This is an archive of past discussions about User:Jimbo Wales. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
"To all our readers in the U.S., It's a little awkward, so we'll get straight to the point: This Friday we humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia's independence. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. We depend on donations averaging $16.36 from the exceptional readers who give. If you donate just $2.75, the price of a coffee, Wikipedia could keep thriving. Most people donate for a simple reason—because Wikipedia is useful. If Wikipedia gave you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate. Show the volunteers that bring you access to reliable, neutral information that their work is the biggest act of generosity still alive on the Internet. Thank you."
The above is what you see if you simply read wikipedia without being a logged-in editor. It is, of course, on a black background, and on my monitor fills roughly 90% of the page.
[We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.] Hi, reader in the U.S., it seems you use Wikipedia a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but this Saturday we need your help. Time is running out in 2019 to help us. We’re a non-profit and we don't have salespeople. We depend on donations averaging $16.36, and fewer than 2% of readers give. If you donate just $2.75, the price of your Saturday coffee, Wikipedia could keep thriving. Thank you.
Interesting. I wonder how much information they track to figure out who to say "it seems you use Wikipedia a lot" to and how long they retain it.
Was it black background?
There is most likely a page that shows all of the variations and tracks which ones bring in the most money. It would be interesting to read that page if anyone knows where it is. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:47, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
Well, I was logged out. And I seldom visit when logged out. Maybe a couple times a year, when it logs me out. So I dunno. Probably they mean that the people in the US as a group use Wikipedia a lot. I can't remember the background, blue or something. Herostratus (talk) 17:41, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
You can track who is currently getting what WMF-spam and why at Meta:Special:CentralNotice, if you really care. IIRC in the core markets like the US and UK they tend to rotate between multiple banners at random to stop people becoming too irritated at seeing the same thing every time. ‑ Iridescent18:24, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
In general, because Wikipedia is only reproducing and reorganising information from other sources, its coverage does reproduce the biases that exist in those sources. WilyD05:51, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
It is always a problem to turn down requests for new articles, and there is currently a fresh controversy over women in science.[1] What the news articles about this don't realise is that declining the creation of the article is nothing personal. It is usually because of problems with WP:GNG, such as weak sourcing or only passing mentions in the sourcing. The Telegraph article repeats the common myth that the women scientists were "not notable enough" but the real issue is WP:GNG compliance when creating a new article.--♦IanMacM♦(talk to me)06:03, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
This is often true, though if experienced editors thought of themselves more as guides and less as gatekeepers when interacting with new users, it wouldn't be so severe. WilyD09:52, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
To be clear, I think the notability of high schools is generally questionable with some rare exceptions. Having said that, I obviously don't think that high schools that predominantly serve or served Africa American students are inherently less notable. Indeed in many cases because of the historical role that they played, they may be more notable than most run of the mill suburban traditionally white high schools!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:46, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Ever-clearer, I think a lot of video games (and songs about video games) are notable only to those who have played them. It's a strange world in which all that money spent for education isn't as notable as the latest monster hit parade... ^⁾..⁽^ 🌿 SashiRolls t · c13:16, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Interesting and rather sad excuses, especially from Wikipedia's co-founder and leader, Jimbo Wales. What we find is that every major high school in the area has an article (see: Pinellas County Schools) except for the two historically black ones. These were the only high schools African Americans could attend and the first ones open to them. You add the bullying on top of that and we have a very clear example of what's wrong with Wikipedia. The bigotry and sickness start at the top sorry to say. You can do better Jimbo. FloridaArmy (talk) 18:25, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
@FloridaArmy: If you think "bigotry and sickness" are good descriptions of what Jimbo wrote, I think you must have simply misread it. You should read it again. He said "I obviously don't think..." He is agreeing with you. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:35, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
(more) To be clear, I don't think "bigotry and sickness" is a useful or fair way to frame the other people responding either. But it's 100% crazy to see Jimbo's response that way. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:41, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
No, he said most schools are of questionable notability. He added that some African American schools are more notable than other schools. It was a cop out answer. It gives cover to the status quo which largely excludes Black institutions. The evidence is clear, the integrated and white schools have articles while even the oldest and most important schools serving African Americans don't. Let's not make excuses for bigotry and discrimination. If it acts like a duck and quacks like a duck.. FloridaArmy (talk) 18:41, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
That's a very interesting cite to pick out and misrepresent. It's the last cite in the article and the only thing it cites is a librarian who graduated from the school. And the host is Tumblr but the source is the Feminist Task Force at the American Library Association. Do you think that group isn't a proper source for who the first African American librarian in the Clearwater area was? FloridaArmy (talk) 20:30, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Please take a look at List of Rosenwald schools with 83 schools listed, most with articles, most with NRHP listings (almost automatically notable). There are similar schools in Delaware funded by the DuPonts. Some similar schools founded right after the Civil War are certainly notable (try Thaddeus Stevens School in Washington DC). Other schools were founded by religious organizations. We've got some African-American schools, we need more. The sources may be a bit different than usual. Keep at it and don't get discouraged! Smallbones(smalltalk)20:14, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
We run into this frequently. The answer is, in many cases, that the wrong fight is being fought. If reliable sources are wrong or biased, Wikipedia articles, which rely on those sources, also will be. If the sources don't cover something that perhaps they should be, we won't either. The answer in that case is not to try to use Wikipedia to "fix" that perceived deficiency, but to get those sources to do it. Once that happens, the fix will, without issue, flow through to Wikipedia as well. But if you think there should be more source material about something, and there isn't, tell those sources what you'd like to see them writing about more. The same sources that love to shout "WHY DIDN'T WIKIPEDIA WRITE ABOUT THIS???" should be told "Well, because you didn't write about it." SeraphimbladeTalk to me20:41, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
These are fun but phoney arguments. Every single assigned high school in both school districts has an article. African American high schools that were the first and only of their kind aren't included. Even when they and their alumni are discussed in multiple sources including with photographs. By all means compare to the sourcing of the current district schools. Wikipedia has an alphabet soup of policies and can determine what is and isn't notable based on what we like. We don't like African Americans and their institutions enough to include them, even when they are far better sourced and more historically significant than their peers. This is the reality. Again, every single district high school in both districts is notable according to Wikipedia except for the segregated ones that served African Americans. FloridaArmy (talk) 21:30, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Question: is there a reason why the Taylor, Dee (October 5, 1999). "African-American Education in Dekalb County". Arcadia Publishing. source is not used in the DeKalb County School District article? Seems like African American is not even established as a theme in that article (mentioned once in passing)? Might be a good start to update that article with such content? Maybe a good idea, in a next step, to develop an article on former and later transformed segregation era schools in that county (there appears to be at least one non-trivial source on that topic), rather than trying, as a first step, to have a separate article on a single one of these schools? --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:56, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Answer: because Wikipedia omits so many African American institutions their role and influence is omitted across wide swathes of our coverage. With articles mostly on white and integrated high schools, Black high schools are frequently omitted from broader coverage of the districts. The Avondale High School (DeKalb County, Georgia) article on the formerly whites only school doesn't even mention the colored school of the same name that predated it. You and others including Jimbo have found various ways to justify the exclusion of important African American history as if it doesn't exist at all. And there's an important ripple effect. Related subjects also get excluded. FloridaArmy (talk) 22:30, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
No, I invite you to add African American content (school-related or otherwise) to the encyclopedia, especially where current content seems to be failing the WP:NPOV policy. Afaics it is rather unfortunate you wandered into this field via articles that are affected by the WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES guideline change: indeed, if the Avondale High School (DeKalb County, Georgia) article irks you, then add the content you think is missing (with a decent reference that is, not unreferenced as you did here), otherwise the article should probably run through WP:AfD, and might likely not survive per the current WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES guidance.
In other words, I invite you to come out of "self-fulfilling prophecy" mode. If you don't add the African American content with decent references (that is, in existing articles if the stand-alone articles you proposed don't pass current WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES criteria), then it is no use complaining that it isn't there – that's Wikipedia's WP:SOFIXIT principle. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:46, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
I did fix it. I created articles on two of the schools that were omitted from Wikipedia Jimbo & Co.have found excuses.to continue to omit the segregated schools that were often the first and only schools for African Americans. It's shameful. FloridaArmy (talk) 21:07, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
You simply didn't read it, did you? I wrote, adding emphasis, "that is, in existing articles if the stand-alone articles you proposed don't pass current WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES criteria". Trying bravado against current WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES criteria simply won't work, and that has nothing to do with any purported African American-related bias: if such bias is your real concern you'd be editing the existing articles, using references to reliable sources in the process. Thanks. --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:30, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
On a slight tangent, I do quite agree with Jimbo: our bar for high school notability was historically too low (per WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES and the attitudes around it). That means that there are a lot of school articles that exist currently that would not pass AfC these days. But these articles see so little traffic (more evidence that they aren't notable) that they don't get XfD'd. That even further cements a bias for white schools that were easier to get created back in the day. I think we can tackle that by pruning old, non-notable schools, and doing better sourcing work on marginalized schools without articles. But I think that's part of a deeper problem of finding old articles that would never pass AfC today. Editors may complain based on WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, but I think its good that our standards have risen. Captain EekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓22:26, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Discouraging FA from creating entries (developed stubs) on two segregation era black schools seems pretty daft. The first was open for 45 years; the second for 30+. How could this possibly hurt the encyclopedia? I recently noticed that en.wp says that there are fewer high schools in all of Haïti (pop: 11m; currently 0 high schools) than there are in Montana (pop: 1m; currently 10 high schools). I noticed this in the context of someone "scrubbing" criticism about systemic bias from the Criticism of Wikipedia page (specifically here) based on categorization effects. 🌿 SashiRolls t · c21:54, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
Take a look at [2] Reverted in less than a minutein seven seconds, It appears that Jimbo's user pages act as honeytrap -- a high visibility page that attracts vandals so that they can be efficiently blocked. Otherwise they might vandalize some obscure page and it might take a while for someone to notice. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:00, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
Guy Macon, Jimbo is the superhero. There is no way to tell how many supervillains are diverted to dualling with Jimbo instead of targeting helpless obscure worlds, as opposed to Jimbo's existence itself providing a catalyst for the constant creation of new ones that would not otherwise exist, and/or Jimbo superheroing around in his local galactic sector thinking he's keeping the universe safe while most of the universe, good or bad, goes on in complete ignorance of the idea of Jimbo. UsedtobecoolTALK✨08:27, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
The API says that it took seven seconds. The previous rollback was six seconds after the prior edit. Before that, 40 seconds, 20 minutes, 24 seconds, 12 seconds, 33 seconds, 50 seconds, and 59 seconds. Pretty quick reverts. --Yair rand (talk) 08:32, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
Anyone with a tiny grasp of Cyrillic realizes that "Эрнцн Долян" is complete gibberish. In fact, the word or name "Erntsn" is so glaringly illiterate that it indicates nothing whatsoever about nationality. I'd also be highly suspicious that this is joejobbery pretending to be the handiwork of a certain Russian aviation aficionado... A cleverness level of 2 would seem to be a red flag, so to speak... Carrite (talk) 13:08, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
I guess we could easily block in an edit filter any username that has any cyrilic characters and which does not transliterate into a proper firstname or family name ... it's just a step further than disabling IP editing. --Dirk BeetstraTC11:50, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
Keep in mind that by across the project base userpages are protected against editing by unregistered and new users, users may opt out of this - and Jimbo is opted out. — xaosfluxTalk18:04, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
I've always got the feeling that Jimbo was very dedicated to the ideals of Wikipedia, such as anyone can edit. Thus as the highly visible founder, what better way to encourage that then to invite people to edit your page? Sure, that does inadvertently act as a honeytrap, but luckily Jimbo's army of nearly 4k watchers undoes shenanigans quickly. But I don't think it was intended to act that way. I suspect editing Jimbo's page remains many people's first edit, be it vandalism or not. If even one editor who starts on Jimbos page goes on to become a regular editor, I'd call the Jimbo open door policy a great success! Captain EekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓18:39, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
Just noting that "Erncn Dolian" also edited with the Latin-lettered name. No it still doesn't make any sense. Taking the simplest explanation as the most probable, I'll suggest that the aviation pioneer, is still the most likely candidate - probably trying to recreate his days of former glory, or maybe he still just doesn't have anything better to do. As far as the original question of whether "Jimbo's page" is a honey trap, I've always wondered why he puts up with so much garbage on this talk page. Just trying to be a nice guy and having a great tolerance for BS is the likely answer, but there may be something also about "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" (to quote Stalin IIRC). Smallbones(smalltalk)04:53, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
I have heard that "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" quote attributed to Sun Tzu, Machiavelli and Michael Corleone, Smallbones, rather than Joe Stalin. That being said, it is my experience that 99.9% of usernames incorporating "stalin" are troll accounts. I block Stalin trolls. As for the "honeypot" characterization, I think that many high visibility pages attract axe-grinding trolls, and that those sad sacks are usually blocked quickly elsewhere. I have sometimes been disappointed that Jimbo has tolerated people who seem to be to be obvious trolls on his pages, while sometimes responding indignantly and with hostility to good faith critics. So it goes. He runs his pages. Cullen328Let's discuss it05:27, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
One obvious question is the IP range used to make these edits. It is not at all easy to edit Wikipedia from known proxy/VPN addresses, so "Эрнцн Долян" and his friends must be able to create an account from an IP address that is not blocked.--♦IanMacM♦(talk to me)06:31, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
Some. There's at least four different LTAs doing mostly the same thing, using, obviously, multiple dynamic ranges and proxies. Still, it's not a bad place to honeypot them. There's some discussion of a filter in archive 12 of WP:EFR; I'm not sure how effective it would be, but feel free to re-request for the current iterations. -- zzuuzz(talk)11:42, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
Didn't stop the edit. It went through without adding the image.[3] Can we add a filter that disallows all edits that attempt to add the image? --Guy Macon (talk) 09:24, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
Hello Jimbo, the results of the December 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections have been posted, having been certified by the independent scrutineers. All 11 vacant seats were filled based on the votes from 1,673 ballots. Best regards, — xaosfluxTalk18:06, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
Understanding the prehistoric world
Gryposaurus Monumentsis Skull
Hello Jimbo, I'm not sure if dinosaurs interest you very much, but a new perspective on some of the most recognisable dinosaurs has been going around for a couple of years now. Wikipedia had barely heard of it until I did the other day and I've started an article and stuff but it seems to be undergoing an almost planned protectionism process, so maybe if I post it here before deletion it will get the most chance of dissemination. As a strict vegetarian, this is interesting stuff of the sort which is usually washed out of the dinosaur topic in favour of perceiving violence as the dominant element to animal life. However, this is an interesting item for anyone who enjoys paleobiology and evolution topics in general.
You probably wonder if that means a toothbrush or violence or... a dental what? The dental battery is a tooth formation found preserved in dinosaurs. It was once a dominant feature on the planet. Triceratops, for instance, had dental batteries. Also duck-billed dinos (the most prolific dinosaur), and sauropod similar to a diplodocus (though not the dippy itself).
Now, because of the way in which a battery stacks as the body decays and fossilises, the dental battery has been found intact on fossils since forever, but because of that ability to survive fossilisation, it was always believed to be a fused lump of enamel, the antipathy of sophistication. However, in 2017, engineering refinements provided scientists the ability to grind down full sized micro-thin slices, polished into a light-permeable glass and studied under a microscope.
Well they brought the whole thing down, Jimmy. This thing is the most sophisticated toothwork ever. If our teeth were like these flexible sheets of tooth crowns which wore completely down to be ever replenished... Imagine if your jaw was just an ever replacing tooth mass, engineered to perfection... well it turns out beyond any expectation, that is what a Hadrosaurid tooth is.
Exciting stuff, this is the most interesting thing about dinosaur teeth hands down, only discovered to be so in 2017.
Various hadrosaourids
Now here on Wikipedia we didn't even have an article about dinosaur teeth at all until 2017. It is called dinosaur tooth. Dental battery was a redirect for those two years receiving something in the order of 25 hits entirely. Sadly, after I asked for clarification on the dinosaur project, a drive has been started to put the information into the dinosaur glossary rather than start an article. This tooth formation may have been only recognised for what it is recently, but it is one of the most available examples throughout history. Wikipedia has not been covering it for almost twenty years now. I tried pointing out that redirects and redlinks no longer encourage expansion as well as a short article does, but it seems certain the dental battery is going to be obscured on the site by our hobbyist experts. I was really excited about the spread of this new important information, but it is unlikely to even make it through DYK before deletion, so I just want to leave it here where someone with an interest might even hear about it. Hope that's not too much for everyone who has nightmares about inclusionism to cope with o/ ~ R.T.G07:36, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
The fallacy of this request is that it assumes that failure to accomplish goals is related to lack of money rather than lack of organizational commitment. Carrite (talk) 15:43, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
According to their own documentation, the Community Tech team has indeed been at least partially re-assigned to anti-harassment tools instead of the wishlist. That doesn't mean that additional funds for more staff would not address the problem with the neglected wishlist, of course. But you are right about the lack of organizational commitment. At this stage, the previous wishlists had 5, 4, and 6 of their top ten wishes completed. EllenCT (talk) 21:23, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
The community wishlist is little more than a sick joke or PR stunt. I don't bother participating anymore, it's just a waste of my time. If ya want anything done around here, ya just gotta do it yourself. wbm1058 (talk) 16:10, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
I predict that the next in the 5/10, 4/10, 6/10, 1/10, ... sequence will be 15/30 the way the fundraiser is going, assuming phab:T202673 isn't impossible in PHP or something. EllenCT (talk) 20:15, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
Jimbo, if you are unable or unwilling to answer these then please say why. I am fine withdrawing them if they are offensive in the slightest (hoping you would prefer reformulation to avoid offense) but when you don't want to engage without saying why not, I don't know how to respond. I hope the election results give you some idea why I think you and people like you should be more vocal on these topics. EllenCT (talk) 00:05, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
Please help me
Hello Jimbo Wales. I don't know the way to create Requests for comment. Please help me. This is my content. It's very important and very critical.
Thank you very much Jimbo for your thoughtful greeting. You have my very best wishes for this holiday season. May your heart be filled with happiness during this special time.CAPTAIN RAJU(T)23:26, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
Saint Jimbo arrives to help a pair of sleepy editors.
'Twas the night before Wikimas, when all through the Teahouse
Not an editor was stirring, not even a mouse.
The references had been inserted by users with care,
In hopes that St. Jimbo[who?] soon would be there.
Most editors were nestled all snug by their beds,
While visions of new articles danced in their heads.
When out from a keyboard there arose such a clatter
I sprang to my screen to see what was the matter.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a question on sources and how to use them well here.
As dry words that before an old dictionary fly,
when they meet with a synonym, mount to the sky,[citation needed]
So, onto these articles the edits they flew,
With a sleigh full of facts, and citations, too.
And then in a twinkling, I saw on the page
Our wiki-creator: a man of great age.
As I checked it on Commons and was turning around,
Down my router St. Jimbo came in with a bound.
Almost 6 million articles he had flung on his back,
And he looked like most users with the editing knack.
His eyes – how they twinkled! slightly square – but how merry! Too much editing, folks, had turned his nose red like a cherry![medical citation needed]
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.[citation needed]
St. Jimbo: "Happy Editing to all, and to all users a good night!"
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his editing,
And filled bare urls; did sourcing and crediting
And confirming notability with a tap on his nose,
And, pressing "Publish changes", back up my modem he rose.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, leaving me to my epistle.[anachronism]
But I heard him exclaim, 'ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Editing to all, and to all users a good night!"
Miraclepine wishes you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and a prosperous decade of change and fortune.
このミラPはJimbo Walesたちのメリークリスマスも新年も変革と幸運の豊かな十年をおめでとうございます！ フレフレ、みんなの未来！/GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR FUTURE! ミラP04:50, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
Hi, I remember you wrote an article about a noted restaurant in South Africa years ago, likewise I have taken the time to contribute to and create articles for notable local politicians from my hometown Richmond, California. It's not the biggest city but I feel like in a democracy the sum of all human knowledge would include the verifiable news on the city council for a city with over 100,000 people. What's more they are even trying to delete the article for the very famous The People's LawyerJim Rogers (California politician) and I feel like these articles can be greatly improved some for instance for newcomer Ben Choi might be premature as he was only elected in 2019 and only has some press but others like María Viramontes and Jeff Ritterman are worth finding more sources for as these were our leaders for years and posterity demands it! Can you help send some resources to those articles and help me fix the city council website? And advice amigo?Ndołkah (talk) 09:14, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
Your canvassing might go better if your articles weren't WP:BLP-violating hatchet jobs. At least the first one was (I redacted most of it, and voted for its deletion). If the hive mind wants to check and fix the rest (or just speedy delete) that'd be good. Herostratus (talk) 15:17, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
Not only that, we need reliable sources not controlled by the subject that aren't derogatory. It may be that a person is notable, but only for stuff she'd probably rather not have aired here. Articles on such people should not exist, unless the person is really notable well above WP:BIO -- Charles Manson and so on. Not some mook who got his hand caught in a cookie jar somewhere. Herostratus (talk) 01:46, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
Hello JW, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2020. Happy editing,7&6=thirteen (☎)20:12, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season. I was doing a little research when I had some extra time on my hands, and out of curiosity, I asked Alexa the following two questions:
Alexa, is Wikipedia a reliable source? She replied: No, Wikipedia is not a reliable source.
Alexa is Wikipedia credible? She replied: Here is what I found on the web - according to nofilmschool.com "It can be said that Wikipedia is one of the most credible platforms for information and contains about five million pages on various subject matters.”
You might want to take a look at the website Alexa is quoting. The site goes on to say, "Businesses today are taking advantage of Wikipedia as a marketing platform as it can boost their ranking and online visibility. There are two ways you can do that. One is to hire professional Wikipedia experts or do it yourself. You can follow the steps below to create a credible Wikipedia page.” On that same site is a link to “professional experts” [4] And on that note, I refer back to what Levivich wrote in a discussion on Dec 2, 2019:
I won't argue for fun,
I won't argue for free,
with someone who's paid
to argue with me.
I get it...paid editing comes in all forms, and we already know for a fact that our political articles are tainted by it. AtsmeTalk📧18:45, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
More coverage here in the NYT. It says "There was no immediate comment from the government and it was not immediately clear when access to the website would be restored." It will be interesting to get comments from ordinary Turkish people about whether the access has been restored.--♦IanMacM♦(talk to me)14:25, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
WOW! Looks like Jimbo's "pathological optimism" mentality is 100% justified. The big news was scrolling along the bottom of both CNN and CBC yesterday for a very long time....very, very cool and super important event. Congrats to all. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:53, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
Sorry to go all Eeyore on you, but since when has a court ruling deterred a strongman intent on a policy outcome? A court ruling is just a speedbump in the road in front of a tank... Carrite (talk) 17:36, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
I would like to suggest adding the following text to this user page for Jimbo_Wales. Any interest?
I am obviously open to any feedback on this, compromise, or suggestions re condensation. I think this might enrich this page, but I am open to all opinions, obviously. thanks.
===Welcome to Wikipedia===
There are numerous areas where newcomers can make beneficial contributions. As just some examples, if you see an important topic that is not covered here, such as a historical event or figure, a new scientific finding, or an important cultural item, then you can find the existing article that covers that area, and edit the article to add the information.
Remember that all information added to Wikipedia needs to be based on what we officially refer to as reliable sources; i.e. published works, or reputable published articles or reports from notable publications, organizations or institutions. You will see footnotes throughout our entries indicating the source for various facts. If no such article exists yet, then you can add a new article, but only if the topic is noteworthy enough to deserve encyclopedic coverage.
We strongly encourage you to create a user account if you wish to make any edits. Doing so establishes you as a real member of the Wikipedia community; furthermore, it provides numerous technical features that you will find helpful in editing. Every user account generates a full and ongoing history of all edits ever made by that user, whether they are large or small edits. You will find it highly useful to do so.
If you need help, there are numerous places to ask. Try Wikipedia:Community_portal; on that page under the heading "Interact More," you can find even more links and data on places at Wikipedia where you ask for help, discuss articles, or share ideas. We welcome your input. feel free to join in!!
Not sure where to air this, but I feel the strategic echelons need to be informed. A consensus has been declared in this discussion to remove UI hooks to our Wikipedia Books tool, with the explicit judgement that PediaPress and their print-on-demand Wikipedia books are of no concern to us. Even Wikipedia:Books has been declared inactive. Yet the PoD upload still works as ever and we now have two pdf rendering services under development, one hosted by PediaPress again and the other, MediaWiki2Latex, at WMFlabs. Is it not a bad idea to cripple the UI as "not in use" while a service we have agreed to support is still up and running? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:29, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
At least the noise on the helpdesk proves that there is still a demand for the tool. Have PediaPress been told that we just flushed their business agreement down the pan? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:10, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
What agreement, exactly? That we would give them free advertising for a commercial service while the free alternative that most users want is broken? If there is such an agreement we should modify it to ask them to help get MediaWiki2Latex PDFs working before they get the for-pay gravy train back. EllenCT (talk) 21:16, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
I wish I knew, it never seems to have been made public, I don't even know if it was ever written down. The WMF were very proud of it when they first announced it, they seem to be less loud about it now. Originally, the WMF mooted going into PoD publishing themselves but brokering payment between the user and the print house was not their/our cup of tea so some guys offered to set up PediaPress to do that. They volunteered a lot of time and a modest amount of cash, I am not sure if PediaPress is officially not-for-profit but it seems pretty much run that way. They wrote our original free softcopy code that got retired years ago and now they are working on a maintainable replacement for us. The nearest thing to a gravy train I ever see is the donations or fees which PediaPress regularly make back to the WMF off the back of their Wikipedia Books print-on-demand service - payments which form part of the agreement. Turning round now to accuse PediaPress of commercialism and profiteering is just shameful and ignorant. I post here only because I want to be sure someone high up in the WMF knows what has been going on in their name. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 22:15, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
Hi Jimmy. I greatly admire the ideas you express in the article below. to everyone else here, feel free to read this. it has some intriguing insights, plus info on some new efforts. enjoy.
Do you want a fun and exciting Wiki challenge? An opportunity to get involved in some of the most important editing on Wikipedia? A giant shiny cup to display on your userpage? Well then you should join the WikiCup challenge! Folks of all experience levels are welcome to join. It's a good way for veteran editors to test their mettle, and for new users to learn the ropes. The competition revolves around content creation, such as good and featured articles, DYK's, reviewing such content, and more. See Wikipedia:WikiCup/Scoring for full details. Over the course of the year, users compete to create the most and best content in a round based format. The top performers in each round will advance to the next, until just 8 remain in the final round. Out of those, one Wikipedian will walk away with the coveted silver Wikicup. Could that user be you? Find out by signing up! Signups are open until January 31, 2020. May the editing be ever in your favor! Captain EekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓22:11, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
To clarify, I am not necessarily suggesting it can be corrected, but we should investigate that question and if so how. EllenCT (talk) 02:41, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo, the reason I ask is that it appears tasks once delegated to the committee to remedy (several heads are better than one?) are now being delegated to individual admins under AE/DS which, in practice, bypasses not only arbcom but the community at large. My concern is POV creep because such actions may be unilateral at an admin's sole discretion. It has given rise to committed involvement and micromanagement of controversial topic areas by making AE/DS individually tailored or perhaps "editor-focused" is a better term. See User:Awilley/Discretionary_sanctions. This new style of micro-sanctions is still experimental - some have been created, imposed, then deprecated when an editor raised enough hell, then it was given new life as deemed necessary at AE by what appears to me to be the same few admins. Perhaps if there was a rotation every month or so, it would prove helpful. Of course, we'd like to think that all of the admins and arbs we have elected are perfect - many are in my view - and they probably all would be in a perfect system - but reality tells a different story. Human nature, bias (be it perceived, unknowing or otherwise), alliances/favoritism, poor judgment, misinterpretations, lack of incentive to do the tedious research of diffs in context, the current WP payscale [FBDB], etc. are all worthy of consideration and may be attributable to why we can expect more failure than success with such micromanagement - including "involved" because of the focus and time spent watching a particular editor's edits simply because they have an opposing view. I don't see how this helps editor retention or NPOV in highly controversial topic areas; rather, it serves more as a means to remedy perceived disruption by silencing voices. It is natural for the result to be a calmer topic area when all opposing voices are removed from the discussion and only like-minds comprise the majority. I don't think the latter was ever the intent for dispute resolution. We recently went through tough times regarding WMF's role in the community, and I believed the outcome of that controversy reinstituted ArbCom's management of highly sensitive behavioral enforcement and controversial topic areas. AE/DS passes a big part of that responsibility to individual admins; thus the potential for POV creep. My curiosity equals my concern, so I'm looking forward to reading the responses and learning from different perspectives. AtsmeTalk📧18:54, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
It seems to me that DS have been fairly successful at resolving recurring edit wars in most of the areas where they have been applied, which has led to their popularity among arbitrators. I am generally in favor of devolving arbitrator power to administrator discretion, primarily because the RFA bar has become somewhat higher than most people seem to favor for the purpose of recruiting new admins, and while we have no desysop procedure, Arbcom has not shied from sanctioning admins for clear abuses. This new very small granularity scope of sanctions are new, as you point out, and do seem to warrant close scrutiny, though. EllenCT (talk) 21:16, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
The WP:AE setup has existed for 13 years (this was the first complaint to it), only slightly less long that the Arbitration Committee itself. It's not as if this is some new mechanism established to undermine the role of the committee; it's neither practical nor desirable that the arbs handle all the blocking themselves and act as judge, jury and executioner. ‑ Iridescent21:25, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Apologies if I wasn't clear, Iridescent, but my primary concern is the homemade sanctions - micromanagement by the same few admins, not DS/AE itself, although after 13 years, we now have more insight into the problems related to the initial setup of WP:AE. Are you of the mind that the process is error free or that it doesn't need improvement? My concern is over the issues DS/AE has given rise to per my comments above, and yes, it is controversial as the following diffs will demonstrate: 06-02-2019, 10-31-2019, 10-31-2019. It has great potential to lead to WP:HOUNDING and bad judgment calls based on preconceived notions and/or anticipation of wrong doing. AtsmeTalk📧23:08, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, ArbCom cases run on geological timescales, the use of DS and AE are a way to reduce the bureaucracy associated with a full case, especially in repeatable scenarios (e.g. Random Partisan Balkan Editor). Guy (help!) 14:35, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
It's inevitable that somebody will want to discuss this, especially over the holidays. Trump has now been impeached by the House of Representatives on the 1st count of the indictment (abuse of power) and voting on the 2nd count (obstruction of Congress) may be identical. Any comments so far? Smallbones(smalltalk)02:02, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure this page is the best place for a general discussion of the situation. The talk pages of relevant articles is the right place to discuss how to make those articles of Wikipedia more reliable/neutral/high quality, with a careful and thoughtful and kind and calm discussion of precise language and reliable sources. What we might discuss here would be any meta questions (more deep philosophical questions) that might arise out of those discussions.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:32, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
I have a deep philosophical question. Why is it that 99% of the people reading this have no idea that what we as a nation are doing is something that the founding fathers absolutely hated?
"[Political parties] serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests... [A political party] serves always to distract the public councils and enfeebles the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption." --George Washington 1796
"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a political party, I would decline to go." --Thomas Jefferson,1789
"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution." --John Adams, 1780.
"Party knows no impulse but spirit, no prize but victory. It is blind to truth, and hardened against conviction. It seeks to justify error by perseverance, and denies to its own mind the operation of its own judgment. A man under the tyranny of party spirit is the greatest slave upon the earth, for none but himself can deprive him of the freedom of thought." --Thomas Paine, 1787.
If we as a nation had carefully considered the form of government that we want and made a rational decision to do what the founders said would be a huge mistake, that would be one thing. Instead we just sort of let it happen, and now most of us cannot imagine anything else.
Guy Macon, perhaps it would warm the hearts of the founding fathers to see the community defy that "small but artful and enterprising minority" by electing an independent as our next president – the guy the enterprising minority disparages as "not a Democrat". wbm1058 (talk) 22:50, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
Well, I more meant philosophical questions relating to how we can improve Wikipedia. :)
Here in the UK, I think we are seeing some really seriously broken structural elements about how parties are organized and how the first-past-the-post system works. What's interesting is that these are abstract structural questions about which it ought to be possible to get broad agreement (at least about there being a real problem) among people of good will, actual progress is likely because the people who benefit from the structural defects therefore have little incentive to fix the structural defects. In the recent UK election, one party got 11.6% of the vote, and only 1.7% of the seats in Parliament, while another party got 3.9% of the vote and a whopping 7.4% of the seats! I'm not mentioning which party because surely we can agree in the abstract that something seems wrong about that. In some voting systems, there can of course be a reason - even at times a good reason - why a precise ratio of votes to seats might not make sense. But surely something *seems* wrong and we should be holding huge public inquiries into whether we need to fix things.
I think it is similar with the power of parties in the US. We have a situation where at least some politicians seem more inclined to respond to demands from the party leadership than their own voters. Why? It has to do with the flow of money more than anything else. (And that points to another problem: the vast number of politicians who seem more inclined to respond to the demands of their financial backers than to their own voters.)
One of the things that being a good Wikipedians helps us all to learn is how to say: "I don't really care what your personal politics are - we can agree on a proper procedure to get to a neutral article and as long as we all follow that in good faith, we're going to be more or less ok." I'd like to see more of that spirit in our political leadership.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 03:19, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
The founding father hated political parties??? Who do you think it was that started the first political parties in America? – Levivich18:00, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
The election of Trump, his impeachment and the fact that the GOP has become Trump's propaganda machine is due to social media. Social media has caused public opinion to be more based on propaganda than on expert assessment of the facts. Before the social media age, anyone could have any opinion just like today, but it was not possible to spread propaganda around in the way it can be done now. Newspapers, t.v. and radio channels had the monopoly on providing information to the population, and they exerted editorial control over what was published. This editorial control was based on literature research done by journalist.
Public opinion would then be shaped by real facts as interpreted by experts. Politicians competing with each other to get the most votes would then need to base their ideas also on facts. Also, lawmakers lacking the sort of direct link they have today with their constituencies via social media, would end up discussing proposals with each other based on their objective merits. External input when necessary could be provided by experts in the subject matter.
Today, things are different. On the one hand, the public is no longer exposed to the hard facts as interpreted by experts. What goes viral on social media plays a significant role today, and that has nothing to do with whether of not the information is reliable. The traditional media has to compete with social media, so they end up having to give coverage to popular ideas on social media.
Politicians then end up shaping proposals based on the prevailing public opinion, which is no longer fact-based. Also, they can now spread their ideas directly to the public via social media without editorial control standing in the way. So far the political right has been affected the most the influence of social media. The GOP has decided to exploit this new fake news dynamics, it has transformed itself to the analogue of United Russia party with Trump playing the role of Putin. Count Iblis (talk) 11:50, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
Basic principles discussion section break
Request: may we please have a high-level discussion about basic principles (which, BTW, might influence the way we deal with the internal politics of a charity with both paid staff and a large number of unpaid volunteers) and not Yet Another Boring Thread Where Various Editor Root For Team Blue Or For Team Red?
Please?
Nothing good will come out of bashing the Read/Blue teams on Jimbo's talk page, but if we keep it high-level we just might be able to figure out how do something about the ongoing conflict between Team Wikimedia Foundation and Team English Wikipedia. We can't make Team Blue and Team Red work together, but we just might be able to get Team WMF and Team EW to merge into one team working towards a common goal. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:31, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
In the US we're trapped in our "nothing matters but the two teams" situation. IMO it's a product of our "winning party takes all" structure for the Executive branch, House and Senate. Which inevitably leads to the "only two parties" system. IMO what's happened in more recent history is that technology, communication, data etc. has clarified and refined everything to more efficiently adapt to the structure and more cleverly navigate down into the abyss that we're in. North8000 (talk) 16:06, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
Trial by Senate or general election? EllenCT (talk) 02:03, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
Or by federal or state prosecutors after the election. It might be all 4 AFAIK. No "quadruple jeopardy" prohibition applies to my knowledge. Should I apply the "wise framers" argument? But how about this scenario? Impeached, convicted, re-elected, re-impeached (same charges), and then re-convicted. Any constitutional scholars in the peanut gallery? Smallbones(smalltalk)04:02, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
I say the House should impeach, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences should make him go on The View and explain to Megan McCain why he's been dissing Taylor Swift. EllenCT (talk) 08:31, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
I could instead talk about how my garage was burgled Wednesday night/Friday morning. About $250 of frozen food (meat, packaged meals, frozen vegetables) was taken from the freezer as well as two coolers to carry them in, some Xmas gifts for my children that was in one, a tub of plastic utensils & paper plates, & a deep fryer. And lots of bags of bottles & cans worth about $20-$30 in deposits. From what was stolen, I suspect it was one or more homeless persons, who are endemic in the contemporary US. I don't know if I should interpret this as a symptom of the extreme inequality of wealth in the US, or as an example of the increasing number of property crimes in this country. Nah, it's far less self-indulgent & far more enjoyable to bash the squatter in the White House for being a criminal & his party for enabling his high crimes & misdemeanors. -- llywrch (talk) 08:30, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
Re: "homeless persons, who are endemic in the contemporary US", roughly 0.17% of the US population is currently homeless.[7] That's down 23% from 2010. Still 0.17% too high, but hardly "endemic".
Re: "increasing number of property crimes in this country", in 1990 the rate was 5,073 cased per 100,000 population. It has been steadily declining and last year was 2,199 cases per 100,000 population. there is a nice graph here: [8] This is one of many examples where things are getting better yet most people believe without actually checking that they are getting worse.
You did get income inequality right. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting richer, but the poor are getting richer at a far slower rate than the rich are getting richer.[9]
The astute reader will notice that the above trends appear to have stayed pretty much the same whether Team Red or Team Blue had control of congress and the presidency. I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:54, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
And where is there a better system of government to model after - one that has withstood the test of time, and that people are dying just trying to get there? Here on WP (a different world), there are times we are dealing with POV being the determining factor for what is or isn't a RS - when a source doesn't agree with the POV of the prevailing majority at the time (which may be only 7 editors of like mind politically), the discussion is closed and most likely, it's another conservative source that gets deprecated. Of course, some should be, but the same PAGs that determine the fate of conservative sources should apply equally to liberal sources. They don't, and that is why our articles appear non-neutral, and why there are constant debates, and we are losing good editors. ”The encyclopedia’s reliance on outside sources, primarily newspapers, means it will be only as diverse as the rest of the media—which is to say, not very.” See the full article here if you haven't seen it already. AtsmeTalk📧18:57, 21 December 2019 (UTC)
Guy Macon, the definition of "endemic" is "commonly found", "widespread", or "characteristic". While I may not be a reliable source, I know there were far fewer homeless encampments just 5 or 10 years ago than now. (Each day I pass at least one homeless encampment when it was rare to see one even five years ago.) A one year's decrease is no more a long-term trend than a single swallow makes a spring. And I have also seen viable, older homes destroyed in order to replace it with housing marketed to upper-middle-class consumers. Fixer-uppers lost to McMansions; a situation endemic in my own neighborhood. The difference between Team Red & Team Blue is that on the Federal level funds for affordable housing is routinely cut by Team Red, often with the rationale of cutting taxes -- always to benefit the richest the most.Atsme, I'll simply say that there are Wikipedians who will sharply disagree with you about "a better system of government to model". As for the article you link to, I'd like to point out that many of the people interviewed clearly believe that Wikipedia emphasizes too much American middle-class POVs, not that it deprecates conservative sources. (And Wikipedia could better present alternative POVs if we volunteer content contributors had help accessing the relevant sources.) -- llywrch (talk) 07:43, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
Homeless congregate in areas where they won't freeze to death at this time of year – Los Angeles, SanFran bay area, Portland and Seattle, which is "dying". Llywrch probably lives in one of those places. Here in the midwest, there are a few neighborhoods where they tear down old houses to build new upscale housing, but still plenty of other neighborhoods left where this isn't happening. wbm1058 (talk) 13:33, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
Guy Macon, I find it quite interesting that you offer up a quote rejecting partisanship from Thomas Jefferson dated 1789 and a quote rejecting partisanship from John Adams dated 1780. Both men lived to 1826 and coincidentally both died on the Fourth of July of that year. For decades, both of these men were highly partisan activists on opposite sides of the partisan divide of those days. So please do not select quotes unrepresentative of their actual political careers to make a contemporary political point. The good news is that after decades of estrangement, those two men reconciled before their deaths. Cullen328Let's discuss it08:00, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
Politicians who espouse principles early on and then later violate those principles when they gain power? Bring me my fainting couch and those beads I clutch before fainting! Good thing for us that no modern politician act that way... --Guy Macon (talk) 08:14, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
Team Red Member Comments on Impeachment"Flake urges Republicans to consider the evidence, but at the same time not to repeat House Republican assertions the president hasn’t done anything wrong: “He has.” “The willingness of House Republicans to bend to the president’s will by attempting to shift blame with the promotion of bizarre and debunked conspiracy theories has been an appalling spectacle,” Flake argues. “It will have long-term ramifications for the country and the party, to say nothing of individual reputations.” He asks what Republicans would have done if President Barack Obama had engaged in the same behavior, in regards to Ukraine." Count Iblis (talk) 15:14, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
And once again we see Yet Another POV Pusher who insists that EVERY FUCKING PAGE ON EVERY FUCKING WEBSITE be about their favorite hobby horse (usually Abortion, Gun Control, Please Join My Religion, or Rooting For Team Blue / Team Red). We simply are not allowed to discuss anything else. http://wondermark.com/1k62/ I won't be reading any further comments in this discussion. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:41, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
Let's put Guy Macon's "both sides are equally bad" thesis to the test. Suppose 100 randomly chosen Team Blue (which according to Guy now also includes moderate Republicans like Jeff Flake) and 100 Team Red members (defined as Trump supporters) were invited to edit here. They would be given a short course on how to edit consistent with our policies and then they would be asked to edit articles on topics such about Trump's impeachment, climate change, Joe Biden, Obama, AOC, and many other such topics that often lead to vigorous disagreements between Team Blue and Team Red members. We would then take a look at the editing behavior of the participants, which side has the most editors that are editing consistent with our policies? Count Iblis (talk) 06:44, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
Please retract the lie ("which according to Guy..") you just told about me. Also, you cherry picked topics where Team Red is obviously wrong. How about some topics where Team Blue is obviously wrong, like Antivax, GMOs. nuclear energy, and whether the solution to climate change is increased power and size of the federal government. Also see [10] --Guy Macon (talk) 14:49, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
I've retracted the statement about Jeff Flake. I agree that no topic should be off limit. There will be ideologies incapable of editing according to our rules on both sides. But I strongly suspect that far more Team Blue members will be able to react constructively to criticism from other Wikipedians compared to team Red members. The difference is that team Red members are far more prone to believe in conspiracy theories, they overwhelmingly reject most of the reliable sources we uses as far-left propaganda outlets, they believe that there exists a giant conspiracy of left wingers who are opposing Trump's agenda. The sources they base their views on are not considered to be reliable sources. Among the left you also have such people who e.g. believe that the food industry is deliberately poisoning people. However, these are fringe views that are not commonly held by mainstream Democrats. Count Iblis (talk) 15:42, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
"Red members are far more prone to believe in conspiracy theories" -- including anti-vax and anti-GMO conspiracies ... Guy's claims about "Team Blue" are baseless (by his word usage, they are "lie"s), and all his comments here are [his accusatory profanity elided] POV pushing, from the very first one that misidentifies the impeachment of Trump as a partisan rather than moral and legal issue (and disingenuously presented as a "deep philosophical question" when it was nothing of the sort). In fact, that framing itself is a bogus conspiracy theory ... the Democratic Party resisted impeachment on numerous valid grounds, and only took that route when the suppressed whistleblower complaint came to light with a case too compelling to be swept under the rug. -- Jibal (talk) 03:03, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
Probably both would be worse than random IPs. I suspect most would be worse than random vandals, because they would all be expected to support their political POV, no matter how long the "short course". — Arthur Rubin(talk)07:05, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
It needs to be put to the test. We could do a test with just two editors. Team Red would probably not object to AOC as an editor for Team Blue. And Team Red could be represented by a Pro-Trump ideologue or even Trump himself. Count Iblis (talk) 13:22, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
"I have a deep philosophical question." -- Ok, what is it? Because what you asked is an empirical question (with an obvious answer: most Americans aren't familiar with the views of the Founders on these questions and there's no reason to expect them to be), with a blatant bait-and-switch--you claim that "what we as a nation are doing is something that the founding fathers absolutely hated" where the subject was impeachment of Trump, but you provided quotes on a totally different matter: parties. It simply isn't true that the Founders hated impeaching thuggish crude treasonous conman self-aggrandizing bigoted criminals like Trump -- though they certainly would have hated the party factionalism that allowed him to be elected, and that allows for the GOP to defend him. They would have hated Mitch McConnell for refusing to give Merrick Garland a hearing, and for holding open hundreds of federal judgeships with the hope that he could fill them once his party was in power. The modern GOP embodies a whole lot that they would have hated. But there's nothing deeply philosophical about that, or about anything else you wrote on this page. You call it "Team Red and Team Blue", but it's not that, it's truth vs. lies and corruption--any truthful "team" would impeach and remove Trump, including the Founders themselves. Reducing it to parties and teams creates a false dichotomy that protects the corrupt and dishonest. (There, that's the deep philosophy you may be looking for.)
If you do raise a deeply philosophical question I may take a look at it, but I won't say more on this subject (or in this section of this page).
P.S. "where Team Blue is obviously wrong, like Antivax, GMOs. nuclear energy, and whether the solution to climate change is increased power and size of the federal government" -- the Democratic Party is not anti-vax or GMO (and there are plenty of right wingers and GOP voters who are), nor are they obviously wrong about nuclear energy or global warming (nor are they anything like unanimous). You have repeatedly violated the principles that you claim to be representing. If you are actually interested in "keep it high-level we just might be able to figure out how do something about the ongoing conflict between Team Wikimedia Foundation and Team English Wikipedia" then you should write about that, instead of nothing but blatant POV pushing.
Please forgive my own basic ignorance on this topic, but what are Team Red and Team Blue? Does this refer to affiliation with one of the two major political parties in the USA? If so, then I would simply please ask for some basic info on how this actually works in practice, here? I appreciate any info. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 17:00, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
Hot diggity! Too bad that discussion ended so soon. I didn't read it word for word - tldr; - but I saw mention of "fringe views" that are questionable fringe, unless the latter is based on the sheer numbers of published perceptions by Team Blue vs Team Red in news media. In retrospect, a new light has been shed on what actually were fringe views - such as the Trump-Russia collusion speculation pushed by media for 2 years, and how much of said material was reliant on news media using anonymous sources. I agree that Wikinews needs a rebirth but that probably won't happen unless the community cranks down hard on WP:RECENTISM and how we use primary sources per WP:NEWSORG. A Bloomberg article covered part of the problem pretty well in a single comment: The encyclopedia’s reliance on outside sources, primarily newspapers, means it will be only as diverse as the rest of the media—which is to say, not very. A great deal of material has been sourced to the news media echo chamber (news wires, conglomerates, etc.). I certainly agree with some of what Masem, Guy Macon and Cullen328 presented in that AN discussion. One final thought - comparing the presidential articles of Clinton and Bush vs Obama and Trump is like comparing apples to oranges in light of recentism and a changing media. There were also some differences in the style of reporting, and the amount of sensationalism that was needed to compete in today's clickbait environment [11], [12]. AtsmeTalk📧 02:02, 3 January 2020 (UTC) Re-ping Guy Macon since I mentioned him. 02:05, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Levivich, A more rigorous implementation of NOTNEWS would be a huge step forward. Not that news sources are crap, but we should be preferring more analytical coverage rather than developing news, sticking to the sources agreed to be most factually accurate and least biased by sources such as [13], and also we need to be more active in curating out content that turns out in hindsight to be less significant. Guy (help!) 14:33, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
this was follow up to another user by another user; im not changing the above content but the reply is withing scope and you all, including wales, are to follow the rules and not revert what you dont like because that is wikihypocrisy but this is proper thread in itself that was killed:
Hi everyone. I am the new coordinator for WikiProject History. we need people there!! right now the project seems to be semi-inactive. I am going to various WikiProjects whose topics overlap with ours, to request volunteers.
If you have any experience at all with standard WikiProject processes such as quality assessment, article help, asking questions, feel free to come by and get involved.
and if you have NO Experience, but just want to come by and get involved, feel free to do so!!!
For anyone who wants to get involved, please come by and add your name at our talk page, at our talk page section: WikiProject History needs you!!!!
Alternately, if you have any interest at all, feel free to reply right here, on this talk page. please ping me when you do so, by typing {{ping|sm8900}} in your reply.
@Sm8900: please write to wlodzimierz dot lewoniewski at ue dot poznan dot pl asking for history to replace cryptocurrencies in WikiRank; or better yet ask them to let people search on their own choice of arbitrary categories. If you can get them to do that I will work on the ones that mathematically need it the most. Thank you for still working on history articles after winning second section in the Manual of Style. EllenCT (talk) 16:56, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
I think this is the first time I've ever actually started a thread on this talk page, but I was wondering what your take is on the promised "revenge" Iran will be getting from Trump's strike. It's very likely the counterattack will be of a cyber nature and since it will attack high profile sites, most likely, if Wikipedia is likely to be potential target. Iran is well known for their "wiper" malware which effectively destroys whatever system it's put on. I welcome anyone's thoughts on this. I hope everyone is having a great new year/decade.—CYBERPOWER(Happy 2020)02:43, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Since the 2015 switchover to mandatory HTTPS, Iran has left Wikipedia undisturbed. They blocked Commons for a few months at the time, but nothing since. Personally I do not expect cyberwarfare blowback. We've had very small lethal assassination UAV drones on the international arms market in the past three years, and there really aren't any effective countermeasures yet, and none on the horizon. If I were an administration or congressional critic of Iran, I wouldn't be scheduling any outdoor events. EllenCT (talk) 03:17, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Still, that does raise a good question of: how secure is Wikipedia? Clearly the foundation isn't gonna tell us exactly what measures they take, but any number of bad actors could try to hack and delete or disrupt Wikipedia, or use ransomware on us, etc. How well armored are we? Captain EekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓03:46, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Incompletely, and better studied than any other form of social media, and thus an unattractive target to the initiated, because while you may be inclined to call your opponent's PSYOPs conspiracy theories, nobody denies the existence of vandals.[14][15] I wouldn't be surprised if backups up to and including code-defined services are approximately as robust as the dumps architecture. EllenCT (talk) 06:58, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
I don't really have any comment about the US/Iran conflict and so will only comment on the cyberwarfare element of things. Hitting Wikipedia would be an odd choice because the image of Wikipedia is not very "American" - we're a global community movement. As a high profile site, of course the tech folks have robustly dealt with all kinds of stuff for a very long time, and have plans and processes in place to deal with all kinds of things. Nothing is perfect, but I think in this particular instance we aren't a particularly useful symbolic target. (There is no meaningful sense in which one might plausibly argue that Wikipedia is complicit or supporting Trump's actions in this matter.)
Of course, never say never, but this isn't something I think we (me and you) should worry about too much. I'm sure the appropriate people are evaluating and keeping their eye on things!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:48, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
A full scale war with Iran has a natural end game involving 1.6 million US soldiers having to occupying Iran for many years, see e.g. here. This is going to be so costly that it can induce a threat to Wikipedia as a result of a collapse of the World economy and a weakening of Western democracy. There will be funding problems for Wikimedia. Also, China and Russia will get far more influence in the World. These powers don't like independent sources, they may be able to compromise Wikimedia's ability to function as it currently does. Count Iblis (talk) 00:20, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
Iran has little incentive to attack this site, imho. for one thing, some articles here are just as impartial to their views as to anyone else's. --Sm8900 (talk) 00:59, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Count Iblis (or vox.com anyway), for looking on the bright side. That sounds very bleak... funding problems for Wikimedia. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:50, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
Perhaps Trump should consult with FB & WP users before he crafts his next strategic move against the #1 enemy of the Western world.[FBDB]AtsmeTalk📧04:13, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, I think the #1 enemy of the Western world is Putin, and may at some point soon become Trump himself: he's delivering Iranian and Russian geopolitical goals with absolutely no thought to the consequences for the precarious alliance that has maintained peace for the last 70 years. Guy (help!) 14:37, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
Eh, the comments specifically on the site's security could theoretically have been productive... But yes, the point applies quite generally to these kinds of threads. --Yair rand (talk) 03:37, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
Perhaps we do need a public reminder of how prejudiced real editors can be, to let them display their biases in prominent places, instead of hidden in talk page histories DGG ( talk ) 05:09, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
DGG, I don't think the idea that Putin is the #1 enemy of the West is particularly controversial. The effects of state-sponsored social media operations in destabilising Western democracy since 2015 would be enough on its own, even without the annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine. We're just waiting now to see whether it will be Putin or someone else who starts the next global conflict - and I think it's more likely to be Trump due to his history of poor judgment. I will be very happy if this turns out not to be the case. Guy (help!) 09:21, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
I've checked out that page and its short but interesting history. The talk page history is at least twice as interesting. That said, I do think that some sort of contingency planning is needed for this type of thing - whether you think the threat is Iran, the CIA, FSB, Mossad, M1(?), China, or any of 100 others. To some extent I think that those folks and Wikipedians should be aware that there are such plans, but no, I don't think any real details should be released - that would just make it easier to break the security. Why let anybody know of the existence of the planning? It's kinda like the Doomsday Machine in Dr. Strangelove, if nobody knows you have it, nobody will be deterred. In this case though, we'd be inviting attack if we say "no, we'll never build a defense against these attackers", which looks like our current ideological position. OTOH, after an attack last year, and all the other nonsense that's going on on the internet, I don't think many people would take our ideological position very seriously now. A little pseudo-BS like "I'm sure the appropriate people are evaluating and keeping their eye on things!" never hurts. Smallbones(smalltalk)21:16, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
I know that legal-reports@wikimedia.org is the snitch line for child grooming. Please provide an e-mail as snitch line for Holocaust denialists and make sure that if good evidence gets presented they get a Foundation Ban. I think you should speak out against Holocaust denialists and other nationalist lunatics, same as you once did for WP:LUNATICS. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:33, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
It's an interesting point. However, child sexual abuse is illegal in virtually all countries, while the laws against Holocaust denial vary from country to country. The biggest problem with Holocaust denial is that it is a tiresome denial of verifiable historical accounts rather than being illegal. In my own country, Britain, a person can end up in prison for Holocaust denial.[16] Alison Chabloz did this over and over again on social media until the courts became sick and tired of her.--♦IanMacM♦(talk to me)08:08, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
Anyone espousing a false view is attacking their readers' reputations, and doing so in knowing contravention of the reliable source criteria is against the Terms of Service. EllenCT (talk) 15:02, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
My point wasn't about being illegal, it is about WP:NONAZIS, I wish that Jimbo releases the hounds against Holocaust denialists, first at hr.wiki, then at all WMF servers. Tgeorgescu (talk) 17:52, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
I don't understand the Croatian language and I cannot globally lock editors. I am not even an admin. Somebody else will have to present the evidence and lock those editors. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:36, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
If I lie to you and you repeat it as truth, those hearing you repeat it without knowing why will think less of you. EllenCT (talk) 02:03, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Hello, Jimbo Wales. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
status of Jimmy Wales statement of Wikipedia principles
Hey jimbo, I made the template below. I hope you like it. Please think of it as my own small token of esteem and my own online thank-you card to you, and everyone else who works so hard to build this project.
Hope others here like this! please feel free to use this, if you want. thanks! cheers!
this is my first little attempt at templates by the way. just trying to learn a little and dabble in new things. I hope this is of some enjoyment to others here. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 07:55, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia's success to date is entirely a function of our open community. This community will continue to live and breathe and grow only so long as those of us who participate in it continue to Do The Right Thing. Doing The Right Thing takes many forms, but perhaps most central is the preservation of our shared vision for the neutral point of view policy and for a culture of thoughtful, diplomatic honesty.
Newcomers are always to be welcomed. There must be no cabal, there must be no elites, there must be no hierarchy or structure which gets in the way of this openness to newcomers. Any security measures to be implemented to protect the community against real vandals (and there are real vandals, who are already starting to affect us) should be implemented on the model of "strict scrutiny".
"Strict scrutiny" means that any measures instituted for security must address a compelling community interest, and must be narrowly tailored to achieve that objective and no other.
For example: rather than trust humans to correctly identify "regulars", we must use a simple, transparent, and open algorithm, so that people are automatically given full privileges once they have been around the community for a very short period of time. The process should be virtually invisible for newcomers, so that they do not have to do anything to start contributing to the community.
"You can edit this page right now" is a core guiding check on everything that we do. We must respect this principle as sacred.
Any changes to the software must be gradual and reversible. We need to make sure that any changes contribute positively to the community, as ultimately determined by the Wikimedia Foundation, in full consultation with the community consensus.
The open and viral nature of the GNU Free Documentation License and the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License is fundamental to the long-term success of the site. Anyone who wants to use our content in a closed, proprietary manner must be challenged. We must adhere very strictly to both the letter and spirit of the licenses.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. The topic of Wikipedia articles should always look outward, not inward at Wikipedia itself.
Anyone with a complaint should be treated with the utmost respect and dignity. They should be encouraged constantly to present their problems in a constructive way. Anyone who just complains without foundation, refusing to join the discussion, should simply be rejected and ignored. Consensus is a partnership between interested parties working positively for a common goal. We must not let the "squeaky wheel" be greased just for being a jerk.
Diplomacy consists of combining honesty and politeness. Both are objectively valuable moral principles. Be honest with me, but don't be mean to me. Don't misrepresent my views for your own political ends, and I'll treat you the same way.
Apologies if this is something you already know, but @Sm8900 if you post that anywhere it needs to be crystal clear that it's almost 20 years out of date, to ensure no good-faith new editor thinks it's any kind of statement of current principles and gets themselves in trouble trying to enforce them. They represent the values of one particular editor (albeit the one who at the time was the most important one) back when Wikipedia was an obscure bolt-on to an obscure online encyclopedia which in turn was an obscure bolt-on to an obscure "guy-orientated website"; at the time they were written we had 202 registered accounts (only 130 of whom were active), consisted of 12000 pages (2800 of which were less than 200 characters long), and the entire database size was 20 MB. Most of them no longer apply, if they ever did; I'd say only 1, 8 and arguably 5 & 7 could be said to relate to Wikipedia as it is now. ‑ Iridescent20:57, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
I disagree. I think all of the listed principles apply. Wikipedia remains a freely-license wiki encyclopedia run by an open community. --Yair rand (talk) 21:04, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
I agree with Yair Rand. From that page: “This is a statement of principles from Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales, as updated by the community since then. The original version of this page was published on 27 October 2001.[1]”
so all of these are values that are still relevant, but implementing them depends on the specific situation, in my opinion. Sm8900 (talk) 22:55, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Yair rand, nope. Page protection, for example, is vastly more common now that getting your opinion reflected on Wikipedia is a high stakes game. Guy (help!) 00:06, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
It's nice to see this. I think Jimbo got it pretty much got it right back then, but it should be clear that things have changed a bit, e.g. the GNU License doesn't have much relevance now as far as I see, historical relevance - sure.
We should be careful about the current version of the page. Jimbo only edited the page once, the oldest version. As things gradually changed on Wikipedia hundreds of other edits have been made, but (without a character-by-character analysis) it looks like the current version is pretty faithful to the original User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles. We could do much worse for a "statement of principals" than this. I am particularly impressed by the 1st principle - which I'm tempted to rename "Do the right thing.
"This community will continue to live and breathe and grow only so long as those of us who participate in it continue to Do The Right Thing. Doing The Right Thing takes many forms, but perhaps most central is the preservation of our shared vision for the neutral point of view policy and for a culture of thoughtful, diplomatic honesty."
Not many Wikipedians talk much anymore about "do the right thing", but this is a subject that actually should come up fairly often, mostly regarding those cases where we fail to do the right thing. Concerning that topic, Jimbo, could you see the YGM notice below. Thanks. Smallbones(smalltalk)01:05, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
thanks Smallbones! as you may guess, part of my purpose was to spark some healthy discussion on the points above, along with highlighting the points themselves. if we spark some healthy discussion, then that's what Wikipedia is all about too. I'm glad to see some views being exchanged here. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 01:32, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Six Million Articles
As an FYI to you and the talk page stalkers, the EN Wikipedia had its six millionth article created a few minutes ago. -- Dolotta (talk) 19:28, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
Congrats everybody! We recenty reached 1 in 150 articles of GA or FA quality too, was 1 in 200 not that long ago. So we're getting bigger and getting better at the same time. Amazing potential as a resource but a long way to go, we're really only getting started of course. :-)♦ Dr. Blofeld19:32, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
If anyone wants to place an auto-updating list on their talk page, the following...
<div>As of {{CURRENTDAYNAME}}, {{CURRENTDAY2}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}}, {{CURRENTTIME}} (UTC), The English Wikipedia has {{NUMBEROF|USERS|en|N}} registered users, {{NUMBEROF|ACTIVEUSERS|en|N}} active editors, and {{NUMBEROF|ADMINS|en|N}} administrators. Together we have made {{NUMBEROF|EDITS|en|N}} edits, created {{NUMBEROF|PAGES|en|N}} pages of all kinds and created {{NUMBEROF|ARTICLES|en|N}} articles.</div>
...displays as...
As of Thursday, 21 November 2024, 20:58 (UTC), The English Wikipedia has 48,299,422 registered users, 122,190 active editors, and 851 administrators. Together we have made 1,254,073,012 edits, created 61,884,470 pages of all kinds and created 6,914,201 articles.
Wouldn't is be nice if we had a count with WP:MAGICWORDS for each of those categories? Then I could write something like
As of {{CURRENTDAYNAME}}, {{CURRENTDAY2}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}}, The English Wikipedia has {{NUMBEROF|BLOCKEDUSERS|en|N}} blocked users.
As of Thursday, 21 November 2024, The English Wikipedia has -1 blocked users.
This appears to be a direct violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and leaves Wikipedia open to the possibility of a discrimination lawsuit.
In particular, National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corp. was a case where a major retailer, Target Corp., was sued because their web designers failed to design its website to enable persons with low or no vision to use it.
So why, after 13 years of inaction, do we not have a set of software requirements (including a testable definition of "done") and a schedule for solving this?
And no, I will not accept any proposed "solution" that lacks the name of an WMF employee who has been given the assignment of fixing this, a budget that says how much the WMF expects to spend on solving this, a deadline that says how long the WMF expects it to take to solve this, and a way for an independent third party to look at the results and verify whether the requirements were met.
I am left with these known facts:
For 13 years the WMF has failed to assign a single employee or contractor the task of fixing this problem.
For 13 years the WMF has failed to budget a single dollar towards fixing this.
For 13 years the WMF has failed to provide any estimate of how long it is expected to take to fix this.
For 13 years the WMF has failed to create any requirements for fixing this. (Note: "Requirements" is geek talk for "please define what 'done' is and tell us exactly how how we will recognize that whoever is working on this is done").
For 13 years the WMF has failed to make a plan for an independent third party (which in this case means "someone with a visual impairment accessing Wikipedia with a screen reader") to look at the results and verify whether the requirements were met.
Again, for me to consider this to be something that the WMF takes seriously, the solution needs to include:
The name of an WMF employee who has been given the assignment of fixing this.
A budget that says how much the WMF expects to spend on solving this.
A deadline that says how long the WMF expects it to take to solve this.
A plan for an independent third party to look at the results and verify whether this has actually been solved.
No, because having a volunteer say (on phabricator) "I'll try to get more educated on the topic, and hopefully give more information in the coming weeks" (which, btw, never happened) is the wrong answer. Nothing against Evan -- volunteering is a good thing and doing anything is better than doing nothing -- but as I have made clear:
I will not accept any proposed "solution" that lacks the name of an WMF employee who has been given the assignment of fixing this. Evan does not work for the WMF and it isn't even clear whether, should he come up with a perfect solution, it would ever be added to the mediawiki software.
I will not accept any proposed "solution" that lacks a budget that says how much the WMF expects to spend on solving this. Evan isn't being paid. Maybe the WMF should pay him, but so far they have not done so.
I will not accept any proposed "solution" that lacks a deadline that says how long the WMF expects it to take to solve this. Evan isn't working on a deadline. Everything he does is appreciated, but like any volunteer he doesn't have to do anything and certainly will never face any consequences for failing to meet a deadline.
I will not accept any proposed "solution" that lacks a way for an independent third party to look at the results, look at how we defined "done" at the start, and verify whether we are or are not done.
These are not arbitrary demands. These are the words of an expert at bringing in software projects on time and under budget. Contacting Evan will not result in the WMF no longer discriminating against the handicapped. Only a decision by WMF management to fix this problem -- a decision that includes staffing, budget, a timeline, and a way to verify the results -- will do that.
If you wish to engage in activities that have zero chance of solving the problem, go ahead. I don't do things that I know will not work. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:58, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
(@Guy Macon: Evan Prodromou does, in fact, work for the WMF. Part of the Core Platform team, IIUC. Whether he has actually been assigned this task is unclear.) --Yair rand (talk) 07:04, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
Ah. I was not aware of that. It might be that the WMF actually does have a budget, schedule, etc. and just haven't revealed this fact. One can only hope. My goal is not to criticize the WMF but rather to allow the visually impaired to access Wikipedia. If Evan can make that happen, great. Everybody wins. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:25, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
@Guy Macon: Well, I called him "a WMF developer" so I don't know how you missed it. And you were obviously aware of it in July. You have known he was a WMF contractor for 5 months and yet not contacted him. Bitter Oil (talk) 00:16, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
As I told you already, I refuse to bother someone who I believe is trying to do the right thing about things he can not change. Evan cannot assign staff or budget towards solving this. Please leave me alone. I do not wish to have any further interactions with you. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:49, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
So, will I hear that the WMF has assigned someone the task of fixing this before the 14th anniversary? Or must we wait until some news outlet notices that we are purposely discriminating against handicapped people, publishes an editorial on this, and The Shit Hits The Fan Once Again? --Guy Macon (talk) 17:27, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
What part of "I refuse to bother someone who I believe is trying to do the right thing about things he can not change. Evan cannot assign staff or budget towards solving this." are you having trouble understanding? If you want to talk to Even, go ahead. I refuse, for good reasons. Also, be aware that Doc James has reached out to Evan Prodromou. Not only does Doc James have a better understanding than I do about what can and can not be revealed publicly about what a particular WMF contractor is or is not working on, he has a better temperament for this sort of thing than I do. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:53, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
It is now one week to go before we hit 14 years. It appears that nobody cares other than a few editors who insist that I do things that have zero chance of resulting in the WMF no longer discriminating against the handicapped. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:12, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
@Guy Macon: I know that you asked me to leave you alone and I intend to do that, but if you are planning to keep bumping this thread for another week, please don't. In fact, if all you are willing to do about this is periodically post messages like this on Jimbo's page, please don't. I agree with you that this issue has been neglected for far too long, but the way you're approaching it is definitely not going to accomplish your stated goal (and is probably going to drive some people away from getting involved with this particular issue). Bitter Oil (talk) 04:53, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
There is this article https://www.wired.com/story/macos-shlayer-trojan-adware/ which claims that there are Wikipedia editors that are taking money to push links to sites with malicious software embedded in them. Quoting from the article, "The operators behind the trojan reportedly offer website owners, YouTubers, and Wikipedia editors a cut if they push visitors toward a malicious download." Could you or some other trusted member of the Wikipedia community shed some light on this and also comment on whether this claim is true or not ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.186.12.161 (talk) 18:06, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
It is the first I have heard of it. Of course people try nonsense all the time, but this particular scheme doesn't seem all that likely to be very successful. Any trusted user caught doing something like this would be in huge trouble very quickly just for posting the link in the first place. Unlike paid promotional editing which can be difficult to actually judge in some cases, a link to a dodgy website would be difficult for someone to explain. We also have the spam blacklist which is precisely for things like this and that works quite well.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:12, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
@Jimbo: What happens is that a good editor adds a good link in a reference. Two years later the domain of the website holding the linked page gets taken over by a scammer (perhaps the original domain owner forgot to pay for renewal, or lost interest, or whatever). Then the scammer either sells the domain to a malware pusher, or the scammer does the malware pushing themselves. They set up a fake website using what was once a good URL and put some malware on it. Archive.org used to delete its archived copies of good domains when a scammer took them over because the scammer would use a robots file to forbid archiving. I think that has changed. It's a difficult problem but one thing is known: WP:Spam blacklist is going to blow up one day and there is an ignored plea from those who handle spam/malware that the blacklist be re-engineered. Johnuniq (talk) 23:33, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
I agree. But out of an abundance of caution, do we have *any* evidence that the thing alleged in the article is true. The path you suggest is 100% plausible, whereas the idea of paying people to insert malware links into Wikipedia strikes me as unlikely in the extreme - but I want to be sure!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:38, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
Johnuniq, funny you should mention this. A couple of weeks ago I blocked someone who kept inserting links to a now-defunct gay magazine (can't remember the name right now); I followed the link and it turned out the site had been sold to some company pushing erection pills or whatever, still under the same name. Drmies (talk) 17:40, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
Drmies, to follow up the website was gaylesbiantimes.com, which is now on the spam blacklist. I notice that the archiving bot on your page cannot add the thread to the archive as it seems to stopped by the spam blacklist because the thread contains links to the website. My private test abuse filter (1024) has caught the bot trying to archive the discussion twice before in the log. You might want to remove the links from the thread. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions23:01, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
I don't have any evidence but there have been attempts to use dead links before. For example, SEO spam attack (WP:AN 2014) discusses an SEO blog that recommended spammers search Wikipedia for "dead link" then change the link to a spam site using a plausible edit summary to avoid suspicion. I thought there were more recent reports than 2014 but I can't find them. That text appears when editors add {{dead link}} to a reference. Johnuniq (talk) 02:47, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
Johnuniq, After thinking about this a little further, I can see the attractiveness of dead links to someone who might wish to try this. I don't anticipate regular editors would be tempting but I don't think we have any limitations on an IP editor updating a dead link. Would it make sense to create an edit filter to keep track of links identified as dead links which are subsequently updated? someone could periodically monitor the list to confirm that the updated link is legitimate. S Philbrick(Talk)21:56, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Johnuniq, I recently removed a link to a porn site based on a report at OTRs. I believe it was exactly the situation Johnuniq describes — it wasn't the case that someone added the porn link to the article, it was a legitimate source for some period of time (a couple years IIRC), Then, I presume, the owner failed to pay the fee, and someone took it over. that doesn't sound at all like the behavior mentioned in the linked article. I agree — if there is evidence that a Wikipedia editor is doing this deliberately, the career will end abruptly, but that sounds different than the repurposing of dead domains. S Philbrick(Talk)21:38, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Request [if possible] to put more "resources" to use on this article "2019-2020 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak"
Good evening, Jimbo! :)
[I hope I may call you only "Jimbo", for it is a simpler way of calling you I must say]
I would like to confirm with you, please, if it is possible and if there any way of channeling more users to edit/contribute/patrol articles related to the current Outbreak of the novelcoronavirus?
My arguments are: that there is a better way and more trusted way to inform and divulge, all the information that readers expect, while browsing articles related to above stated topic; and that is in my opinion more "publicity" so that there are more ready users to help with any edits, rectifications and patroling of said articles; thus increasing the quality, quantity and better sourced information.
I hope to have conveid my argument logically and soundly. I hope to hear (read) you soon. Have a nice day, keep up with the good work :) And also a nice weekend :) FranciscoMMartins (talk) 01:05, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
P.s. I too believe that more users going to said pages and helping out would be great on the english version of Wikipedia and super awesome and even more helpful also in the other languages of Wikipedia (because those articles in other languages also have many visitors reading them and getting their information through them). Also the version on other languages besides English lack users as it is comprehensible, in order to keep all the articles totally correct and up to date. Ty! FranciscoMMartins (talk) 01:10, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
@FranciscoMMartins: is there a particular area where you think our coverage is most in need of improvement? I see the main article being cited all over the news for the statistics compilation. EllenCT (talk) 21:22, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
@EllenCT: Hi. I agree with you. My question would be users from the English version "helping out" translating content to other Wikipedia language versions and vice-versa. Is that a "thing" in Wikipedia? Like is there any group to help translate articles or is it decentralized? Ty. FranciscoMMartins (talk) 21:39, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
A question for Jimbo regarding the use of social media as a sole source of assertions regarding sexuality in biographies of living persons.
As other contributors may be aware, there has recently been some debate about the use of postings in the social media by individuals featured in Wikipedia biographies as the sole source of statements regarding their sexuality. It has been claimed that the relevant policy, WP:SOCIALMEDIA permits this, and that no other source is needed to include such biographical detail. I'm not going to name the specific articles here, since I see no benefit in drawing further attention to the individuals concerned, but would instead be interested to learn what, if anything, Jimbo has to say on the matter as a general principle.
To elaborate my concerns, I would start by noting what WP:BLP has to say with regard for the need for biographies of living persons to be "written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy". The WMF, in a statement on biographical content, echoes such concerns, asking that "human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account" in such articles.[17] It is my contention that the use of Twitter postings etc as the sole source for assertions about an individual's sexuality is contrary the spirit of such statements, if not the letter. There will no doubt be those that will argue that postings on social media are made public by the individuals themselves, and as such are both entirely valid as sources, and sufficient grounds to include such matters in a biography. I would contend however that doing so is questionable on multiple grounds. For a start, the social media may be 'public' in a general sense, but the way it is used is frequently much more of a conversation between individuals. I very much doubt that most people using Twitter or similar media would expect that their passing conversations will later (maybe much later) be relied on as a source for biographical details of a personal nature on one of the world's most-visited websites. Furthermore, the use of such sources carries inherent risks, as citation of passing comments is liable to miss the broader context, and seems to encourage Google-mining of the worst kind. People don't always use the social media in the most responsible manner, and something intended as a joke, or posted while under the influence of one substance or another, may be taken too literally. Even a comment intended at the time to be taken seriously may later be retracted, or clarified. People (often the most insecure and vulnerable people, but not always) may sometimes express things about themselves that they later come to realise aren't an accurate representation of how they really are (I've been there, done it myself). For all these reasons then (and no doubt more...), I have to suggest that passing comments on Twitter etc are a poor source of biographical information, and instead appear to me to be precisely the sort of material that concerns for privacy would imply Wikipedia should not be using.
I should at this point make clear that I'm not for one moment suggesting that an individual should not be used as a source for their own sexual orientation etc. They absolutely must be. Nobody else has any right to do that for them. The issue here however is that Wikipedia seems to be taking on for itself the 'right' to transform a passing comment (sometimes ambiguous) or similar ephemera into a definitive statement, using the individual as a 'source' for something they may consider a private matter, and may quite reasonably have assumed was unlikely to become a matter of broader public discourse. If this isn't technically 'outing' it seems to me to risk being something darned close to it, and clearly close enough to demand caution. Where an individual has discussed their sexuality in detail in a context where the public nature of the discussion is clear, and (perhaps as important from a biographical context) where such a discussion is actually of significance to the biography as a whole (i.e. to the subjects Wiki-notability), better sourcing will be available anyway. Some biographies absolutely must discuss the subject's sexuality, and at would be a grave disservice to our readers not to do so - but for such biographies, Google-mining the social media will be entirely unnecessary. Wikinpedia articles (and biographies in particular) should not be exercises in detective-work, and nor should they be reduced to answer-sheets for multiple-choice questions, where sexuality, along with ethnicity and other arbitrary categorisation is slapped in as bald assertions lacking any context to explain to the reader why it matters. Both out of concern then for the rights of the subject, and for the benefit of readers who would (I'd hope) prefer articles not to be a collection of dubiously-sourced factoids slung in at random by whoever hits the Google-jackpot regarding their personal concerns, I thus contend that contributors should not be using social media in this manner. If someone's sexuality matters biographically, and if and when they make such personal matters clear in genuine public discourse, we owe it to both the subject and to our readers to write actual biographies, based on reputable published sources that were aware they were engaged in 'publishing' at the time they did it.
I would ask Jimbo then, the following questions:
(a) Does he consider it appropriate for Wikipedia biographies to be using the social media in the manner described?
And if the answer is no (as I would hope):
(b) Does Jimbo think that Wikipeda policies concerning this issue need amendement or clarification?
(d) Does he think it may be necessary for the WMF to comment on this, given their earlier statements on the need for Wikipedia to show respect for personal privacy?
No doubt others will wish to comment on this, and add their perspective. When doing so, can I ask people not to go into details regarding specific ongoing disputes here. This is a very public page, and the very concerns regarding the need for privacy aren't going to be best resolved by hashing over specifics: the disputes are spread over multiple pages as it is, and this discussion should be of more use if it is focused on the more general principles. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:15, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
This: "I very much doubt that most people using Twitter or similar media would expect that their passing conversations will later (maybe much later) be relied on as a source for biographical details of a personal nature on one of the world's most-visited websites." is probably where you're out of step with everyone else. Twitter is probably the biggest, most public platform on this internet. It's the digital equivalent of scrawling something something on a sandwich board, and then strolling down Main Street blasting an airhorn. If I turn it around and said "If I were to advise a famous person on how to get their sexuality into their article, how would I do it?" - the answer is of course to use their official twitter. It's the biggest, most public platform they could do that on. For instance, Jimmy Wales gets about a thousand views a day; @jimmy_wales has 153k followers, and that's probably the most biased towards Wikipedia one could be; Donald Trump is 50k to 70M; my rather famous sixth cousin is 5k to 5M - and comparing views to followers is probably way overstating the relative visibility of Wikipedia. Of course, you're right that there could be context/jokes/whatever, and like anything, the details matter, but by cutting the details, you're probably losing the bulk of the point you're trying to make. WilyD08:28, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
The way that Donald Trump or Jimbo use Twitter isn't actually that relevant to my point. Back in 2016 (I doubt it has changed that much), the average Twitter account apparently had 707 followers. [18] Which mean that when you allow for the Trump and Jimbo outliers (which are small in numbers of accounts, but large in number of followers), that most accounts are going to have even less. The vast majority of Tweets aren't going to be aimed at the general public. Instead the expected audience is the social network of the account holder. Very few people will have Wikipedia biographies in mind as expected targets when they use social media, and our use of such ephemera in the way it is being used runs contrary both to the requirements for respect for individual privacy explicitly laid out in WP:BLP and the WMF statement, and to the requirement that article content be based around published reliable sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. The vast majority of Tweets aren't going to be fact-checked, are likely to be 'reliable' only in the sense that at best they were typed out by the individual named (spoof accounts aren't rare), and are 'published' only in a very technical sense. They aren't publications in the way that the term is usually applied. They aren't targeted at the public. And they do nothing to establish that the sexuality of the individual concerned is an appropriate subject for a biography. That needs evidence of external interest (beyond mere tagging by Wikipedia contributors), and, if one is attempting to write something which approaches a proper biography rather than a collection of dubious factoids, an explanation, or at least an indication, of why it is a matter worthy of public discussion. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:04, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
our use of such ephemera in the way it is being used runs contrary both to the requirements for respect for individual privacy explicitly laid out in WP:BLP and the WMF statement, and to the requirement that article content be based around published reliable sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy ten thousand times this. --JBL (talk) 15:41, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
As I noted, by making it generic, you're probably ruining the point you're trying to make. The average twitter user may have 700 followers, but their Wikipedia page has zero views, because they haven't got one. I for instance, have one twitter follower, and no biography here. Trump or Trudeau may be outliers, but Jimbo probably is a pretty typical example of someone with both a twitter bio and a biography here. I have the suspicion you're trying to right a very generic rule to deal with a very unusual situation, and that's why you're getting pushback. Maybe it makes a lot of sense in the particular case you're looking at, but "Hey, shouldn't we keep private people's loud, public announcements made for the explicit purpose drawing public attention to the announcement?" is. Nor do I think "Hey, shouldn't we ignore people's public announcements of their own sexuality until someone fact checks it?" is going to get you far when you consider the generic question. Instead of trying to bend unsuitable rules to an unusual case, you should probably look at the case you're actually concerned about. WilyD18:48, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
I am not just concerned about specific cases, I am concerned about the way social media is repeatedly being mined to make assertions regarding the sexuality of living individuals in a context where their sexuality isn't otherwise a subject of public discourse. If governments or commercial concerns engage in such activities, there is quite rightly public disquiet. I see no reason why Wikipedia should exempt itself from such criticisms, particularly when it aspires to (or claims to aspire to) respect for personal privacy. And please don't misrepresent what I said, I am not asking for such sources to be 'fact-checked'. I am stating that their use in this manner is contrary to stated policy. Or if it isn't, it darned well ought to be. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:19, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
It is. WP:BLP opens with "Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page. Such material requires a high degree of sensitivity", and goes on with "Biographies of living persons ('BLPs') must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy" and so on. That's the spirit of the rule, along with "We are not here to make people sad". The details are just to support that.
In almost all cases, there's no reason to talk about people's personal friendships, their pets, their teenage DUI, who they were seen holding hands with, or stuff like that. There's no reason to talk about their sexuality, their bedroom techniques, their kinks, their sexual fantasies, how many sexual partners they've had, or things of that nature.
We're here to talk about what makes them notable. What books they wrote, what offices they held, what companies they founded, what armies they led, and things related to that. Sure we put in a few anodyne facts -- names of spouses and children, home town, notable siblings, and like that. But that's not necessary. We could dispense with it if there's any significant objection, if there's any reason to believe that person wouldn't want it spread around, if there's even a small shadow of doubt about the veracity.
If we're rock-solid 100% sure that person would be perfectly pleased for their sex life to be trumpeted in the world's most widely read encyclopedia to put into its database which may persist for centuries and will be the primary point of entry for people looking them up, I guess it's OK.
That's PROVIDED that you have especially good WP:BLP-level references. Not single tweets obviously, since sexuality is way too complicated to fit in a tweet, people can be unsure even in their own minds, people lie or play cute about themselves, sexuality is fluid thru life and circumstances, tweets are sometimes spontaneous and ill-considered and peoople get drunk or get in moods, and so forth; you're going to want full-scale interviews or equivilants.
Otherwise, maybe you could consider leaving people the heck alone and not playing asshole gossip or advocacy games with people's private lives. Other editors are not just allowed but required to revert BLP violations on sight, and the admin corps will back them up, and if doesn't then screw it, one's obligation to do right things supercedes not getting blocked from some website.
Of course the specific case matters a lot (which is probably why this conversation is nearly 100% noise - we're all imagining very different "typical cases", with no real basis in fact). I look at "If we're rock-solid 100% sure that person would be perfectly pleased for their sex life to be trumpeted in the world's most widely read encyclopedia to put into its database which may persist for centuries and will be the primary point of entry for people looking them up, I guess it's OK. " and think "Well, if they're trumpetting it into the most high profile, public venue they can find, a venue that's ~100X as visible as this one, then in a typical case we can be pretty confident they're perfectly happy with it being in our relatively obscure little project". But I don't actually know what the typical cases are, nor do you, nor does Andy. And so Jimbo could issue some semi-generic statement along the lines of what BLP says, and everyone would agree with it, but still come to the same conclusions they started with, because they're applying general principles to imagined specific cases that are very different. I could copy-paste what you've taken from BLP and conclude that in most cases we should respect and endorse what people announce on their most high profile, public forum, and respect means not suppressing their own voice in such matters in favour of third party reports, a ditto that respect is typically going to mean not trying to suppress as "private" or "embarrassing" what someone proclaims loudly and proudly. Sure, if there's some doubt that it's their twitter, or about the contents, it could be a problem - but I'd guess that's a far rarer case than someone trying to correct the public record. But that's just a guess. As is everything, and we shouldn't be gung-ho about suppressing people's voices or self-expression under the guise of BLP either. I certainly agree we're not here to make people sad - and thus would be concerned these kinds of attempts to suppress their voices, no matter how well intentioned they might be. If you're guessing that we're talking about " ...playing asshole gossip or advocacy games with people's private lives.", then of course you're going to see a problem. But there's no real basis to think that's what we're talking about, and it's just as likely we're talking about using a BLP guise to suppress people's identities and play an advocacy game by denying them the chance to speak for themselves. I'm really not playing Devil's advocate here, I think that's the most likely case. But I'm self-aware enough to know that's coming largely from my own priors on when this is likely to come up. I don't think anyone's advertising their sexuality on Twitter who has a biography here that wouldn't prefer it was mentioned, to act as a role model/glass ceiling breaker/the like. And I suspect almost everyone trying to remove such stuff is trying to push back against that kind of identity politics. There could be other weird, outlier-y cases. I think that's by far the most parsimonious explanation for why this would come up. And so we'll probably all agree on the principles, but disagree what it means, unless we have actual data on when this is happening. WilyD13:50, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
SoWhy, right - but any information that is contentious or disputed should be removed unless it can be referenced from reliable independent secondary sources. Otherwise we're placing ourselves in the position of arbiters of fact, deciding that a specific primary statement is intended as a serious statement of fact rather than some drunken prank. Guy (help!) 19:22, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
I have a few thoughts here which I hope are somewhat helpful.
First, let me offer a thoughts that have little to do with the specifically social media aspect of the question. Statements about someone's sexuality, from wherever sourced, need to meet a few important thresholds. The information needs to be noteworthy in order to be encyclopedic. It is not automatically noteworthy in the first place. One way to establish this would be through multiple high quality reliable sources. One example would be Anderson Cooper - which became of historical interest because of great speculation about it, his longterm silence on the topic, followed by his publicly coming out as gay. This was widely covered in the press and is of interest for multiple perfectly good reasons having to do with the changing of social mores, etc. Another way to establish this would be through a coherent argument as to why it is relevant: I can imagine that if someone is highly active in LGBTQ causes, speaking often on the issue, it could be sensibly interesting to readers in terms of understanding their perspective. Indeed, it might be a case where someone being heterosexual might be of valid interest. In general, though, I would say that some kind of reasonable argument needs to be made: the sexual preferences of a random business executive or news personality where it has had no meaningful interaction with their professional life seems to me to be of little interest, even if some random comment might be used to justify it.
Second, social media sourcing can be fine in clear cases, and might or might not be sufficient to establish the noteworthiness of the information. A passing mention of a partner could very well fail that test. An ambiguous statement that could be interpreted in different ways almost certainly fails that test. For everything we must ask ourselves both "Is it true?" and "Is it encyclopedic?" and where we are talking about a BLP we must always consider matters of dignity and take a firm approach to notability - in many cases the expressed wishes of the subject can be relevant.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:30, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo, you and I have occasionally disagreed but I agree completely with the logical and insightful things you have said above. A social media post that says "I am going out with so-and-so" is an ambiguous comment that cannot be used to source sexual orientation in the way that "I am coming out and I want my friends and family to know that I am gay (or whatever)". I have recently blocked an editor who used what I (and other editors) perceived to be an ambiguous tweet about sexuality in a BLP. That editor is quite insistent that my block is unjust. I feel bad for that editor but I will not back down. Thanks for mentioning Anderson Cooper, a very informative example. Another example is Jodie Foster, where debates went on for years about how to describe her sexuality, with the lesbian label being added and removed many times. Only when she decided to speak a bit more frankly about her sexuality was that issue resolved. Wikipedia and its editors should not add in any way to the pressure on celebrities to discuss such issues. They are inundated with that BS from all directions these days. Let's err on the side of privacy when dealing with ambiguous social media posts. Thank you. Cullen328Let's discuss it03:53, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
I have no problem with self-identification on social media of ones sexual gender or orientation of living persons. But Wikipedia has a troublesome problem with the sexual orientation of historical figures. Over Christmas, I was reading biographies of actors & actresses from the first half of the 20th century and I came across ones where the person was said to be LGBT or they were placed in LGBT categories when there was no or poor sourcing on their sexual orientation. But who will volunteer to go through LGBT categories (like actors, authors) and remove every bio of a person where their sexual orientation isn't reliably sourced or is questionably sourced (like to a tell-all book)? As one example, Walter Pidgeon isn't placed in a LGBT category but it is there's a claim in his bio that he was gay based on the memoir of a former gas station attendant, Scotty Bowers, who said Pidgeon picked him up for sex. Seriously? I think living persons have a lot of protections that historic persons don't have. LizRead!Talk!04:20, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
I think you raise here an additional question that I think is also important: categories. In the past I have objected to being listed in the category "American atheists". My personal beliefs in that area are not particularly relevant even if it can be sourced (or perhaps deduced). It isn't something I campaign about or tweet about or anything similar. I have been asked by the press, and answered truthfully, but putting me into a *category* for something like that has always seemed odd to me. Similarly, I have a blog (last updated 2012) from an era when being a blogger was like being a Facebooker. So it isn't strictly speaking false to say that I'm an "American blogger" but it certainly strikes me as odd and certainly forms no serious part of my personal understanding of who I am as a person.
My BLP point here is that I think in many cases placing someone in a category means more than just a casual mention - and that people are sometimes doing it for some agenda-based reason, possibly mild and harmless but still.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:48, 28 January 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales, we had this discussion over Joan Armatrading. Consensus was that a category should be definitional - i.e. the person should be prominently identified with that thing. A sportsist who writes a memoir should not be in category:Authors, for example, and someone who keeps their private life private should not be categorised according to purely private life factors. That didn't stick for long: she was added back into the LGBT categories. There's a terrible tendency for people to want to claim their own. It's understandable, especially if you're a member of a minority group. Guy (help!) 19:14, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
Sale of .org domain registry delayed by California attorney general
Hello @Jimbo Wales: I would like to use my book as a source in articles, but don't want it to fall under book-spam. In general I am wondering your take on this. If an author's book is accepted by trusted publishers, Wikipedia allows editors to use those books as references. What if that book is your own. I mean it's not entirely yours if you get it published the traditional way instead of self-published, since a publisher will get many of the rights to it such as the pricing, although it will usually become free over the years (from the policies I read on Wikipedia's guidelines, materiel does not need to be free, only trusted). I see in the Wikipedia spam policy that books which are added as citations and do not support information connected to the spoke topics, are considered spam, however my book would indeed give details about the article instead of merely promoting the book or myself. It is also not a biography, I write about stuff like history and archaeology. So Jimmy, do you think trusted authors whose books are approved by professional publishers (mind you this is harder than most people think), neutral, fact-based and possibly free in digital form, can be used as sources?-Uncle Shelldon (talk) 22:51, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
Hi Jimbo, An article about me was rejected by a wiki editor. I am running for President of the USA. <website redacted> is my core website of 9 pages of issues and issues. I don't understand as other political candidates have pages, and their volunteers upload information as it changes, so do elected officials. Any hep would be appreciated. His Peace to you, Kyle <email redacted> — Preceding unsigned comment added by KyleKenleyKopitke (talk • contribs) 07:34, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
@KyleKenleyKopitke: Being a candidate is not sufficient. At the point of this writing, there are more than 1,000 candidates registered with the FEC and most of them have no article. Wikipedia is not an election guide and there is no right to be represented here unless the candidate meets the threshold for notability. Focus on your campaign outside Wikipedia, I promise, if you become president, there will be an article made about you. Regards SoWhy13:33, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
KyleKenleyKopitke, Wikipedia only includes biographies of people who have been the primary focus of non-trivial coverage in reliable independent sources. I can find only a very small number of sources about you, mainly focusing on fraud, e.g. [19]. I am not sure any of these rise to the level of non-trivial reliable independent coverage except maybe this. Guy (help!) 13:37, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
Gråbergs Gråa Sång, I'm almost impressed: after two presidential and one vice-residential campaigns and one senate campaign (that I found in searches of primary data, there may be more), over more than two decades, he has nonetheless failed to be covered even as a joke candidate.
Consider the coverage Jimmy McMillan achieved as a perennial candidate. Or Bill Boaks. Apart from local press stories about the frauds, I cannot find anything at all. He got about three times as many votes in 2016 as Jerry White, but I cannot find a single non-trivial RS.
And that's despite some notably eccentric positions such as stating that as President, he will stop teh chemtrails (yes, seriously). And my personal favourite: "[a]s you must be aware, the Democrats and Republicans who support a move towards a One World Government, have molded the United Nations to purpose a “Global Internet” that is not controlled by the United States of America, but by a “Globalist agency.” As President Kopitke, I will protect and preserve the sovereignty of the American Internet."
Jimbo, do you believe the German VGWort model of compulsory literature royalties is an appropriate model for the United States to adopt? It has served them for well over half a century. EllenCT (talk) 01:51, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
Endowment board and Wikimedia governance
I'm curious about something relating to the Wikimedia Endowment Advisory Board, and since you are, to the best of my knowledge, the only member who does any on-wiki communication, I figure you're the best person to ask.
The public agenda of a WMEAB meeting that happened a few weeks ago (kudos to the WMEAB for posting those publically, btw; I wish more off-wiki groups were as transparent) mention 35 minutes being devoted to the WMF's Rebranding effort. (I assume you're aware of the ongoing uproar about the rebranding proposal, with 92% opposing it at the first consultation, and then 91% of the 336 commentors in the current RfC opposing the WMF & co appropriating the Wikipedia brand, and many particularly upset about the misrepresentation of community opinion by the WMF.) My question is, why is the rebrand proposal a topic of discussion for the WMEAB in the first place? Does it influence WMF decisions on things like this? Does the Wikimedia Endowment Advisory Board hold a position of general importance/influence on Wikimedia Foundation decisions? Or was this just a general "Keep up with what's going on, in order to be able to make more informed decisions on the Endowment"?
Hi Yair, great question. The Endowment board members spend a lot of time pitching companies and very rich people to give us money, to leave us money in their wills, etc. What we often find is that there is a big confusion at the start - you can try it yourself - go up to someone who you know but who doesn't know about the Wikimedia Foundation and ask them: "Would you donate money to the Wikimedia Foundation?" versus asking "Would you donate money to Wikipedia?" To me it is rather obvious that there are good reasons to abandon that distinction and I would think most opposition to it might come from projects like Wikidata, Wikinews, Wiktionary, etc., out of a fear that they will be neglected going forward.
I most certainly hope that the WMF Endowment board has "influence" on WMF decisions, just as you do, just as everyone in the movement does. The question of how the Wikimedia name may impact fundraising is one important factor in the overall decision. But obviously the WMF Endowment board is completely not the decider on things like that, nor do they wish to be or think they should be in any way. These are experienced thoughtful professional people who are donating their time and personal connections to raise money for our longterm future.
And yes, in addition to giving advice, it was also a discussion to allow them/us (endowment board members) to "Keep up with what's going on in order to make more informed decisions".--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:59, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Just now hearing about this, but has the board considered "Wikipedia" for the websites ("English Wikipedia, French Wikipedia", etc. as needed) and "the Wikipedia Foundation" (WF? See [22]) for what we now call the WMF? That might be a lot more acceptable to those who oppose the WMF calling itself "Wikipedia" while still reducing donor confusion. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:21, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
"The Wiki Foundation" is unencumbered by trademark registrations and would achieve all of the stated rebranding goals without introducing confusion. EllenCT (talk) 18:06, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
I think there would be a lot of confusion. "Wiki Foundation? So you run Wikileaks, Wikihow, and the Minecraft Wiki?" --Guy Macon (talk) 19:03, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
(Personally, I think having to explain the WMF's status to donors is a feature, not a bug. The WMF isn't Wikipedia, people aren't donating to Wikipedia, and asking for donations for "the organization which supports Wikipedia (among other projects)" is a lot more accurate and informative.)
Please see [24]. I asked about a similar speaking engagement last year and was perfectly happy with your reply -IIRC that people wish to pay you to speak and that you just go and speak your mind freely, and that they know about this ahead of time.
But in advertising this speech, they kinda suggest that Wikipedia might possibly consider using Bitcoin SV in micropayments for contributing to Wikipedia. I'll suggest, if I may, that you completely disabuse the audience of this notion. It's your call of course.
Micropayments in wooden nickels would be completely unworkable and, if the wooden nickels were actually worth anything, completely against your "bright line rule" about paid editing. If everybody was paid to contribute, nobody would be left to edit the article pages!
Don't worry. I'll address the issue head-on. I haven't read that press release yet (will do so in a moment) but if it appears to imply some endorsement of such a notion by either me or the Wikimedia Foundation, I'll complain. Suggesting such a surprising and obviously wrong thing seems likely to me to backfire on them, as it may inspire journalists to ask me about it, and I'll end up generating headlines smacking it down, having the reverse promotional effect they may have imagined.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:10, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
I love the whole "yes you can pay me to give a speech but what I say in that speech is not for sale" aspect of all of this.
The actual speech -- in the middle of nine and a half hours of a livestream starting with nine and a half minutes of their logo. (It sure would be nice if there was a YouTube video with only the Jimbo bits...)
Actual start of the speech. Jimbo is rocking that exoskeleton, don't you think? :)
OK, back to that press release. I quote:
"Especially now in the era of increasing fake news, Wikipedia seeks to offer a place where genuine and transparent information can be accessed. Blockchain technology has the ability to both incentivize (through Bitcoin micropayments to users) more reliable information, and create a transparent record of changes to what has been written before. Until the emergence of Bitcoin SV (BSV) to reclaim Bitcoin's original design, no blockchain had the scalability to power micropayments to efficiently reward better user information and handle the staggering amount of data Wikipedia carries. CoinGeek is, therefore, thrilled to have Jimmy Wales as a keynote speaker and looks forward to hearing his views on combating fake news, improving the quality of online information, and how Bitcoin technology might have some of the answers."
Wow. Big claims for a speech where they don't know what is going to be said.
It will be interesting to watch Jimbo give a speech where I suspect that he will say:
Wikipedia does not need need micropayments because we don't believe in paid editing,
Wikipedia already has a fully functional transparent record of "changes to what has been written before" (our page histories) with no blockchain needed, and
Not only does "Bitcoin technology" have zero answers to the problem of fake news, but that a lot of bitcoin fans are generators of fake news.
Jimbo or @Lgruwell-WMF: may we please see the investment update presentation? The most recent running total says, "as of July 1, 2019, $43 million has been raised," of a $100 million goal. What is the current amount? How is it currently invested? Is $100 million still the current goal? What will happen to bequests after the goal is reached?
Also, the foundation:Benefactors/2017-2018 page created 8 October 2019 says that it, "reflects gifts received as of January 1, 2017," referring to foundation:Benefactors/2016-2017 which says it, "reflects gifts received between July 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017." That earlier and all previous Benefactors lists cover only one year each. @Seddon (WMF): are those dates correct? [27] says it, "reflects gifts received after July 1, 2018," but not the date at which it was current or when it was last updated. Are current updates going to the Foundation wiki or the .org site? Is there any document which clearly lists the benefactors by year for each year since 2015? EllenCT (talk) 16:12, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo, in 2018 and 2019, Amazon donated $1M to Wikipedia. In response, in 2018, you said, "We are grateful for Amazon's support, and hope this marks the beginning of a long-term partnership to supporting Wikipedia's future." [28]. Now, look at the responses over in Quora about what it's like to work at Amazon: Why is the attrition rate so high at Amazon? Is it true that many people have seen employees crying at their desks while working at Amazon? That company is a horror show. According to the testimonials there, it racially discriminates, abuses and mistreats workers, suppresses unionization attempts, and gives less than one week of annual vacation to new hires.
The Wikimedia Foundation has, the last several years, been making a special effort to promote progressive social causes like diversity, womens' equality, workers' rights, etc. So, how does Wikipedia's partnership with a company like Amazon fit into those efforts? AppliedCharisma (talk) 16:22, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Pretty sure the WMF has not made any special effort to "promote" such causes (except insofar as they apply the principles internally). The WMF is supposed to be (generally) neutral. --Yair rand (talk) 17:53, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
"A concern troll is someone who disingenuously visits sites of an opposing ideology to disrupt conversation by offering unwanted advice on how to solve problems which do not really exist." Do you think I am opposed to the ideology of sustainability assessment? Do you think I have offered unwanted advice? Which specific problem do you believe does not really exist? EllenCT (talk) 22:48, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Yes. I do think you are a concern troll. I may be wrong, but that is my considered opinion. Pretty much anything that gets posted on Jimbotalk gets a comment from you "expressing concern". You have made 1,459 edits to this page. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:05, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
No. I am not going to debate you. I have expressed my displeasure with the fact that pretty much any time someone posts a comment here (in this case about the endowment board and WMF's Rebranding effort) they get a response from you attempting to hijack the discussion into some other area that you are "concerned" about (in this case the endowment board's investment strategy). You won't let anyone discuss what they are concerned about without using it as a coatrack for an unrelated topic that you are concerned about. I believe that I have correctly identified your behavior pattern. If Jimbo wants to allow this behavior, it's his talk page and that's his business, but I think you either should be limited to X comments per day on this page or limited to new sections that you create. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:09, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
I'm sure you know that my request for transparency in the endowment's constituent investments is longstanding. Do you share it? EllenCT (talk) 15:33, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
Please post your concerns about the WMF and carbon emissions in a separate section. It is certainly worth talking about, but you have hijacked a thread that was talking about the WMF's Rebranding effort. This behavior is disruptive. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:06, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
Commuter carbon emissions are included under "Scope 3 - indirect" emissions per pp. 87-93 here, but Morningstar is still trying to figure out the proportion to which Sustainalytics' ratings depend on that World Resources Institute and Carbon Trust's Greenhouse Gas Protocol. It might be substantially less than the other issues they measure. EllenCT (talk) 20:28, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
A question for Jimbo about the constant never ending argument about subject specific guidelines
In AFDs and elsewhere there are always some who stubbornly insist that the subject specific guidelines don't matter, only the general notability guidelines do. I think WP:NOTABILITY is quite clear. "A topic is presumed to merit an article if: It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline". It can be one or the other. Otherwise the subject specific guidelines wouldn't exist. But some do stubbornly keep arguing otherwise regardless. How do you feel on this? Could it be written even clearer than it is now somewhere to avoid constant pointless arguments and bad nominations for deletion? DreamFocus19:03, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
You need to go and amend WP:NOT to remove the line "Wikipedia is not a directory". GNG defines what can be sourced by reference to reliable independent secondary sources. SNGs as I understand them describe the sort of subject likely to meet GNG. SNGs as you define them aim to completely cover all subjects of a specific class, regardless of the existence of sources (because if they met GNG there would not be a problem). So: asserting that X is notable if it meets A, B and C criteria regardless of the existence of reliable independent secondary sources is a direct conflict with WP:NOTDIR and also, in the case you're involved in right now, invites the creation of biographies of living people sourced from a single results list and nothing else. Guy (help!) 19:09, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
You misunderstand what the rules say. I hate having this same argument with you and others constantly so I want clarifications. As I recently explained to you, when the notability guidelines were being discussed and created years ago, it was determined what would qualify things of being notable enough for a Wikipedia article. Just getting covered in a couple of random news sources was one way. Scientists are notable for their accomplishments, musicians for how well their songs sold, actors for how notable their films were they were a significant part of, etc. Whether or not you did a lot of interviews or were interesting enough for people to write about, is irrelevant, Wikipedia isn't just popular culture. DreamFocus19:16, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
"Whether or not you did a lot of interviews or were interesting enough for people to write about, is irrelevant" You should stop and think about what "notable" means. It means that people took note of something or someone. Like, literally. If something wasn't "interesting enough for people to write about", it isn't notable (and obviously there would be a lack of sources for a decent article here). Bitter Oil (talk) 00:03, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
Dream Focus, The "rules" say that Wikpedia is not a directory and doesn't cover subjects unless they have been the focus of non-trivial coverage in reliable independent sources.
Here's a challenge for you: my childhood swimming coach Bill Thornton medalled in two different events in at least two games. See if you can find any sources beyond namechecks and listings. Guy (help!) 09:04, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
Good example. And one of the problems with the term 'notability' (which might plague any term) is that it can feel demeaning or insulting to say that someone isn't "notable". Bill sounds great and interesting to me but we can't possibly write a biography about someone about whom there is too little public information. In some cases, if someone bothers to do the work, local news reports could very well be enough. But not always.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:28, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
They are currently debating whether being in the Olympics is enough to quality for a Wikipedia article or not at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(sports)#Change_to_WP:NOLY. Then you got AFDS like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kyle Kulinski (4th nomination) where even though most people said to keep the article, that the person passed the subject specific guideline for entertainers at WP:ENTERTAINER "Has a large fan base or a significant "cult" following." by having over 645 million YouTube views, and media mentioning him as a "internet idol." and other coverage, it still got deleted. Sometimes passing a subject specific guideline results in an article being kept, and sometimes its deleted anyway even if there is a proper article already written, not just a stub. And of course if anything doesn't get deleted the same nominator can just send it to AFD again less than a month later and try again as happened here and many other places in the past. The results are always the random opinion of whoever shows up to argue in the deletion discussion and the person opinions of the random administrator who shows up to close it. How about some clear rules that get enforced always instead of the nonstop relentless arguing over the same thing all over the place where people can just argue that any notability guidelines they don't like don't count, and only the one they do counts instead? DreamFocus12:43, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
Dream Focus, the problem is that SNGs are often written in a way that implies membership of certain categories is automatically grounds for inclusion, when Wikipedia core policy says it's not. You can't fix this by writing repudiation of core policy into the SNG, as Jimmy says. Guy (help!) 13:12, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
Somewhere or other (ANI?) I saw someone suggest the use of list-type articles for this purpose (Turkmenistan in the 2004 Summer Olympics or what-have-you). This seems like a really good compromise: an article on an unquestionably notable subject that can include whatever information is available about less obviously notable individual competitors. --JBL (talk) 00:36, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping. I do think people are misunderstanding "presumption of notability". It's just an acknowledgement that, for some classes of articles, sources probably exist and they might be hard to get at, so we can afford to lay off insta-deleting them right away. It's not an automatic entitlement to a shrine, and it's not a permanent exemption from WP:V or WP:N. We do eventually expect to see sources. For obscure sportspeople, where the only sources are that they competed at such-and-such event, list articles are a better way to present information like this than a cloud of substubs. I've suggested similar things before, and got my head chewed off for it, which just means I must be on the right track. When you have a bunch of purely statistical information, present it as a list or sortable table. The benefits are that the reader doesn't need to scuttle from page to page looking for tiny scraps of info, being able to compare similar entries at a glance adds utility that individual articles don't have, and you don't fall into the trap of claiming more than the sources do in the attempt to bloat stats into prose. ReykYO!01:22, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Reyk, I broadly agree. The problem at the moment is caused by the rapid creation of vast numbers of articles whose only sources are results lists. This would also be better handled by a list article, and splitting out as more sources become available. Either way, list articles should be a great starting point, and full articles without sources should then be unnecessary. Guy (help!) 22:44, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales, Bill Thornton was a top bloke and very inspiring both to me and to my late sister, who became a lifesaver and competitive swimmer. It's a source of great regret to me that I cannot find the necessary sources to write an article. Guy (help!) 13:10, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
So here's the deal with SNGs, in my view. Some are just guidelines that are superseded byt the general notabilty guidelines (WP:GNG), , while others de facto supersede the GNG and denote notability by themselves. It's a political issue, and that's fine. Humans are political. Politics can be toxic, but here's it's benign and functional.
For baseball, we have an SNG which says that anyone who has appeared in even one major league game gets an article. This we have articles on people where we don't even know their vital dates and all we have is bare statline from the baseball encyclopedia -- Ed Brown (baseball) for instance. (Railroad stations, chemical compounds, and various other subjects get the same treatment.) It's fine. Those articles aren't hurting anyone. They're not breaking out thru people's monitors and ordering pizza on their credit cards. It's OK; relax.
The reason for this is that baseball is very popular. There a lot of people who are really interested in baseball, both editors and readers. And they're completists, a lot of the ones who are particularly interested. These people form a strong political faction. Again, that's fine. That's life. Popular subject, strong faction -- why not?
So if you try to delete an article such as Ed Brown on the grounds that he doesn't meet theGNG and that should supersede WP:NBASEBALL, you will get pushback. You will be outnumbered. You will be given the argument that treating WP:NBASEBALL as as top-level notability guideline that supersedes the GNG rather than being subsidiary to it gives an objective measure that prevents a lot of useless squabbling about whether of not this player meets the GNG and that player doesn't, which is a reasonable argument. You will probably fail in your attempt to delete Ed Brown (baseball). That's politics.
On the other hand, if you try to delete an article about a very obscure person who meets WP:NCYCLING but not the GNG, you probably will succeed. Cycling not a big deal in the English-speaking world. There's much less political strength around it. Thus WP:NCYCLING is treated differently then WP:NBASEBALL.
You can call that politics, or you can call that popular subjects properly getting more coverage. What's wrong with that? If there's some rule somewhere that says that says WP:NBASEBALL shouldn't be treated as it is, so what? We are not rulebound here. Twelve people got together in 2009 and made a rule, so what? The river of people that is the Wikipedia can't be constrained that tightly, and shouldn't be.
We're not running out of paper. We're not losing readers because articles like Ed Brown (baseball) or Cape Boothby or Vendomyces exist even if they don't meet the GNG. we're not offending people, or getting flak from governments, or getting negative publicity, because these articles exist. Relax. It's OK for politics to play a role in what we cover. It's alright for some SNGs to be treated differently than others. Herostratus (talk) 16:21, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
Herostratus, a SNG cannot override policy. GNG supports policy, including WP:NOTDIR. We should not have "biographies" with one watcher that are drawn from a single results list in a single event. Guy (help!) 16:20, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
It can if we want it to, Guy. It can if we want it to.
Based on analyzing 100 articles, assuming that that more or less scales, I found that most of our articles do not meet the WP:GNG (or can be easily made to), by a good margin. I also deduced that if were to rigorously enforce the GNG (deleting millions of articles), our material would skew away from academic subjects and toward popular culture -- after all, there's a lot more in-depth coverage of a 1974 concert tour by Grand Funk Railroad then there is of a 18th century Russian geographer.
Some of the things on which SNGs act as if trumping the GNG:
Baseball players (as mentioned) -- SNG
Cricket players -- SNG
Members of American state legislations -- SNG
Species -- fungi, moths, plants, etc. -- no SNG that I can find; de facto SNG
Railroad stations -- no SNG that I can find; de facto SNG
Geographical entities (hills etc.) -- SNG
Places on the American National Register of Historic Places (quite liberal -- 80,00 individual entities, not including historic districts) -- SNG
Astronomical objects -- SNG
Probably others I assume
All of these categories contain scads of articles with just one ref, that ref being one line in some technical publication. Species are the worst for this: "Mitrulinia is a genus of fungi in the family Sclerotiniaceae. This is a monotypic genus, containing the single species Mitrulinia ushuaiae." There's one ref, and there's probably nothing more to say. There's millions of these. So?
Apparently people have voted with their feet on these things. And rules are supposed to codify common practice. And besides, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia -- "Wikipedia is freely available, and incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers." There are specialized biographical dictionaries for very many types of people and professions, and for those that there aren't, we can be one. If we want to. And a lot of us do.
So, rather than trying to fit the community to some rule, change the rule. Of course, we can't change the rule -- everyone knows that it's very difficult to get the required supermajority. So the functional thing to do is ignore it. I generally ignore three Wikipedia rules before breakfast, it keeps me young. Herostratus (talk) 20:13, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
Herostratus, agreement of small groups of like-minded editors cannot override canonical policy that has existed for over 15 years. If we allow that, we're fucked. Porn fans, for example, can override GNG and declare their preferred sites as "reliable", and introduce semi-fictional biographies. We know: they did.
I agree that the rules should change to fit the community. I am an inclusionist. and I applaud user:Herostratus's comment above; some guidelines can indeed be disregarded, if doing so helps the encyclopedia to grow as a real and genuine resource. --Sm8900 (talk) 15:50, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
I think the solution is not so much deletion as it is to find another article to merge these perma-stubs with. In the case of cricket players, I was involved in a discussion a year or two back in merging some of these into a general list of players, which I was pleased to find had some support. (I don't know what the status of this is at the moment.) Another area where this could become a problem -- but which I'm trying to prevent from becoming a problem, as my time permits -- are the thousands of Roman consuls. Arguably each of these men are notable: holding the office of consul means the person was either the chief executive/leader of a country (which is the case during the Roman Republic), or someone powerful politically or socially (which ought to otherwise meet WP:GNG standards). Yet for as many as half of these men we only know their names; for another large share, we might have only a few scraps of information. My goal is to write articles for those about whom we can say something more than "X was a Senator of ancient Rome. He was consul in the year NNN with Y as his colleague." The rest either become a redirect to the article about the gens they belong to, or get a footnote stating nothing more is known about this person. (In our information-rich age, it is far too easy to think complete profiles about all important people exist somewhere; you just need to find the right book. Sometimes learning that we know nothing about a given person is actually useful information.) -- llywrch (talk) 17:35, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Oh, absolutely. It's retaining the information that matters. Whether is a lot of really short articles or in list articles, that's a matter of opinion and either way is fine. Herostratus (talk) 07:27, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
JzG, 'GNG is not canonical policy. It isn't even policy. It's one part of the notability guideline, and repeated discussions over the years have refused to elevate WP:N to policy. That's because there already is actual policy in the area: NOT INDISCRIMINATE. As policy ought to be,, that's a very broad non-specific statement which we can interpret however the community wishes to do so. The practical guidelines that interpret the policy are what we actually do., and the place where we decide how to interpret WP:N and related guideline is WP:AFD. We mae the rules: we make our own policy, and follow our own guidelien interpreted in our own way by our version of consensus. I doubt any person is totally satisfied with the result--every one of us, if we were in charge, would do it in some different way, but no two of us would agree how.
AfD is, as anyone who works there regularly knows, erratic. Whatever view any of us might take about notability, there are many decisions at AfD tat do not conform to it. A very few things might seem to be never deleted, but even in the most conspicuous group, geographic features, there are continuing disagreements about just what is a sufficient geographic feature. Even for elected officials, it isn't clear just how far we go to consider someone an elected official. For professional athletes, opinion has changed back and forth, and I would not assume the present situation is stable.
Even as a guideline, WP:N's sub-guideline of GNG is dependent upon what we consider a Reliable source. A considerable restriction was made in notability for organizations when there was consensus to adopt WP:NCORP, which doesn't actually affect notability as such, but just what counts as a sufficient source to show it. We could choose to do similarly in any field, and the wording of GNG would be just the same as before, though the effect might be very different. Anyone who has been here long enough can add other examples.
Even as a guideline to be interpreted literally, GNG is more complex more than most people assume. Meeting GNG does not guarantee a separate article if there isn't enough to say. It would be perfect compatible with GNG for us to make combination articles for most professional athletes, or most small geographic features, or almost any field. We could even do it with state legislators. Or any other field--we did it with astronomical objects. Anyone here long enough can add other examples.
There's a basic problem with all of this. The important thing about an encyclopedia is not how it is organized into separate articles. It is what gets said about the material it covers. There are two real policies here that are much more important than anything else being discussed here--WP:V, and WP:NPOV. We could combine everything on all US presidents into one article, and we'd be just as much as an encyclopedia (if we could figure out how to make it readable on cell phones). We could be as strict as we like about GNG, and accept sourcing from gossip, and we would no longer be an encyclopedia. That's what matters. Arguing about notability detracts from the serious problems at WP. DGG ( talk ) 07:33, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
DGG, sure, GNG is not itself policy, it is a distillation of three core policies: V, NPOV and NOTDIR. If we don't have reliable independent secondary sources we can't verify that the content is neutral. NOTDIR says we don't include topics just for completeness, it places the focus on sourcing. I completely agree with your analysis above. Guy (help!) 10:12, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
Rand Paul has named on the Senate floor the person who, he acknowledges, is speculated by right-wing media to be the whistleblower - something the Chief Justice twice refused to do during the Senate trial.
Some sources cover this, though almost always without mentioning the name, you have to go through the source and watch Paul's Senate speech to get it. Some Wikipedians are asserting that this is now coverage in RS so we should allow inclusion of the name on Wikipedia and remove Special:AbuseFilter/1008 which prevents addition.
I'm not sure that Rand Paul can be sued for what he says on the Senate floor, but I'd guess we could be (maybe "reckless endangerment"? IANAL). We might as well wait until at least one of the following publish it: The NY Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post. Smallbones(smalltalk)20:10, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
Esowteric, it's interesting that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others appear to be expunging the content itself. It looks like we're not the only ones who think this is inappropriate. Guy (help!) 10:49, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Honestly, either it is unreliable information (i.e., how does Paul know this?) or it is true & puts the person's life in danger. (There have been death threats against critics of the current administration, although I suspect a large share of them are employees of the Internet Research Agency). In either case, let's not print it. -- llywrch (talk) 23:02, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
For me, there is no hurry. I think history will know the name. But we are not a newspaper. Let's wait to see how RS handle it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:04, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
A U.S. appeals court said that it will not reconsider an October ruling that largely upheld the repeal of landmark net neutrality rules[33]
The net net neutrality rules were in place for roughly two years, created under Obama and repealed under Trump. The Internet is not broken and does not need to be "fixed" by giving the federal government more control over the Internet. Pretty much none of the bad things that were predicted as a result of the repeal actually happened.
There was one major casualty though; Wikipedia Zero.[34][35]
For six years (2012-2018), Wikipedia Zero provided over 800 million people -- mostly in developing countries -- with access to Wikipedia and its sister projects free of mobile data charges. Alas, giving Wikipedia away for free violated the Obama-era net neutrality regulations. :( --Guy Macon (talk) 11:42, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
Guy Macon, "It’s been a year since we’ve given them that power, so what has that year looked like? Have we actually seen any drastic changes to our internet service? The short answer is no, we haven’t. But it’s not that simple, and it doesn’t end here. Just because corporations haven’t abused their power in the last 12 months doesn’t mean they never will, especially when that option is within their legal rights. "
Yes, let's trust the good nature of for-profit corporations. That has never worked out badly at any time in history, has it? Guy (help!) 22:55, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
Giving the US government vastly increased control over the internet is not the answer. The Internet was just fine for all of the years before Obama imposed his regulations, the Internet has been just fine in the year since Trump repealed those regulations, and the Internet will be just fine now that a U.S. appeals court has upheld the repeal. The repeal simply returned the internet back to pre-2015 rules where there were absolutely no systematic issues related to throttling and blocking of sites. The Clinton administration basically got it right when it came to the federal government regulating the Internet.
I notice that you have nothing to say about Wikipedia Zero. Giving Wikipedia away for free to users third world countries was a great idea. It was well on the way to really helping us with our ongoing problem with too few editors in developing nations and too many from rich western nations. And it was illegal under the net neutrality regulations. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:23, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Before, during, and after net neutrality, it was possible to buy the cheapest data plan and get throttled when you exceeded the data cap. Net neutrality didn't change that. Before, during, and after net neutrality, verizon had a policy of turning off data caps during emergencies, and they acknowledge that they made a mistake by not doing so in this case and instead asking for an extra two dollars per month, (which, BTW, the fire department was not willing to pay at first, which makes me wonder how badly they needed that extra data). And the court rejected that particular argument. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:18, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
You say "previously". Did the UK have some sort of government regulation of the internet the kicked in around the time they stopped? I doubt that they stopped because of the FCC... --Guy Macon (talk) 14:18, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Since when exactly has the US government been in charge of regulating how ISPs in third world developing countries conduct their business? Regards SoWhy12:20, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Since Wikipedia has been on US soil. It wasn't illegal for the foreign ISPs to offer Wikipedia Zero for free. It was illegal for the WMF to pay them to do so. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:18, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Guy Macon, "There was one major casualty though [..] Wikipedia Zero" Pretty sure that that wasn't the reason why that project got canned. Killing off Zero was advocated for heavily by both the community in general and many employees internally on idealogical reasons yes, but also because zero had seen a significant drop off in popularity since 2016, and because it was creating a lot of problems on Commons with illegal filesharing. I'm not aware that any legal argument regarding FTC net neutrality ever came into consideration (did those rules even extend beyond america?). You could argue that the foundation's credibility supporting American net neutrality rules was negatively influenced by Wikipedia Zero, creating an indirect casualty. But I'm pretty sure it was on the path to being axed regardless. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:00, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Given the fact that the WMF is so opaque, I have no way of knowing whether the fact that "Killing off Zero was advocated for heavily by both the community in general and many employees internally on idealogical reasons" was what killed Wikipedia Zero. Public discussion at the time was mostly about the fact that it was illegal under net neutrality (yes, it was indeed illegal for the WMF to pay the foreign ISPs to offer Wikipedia for free), but that doesn't mean that internally the WMF made the decision because of illegal filesharing. All we can do is speculate on the "true" reasons. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:18, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
The WMF is bound by the laws of the United States. It is not free to break those laws just because they are only being broken overseas.
"In a blog post, the foundation’s Deputy Director Erik Moeller promoted a relatively new offering, Wikipedia Zero, a partnership with telecom companies to provide access to Wikipedia free of charge. The idea is to overcome the prohibitively expensive data charges that contribute to keeping many people around the world offline. In making the case for Zero, Moeller argued that the Wikimedia Foundation is committed to net neutrality — the notion that all online data should be treated equally — and that Zero doesn’t violate this fundamental concept of the open internet. We respectfully disagree. We believe that Zero clearly violates net neutrality and is an attack on the future of the open internet." -- Access Now
"In 2012, the Wikimedia Foundation launched Wikipedia Zero, a zero-rating program aimed at spreading free knowledge in the developing world. However, accused of violating net-neutrality rules and dubbed as 'digital colonialism', the Wikimedia Foundation dropped the program in 2018." -- Forbes
"The Internet's biggest encyclopedia is a lot like other major sites on the Web: It's been a little hesitant to weigh in on net neutrality, the idea that all Web traffic should be treated equally by Internet service providers such as Comcast or Time Warner Cable. That's because the folks behind Wikipedia actually see a non-neutral Internet as one way to spread information cheaply to users in developing countries. With Wikipedia Zero, users in places like Pakistan and Malaysia can browse the site without it counting it counting against the data caps on their cellphones or tablets. This preferential treatment for Wikipedia's site helps those who can't afford to pay for pricey data — but it sets the precedent for deals that cut against the net neutrality principle." -- The Washington Post
"Wikipedia Zero, a Net Neutrality violating programme that allowed access to the online encyclopaedia without any data consumption being counted, is being discontinued... Wikipedia Zero and Free Basics are both instances of ISPs and Telecom Operators giving preferential treatment to these specific services over the ones that they compete with; whether there is a commercial relationship between them and the access service providers or not is immaterial: they lead to the greater usage of these specific services over the rest of the Internet, and give access service providers disproportionate power to pick winners. For example, why Wikipedia Zero, and why not Khan Academy? Or why Wikipedia Zero and not Encyclopedia Britannica?" -- MediaNama
"The push for zero-rating in developing countries has made Wikipedia's public support of net neutrality tricky in the past. The concept of net neutrality dictates all internet traffic should be treated equally and that carriers shouldn't offer cheaper or faster access to particular sites online." -- CNET
"In May 2014, the government of Chile deemed Wikipedia Zero, and similar services by Facebook and Google, illegal... paying mobile carriers more money to provide a particular internet service at a different rate than all other services seems to tread on violating Net Neutrality." -- Sociology Lens
"Wikipedia Zero: Is Wikimedia violating net neutrality in 59 countries? Because one of the underlying principles of net neutrality prohibits any kind of preferential traffic management, Wikimedia Foundation's Wikipedia Zero appears to be violating net neutrality. Under Wikipedia Zero, users can access Wikipedia on Wikimedia's partner networks without having to pay for data usage. Wikipedia Zero has been launched in 59 countries with 67 operators and Wikimedia estimates that '400 million people can now access Wikipedia free of data charges.'" -- News18
" By giving preferential access to Wikipedia, the Wikipedia Zero program arguably promoted the antithesis of net neutrality: mobile carriers would provide unrestricted access to the site without charging customers the related data fees." -- The Outline
Guy Macon:I was unaware you had been hired as the Legal Counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. If I am mistaken about that assumption; then it should be noted that it really isn't anyone who ISN'T the legal counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation to deal with these issues. Presumably, they're aware of these things, and if they needed you specifically to remind them that they existed, we're so fucked in this regard your reminder is unlikely to be helpful anyways. Either way, it's someone else's problem, and this discussion here stands little chance of improving anything. --Jayron3219:08, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Was WZ officially ruled illegal in any country other than Chile? I note that Internet.org/Facebook stopped their zero-rated operations there but remain zero-rated in dozens of other countries. EllenCT (talk) 20:09, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
I don't believe that any other country actually declared WZ to be illegal. In the US at the time the Obama administration was mostly using consent decrees for enforcement (stop doing X and we won't fine you) and never targeted Wikipedia. It does seem likely that there were a number of factors in the WMFs decision to cancel WZ, including the huge number of Wikipedia users screaming that they were violating NN, several anti-NN websites citing WZ as something that NN would outlaw, not as many people taking advantage of it as expected (although it is unclear how the WMF would know that), and piracy issues as documented at Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2017/06#Restrict Video Uploading. Clearly if NN was the only reason, WZ would have come back when NN was repealed. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:00, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
I'm confused here. I don't want to bother to get into the politics of net neutrality. But is there actually any evidence that the WMF had legal concerns in 2018 from US net neutrality regulations which were either in the process of, or already had been repealed and this was one of the reasons they dropped Wikipedia Zero? If not, HTF is Wikipedia Zero a casualty of US net neutrality regulations? Unless you mean an indirect causality since it got people interested in the issue, and maybe also got other countries interested in the issue. (Although in reality, many countries were talking about it and some doing something about it, before the US was.) As a secondary point, is there some reason to think that the WMF couldn't do whatever Facebook the billion dollar company everyone hates, to avoid problems from US net neutrality regulations when it comes to paying ISPs in other countries? Accepting that Facebook's legal budget probably exceeds the WMF's entire budget. Facebook still is the sort of company who it seems the government would want to target rather than the WMF (optics and all that). Frankly, IANAL etc, but I see no reason to think the regulations which seem to be explicitly targeted at ISPs [37][38], would ever have caused legal problems for the WMF. Heck even if they were paying US ISPs..... I mean I guess it could be considered some attempt to defraud or enticing someone to commit a crime or something, but frankly I'm utterly unconvinced that concerns over the legal risks in the US from offering Wikipedia Zero had anything to do with why it was dropped. Or as they say [citation needed] P.S. To be clear, I'm only referring to US regulations. The fact that Wikipedia Zero may or may not have violated net neutrality regulations in other countries, and therefore have posed a legal risk to the WMF in other countries, is besides my point. Likewise, I am only referring to actual legal concerns i.e. the claim "It was illegal for the WMF to pay them to do so" etc. Again, the fact some people may have felt the WMF shouldn't be doing something which violate net neutrality for political, ethical, social, policy and other such reasons is also basically besides my point. Nil Einne (talk) 15:11, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
I cannot document why the WMF made the decision other than what they said in the official announcement. If you wish, I could document some of the many places on Wikipedia where editors called on the WMF to kill WZ because they believed it to violate NN, but I have never seen any receive a reply from the WMF. There are a lot of unreliable sources on the net that make the same claim. RS, not so much. That's likely because any RS ran into the same "I cannot document all the factors the WMF considered" problem I ran into. Here are some sources, some kind of OK, some rather dodgy:[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51] --Guy Macon (talk) 23:16, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
There appears to be a dispute regarding an edit you (and others) made last year to this page. Your contribution to the Talk page would be appreciated. Thanks. Rodericksilly (talk) 11:25, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
It looks like a perfectly civilized discussion; I don't really have anything useful to add to it. Attempts to remove a neutrally stated and well sourced set of facts of obvious historical interest and relevance strikes me as unlikely to succeed.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:52, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
RFC's on Reliable Sources
The RFCs on if something is a reliable source or not are getting out of control. It use to be that we all agreed on a set of objective criteria upon which to base the decision. Did it have an editoral team? Did it correct errors? etc. These were questions of fact that we were discussing that could be reliably backed up. Nowadays it is treated more of a question of "do you like the opinions issued by this source?" If not then it is said to be unreliable. Over time this is degrading the diversity of opinions that are represented by WP. It use to be that on disputed issues we would show the opinions of both sides to present a NPOV. But the "not reliable" label is being used to eliminate undesirable opinions so that only one side of issues are shown. There are a few people standing up against this, but so far they do not have a majority and the admins are allowing it to continue. Over time this will make wikipedia worse. I encourage you to speak out about this, even as I know you probably wont. But sometimes it is worth shouting to the shouting into the wind, even if what you are doing will not change what is wrong. 144.121.128.138 (talk) 15:52, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
They seem pretty measured to me. For the most part the results align with things like the media bias chart. Sources are more likely to be rejected if they are unreliable, and that is exactly what's supposed to happen. They are much more likely to be rejected if they are both unreliable and highly biased.
Of course we have occasional complaints that most of the officially deprecated sources are right-wing, but that's a bit like the complaints that Twitter bans on racism and homophobia disproportionately affect "conservative voices". Yochai Benkler's Network Propaganda (recommended to me by Mike Godwin) analyses in detail the reasons why the right wing media bubble has become self-reinforcing and vulnerable to conspiracy theories and falsehoods, in a way the mainstream media is not, leading to asymmetric polarisation.
There are inaccurate partisan left-wing sources, but for the most part liberal editors don't seem to add them. There are left-leaning mainstream sources with a good reputation for fact-checking. Right-leaning mainstream sources are an endangered species. The WSJ and a couple of others. Most of the right-leaning media has lost its connection to mainstream fact-based reporting. Guy (help!) 17:32, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
They missed a critical point, I think. Gatekeepers still exist. A news source is still seen as more credible than an opinion source, but not all news sources are created equal.
In Network Propaganda, Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society use network analysis to analyze American media and explore why there "often no overlap, no resemblance whatsoever between the news events reported in mainstream print and broadcast coverage [...] and the topics that get broadcast as news on the Fox network and its fellows on the right".[1] By tracking citations and social media shares across various news outlets and correlating with editorial political leaning, they found that right-wing media sources had effectively segregated themselves[2] into in an increasingly isolated silo, creating a propaganda feedback loop[3][4] continually becoming more extreme and more partisan.[5][6] They note that the right wing media "punish actors – be they media outlets or politicians and pundits – who insist on speaking truths that are inconsistent with partisan frames and narratives dominant within the ecosystem", and contrast this with a "reality check dynamic" that prevails in the mainstream media. [4][3] They also note that liberal readers consume a much broader range of sources, whereas right wing media consumers rarely stray outside of the narrow right wing bubble.[3]
^Wanless, Alicia (June 21, 2019). "Computational & Network Propaganda: A Practitioner's Review of Two Books". Journal of Communication. 69 (5): E18–E21. doi:10.1093/joc/jqz020. ISSN0021-9916.
^ abcPyo, Yeahin. "Network Propaganda: Book review". International Journal of Communication. 13 (2019): 426–462.
^ abDeCook, Julia Rose (June 1, 2019). "Book Review: Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics". Convergence. 25 (3): 568–572. doi:10.1177/1354856519855568. ISSN1354-8565.
lets talk turkey here mr wales . /uv kept sort of a loose hand on wikipedia's reigns which prolly has served u & the project in pretty good stead over the years i suppose . . . . /but, apparently now it's the case even the epoch timesuniversallycannot be cited on wikipedia !! /really ? freekin ridiculous . ' 1st they came for infowars and nobody said nuthin 'cos we warnt conspiracy mongers . ' [diff] ( maybe unseemly to present my bondefides but here goes : fwiw am at least 3rd-gen dem : grampa was a dem state-legislator ; cousin , fed judge appoint'd by bill clinton & ive never voted GOP in prez elections late 90s--present )--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 18:45, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
Hodgdon's secret garden, Epoch Times is a crappy tabloid with a predilection for right wing authoritarian politicians - to the point of being the second biggest buyer of Facebook ads for Trump, leading to it being banned from advertising on the platform. It has boosted fake news and conspiracy theories.
So I assume your issue is with VOA. And I agree that also should never be used, because it is also crap.
Then again, so is the Washington Examiner, which you cited right there.
Guy, indeed, you make my point for me: How can you yourself not see this smacks of censorship? What then would distinguish Wikipedia, then, from Turkey et al? The London Mail breaks news stories. When it does, you say WP, the "encyclopedia about everything," can't link to it? In point of fact, sir or ma'am, the "fact-checking" network at Poynter in 2019 actually came up with a full list of 515 unreliable news sites, which has subsequently become unpublished by them (ne'ertheless an internet archive hosts it here!): In any case, indeed, the WaExaminer had been on it! Yet after internal review Poynter had revised their opinion and said the Washington Examiner did not meet its "criteria for inclusion" for this list, if you'll forgive this double negative.[52] (And in any case please do note that neither Epoch TimesnorVoA was even on this list.)--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 20:52, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Hodgdon's secret garden, censorship would be assessing sources by political bias. We don't. We assess them by reliability, per independent sources.
Of course, just as Twitter bans on hate speech tend to disproportionately affect right-wing people, leading to howls of suppression of "conservative voices", so it turns out that conservative media are more likely to be unreliable. That's a huge problem for America and the world, but it's not our doing.
I pointed that out at Signpost. And we can expect more to come (was it plans for 78 M images total??) --Masem (t) 20:12, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
WPITN, original research on popularity, the core of Wikipedia, and bias.
Well Jimbo how's things,
I live in Ireland, Jimmy. And it has been on the main page here for a week now. The Irish government fails to return a majority, it says on In The News.
Ireland has not returned a majority government since before I was born, which was certainly not yesterday, so that isn't news at all. What is news is that both the main parties here have been pipped for the second time in even longer than that with Sinn Fein winning the second most seats with the largest voter percentage.
If you were running a news outlet which was expected to be knowledgeable about the stories it is promoting, and you reported it that way, you'd be blatantly biased. It would be like an open cover up. Exacerbating that fact is the situation in Ireland. Traditionally the government has often schemed open cover ups in Ireland so that politicians can promote popular agendas against, or avoiding, the wishes of the people.
Neutrality is a supposed to be a pillar here. WPITN has for a long, long time, to many laughed-out complaints, reported government leadership issues as their (I cannot recall now if it was first or second but it is mass death and government leadership, I'm not going to search back through the years again just now, it is those two)..
Wikipedia, it is often said, has its own bias to support. We have an agenda here on this site. Freedom of information. Open source culture. I believe I've made the point... ~ R.T.G15:18, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
RTG, the news event is the election. That's the whole point of that ITN item. Yes, you can read "bias" into it because we don't mention Sinn Fein. Or you could assume that the people at ITN don't know a lot about Irish politics.
Regardless, the ITN piece is neutral. The fact that it doesn't say everything you want it to say may be a reflection of your own biases, or it may not - what did they say when you raised it on Talk? Or did you not do that? Guy (help!) 15:58, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia, despite having a news section, is not a newspaper. The headline is accurate, the election didn't return a majority. If you have an alternative headline, why not propose it? CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓16:36, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Bumbling around a partisan political event. A pillar of neutrality, that is not. Why belittle the truth? Wikipedia was born of a dynamic charitable people-as-one fledgling society. Tonight it beds down with a load of stuffy-old popular media. Sacrilege I say, Get partisan government leadership issues off the main page of Wikipedia! ~ R.T.G16:48, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
We are supposed to exemplify neutrality, not simply design a nice sticker for it as we facilitate business as usual among the others. ~ R.T.G16:50, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
We don't have the space there to adequately cover that topic. It literally drowns the section. There's nothing in WPITN about supporting and promoting Wikimedias agendas or issues, nothing. Yes I would certainly suggest not to cover political events with no other qualification than their popularity in current media. It's ridiculously trivial and open to bias. Wikipedia is so against that. So easy to manipulate. Such wide coverage. Popular media says today to fear that. Why wait until it is broken. Can we not be dynamic any more? Ye Gods! Wikimedia has employed a whole village to try and find ways of being more dynamic and promotional of the mission. There isn't room to cover it there. We were supposed to link to Wikinews for that. Tell me, how come Wikipedias recent birthday and 6 millionth article milestone doesn't seem to appear in the nomination history? Hmm. Well maybe it's not so important then. ~ R.T.G17:33, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
The other parties generally mark solidarity in opposition to Sinn Fein. The fact that the election hasn't returned a government in 40 years makes the divided result of the election trivial. The fact that this is only the second time one party has made a tangible foray since longer, as well as the rise in popularity of Sinn Fein over the last two elections, is undeniably the most newsworthy thing about that election... and it can be argued, that reporting their success as a main feature is biased, promoting them, as well as it can be argued that excluding them from mention can be biased, by downplaying the most significant feature. Fight your way out of this one... Politics is partisan, it is partisan, it is partisan. And here on Wikipedia we avoid partisanship like the plague, because: there is absolutely no need for us to pander to it. ~ R.T.G17:57, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
RTG, tone down the wrongteous anger. We're not pandering to anyone. The statement is 100% accurate, neutral, and any issues you have with its completeness can be raised at the appropriate talk page. Which, if you adopt the style and tone you have here, will probably be unsuccessful. Guy (help!) 18:08, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
@JzG:That's a total wash, Guy. Why personalise this? Why embitter emphasis with talk of anger? Come on, if it's a challenge, rise to it. Give us words of support better than "I support them". Give us good reason. I say, if you cannot do so, you cannot. ~ R.T.G18:19, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
You may misunderstand the purpose of ITN. ITN is not for news about Wikipedia (that would be seen as navel-gazing). It's for covering world news that is interesting, relevant, and that we have a halfway decent article on. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓17:42, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
The purpose of all sections on the main page is to promote awareness of content in the encyclopaedia. Why should the purpose of any section there have nothing to do with the sites mission? There is no why right there. I don't know why, you don't know why, it's just the way things are, right folks? Hmm. ~ R.T.G17:57, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
RTG, But the ITN section does promote our content. It shows off decent articles about current events, and drives editors towards those pages to improve them. Having an article ITN greatly increases its traffic, and edit count, which is a positive thing. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓18:10, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Actually, Captain, I've looked into it before. Political leadership issues and occurrences of mass deaths totally swamp the content of that section for a long, long time. Complaints are perennial. ~ R.T.G18:21, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
RTG, Or perhaps its just that those events tend to be notable, and thus we tend to have articles about them? How do you propose we fix this? What substantive change would you have the community make? CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓18:27, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
That's subjective. WPITN should be focused on the mission of this site, not the missions of popular media. Look up this page. There is news to be had without swamping in government leadership issues and issues of deaths, which in the timeframe WPITN operates in, Wikipedia is not the go-to resource. For an ongoing event, yes Wikipedia becomes a go-to resource. Hot-off-the-press..? That's not Wikipedia. It's not encyclopaediac. Reporting things like freedom of information and open source culture is encyclopaediac and down with the mission here. Is this really down to me? Is this not a valid suggestion? ~ R.T.G18:38, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
For my part, I've made the effort to address political bias at ITN and gave up/do not plan to engage at that forum again. If there was a serious RfC on removing it, I'd agree; however note this could be considered a perennial proposal. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:25, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
I think it is certainly a perennial proposal to stop giving so much coverage to government leadership issues. ~ R.T.G01:47, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
If ITN was really going off the mission of popular media, ITN right now would be TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP BREXIT BREXIT BREXIT. ITN is not a news ticker, we are very selective to avoid stories that the media weighs heavily but in terms of a long-term importance of the encyclopedia. That, to me, nixes about 50% of the usual stories mass media covers. And the reason that ITN often features election results and the results of tragic events is that they ARE in the news and that these articles tend to show the type of quality wiki editors can accomplish in a short amount of time.
Also, it would be part of the Wikimedia Foundation to focus on freedom of speech and open source projects, but for Wikipedia which is about information in general, we do not give any special prioritzation to these subjects at all. --Masem (t) 00:21, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
Someone has suggested a companion page to extend and thereby balance coverage out, over at Wikipedia_talk:In_the_news#Proposal_for_a_companion_page,_Wikipedia:_In_other_news. I think that's a really good idea. It wouldn't instantly change what I am complaining about, but at least other genres would not be utterly rejected by the ITN project. I don't think they so openly avoid particular subjects as Masem seems to suggest, but the effect in practice certainly does return that result. An extension page would go some way to responding to that without dramatically changing the face and content of the section, and without enforcing a prioritisation, it would still open the door to the wider news area which has often been requested over there. ~ R.T.G07:25, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
ITN does not outright reject any "genre" of news (with possibly the exclusion of celebrity gossip for good reason). But as a en.wiki main page box, we are looking for topics we believe have interest to the widest swath of readers that may see it and which demonstrate quality updated articles on en.wiki. As a rule, election articles nearly always meet both - the changes or lack thereof of national leadership is considered important and these are nearly always updated in real-time. Same with major sports results, weather and transport disasters and terrorism/mass casaulty incidents. The volunteer editors on WP tend to be drawn to these. But we post stories about science, health/medicine, entertainment, and a host of other areas, it is just that ITN does not get anywhere close to as many candidates, the articles often are not updated to the quality expected that the forementioned volunteer articles get, and (to your point) that ITN regulars do deem the topic to not be to of interest for the main page readership or show the long-term significance for an encyclopedia. But I want to stress that this is one of several reasons why you're not seeing this other stories posted. There is no ban or similar autorejection in this area, this is simply how a volunteer based project with a volunteer-based nomination process has the chips fall. ITN is not purposely rejecting content. --Masem (t) 15:50, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
Ah but the has been significant auto-rejection. Go you to that page and talk of balancing topics. It's just a lucky co-incidence that holding the status quo pushes some genres forward far beyond any of the rest. It's something like 60-70% or more leadership and disaster, WPITN. It is literally woeful, unless you blinker yourself to that sort of thing. No they don't tend to be drawn to that. For the longest time, if you try to push other genres, you get crowded out. There isn't enough room. The reality is not that people interested in the news only prefer these things, but that there is nothing else left there to see. You are representing a barrier to diversity.~ R.T.G16:15, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
If you want a diversity, go and nominate a story. This is encouraged on the main page itself, in the Nominate an article link, and is the very example of direct democracy in action, which so rare in real world. If every person complaining about "it's 60-70% or more leadership and disaster" instead nominates at least one story, we may become more diverse. As simple as it could be for an average reader and potential editor. Brandmeistertalk20:04, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
Re: "You may misunderstand the purpose of ITN", the real purpose of ITN is to sabotage the purpose of Wikipedia (the purpose of Wikipedia is to be an encyclopedia) by turning it into a place where people go to to look for breaking news. Yes, I know that it is popular, but it still does not belong in an encyclopedia. It also sabotages the purpose of Wkinews by training users to look for breaking news on Wikipedia instead of on Wikinews. We should nuke ITN and replace it with a link to Wikinews. That isn't going to happen because so many here have an entrenched interest in displaying unencyclopedic material ion the front page of an encyclopedia, but it would be the right thing to do. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:42, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
That does raise a good question: why is ITN so prominent? It sits right atop the page. Its also one of the only two parts of the mainpage that is displayed on mobile. I always felt that another part of the mainpage should be on top, such as moving the Featured pic to that slot. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓18:05, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
Guy I agree with you on this too, as unusual. There are a thousand places to find news on the web, most of which are superior for that purpose. If we wanted to show people what our editors actually care about, we would put some form of WP:MOSTEDITED on the front page. It always has some but not much overlap with ITN. EllenCT (talk) 19:38, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
WPITN swears they are doing things the best way it can be done. And yet, no awards are on the cards for that section. It is an odd one out, and not because it is quirky, innovative, surprisingly effective, and surpassing of its peers, like most of the rest of the site. Instead it is small, stuck, narrow, and mildly objectionable. ~ R.T.G15:48, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
Also, the main page of Wikivoyage is 100% about travel, the main page of Wikiversity is 100% about learning, the main page of Wiktionary is 100% about word definitions, the main page of Wikisource is 100% about sources, the main page of Wikibooks is 100% about books, the main page of Wookieepedia is 100% about star wars, and the main page of the minecraft encyclopedia is 100% about minecraft.
But hey, Conservapedia has "in the news" on the front page, so we are not alone. In fact, most of the page is devoted to "In The News: what the mainstream media isn't fully covering". Maybe we should be more like them and have ITN articles like "London Daily Mail reports the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, where research was done on bats, is 300 yards from the Wuhan Seafood Market where the Coronavirus is alleged to have originated". I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:38, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
Near where I live we had a proposal to make changes to a major highway. On the side of keeping the traffic flowing were thousands and thousands of users of the road, none of whom showed up at the city council meetings about the plan. On the side of a plan to reduce 4 lanes to 2, convert the existing lanes to parking spaces, drop the speed limit from 40mph to 25 and place stop signs every 50-100 feet were a grand total of 15 shop owners who showed up at every meeting and gave generously to political campaigns. Want to guess who won? --Guy Macon (talk) 17:49, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
I'm on board with any effort to do away with ITN entirely (and while Venezuelan presidency was on the mainpage, I also came across some news portal that carried tons of inaccuracies, so that's another problem area). NOT NEWS! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:42, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
For those not in the know, I probably hold the record for being the worst formulator of RFCs on the entire Wikipedia, with three epic fails under my belt. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:39, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
At the core, the main problem is that what some editors think of "in the news" is what newspapers are reporting, whereas ITN has been very clear that we are not a news ticker and focus on stories that are more encyclopedicly relevant. And now we're adding this angle of "ITN should be able news about en.wiki, not news news" but that would make sections like DYK and On this Day also stand out as inapporopriate. I'm all for finding ways to help broaden what ITN covers by way of getting more volunteers to submit articles and stories to cover that fit its purpose, but getting rid of ITN and not other sections of the main page is not addressing the problem correctly. --Masem (t) 19:28, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
If motivating the creation of articles of topical subjects is somehow sabotaging this project, I guess I never understood the point of this whole project in the first place. Aren't we here to write articles? ITN contributes to that. ITN is not intended as a source of news, it is intended to highlight articles on topical subjects that happen to be in the news. 331dot (talk) 20:11, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
Why would we put something that has the purpose of serving editors instead of readers on the front page? Nothing else that only exists to serve editors (Wikipedia:Five pillars or Wikipedia:Verifiability, for example) is on the front page. WP:ITN says "The In the news (ITN) section on the main page serves to direct readers to articles that have been substantially updated to reflect recent or current events of wide interest." (emphasis added). Readers. Not editors. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:58, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
I disagree. One of the requirements for ITN is that highlighted article shows that it has been updated and that the article has a reasonably quality that meets with the five pillars. This may not be much for "simple" updates where only or a line or two needs to be updated to reflect the news, but for things like the Notre Dame fire, that was an article of high quality developed rapidly by multiple editors but in a few hours on the day it happened. That's the ideal of what we want to feature in that box, that we can cover current events while adhering to the 5 pillars, though we recognize that type of event (importance or coverage) does not happen every day, so we allow important stories that are still articles of good qualities to be there too. We are directing readers to these articles. We are trying to make a judgement of what our readership is as this is a global work , not just US or UK or English-speaking, and so are focusing on topics that we consider have the best broad encyclopedic interest in place, not just those that CNN and other news channels are rambling on about. --Masem (t) 21:09, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
It seems to me that the purpose you just described would be better served with a section titled "recently updated" or by simply by "featuring" multiple high-quality articles in that space. You could still put in articles about late breaking news, but the message to the reader would be "this is worth reading" as opposed to "this is the place to look for breaking news". --Guy Macon (talk) 21:58, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
Name changes have been proposed before(I've even supported it in the past, not sure about now), but I don't get a "breaking news here" message from "in the news". I get an "in the news" message. 331dot (talk) 22:18, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
That itself is a possibility (in brainstorming mode here) along with perhaps recently promoted GAs and FAs, but then that gets at odds with TFA. Or if we're talking newer articles, that also gets at odds with DYK which is meant to highly good quality articles that are new or have significant updates with the hooks to draw the reader to them. ITN serves as a third way to draw attention to works on WP in contrast to looking at quality (TFA), looking at newness (DYK) and looking at recurrence (OTD) by using the news media as a guide for what's happening in the news to identify hat we have created or updated quality articles for, and which editors feel is encyclopedically relevant for a broad audience. This latter factor is always going to be at odds but I still believe it is more an issue with not getting as many nominations to work from and less about being too narrow of what we allow for posting.
One of the things that should be stressed is that the ITN box has continued to link to Portal:Current events which has far less a barrier for inclusion. If a reader needs to see a broader picture of the news they can go there in one click from the main page. P:CE is still not a news ticker, it just doesn't have the space limitations that ITN has. --Masem (t) 22:25, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
Question Is there a formal RFC some place so I can oppose the perennial "I didn't get my way therefore ITN is completely broken" proposal? --LaserLegs (talk) 22:58, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
There is a tide of claims now that ITN is encouraging content and promoting content. But it isn't. One of the main features of the review at ITN is wether the reviewers believe the content is newsworthy. Also, Portal:Current events is for developing events, only. It's not for expansion of coverage, at all. ~ R.T.G08:03, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
RTG Any curated content of any kind involves a judgement call. Just as AFD involves a decision about "notability" and other factors. If you don't like the decisions that are made, you should be there participating instead of wanting to burn the place down because you don't like the decisions. Many people wish to work on articles to see them posted to ITN, and many people want to read them. 331dot (talk) 08:36, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
More evasive response. The complaint was not that items are judged when they are reviewed, but that the guide tells them to go with what they feel like. Aw I'm sorry. The point is not to shut you down though, but open the doors a little. ~ R.T.G18:58, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
It is fun to some of us interested in using the increase in media cover caused by a person's death to improve Wikipedia. (See Slate article about ITN.) ITN has contributed to the improvement of countless BLPs that have, until the person's death, been plagued with sourcing issues. I for one have created articles like Mavis Pusey about notable people that have gone unnoticed and "Under-the-Radar" as The New York Times put it. ITN is doing great work to improve our encyclopedia.
What people still seem to not understand is that ITN is not a news service. It is a WikiProject like any other. The goal of the project and the measure by which it or any other WikiProject should be judged is whether or not it causes articles to be improved and helps to "make a great encyclopedia" (see first paragraph of Wikipedia:In the news). --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 17:43, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
This right here. I know recently I contributed greatly to Larry Tesler's article, and a few months back we had no article for Shuping Wang that I helped to expand on. And I forget who it was but there was that case of a female Nobel winner that we had NO article on at the time she was named a laureate. ITN helps to draw readers (hopefully editors) to topics that can be expanded further as long as we have a good base (quality) for them to build on. --Masem (t) 18:00, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
There are four slots on ITN today. It doesn't encourage anything of the sort. Wikipedia has six million articles. It was recent news in fact, when the site broke the six billion barrier. Well, in most places, that report news, it was news. You know, if they have room for... anything...? ~ R.T.G18:58, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
It wasn't in the news however. (the best source I can find right now is TechCrunch). We're trying to just ITN stories based on the appropriate media for the type of story which is generally going to be mainstream international newspapers and news networks. --Masem (t) 19:05, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
It was in some news, but more importantly, it was news for the site. In fact, in response to your claim I searched and am stunned by how little coverage it received. However, that's not a good enough excuse for the template not to have run it. On one hand the guides are telling you to promote what you feel, while on the other hand you appear to feel nothing. It's untenable. Go up the page to where one of the better editors active on the site, User:BD2124, has suggested an expansion page, and support it. And link to it from the template, and send all of your kooki stuff there, and lesser notable stuff, and let it cover everything which should be covered, rather than maintaining a barrier, around this objectionable shortfall. You aren't even being accused of anything devious. You are just being accused of being too small and narrow in your output. The request is not to "burn the place down". It's to extend the place. ~ R.T.G19:36, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
One of the things we try to avoid is navel-gazing. Yes, 6M articles is impressive, and we updated the logo for it, so everyone saw it, but we know people do not llike it it when we draw undue attention to Wikipedia itself (Every time the donation banner goes up, ppl bitch, for example). So unless there is significant coverage related to Wikipedia that is actually in the mainstream news, it does not make sense to cover it. And we already have a page for stuff that doesn't quite make ITN: that's Portal:Current Events. --Masem (t) 20:05, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Navel gazing? Even people who contribute nothing to Wikipedia should be proud of it. It's literally the broadest project. And the news section it puts on its front page, should operate in deference to it. There's been many requests to expand ITN in some way. It wouldn't take much to do so, and opposition to the idea is pretty crapola from over here baseless or evasive. ~ R.T.G21:12, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Turn on a national news program that has a limited time slot (like CBS Nightly) or the front section of the NYTimes or another major paper. How often do you see them tooting their own horn? At best, I have seen (and this is totally reasonable in my book), obits to their well known editors and reports at the tail end of the program, and maybe rarely the case of reporting on winning an award like the Pulitzer. I might have seen a 60 Min block end with "With that, that was our 10,000th story. Goodnight!" in passing or something like that. They don't navel gaze at least to the public audience. I am 100% sure these news outlets have internal news channels like we have our Signpost to go all in on praise and the like. If it was the case that the world made a big deal of our 6M article, then that would have been something, but the world didn't, and it is inappropriate for ITN to give undue weight there; it sets a bad precedent for the future. --Masem (t) 01:56, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
Exactly so. It would be hypocritical to ask people who have created new software applications or formed new rock and roll bands to not use Wikipedia articles as a means of self-promotion and then to turn around and do it ourselves. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:43, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
On one hand Masem is supporting the statement that Wikipedia is not a news service, while farther down here on the same thread they are saying that things should be done, like news outlets would do it... And I think this sort of confused antipathy is typical of the protectionism over at the ITN. Of which it is not the protection that has to be complained about, but the confusion. Being protective is understandable given what and where WPITN is. However, what turned me on to this was, this time last year there was a further story on colony collapse disorder run by most outlets. I wasn't laughed out, but I might as well have been laughed out. It was snowballed. There was no complaints towards editing and adding the story to articles. It was news about encyclopaedia-worthy content. And then I realised, isn't ITN like this all along? I complained, I searched for previous complaints, I realised it was actually an issue falling between the cracks for many years. Please find a way to balance out into stuff like science, technology, and things for instance, which might attract an editor for a while who will study a topic with focused interest, it probably remains to be said, because there is going to be no flood here. Even if there is an expansion, it's not going to turn all our heads sideways and overshadow the whole project as this bright shiney new thing, or this massive stupid broken thing... It is going to be so minor an update, in the material sense, but it will be a taste of polish for this project, and I wish they'd see that because there are many editors devoted to that template... Look it's far too much to go on and on about. It's a really simple thing. Let's see that Wikipedia will still be here. WPITN will still be here. Nothing is going to fall down or break on this, and where your RFCs should go is into what is or isn't newsworthy in a more balanced coverage. Please go to ITN talk and state support for BD2124s proposal, thankyou o/ ~ R.T.G12:05, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo hasn't commented on this matter himself. Perhaps that's because he's too busy with his own efforts to reform news coverage: WikiTribune and now WT Social.
I often need to wash my hands after handling money, but transitioning to paper and coinless money outright would mean an extreme cut in charity, difficulty with pocket money for kids, and incidents of broken plastic causing hunger. ~ R.T.G12:11, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
Following Q ( diff ) was on the talk page @ jimbo's blp but I'm re-posting here.
Politics?: His political position is variously described as being a supporter of Ayn Rand, "libertarian", "centre right", being a supporter of the Democratic Party of the USA, being a supporter of the British Labour Party (though he has attacked Jeremy Corbyn), and being sympathetic to the Occupy movement. Can we clarify this? Has he changed his opinions? Does he have a very individual point of view? Are these descriptions just wrong? Or is there a clearer way to explain this? -- (user:Jack Upland)
Hmmm. It would be fun if some sourcing could be found Re what hypothetical ideology or ideologies might categorize some various trends by which jimbo's decisions seem governed. What I myself might guess is, inasmuch as jimbo's not a political public figure so much as---- well, l' innovateur célèbre . . , perhaps, politically speaking, he'd most closely be classed within something like the pragmatic technocratic mode, with little to no ideological consistencies by overarching political category or closely-related categories able to be found.
By my reading, he does come across a bit go-along-to-get-along as figurative helm of the WM foundation, say, when a mass of volunteers are fixing to boycott over some opinion he'd come to've expressed, he'll then qualify these same, trying to arrive at a reasonable compromise of sorts, no? If it were me, I might let them walk. Where in heck else they're gonna go? With larry &t-al @ some at various wiki-esque competitors? Plus: What kind of ' first amendment absolutist ' - which he obviously won't be classed as - stands by while the En-WP willy nilly blocks contributors' even linking a whole host of sources? A set of guiding principles similar those undergirding poynter ought be adopted & stringently abided by instead, in the face of the usual locusts swarms-beholden-to-ideological leftism as gather in typical WP in-house editorial discussions. ( WP could really use this metaphorical counter-swarm of chinese ducksha ha ha! . . saying this myself, politically speaking, at least a 3rd-generation Democrat & self-described socialist heh! ).--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 19:28, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
He said he's a pathological optimist and that says it all because that mentality would override and make moot all of the wide variety of typical labels people adopt or throw at each other. Having said that, "I'm with you" Blair is either really stupid or else a really bad dude, obviously, imo, so I don't understand how come he seems to like him, but then again, Christians are not supposed to be judging anybody so maybe he's just more Christian than me, but damn, Blair does piss me off. Maybe even more than the turd he was "with". Nocturnalnow (talk) 01:55, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
hi
Hi. recently I found that some users use wikpedia to propagate things like violence. and fiercely prevent any changes in those articles. I'm aware naive people will believe those layers. So could you please put that warning "wikipedia don't guarantee truth" at the top of every page of wikipedia? FlayeF (talk) 10:41, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
See the "Disclaimers" link at the bottom of every page. Or google "Is Wikipedia reliable?" Of course, some of the info you find then will be from Wikipedia, which could be problematic. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:04, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
This has started today if anybody is interested. We're aiming to get 1000 UK and Ireland articles destubbed or improved during the month, from all 134 counties of the UK and Ireland. Even if you're not into contests, treat it as just a drive to get content improved.♦ Dr. Blofeld10:19, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
Yes, it does say "6 billion articles" with a B. It looks like a typo, but does anybody know the total articles in all the different language versions? Smallbones(smalltalk)17:43, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
The Persian Wikipedia is blocked in Iran. A few days ago the speed was very low, then the servers were cut off one by one. And now, wiki is blocked, absolutely. Please do anything, if you can ;( Ταπυροι (گپ) 19:08, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
Making Wikipedia available in Iran is not an end in itself. People could be thrown in jail and tortured because they read or edit Wikipedia. It is not child's play. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:27, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
You already know about the Bulgarian Wikinews. I thought I'd share with you another case—also because the Foundation may be getting pushed into some not very fair political games (as if there are fair ones :).
A few years ago there was an article about a corruption scandal in Bulgaria that was drawing much attention at the time (and one of many in recent years). One of our editors, who is known to frequently cross the line with his political preferences, proposed the article for deletion, because he felt, ironically, that it was too politically charged. The discussion was heated at times, but, overall, followed the routine practices (I do have some remarks about how it was closed, but they are not that important here).
In the end, the article was deleted, with a basically split vote of 9 to 8 in favor of deletion, with the most debate being around the question whether such "hot" topics should be covered in Wikipedia.
Fast forward three years. A week ago I got contacted by a journalist working for, amongst others, the investigative website Bivol.bg (apparently, the reason why I was contacted was that I had tried at the time to moderate the AfD discussion). She wanted to know the real identities of the editors who had voted "so fervently" in favor of deletion. I shared this with the Bulgarian community in Wikipedia, where the general suggestion was to ask her to contact the editors publicly. When I conveyed this to the journalist, she responded that she wasn't interested in having discussions with insert-pejorative-for-anonymous-people. She requested that instead the ediors contact her, revealing their real identities and answering if they were paid for their contributions, if they were members of political parties, etc. At that point, most colleagues in Wikipedia felt that further communication seemed pointless and perhaps even harmful. One of them still did contact the journalist and answered the questions in good faith, but apparently later regretted it, as the communication seemed edgy.
Finally, today came the article in Bivol.bg, which, in general, accuses the community of censorship and doing the bidding of certain political figures. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to discuss here the truthfulness (or not) of such statement.
What worries me—and why I decided to contact you—is that the article does reveal the real identities of editors, who apparently have been "investigated", with some ambiguous or even misleading connections being made, employers being named, etc.
The article also mentions that WMF "had been presented with the case in details" (I probably should mention that the article is full of incorrect statements like: "new sysops are elected only by the existing ones", "the sysops don't need to provide justification for their actions", one of our colleagues being presented as an "active blogger of the Foundation", etc.), that the Foundation promised to investigate it, and ending with a quoted statement by Chantal that "the manipulation of Wikipedia for personal and political gains is against the essence and the mission of the project" (of course, that's an entirely correct statement on its own, but in the context, to me, it seemed manipulatively presented as if the Foundation already agrees with the accusations against the Bulgarian wikicommunity).
Such doxing attempts are of course inevitable and expected to come from diverse sources. They may be even well-meaning and beneficial in certain cases, like the Bellingcat investigations. But you, of course, are the last person whom I need to convince why the privacy of the editors in Wikipedia is important. The fact is that while I stand with my real identity and this has certain benefits (at the very least, people tend to be less aggressive when communicating with me), I'm also much more mindful of what I write, and there are topics I consciously try not to get too involved with (and even so, I still have managed to earn myself some invitations to "meet f2f" to "solve the problem"). This is further exacerbated by the problems that Bulgaria still faces with instilling the rule of law.
I'm certain that these problems are not unique to the Bulgarian projects. I also don't know what (or if) the Foundation can do about them. But, again, I thought it wouldn't hurt to at least ring a small bell here.
Key question to me remains: what's the best way to react in such cases. The Bulgarian community, for one reason or another, hasn't been able to establish a local WMF affiliate. I thought about forwarding the journalist's email to either the WMF's legal team (because of the request to reveal user identities), or to the media relations team, but wasn't sure if they would find it appropriate for them, as the issues that the journalist was raising were still mostly connected to the specific AfD procedure in bgwiki. — Luchesar • T/C11:30, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
Absolutely tell the legal department of you haven't already. It's a harassment issue in addition to a privacy and safety concern. I'd email legal at wikimedia dot org and ping the talk pages of a few international community relations folk, of whom there are several. EllenCT (talk) 11:49, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks a lot, Ellen! Sadly, I'm a bit short on time these days, so I also opened an RfC on Meta, where, hopefully, more people from both the Bulgarian and other communities will openly participate without spamming Jimbo's talk page. — Luchesar • T/C14:19, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
There is some interest in why the Wikipediocracy message board has been replaced with a splash screen indicating that the account has been "suspended." According to one of the principals, the site is undergoing a protracted Denial of Service attack, which has led to the host temporarily shutting down the site. Not the most professional way to handle such things, in my opinion, but that's neither here nor there. Look to the Genderdesk blog for additional information as it develops. LINK. Carry on. Carrite (talk) 14:40, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
Morningstar isn't including accurate GHG emissions in their ESG ratings
Jimbo, I just heard directly from Morningstar, Inc. and Sustainalytics, that their ESG ratings as used by the Foundation's reporting on the Endowment do not include the "Scope 3" carbon footprint (see e.g. pp. 87-93) of the World Resources Institute, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and Carbon Trust's Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Value Chain Accounting and Reporting Standard. So for example much of the 25% reduction in carbon emissions from work-from-home policies may not be accurately credited to the companies implementing them.
Ironically some of our (Canadian) poorest/most remote indigenous outposts in the high arctic might do the best if/when this thing REALLY takes off. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:26, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
The US will need about 1.9 million Intensive Care Unit beds come mid-March, with about 330,000 available. This is the sort of profoundly urgent situation tailor made for your dignified penchant for understatement.
You might want to suggest that local public health authorities take commensurate measures such as field hospitals from schools and the like, following the lead of China.
Because it looks like we're going to get an annual die-off about the size of cancer or heart disease from this point forward. EllenCT (talk) 14:07, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
It is not unusual for Jimbo to get media interviews when the subject of reliability comes up, and since a large portion of the American government is currently based on constructed reality from self-aggrandizement along with the longrunning attempts to manufacture consensus, I predict Jimbo is going to be in the media on reliability of information again soon, and the context I tried to give above might help. I am generally in favor of Jimbo's interviews. There's really only one of his media appearances I didn't like since 2004, with the Objectivist mentors at the Cato Institute if I remember right. EllenCT (talk) 02:50, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
The next pandemic may be a lot more dangerous than this one, so we need to invest in the capacity to design and mass produce vaccines within a few months. For example, this virus could end up mixing with MERS due to someone infecting a camel and a subsequent spread of the virus among camels causing a camel who has MERS to catch this virus (MERS is endemic in camels). That may well lead to a virus that's as deadly as MERS but which unlike MERS can be easily transferred from camel to humans and then spread from human to human. Count Iblis (talk) 09:06, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
You don't know me and I don't know you, but we've been working together for 14 years, and it's about time I showed some gratitude. If not for your open-door policy, I'd have probably wound up on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram back when they seemed cool. This way still seems cool, so thanks again, but I'm handing in my three minute's notice and applying what you gave me in some practical manner or another. Cheers, boss! InedibleHulk (talk) 23:57, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
Well, he's certainly made a wonderful thing possible, one of the great achievements is keeping this going without irritating adverts and "two free remaining articles this month" popups. This site has gigantic potential but we badly need more active editors to get it to the level and consistency in quality and readability that it could be. Wikipedia:The Great Britain and Ireland Destubathon has already seen 450 article improvements in 2 weeks for most counties, imagine what could be achieved if we had ten times the amount of contributors, we'd have reduced the stub count by over 10% already!!
I still think we'd greatly benefit from having a Concise Wikipedia edition, not as short as Collins Dictionary but something like that in virtual format which resembles a virtual book encyclopedia and you can browse with multiple short but sweet articles on one page. I recently bought the Columbia encyclopedia (the largest single volume print in publication) for browsing and finding stuff and using it to find interesting content on here, I miss that aspect of when I was younger and reading a book in an A-Z. I think Jimmy said that was one of the joys of his youth too. I proposed it back in 2012 I think, Jimmy and 40 odd people supported but it sadly came to nothing. I think knowledge would greatly benefit from a short overview of the important stuff, and something which is more consistent and less inclusive than Wikipedia. A virtual encyclopedic dictionary and a web design in virtual book format and resembling old parchment paper perhaps, that's what I envisage! I love that idea but it's difficult to gain the support needed to make something really happen. Wikimedia developers, if you read this, please make a note of it and discuss this idea sometime!♦ Dr. Blofeld04:06, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
Sure, nowadays. But that's just because you (in large part) created a world where democratic encyclopedias are "a thing" at all. My greatest accomplishment was only shaping Richard Gere's career section to spell the word most readers were already thinking. Four damn years, almost, it stood. You know how many complaints it received? Zero! You know who thanked me? Nobody! It just gradually eroded into gibberish, unworthy of study. There are levels to this game, my modest colleague, and I can say with certainty you're a better player than I. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:49, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
"Calls for political action in geonotices" on Village Pump
Agreed; it's just that the March 15 deadline is weighing on me. Any collection of editors can form a consensus, but who other than Jimbo can form a strong consensus? EllenCT (talk) 01:21, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
Rather than discuss this one issue - which is an important one of course, particularly in the time of coronavirus in which open access to research globally is critical as we need scientists and medical professionals and engineers all sharing the best available information openly and quickly - I think I'd rather just weigh in on my views about how and when we should message proactively: much more often than we have traditionally.
I think, and have said so, that it was a mistake to not do more messaging around the European Copyright Directive. When we did it, we won the first battle in European Parliament. When we didn't do it, we lost the second battle.
There are relatively few issues where I think we can get to consensus about what ought to be done in public policy. The Wikipedia community shouldn't weigh in on every policy debate in the world, in no small part because we are not experts on every possible thing. We do know a great deal about open access and the sharing of information, so we have an intellectual right to inform people.
Separately, I think there are things that we can and should do which are not super political but are part of our mission. Here are two examples: link to quality information on every page of Wikipedia about the current covid-19 crisis, and completely non-political messages aimed at persuading people to vote in democratic elections. My thinking on the latter one is this: it's not up to us to tell people how to vote. But I think most of can agree that the sort of people who really should vote are *people who read encyclopedias*. A great many people are voting after being wound up to do so by flamewars on twitter, reddit, facebook, etc. I'm pretty sure that isn't leading to great outcomes.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:32, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
While not on every page, we did just add a Covid article navigation box to Main Page, leading the In The News section - may help get more information out. — xaosfluxTalk01:25, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
In my days as a regular Wikipedia contributor I had many run-ins with others over what I considered to breaches of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policy. In all my time here though, I don't think I've ever come across anything (beyond simple vandalism and the raving of lunatics and neo-Nazis) that struck me as pure and unadulterated evil in the manner that List of people with coronavirus disease 2019 does. A list like that would sully a shit-house wall, and why anyone with an ounce of common sense would think it in the slightest appropriate to place it in anything purporting to be an online encyclopaedia is beyond me. Both WP:BLP and The WMF's resolution on biographies of living people with regard to taking "human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account" may as well be printed out, used to counter the current toilet-roll shortage, and deleted. Utterly repulsive. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:42, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
While I don't endorse the dramatic language of "pure and unadulterated evil" I agree that this list is not a good idea at all. For notable people, it may or may not in the long run prove to be encyclopedic that they got it (if they die of it, that certainly will belong in their biography). If, as many people in a position to make reasonable forecasts believe, 70% of us are going to get this in the next couple of years, such lists will quickly prove to be pointless.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:20, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Yes. Even ignoring the obvious privacy concerns (which can't be done without amending WP:BLP, and telling the WMF to stick their 'Biographies of living people' resolution where the sun don't shine), the list can only ever be a random selection of Wikipedia-notables that tested positive while the media considered it worth commenting on. This is Wikipedia data-mining at its worst. Except that it isn't 'data' in any meaningful shape or form. It is a list of random people.
Reasonable people can disagree on the merits of the list, but Andy your provocative language and excessive hyperbole (both here and in the AFD itself) is not helpful to this conversation, and the comparison you just made above is particularly off-based and offensive. — HunterKahn20:02, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Not so many years ago Wikipedia had a list with a subsection for 'Persons of debated XXX', with the inclusion criteria helpfully displayed below the header that read "The following list includes those who some people legitimately believe there is meaningful evidence the person is or was XXX. This speculation should be supported by documentation or historical record. More information about what is known about each individual's XXX should be available in the individual's biography". And no, I'm not going to link it here, per WP:BLP for a start. Or even say what XXX was. And I would strongly advise anyone else not to do that here either, if they find it. Not without taking due notice of who is on the list, and what the consequences might be for making it visible again. If Wikipedians could do that in the past, who's to say what they will do in the future... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:03, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
I believe I am eligible but I seldom get involved in such matters directly. Better, I think, if I speak most often about broad principles and values, reminding us why we are here, rather than getting involved in detailed matters of judgment about which other people are better placed than I to discuss and understand.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:24, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
I !voted "Delete" on the basis that non-notable attributes of non-notable persons are actually not notable enough for Wikipedia. Else we ought have "List of Measles Survivors", "List of Prostate Cancer Survivors" and so on ad infinitum. I am not usually one who !votes "Delete" but this example is a tad egregious. Collect (talk) 23:29, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Not a good idea on reflection, is how I would phrase it. People want to have some measure of control, and making lists and writing articles is one way to do that. All the best: RichFarmbrough (the apparently calm and reasonable) 02:36, 17 March 2020 (UTC).
On the one hqnd, it's true that within a day or two, this article will make no more sense than list of people with arms. On the other hand, the idea that we need to protect the privacy of people who are working hard to publicise that information about themselves is so divorced from reality it's hard to know where to begin; but if anything is evil, it's treating fully functioning adults trying to good in the world like they're mentally incompetent children who need to be protected from themselves. Tommy Hanks et al. didn't hqve their statuses leaked, they're actively trying to publicise it to destigmatise the disease and raise public awareness of its seriousness and the need to take efforts to combat it and save lives. Trying to undermine those goals is certainly unethical. WilyD16:39, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
Here is what you need to understand... This is difficult to explain. The people under threat here are almost exclusively old. The virus is basically a variant of the common cold. It just happens to be more deadly than usual for physically weaker people. You have seen talk of herd immunity. You see the pictures on the article, where one person who hasn't caught the virus is surrounded by people who have already recovered from it, and in that case no longer transmit it? Well the people in the middle are the old people, surrounded by us, the getting old people, and the young people. You get it? Well... the point is... you get it... And isolate... and return... That's the point. Get this virus and get over it, for at least two or three (or four) weeks (making sure that you are guided by medical advice), away from the old people, the pregnant and poorly healthed people... In such a way that they are buffered from contact with it. It's not easy to explain. Can anyone explain what I am saying please? I've watched so many speeches. They haven't explained in a broadly digestible manner. This is quite important actually... Let's have some more attempts to explain it please... ~ R.T.G04:07, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
This isn't a discussion about COVID-19, it is a discussion about the merits of a Wikipedia list of people who have contracted it. If you want to discuss the virus, there are plenty of forums elsewhere on the internet to do so. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:41, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
This is the story of life and death. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. The list is inert. The potential for evil resides everywhere in this human world. We should be able to be cautious without destroying ourselves or targeting each other. War this, war that. The saddest thing I have heard through all this beyond the fact of people dying is the phrase "common enemy" being repeated. Sometimes a voice calls the future. Don't cry wolf, or enemy, or evil, when you should cry fear wolf, fear enemy, fear evil. It's a fine point. As I realised what we should learn about herd immunity, well that's more important right now so I must have deleted all the stuff about the list before I posted, sorry. ~ R.T.G11:42, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
But none of that is important right now. What is important is this herd immunity thing. We thought at the outset, that this internet would give us intelligence through access to information, but in some ways we are more dumb than ever. Right here we can see the value in superceding leadership rather than simply challenging it all the time. It's not about choosing the good and the evil at an early age, but enriching the herd, at every stage. Get this herd immunity thing. Catch the thing, isolate, recover, return... act as a go between. Somebody please explain how that works for people... We all know evil in this human world. That's boring old trap talk. What is important today is this herd immunity thing. It's a good word, perhaps. This list of people who caught the disease early... it may prove to be the opposite of a stigma... as they will be the first immune... Herd immunity. A positive attitude is going to serve you much better in this situation, alongside caution, of course. The concern in the OP is understandable. We must cope with that, not simply silence it. ~ R.T.G12:25, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
Nobody to dispute. I think if you lived in Italy right now you'd be warning against what seems like a leap of faith, which is what this herd immunity proposal requires... In France, I read yesterday, gatherings of 100+ people are banned for the time being. Except for protests. If you want to gather for protests well, the virus is for you apparently. And it's funny/strange with how protest is so worshipped in French culture. Similarly, in the USA, politicians are openly talking of opportunity and tying policy leaps into crisis management. Scheming outside the box is only truly appropriate when it is relevant. Here is an echo:- We cannot see the difference when we describe a struggle as a battle in this world. Even the WHO has described this virus as an "enemy". The rhetoric of war in the land of peace is an abomination. And you know that is true. ~ R.T.G07:29, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
I've come back and looked at this statement I wrote almost every day wondering if it is bad advice. Sure if you have strong health you are likely to recover from the virus but as I watch the news each day the death toll rises more and more rapidly, as though the low mortality rates are way too low. "Social distancing" is presented to us today almost as though it is new, without reference. But here for instance is an article published freely today by the National Geographic magazine about social distancing in 1918, How some cities ‘flattened the curve’ during the 1918 flu pandemic. It has graphs of the effects of social distancing in US cities over 24 weeks during the 1918 epidemic. The graph for each city is unique. ~ R.T.G23:54, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
Atsme, when it works, it's great. Other times, Wikipedia volunteers are the ones spreading false information or preventing the stopping of spreading false information. We've seen that before. Sir Joseph(talk)01:10, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
"It was an obvious hoax, and a rather cartoonish example of Wikipedia at its worst—the reason why many people still believe it can’t be trusted: Anyone can edit it! But it was also Wikipedia at its best: Anyone can also edit an edit!" Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:06, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
That article led me to this website [55]. It flashes up Wikipedia edits as they happen with a vandalism rating out of 100. Users are invited to scrutinise the diffs and recommend the appropriate action. The ones I saw, all obvious vandalism, were reverted within a minute or so. Well done the vandal fighters! 2A02:C7F:D63F:AF00:3DEA:735E:3297:2E5F (talk) 14:33, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
Only as I remember seeing this one posted here, here is a new article related to misinformation related to COVID and specificly to application of WP:MEDRS with focus on User:Doc James' and the WP Medical project efforts, from Wired. [56] --Masem (t) 13:05, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
The following statement in the article stirred memories: Once an article has been flagged as relating to medicine, the editors scrutinize the article with an exceptional ferocity. While typically an article in The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal would be a reliable source for Wikipedia, the medical editors insist on peer-reviewed papers, textbooks or reports from prominent centers and institutes. It made me think of Project Accuracy, and the initial reception it received back in 2016 User:Atsme/WikiProject_Accuracy. As evidenced at the top of the TP, it started off with some positive feedback. I still believe it could be a worthy endeavor and a viable project that will attract more positive reviews by media. AtsmeTalk📧13:23, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
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MMXX Lunar Calendar
I didn't read it word for word - tldr; - but I saw mention of "fringe views" that are questionable fringe, unless the latter is based on the sheer numbers of published perceptions by Team Blue vs Team Red in news media. In retrospect, a new light has been shed on what actually were fringe views - such as the Trump-Russia collusion speculation pushed by media for 2 years, and how much of said material was reliant on news media using anonymous sources. I agree that Wikinews needs a rebirth but that probably won't happen unless the community cranks down hard on WP:RECENTISM and how we use primary sources per WP:NEWSORG. A Bloomberg article covered part of the problem pretty well in a single comment: The encyclopedia’s reliance on outside sources, primarily newspapers, means it will be only as diverse as the rest of the media—which is to say, not very. A great deal of material has been sourced to the news media echo chamber (news wires, conglomerates, etc.). I certainly agree with some of what Masem, Guy Macon and Cullen328 presented in that AN discussion. One final thought - comparing the presidential articles of Clinton and Bush vs Obama and Trump is like comparing apples to oranges in light of recentism and a changing media. There were also some differences in the style of reporting, and the amount of sensationalism that was needed to compete in today's clickbait environment [11], [12]. Atsme Talk 📧 02:02, 3 January 2020 (UTC) Re-ping Guy Macon since I mentioned him. 02:05, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales Statement of principles: 
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No they don't tend to be drawn to that. For the longest time, if you try to push other genres, you get crowded out. There isn't enough room. The reality is not that people interested in the news only prefer these things, but that there is nothing else left there to see. You are representing a barrier to diversity. ~ R.T.G 16:15, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Gurbaksh Chahal and Shyam. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 14:03, 18 March 2020 (UTC)