me it seems obvious that the vast majority of secondary schools that are real must sit on a whole pile of official government paperwork which may not be available online but which suggest that the thing is notable. So if we can find some third party reference to the school showing it exists, then it must follow that this other stuff exists. Others have strong views in the opposite direction, but to my mind if one allows the deletion of pages this is almost inevitably going to affect children in developing countries who will look at WP and be told that their school (which might be very large) is not notable when a small village school in Scotland is notable. Personally I don't think that kind of cultural bias is really a good thing. And if the general consensus is promoting cultural bias, then maybe WP needs to make it clear that we shouldn't be doing that. JMWt (talk) 16:11, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

I haven't seen much evidence that the longstanding consensus at AfD has changed — even if there was no consensus that the longstanding consensus is a consensus at all. Secondary (and higher) schools of confirmed existence are invariably kept; primary schools are invariably redirected to their school district. There does not seem to be any cultural bias to this rule of thumb, other than the fact that very bad pages tend to get hauled to AfD with more frequency than better constructed pages and there seems a correlation between quality of a page and the income level of the school district. I don't see any fundamental problem with the way that AfD handles schools in practice, although if every school had to "prove" itself with multiple sources as it is supposed to do in theory, there might be a significant bias against poor schools and districts in the non-English-speaking developing world. Carrite (talk) 11:23, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

For context see this [[32]] and close comments on recent AfD for example Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/The_Sheffield_Private_School. Also Jimbo's comments from 2011 ["The truth is that most high schools are not notable"]. JMWt (talk) 15:50, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

And on the other hand, there has not been a flood of time-wasting challenges of ordinary high schools at AfD and the pattern of results hasn't changed appreciably despite the RFC which ostensibly changed the longstanding consensus. Carrite (talk) 17:33, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

My own views on this matter are of little importance, but I think that only in rare cases will high schools ("secondary schools") be suitable for an encyclopedia entry. I don't think my views have changed, but of course this has been a topic for well over a decade. I don't think that, in general "a whole pile of government paperwork" is what makes something notable, and I have never been entirely comfortable with debates about "notability" as a thing in itself. What matters a great deal more is "verifiability" meaning 3rd party high quality sources, which are generally not there for most schools. And even that isn't the only thing to consider: it's also worth thinking about the implicit invitation to boosterism and vandalism that some topics bring.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:39, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for this - for the record, I think you are totally wrong as do most of the participants in the AfD process, which is very frequently a debate about notability. Still, I guess nobody is prepared to clear the logjam on this (and actually a whole lot of other) topics - which will inevitably mean that the angry AfD wars will continue forever and children in "minor" countries will never see their schools get the respect others expect as a default position on wikipedia. JMWt (talk) 14:23, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

The number one thing that the writer of ANY article can do to protect it from deletion challenge in the first place is make sure it is competently written and sourced out. The schools articles that get into trouble at AfD are the terrible unsourced one- and two-line stubs that have nothing but a web URL — if that. I think your concerns are valid on a theoretical level but not on a practical level — I seriously haven't seen much in the last month or six weeks to give me pause that the longstanding consensus on schools has actually changed. And that rule-of-thumb protects articles on secondary schools in First World and Third World countries alike. Carrite (talk) 03:16, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Casual use of "hatting" to "censor" talk page discussions

Jimbo, sorry to use the word "censor" but I can not think of a milder term in this instance. Please have a look at this discussion thread and the "hatting" threats and applications thereof related to the thread, i.e. diffdiffdiffdiffdiff

There appears to be thoughtful interest and discussion from many editors on both sides of the issue of that thread.Apparently they had already hatted it once before being unhatted. Your thoughts? Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:50, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I would have hatted that discussion, had I been involved.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:22, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Wow. I am really surprised. I must be way out of sync with current norms and mores re: artificial limits being placed on constructive discussion. So be it. Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:40, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Would you care to give your reason? --Bob K31416 (talk) 20:17, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo, The editor of the last 4 diffs mentioned in the opening message here, later supported an edit for the article that I had later proposed in the subject discussion. In case you're curious, the proposed edit is to add the phrase, "based on highly classified intelligence," to the first sentence of the lead as follows.

The United States Intelligence Community concluded, with high confidence based on highly classified intelligence, that the Russian government engaged in electoral interference during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Here's a link to the proposal and discussion. Proposed change in first sentence of lead. --Bob K31416 (talk) 00:14, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Regarding the talk page over there as a whole, I'm getting the impression that part of the problem is miscommunication between well-intentioned intelligent editors who are assuming the worst intentions of each other. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:11, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Editors criticizing each other

He's being disruptive by derailing and hijacking discussions about article improvement to rant about... well, conspiracy theories and such. Just like he's doing here. So yeah, hat it. Volunteer Marek  06:13, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Note: My comment right above was not a criticism of Nocturnalcow, but an explanation - which was an elaboration on Jimbo's comment above - for why the discussion by a DIFFERENT editor was being hatted. The addition of these section sub headings sort of completely confused the issue. Volunteer Marek  08:27, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

User:Volunteer Marek, who are you talking about in such an ad hominem way? Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:36, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

You seem not to actually understand what the phrase "ad hominem" means, just like you don't understand how properly to use the word "censor". Volunteer Marek  14:42, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

The irony of the above post is delicious. "I'm not using ad hominem, you imbecile!" -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:23, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Marek did not call anyone an "imbecile", nor was it implied in his post. You can't just lie about what a person says, claiming an insult was uttered when the evidence says otherwise. TheValeyard (talk) 23:12, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

If you think I was trying to directly quote Marek, I can't help you. I also can't help you if you can't see the ridiculousness of Marek denying engaging in ad hominem, while at the same time saying things like, "just like you don't understand how properly to use the word 'censor'." -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:28, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Implies enough to insult but not enough to be held accountable.--v/r - TP 00:58, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

No, but YOU are trying to imply deviousness on my part, which IS a dishonest false accusation. Coming from an administrator no less. "Conduct unbecoming" and all that. Look, if I wanted to call him an imbecile, I would've called him an imbecile. But I didn't. Volunteer Marek  06:59, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Who me? I just typed some words into a box. Held no meaning. I didn't even use a complete sentence - it lacked a noun. I'm just an innocent bystander *wink* --v/r - TP 18:33, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

 Volunteer Marek , actually TP's edit was necessary for me to see that you are referring to me, because I could not believe you would be so hallucinatory with this edit of yours since I have not been editing at all, zero, at the article in question; yet you say "derailing and hijacking discussions about article improvement". Maybe you have a better command of vocabulary but if you were trying to actually communicate, you get an F-. Now that I know you were talking about me, what exactly is the shiny object "conspiracy theory" you accuse me of in this situation? Or was that just more hallucinations? Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:01, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Sigh. No. You're not comprehending here. My comment about why the discussion was hatted ("derailing and hijacking discussions") was not a comment ABOUT you, it was a response TO you, because you asked for it ("Your thoughts?"). It was also a response to Bob K31416 who asked Jimbo to elaborate (In both cases, I was trying to save Jimbo the trouble since the reason for the hatting appears to be pretty obvious) .

My first comment ABOUT you was the one in which I pointed out that you seem to have no idea what "ad hominem" actually means. (And seriously, accusing people of making ad hominem arguments, then claiming that someone is "hallucinatory" (sic)? Really?).

ok, I couldn't tell if the "he" in your first comment was me or Bob which is why I asked who you were talking about. I should've left out the "ad hominem" bit. Sorry about that and the hallucinatory slight. Best wishes, Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:40, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Greetings TP. You're right Thuc has no business insulting Valeyard, even worse to play dumb on his own personal attacks vs Marek. 😲"Who me?"😲 SPECIFICO talk 02:03, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Mister Thucydides, words mean things. You said someone said something that they in actuality did not say. Don't do that, and all will be well. Cheers. TheValeyard (talk) 02:21, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Mr. Yard, I did no such thing. It is strange how whenever Marek attacks someone, all these defenders come out of the woodwork. It's pretty clear he gets a pass because of his politics. -Thucydides411 (talk) 02:55, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

No, Thucydides. A criticism of a person's action or statements is not an "ad hominen". If a normal adult says "two plus two is five" then responding with "that is a lie, because it's not, and since you're an adult you know better" is NOT an ad hominen. An ad hominen attack would be saying "you're wrong because you have funny hair". Likewise here, if Nocturnalcow uses a phrase which clearly indicates they do not understand it's meaning it's not an "ad hominen" to point that out. This is pretty elementary.

Oh wait, I got a better example. If someone says "Marek called someone an imbecile", when the exact quote is right there in plain sight and clearly shows I didn't, and then someone else says "no, that's not true, you're lying", that is NOT an ad hominen. That's just a pretty trivial observation on your own dishonest behavior. Volunteer Marek  06:59, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

You guys have really latched onto the interpretation that I intended to directly quote you with "imbecile." I know you understand better, but I'll spell it out for you: "I'm not using ad hominem, you imbecile!" wasn't a quotation of you. Anyone who looks at the thread knows that, because my comment came right after yours. It should be perfectly obvious to anyone reading the thread that I was ridiculing the fact that you attacked someone personally while claiming not to have used ad hominem. You can keep on insisting that this is some sort of false quote I was trying to manufacture, but nobody with a sliver of reading comprehension will buy it. I know your reading comprehension is good enough to pick up on this, so it's pretty clear who's being dishonest here. -Thucydides411 (talk) 07:12, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Thu, That's how WP works. Most editors abhor personal attacks. Therefore, when you post a personal attack, editors who see it are likely to rebuke you. From what I've seen you've had the experience many times. Often enough to be able to recognize the pattern, in fact. Or do you think that @Volunteer Marek: has a claque of irrational or corrupt "defenders" who are indentured to him for some untold and unintelligible reward? Maybe payola like the American deejays of the Rock n' Roll era? Do you think Marek is in on it? I doubt it. The simplest explanation is that folks don't like to see aspersions and personal disparagement. SPECIFICO talk 03:57, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

We've both recently been in threads in which several senior editors have expressed a rather "meh" attitude towards personal attacks (one was about VM's behavior specifically, and it was opined that a number of rather aggressive comments were just "feisty"). In other words, your remarks on editors' general opinions towards personal attacks are empirically wrong. My observation is that personal attacks are generally given wide latitude unless the admin in question dislikes an editor for different reasons, in which case the personal attacks might be held against the editor in question. How much leeway is given could also depend on how the editor who suffered the attack is viewed.

You're no stranger to personal attacks, so I'm not exactly going to take my advice from you. I recall when you called one of Wikipedia's more patient editors a "misogynist," and then refused to take back or apologize for the statement. I think the issue with VM is pretty simple: a lot of people share his general views on American politics, which he makes pretty obvious through his editing, and are therefore willing to look the other way when it comes to his impossible editing behavior. -Thucydides411 (talk) 07:06, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Just to try to explain why I used the term "Ad Hominem" when Marek made this edit. That edit reads to me as if Marek is suggesting hatting decisions ( whether or not to hat a thread) should or could be made on the basis of the identity (thus Ad hominem - at least as I understand the term) of an individual editor as opposed to on the content of the thread. Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:33, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

"Marek is suggesting hatting decisions (...) should or could be made on the basis of the identity (...) of an individual editor as opposed to on the content of the thread" - that is a blatantly false since I made no such suggestion. I specifically said that a hatting decision should be made because an editor was *derailing* a discussion (content, not identity), because an editor was *hijacking* a discussion into off topic territory (content, not identity) and because the editor's *behavior", not identity, was disruptive. BTW, aren't you indefinitely banned from US politics, which your comments would fall under?  Volunteer Marek  08:41, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Ok, but in that case there was no reason to even mention the editor's behavior as your reason for hatting could, and I think should, have rested entirely upon the current content, not how the content came to be the way it is/was. Re: your question, I only wanted to discuss systemic media bias and the harm shiny objects, such as "conspiracy theory" in 2017 and "communism" in the 50s, do as distractions and blockages to constructively flowing discussions. Then, when Bob brought over the discussion going on where "conspiracy theory" was used as a shiny object, in his opinion, I looked over at that article for the first time and was literally very surprised, almost shocked, to see "hatting", which I had always thought was exclusively a technical tool for very old or duplicative stuff, being suggested and used in a strategic, discussion controlling way which, imo, has the consequence, whether intended or not, to substantially erase access for most readers, not editors, of Wikipedia. So, I get excited about, and feel I should talk about, any form of information, discussion restrictions here, on Wikipedia, which so many average people around the world rely on to get information, especially since there is so much information, discussions already hidden from our citizenries, e.g. there is now more classified info in the USA than unclassified according to a Harvard University report on removing knowledge. That is the sequence of how the discussion widened but I still do not feel as though my thoughts or contributions in this sequence have wandered into U.S. politics, other than perhaps very tangentially, and as you likely know, its hard to discuss almost anything in 2017 that does not in some way touch on US politics, however, I think I have obeyed the ban and I know that I have not intentionally disobeyed the ban. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:14, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Break

I want to add, Jimbo, that any deep thought about the details of the preceding section (Systemic bias within Wikipedia.en) and this section (Casual use of "hatting" to "censor" talk page discussions, as of time/day of this message) demands a conclusion that the content of Wikipedia is, with your blessing, subject to being controlled by a MSM which, in turn, is subject to being controlled by a political establishment or political establishment/MSM partnership. That is kind of historically usual, and thus, maybe acceptable, except for 2 diametrically opposed positions which you are taking, i.e., your commitment of Wikipedia to NPOV and your opposition to governments like Turkey controlling their messaging. Turkey just does it directly rather than via a MSM that it influences (via access restrictions or monetary opportunities), as is the case in many other countries. Imo, the situation you are blessing (more than condoning) is a relationship of agency; i.e. Wikipedia being an agent of MSM, which in many instances are themselves an agency of a political power such as the Liberal International Order. Your WikiTribune project idea seems to want to deliver only fact based journalism, so at some level you must be aware of the current junky status of MSM. I hope you can use this awareness to help improve Wikipedia going foreward. Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:43, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

@Nocturnalnow: You don't need to ping the bloke on his own talk. It is generally an irritant of the grandiose kind. Cheers, — fortunavelut luna 14:48, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

@NN. You seem to have tapped into a buzzword (the Liberal International Order) which usefully serves a paranoid, right wing narrative without understanding that particular neologism in the context in which it was intended. Per your link: "The International Order is defined as the body of rules, norms, and institutions that govern relations between the key players on the international stage. Today, this body includes a nexus of global institutions, such as the United Nations, and the World Trade Organization; bilateral and regional security organizations; and liberal political norms, as well as what the authors describe as "liberal political norms.'" — In other words, democratic civil society as part of an interrelated international community; as opposed to the "existential threat" to that post-World War II system presented by authoritarian nationalism, which is more akin to the anti-democratic movements that dominated Europe during the 1930s. Carrite (talk) 15:28, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Its not a zero sum game, the left wing/right wing "struggle" is a staged wrestling match with the management laughing all the way to the bank, imo. Its all about control and whether we have sovereign countries controlled by the people of those countries or regional/group authorities controlled by technocrats and corporations and professional politicians or something somewhere in between. You can call it "the establishment", which is the best term and if you like where the world is and where its heading, then that's fine, no problem. I am interested in the USA's MSM's bullshit, both left and right, dominating many of Wikipedia.en's articles and what can be done about it. Nocturnalnow (talk) 20:31, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

The answer to the use of weak facts from the popular press is to use better facts from the academic press. Use books and journals rather than newspapers and blogs, in other words. Some contemporary topics don't have that sort of sourcing available (yet), which presents a temporary problem. But in the long run, better sources tend to supplant worse sources. I don't think WP does a bad job of any of this at all. Carrite (talk) 11:31, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Carrite, you make very good points and I'll defer to your greater Wikipedia experience when it comes to most Wikipedia articles in the "long run", as you say. My own experience is that I actually sat in funeral homes as childhood buddies came back in body bags from the Vietnam war during a time when a knowingly false narrative was being pushed through the MSM. I can still hear Don B_______'s mother and sister wailing behind a curtain as his closed casket was draped in an American flag and I was the only one there to pay my respects. So, I may have an extraordinary awareness of how much personal and societal harm is being done by sketchy narratives which flow through USA MSM in support of invasions and war expansions. Thus, I notice today, right now, how 15 years after our side invaded Iraq that our articles on how the Iraq war began still leave out the downright criminal plans and false justifications for that war which have since been disclosed by many "insiders", including the example I referred to in the now archived section, which you may have missed; "My example relates to our articles...thus sourcing..for how the Iraq War started and how General Wesley Clark's crucial "whistle blower" report, in 2007, of the fraudulent justification for the war has not made it into our articles in any substantive way.....Only Salon picked up the story in print whereas over a million people have viewed his interview on youtube, yet a google search of "Wesley Clark 7 countries" shows virtually no USA main stream media published his revelations. Our articles on the Iraq War and Iraq and weapons of mass destruction do not include anything about Clark's revelations..." Carrite, 15 years is just too damn long and even 10 years is too damn long for our articles on such important existential and humanity issues to self correct. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:01, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

My take is that Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections is one of the worst articles on Wikipedia, because a good article would rely on information that is not currently public knowledge. It's simply WP:TOOSOON to do a good job on the topic. The sophistry on both sides as to how to handle the lack of sourced material for parts of the article is too stupid for me to respond to. power~enwiki (π, ν) 21:04, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

@Power~enwiki: Surely you mean "because a good article would not rely on information that is not currently public knowledge? Agree with the utter surrealism of that article and some conversations about its contents. — JFG ^talk 23:06, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

I mean that the version of the article in Wikipedia 2050 will be of much better quality, because it will rely on sources that do not currently exist. power~enwiki (π, ν) 23:22, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Re "information that is not currently public knowledge" – I have an idea of what type of information that is for that article's subject, but I'm curious about what type of information you think it is. Thanks. --Bob K31416 (talk) 01:49, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

@Power~enwiki:, I wholeheartedly agree that it is too soon and, therefore, we can't exclude the possibility that it could end up looking like the Gulf of Tonkin incident article by 2050. Unfortunately, if that is its destiny, a lot of damage could be done by promotion/publishing of existing non-public assertions. I wonder how you'd feel about the article being deleted as it has such an obvious WP:TOOSOON status? Nocturnalnow (talk) 02:20, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

This is exactly the kind of discussion that should be hatted and archived. SPECIFICO talk 02:46, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes. -- Begoon 09:26, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo, FYI, the discussion has grown considerably. [33] --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:13, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

BTW, in that discussion there is currently a proposal for an addition to the lead (diff) that has 2 for and 2 against, which could use some more opinions. (Not to be confused with another discussion there about adding a section.) --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:30, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Actually it has 2 "for" and ~30-40 "against" because ~28-38 have resisted being drawn into this pointless, repetitive, off-topic, strawman soapbox thread. SPECIFICO talk 18:06, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

While we're in the business of counting people who haven't commented in our own favor, I'm going to go ahead and say that the count is approximately 7.6 billion to 2 (in favor of the position I support, of course), because most of the world's population has refused to get involved with the repetitive, off-topic, strawman soapbox (have I ticked all the boxes?) thread. -Thucydides411 (talk) 18:15, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

"Our own favor"??? Is that you Pope Francis? Welcome aboard. SPECIFICO talk 18:27, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

"We are not amused", SPECIFICO, please try to be less frivolous in such a serious discussion. I'll give you 500 internet points if you do actually hat all this though, and a gold "too obvious but still absolutely justified irony" award - I'm not sure how much longer I can resist the temptation myself. Please use "1=Casually hatted" as a rationale in the "hat" template if you do so, for transparency. -- Begoon 09:26, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. You (Jimbo) are mentioned in passing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  21:54, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Rats Jimbo! Looks like you're going to be indefinitely blocked again. oops, I just read the rest of the thread, it looks super-serious. Sorry for making jokes Edaham (talk) 09:13, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

...and 'sorry' you should be. This goes beyond 'super-serious'. The casual hatting of threads and censorship thus enabled is a veritable scourge upon our website. Don't be fooled by those (including me) who would have you believe that this is all just a tedious, yawn-worthy, extended whinge ...</sarcasm> -- Begoon 09:35, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Bullying culture

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I've just received another request for contributions to Wikipedia and I simply want to explain why I'm not contributing this year.

There are certain editors on Wikipedia who practice a bullying culture and have the tacit support of many admins; particularly those who take a strong scientific line. I realise that bullying is an endemic problem of online systems and is not easy to deal with and that administrators have to deal with many issues in a short time and do not have the time to understand the minutiae of individual articles.

This problem shows itself in at least two ways: one is to do with fringe scientific theories where they insist on only including references from top line scientific journals, which by definition don't usually exist, thus changing the normal Wikipedia citation rules significantly. They are usually not specialists in the topic concerned and therefore have little more specific knowledge than the average reader. The other is an insistence on using correct scientific jargon even in the lead sections of articles and where this usage makes the articles much less accessible to the average reader. They are then dismissive in talk page contexts of any attempt to introduce topics in a less formal fashion.

I don't see any way of changing this culture as a normal Wikipedia editor without appearing to champion causes for which I have no sympathy. However it is apparent that Wikipedia is failing to engage a significant portion of the population who are the only ones who have set up rival pedias. Unless you believe that science is the only path to true knowledge I think this should concern you. Chris55 (talk) 11:17, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Give us a specific example, please, of content you feel should be included in wikipedia but is excluded due to this "Bullying culture" which you allege exists. -- Begoon 12:05, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

I honestly can't see why you'd feel that way. Edaham (talk) 14:09, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Huh--that makes no sense at all, unless you are implying that Jimmy (back in 2014) was getting bullied by 7,000 signatories to an online petition demanding we change our guidelines and stop doing reliable sources and stuff. Drmies (talk) 18:53, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

I think the comment was sarcastic, suggesting that I'm part of that culture, due to my view that we should privilege peer reviewed scientific studies in quality journals.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:24, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales, Drmies Neither of the above. I just liked that article and thought it relevant. I recently added a quote from it to my user page, so it was fresh in my memory and hope that the person who started this thread reads it. It explains in part in the linked article, why insistence on adherence to high-quality sources has been interpreted as bullying. To further clarify (as now I'm a bit worried that I was misunderstood) I can't see why someone would feel bullied simply because someone writing about fringe scientific theories has met insistence on including references from top line scientific journals. Apologies if I was not clear and/or misinterpreted the original post. Edaham (talk) 04:31, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Looking at the article you reference, I don't think they were protesting at all at the references in the article or the need for them. From what I can see they were protesting at the misrepresentation of the content of those articles, where anything positive was suppressed and anything critical was highlighted. I have spent a fair bit of my time in Wikipedia adding better references for articles so I don't need to be lectured about that. Chris55 (talk) 16:26, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Noted. I'll read more carefully in future. Edaham (talk) 16:39, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

• @Chris55: please return part-time to Wikipedia, else the bullies win. I returned after 2 years away. I think Jimbo is aware of such problems x100, but when he helped he has been bullied, also insulted on other websites because his name is famous. I suggest become an admin, as other admins tend to back down, and there are admins who spend more time expanding text than blocking vandals. In fact, blocking, or unblocking, others could help understand how other users view bullies. Major advancement comes via wp:RfCs where dozens of people can help steer change. Meanwhile keep a "to-do" list of quick edits for when you plan to return. Many amazing topics to write in this "Brave New World which has such creatures in it". -Wikid77 (talk) 14:28, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• For those who don't want to look at the edit history, it appears the original dispute was at Aquatic ape hypothesis. power~enwiki (π, ν) 17:13, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• "...references from top line scientific journals, which by definition don't usually exist"? About fringe topics? But the essence of Wikipedia:Fringe theories is that things are called "fringe" if reliable sources say they are. And if there are no reliable sources we don't write about it. If the editor who started this thread wants to do that, they will run into some difficulties, and not just from the bullies and their admins. I'm sorry, but I really don't understand what this complaint, although it does underscore how easily the accusation of bullying is made. Drmies (talk) 18:57, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• Well, here's the thing. When people try to include fringe ideas in the encyclopaedia - for example, citing "nutritionists" publishing fantastical nonsense in fringe journals based on implausible and discredited ideas [34] - they tend to get some pushback. Sometimes they accept this, learn and move on. More often - much more often - they WP:CRYBULLYING. Of course we can improve the way we deal with advocacy of bullshit, but in the end the number of people holding back the tide of bullshit tends to be small, and burnout is an ever-present risk. Wikipedia has far fewer gatekeepers than it does believers in bullshit. Advocates of bullshit typically don't like Wikipedia dna won't donate. I will bet that no homeopath on the planet would give us a dime. Let's make sure this never changes. Guy (Help!) 10:52, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the Crawford book was regarded as bullshit at the time by most people (see the comment following) and having read it, I largely agree with them. Unfortunately the wiki 'experts' who took over the page then elevated it to being one of the main supports for the idea (see current version), which I fought against unsuccessfully. In the meanwhile of course his basic thesis, the importance of Omega-3 fatty acids for the development of the brain, has become widely accepted, despite the criticisms of Pond et al. So astronomers aren't necessarily the best people to fix articles in neurology and nutrition and human evolution. Chris55 (talk) 13:37, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

On the contrary: they are the best people, because we are not allowed to rely on what we know to be true, and we do not give deference ot those in the field because very often they have their own unrecognised biases. The aquatic ape hypothesis is rubbish, and the claim that omega-3 somehow invalidates that fact is the reslt of the scientific equivalent of pareidolia. Guy (Help!) 15:13, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

You're not one of them too are you? Or maybe the same one on a different account? :-( Chris55 (talk) 20:04, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

To : Jimmy Donal Wales

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

A :

"To set a new standard for breadth, depth, timeliness and lack of bias, and in the fullness of time to become the most comprehensive encyclopedia in the history of humankind."

B :

"It is a social faux pas to write about yourself."

What if it was humanly impossible to accomplish A without committing a 'social faux pas' of B ?

- 100.14.81.196 (talk) 14:39, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Please read WP:YOURSELF and the WP:AFC instructions linked there. The AfC process takes weeks if not months, and will probably not be satisfactory to you unless you clearly meet notability guidelines, which the vast majority of people do not. But it is the only process which doesn't result in useless auto-hagiography. There are services like LinkedIn and About.me which may be more suitable for your needs and those of the wider readership. 83.137.1.222 (talk) 17:10, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not questioning WP this and/or that, and the specific article in question has already been 'around' for hundreds (nearly thousands) of years. But the specific article is prophetic, referencing from a time in the past to a point in the future, which already, with lack of bias, has specific, unchanging, unyielding facts that, notwithstanding, should still be recognizable to Wikipedia. But they aren't, due to an inherent 'block' of human nature, but a surmountable block, even though the specific manifestation of that block is also prophetic. If all the Wiki this and/or thats were sufficient, Jimbo would have no need for such a page, he could just as well retire to an island and sip mai-tais for the remainder of eternity. I have been contributing to Wikipedia for more than eight years, and regarding the specific article in question, it remains a catch-22 (guaranteed failure of "A") if the author of "A" doesn't step up to the plate and give (take) affirmative action. - 100.14.81.196 (talk) 05:53, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Which article (about a subject?) which has been around for hundreds of years has to do with writing about yourself? Some details about the specifics to explain what you are trying to do would help figure out how to help. 83.137.1.200 (talk) 15:59, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

100.14.81.196 has been editing the talk page of Prophecy of the Popes and seems to be the same person as User talk:Edward Palamar, who has been banned for years. That user seemed to consider himself to be the future, final pope. 134.223.230.151 (talk) 17:43, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

[pointless mocking of someone removed]

[pointless mocking of someone removed]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Google disambiguating

I just typed “Frankenstein” into Google’s search field and, when I finished typing, a disambiguation list dropped down. The first option was “Frankenstein monster”; the second looked like a link to the novel’s full text. When I clicked “Frankenstein monster” I wasn’t taken to a Google results page with Wikipedia somewhere near the top, instead I was taken directly to Frankenstein's monster. I haven’t noticed this before. When I typed “Frankenstein” again the usual autoprompt search terms (when you click them you go to a Google results page) dropped down and I haven’t seen the disambiguation list again. —Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:01, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Predatory publishers, fake conferences and academics who find them a way to succeed

At World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology (WASET] an attempt by an editor to speedy delete it, then an AfD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology (2nd nomination) and discussions raised at RSN and NPOVN spurred me and other editors to look for current sources. Some of these sources discuss OMICS and Allied Academies, recently acquired by OMICS along with Future Medicine.

These have sparked a number of articles in the mainstream media and complaints by academics, while at the same time some academics are cooperating.

A study reported in the Japan Times[35] by James McCrostie looks at fake conferences in Japan. McCrostie discusses submitting fake papers generated by SCIgen to fake conferences all of which were accepted. It also discusses both the cost to attendees for these conferences (which are cheap to run) and the damage that can be done to reputations.

The New York Times published an article last month[36] called "Many Academics Are Eager to Publish in Worthless Journals". It also discusses aspects of predatory journals such as using names almost identical to prestigious ones, the fact that many or most don't have paper publications or do serious reviews, etc. And the fact that publishing in them is a way for academics to get promoted. "Many faculty members — especially at schools where the teaching load is heavy and resources few — have become eager participants in what experts call academic fraud that wastes taxpayer money, chips away at scientific credibility, and muddies important research." Senior academics publish in them -- 200 McGill University professsors, for instance.[37]

They also run fake conferences where by paying a hefty fee an academic can be listed as a presenter even if they don't attend. It's also easy to become an editor of a fake journal. A fictional academic with ludicrous credentials applied to 360 open-access journals asking to become an editor, with 48 accepting her, 4 making her editor-in-chief.[38][39] See also this article.

There are now more predatory conferences than scholarly ones.[40] Many of these are run by Waset: "research into Waset, which is registered in the United Arab Emirates, shows that it will hold some 183 events in 2018, although these will cover almost 60,000 individual “conferences” – averaging 320 at each event. Conferences are scheduled almost every day up until the end of 2030." These take place in small rooms with multiple conferences held in each room but few attendees, although many will have paid a large sum to attend.

An article last month in Die Zeit[41] says the ownership of WASET is unknown, and "website of Waset does not give an address anywhere. Interested parties can only fill out an anonymous form or send an SMS - with the United Arab Emirates dialing code." "The purpose of a waset conference is to extend the CV by a conference as well as a contribution in a scientific journal. Because every lecture is published in an online publication, which is also published by Waset. Over 40,000 articles are said to have come together since 1999, according to the website."

There are more sources of course, I could go on and on. And warnings from academics.[42][43][44][45]

This raises serious issues from Wikipedia. The obvious one is that it is now very difficult for most editors to distinguish between reputable journals and predatory ones, especially when the contributor seems "normal". My other issue is whether Wikipedia or the WMF has a role to play in the fight against these. Maybe we don't, I'd like to think there is something we can do. We do have Predatory open access publishing which oddly doesn't linketo Predatory conference. Perhaps one of the relevant wikiprojects should set up a working party to improve all the related articles?

Mild rant over. Please read the sources, they are pretty alarming and go into much more detail than I can here. Doug Weller talk 20:14, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

I think this is very interesting. The first question I see here seems easy enough to answer: what should we do about this in terms of writing about' them? Be NPOV, I would say. The second question I see here has to do with making editorial judgments about which journals are accepted as sources and which are not - and organizationally, how do we help good faith editors who are having trouble distinguishing between the two?

I have spoken often recently about how the true "fake news" sites (created by teenagers in Macedonia, etc.) have caused us little problem because we have a lot of experience and Wikipedians are very able to recognize things like the Denver Guardian as being unsuitable as a source. But this is about general interest newspapers.

To the extent the same problem is existing (for different reasons) in academic publishing - this seems a lot harder to manage. These are not completely "fake" publications, if I understand it. They have real professors submitting to them. But because they accept absolutely everything, the quality should not be considered confirmed in the way that quality is (more or less) confirmed by traditional high quality peer review processes.

My view, for what it's worth, is that we generally shouldn't use them as sources. But I recognize that this opens a huge set of debates about how good a journal needs to be in order to meet our cutoff.

I encourage further discussion. I think there are answers here which are likely to be fairly nuanced.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:01, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

• It's gotten to the point where in some tenure files you have to comment on the quality of the journal you got published in. Sure, we are usually pretty good at weeding out fake/predatory journals, but members of university-wide T&P committees look at stuff well outside their own field, and then it's not always easy. People publish in these journals for a variety of reasons, and some of those are valid, even if it's not good to do so. Yes, we have a job to do here: I have advocated in various places for us keeping a list of reliable sources. Perhaps we can have someone tallying up the results of RSN. That would be beneficial not just for our editors, but also for the larger public. I just suggested we put Usernameunique on payroll; surely we have librarians here who can do this kind of thing. And why not pay them? Drmies (talk) 22:15, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• The participants in WikiProject Medicine have been aware of this problem for years, and I think we do a pretty good job of handling it. Our insistence on the priority of secondary sources (review papers) rules out most of the junk right off the bat, and for the rest, WP:MEDRS#Predatory journals gives useful guidelines. Looie496 (talk) 01:05, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

In medicine it is somewhat easier, because MEDLINE/PubMed -- who have been dealing with the same problem for half a century -- put a great deal of effort in to deciding which journals and proceedings to index, the list of which is constantly updated. Other traditional (pre-web) indexing authorities don't really do the same thing, relying on impact factors or just refusing to index conference proceedings altogether. INSPEC relies on publications to send files in their bibliographic format, and while they try to verify that the publications exist, they don't really judge quality. 83.137.1.200 (talk) 16:14, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

It seems the straight forward approaches are either a white list, a black list, or both, see, [46] but someone is going to have to pay to get access, and work it into policy. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:34, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

There are fine suggestions here, but we should be careful as a community not to pose as an authority on academic quality. I think it would be a great first step to start a supplement, even a simple essay, about predatory publishers. It can be a list of pointers to RSs on the subject or a well-sourced summary, and it can include pointers to RSN discussions, but without implying that the conclusions reached by Wikipedians have greater authority than they actually do. This would help channel community efforts into further elaborating this resource.

The line separating reliable from unreliable academic publications is not always clear, even for someone with a practiced eye. For example, there are some online publications which list reputable academics in their editorial boards, apparently with their consent, but exercise weak editorial control, and function less like peer-reviewed journals than group blogs. Eperoton (talk) 02:38, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Sadly that's correct. A few more sources. The DeSmogBlog ran an article about them a few months ago in relation to a climate conference.[47] PubMed has banned OMICS, but not very successfully."PubMed may be consciously or unwittingly acting as a facilitator of predatory or unscrupulous publishing." New owner of two Canadian medical journals is publishing fake research for cash, and pretending it's genuine "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Predatory Publishing but Were Afraid to Ask" "Is predatory scientific publishing “becoming an organized industry”?" Doug Weller (talk • contribs) 14:12, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Bottom line, there's no panacea for this: you need at least some knowledge of the subject area and to be willing to actually put in some effort to be able to distinguish predatory pubs from legitimate ones. This poses a particular problem for Wikipedia since most of our editors are not experts and a lot of them are a bit lazy in how they find sources: its a lot easier to google something and stumble onto a free, online (but predatory/paid) source than it is to use an actual research database or library catalog to find a high-quality (but maybe offline, or paywalled) academic source. A list is unlikely to work since there are literally hundreds (thousands?) of fake pubs, with constant new ones and name changes making it something like a game of whack-a-mole. I don't see what can be done except encouraging vigilance and trying to educate people on how to spot the difference. Do we not at least have an essay on this? I find it hard to believe that no one's written one yet but if not I'd be happy to help start or contribute to one if not. Fyddlestix (talk) 14:41, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Also, it's worth noting that one admin who was especially vigilant about this (JzG) got tons of grief/hassle for it and is currently on a long-term wikibreak. If we're serious about tackling this people who are willing to work on it need the community's support. Running around finding and removing this crap is a pretty difficult/thankless task. Fyddlestix (talk) 14:46, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

A datum that should be mentioned here: WASET has been blacklisted, in the sense that links to its website are regarded as spam. XOR'easter (talk) 16:38, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales:: you could do one easy thing that would materially help: get some dev time devoted to restoring the ability to linksearch by namespace. That was available for a while, and it made tracking down links to junk sources in mainspace a lot easier. To understand why I ask this, and why it's a much bigger deal than just predatory journals, look at the linksearch for stormfront.org - more than 400 links, so monitoring for abuse in mainspace is tedious. It takes a very long time to review these lists and find all mainspace links, and once you have cleaned up mainspace, even if a few links are actually appropriate (e.g. special:linksearch/*.omicsgroup.org), watching for new instances in mainspace is time consuming. I would think that it is desirable to make it as easy as possible for editors and admins to monitor mainspace, in particular, for known red-flag links. Even if some are appropriate - no doubt there will be instances where the Daily mail is a good source for something, though I can't imagine what - it needs to be easy to review the content in the actual encyclopaedia, and by extension Talk and project space, separately. Guy (Help!) 10:20, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

mw:Help:Linksearch says "There is no way to show external links only in articles, which is often of greatest interest as evidenced by Wikipedia:External links. The MediaWiki software does offer the ability to search for links only in a specific namespace, but this functionality is disabled on Wikimedia projects, due to efficiency issues.", so I guess the question is what are the "efficiency issues" that necessitate us being only able to search less "efficiently", and how feasible is it to "fix" these "issues"? It obviously seems desirable. -- Begoon 14:23, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

phab:T12593 is the development query in question. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:34, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

It's still technically possible to get lists of links by namespace, but as far as I know you have to go directly through the API using the eunamespace parameter (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=exturlusage&euquery=*.naturalnews.com&eunamespace=0 will give you a list of all uses of naturalnews.com in article space). Of course, the result comes back in JSON, so it's really only useful if you write a script around it to parse the results. I used to have a bit of JavaScript that modified my Special:LinkSearch page to allow you to filter by namespace (see User:MastCell/el-search.js), but it doesn't work anymore and I can't be bothered to figure out why. It is definitely something that would be useful. MastCell ^Talk 18:51, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

I think the WMF should look at the broader question --- what is wrong in open access publishing and how do we fix it? Open access is a great idea, but giving the same people the power to rate papers and to accept up-front payment from authors is a terrible implementation. Clearly, we need to have a division between the role of archivist -- a site that takes payment and promises to make your paper permanently available -- and editor, in the sense of someone who recommends a paper as high quality and perhaps works with the author to get it to that point. So WMF should sit down with ArXiv and its cogeners and see if they can work up an entity whereby independent funding (government and private contributors) goes to get some raters who can recruit a much larger team of qualified volunteer scientists to act as peer reviewers and in other ways to work with authors. Create "journals" that don't publish papers and don't take payment -- from anyone -- but simply consist of a set of links and, indirectly, acknowledgments by the authors of those links that they were assisted by people at the "journals". That way the scientists are still getting their publication stats, in terms of archived materials, they pass quality standards (of varying levels) at the "journals", they can also get some career credit for being accomplished peer reviewers at the "journals", etc. A populistic Wikipedia-like group of people can work to make pretty summaries of the journals and provide more (mentally) accessible science-news articles about the content therein. There are a lot of variations on this theme, but it would be a decent activity for WMF, and a bridge between the broad and populist Wikipedia and a more elite academic role. Wnt (talk) 04:07, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo, the last thing that is needed here is "nuance". What is needed is some fuckin' leadership by YOU! There is an aggressive and epidemic explosion in for profit and fraudulent "information" disbursement platforms. What is needed is obvious and compelling and it is simply to put on a common sense hat and restrict all sourcing for Wikipedia to proven reliable sources. Proven to a committee of Wikipedia editors and there is no shortage of volunteers for such an effort. Com'n let's all get real and let's all drop the pseudo sophistication personas and crush the fraudsters. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:33, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

There are many things in Wnt's response that are in my view off the mark, but I'll address only what I see as the most important one: "what is wrong in open access publishing?" isn't the real question because there's nothing wrong with open access publishing per se. There are lots of good open access journals. The problem is that some people work the system to their own ends -- just as there are bankers, car salespeople, and folks in every other walk of life who cut corners. The idea of setting up a system in which there's no potential for conflict is laudable. But it won't solve anything in practice because the bad guys will just ignore it and keep doing what they do.

The issue then is not what's wrong with open access publishing but how to separate the sheep from the goats. As a practitioner I don't find it all that hard. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 23:01, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

As a practical matter it might be possible to extend the approach of WP:MEDRS to other topic areas. DGG ( talk ) 13:51, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

@Shock Brigade Harvester Boris: On further examination, some of the distinction I'm describing already has a name -- as detailed here [48] there is "gold open access" with up-front payment for publication, and "platinum open access" where societies pay the fees, and "green open access" where papers are archived by universities. None of these quite reach the idea I was favoring of having a platinum review and publicity for papers but keeping them on a "green" or "gold" archive, but I'm not the first to note a problem. If you read predatory open access publishing you'll see that there are arguments over the criteria. Inevitably there will be blur on how the lines are drawn, but I think the problem is deeper than that: predatory journals have been defined post hoc according to some low-hanging fruit of bad practices, but a crappy non-predatory open access journal can still work more or less the same way, simply without the more blatant fraud. We should look beyond the specific culprits to the underlying cause.

@DGG: MEDRS is an overbearing, arbitrary guideline that has been used to sweep away a lot of good content. Expanding it would be awful. I want to cite ArXiv papers by good scientists. It would also be impossible to get much enthusiasm behind such a policy, because there's not much of a dedicated lobby trying to prevent people from finding out reliable basic information about physics without scheduling an appointment with a licensed physicist. Wnt (talk) 15:37, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

You seem to believe that Wikipedia was a font of "reliable basic information" about health and medicine before a bunch of tyrannical elitists imposed WP:MEDRS. I can't think of a kind way to describe how wrong you are in this case. I've been here a long time, but my role in encouraging the (eventual, grudging) recognition of the immense potential for harm from medical misinformation on Wikipedia is something I'm proudest of. MastCell ^Talk 19:00, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

To give an example, I've done some editing about TRAPPIST-1, and I really like the article we were able to get together there. But at least in the hands of the more zealous MEDRS enforcers I doubt there is one single source in that whole article that would pass their guideline. I mean, in extremis I could argue that introductions of some of the papers are sort of like secondary sources, or in desperation try to claim Popular Mechanics is one or something, or try to keep one or two of the primary sources under the explanation that I'm not really cobbling them together, but there comes a point where you should just give up and replace the article by a notice that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Encyclopedia Article, please purchase a subscription to a qualified copyrighted resource and try your query again. Wnt (talk) 15:49, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Perfection is not achievable. MEDRS stops a lot more stupidity and harm than it may cause. Johnuniq (talk) 22:15, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

"Perfection is not achievable" is a great buzzphrase -- one I'd interpret to mean we shouldn't have policies demanding better-than-reliable sources. I'm not sure what you mean by it, if the phrase really means anything at all. As for "stopping stupidity", well, that's not what Wikipedia is for. We're for documenting knowledge, and I prefer a bit more of a Pliny the Elder approach, gathering together sometimes absurd stories in case some are actually true, rather than dismissing things out of blind prejudice. Wnt (talk) 23:43, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm very much in favor of starting a list of known predatory sources. I also think that the creation of a bot, which leads editors to areas of the project where such sources have been used and tags them would be a good idea. Automated removal would be problematic as the info contained, even within these sources, may conceivably be valid. I would join a program where a bot asked me to review material, which was based on sources which had been tagged as being on a list of known fake/low-quality material. My feeling here is that the internet is changing and that the stringency of the application of policies may need to be accordingly reviewed. Edaham (talk) 00:03, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

I used to run a script (not really a bot, exactly) every month or so which would identify all medical articles in which the Daily Mail was cited as a source. (The script output is at User:MastCell/Daily Mail links; as you can see, I haven't updated it in about 5 years). The script itself is here. In principle, it's fairly simple to compile such lists, and we did have some success with using the Daily Mail list to point editors toward articles needing source improvement. I don't have as much bandwidth for or, frankly, interest in Wikipedia as I used to, for a variety of reasons, but if there's interest in applying this sort of approach to identify articles where predatory journals are cited, please let me know and/or feel free to adapt the approach I used if you find it useful. MastCell ^Talk 18:23, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

My user page has a list of predatory and other sub-standard publishers where I have found, over the years, a lot of evidence o ref spamming. Often I will find a link in main space, track back to when it was added, and find a username that's a match for the article author. Guy (Help!) 00:22, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

British English

The English people are not biologically related to the British people. Tacitus suggests in Germania that the English were descended from a nation called the Anglomenene which thrived in the fifth century before common era. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RCNesland (talk • contribs) 00:25, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

"not biologically related". Well, that's just obviously false, at least insofar as it regards the present day British people, and I would say even much older than that. Perhaps you could be more specific about a specific sentence or paragraph in a particular Wikipedia article that you think should should be amended.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:49, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

The sum of all human knowledge

Re your original formulation: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." — As it is now, of course Wikipedia has a very tiny fraction of all human knowledge, but I don't see that fraction improving. Nevertheless, for the most part Wikipedia is a useful source of information. --Bob K31416 (talk) 11:38, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Sum of all human knowledge makes perfect sense based on the "summary" meaning of "sum" (definition #4 at wikt:sum). Deli nk (talk) 14:52, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Not even close according to Harvard, at [49]

"Contemplate these numbers: about five times as many pages are being added to the classified universe than are being brought to the storehouses of human learning, including all the books and journals on any subject in any language collected in the largest repositories on the planet."

Bob K31416 is right about Wikipedia only having a tiny fraction of all human knowledge, but the more important issue, imo, is that we, the citizens, only have access to a tiny fraction of the information. Just like the old expression: "They treat us like mushrooms, keeping us in the dark and feeding us a lot of shit". A lot of people are enablers of this situation through their chosen naivety, passivity and peer group conformity. Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:57, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

I think I understand your point, but you might consider that of the information gathered by the NSA, GRU, etc., only a very tiny fraction of that information is of any interest to people not involved in intelligence. Although I only skimmed through that Harvard article, I thought it was interesting. One thing that came to mind regarding the number of classified documents, it would seem that it is much smaller than the number of public access documents because of the relative number of writers for each type. --Bob K31416 (talk) 13:45, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Bob you bring up a great and new train of thought; i.e. "is it useful to include information in Wikipedia which most people are not interested in?" Speaking for myself, the most exciting times for me reading Wikipedia are when I see or hear something that I previously had no interest in and knew nothing about and when I go to the related Wikipedia articles I find a wealth of interesting knowledge; and often the initial article I go to leads me to another tangent which I find even more interesting. A great mantra that applies, I think, is "its better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it". When it comes to the NSA and other intelligence services, I think a whole lot of that stuff is interesting to average citizens. This example: Poppy quarter led to spy coin warnings may blow your mind, as it did mine. It talks about some paranoid U.S. contractors in Canada reporting that some Canadian coins were "spy coins" with "nanotechnology"....and note the words "The Defence Security Service disavowed its warning about spy coins after an international furore but until now it has never disclosed the details behind the embarrassing episode." which show the commotion was kept secret by the agency. This was very interesting to a lot of Canadians because it showed:

A: How erroneous and maybe downright stupid some USA "intelligence" was and

B: That there were lots of USA "contractors" prowling around Canada stirring up conspiracy theories (pun intended).

I also urge you to carefully read the entire Harvard article. I had to read it about 4 times before I thoroughly understood it. Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:51, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

• It's just a Utopian advertising slogan — and a successful one. Don't think about it too much. And keep writing content... Carrite (talk) 01:43, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

• Look at it this way, what percentage of the average person's idea of what amounts to the sum of human knowledge is covered by the contents of Wikipedia? I think if you look at it this way, it's probably more than 100% already - and yes, keep writing content. Edaham (talk) 03:52, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, our content is absolutely worthwhile and worth adding to. In fact, Wikipedia has done more to educate people all over the world than any other vehicle except the internet itself. I also believe that when the slogan was created it was not just a slogan but a sincerely believed attainable objective. Also, I myself have no problem at all with advertising slogans, they are an integral part of capitalism which I like. I just wish the information control freaks would be gotten out of the way.

It is also true that Wikipedia fits with the average person's idea of what amounts to the sum of human knowledge. That fact is a big part of the problem. Societies wherein the collective "people" are brainwashed...yes brainwashed...into believing or not knowing an important aspect of their society, an awareness of how much, % wise, information is being kept secret from them and only available to select circles of other people, mostly government people, are not , in my view, democratic societies. The elections become fatally flawed because how can someone cast an educated vote when so much of the important information about what's going on (important enough to be "classified", supposedly) is kept secret from them?

So, the questions become, "Will we, as providers of one of the world's biggest sources of knowledge accept the arbitrary limitations placed upon our access to knowledge?" and "If we don't accept it, what can we do about it?". I don't think it is acceptable at all, I think its a form of intellectual slavery, ( denial of freedom is a possible definition of slavery, so, in my mind, denial of information is a possible definition of intellectual slavery). But the best slaves are the ones who do not realize they are, so they don't demand freedom, and right now Edaham is right on. Nocturnalnow (talk) 13:27, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Nocturnalnow, You might want to distinguish between information that is kept confidential for good reason from that which is not for good reason. For example, we all keep some of our own personal information confidential with good reason. --Bob K31416 (talk) 13:54, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, Bob, good point. I think that the Harvard article I refer to above is not talking about personal information. Nocturnalnow (talk) 18:07, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

What about the government's confidential information with regard to distinguishing between good reason and not? --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:49, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:02, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Edaham, Re "Look at it this way, what percentage of the average person's idea of what amounts to the sum of human knowledge is covered by the contents of Wikipedia? — That would seem appropo, since Wikipedia is written mainly by editors that are closer to the average person than to experts. But that may mostly exclude from the information base what is most important for advancing the knowledge of society and it may limit the information to what interests the average person in a casual way, rather than what interests an expert who is working on advancing a field. Between these two types of people there are students who are learning about a field. Information in Wikipedia that is useful to them may be limited because Wikipedia is not a textbook, and the number of Wikipedia editors who have sufficient competence and clarity in their writing, and who are able to get their edits accepted, and who would be willing to spend the time with a somewhat cumbersome editing environment, may be very limited. --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:21, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Having to know how to use computers and to be familiar with some of the concepts of parsing markup and contributing via an interface is the first and biggest hurdle to our potential editing community. That's why outreach in under represented areas of the planet and its societies is so beneficial. I'm getting involved with this at the moment in Shanghai and see it as a very worthwhile pursuit. I can't wait until the day I can read an article by a writer far more knowledgeable and able than myself, who was introduced to Wikipedia through a talk I gave in China. Lots of people who have in depth knowledge, access to sources (and lots of time to write) are elderly. Elderly people often require help with elementary computer skills. One project I have in mind while I'm in Shanghai involves addressing this issue by introducing the encyclopedia project to senior Chinese people. In my mind the answer to many of the questions raised in this thread is not "furious typing", but judicious outreach and extension of the project to people who would not otherwise find themselves contributing. Edaham (talk) 02:31, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Edaham, I applaud your good work and agree entirely with your propositions. I can say that seniors, especially retired seniors, often have much more free time to contribute than working stiffs. You can rest assured your "talk" in China will absolutely bear the fruit of new articles, whether you ever witness it or not. Apparently Johnny Appleseed did not personally witness the enormous spreading effect he started with a bag of seeds, but an enormous effect he had, whether he ever saw it with his own eyes or not. Every contributor to Wikipedia, and especially people like you who give talks with outreach, will have a bit of a "Johnny Appleseed" effect, imo. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:18, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

F_O_A_D

If you know what that means, you're one up. What goes on here? I can't even read fast enough to keep up with what's scrawled here. It's a stream-of-consciousness brain dump. For example, I just for grins, did a search on this page for ONE word no way could/should be here. I found one! What word? Ask George Carlin. Maybe y'all should just be talking to Thomas Crapper instead. The hot topic is predatory, as in whoa! a snake? Try a Komodo Dragon. Do you think anyone reads this stuff? Seriously, who're ya' talkin' to? It's a congregation of lounge lizards and bossasauruses. You're flippin' tiddly-winks in a deep dark place. Thought I'd cop a clue from Charlie Daniels in Easy Rider, and

chase them jes' once around the parkin' lot

Well I had them all out there steppin' an' a fetchin'

Like their heads were on fire and their asses was catchin'

Adieu, Sbalfour (talk) 02:12, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Nice meeting you!

It was nice to meet you at the fundraiser yesterday in LA! Thanks for all you do for Wikipedia! Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:56, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Yay!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:32, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom self-nominations are now open

A reminder that (self-)nominations for the 2017 Arb Com Election are now open, with a filing deadline of 23:59 UTC on November 21, 2017. Candidates must have 500 mainspace edits racked up to a registered account as of Nov. 1 and be free of blocks and bans. Candidates must reveal all WP account names and meet the WMF's requirements for access to non-public data and sign a confidentiality agreement. More details are HERE, as are instructions regarding the nominating statement.

Hike. Carrite (talk) 06:35, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Yaifo

There's a British explorer, Benedict Allen who has gone missing (but may have been spotted now, the news seems unconfirmed at this point) after attempting to visit the Yaifo who are described in the press as one of the last "uncontacted" tribes in the world. I got interested in uncontacted peoples a couple of years ago and I was impressed with Wikipedia's coverage. But we seem to have nothing on this group. That's interesting and surprising to me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:59, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Question: would his own site be OK as a reliable source for starting an article if used in conjunction with available news sources? As a person who has tried to visit them, he would seem to be the only person qualified to write in detail about certain aspects of the tribe.

• links
  • http://www.benedictallen.com/news
  • http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-41998842/missing-explorer-describes-meeting-papua-new-guinea-tribe
  • http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/who-yaifo-people-mystery-tribal-11524191
  • http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42009854
  • https://www.ifad.org/documents/10180/e31cb446-5fa4-4d6b-b83d-94b471d359bd - PDF report on agriculture including some demog'. Some research into reports on the surrounding areas might be good for some locational info, as news reports are pretty top heavy in the drama department, while being sketchy on the facts regarding the tribe.

https://www.antiqbook.com/boox/burn/37425.shtml - "the proving grounds (1991)" is a book by Benedict Allen, in which he first describes his encounter with the people in PNG

• Edaham (talk) 15:39, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

@Edaham: I have created the article page, you all may trying to expand it, base on these sources information. SA 13 Bro (talk) 18:23, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Apart from the 2002 IFAD report (pdf linked just above which mentions the Yaifo once in a list of tribes with no source) the only source on this group seems to be Allen’s testimony. —Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:23, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

I had some luck (at home with my VPN) searching google for pdfs which include the tribes name. There were a few results. the IFAD pdf was the first one I came across which looked like a decent independent body report. I didn't have time to complete my review of these search results. It might be worth diffing further. Edaham (talk) 04:12, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

And while we are on the subject, we also don't have any info on the Obini tribe, despite there being a similar amount of info (i.e. not a lot) lying about. Edaham (talk) 10:09, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Best to provide the secondary published sources that is closely to primary materials describe, the third tertiary sources sometimes can be described in fake information. SA 13 Bro (talk) 15:23, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you SA_13_Bro, I will definitely bear that in mind. That's useful advice. You can have a look at the article now, as I built a little on your stub article that you started. There's a few sections there and hopefully when we know more about this tribe we can build upon the article. Additionally, I have an account on the Chinese Wikipedia and can speak Mandarin. If you'd like to collaborate using Chinese characters you can message me on my talk page on this link. Many thanks again! Edaham (talk) 17:00, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

@Edaham: Welcome! :) I sometimes will busy on my job and not every times will on-wiki. I was dealing this section at recent changes and read this note to create for build this article page. SA 13 Bro (talk) 20:37, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

I would have a concern about working on such an article because it may increase the risk of outside interaction and destruction of their culture. On the other hand, it may be beyond the tipping point. For example, I noticed in one of the links that there are missionaries in the area of the Yaifo. --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:07, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

@Bob K31416: We are certainly lacking an explanation of the ethos you describe in Uncontacted peoples or First contact (anthropology). I should add that my gut rejection is to reject this idea out of hand -- to leave a tribe "uncontacted" because it is scientifically interesting to watch its people die in weird ways from drone aircraft strikes me as akin to the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. I can't deny the seriousness of the risk of diseases, nor that ethical problems exist with trying to distribute medicines to those you can't communicate with (due to informed consent requirements). But I'm thinking every "blank spot on a map", inhabited or not, will be of interest to every would-be gold digger and exotic animal trader, and that if responsible people don't do first contact it will end up being done the usual way, with shotguns and a case full of booze. Wnt (talk) 16:22, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

(ec)There's a little about the ethics in the lead of Uncontacted peoples, "Indigenous rights activists call for such groups to be left alone, stating that contact will interfere with their right to self-determination.

--Bob K31416 (talk) 16:37, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Bob K31416 The North Sentinelese are protected by their (Indian) government from intervention. The existence or not of an article in an encyclopedia wasn't as relevant to them as the legal mesasures that were taken to ensure their protection. I think the same will apply here. If PNG thinks they ought to be protected it will have a much more limiting effect on contact than simply disallowing the aggregation of available information about them. It is sad that sometimes making info available - such as the location of oldest living trees - resulted in people going to those locations with ill intent, but we aren't making road signs here. Apparently the one person who knew how to get to them couldn't find them on the last try, and we haven't written a fraction of what that one expert knows about their specific location. I understand your concerns though. Edaham (talk) 16:34, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:39, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

If you don't mind me going off the wall, here's an idea for a science fiction story to see how it might feel for us on this planet to be uncontacted people that are contacted by a different culture with different values.

Suppose offworld beings that are technologically far advanced beyond us, came to our planet and noted the adverse effects of overpopulation. And suppose they didn't have the concept of fear of death or the sense of loss when someone died, perhaps because they don't die. They might try to cure the population problem by thinning out the population through eliminating people and feel satisfied with their accomplishment, for example with the result that people could drive on freeways without the problems of heavy traffic. --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:07, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Ideally, you shouldn't tell me -- you should tell the people reading the article, and find some good sources. I'll add though that to me that seems like an absurd comparison; after all, even in the U.S. there are places like the Pine Ridge Reservation where, through the magic of capitalism (and perhaps a bit of first contact hangover) people don't live much longer than the Yaifo at all. Nowhere do we exceed them routinely by much more than a factor of two. That background of course changes all sorts of attitudes about how serious it is to do things like have a fist fight or shoot an arrow at somebody, which can lead to cultural conflict, but we're scarcely gods even in our own minds. Even a five-year leap in technology can be very disturbing when technological science is ahead of moral science (cf. The Circle (2017 film)), but I understand no inherent reason why, say, a few dropped specially designed cell phones couldn't be a positive rather than a negative force for introducing the tribe to the outside world and establishing a route to begin translating language. (That isn't a promise there isn't one, but it's a promise I don't understand it presently) Wnt (talk) 18:18, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Sorry. It wasn't meant for debate or attack, so I'll just strike it out. Regards, --Bob K31416 (talk) 19:58, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Maybe moral science has always lacked technological science. This subject requires a lot of critical and out of the box thinking. On the face of it, the Pine Ridge Reservation demographics you mention, thanks for that, leads me to wonder whether until Western societies clean up, somehow, our own sub-culture ghettos, we are not in a position, certainly not a moral position, to be of use in jungle societies in the South Pacific. Not sure about that though. If, don't freak out, just a wild idea, the U.N. decides these primitive tribes need protection from the outside world, we might could designate them as world heritage sites and apply modern technology to keep away the gold diggers etc. through drone surveillance and weaponry elimination of any unauthorized intruders. Then the evolution of the tribes would depend upon their own people venturing out and returning with info/gadgets from the "outside world"...so maybe we, the outsiders, could take a protection role as opposed to a interference/guidance role, especially since we've fucked up so badly with the Pine Ridge Reservation evolutions we've been proactive about. It certainly does not, imo, help these tribes at all for an outsider to embed themselves in their society like, imo, a spy, to report back to anybody what they observed. Nocturnalnow (talk) 14:35, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Interesting, isn't it? I hope this will encourage some passing anthropologist into doing some in-depth coverage of relevant issues in the articles. Wnt (talk) 16:25, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

I just want to thank you for all you do and have done for the internet as we know it.

Dastolan (talk) 06:02, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

A strange question

Can you cancel sanctions in fa.wikipedia.com?--Persian-iran (talk) 18:49, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

@Persian-iran: What sanctions are those? ^{My name is}not^dave (talk/contribs) 19:29, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Sanctions on everything! One example: see history. my edit- (Carbon monoxide poisoning (fa)).I was banned by Iranian admins.(admin fa.wikipedia.com: user:مهرنگار user:Modern Sciences user:Sunfyre &...) They delete my articles. Because I'm banned!--Persian-iran (talk) 20:14, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

As I do not speak Farsi and know only a few people in Farsi Wikipedia, I am unable to assist in any meaningful way, sorry.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:22, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you:(. Do you know user:mardetanha? He knows the Persian language--Persian-iran (talk) 20:40, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Please leave a note on the relevant talk page Persian-iran. Thank you. Edaham (talk) 23:42, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

I do know him, and I like him quite a bit. But I'm still not really able to intervene. He's a very well known and well respected Wikipedian, and I"m sure he can give you sound advice on next steps.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:15, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Edaham, Jimbo Wales: 💖Thank you--Persian-iran (talk) 18:00, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

HELP US, PLEASE!

ADMINISTRATORS IN CHINESE WIKIPEDIA HAS BANNED USERS IRRATIONALLY! WE NEED YOUR HELP!--Mirai2016 (talk) 08:02, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Please also see User:Tanbeens (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)'s history who appears to post the same message on noticeboards. —PaleoNeonate – 08:37, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

As I said to Tanbeens, as long as your post is so low on details (who did what to whom), even if we had any jurisdiction over the Chinese Wikipedia we wouldn't be able to help. —Kusma (t·c) 09:11, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

I have checked zh:User:Tanbeens and zh:User:Mirai2016 on Chinese Wikipedia, this 2 accounts are the sock puppetry of CIH0426, and has been indefinitely blocked on that site. SA 13 Bro (talk) 09:24, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Good work SA 13 Bro. Its great to nip this stuff in the bud. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:33, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Admins not understanding and not interested in discussing NPOV

There was a recent move discussion at Talk:First observation of gravitational waves#Requested move 16 October 2017. The discussion concerned whether or not to rename the article with the official name GW150914. The bulk of the discussion concerned weighing in on whether to use the easy to remember descriptive phrase or the use the official name.

I had commented that the phrase "First observation of gravitational waves" is actually POV, and is thus flat-out unacceptable as an article title. The reason for the POV issue is that an earlier discovery is sometimes described by the same phrase. I gave some details in the discussion, along with a recent expert RS that goes over the controversy for several pages.

The discussion had gone quiet for a while, then there was a round of Opposes over the weekend followed by a quick no-consensus closure. While I thought the closure was suspiciously quick, there do not seem to be any guidelines on that. The closer, in his comments, made no mention of NPOV.

I asked the closer about this on his Talk page User talk:Jenks24/Archive 24#Regarding your no consensus closure of First observation of gravitational waves move discussion, and he gave no explanation beyond saying it was his interpretation. No details of how something POV can be interpreted as NPOV were given. If I were to guess, there was a comment in the original discussion that we get to call "descriptive phrases" names, see, and names are allowed to be POV if that is a standard name. Apparently it is such a name, but on Wikipedia only, as no one else has been identified as using "First observation of gravitational waves" as an actual name for the event in question. Like I said, I'm only guessing.

I took it to Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2017 November#First observation of gravitational waves (closed), and the responses astonished me. Admins saying essentianally that since the consensus ignored NPOV, it can't be a factor, and the like. I quoted from WP:NPOV that it is fundamental policy, it's not an add-on, it's not one more thing to consider and weigh in on, and there was just more claims that I'm merely bludgeoning, not giving a cogent argument, and so on. Meanwhile, no one on Move review explained how this POV descriptive phrase was allowed in the first place.

I originally assumed the close was merely mistaken, caused by an understandable unfamiliarity with long-term disputes among scientists. (This particular debate goes back a few decades, long before it became real in 2015.) However, I cannot understand or accept the utter stonewalling that has followed.

(Why here? I don't see why noticeboards or arbcom or the like will be any different from Move Review. It's not about behavior, so this seems to be as good a place as any for a goodbye rant.) 129.68.81.123 (talk) 23:45, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

While I think your fundamental point is not unreasonable (which isn't the same as saying that I agree with you, it is just saying that I see a valid point of contention here), I also think it is an unreasonable and unfair characterization of the discussion to say "Admins not understanding and not interested in discussing NPOV".

The point of contention seems to turn on the following facts, which I take it that all sides are in agreement about: in the past there were "indirect" observations of gravitational waves, whereas this was the first "direct" observation. But in the popular press and indeed even Nobel announcements, this is a distinction frequently ignored in favor of referring to this observation as simply "the first observation". Given that the first paragraph of the article explains the situation, I think that therefore this is a very minor point and our title is at least acceptable. It may, however, merit some improvement, as I shall explain momentarily.

The idea of naming all the observations by the scientific names seems unreasonable to me from the viewpoint of reader needs. That isn't to say that the current nomenclature can't be improved upon.

I would personally consider at least two alternate solutions: first to rename the article "First direct observation of gravitational waves". This seems to resolve both your objection, and the desire that the title be one that readers will find comprehensible and context-setting for what they are about to read.

Another solution might be to have an article about the "event of discovery" which focusses on the history of the team, the cultural impact, the scientific implications, etc., and to have another article "GW150914" which has the scientific details only, similar to GW151226. I immediately see both advantages and disadvantages in this approach.

My basic advice to you is to relax and drop it. It's probably not worth a big fight over, and certainly if you do want to continue to seek a better solution, that you be careful not to imply that others don't care about neutrality.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:26, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your extended comments, which basically address my concerns. I'm not in agreement, but just as you saw what I was angling at, I definitely see what you are getting at also. My comments about the admins refers to what struck me as stonewalling, and some of them saying false things about NPOV, like I can't expect it to be taken into consideration if no one discussed it very much.

I think allowing non-neutral common phrases, even when the article quickly clarifies the issue, opens up various problems if it gets taken seriously.

As the guidelines are written, something like Ethics in videogame journalism is a non-starter as an article title. In fact, it's so toxic that it's a slightly devious redirect. I don't think it would be good if the next such common POV phrase needs consensus to be renamed if the POV pushers rein themselves in.

Ultimately, what I think the issue boils down to here is simply the POV aspect here is not generally known, whereas usually POV is honking obvious.

I see no POV issues with the first solution you suggested. I am aware of some scientists who feel (or felt) even that was too much! The Collins book chapter identifies such, but since pretty much all the sources consider it acceptable, it's not relevant here.

Again, thank you, you removed much of the sour taste, but I don't think I will return. This has been an entirely unnecessary time sink. 129.68.81.202 (talk) 02:30, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

You might look at Wikipedia:Administrators, regarding the role of administrators, and Wikipedia:Closing discussions, if you haven't already. --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:52, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, but I have. My stupefaction was with the total non-response to the NPOV issue itself, which as a fundamental principle trumps the usual issues. 129.68.81.202 (talk) 02:30, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

I added Jimbo's suggestion to Talk:First_observation_of_gravitational_waves. Feel free to comment there. Thanks! Brian Everlasting (talk) 03:24, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

AFAIK, it's not part of an administrator's role to enforce content policies such as WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:V. It's left to the editors themselves to decide it by consensus, regardless of whether they're right or wrong. --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:19, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Need help to resolve the Sockpuppet case

Hi Jimmy, I need your help to this situation going on since I am alleged that I used this account since my other account was blocked due to copyright violations. Wrestlingring (talk) 03:38, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

@Wrestlingring: You are violations in copyright and multiple accounts policy, read standard offer are the only way, stay away from Wikipedia in 6 months without any block evasion accounts and make the unblock request at your main account only. SA 13 Bro (talk) 08:28, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

request WP:THIRDOPINION

Please guide us. Special:Diff/811542049--Persian-iran (talk) 08:39, 22 November 2017 (UTC)see User talk:Jasper Deng#... and Village pump (policy)#...--Persian-iran (talk) 10:00, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

The editor is misinterpreting WP:THIRDOPINION. That process is used for situations where consensus couldn't be achieved. Here, however, consensus is clearly against their proposal and they are steadfastly refusing to drop the WP:STICK. I'm not going to engage them beyond this comment.--Jasper Deng (talk) 10:06, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Jimbo Wales. You have new messages at Persian-iran's talk page.
Message added 16:57, 23 November 2017 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

— fortunavelut luna^{Rarely receiving (many) pings. Bizarre.} 16:57, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Happy Thanksgiving

Enjoy the holiday! A little turkey never hurts (I'm sure there's no deficit of turkeys in London) Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:08, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Not in Downing Street, anyway :D — fortunavelut luna^{Rarely receiving (many) pings. Bizarre.} 17:18, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 November 2017

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Thanks!

Thank you for founding Wikipedia. It's now one of the most used sights in the WORLD. Here’s a cute little kitten! I hope you’re a cat person or you like cats...

BabyPugsAreCool (talk) 15:46, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

"There’s Now a Dark Web Version of Wikipedia"

Albeit an unofficial one, as reported here on Motherboard today. Although it has been suggested in the past that Wikipedia should have a .onion version, critics have argued that a high traffic top ten in the world website such as Wikipedia could never serve a large number of users over Tor (anonymity network) simultaneously. The current service is experimental and unofficial, and the link is in this tweet for anyone who is interested. When I tried to use it, the site produced a HTTPS certificate error which had to be overridden before it would work properly. Personally, I don't think that this method offers many significant advantages over accessing Wikipedia directly via Tor. It wouldn't solve problems for users in countries such as Turkey, as Wikipedia bans editing from known Tor exit nodes. A person can still read pages over Tor, though.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 18:28, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

This appears to be a roundabout way of accessing Wikipedia proper -- for example, trying to log in gets a notice that your particular Tor exit nodes' IP address is blocked, which was definitely not going to be mirrored. The response is reasonably fast - Tor carries a bit of a burden, and once it seemed to jam up on me, but in general the main problem was the certificates, which he presumably didn't want to spend money to register given it was only a few days experiment (note there is one for the main landing page, one for en.wikipedia, and one for the image server ... at least) There is a conceptual advantage in that one particular person holds the .onion address secret key and so the DNS enforcers don't get a say over what you connect to. But that's only if you trust the .onion holder and you also trust he is better at making sure he's not being hit by a man in the middle than you are, I think.

In any case, the site is at least technically an infringement on the Wikipedia trademark, and more to the point, Wikipedia shouldn't be leaving it to see if some guy like this manages to take de facto control of its ".onion identity". (Note that knowing who put up this .onion link is a gift you can't count on with the next one!) Just go ahead and make a site yourself, even if it is not recommended for general use, so that you can publicize it enough that someone else can't beat you to the punch permanently. While it may seem unlikely right now that Wikipedia will be given the Daily Stormer treatment by the DNS registrars reveling in newfound power, over time it is possible their demands will ratchet up to the point where you need to have this identity, and when it does, it is best that it is already firmly established and reliable and under your control. "The Internet is the TV of the '20s -- The Dark Web is the Internet of the '20s" -- believe it. Wnt (talk) 23:36, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Reference Desk

Re wp:RD talkpages. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:39, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to see your opinions on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/RfC: Should the Reference Desks be closed.

The refdesk is amazing at providing answers, but I am concerned that it is fundamentally in conflict with core policies (WP:V) in many cases; I don't see how it can conform to Wikipedia rules without massive reform or a spin-off; I am concerned that the discussion will end with no consensus (status quo) because that's easier than continuing a controversial discussion. 86.20.193.222 (talk) 19:21, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

There is no possibility of any discussion at Wikipedia closing the ref desks because there are too many participants who enjoy them. The RfC is an indication of what happens once a group of similarly minded people grows to a critical size. As Wikipedia's influence grows, external groups will be more and more motivated to attempt to dominate topics which match their interest. That's likely to be US politics due to the amount of money and dedication available, but it could be creationism or a host of other contentious topics. Such attempts have occurred, but have been rebuffed since the external groups lacked patience and coordination, so far. Johnuniq (talk) 22:01, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

There are many situations where I suspect such external influence -- the constant featuring of video game ads on the Main Page, most notably, but also the permanent opposition to any competition of Wikipedia's news aggregation with publishers or medical articles with the companies that control those search results. But of all the places to suspect such influence, the Reference Desk with its utterly heterogeneous stream of questions seems like the very last place I would suggest such a thing. Wnt (talk) 00:27, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

My point is that the ref desks provide an example of a group of people who are impossible to shift because they are now entrenched and can dominate any discussion about their future. I'm not commenting on the ref desks other than to observe their example. Obviously external sources are not directing them. The gamergaters presented a major challenge and with a bit more clue and organization they might have won. Johnuniq (talk) 03:26, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

(talk page gnome) fundamentally in conflict with core policies (WP:V) in many cases; Reference desk posts are not encyclopedia articles. —PaleoNeonate – 02:49, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Sure, but the point being made concerns the desirability of having a walled-off area where regulars can offer unsourced forum commentary. Johnuniq (talk) 03:26, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

What sort of attempts have there been made to change it to what you want? --Bob K31416 (talk) 04:07, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Does anything seem even slightly ironic to you about making that point on this particular page? Not that Jimbo's talk page is the only one -- Wikipedia is actually full of unsourced forum commentary ... it's just, usually, it's commentary about how much one or more of the other editors suck and why some kind of administrative action is needed against them. To me it seems like a pleasant change to have a page where it's unsourced commentary with the goal of developing a real answer about a real educational topic that we at least could and occasionally do write an article about. Wnt (talk) 16:24, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

How would you feel about having a forum page where editors can discuss anything, and a reference desk page where editors can only discuss topics relevant to improving or understanding existing Wikipedia articles or potential ones? In the case of a discussion about existing or potential articles on the reference desk page, an explicit connection would have to be made to such Wikipedia articles or the thread could be moved to the forum page. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:52, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

It sounds like it [1] would basically become a forum for arguing about what could potentially become a Wikipedia article (or else, have that on its talk page). Call it [1] PAfD, a hypothetical debating club for people who want to argue about whether colonization of Saturn or neural flossing ever could or couldn't become an article, before finding more than (perhaps) one reference about it. Heh, we have a link, but it's a misnomer, points to living on moons, not my pet notion of people living on Saturn at 10-50 bars. It seems like it would be wiser to stick to the forum [2]. Wnt (talk) 22:12, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Could you clarify your message where you use "it", "the forum", etc.? --Bob K31416 (talk) 00:45, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Alright, annotated with [2] being the "forum page where editors can discuss anything" and [1] being the "only discuss topics...". Though [1] might also include [3] a talk page for arguing over what is allowed on [1], and [4] some administrative process or RfD where people argue over what is allowed on 3, etc. (It's all been done before by people who like enforcing/proposing Refdesk policy more than answering questions...) Wnt (talk) 03:28, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I think I see your main point that the RD I suggested might result in discussions that should be at other places such as article talk pages, etc. The situation of the actual RD is getting more unclear to me as I think about it more. Would you happen to know what was intended for the activity of the RD when it started or what was the motivation for starting it? --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:32, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

I remember reading something about it coming from the WP:Help desk early on. Wnt (talk) 18:15, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

If that's the case, it may be that the Reference desk was created as a place for questions that weren't appropriate for the Help desk. It's interesting that as I look at the Help desk today there are some questions there that are not appropriate for the Help desk but appropriate for the Reference desk. If the Reference desk was closed, more people with Reference desk questions might go to the Help desk. --Bob K31416 (talk) 01:36, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Net neutrality redux

I don't see anything on this talk page about the proposed repeal of Net neutrality in the United States, vote to happen on December 17, 2017. I've been hearing a lot about it on the news the last few days, so dropping a link here MSN — Maile (talk) 12:24, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Possibly bears mentioning here that there has recently been a substantial uptick in the number of OTRS tickets requesting that Wikipedia pulls another SOPA-style blackout. Many people out there seem to expect Wikipedia to take a stand on the issue. Yunshui ^雲_水 16:05, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I was actually going to suggest that very same thing. Every time net neutrality is threatened, we as Wikipedians must take a stand against it. If we do not, then net neutrality will die, and Wikipedia will die along with it. Kurtis ^(talk) 17:03, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo, isn't this the case of the "internet bat signal" regarding which you half a decade ago promised us vigilance? Now would be a good time to ramp it back up. 185.13.106.221 (talk) 21:06, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm all for it. The community should lead, of course. My personal views aren't that relevant.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:29, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

No Jimbo, like it or not, you're the only leader around here with any public name recognition, so if you think its best to leave it up to the community, you should get out altogether. What's best is for you to immediately ( only 3 weeks left) call for a mass demonstration of Wikipedians, including Readers, at FCC Headquarters 445 12th Street SW, Washington, D.C. during the Week of Dec.7-14. This is a great time to use the moral capital that yourself and the rest of Wikipedia has accumulated by not selling out/not being monetized. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:05, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

While I very much appreciate in a way your persistent calls for me to act unilaterally, I don't think it's wise. It is true, of course, that I have public name recognition and that I can rally people. But the way it works is that I should only act if the community wants me to act. If there is a community vote for a site-wide protest, then I'm absolutely ready to do what I can. But it is much more powerful if I can speak with confidence on behalf of our community, than for me, as a single influential person, to write an editorial. (Which I'm happy to do as well, my point is just: if we want to have a real impact, the community needs to lead and I need to act as the physical symbol of that by going on television and so on to be the face and voice of it on your behalf.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 06:12, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Please consider the four possible outcomes of the worst and best that could happen if you do and don't act unilaterally to open the necessary RFC, announce it to the appropriate village pumps, WP:CD, mailing lists, IRC, and movement leaders in the Foundation and chapters, and Wikipedians known personally to you who would be harmed if network neutrality ended (i.e., most of them in the U.S.) My estimate is that if you personally take initiative to lead, the chance of success is in the mid 90s percent, but if you don't it's probably below 50% and possibly below 35%. If you say, "yes, this is what I want and the community should do it for me," then you need to be very explicit about that or (1) people won't do it for you, (2) other people won't believe it's actually what you want, and (3) it will happen slower than if people see you took initiative. 136.148.221.174 (talk) 14:36, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

This is another existential event, I hope you know. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:10, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

One good argument for you now is that the Dark web renders most of the alleged benefits from this change irrelevant. Nocturnalnow (talk) 23:27, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

• I agree with JW above that unilateral action is a bad idea. Open up an RFC if you feel strongly about the issue. I personally don't believe that the Trump administration is manipulable by public pleas — they'll always do the wrong thing, regardless. Carrite (talk) 15:56, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

So you don't think JW should act unilaterally, but just anyone who feels strongly should, because you believe it's a waste of time? Would a blackout-scale action influence Congress (leaving Trump out of it for the time being)? The FCC is the target of our action, and as an independent commission is the U.S. Executive influential over it at all, relative to the sway Congress holds over its budget, agenda, appointment schedule, and regulatory guidance? Trump and his cronies are buffoons who have no idea how to hang on to their base, let alone manipulate telecoms policy that they've already flubbed. 136.148.221.174 (talk) 16:26, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

• Wikipedians can and should try to create a clearinghouse of neutrality violations. Most likely this can be a plain article, provided we can brush aside the people who will claim it is a "coatrack" for us to pull together all the cases we can find. Let's bear in mind that the worst of net neutrality violation that we can expect is direct censorship -- companies trying to ban us from accessing streaming sites, file sharing software, interlibrary loan sites like Sci-Hub and so forth, until at last they reach the level of political censorship they prefer. But that puts them in a position like China five years ago, where they can't do that effectively until they have to block or severely slow privacy options like the Tor browser and virtual private network software, things which are really very practical options and not at all difficult for users to implement. However, unlike China it is not clear that they have a unified central committee with sufficient power, resolve, and coordination to orchestrate the change, particularly if people on Wikipedia are tracking every trial balloon they float in that direction and helping thereby to orchestrate the inevitable resistance. Wikipedia can also work as a social network to get a bunch of Tor nodes online and try to walk every single editor through the process of getting Tor installed and running (not that they really need any hand-holding, the thing is just as easy as Firefox to install, but we can convince users it's worth doing). Remember - if we can gnaw away at the reward the companies are seeking, we can sap their motivation to even get started! Wnt (talk) 23:02, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo, how can you be revolted by Kohs as a person, but when his company tries to take down your website by buying off the government and lying about it you want the community to lead? The community would prefer that you do what you can to save its existence. We know you don't prefer a return to the commercial model under strict government censorship. Your role as our figurehead requires you to take measured responses to genuine existential threats. 83.137.1.196 (talk) 13:15, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Horseplay vs. foreplay harassment

The last thing I thought Wikipedia would need to explain, in the 21st century, is the difference between non-sexual horseplay and foreplay, as with sexual harassment. As you likely know, in the U.S. recently, numerous claims of harassment have been flooding the news. I think we need more articles to explain the behavior of affectionate, loving people versus loners, hermits, or sexual predators. As typical, people should write what they know about physical horseplay, and meanwhile find wp:RS sources to support the explanations. If someone tickles your ribs, it does not mean they are groping, and there is such a thing as affectionate people accidentally brushing against another body part. If a person walks around naked, then it is not automatically harassment, but often getting attention or show-off of workout results. When teenage boys romp around in the gym shower, it is not likely foreplay but rather, water play, and we should find swim coaches who write to discipline teenage boys when the shower horseplay lasts too long. Perhaps there are several other page titles to cover, but I would suggest "Horseplay versus foreplay" or such. I think many affectionate people are being misjudged about tickling or risqué jokes (lewd jokes), as if intended to be harassment. Perhaps other readers can suggest more page titles, and WP might need a whole navbox to link related articles to explain the spectrum of personal behaviors displayed by affectionate people, misinterpreted as harassment. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:13, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikid77, this issue is interesting because your points are valid while at the same time, real sexual harassment is, or at least has been, occurring at epidemic proportions. I think its futile to try to have articles addressing the differences between what's harmless and harmful in this area as its too subjective, I think. Its kinda like having articles about "what's drinking too much". Also, it may be too soon to try to be comprehensive about the variations of this topic because, in the USA at least, there is perhaps an hysteria or avalanche aspect going on right now, maybe? This could be a seismic cultural long term event unfolding which may effect many aspects of society and it might just be beginning. In summary, I think its too early to even try to address the valid points you make in an encyclopedia. Nocturnalnow (talk) 19:34, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikid77, I'm not sure you have considered the point of view of someone who is at the receiving end of unwanted tickling. It's fine to be an affectionate person, but that doesn't mean you should feel free to demonstrate that affection if you don't know that it is welcome. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 22:16, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

There are issues worth pursuing here, especially in the context of this story. We are confronted with some significant philosophical or political issues we have to sort out.

• First, is "stealing a kiss" ever a form of sexual assault, and if so, when? Since there are many, many movies that idealize a bygone era's ideal of attempting to steal a kiss under various circumstances, do we regard these as portrayals of sexual assault, and if so, are their G or PG ratings inappropriate?
• Second, is there a defense against "groping" based on the presence of a physical barrier to sensation and/or whether pressure is applied through it? If so, how thick a barrier, how much pressure are we talking about?

Now, my feeling is that even to suggest that philosophy could apply to such situations will be taken as inherently offensive by many/most. The way these things are meant to be settled is through universal condemnation, followed by the inevitability that in the future some famous personage gropes Sophia (robot) or a projection on a holographic screen or even a TV and suddenly, within hours, under intense supervision from a few aristoi among us, the world says "No!" and establishes that such a thing is invariably wrong, no matter what people might have believed in the past, and this is never to be questioned again (and never will be). But that isn't actually my preference for how we would establish moral standards. Wnt (talk) 00:23, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, prior norms for "serial dating" (or flirting) in U.S. are beginning to rival "serial killer". The complex issues include whether workplace dating is prohibited by company rules. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:13, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Is hanging a man from a tree ever a form of murder, and if so, when? Since there are many, many movies that idealize a bygone era's ideal of justice under various circumstances, do we regard these as portrayals of murder, and if so, are their G or PG ratings inappropriate? World's Lamest Critic (talk) 01:54, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Well, relations between human beings are complex and full of grey areas and shades of understanding rather than black-and-white interpretations. But a couple points.

If someone tickles your ribs, it does not mean they are groping

No, it doesn't. It does mean that they're committing assault and battery though, if the person being ticked doesn't consent. It can also be a form of torture by the way.

there is such a thing as affectionate people accidentally brushing against another body part

Again, assuming consent, there is indeed such a thing. Consenting adults, in the privacy of their own homes, have indeed been known known to brush their body parts together. So what? What does that have to do with anything? The implication, which is extremely offensive, is that only one person need to consent otherwise you would not have raised the issue. Right? Are you claiming that consenting adults in their own homes are in some way, shape, or form being penalized for brushing their body parts against each other? You're not and you know you're not, but are rather advocating frottage. Don't.

is there a defense against "groping" based on the presence of a physical barrier to sensation and/or whether pressure is applied through it? If so, how thick a barrier, how much pressure are we talking about?

Precisely 5.3 millimeters and 2.7 foot pounds respectively, of course. Neither more nor less. Hopefully this answer brings as much enlightenment to the discussion as your question. Sarcastic implications that the problem here is that you're a philosophical genius and everybody else is a moron are also not helpful. Can somebody hat this pointless and offensive thread, thanks. Herostratus (talk) 03:17, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

You might imagine it pointless and offensive, but the harassment topic, for months, has recently occupied almost half of U.S. mainstream news coverage, including concerns about rules of meetings for work at home or work at hotel room. WP should have more pages about affectionate people, beyond charismatic people. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:13, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Moral panic?^[Humor] —PaleoNeonate – 08:58, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I mean, yes, point taken. It is an important subject. It is fraught, complicated, and difficult to analyze and discuss. So, if we want to -- count me out, but others may -- it has to be handled delicately. And it's about social behavior so it's a political question (in the larger sense).

It is also true that many activities are debatable at the margins. Questions of consent, establishment of unequal power relationships, intent, creation of hostile environments, and so forth are subject to complicated analysis and there's not always one correct answer especially at the margins.

However, mostly we don't need to worry about the margins because very few of these things at the margins enter the public discourse. The margins are interesting questions for late-night conversations in the freshman dorm common room, or maybe for law school or philosophy class. But it's not helpful here.

Again: discussed with special care. I'm not seeing points about thickness of fabric, tickling of ribs, brushing of bodies, and so forth as evidence of special care. Herostratus (talk) 16:57, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. I think one thing that we could do, and I intend to try myself, is to expand our sexual harrassment article with branch articles covering some of the different national,societal and religious perceptions, norms and mores, both present and past (e.g. men in Italy pinching unknown women on their butts...hopefully that's in the past). And there are definitely different societal attention to,reactions and punishments related to this issue varying between countries where you would not expect much variation. Here in Canada, as you see here, half our women say they have been sexually harassed, however, media stories and content within the past year has been much less than in the USA. Why? One reason may be that the aspect of big money, especially hush money, is in play in the USA but not up here. Our civil courts are dramatically more stingy when it comes to any civil payouts and especially any where quantifiable damage can not be proven. In fact, if I understand the basics of 1 of the highest profile USA settlements of $30 million dollars, it was related to a former consensual girlfriend and I doubt she would have gotten a penny in court up here and thus likely nothing from an employer either. The perpetrator might have been fired, but even then, he would have a good wrongful dismissal suit if the victim had no tangible proof to support her allegations. As another example, this event would have likely gone very differently in the USA. I'm NOT implying that one or the other approach by employers and courts is more valid, I'm just saying there can be substantial differences in victims coming forward, employer approach, and results of allegations in different countries and especially when big money is in play. So, I think that expansion of our existing article to include any national or religious differences in law, norms and mores, is our best approach going forward in terms of encyclopedic content. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:29, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

OK. Well, if there's anything we're not up to doing here, it's dealing with these issues very well. This is really best left to publishers with small focused editorial boards. There are a few other issues like this. A few.

One reason for this that the demographics of our editors is... well, you know what it is. And we have an unusual organization -- everybody's on the editorial board -- which works great for >99% of subjects, but not very well on those that are political hot potatoes. IMO our material on these subjects should be as short and anodyne as reasonably possible, and let the reader look elsewhere for in-depth material on these issues. Herostratus (talk) 21:18, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Well, once we've established that people thinking for themselves or asking questions about one issue is bad, particularly because it's a serious issue, the obvious question is whether it is actually "pointless and offensive" for people to think for themselves on any issue. After all, it is surely not useful to think for oneself about an issue that is completely unimportant to anyone, and difficult to explain why only issues of a specific level of importance, not too high or too low, would be beneficial to speak about. Certainly we see the imminent introduction of a more top-down model with monitoring by Xi Jinping via a "social credit" model in China; [50] a less advanced country cannot move at that pace, but Donald Trump's "extreme vetting" scheme is close enough to it that I imagine the Americans may be handing over many billions of dollars in patent royalties to their betters once all of the patents are published. (A logical progression probably involves first immigrants, then air travelers, gun buyers, and finally just about anyone who finds themselves with a need to work) Obviously such a scheme is well integrated, able to take on anything from a casual question to a casual grope with ease, and probably with similar effects on scoring. Wnt (talk) 16:41, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Wnt, the unitizing of humans by both China and the USA is interesting as is, I might add, the credit score addiction even in the face of rampant manipulation of credit scores. This sociological/economic event is unfolding so fast, e.g.[51][52] I must agree with Herostratus that its like chasing a meteor on a bicycle and we are forced to keep our material short and anodyne...that is the only rational thing for Wikipedia to do at this stage of this sociological earthquake. Just as an aside, one of the solutions being mentioned is to separate men and women in large company workplaces, wherever possible, on the basis that would avoid potential harassment issues. That would be a disaster, imo. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:52, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

In terms of people thinking for themselves, the capacity to do that separates us from sheep. But the mainstream desire to do that is becoming less encouraged and rewarded in all but base materialistic/commercial terms....e.g.Shark Tank and drug patents. However, ironically, the mainstream encouraged internet platforms and social media as well as renegades like Wikipedia, have opened communication interactions among people which stimulate some people to pry open their own brains...their thinking processes...their peer group set opinions...a tiny little bit at a time..until eventually..slowly..like dawn breaking...a few, or maybe more, come to taste the beauty of thinking for themselves...and once its tasted, it can not be put back in a box. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:49, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Having said that, Wnt, I think that thinking for oneself is not automatic upon birth. It has everything to do with the cultural, educational and parental influences upon children and adults. Critical thinking abilities and exercises are much more highly valued in some schools than in others, for example. I can personally testify that "thinking for themselves" is dramatically more prevalent among Canadians than among Americans as a whole. I would guess its still the norm here in Canada. One huge threat to younger generations re: thinking for themselves is the Helicopter parent epidemic. Wikipedia is a strong influence towards individual thinking because of our NPOV pillar. And the various institutional/government threats toward NPOV, e.g. the constant attack on "net neutrality" will continue ad infinitum. Your prediction that "The Internet is the TV of the '20s -- The Dark Web is the Internet of the '20s"" is profound and likely, but I choose not to believe it because I know it is not carved in stone....yet. It all depends on what the forces of good guys do...we all already know and can see what the forces of bad guys do. Nocturnalnow (talk) 17:35, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Presumption of innocence aspect

This 2 day old article contains an allegation: "..... said in a Facebook post that she quit Friday because she was sexually harassed on the job in March. She said the person who harassed her was “disrespectful” to several staff that night." which seems to conflate "disrespectful" with sexual harassment. The venue took immediate action. And within 2 days there were these consequences:

1. A sign on the door Tuesday read: “The Needle Vinyl Tavern will be closed indefinitely. We will let you know if and when that changes.”
2. Jeremy Taggart and Jonathan Torrens, who were to host their Taggart and Torrens Podcast at the Needle on Monday, instead relocated to a south-side venue. “We are heartbroken to hear about the allegations of mistreatment of the staff at The Needle Vinyl Tavern in Edmonton,” said a post on their Twitter account. “We cannot in good conscience perform there tonight.”
3. The biweekly Edmonton music podcast Cups N Cakes, which covers the Canadian indie scene with an emphasis on the western provinces, said Monday in a Facebook post: “Cups N Cakes will no longer support The Needle in any way, shape or form. Our hearts go out to anyone affected by this. Stay strong and know that Edmonton’s music community stands beside you.”
4. Other acts who had cancelled or relocated their performances included Nuela Charles, the Red Cannons, Chron Goblin, LA Timpa, Cold Specks, Craig Cardiff, Simon Hoskyn and Dylan Ella.

So, does this event deserve a Wikipedia article and if so, how many more like it? Nocturnalnow (talk) 01:27, 24 November 2017 (UTC)