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Ratings of articles

Hi, like in title I have to ask you about ratings in articles. So, will they in for example: the german, french, polish, italian etc. version of Wikipedia? I think, that they need something like ratings, because the part of article has bad quality, are incredible, has no references. Please lead to of the ones biggest Wikipedii of the evaluation. It really will be needed. Thank You --83.11.225.163 (talk) 21:17, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

If I may try to help, we do have article assessment which appears in the menu bar of every article for users who have a login account. This ranking system is one of many features available to account holders.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 23:57, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
An article's assessment is not displayed by default to logged-in users. This feature is enabled by selecting the gadget entitled "Display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article" in the gadgets section of your preferences. Graham87 08:59, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for clarifying. I have forgotten what the standard account looks like as I have several gadgets installed and use the modern skin. (note to IP) Listen to Graham...he knows what he is talking about. :)
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 12:41, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Do you mean the Article Feedback Tool?Smallman12q (talk) 02:14, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Congrats!

Congratulations on being in wikipedia for 10 years yesterday. There should have been a party or celebration in my opinion Pass a Method talk 16:48, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

No, he was on Wikipedia the day it started. His original account name was JimboWales (talk · contribs). However, many of the early edits have been lost from the current Wikipedia database. Also see this Signpost story. Graham87 02:20, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Violation of Wikipedia CheckUser policy

Investigated. No violation.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.


Dear Jimmy Wales,

Are you aware that Wikipedia's CheckUser policy is being violated by someone using the name 'Versageek'?

[1]

Anyone who checks the SAQ Talk page can see that neither TurquoiseMountain nor NotRecommended has ever made a comment or edited on the SAQ Talk page, and that neither TurquoiseMountain nor NotRecommended is a SPA. It is therefore obvious that Versageek was snooping into the identities of new Wikipedia editors for some other reason, and that he/she made these two false statements to provide cover for his/her flagrant violation of Wikipedia's privacy policy in the use of the CheckUser tools. Will this be investigated?

Nina Green50.92.68.21 (talk) 03:36, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Note that User:NinaGreen was banned for a year as a result of the SAQ arbitration case, and that the two usernames mentioned above were found to be her sockpuppets. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:59, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Mr Wales is being asked to investigate Versageek's violation of the CheckUser policy. You should be as concerned about the violation of the privacy of Wikipedia editors and the flagrant violation of Wikipedia's privacy policy as I am, rather than seeking to shoot the messenger. And as you well know since you were involved, the arbitration was a kangaroo court, as a result of which a whole slew of highly-educated and well-qualified professionals who wished to edit on Wikipedia have been banned and continue to be banned one after the other on an almost daily basis. It's an absolute scandal, and people would be shocked if they knew what was going on behind the scenes on Wikipedia, particularly when there was a recent appeal made by the Wikipedia Foundation because Wikipedia was losing editors. Moreover the two usernames mentioned were not 'found' to be sockpuppets. Versageek merely made the assumption that they were sockpuppets. And if they were sockpuppets, one of them had made very significant contributions to more than two dozen Wikipedia articles, including the editing of one brand-new article, while the other did no editing at all other than to get rid of a link on an article that no longer worked. Wikipedia seems to be on a course of self-destruction when new editors who are making significant contributions and editors who are doing no editing at all are banned alike by administrators who have nothing better to do than to snoop into editors' privacy in violation of Wikipedia policy.
And just for the record, one of the two alleged sockpuppets is anything but a Single Purpose Account (SPA), and since the (false) ground for the arbitration decision was that I was a Single Purpose Account, what does that say about the arbitration other than that it was a kangaroo court? Wikipedia can't have it both ways -- banning editors on the ground that they are Single Purpose Accounts, and then banning their alleged sockpuppets who are clearly not Single Purpose Accounts. Things are very much out of control on Wikipedia when administrators are allowed to ban everyone in sight on self-contradictory grounds. Nina Green50.92.68.21 (talk) 04:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Just to make sure I'm totally clear on what's happening here, you're evading a block to protest being blocked? By Arbcom, no less. And your block has been extended before, for exactly the behavior you're exhibiting now. I suppose this is the definition of "last ditch". --King Öomie 04:42, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
The complaint appears to be of the "You don't have a right to try and catch me!" variety. As a member of the ArbCom audit committee (for whom such appeals are intended) I've rerun the CU evidence, and not only confirmed the original two blocks, but blocked an additional sleeper sock in the process. Nina Green, you are not welcome to edit Wikipedia at all until and unless your ban has been removed. Trying to complain vaguely about the processes which catch you out violating the sanctions placed upon you is not productive, nor is misconstruing ArbCom sanctions: there is no bright line offense in being an SPA and your sanction involved a long pattern of disruptive behavior. Your chance to disengage from such behavior and edit Wikipedia productively has previously been spent. Rather than trying to concoct a reason why it was illegitimate to catch you violating your ban, you'd be better served by reading WP:Standard offer and taking it to heart. Jclemens (talk) 04:59, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Here's the point. Versageek flagrantly violated Wikipedia's CheckUser policy, AND lied about it. If that doesn't concern Jimmy Wales, it should concern him. So let's hear what Jimmy Wales has to say about whether he's going to have the matter investigated. Moreover, highly-educated and well-respected professional people who would like to edit on Wikipedia continue to be banned as a result of this arbitration on an almost daily basis. Just have a look at the partly locked-down FA status page and the accompanying talk page. People in the outside world would be shocked if they knew this sort of thing was going on behind the scenes in Wikipedia. And all of this is in aid of one thing and one thing only, i.e. the small group of editors and administrators who have decided that the SAQ article is going to attain FA status despite the fact that it violates the most important Wikipedia criteria for FA status, neutrality and stability. Getting rid of any opposition to the achievement of FA status for the SAQ article was the sole purpose of the kangaroo-court arbitration, which was brought under an allegation that there was a vast conspiracy, an allegation which was immediately and totally dropped the minute the arbitrators accepted the case. Can you imagine a case of any kind in the real world, whether it be a trial or an arbitration, in which the totally absurd and specious grounds on which the case had been brought were dropped, but the case went ahead anyway? I thought not, unless we're talking totalitarian regimes. However that's the modus operandi on Wikipedia, and any disagreement with the small group of editors and administrators who are determined to push the SAQ article to FA status is branded as 'disruptive behaviour'. No-one can call attention to the non-neutral point of view of the SAQ article without being branded as 'disruptive' and having their comments moved by officious administrators off the project page and onto the talk page on the ground that they are irrelevant, when in fact they have to do with one of the most important criteria for FA status, which is neutrality. This shutting down of any comment concerning the non-neutrality of the SAQ article is outright censorship and a violation of freedom of speech, and is against everything Wikipedia stands for. As for the statement that I had engaged in 'a long pattern of disruptive behaviour', that's just plain baloney, and everyone knows it. I edited on a sustained basis for only A FEW WEEKS, during which time I edited, entirely on my own, an entire Wikipedia article, before I was swept into the SAQ arbitration on the specious grounds of a vast conspiracy involving people I'd never heard of, grounds which were immediately dropped as soon as the arbitrators accepted the case. Very Kafkaesque. One day the true story of that absurd kangaroo-court arbitration will come to light. In the meantime, Wikipedia is the loser because of all the excellent and well-qualified editors who have been banned, and continued to be banned or threatened with bans on a daily basis as a result of the arbitration. Nina Green50.92.68.21 (talk) 05:38, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Oh, OK, I see where you took the wrong turn: He's clearly entitled to check on NinaGreen, which quickly leads to the ban-evasion accounts, which were duly blocked. You appear to have assumed he started with the accounts he blocked, which doesn't appear to be the case. Even if your "new" accounts were behaving themselves entirely, they're still blocked, appropriately, after the CU findings. Jclemens (talk) 05:45, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

How to keep a discussion about possible anti-Semitism civil

I know that you are now for the most part just one editor among thousands, which I admire and would not wish to compromise. But you have in the past taken an interest in discussions that cross a line beyong uncivil, and of course no one can question your commitment to the project as a whole.

I opened a thread at AN/I because of what I perceived as anti-semitic content in a new article. I proposed a ban, which another user changed to a proposal for a topic ban. Many editors oppose this and while I do not agree with them, I respect their reasoning.

But here is one exception that really disturbs me.

I am really disturbed by the following reasoning, at an AN/I thread: "Should it be concerning that a good percentage of the supporting editors here are Jewish, according to their userpage? Doesn't that make them biased against Noleander?" [2]

I didn't bring this to your attention at the time because a great number of other editors responded and in my view quite appropriately. But it has now been two days, and this user continues to take the same line of reasoning:

The reason I raised the issue is because there is an preponderance of Jewish users who have arrived to vote on this topic ban, far more than an average cross-section of ANI watchers should have. There is also the fact that there is also accusation of antisemitism on Noleander's part being thrown around with very little actual looking at his editing and only looking at the type of articles he edits. It raises concerns for me of both bias on the part of users using such arguments and concerns about ulterior notification of this discussion. SilverserenC 00:18, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

[Note: at the AfD related to this thread, many editors have looked closely at the article Noleander wrote, and have explained in detail with regards to specifics why they cave problems ith the contents of the article he created. a good example is user:Mathsci/example]

No, it is specifically true. Every single person on the opposing side in that argument was Jewish, thus it is literally true to call them Jewish users. Their userpages said so and they were arguing against the inclusion of any material that was criticism unless it was by a Jewish author (which...doesn't even make any sense in terms of criticism). Eventually, most of us gave up on trying to argue, since it was getting nowhere. I believe Noleander kept arguing since then, which clearly didn't help him in the books of said users. The rooted stance of the opposing users also explains why the Criticism of Judaism article is so much worse than other comparable Criticism of religion articles. There is a specific reason why I attempt to stay away from articles where I would have a personal interest in them having a POV (such as political articles, articles about social issues, articles related to homosexuality, ect.). I wish other users did the same, but more often than not, users go directly to articles where they have a biased opinion and it's this that causes such conflict on Wikipedia. I have no personal interest in Judaism, either for or against, but I am against other biased users trying to control such an article. SilverserenC 00:37, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

If you do not want to get involved, you don't need to give me any explanation. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:26, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

This post isn't about Noleander; it is about the responses to the discussion on Noleander.
It seem seems to me that there are two possible issues to address here:
  1. When an editor is accused of anti-X bias, should it be a matter of concern if Xian editors are disproportionately represented amongst those making or supporting the accusation?
  2. In this case, did the editor claiming that this was the case have reasonable grounds for doing so?
My own thought on point two is that is that allegations either of structural bias or of misconduct should not be made unless there is sufficient evidence for a case to be reasonably made. Whether the case is proven is a different matter, but editors should make sure that they have have reasonable prima facie grounds before making such a claim.
However, it appears to me that Slrubenstein is objecting to the principle of an editor ever raising such concerns about who is doing the accusing. Is that what you mean, Slrubenstein? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:05, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Noting that there's already a lengthy WP:Wikiquette alerts thread about this. I would have thought that accusing other editors of being biased because they're Jews was an obvious personal attack, but maybe I'm just not smart enough to appreciate the subtleties and nuances involved. I know if I'd said something like that as a kid my Protestant parents would have washed my mouth out with soap, but apparently here it's just "fighting political correctness" or "standing up to censorship" or some such. 28bytes (talk) 19:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
If an editor was accused of anti-Ruritanian bias, and faced sanctions based on the consensus of a predominantly Ruritanian set of participants, I would be concerned. If an editor faced sanctions for anti-American bias on the basis of a consensus of American editors, I would be concerned. And the same goes for any value of the "X" I mentioned above, because it's a long-standing principle of justice that people should be tried by an impartial tribunal, not by a group who perceive themselves to have personally slighted by the accused.
I don't know whether SilverserenC had reasonable grounds for hir claim of bias; I have not attempted to assess that point. What concerns me here is the attempt to censure an editor for even suggesting that such bias could be a problem, just because the allegation was of a pro-Jewish bias. This seems to me to a very dangerous situation: are Jewish editors to be exempt from any expression of concern about structural bias? If any editor says "hold on, Xian editors should not be the majority on a jury deciding whether someone is anti-Xian", are to be automatically tagged as anti-semitic whenever X=Jew? Really?
Anti-semitism is a wicked thing, but the existence of anti-semitism should not be abused as an automatic trump card to which can be played to prevent any scrutiny of the processes used in assessing whether an editor has fallen below the high standards which Wikipedia seeks to uphold. If anyone who questions bias and due process in this sort of discussion is going to be hounded as anti-semite, we set a horribly chilling precedent. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:15, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Let me say that I have never stated that such a bias does exist in this situation. I have always been asking whether there is the possibility it exists and voicing my concern about the makeup of the topic ban voters. But I have never, ever said that said voters are biased without a doubt. I have always just been asking and it is this asking that has been taken so far our of context and somehow meant to mean that I was condemning Jewish editors or something to that effect. SilverserenC 20:29, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Here's what I find chilling. Immediately after Silverseren made his accusation of bias, two or three editors supportive of the topic ban scrambled to point out that they weren't Jewish. As a non-Jew who supported the topic ban, I almost joined them... and immediately felt ashamed of myself for thinking my not being Jewish would somehow "legitimize" my support of the topic ban. For thinking my opinion would somehow hold more weight because I'm not a Jew. It disgusts me that the non-Jewish editors have felt the need to "out" themselves as non-Jewish to defend their position. I can't imagine how the Jewish editors must have felt. 28bytes (talk) 20:33, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
@28 bytes, if the substantive topic was anti-American bias or anti-Methodist, would you be disgusted if editors declare whether or not they were American or Methodist?
If not, then how can we ensure that such concerns can be aired in respect of Jewish editors and Jewish topics, without someone seeking an unbiased assessment being accused of anti-semitism?
Because that's the chilling effect I see here. It seems that even asking whether there is bias is being taken as an open-and-shut case of anti-semitism. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:57, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Well, yeah, I would be disgusted if editors felt compelled to announce that they weren't Methodists in order for their opinions not to be considered suspect. Is it really too much to ask that our arguments and evidence be considered rather than what church we go to when determining if what we say has merit? 28bytes (talk) 21:13, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
@28bytes - re "I would be......they weren't Methodists" - Not to butt-in here, but a question to better understand your point. Would you say a Methodist would on average be equally able to write neutrally on some contraversial methodist-related subject as a non-methodist? NickCT (talk) 21:20, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
On average? No idea. I'd imagine some are very good at it and some are not, just like everyone else. 28bytes (talk) 21:43, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
With all due respect, I think that viewpoint is a little naive. Being American, I think it would be hard for me to write/research the war in Afghanistan in a way that gave due attention to the Afghani perspective on the ordeal. Even if I made a good-hearted, good-faith attempt to do so, it would still be difficult.
I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that we're all subject to our prejudices. Regardless of whether we're American, Methodist, or what have you.... Someone posing to me the question "Do you think as an American you can write w/ NPOV about the War in Afghanistan", doesn't strike me as "disgusting". NickCT (talk) 13:50, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
If the discussion on ANI had worked as you say it should, then it would have been about the real issue with Noleander, which is misrepresentation of sources, and the word antisemitism would have never been used. But the fact that it is being used extensively in that discussion and seems to be one of the primary reasons for most of the supporters of the topic ban, your argument doesn't really work. It is everyone else who made this about religion. SilverserenC 21:25, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
There were plenty of other opponents of the topic ban who managed to make their case without referencing the supporters' religions, so don't blame "everyone else" for something you alone did. My "argument" is that you shouldn't say things like this about your fellow editors for reasons that should be painfully obvious but apparently aren't. 28bytes (talk) 21:43, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Is it possible to talk with anyone on this topic without the other person becoming increasingly rude? And, yes, it is clearly not "painfully obvious", considering the number of users who are pointing out that it was a valid question (though I clearly worded it badly). SilverserenC 21:53, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Apparently not :(
It seems that questioning the impartiality of people who have a personal stake in an outcome is to be labelled "disgusting", and the questioner is to be hounded. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:15, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
  • This is clear WP:FORUMSHOPPING. While this response was made before the almost exact duplicate on Wikiquette, it should have never been brought here. As I explained over there, the last quote from me, beginning with "No, it is specifically true" is misquoted and misapplied here and there. That comment is in reference to an incident I was involved in a year ago on Criticism of Judaism, as the comment itself says. I was elaborating on that incident because someone asked, it doesn't apply at all to the topic ban proposal or the discussion at hand.
Furthermore, as I have already elaborated on Wikiquette and received support for such, asking whether someone is biased in a certain situation is not a personal attack. People are continually misquoting or bringing my words out of context and trying to make it seem like I am on the hunt to expose a great Jewish conspiracy or something when I am clearly not. I was merely asking whether, in the case of a discussion about a user who works on anti-Jewish articles, is it proper for the majority of users supporting a topic ban to be self-described as Jewish. That was my original question, whether the sample base is proper in such a case, I was in no way saying that Jews are always biased or whatever is trying to be pinned on me. My original question was one that could have been answered with a simple "Yes, it is" or "No, it isn't". Instead, i'm getting accusations of anti-semitism being thrown at me. I am both offended and appalled at the reaction from a simple question, which is only furthering my reasons for never getting involved in the Israel-Palestine area if accusations and threats of blocking are thrown around as wildly as they have been here. SilverserenC 20:06, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
There shouldn't be "anti-Jewish articles" on Wikipedia. If an article can't be NPOV, it's got no business being here. 28bytes (talk) 20:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Sorry I should rephrase that, articles whose subject is about negative stereotypes of Judaism. There. No reason why said articles can't be NPOV, indeed, all (I would presume) of them are. That's what I meant by anti. Sorry, I should have phrased it better. SilverserenC 20:39, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
"...asking whether someone is biased in a certain situation is not a personal attack" - I disagree. Such questions almost always are personal attacks and almost are always wrong, particularly when grounded in looking at their user page to discover that they are... Jewish... or Muslim... or athiest... or American... or... or... or....
And please don't accuse people who bring issues to my attention of forum shopping, particularly when they have very explicitly started out by saying anything similar to "I know that you are now for the most part just one editor among thousands, which I admire and would not wish to compromise." That's the opposite of forum shopping. No one is asking me to do anything, and this is not a "forum" in most cases. Unless someone comes to me with a formal appeal of something (at the right point in the process) or asking me to do something unusual (at the wrong point in the process), it isn't forum shopping, it's just talking to me. It is important that I stay informed, and I don't like it when people are discouraged from talking to me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:41, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
The problem is that most Wikipedians use your words as a de facto ruling on a matter, almost on the same level as Arbcom. Because of this, it is hard to view anyone coming to you after having a discussion in multiple other places as anything other than an attempt to use your opinion as a way to sway an argument to their side. If a discussion is one that is initially discussed on your page before elsewhere, that would be different, but it isn't often such a case for things that end up at ANI.
As to your response, so no user can ever question whether another (or other) editors have the possibility of bias in a situation? I understand that this is quite different when talking about articles and how that is inappropriate to ask as such, but I think this sort of situation that involves a topic ban for an editor who works in an area of Criticism articles is a bit different. Of course, the topic ban discussion itself is currently moot since it has been taken to Arbcom.
Let me also note that, in most cases in my opinion, bias is not something that is purposefully applied. Bias most of the time is a propensity to lean toward a decision based on a personal opinion or of personal likes or dislikes, but that doesn't mean it is one that is consciously done. However, that doesn't change the fact that there are many situations where there is a topic for someone where it is almost inevitable for them to be influenced by their own bias about said subject. SilverserenC 22:50, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

TEMP vs BLP1E: your thoughts, please?

It is no accident, to my mind, that WP:BLP1E could only have evolved on a separate page to WP:NTEMP; they are in many senses incompatible. A person who is once famous is always famous, says NTEMP, and 1E says if they were only once famous, they were never famous. The former seems more logical to me, but I am interested in hearing your thoughts on the issue. Anarchangel (talk) 16:38, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

IMO, the easy answer is that 1E is policy while NTEMP is a guideline, so if there is a conflict between the two then the former wins. The more involved answer is that when there is a discussion about a 1E person, "notability" is not really germane. It is a given that the person in question has received coverage in reliable sources, otherwise the discussion probly wouldn't be had in the first place. What is central to 1E is of the person is only in the news for this singular incident, and if absent that situation, would they be an otherwise non-notable person. The woman who Gordon Brown called a bigot in last year's UK election does not have an article. The JetBlue steward does not have an article. The woman who was fired from her job because her large breasts were a distraction in the workplace does not have an article. All were in the news, but for only one thing. Tarc (talk) 19:45, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I generally agree with you, Tarc, but I'd say that a person who is 1E isn't notable, rather than saying that in a 1E event, notability is not really germane. But that's a quibble and we arrive at the same answer.
I would argue that NTEMP is slightly wrong. I agree with the general gist of what it is trying to say, but I think it is not stated correctly. I think that notability may not be temporary, and that in general, once notable, ongoing coverage is not necessary. But I don't think a blanket statement that "notability is not temporary" overstates the case, and may actually tend to shortcut the valid debate contemplated in the next section, i.e. allow people to argue "We had a deletion debate in 2003 and the guy was found notable, so now in 2067, you can't say that he wasn't." In the fullness of time, things that seem important to us now may prove to be not so in the future. It's a complex matter that we should be cautious about prejudging.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:51, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
This is an interesting discussion! Tarc's examples of the "bigot woman" Gillian Duffy, the JetBlue steward Steven Slater, and a large-breasted woman named Amy-Erin Blakely are all true, it seems -- none have an article on Wikipedia, though the first two re-direct to articles with information about these people, much like Wang Weilin. But, how do other people notable for just one (usually adverse) event seem to slip past the WP:BLP1E policy? For example:
There are probably hundreds of other examples. Why do you think BLP1E is so haphazard in its application to actual articles? - Wacomshera (talk) 20:59, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
I have not time for rationales for more than the first four of these plus G Ratte, but roughly, they are either good examples of why BLP1E is an irrelevant rule because their subjects are good (the first two, in the same way as Howard Brennan), or are not based on single events (Grandmaster Ratte), or are just badly sourced (Grandmaster Ratte) or incompletely sourced (251 Google News hits for Bjarte Baasland), or just overblown (Edward Porta-America's Most Wanted appearance would not be enough for me to put my fingers to the keyboard) articles.
BLP1E is the weapon of choice at AfD. People who wrote one book, acted in one film, did anything one time, will get at least one voter quoting this rule. More importantly, notable people who had something slightly more notable happen one time get nominated because of it. It is not just NTEMP that is incompatible with it, but WP:COMPOSER 1-4, and WP:ARTIST #2, part of 3, and conceivably 4. Defending articles is a lot harder for this softball pitch to deletionists, and if NTEMP goes, then we will see a return of the ad nauseum WP:RECENTISM votes. I really get tired of having to point out that Recentism is an essay; it is so much easier to trump it with NTEMP.
As I pointed out on Tarc's page, take away the notability from anything and it is non-notable. Repeatedly, voters and noms will say, "without this event, the person is non-notable". Yet take away the Warren Commission investigation from the very example subject on the WP:1E page, and Howard Brennan becomes just another person in the crowd at Dealey Plaza. Applying that test to BLP subjects is not feasible. The answer, to my mind, is establishing a standard with examples; a written rationale has been tried, because examples are very slippery too; more so, even. But a large set of examples, with rationales behind each one, isn't. I tried my hand at establishing some criteria myself, at Tarc's page, but I am not happy with the results so far, mainly because the examples at BLP1E are terrible; to me, and especially applying the tests I came up with at Tarc's page, they show that George Holliday is as notable as Howard Brennan, if not more so (because of the "can't we all get along" quote). I wrote at Tarc's page that the GH had no -further- effect on the case, but I was kidding myself, trying to shoehorn GH into a deleted BLP; HB had no further effect either, if the same standard is applied. I rewrote all of it, but I won't test everyone's patience with it; my rationale for 1E's failings has not been compelling so far, and I have already thrown good money after bad. Anarchangel (talk) 04:06, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Might be variety of opinion one way or the other

Are the infamous(/famous) Julian Assange, that blogger Murphy that impersonated David Koch to the governor of Wiz, and/or prankster Mr. O'Keefe "alternative journalists"? I've started a thread on this topic here: Talk:James_O'Keefe#cat.--Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden (talk) 15:04, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Jimbo, I've quoted you on the npov noticeboard page here.--Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden (talk) 19:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

ANI problems

Mr. Wales,

I notice a persistent problem in ANI and WP. When people cannot defend their opinion, they automatically accuse the other side of being a sock. This is funny but sad.

On ANI, there is an issue what to call Kansas State University since the offical name is quite long. I have a reasonable solution (and interest since my dad went there) but can only offer an opinion, which is not what the 2 major people want.

Also on ANI, there is a rather heavy handed handling of Malia Obama. It seems like President Obama doesn't want too much coverage on her (but does mention her regularly and even let her do an interview). There is an issue of whether children should not have articles or whether she is enough of a public figure. However, an article existed, but aome people just removed the article and redirected it without adequate discussion. Furthermore, their main reason is sockpuppetry, not logic.

Mr. Wales, you should bring order in Wikipedia and let things be decided rationally, not slightly poorly in the KSU article and very poorly in the Malia Obama article. What is at stake is orderly process in Wikipedia, not the specific article, but these articles need your help. Thank you. Ksuoaas (talk) 23:00, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

That's just...false. There has been extensive discussion on the matter on the respective article talk pages. The general consensus is that WP:NOTINHERITED applies, and that while the children have received coverage in reliable sources about schools attended and something recently about growth spurts or whatever it is, that that is not out of the ordinary. They are minors, they derive 100% of their notability through famous parents, and they have not done anything especially notable in their own right to justify separate articles. The insinuation that editors take indirect cues from the President is a bit fanciful. Tarc (talk) 01:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
I wish there was some level committee which acted in a capacity similar to the Supreme Court. In other words if lessor means have exhausted, and they accept to hear the case, it is binding and if policy is affected, it must align with the precedent. But ultimately I prefer structure and some form of finality. Do we have such a means? My76Strat (talk) 05:53, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes indeed we do, although I have never before heard them described as a "level committee". For this neologism, My76Strat, we must consider ourselves to be as part of an indebtedness to you, coinciding to accompanied acceptances that permeate our discussion. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 07:12, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Regarding KSU, I have no opinion and have so little interest in the topic that I didn't bother to even visit the talk page. I'll do so if anyone tells me that it's important, but if it is just a routine discussion, I'll stay out of it. :-)
Regarding the Obama children, that touches on WP:BLP issues and I do have an interest there. I think it's important that WP:NOTINHERITED be considered, and that sensitivity to human dignity must play a solid role in our deliberations. Some children of famous people are themselves famous, for better or worse. But we should always be reluctant to write an article just because we can. A good biography doesn't consist of random tabloid facts about a person of interest to the press for not very good reasons. In short, I agree completely with Tarc's answer here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:57, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikisophical issue

[3] presents what I consider a core issue of a Wikisophical nature - is it up to editors to "know" what a source means, or is it up to editors to use precisely what the source actually states? This has been a long-running discussion with some editors, and my side is that it is up to us to use what is written, not what we know the author meant, but others may clearly differ. Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:52, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Without going too deeply into the philosophical question, there is a practical issue here: the only way to "use precisely what the source actually states" if you don't understand it is to quote it. To paraphrase something you have to interpret it. In any case, if you don't know what something means, how do you judge whether it is relevant to the article? AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
The issue is that one editor finds a source using a particular term does not "mean" the term (in his estimation) - which would, it appears, not be your opinion at all. It is not an issue of paraphrase - he feels the source can not "mean" what the source says in English. Collect (talk) 14:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
This isn't something that has a black and white answer. It is entirely possible to directly quote a source while still misrepresenting its meaning; out-of-context "quote mining" is a recurring problem in some contentious areas. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:26, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
There's no right answer to this question. Those who tend towards a strict reading of V and OR will insist we must use a source as written it and keep out our interpretations of it. Those who focus on the context of the claim (also mentioned in V/RS), and care about shades of meaning, will make a case for WP:Editorial discretion or even WP:IAR with the goal of neutrality. This is not unlike the current dispute going on at Pseudoscience, over a quote which says one thing literally but about which there are editorial questions regarding whether the source is doing it in such a way that meets RS and OR 'in this specific context'. A simple solution is to find more or better sources. If that's not possible, try to find another source which can comment on that misuse of terms directly. If that's not possible, hold an WP:RfC at the article. I don't know if the community has resolved this tension in a more philosophical way; indeed, it may reflect different approaches to more than just Wikipedia, but to thinking and writing in general. Also, bias comes into play, since one person's quote-mining may be another's quote-finding, and one person's seeing the forest may be another's clouding the issue. Curious if anyone has parsed this better... Ocaasi c 16:30, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Let's look at where this came from:

On May 4 Munich celebrated its liberation from Communist terrorism. Crowds thronged the streets and cheered the Government troops, which included a detachment of 800 Austrians. Bands played and national airs were sung outside the palace. (from a 1919 source)

Does this sound as if it talks about something we would call terrorism now? ("On September 12, New York City celebrated its liberation from Islamist terrorism.") No, I don't think so either. It all becomes clear once you remember that the term terrorism started as a description of government actions during the Reign of Terror of 1793/94, and once you consider that 1919 was about half way between that time and now. The term has shifted in meaning, and at the time it was much closer to the original meaning than it is now.

Historical sources must be translated into modern English in the same way that we cannot simply take French sources and read them as garbled English. Unfortunately Wikipedia seems to have an increasing problem with literalism of this kind. Hans Adler 16:56, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

IMO, there's a bit of intellectual dishonesty going on if someone is taking that 1919 headline and trying to use it to support the existence of "communist terrorism" today. Word usage changes over time. Context matters. Tarc (talk) 17:25, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
I venture to suggest it's more complex than Hans and Tarc suggest. The 1919 meaning is compatible with some if not all of the currently proposed definitions: see my cites at WP:RSN. Hyperdoctor Phrogghrus (talk) 17:31, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Greetings Sir

If you could see of your time to comment here, It would be great insight and a great morale boost. If not, you have already done some amazing things, Thanks. My76Strat (talk) 01:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikinews standards of civility

Hey Jimbo!
I noticed you had a somewhat hostile experience at Wikinews a few weeks ago. I'd like you to know that a couple of us have taken the step of building some serious standards on civility of discussion/ personal attacks. We'd love to hear any comments/suggestions you might have if you care to comment here. Thanks. --Ashershow1talk•contribs 12:37, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I am glad to have noticed this. I believe this is a very important concept. It extends well beyond Wikinews, indeed it touches every project. It is certainly relevant to a concurrent discussion regarding the conduct of RfA. The strong indication is we need to broaden our intentions to enforce WP:CIVIL and aggressively required adherence. Human decency must underpin its every interpretation. This will improve every area because discussion is always key. I second this request that you speak to some guidance on this subject, and ask that you clearly broaden the scope to include all on-wiki communications. My best anticipation would be if you answered directly that standards are forthcoming, as in a directive. Because consensus has shown its own stifling ability at times. My76Strat (talk) 14:02, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Qwiki ranking higher than Wikipedia

For certain random articles and images(found on commons), Qwiki is appearing before Wikipedia in the search results of certain search engines. Should Wikipedia appear before it's mirrors?Smallman12q (talk) 22:41, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

You know we don't own Google, right? It's entirely down to whoever operates PageRank as to in what order their search results appear. – iridescent 22:48, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
It seems like a reasonable question to raise. There's no need to be insulting. If it's true, then 1) it seems odd that it would be true, and 2) while I don't know what Qwiki is, I see that it's just been launched and that the founders of Facebook and YouTube are behind it, and with some dollars, and 3) it's not necessarily true that we should not cogitate on this and go "hmmmm". I'm not saying it's a problem or will be, as after all we welcome content reuse. But our mirrors so far have been mere dumb data dumps. This looks to be different, maybe, and it raises some interesting questions. Herostratus (talk) 05:15, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
The bigger issue might be that they're not attributing their content to us...at least not in a manner that I see. The nice lady reads the text from the lead of our articles word for word, and copies most of the pictures as well. N419BH 05:27, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm also concerned that they are not differentiating between free use and fair use images.--Wehwalt (talk) 06:16, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
[See also http://www.qwika.com/. -- Wavelength (talk) 05:35, 30 March 2011 (UTC)]

Qwiki is amazing, so I am not surprised they rank first on some topics. I guess lots of blogs are currently linking to them because of the novelty, and the situation will soon be back to normal. Hans Adler 13:44, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Amazing until you look at it a bit more in detail. It is a completely unattributed and often massacred copy of Wikipedia: they seem to take the beginning and the end of the lead or the first section of our articles, omitting the middle part of it if it is too long, which gives very strange (and severely unbalanced) results sometimes. E.g. the article on Cromwell Dixon: according to QWiki, October 2, 1911 comes two days after 1903... An article like André Franquin on QWiki uses the intro and a seemingly randomly chosen sentence from farther down. As it stands, it is a nicely presented but contentwise rather useless unattributed and undated copy of Wikipedia. Fram (talk) 14:25, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, it is fun to watch, but they totally massacre our ledes. For Canadian federal election, 1957, one of the featured articles I've been privileged to play a part in, it finishes with the stat from the infobox "Turnout: 74.1%". Odd.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
I have seen similar problems there, and of course they should have attributed us properly (or at all). However, I had not heard of that site and I was simply blown away by the amount of finish they managed to apply to a huge amount of material. Their vision seems to be taking a step such as from print news to television news. Even though they have taken only a few sentences from each article and the choice tends to be odd, it's still amazing how much material they have turned into speech of perfectly reasonable quality. Of course television news is inferior and the best thing you can get is print news with an occasional video. But TV news is what reaches the masses nowadays.
I am not saying that they are better than Wikipedia in any way; that would be ridiculous. I am saying that they somehow managed to do something new, and in fact I am amazed in much the same way that I was amazed when I first saw AltaVista, Google, the Open Directory Project, Yahoo News, Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook. The ethics behind the matter, and whether they manage to keep their promise when (if) they get out of the alpha stage, are different matters and have nothing to do with how many blog posts link to them. Hans Adler 15:27, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Its pretty creepy really I think to have your work read out like that. But I agree it is an excellent idea and a revolutionary way of learning. Its the sort of 21 st century futuristic developments we expected to occur and dreamed of as kids.. Spoken text I find is the most effective way to learn, I've found google's spoken translation extremely useful for learning spanish and french. Would have been nice for wikipedia to have this on the site, would be especially helpful for readers who are not fluent in english. I find this Qwiki does get very irritating after a while with the mis pronounciations. This sort of technology is definately the future but needs considerable development to perfect it.

At present they are using it illegally as I don't see any form of attribution of wikipedia. Somebody needs to contact them and get them too and also to link to the relative article on wikipedia so people can read the full articles.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:26, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

The presentation is fantastic but the actual selection of information is not. Irritatingly so. If it spoke the whole articles it would be much more useful. Your thoughts about it Jimmy and had it ever crossed your mind to introduce spoken technology into wikipedia?♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:52, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

They actually do link to the Wikipedia article, in the "MORE ON [TOPIC]" section, in the "Related page" after the video. However, I don't see any proper attribution either. - Kingpin13 (talk) 19:23, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
Something else I just discovered, images apparently are attributed, if you click on them it gives you a link to the original. - Kingpin13 (talk) 19:26, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia and Category:Spoken articles. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:35, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Evolution Of The Wikipedia Article On The Murder Of Meredith Kercher

Interested in keeping Meredith Kercher discussion focused on practical work at the article talk page
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Hi Jimbo, Did you see the blog written about your involvement in the MOMK Wiki article by an Amanda Knox guilt site? I'll post the link for you: http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/evolution_of_the_wikipedia_article_on_the_murder_of_meredith_kercher/ -- Issymo (talk) 23:43, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. It is unfortunate to see how many people view this article as an appropriate place for them to conduct their campaigns.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:35, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
You do know this is true for both sides of the conflict, right? --Conti|✉ 10:03, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
A reasonably factual blog, saving your honor's presence, of course.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
That's a truly ironic statement considering that your actions have empowered one side to push their POV in the article. There are editors that refer to your action and view it as giving them full reign in reverting any previous decision that did not go their way. I don't think the article was balanced before, but I greatly fear that the balance is shifting the other way and quickly. Ravensfire (talk) 15:40, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
I probably don't need to tell you what I think about this, Jimbo. I hope, though, that you're still planning to return to the talkpage to add some flesh to the comments you made last week and let editors know the results of your investigation into the article. --FormerIP (talk) 15:56, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
I have a novel solution. How about the editors of Murder of Meredith Kercher swap articles with the editors of Communist terrorism? Maybe throw in Economic history of Jews and Psuedoscience, too? They seem to be the most exciting articles to be working on right now. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:02, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
That actually makes perfect sense. Seriously. --FormerIP (talk) 16:05, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
And then on to climate change and Obama articles! Ravensfire (talk) 17:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
I am reading books. And yes, everyone, of course NPOV is non-negotiable.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:14, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
The stuff done by The Learning Channel--I think it was called "The Trials of Amanda Knox" is really very useful. My biases are clear, but I agree completely that it is not the mission of Wikipedia to reflect them. NPOV is of the essence. Ravensfire has made some helpful suggestions on the article but I must respectfully with his characterization here. I feel the article is just now starting to feel like it could be balanced--which is why some of the same people who made it bad to begin with appear to be trying to subvert progress. PietroLegno (talk) 21:03, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
Honestly, PietroLegno, there's more to it than that. Some of the phrases being used serve to polarize the editors or push the line of NPOV. Let me pull some of the phrases from your last post that I don't think help matters. "This time the tag-teamers call themselves ...", "The neutral editors are trying to rough out a version of the article that is fair. Let them do their work for heavens sake without all this logic chopping and carping" Particularly the second one says ignore the people I don't agree with - they aren't neutral. My side the only one that's neutral. Is that what you intended? Probably not, but that's how it comes across. Other recent posts "counter the bad Italian/British coverage", implying only US coverage is good. Yes, all of those are pulled from pro-Knox editors. That was intentional. To some extent, I agree that there is some stone-walling, but there is a extremely easy way to block that - if they ask for a ref, give that to them. Destroy arguements with evidence. This article has an ugly tone on the talk page, and it's been there a while. It's not from one side only - it's from both sides. When both think they, and only they, are right, the talk page ends up looking exactly like it is. The new editors have NOT taken the "editorial high road" since Jimbo's post. I'm about as unbiased as it gets (local media hasn't reported anything about Knox, and I'm not going to dive into the madness), and the tone of some posts smacks of vengeance. That's disappointing. Several editors in the pro camp are excellent, and it shows and helps. The progress in the past week has been good, but more than a few times the material added shows a strong slant, which is where my concern comes from. Ravensfire (talk) 21:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Refuting blog-post claims: Well I actually read that "evolution_of_the_wikipedia_article*" (linked above), and having been a debate judge of several high-school debate teams, I must conclude, objectively: Gwaendar 0%, Jimbo 100%. Perhaps we need to make "Debating" mandatory reading before allowing people to edit WP: in debate, the lowest form of fallacy is argumentum ad hominem ("elephant in...shop"). In fact in years of judging debates, I never saw high school students sink that low: they were educated to know better. Hence, once a debate descends to that level, it is over; there is no need to read further to see who wins (except to give point-by-point commentary advice). However, in this case, I wanted to see what other incorrect information was being pushed, so finally, I found the reference to User:PhanuelB, as being banned for alleged "atrocious behaviour" as another ad hominem: Gwaendar 0%+0%. At that point, the whole posted message should be discounted because there is no obvious limit to the fallacies (many things said about MoMK did not match reality). Meanwhile, let me offer some perspective on why PhanuelB was blocked: he seemed to be unwilling to acknowledge that Wikipedia cannot call a person a "drugdealer" (or such) just because some journalists interviewed bartenders where he lived. There must be more definite proof. When PhanuelB continued to post lists of quotes (from bartender interviews or such), then that was just considered WP:SOAPBOXing of text possibly containing unverified WP:BLP claims, and when he showed no intent to beware calling people names, he was indef-blocked. All that the admins had seemed to want, in his case, was some dialog that he would restrict what he quoted, but I never read him as clearly agreeing that there were some newsreports which Wikipedia cannot quote. I might be mistaken in viewing that as the key concern, but I never saw PhanuelB engage in alleged "atrocious behaviour" IMHO (whereas some other editors even wrote profanity in hostile posts to women but were never blocked). I could refute more claims in that blog-post, but this is not the venue, beyond just clearing the names of people noted in that page. Incidentally, despite several blog-posts discussing you (Jimbo) with MoMK, the average pageviews of the MoMK talk-page have increased only 10x-19x higher (Talk:MoMK stats), but not the 100x-300x higher as seen when many people are concerned about a subject. Hence, there has been no widespread earth-shattering concern that the "founder" was intervening to "tilt the article" (whatever), and the limited pageviews confirm how the general readers have found no evidence for growing concern. The current steady pageview rate is more typical of regular editors re-reading the talk-page, each day. Feel free to offer more advice in the future. -Wikid77 04:01, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I thought it would be courteous to let you know that I posted a response on the blog in question. I'd add, for here, that it's certainly to your credit that, having said you would read up, that's what you are doing. --FormerIP (talk) 02:36, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry case

Your name has been mentioned in connection with a sockpuppetry case. Please refer to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jimbo Wales for evidence. Please make sure you make yourself familiar with the guide to responding to cases before editing the evidence page. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 02:15, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Please see related ban discussion The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 03:19, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
A band discussion? I'm rather fond of U2 myself. Magicperson (Politically correct) 03:20, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

You forget these:

I confess! And I apologize without hesitation for my roles in A Kid in King Arthur's Court, Dr. Doolittle 3, and - especially - Malibu Hot Summer.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:56, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

ANI

Your talk-page & a blog-post has been mentioned re MoMK at ANI (this topic). Meanwhile, I am learning more about potential talk-page behavior by reading article Passive-aggressive, for explanations. -Wikid77 09:58, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Happy April Fools Day

Hello Jimbo, Happy April Fool's Day. I have recently noticed that many Wikipedians within the community have gotten there shake on and have finally let lose from being stuck up and stuffy. It seems that everyone is feeling in the April foll's mood. I have already sen 2 RfA's that seem pretty humourous to me. So I have a proposal: this. Jessy (talk) (contribs) • 14:51, April 1, 2011 (UTC)

Yawn... – ukexpat (talk) 15:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
The link above logs you out. Being Rick-rolled would have been funnier. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:25, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
You know what would be funny? Renaming 2011 Libyan civil war to 2011 Libyan edit war. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:45, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
Right before Herostratus gave up his adminship, I convinced him to delete the Temple of Artemis article; we need something like that. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

FYI - John Stuart Mill Speaks Out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:BenJonson--BenJonson (talk) 21:45, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi there!

Welcome!

Hello, Jimbo Wales, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! WikiDonn (talk) 00:17, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

RfA reform

Hey Jimbo, could you please take a look here and on that page's talk page when you have time? We've decided that it's about time RfA was overhauled and we'd like your input. Thanks, — Oli OR Pyfan! 02:39, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Invertzoo has given you a kitten! Kittens promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Kittens must be fed three times a day and will be your faithful companion forever! Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a kitten, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

Spread the goodness of kittens by adding {{subst:Kitten}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message, or kittynap their kitten with {{subst:Kittynap}}

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Invertzoo (talk • contribs) 13:10, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

"Wikipedia Offline" - Mac App Store

Jimbo, I've just noticed something called "Wikipedia Offline" retailing on the Mac App Store for US$14.99, using Wikipedia content (although as I haven't downloaded the app, I'm not sure if the editors of the pages it includes are credited). Is this in some sort of violation of either the Wikipedia trademark of the WMF, or the CCBYSA3.0/GFDL licensing requirements? Should the WMF, at the very least, issue some sort of statement distancing itself from such a for-profit app? Strange Passerby (talk • contribs • Proudly anti-April Fools') 15:33, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Passerby, the CCBYSA3.0/GFDL license only requires that re-users of our content give attribution to us. They can change it. They can sell it. Pretty much the only thing they can't do is not say where they got it, or mess with our content in a way that could directly reflect badly on Wikipedia (and even that has some slack). You're working for free so they can make bank! So am I! Ocaasi c 01:59, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
If they are calling it 'Wikipedia offline' without permission, they are breaching the Wikimedia Foundation's copyright on the name. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:15, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Which is what I was thinking. And as I said, I haven't actually downloaded it, so I can't verify if they've given any attribution or mentioned the CCBYSA3.0 licensing requirements in their app. Strange Passerby (talk • cont) 02:39, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
I found one app that is called Wikipedia offline (another was All of Wikipedia). The only troubling piece I found was that for the W.O. version, the intro could be confusing--it's talking about the application but sounds a bit like how we describe the project: "Wikipedia Offline delivers the premium reading experience for the entire corpus of human knowledge. This premiere service is the result of collaboration with over 1000 users just like you. Join the myriad of scientists, teachers, frequent flyers, vacationers, parents, and knowledge lovers whose lives have been improved by Wiki Offline." Like they took the wiki model to improve their interface, etc. It's a bit ambiguous, but I generally feel that people are not that easily fooled, and am happy to have our work reaching more people in a nice format. That's not a legal enough reason. What would the goal here be, just to have them disambiguate with a line that says, "This is a third-party application not affiliated with Wikipedia or the WMF?" Ocaasi c 07:18, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Probably best to notify the foundation. I don't know anything about this, but I think using the Wikipedia name to sell an app like that is a violation of our trademark (not copyright).--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:45, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Just to provide a more nuanced context for this, I've often considered writing an app (for IOS devices) called “Wikipedia Watchlist” which, granted, would probably be free, but would still be using the word “Wikipedia” in the app name. How else would you name an app to help you keep track of your watchlist? Would it really make a difference if I called it “Watchlist for Wikipedia” (which, by grammatical trickery, makes it legally non-infringing on the trademark as it is now purely descriptive)? If the app misrepresents the source of the data it displays, or otherwise fails to properly attribute the articles, then it is violating the license, and thus in violation of the Copyright act (and it's infringing on the relevant editors' copyright, not the Foundation's), but claiming trademark infringement here is, in my opinion, rather disingenuous. Do we not want a healthy ecosystem of apps and utilities that makes it easier to access and work with the encyclopedia? Why else all the hubbub about a better WYSIWYG editor and WP:LiquidThreads? --Xover (talk) 16:14, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
I think your "grammatical trickery" idea wouldn't work - law is not code, and judges aren't easily fooled by such stuff. With appropriate disclaimers on the sales page, it might work. But the real key here is: why bother playing tricks? The Foundation does want a healthy ecosystem of apps and utilities. Best to talk to them about naming things in a way that balances a desire to not allow people to pass themselves off as us, and to appropriately monetize the value of the name, with the desire to have an open and healthy community of developers doing useful things. There's no need at all to view this through the lens of conflict.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:12, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
Off the cuff of course, we definitely definitely want a great ecosystem of development around Wikipedia, as long as people realize that the programs are not actually ours but someone else's. For me, that's where the problem comes in--trademark infringement would be an issue if it means that users thinks a program is actually built, managed, reviewed, or controlled by the same folks who brought you The Original. Ocaasi c 20:00, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Right. But now you're talking about Trade dress and Passing off, where Trademark infringement is the nuclear option. Siccing the landsharks on someone for the mere use of the word “Wikipedia” in an app name is, IMO, short-sighted and counter-productive; and any actions in relation to such should be based on more substantial concerns, and with a nuanced response. I.e. if the app here in question misrepresented itself as “official”, an email to the developers asking for a changed description would be a reasonable first approach. --Xover (talk) 22:17, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I would hope that WMF legal counsel would try many sub-suit approaches before shouting 'infringement'. The most reasonable to me is just a simple disclaimer. I think we would want Wikipedia in the name, as long as there is no confusion about who made the program. The alternative would be silly workarounds like 'Collaborative Encyclopedia Offline'--we've built an amazing brand that people want to share. As long as they're not exploiting it, we should let them, methinks. Ocaasi c 23:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Why isn't there an official offline Wikipedia app? Couldn't this be a great fundraiser? --JaGatalk 03:33, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Hello

Hi Jim! my name is Alexandra Padilla and I'm 11 years old.I'm from Honduras. My friend and I had been talking about creating an encyclopedia for kids. Something like wikipedia but specially for kids. We want to put it in the kid point of view. I know there are a lot of other encyclopedias for kids but this is going to be different because it's going to be created based on the point of view of kids. If you allow us we can get started with the web page. Our plan is to make a whole new wikipedia but only for kids. Where they can find anything they want to know. When we expand, we'll make a special section for teachers where they can find worksheets, tests, and classwork for their class. To create everything we will need about 2 or 3 months. I know it seems kind of hard to believe that two kids are going to create a whole new wikipedia but we are capable enough to manage it. We are doing this because when we have assignments to search we find them but in words we don't understand. We want kids to understand what they are reading. I clarify that this is no April Fool's joke. Please answer ASAP. Send me an e-mail to: E-mail removed

Sincerely,

Alexandra Padilla —Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.2.144.103 (talk) 22:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Asheshow1, just FYI, Simple English Wikipedia is not a "Wikipedia for Kids" - it is about ESL.Actually I just followed the link to our article and apparently 'for children' is one of the goals. I personally think that's nonsense.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:40, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Alexandra, you may be interested in WikiJunior: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior. Fences&Windows 00:30, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Another idea, what's the minimum age for Wikia, anyone know off-hand? (Many sites have rules that do not permit kids of this age.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:41, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Alexandra Padilla, start with creating a special section for teachers where they can find worksheets, tests, and classwork at http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page which is "a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university". http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk:SB_Johnny will be delighted to put you in contact with people who will help. - WAS 4.250 (talk) 16:34, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

"Neither Sanger nor Wales looked on Wikipedia as anything more than a lark"

Greetings, Jimbo. I have a hazy memory of you in some frustration using the Jimmy Wales article as an instance of us mischaracterising sources in BLPs. If I recall correctly, you specifically took issue with the "Neither Sanger nor Wales expected very much from the [Wikipedia] initiative" line among other things. I would like to raise that article to a higher standard, but as an editor not having firsthand knowledge of the events described, I am wary of inadvertently misinterpreting sources, or simply failing to consider conflicting accounts. I was wondering if you would be interested in helping identify where your biography goes awry in these respects. Regards, Skomorokh 12:33, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

That line is simply false. It is, at best, the opinion of a reporter. I doubt if Larry would agree with it; I certainly do not. There are a great many reliable sources where I have stated my own optimism. A more accurate statement would be "Wales expected great things from the [Wikipedia] initiative." ([4] [5] are two quickly found sources for 'always optimistic' about Wikipedia.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:36, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Per-user edit limits on talk-pages

I am always trying to find technical ways to reduce behavioral problems. I am thinking that talk-pages should allow per-user edit limits, perhaps 300 edits per talk-page, for users identified with numerous edits on a page. Admins have used similar logic, as follows: if an article really needs 301 things discussed, then other users will most likely come to the talk-page to discuss many of those issues. There is no need for "5" users to flood a talk-page with more than 300 edits each. This feature could be made efficient if only users with counts close to 300 edits were checked (on each attempted edit to a talk-page), whereas thousands of other editors with just dozens of edits would not require checking. Suspected socks would also be restricted, and only a few would slip detection. I think obsessive behavior is linked to huge edit counts on a few articles. By using technical limits, then admins are less likely to be accused of favoritism: everyone approaching 300 edits would be checked, but only on some controversial articles. No reply needed. Thanks. -Wikid77 16:12, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

hello

Hi dear Mr.Wales
I'm a user of wiki FA (ویکی‌پدیای فارسی) and I don't know English very well.
many days ago I was blocked by a manager of Wikipedia and we had a lot of discussions about that and I told him that "why we don't have an internet government for checking manager's works to don't watching any error from them?"(because i was opposing with blocking myself and I thought that it's better to have an organization in wiki to check their(managers)works.after that one of them told me that "wiki is not a place for democracy"(because I told them to have a Consensus system for blocking);I asked them "why" and then they don't answered me and I decide to tell you this adventure and ask you "why we shouldn't have democracy and a consensus system in wiki for directing managers"???
thanks a lot
Jack ۩ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.182.142.44 (talk) 22:51, 2 April 2011 (UTC) (BUT I SIGNED IT!!!)

Yes, you did sign it- that bot was fooled into thinking you didn't because you didn't include a date. Preferring consensus over majority rule makes the encyclopedia move more deliberately toward its goal. If two groups of people disagree strongly about something, we don't want the larger group to immediately get its way- discussion should continue until the two sides can come to an agreement. --King Öomie 03:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
Oh, and we don't require administrators to request a user's 'consensus' to be blocked... because then it would be impossible to block vandals. If you think a block was made for the wrong reasons, say so- blocks are overturned sometimes at The Administrator's Noticeboard, if the consensus of the editors at that page is that the block was bad. --King Öomie 03:55, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
sorry,in these days I was busy with other things so I couldn't came here and read you answer.
I said my English is not very good so understanding your write wasn't easy for me but I hope that I understood it! anyway,you are right,if we require administrators to block users with their agreement,then admins(administrators) couldn't block vandals ASAP!but it's not good reason for this problem;as we have a good proverb for this in Persian that means you shouldn't "burn wet and dry(wood) together".I know that ve have a lot of vandal in INTERNET and also in wiki,but you know that anybody could fumble.for example think that an admin make mistake and block a user wrongly,then what can that user do??only it can edit its discussion page and sending that admin that blocked it email.I tendered that it's good to have a page in wiki to let blocked users to buckler them self with editing that special page or let blocked users to send email to other admins too.
what do you think? I'm talking about a big change in wiki!!!
now I explained my propose of "democracy"!!--Jack ۩--46.19.140.46 (talk) 15:43, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

It's April 3rd

Hey, Jimbo, did I just block you? Tiderolls 06:37, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Not me, no. :) An impersonator I suppose.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:05, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

User signature issue

I've tried to sort this out as best I can, seeking advice at WP:BN#User signature issue. User:Dgriffith161 has a signature that links to User:Dgriffith161 and User talk:Dgriffith. Correcting the signature is not something I, as a mere Admin, am able to do, and it is apparently not something that a Beaurocrat is able to do either. To assist editors in reaching the correct talk page, I've placed a {{tmbox}} on the talk page of User:Dgriffith. I'm not looking to get Dgriffith161 blocked over this issue. It may be a glitch in the software that has caused this issue and I've got no evidence that this is a deliberate act on the part of Dgriffith161. Is there any way that this editor's signature can be fixed for him? Mjroots (talk) 07:43, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

What does Dgriffith161 say about it?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:39, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Dgriffith161 is a new editor, has made one edit to Wikipedia at an AfD on an aircrash. Dgriffith made a few edits in 2009 on a totally unrelated topic. Mjroots (talk) 10:50, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Murder of Meredith Kercher

What about that mess you'd (unintentionally I assume) started and then left behind? Forgot it or are you still planing on coming back? Honest question seeking an honest response (and maybe even at the article's talkpage?). Thanks, TMCk (talk) 13:50, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I did not start a mess. The article is improving and I am reading about the case, talking to editors, etc. What mess do you see?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:39, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Got you.TMCk (talk) 15:48, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

An account problem that maybe you can solve.

Hello, Mr. Wales,

This is a personal appeal about one account problem that only you can solve. I need the password reset in my de.wikipedia.org account. There was no e-mail account set or it's set to an old, dead e-mail address. I can prove that the account is mine because the four or five edits made in the German Wikipedia were all in English, and they were all identical to edits that I had made just hours before in the English Wikipedia. The German administrators refused an usurpation. My accounts are Gus in the German Wikipedia and the global account Gus. Thanks for your kind help. - Gus (T, C) 2011-04-05 22:44Z

Unfortunately, you cannot reset passwords without an email.Jasper Deng (talk) 23:30, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
If you send me an email I can ask people to take a second look, in German Wikipedia. It's unorthodox, but if you did make identical edits in a narrow time span, that should be plenty proof enough.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:44, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Indifference kills the cat?

Mr Wales. There's a small problem being discussed here. Have a look, if you have the time. I think it is an instructive illustration of apparent indifference to a difficulty being reported, and the almost fetishistic focus on interpretation of rules instead. I would imagine the problem itself could be resolved easily if someone with a command of Japanese could take a look. It seems to me to be an example of the kind of impersonal lack of care or regard for fellow Wikipedia users that may be a root causes for the much discussed declining editor numbers, for bad administrator reputations, and for a possibly corresponding rise in disrespect for Wikipedia codes of practice and conduct in general. regards — Peter S Strempel | Talk 12:14, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't really call it indifference, but I'd like to commend you. Your answer is likely to be the most helpful to the person asking, who wasn't really seeking a lecture on free licensing.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:46, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Better not be my cat Mr. Bigglesworth or there'll be trapdoor and piranha tank trouble in store..♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:58, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Greetings

I am so sorry this has to be our first interaction. But I would deeply appreciate if you could take a look at this, and prevent this from happening to someone else. I hope for a bright future to you and your project. Sincerely, Rehman 12:58, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Just to note to Jimbo that that's an oldid revision of WT:RFA, so if by the time he sees this message if there's been some discussion on it, he should check the latest revision. Strange Passerby (talk • cont) 13:00, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles

What are your thoughts on this Jimmy? I think its a dreadful proposal and would do absolutely nothing to change the quality of new content. The obvious vandalism, attacks and non notable spam is almost always speedied anyway. I fear it would turn a massive number of people away from wanting to contribute to wikipedia. You certainly can't assess one editors abilities in 4 days and 10 edits.

As one editor put it "The only new users willing to commit themselves to the extra effort will be the determined, ideological POV-pushers". That is exactly what will happen. Given that new visitors or not paid or compelled to contribute if they bother to create an account they should at least be able to have the chance to contribute what they want and be given a chance immediately to prove their worth.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:50, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

My opinion is that I can't possibly have an opinion without empirical evidence. I think the community should send strong signals to the Foundation that we want them to test things, and that not every little change to Wikipedia requires a massive referendum, and that *especially* we have to let go of a culture that allows a tiny minority of people to block progressive change.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:37, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
On empirical evidence, what are your views about publishing a regular 'dashboard' of already available figures about what's actually going on in terms of edits and interventions? I am advised that it's just a question of knowing what db queries to write. If the appropriate metrics are determined, a lot of bulls#$@t arguments might be defused just by pointing to figures that show it ain't (or is) so. As for you, Bloefeld, haha, I open the pit under your feet instead, and 'good ridansche to you and your kat!' Regards - Peter S Strempel | Talk 04:50, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Indeed. I just said to the board (we just now had a meeting) that I would love for the Foundation to give us in the community a frequently updated metric for new user retention on a 4 week rolling basis, and that I would help make it a priority within the community. Wouldn't it be great if we could focus on new editor retention the way we used to focus on article counts? I'm confident that if we had some actual metrics, we could work to make the numbers go up quite effectively.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:40, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
@Peter: Is this what you're looking for? – iridescent 19:46, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Jimbo: What about statistics on retaining editors who have done useful editing over at least, say, three months? Do such people often leave? Why? Is there anything about current Wikipedia culture that drives away useful editors who have done significant work? Is there a trend whereby WP:CPUSH editors are replacing neutral editors? (The answer is yes!) Johnuniq (talk) 02:06, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Jimbo, you are aware that in this debate the change is being moved forward by members of the community, it's a rather big change, and that the "tiny proportion of the community blocking change" includes every WMF employee who has weighed in on the issue? Ironholds (talk) 04:12, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Smart watchlist proposal

I don't know where the best place is to discuss features on-wiki before taking them to developers, so I'll put this here and figure someone will tell me where it should go.

This edit is minor vandalism of an article that I have on my watchlist. I corrected the vandalism today after an anon made a correction of some of it.

The vandalism was minor, but obvious. I would have caught it, had I seen it. However, on January 26th, the day of the vandalism, I did not edit Wikipedia.

A nice feature would be for edits to articles that I am watching to be on my watchlist (or a particular 'view' of my watchlist) until I view/accept them. An enhancement to that feature would be for me to be able to add some 'trusted editors' to the list, so that any edit or acceptance by them would remove them from my watchlist.

What I want to see on my watchlist are "edits by users I haven't explicitly trusted, to articles that I am watching, that I have not yet approved". The list should be sorted "oldest first" so that I can constantly work at any backlog. (Alternatively, the list could be sorted by some slightly clever algorithm for importance as measured by the age of the edit, the popularity of the page, how frequently I have edited the page myself, etc.)

With this feature, I might not have caught the vandalism on the 26th of January, but I would surely have caught it some time soon after.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:21, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

This would be awesome. I would love such a feature. The ability to "dismiss" an edit from my watchlist after I've looked at it would make checking the watchlist so much more efficient. 28bytes (talk) 19:26, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Definitely a good idea there. I'm still finding stuff I need to respond to / work on from the back end of last month when I was AFK for a bit. Maybe... WP:VPR as a central discussion point. --Errant (chat!) 19:35, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Agreed. With 4,400 pages on my watchlist, this would help me focus. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:46, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
I will admit it would be quite the nifty tool to have. Especially with over 2900 pages on my watchlist. Jessy (talk) (contribs) • 19:53, April 7, 2011 (UTC) 19:53, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Two issues here: a) flagging and b) scoring. The flagging issue could be a bit messy if done manually, since it would mean marking potentially thousands of diffs as read. But a simpler mechanism could just keep the entry highlighted until it's been loaded in the watchlist (but not reviewed), or move them to a 'missed' section (say for 7 days). As for scoring, why not have WP:CBNG or WP:STiki score watchlist edits for vandalism-likeliness the same way they do in their bot/review interface. That kind of data would be useful to all of us, and as they get better at scoring edits, we should try to integrate that data in more places. I wonder if User:Cobi or User:West.andrew.g or User:UncleDouggie has any ideas. Ocaasi c 20:46, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Not to be rude but what does there input matter. Are they developers or some vague approximation. Jessy (talk) (contribs) • 21:27, April 7, 2011 (UTC)
They maintain the tools Ocaasi mentions. @Ocaasi; interesting idea. Though FWIW it's not so much missed vandalism as "new stuff" of whatever form :) --Errant (chat!) 21:32, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
As I tried to split out, they are separate issues, and vandalism applies to the 'other' part. That said, of all the 'new' edits that you miss, the ones that bother the most are the ones that are also vandalism.
SunCountry, sorry, Cobi manages the Wiki side of CBNG, the phenomenal bot that auto-patrols edits for vandalism, AGWest is the author of STiki which is a machine-assisted vandalism review interface, somewhat like Huggle, but developing more of an algorithm for detection, and UncleDouggie is just a great coder who is intimately familiar with the edit-filter, vandalism, and .js tools in general. Ocaasi c 23:40, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Whoa. A lot of people working in technical areas. Sure would be a joy to have then on the conversation. Jessy (talk) (contribs) • 23:45, April 7, 2011 (UTC)

These are all great ideas. Checking things off your watchlist was proposed in 2008 and 2009. Those past discussions also include various proposals to support categorization of your watchlist. Sorting by the criteria requested by Jimbo, or by vandalism risk, are new ideas that I agree would be very useful. I've designed a rough framework to accomplish all this in JavaScript that would act as a fairly transparent replacement for the standard watchlist functionality. To get the vandalism risk, we would need to have West.andrew.g provide an API to query the STiki database, which stores the scores for all three rating engines, including User:ClueBot NG. While this sounds like a fun thing to do, I'm consumed at the moment rewriting Twinkle before HTML5 gets turned back on and kills it. Perhaps Andrew would be willing to work on the API in the meantime. If Andrew doesn't have time, we could setup our own API server somewhere that would query the STiki database on behalf of clients. If any other developers want to start tackling this, let me know and I'll send you my rather rough notes. —UncleDouggie (talk) 03:57, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

There is already an HTTP-API into the STiki scores (see [6]) in addition to the aforementioned IRC feed. It would be only a couple lines of PHP to give you access to the third-party scores I collect (CBNG + WikiTrust). Though, the former is currently down and has a history of inconsistent operation, and the latter is known to not be particularly accurate at detecting "zero-delay" vandalism. I could also just share some database credentials so a persistent connection can be used and one can really hammer away at the tables.
This also raises questions about how such an extension will work. Will the client-side be making all the RID->score requests? Users with big watchlists will be issuing lots of queries, no? And if lots of users install the script, we are talking about a lot of traffic that could choke a commodity server? This underscores the other discussion here regarding why the WMF might be interested in hosting services such as these. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 06:26, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
I have some technical suggestions to improve the API that I'll post at your talk so we don't bore Jimbo to death. We can use your server for initial development, but we might need something better for widespread use. Having CBNG down again really shows how critical it is that we come up with a better solution. —UncleDouggie (talk) 06:44, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm a bit concerned by how dependent we are becoming on using non-WMF servers and software to manage the project. When ClueBot NG went down for a weeks earlier this year, it was a major blow to vandalism prevention. If Cobi or Andrew aren't around when there's a problem, we can get into a real bind. We are also so dependent on user scripts like Twinkle that whenever something breaks them, productivity comes to a crashing halt. The MediaWiki developers don't test compatibility with user scripts before deploying changes, as we know all too well. However, we need to keep moving forward and a smart watchlist seems like the next logical step to improving article quality. I'm sure we will find another dozen features to add to it once something is in place. —UncleDouggie (talk) 03:57, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

A.G. West reports back that he's swamped but likes the idea and can easily supply STiki's code to be hosted on a central server (it already streams edit scores to IRC, as does/did CBNG so that might not even be necessary): West writes: "Yes, the suggestion that you/Jimbo put forth seems to be a quite reasonable one. If it can gain community consensus, it should be a quite simple interfacing matter with the devs. Score one for my support, as an opt-in extension, at minimum. STIki already writes its scores to an IRC feed, and it would be simple to transfer the Java code onto a Wikimedia server to give everyone some sense of reliability." User_talk:West.andrew.g#Interesting_idea
Also, you're right on about the risk these varied tools pose and have posed to them. It's a wonderful thing having an ecosystem of development, but we are in a crazy state of decoherence. The bot that runs the better half of vandalism ops has been down again for over a week. Half of the .js scripts I love went dark with the 1.17 update and still haven't returned (including Magnus' less edit clutter, the godsend of tools!). The .js tools and Toolserver tools and bots offer up wonderful additions, but they are rarely integrated into the userface for non power-users (except occasionally as a gadget), not always hosted centrally, and not checked for compatibility with mediawiki devs. Yeoman editors don't run on coffee and cigarette burns alone. We need our javascript.
Douggie, for the watchlist idea, should we post to Village Pump Technical, or create a WP:Page Proposal, or... put it in your userspace and see if you get bored? I have *zero* coding ability, but I'd be happy to copyedit the documentation. And do you have any more eco-systemic thoughts about the status of tools and how to improve it? Cheers, Ocaasi c 04:46, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Agreed, this would be a very useful feature for making it easier to track suspicious changes on your watchlist. It should include *all* edits to a page, not just the latest one, so a bad edit wouldn't be hidden by a subsequent bot edit to change categories or something. However it would be tedious to accept *all* the latest edits if an article had recently been heavily vandalised. An "automatically accept reverted edits" button would fix this problem, but may also have the side effect of hiding edit wars. However you didn't catch *all* the vandalism at the Ajay Kakkar, Baron Kakkar article. If I had encountered that situation, I would have reverted back to the version before the IP edit on 8 April with an edit summary like ("rv to fix all the vandalism", then used the undo button to undo all the vandalism made on the 26th of January. Graham87 05:23, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Oh, the best place for this suggestion would be the idea lab or maybe the proposals village pump. Graham87 05:29, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, it turns out that using the undo button wouldn't have worked anyway. Graham87 06:04, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

What do you want in a smart watchlist?

(outdented from above comment) The previous proposals are from WP:VPR, one is even a persistent proposal, so I don't think that posting there again is going to help. I think that most of this functionality will be done in JavaScript anyway, for which we don't need server side changes. The exception is the vandalism scores, for which it would be great if we could pull them straight out of the Wikipedia database. Then again, if we want to see this up and running this decade, we should plan on handling it externally for now. We will need a new vandalism score API server that either queries the current STiki database on the fly or builds its own database of scores by listening to the STiki IRC feed. For now, please give some more thought as to how you want this to look on the screen. It would best if you could paste together some desired screen shots. We currently have three methods of displaying a watchlist:

  1. Orginal: Only the most recent for each article. One line per article.
  2. Expand watchlist to show all changes: One line per edit, sorted by edit time, grouped by date, not grouped by article. Multiple edits to the same article are scattered on the page.
  3. Enhanced recent changes: Grouped by date, then by article (expandable). Sorted by articles with the most recent edits. Articles can be listed once for each date, which can be annoying when using popups because it shows the entire edit history from any link.
What do you want to see in a smart watchlist? —UncleDouggie (talk) 06:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Wow, that's like Santa coming early. Um, this is what I've seen around the various discussions:
  1. Rank pages by importance, ability to select display of only a certain level or range
  2. Watch only talk pages, or only article pages, respectively, for individual articles
  3. Group pages by type, either Category, or user-supplied tags; effectively, have multiple watchlists
  4. Mark changes as read or 'patrolled'
  5. Record the STiki/CBNG/WikiTrust scores alongside changes, optimally with some visual signal for higher risk edits
  6. Ability to watch search across more than one criteria, so that I could see [Articlespace] edits, which are [high priority (my tag)], which are [MilHist related] and have a [high CBNG vandalism score]. Basically a dashboard like there is now, but with parallel, simultaneous, categorization or filtering.
  7. Include *all* edits to a page, not just the latest one
  8. Some way to mark groups of edits as patrolled, (e.g. mark all as read, or mark [low priority] as read, or "automatically accept reverted edits"--Graham's idea)
  9. Ability to watch only talk page or article sections (really wild)
  10. Sort by number of page-watchers. (to look more closely at little-watched articles)
  11. Sort by number of page-views. (to look more closely at highly viewed articles)
  12. Ability to show only changes since last watchlist check (i.e. assuming personal patrolled changes, present all 'pending' changes since last 'patrol')
Ok, cookies will be by the tree. Ocaasi c 07:13, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

There is the option "enhanced recent changes" in preferences. Can't that simply be "copied" for "enhanced watchlist"? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 07:40, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

That option already gives you an enhanced watchlist, which is variant #3 I listed above. We are talking here about going a few light years beyond what we know as a watchlist today. —UncleDouggie (talk) 08:13, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

This has been proposed a few times, I had proposed this more or less at the strategic wiki, see strategy:Proposal:Mark a watched page as visited and compare since latest visit. If I remember correctly, it would be hard to implement because of limited server resources (too much information to store), though enabling this to only, for example, autoconfirmed users could limit the resources needed.
Also, the 'collaborative' version of this is exactly Wikipedia:Patrolled revisions, which we had asked to be implemented at the same time of flagged protection/pending changes. This would be of tremendous help for checking vandalism on little watched articles, esp. BLPs, which we know is one of the biggest present issue of WP. Cenarium (talk) 13:45, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

What you suggest is essentially WP:Patrolled revisions extended by a web of trust. Keeping trust relations per editor will require that each revision can be marked as patrolled by multiple editors, not just one. Once that is in place the watchlist extension showing the trustiness of a revision is relatively easy.
I don't know how far along patrolled revisions are or if anyone is working on them at the moment, but those would be the people you should talk to. Amalthea 13:47, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

This would fit the bill for Jimbo's original request, but WP:Patrolled revisions shows no signs of life and I highly doubt it would be extended to versions flagged by individual using whitelists for performance reasons. Furthermore, the other requests for somewhat related watchlist functionality are beyond what patrolled revisions could do. —UncleDouggie (talk) 15:03, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Collaborative watchlists is a whole 'nother animal. But we could easily incorporate data based on the # of watchers a page has. That is available through Toolserver somewhere, and it would be a good indication which pages needed more attention. So I then could also sort my watchlist by the pages that have fewest watchers (perhaps by range, <30, 30-100, >100; low, medium, high, etc). By the same token, I'd like to be able to sort the watchlist by the number of page views a page gets. So I could then find the highest viewed article pages with the lowest number of watchers, and then only look at BLPs, related to Music and Entertainment, for example. Of course, I'd like to be able to do that for all of Wikipedia, not just my watchlist, so essentially the watchboard you're talking about could provide the base for coherent dashboard data/database interface that many editors have wanted for the entire encyclopedia. (I updated the numbered list above). Ocaasi c 19:32, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Wow... everytime I think I am crazy for doing what I do on WP, I find that there are people far more crazy dedicated than I am. Really??? thousands of pages on watchlists???? I am humbled.Thelmadatter (talk) 15:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah I feel a little silly about having 22000 on my watchlist but since I edit persistently thruoghout the day its not too bad. If I take a few days off I have no way to go back and review them. These improvements would be awesome. --Kumioko (talk) 17:18, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I want connections to other wikis: I hardly ever look at my watchlist at the German, French etc. Wikipedia, at Commons, at WikiSource, at WikiBooks, etc. That's because usually there is nothing to see there. When there is something to see, a note should appear on my watchlist here.

Wikipedia has reached saturation in terms of content. That's why we have negative growth now. Meanwhile, many of the other projects have not even reached the criticial mass which they would need to get anywhere near their full potential. I think that's because there is so much more interaction here and the few times that there could be interaction at one of the other projects we just don't notice. Hans Adler 07:14, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

New Page Patrollers

I am concerned that new-changes-patrollers seem to be accepting changes of pages at far too fast a rush. This issue arose when thinking the list at Special:NewPages seemed to be unable to track new pages, and then it was discovered that a small group of editors were marking vast numbers of pages as acceptably "patrolled" despite the speed of proofreading at what seemed to be "superhuman speed" as unable to adequately check the quality of changes. At least this issue, of rapid allowance of new pages, has been monitored to be noticed. I am continually surprised by the unusual things that people do, having just learned about "passive-aggressive" behavior in thwarting article updates; however, I keep thinking the solution is to limit the per-user counts: as to how many edits, how many blocks, how many approved changes (etc.) each user can do. For example, it is quite likely that 20% of admins block 80% of all blocked accounts, and that needs to be studied to see if the numbers can be leveled to a more even balance. The same goes for approving numerous changed pages as all being quickly accepted. If we get more people involved in checking pages, then vandalism will be reversed sooner by our thousands of helpers (154,000 active editors). -Wikid77 22:38, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

  • The reason a small percentage of admins make a large percentage of blocks is that most admins aren't actually active any more. So, you think the solution to "new page patrollers not adequately checking for vandalism" is "actively prohibit people from checking for vandalism"? Ironholds (talk) 22:50, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
  • The word "prohibit" is too severe, as I was thinking more in terms of per-user, per-day limits. Also, perhaps changes should be patrolled with a "triage" system of 3 groups: the instant reverts, the easy approvals, and then a 3rd group which would be articles needing "medical attention" to judge whether a change is acceptable, or is POV-pushing, or is a subtle form of vandalism (etc.). There seems to be some obsession with marking articles as accepted, quickly, in order to avoid a "dreaded backlog" as though a backlog is a life failure, perhaps because, at the deadline of 3 months, the list of articles is pruned, and older changes can slip off the list. Consequently, some people might over-react by perhaps accepting articles too soon. I would consider increasing the list to 5 or 6 months to reduce the worry about backlogs. -Wikid77 (talk) 03:42, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Trust me when I say this; you do not want a giant backlog there. I've seen some pretty horrific attacks come out of there, things that could easily lead to lawsuits, and the sheer number of copyvios we get everyday is rather startling. Instead of bitching about us, how about you do a little NPP yourself? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 13:28, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Just wondering, Mr Lights, but when NPPing and coming across a new article with no sources whatsoever, do you always mark it as being unsourced? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.25.109.195 (talk) 17:48, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Unless I know about the subject and can find sources, yes. If it's a BLP, I BLPPROD it. What logged-out user are you? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:36, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Article author lists

I think the “author list” at the end of an article should distinguish between who actually wrote the article, and who edited, patrolled, and goofed around with the article. This could be partially automated if the boxes to click were more specific on the type of edit being done, so that only actual authors and editors are encouraged. Also, I think the “how to” directions should not be a part of a selective scheme, because the public ought to be well-treated here. The directions should not say things like “go for it” and “have a blast editing” and “get them vandals.” As far as quality of the articles is concerned, I find any article with more than ten edits to be a madhouse.--Rhbsihvi (talk) 20:42, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm not sure what you mean. Where can I see this? Also, all the evidence I have seen is that articles improve with edit count (as a general rule, not as a certainty of course), so the idea that articles with more than 10 edits are "a madhouse" doesn't really make sense to me. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:35, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
I dont know about the over ten edits criterion, but there are articles I will not touch simply because there are too many people with their fingers in it..they dont even have to be controversial.... like Mexico City. I would consider that article a madhouse. I worked only on the history part because at the time there was little and since most people dont read Spanish, it mostly gets left alone. As for getting "author" credit... it would be nice, especially for folks like me who write pretty comprehensive stuff (like Sierra Gorda ---yup, cheap plug!] and mostly offline, so tens of thousands of characters counts only as a single edit. However, in cases like the Mexico City article, with so many cooks stirring the pot, there really is no author. Even in the case of editing, not all edits are equal. Dr. Blofeld did a wonderful job of paring down and editing the Oaxaca article after I expanded it with everything I could find. (the pared off information was put into new articles.Thelmadatter (talk) 15:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

money

hi jimbo wales why dont u advertise on wikipedia? ull make billions. are u already a billionaire? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.94.130.219 (talk) 07:26, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia - and all other Wikimedia Foundation wikis - don't advertise because advertisements are not neutral, thus violating the Foundation's neutral point-of-view policies. And Jimmy doesn't make money from Wikipedia, anyhow. —Jeremy v^_^v Components:V S M 07:46, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Well, I wouldn't say neutrality has much to do with it. We could keep our NPOV policy and also have advertising on the site.
It has more to do with Wikipedia's role in the culture. I think of Wikipedia as a very special place where people can come to quietly learn and reflect, to dig in and get background information on just about anything.
And to answer the anon's question, no I'm not a billionaire. And Wikipedia is structured as a charity, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. So even if Wikipedia had a business model to generate billions of dollars, none of it would go to me or the other board members.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:01, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Based on my experience as a newspaper writer and the son of a newsman, I disagree that "[w]e could keep our NPOV policy and also have advertising on the site." --Orange Mike | Talk 17:54, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
How about temporarily allowing ads so we can get some faster servers? Digging through an article history is a PITA because of the long response time. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:28, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
"We've already established that; we're just haggling over the price"? I don't think so. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:03, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to venture a more simplistic answer. Wikipedia is built, almost (although not entirely) on effort given for free. If Wikipedia starts generating revenue beyond that which it needs for its own existence ("billions of dollars" per the OP - and certainly tens of millions is realistic) then we have to ask where the revenue will go. The volunteers? Hardly practical. Charities? Which ones? - and so on.

The minefield is simply easier if avoided, rather then approached in the hope that after we've had a few limbs blown off we'll find a better way of doing things. Pedro :  Chat  21:29, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I am more concerned about neutrality. The effects of advertising can be insidious and I'd worry about coverage of bodies that had paid a stack of money for advertising. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:40, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
As I pointed about above, I see little need to worry about the effects of advertising (NPOV etc.) when the reality is that to shift the business over to one that requires it is not practicable - and not going to happen. I'm fully aware that it could be done (other sites after all mirror WP content and have adverts) - I'm saying in the current incarnation it's not realistic. So let's not be, to quote "concerned" about something that can't happen. Pedro :  Chat  21:59, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Anyway, yeah, there's no plans for advertising, I would be loudly opposed to it, the board isn't even remotely considering it (it never comes up in our discussions), so this is all a pretty idle discussion. :-) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:26, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Check this out

This Wikipedia User Page article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

What do you think? A user page stub. Mr. Simon Green (talk) 19:15, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

What would be the point? LadyofShalott 00:54, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
It's kind of a joke. I don't know who you are and you don't know me, so who could expand another user's page if they didn't know them. So if you don't get it, never mind. Mr. Simon Green (talk) 01:41, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

What help japan?

Σ:D『 Hi,Ladies and Gentleman and both unit, I think help to Japanese ,What you do mean? --MOTOI Kenkichi基 建吉(gikoneko擬古猫)as Kenkichi Motoi (talk) 21:29, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I would love to be helpful, but unfortunately your message doesn't quite make sense in English. You may wish to write it in Japanese and ask someone to translate it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:32, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Σ|3＜Hi,Mr. Jimbo.Now we have to consider what to do in Japan. I If you can contribute to Wikipedia because it can not be their little Dzutsudemo Shimo Shigeru Eru what it is I think it would be happy.Thank you for your reply.--MOTOI Kenkichi基 建吉(gikoneko擬古猫)as Kenkichi Motoi (talk) 11:17, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Unexceptable

I've heard of you and you must be a very famous person on the web, but punks on the internet did this to you. And I know that this has to be illegal somehow. Wikipedia is a big website known internationally, and they do this to the creator. Mr. Simon Green (talk) 01:29, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh come on, that is pretty funny. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:40, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
I know it is. It is to me too. But I just wanted to see his reaction. These punks on the internet are not predictable. Mr. Simon Green (talk) 04:22, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
These punks on the internet are not predictable. I think I will put that on a t-shirt. Great. Ocaasi c 05:18, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
I want to put 'Unexceptable' on a t-shirt. :-)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:37, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
Is it true that you also created Wikia? Mr. Simon Green (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:49, 10 April 2011 (UTC).
When this whole "internet" fad has blown over we'll look back on this and laugh. Herostratus (talk) 20:36, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
What's that suppose to mean? Mr. Simon Green (talk) 23:01, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
It's just a joke. People make fun of all of the fads and memes which the internet helps create, but the internet itself is unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon. Long live the network. Ocaasi c 23:44, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
I'd like to see "The Internet is a Fad" on a T-Shirt. --Ashershow1talk•contribs 00:50, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Maybe, The Internet is a Fad... I read it on Wikipedia. Ocaasi c 01:45, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
"The Internet is a Fad... I read it on Wikipedia[citation needed]" Resolute 18:26, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
I'll have one, too. (;-> Andrewa (talk) 05:32, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
I hope Jimmy is happy to take that image as a joke. Whoever has copyright on the picture presumably has a case to say that their rights have been breached, and Jimmy could argue that they are misrepresenting him by implying that he said that, but I suspect a court would accept the argument that it is an obvious joke. I gather that in the last fundraiser the appeal from Jimmy was the one that got people to donate, so I hope for Wikipedia's sake that Jimmy is willing to put his name and face on our appeals next year. Though it would be nice if we could come up with something else. Personally I'm keen on some variant of "Pay up or you'll have to do your kid's homework yourself". ϢereSpielChequers 13:49, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you kindly

File:Pie.jpeg

Truth Mom (talk) has given you a fresh pie! Pies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a piping hot pie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Bon appetit!


Spread the tastiness of pies by adding {{subst:GivePie}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

--Truth Mom (talk) 16:24, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Catherine Ashton

Hi, you reverted a good faith edit I made about Catherine Ashton. On the discussion page for that page I have made my case for my edit to be restored, as the "unelected" criticism seems in public discourse to be almost uniquely associated with that politician and the office of which she is the current holder. So I hope you will agree that the deleted paragraph was fair and factual and should be restored. I will respect and appreciate your judgment on this.85.210.124.195 (talk) 17:42, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Wisdom required

See User talk:Johanmpino and Talk:Alférez FAP Alfredo Vladimir Sara Bauer Airport#Relisting for what I see as a way of improving Wikipedia contrary to policy which may even go further than WP:IAR allows. Your wisdom appreciated if you have a moment. Andrewa (talk) 21:10, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Editor activity is 8% below last year

Averaging the monthly data (up to Feb. 2011), there are 3,300 fewer active editors (-8.2% with >5 edits) and 302 fewer busy editors (-7.6% >100 edits), per month, comparing 24 months back to March 2009.

Monthly statistics: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm
Wikipedia size & users
Articles in English:  6,914,196
Articles in all WPs: 63,985,206
Average revisions: 20.26
Articles per day: +671*
Total wiki pages: 61,884,414
New pages per day: +7,731*
Total admins: 851
Total users: 48,299,390
New users per day: +6822*
UTC time: 20:50 on 2024-Nov-21
  * (English WP, since 2010 Dec 10)

Although the focus has been on newcomers, the totals of all registered users show an average 8% drop in editor activity, comparing the past 12 months (up to Feb. 2011), against the prior 12 months (to March 2009).

2010 Active editors: 36,849 (~36,850 / month) Busy editors: 3,695 (~3,700)
2009 Active editors: 40,148 (~40,150 / month) Busy editors: 3,997 (~4,000)

The reductions are similar: both active (>5) and busy editors (>100 edits) are leaving at a nearly 8% decline. However, the general active editors are leaving somewhat faster (8.2%), as would be expected, while the "die-hard" editors are leaving somewhat slower (7.6%, about 26 busy editors have remained, on average, who would have left if among less-active editors). Hence, the decline, in editing, is not only a "newcomer-experience" problem. There are systemic factors causing a nearly 8% decline by all editors above the 5-edits-per-month level. Meanwhile, the new-article growth rate is 910 per day, down 8.9% from 2010's daily average of 1028 new articles kept per day. Looks like measuring the general editor monthly activity will also indicate the newcomer retention levels, because if many newcomers remain, then the general average will jump and rise quickly. There are 193,000 new users per month, if many stay, then the statistics will jump higher. -Wikid77 07:00, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

One of the issues is that there are a number of users who make accounts and make a single edit, which is creating an obviously inappropriate new page. These people wouldn't be factored into active editors. Because of this, while we continue to lose active editors, the number of new articles made per month will likely not drop as quickly or in any direct relation to the drop in number of active editors. This will, in the long run, cause major issues. We're seeing the repercussions of some of those issues already, which is why the making only autoconfirmed editors able to create articles proposal is so important, among other reasons. SilverserenC 07:09, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
My understanding, imperfect but informed, is that a more detailed study of the situation than this shows that attrition rates of both "busy editors" and "active editors" is stable and natural. Of course many people come into the project, get really into it for awhile, and drift away. There's nothing new or alarming about that - people's life interests change over time.
So if we look at what has changed from the past, it is not that editors eventually drift away, it is that we are not replenishing the ranks in the way that we used to. So I believe that this is, if not entirely, at least in large part, a new editor experience problem.
Some of this may be natural, of course, and therefore not a concern. Wikipedia used to be largely unfinished, there was a lot of easy work to do. That is less true now.
But some of this likely is not natural and can be positively impacted in a number of ways.
As an addendum, I think "new articles per month" is a very poor metric. It doesn't strike me as something we want to focus a lot of attention on. As part of a suite of metrics, it is fine of course, but I think it is secondary. English Wikipedia already has 3.6 million articles. I think we should be more interested in quality than quantity, particularly now.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Editor decline has slowed from 10% to only 5% fewer: Okay, a more detailed study reveals a different aspect: although the average, for the year, shows a general 8% decline in active/busy editors, the decline had been over 10% last year, and has slowed to just below 5% fewer active editors in recent months. The decline appears to be ending, or stabilizing (rebounding), as reaching close to a core "minimum number" of active/busy editors. If any busy editors are worried that the "ship is sinking" (and fear they will be left "alone" to fix all articles), then the numbers reveal the opposite effect: how the prior decline in numbers of active/busy editors appears to be stabilizing, as leveling off, with a dependable number of people who will be actively still editing articles, each month. The recent decline, in active editors, for February 2011 was only 4.4% fewer, compared to an 11% drop for November 2010. These figures fit the logical notion that, regardless of past hardships, there will always be a sizable minimum number of active editors, to continue improvements each month. The overall 8% decline, for 2010 compared to 2009, is not a free-fall pattern, but is part of a slowing decline which began in 2007. Apparently, March 2007 had the most active editors (54,221 >5 edits & 5198 >100), and participation sometimes fell nearly 14% lower during 2008, but finally, a core number of editors has emerged, of perhaps 34,000+3500 busy editors (on average) who can be expected to continue working every month, plus others who will (re-)gain interest during the year 2012. -Wikid77 13:16, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

We do have 3.6 million articles but what proportion of that would be better replaced with truly encyclopedic missing notable topics I wonder which have genuine encyclopedic value like towns in China, African plants, agricultural studies by country etc rather than lists of pokemon, youtube videos and short stubs on every minor sportsperson which take up at least 0.5 million articles.... Quality is most important but the bloated 3.6 million figures are not truly reflective of knowledge which is being covered. The truly notable missing articles are vast and should continue to be identified and started. The problem is that because the encylopedia has grown in such an uneven way with a huge bias towards popular culture we are still missing very important topics which should really be half to full length by now. So it is difficult to concentrate purely on existing quality when such topics which should have been started long ago but weren't because of non-anglo contributors and should be started asap. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:44, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

There is that. At any rate, I would expect editor activity to decline somewhat over the years. This is signal that we have been successful. I wouldn't see it as necessarily a problem. Herostratus (talk) 08:03, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Successful, maybe, but one wonders why Baby (Justin Bieber song) has over 35 times more references than the Loire River and Moscow Kremlin put together... its rather sickening.... User:Nvvchar/Loire River. I'm on the case.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:05, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

  • Wow, Bieber's song "Baby" (likely to be forgotton) has over 70 footnotes, but the longest river in France, Loire River, has only 1 footnote; I would have imagined at least 10 footnotes to back some lesser-known facts about the river. That supports Jimbo's view about quality concerns. Meanwhile, I am also worried about too few mainstream articles, such as people asking about Biblical "strange wives" (strange women) or the missing taxonomy subtribe "Phaegopterina" of tribe Arctiini, etc. We need to enlist more help in writing core articles: the pop culture gets automatic coverage. I feel certain there are over 1.5 million sports articles: over 32,000 footballers, etc. -Wikid77 12:59, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Well, some aspects of pop culture get sufficient attention, other aspects much less so. We e.g. don't have an article on Wout Wijsmans, one of the best volleyball players of Europe, twice voted Italian player of the year by La Gazzetta dello Sport. Four other Wikipedia versions do have such an article already. We don't have an article on Baru, winner of the main career parize for a comics author in Europe, even though five other Wikipedia versions already have such an article. We don't have an article for Familie, a Flemish soap series with more than 4,000 episodes. Fram (talk) 13:29, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes our core editing community is dwindling, but is that because we are less able to keep editors than we used to be, or is it because we are not recruiting as many new "active" or "busy" editors? I suspect the latter, but it should be possible to calculate statistics. I suspect our problem is that we have become a less welcoming and more cliquey community, but working out why we are failing to recruit people will I fear be more difficult than working out whether we are losing regulars faster or failing to recruit new ones. The problem will I believe get worse, we can pretty much guarantee that requiring autoconfirmation to create articles will accelerate the decline. I think we need better stats, and in particular we need to keep an eye on the ratio between edits by regulars and edits by newbies. Whether we organise our info on minor sportspeople and records as a million separate stubs or a hundred thousand lists and a million redirects probably doesn't effect the amount of vandalism that gets past the vandalfighting bots, so the number of articles isn't related to the amount of work needed to defend the wiki. But I suspect it is related to the number of editors we have ready to defend the wiki from vandalism and spam, and another deletion spree would drive away more editors without reducing the workload for those that remain. ϢereSpielChequers 13:37, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
  • A decline in growth is natural, because Wikipedia is saturating its market. It's been pointed out many times that we already have articles on the vast majority of topics that most people care about. It might also be the case that there's a certain pool of individuals who are inclined to participate in projects such as this; as more and more cycle through the ranks, the number of potential new entrants in the pool declines. We sometimes talk about growing that pool but that's a very difficult thing to do.

    One possibility is to put more emphasis on editor retention. Jimbo has always shown far more concern for attracting new members than retaining current ones; at times, I have almost had the feeling that he takes a "bring 'em in, use 'em up, spit 'em out" philosophy. I'm not saying that we should abandon efforts to recruit new editors but that we should also pay some attention to retaining those who are already here. The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 13:50, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

There is absolutely no truth to what you just said at all. Let me be 100% clear about that. First, historically speaking, it is absolutely false that I have "always shown" far more concern for attracting new members than retaining current ones: precisely the opposite is probably my greatest failing. Where on earth did you get that idea? Second, the bit about "use 'em up, spit 'em out" is so wildly at odds with my personality and actions that I feel you didn't stop for two seconds to think about what you were saying before you insulted me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:48, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
    • (edit conflict) Again, I would characterize the notion that any of this is necessarily a problem as not proven. Of course we still lack coverage of many important subjects, but not of very important subjects, so there's no urgent hurry to fill these gaps. Now, there are certain conditions where it would be a problem. If vandalism is not decreasing at the same rate as regular editing, that is a problem. But it is a solvable problem, albeit it would probably require a slow tightening of editing restrictions. If the percentage of low-competence editors, POV-pushers, tendentious editors, and dedicated trolls is not decreasing at the same rate as regular editing, that would be a problem, and not so easily solvable, but still solvable, through some combination of changes in governance or a slow tightening of editing restrictions or other means. Finally, if the decrease in editing either indicates or causes a death spiral leading to basically no editing, that would be a problem. But still solvable, albeit with a major change in governance (e.g. paid editors). I'm perfectly happy with the Foundation taking the stance "We can and should do X and Y and Z to recruit and retain more editors" but would also like to see planning for a future where this doesn't work. Herostratus (talk) 14:22, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
    • This is just a personal perception but it seems like there are several factors affecting the exodus we are seeing and in order to slow it we are going to need to focus more attention on some of these areas in addition simple recuiting. Recuriting is important but so is retention. Here is a short list to chew on that I am sure we are all aware of but there are more:
      1. Too many projects showing ownership over articles. There are several projects that are very aggressive in gaurdianship over articles and this applies not only to newby's but to experienced editors as well. We need to reemphasize that we should be encouraging edits to our articles not running off anyone who dares to touch one.
      2. The great majority of the "common" articles have been created. We need to better emphasize areas for improvement to newcomers. There are still potentially millions of articles that could be created but we don't do a very good job of getting that info out to the casual users.
      3. We have blocked a lot of Ips and IP groups. For example the IP group that pertains to the entire Navy and Marine Corps is blocked due to vandalism. Thats over 1 million people who can't edit. Some IP's need to be blocked due to repetetive vandalism but we should be careful not to block massive groups who do generate good contributions.
      4. There are a lot of editors who are very wrapped up in the is the article notable debate. Since the argument of notability is a subjective one I tend to lean towards an availability of references when in doubt but not all feel that way. Its very demoralizing to have an article created about a subject your interested in to be deleted as not notable.
      5. The rules of editing are very complicated, confusing, frequently contradictory and difficult to learn. Most aren't interested in spending weeks or months to learn the all the rules. We need to clarify and simplify the rules. We don't need hundreds of policies and rules to edit an article. We should employ the same philosophy towards our rules and policies as we do towards a featured article. They should be clear, concise, professionally written and adaquetely cover the topic. We shouldn't have to go to 5 different places to learn different pieces of info about external link usage.
      6. Too much clutter. There are a lot of projects that are inactive and not marked as such, there needs to be more standardization in regards to templates and the like (its easier to learn when there aren't 50 0r more variations), we have redirects leading to articles that have longsince been deleted, borken, uneeded or deprecated parameters that should be deleted (but because they don't change the rendering of the page we can't according to the rules). --Kumioko (talk) 14:10, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
In my opinion, one other reason for editor exodus is how time-consuming, convoluted, arbitrary, and inconsistent the dispute resolution process is. In the last month or so, I have run into two editors owning two different topic areas. I haven't done anything about it because I just don't have time (collecting diffs takes hours), and because I'm not sure that anything would be done to effectively fix it even if I did take the time to try to bring it to administrators' attention. I imagine that regular editors would get fed-up with this and decide to pursue a different pasttime. Cla68 (talk) 22:43, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
Maybe...but there so many more editors that avoid getting into disputes than there are that do that this situation only applies to those that are involved in arbcom cases or Rfc's etc. There are some cases where we want a posse keeping junk science at bay...that may appear as ownership but that isn't a bad thing in every single instance....if a garden isn't tended it grows weeds. On the other issues, we can still write another 30 million articles yet if the various projects reach out to those folks that are newbies who show up to edit article sets. I will say that I think the global economy is impacting editing...I know of at least 10 editors who have slowed their editing or ceased due to economics.--MONGO 22:58, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
Well, Wikipedia, in spite of how nice its software works, is a high maintenance endeavor. For various reasons, including, as you say, economics, regular editors only have so much free time in which to contribute. If they feel that their time would be better spent on other activities... Cla68 (talk) 01:03, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
@Short Brigade Harvester Boris: Hello, ten years Wikipedia !!! If u're growing from nought, and so fast, the newbies are more revelant than the editors who stay; on the other side, at the worst economic crisis though, the editors who stay are more relevant than the newbies. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 14:23, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Request for Wikimedia-wide watchlists

I am sure you must have heard about this several times before, but maybe the Foundation is not aware of the strategic importance of this point for the development of the smaller wikis: We need cross-wiki watchlists. See WP:Integrated, interwiki, global watchlists and the many links from there to other discussions (and Bugzilla bug 3525, open since 2005).

In short, the English Wikipedia is successful (busy) because it is successful (busy). Editing at smaller Wikimedia wikis is boring. It's like playing an MMORPG that is only known to a few insiders. I know what I am talking about, because I have tried out many of them. But in most cases there is no interaction there, so I just stop editing there. Except, sometimes someone reacts to my post at another wiki, but with a delay of at least a week, sometimes of several months. I could react immediately, and then there would be real interaction – except I only learn about the response much later, because it does not appear on my watchlist at the English Wikipedia.

People have tried to build workarounds, but these are rather clumsy:

  • gWatch on the tool server is a separate global watchlist which is not integrated with the various wiki watchlists. When I edit an article, it does not get added to the global watchlist. (That's why I am not using it.)
  • Watchlistr requires giving one's watchlist tokens to a third party. It only supports the major wikis and is less convenient for daily use than the standard watchlists. (It's also a bit buggy. If you want to try it, use the user name "Jimbo_Wales", not "Jimbo Wales".)

The separation between the several wikis prevents development of the smaller ones and contributes to the conflicts between the bigger projects, e.g. between the English Wikipedia and Commons [7], earlier between the German Wikipedia and Commons (in both cases the problem was deletion on Commons of images in use by Wikipedia, and insufficient communication), or between Wikipedia and Wikiversity. It's also absurd that the expertise of Wikipedia's WikiProjects in the various sciences is not harnessed by WikiSource, WikiBooks and Wikiversity.

A simplistic implementation of cross-wiki watchlists could be rather easy:

  • MediaWiki could offer light-weight watchlist pages that are meant to be transcluded (cross-wiki!).
  • A simple JavaScript user interface extension could then transclude any number of watchlists chosen by the user.
  • All the various local watchlists would be hidden on the global watchlist, and each would only be loaded once the corresponding icon is activated. I.e. the structure would be like the following:
English Wikipedia
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

No changes in the last 7 days.

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

No changes in the last 7 days.

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

No changes in the last 7 days.

  • Ideally, local watchlists which do not have any recent changes would not be displayed at all. This might be slightly harder to implement efficiently.

But apparently this feature request has been open so long that it has become a tradition not to comply with it. Hans Adler 22:34, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Looks like the problem is already solved: User:Yair rand saw my post here and immediately implemented a solution in JavaScript that is similar to Watchlistr but integrated into the standard watchlist in the way I proposed here. It's currently available for all editors at Wiktionary, but I also got it to run here. Suddenly I feel in control of my watchlists at the various wikis. I think this just needs some fine-tuning before it can be advertised. I really think this should cause a boost of activity at the smaller projects. Hans Adler 15:38, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Macroevolution edit

Hello. Last night I made an edit to "Macroevolution" in the section "Misuse" with the following text, "...from a macroevolutionary perspective. However, creationists claim that speciation is on too small a scale to be macroevolution, and is therefore microevolution." My edit was tagged by a human admin as vandalism and promptly removed. I was sent a message saying that my edit was not constructive and had been reverted. Why was my edit not constructive? I merely added a creationist view on speciation. If Wikipedia aims to be neutral, then a edit for that purpose should not be reverted. Please clarify this for me. Thank you. 76.122.200.251 (talk) 17:39, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Discussion of fringe theories belongs in articles on those theories.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:44, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
See WP:UNDUE for the general rule. Wikipedia does not aim to be "neutral" on fringe topics in the way that you seem to be envisaging. Hans Adler 18:00, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
I'd also add that the edit wasn't reverted as vandalism (as indeed it shouldn't have been), it was correctly reverted with the edit summary rmv "However.." pov bit. And your immediately preceding edit had been to add the text "qaszwopeqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq" into the same article. Although this may have been an understandable editing test, it was unlikely to have encouraged people about your intentions towards the article. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:15, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
General discussion of religion/science not related to editing Wikipedia
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Actual points made to me (and has helped me to give up wasting time with such people): (1)Written observations of changes in species do not exist for a period of time greater than the length of time writing has existed and that length of time is short enough that all such records by definition (tautologically) represent micro-evolution; therefore macro-evolution can not be said to be evidenced by scientific observation; (2)Religion is based on faith and therefore does not change as evidence changes, while science is evidence based and thus changes as evidence changes; so science contradicts itself by always changing but religion provides a firm steady foundation and never needs to change. WAS 4.250 (talk) 12:56, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

"Religion is based on faith and therefore does not change as evidence changes" - factually incorrect, for a start: as is everything else you write. In any case, if you wish to make a fool of yourself, I'd suggest you find a less prominent place to do it. Wikipedia isn't a forum for half-baked amateur theologians and philosophers. Instead, we base article content on reliable sources, not on the opinions of those who think they 'know' the answers. There are plenty of other websites that cater for this. I'd suggest you might find a more accepting audience there. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:18, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

thank you for founding Wikipedia

Crazymonkey1123 has given you a brownie! Brownies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a brownie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. †

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Crazymonkey1123 (talk • contribs) 05:34, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Murray MacLehose, Baron MacLehose of Beoch

Hi. I shall be glad if you can join the discussion of the requested move of the article title of Murray MacLehose, of which you may be interested. --Clithering (talk) 14:11, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Persistent harassment against Italian users

Hi Jimbo, I request your assistance because some admins systematically ban every account or IP from Italy which edit on Dalmatia and Istria or ex Yugoslavia related articles! What is this: incomprehension or political agenda of those admins? These cases are evidences:

I know Nanazo, Mat003second, Barba Nane, Luigi 28, ANTE RAKELA and Miranovic personally or by e-mail: they are not user Ragusino or PIO! Other IPs are obvious used by many users! If you want, we can meet you: when and where? You decide! Now I request your security against admins user:LessHeard vanU and user:Fainites who have hostility versus all contributions from Italy in topic articles! Cheers,--MILAZERO (talk) 14:39, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I've just blocked this chap as a ducksock of User:Mat003second. Hopefully some editors who aren't socks of banned users can deal with the points he raises about Tito, the Partisans and the Foibe killings if there is substance to them.Fainites barleyscribs 19:39, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
I suspect that Mat003second may prove to be a sock of this account. The interests regarding Tito, the Partisans, Foibe killings and the Republic of Ragusa (better known as Dalmatia today), plus an ability to know where a number of accounts are editing from when claiming they are not sockpuppets - and disregarding Wikipedia:Meatpuppet, is standard modus operandi... LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:58, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia on war or war on Wikipedia

Could please have a look at this. I think that is highly important and i think it is necessary that you get involved in the interest of the public and Wikipedia. IQinn (talk) 03:43, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Iqinn, you really shouldn't try to enlist Jimbo's help when you're afraid you're losing an argument somewhere on Wikipedia. Jimbo's page is, however, watched by a lot of people so it may increase participation at the photo deletion discussion you link to. Indeed, it attracted my participation. I've seen discussions like that one before. I don't understand why some Wikipedians try to argue that photos taken by US government employees/military members depicting possible illegal acts are coprighted photos. Cla68 (talk) 05:11, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Cla68, you shouldn't try to persuade people not to talk to me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:31, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the advise Cla68. No i did not try to enlist Jimbo because i am afraid of losing an argument. This is simply one of this highly important issues that we need to get right. That includes also that our leadership has knowledge of these kinds of issues where possible wrong decisions could be very damaging to our reputation and the trust people used to have in us. IQinn (talk) 05:39, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
This is just reinforcing my view that on-wiki image uploading is better than Commons, since we have our known defined rules here and not the esoteric rules over on Commons. SilverserenC 05:52, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
That's a good point, although in this specific case I'm not sure if it would have made a difference. Cla68 (talk) 06:48, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Well, it would be easier for me to comment, for one. My account on Commons isn't allowing me to log in, though I guess it's not that surprising, since I haven't used it for a year. And I never assigned an email to it, which makes recovering a password rather difficult. :/ SilverserenC 07:16, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
  • If Der Spiegel requested photo deletion 29-Mar-2011, as noted in this edit claiming Der Spiegel requested the image be removed, then it seems the photo should have been blanked, allowing Google to re-index the image, then deleted a day later, rather than left over 16 more days. If the version from Rolling Stone is needed, then change the ongoing deletion-discussion to consider re-creation from that off-site version of the image, with possible photo-blurring of image. -Wikid77 09:06, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
  • As was pointed out in the discussion itself, Der Spiegel asked for it to be deleted, but they didn't do it on copyright grounds since they don't have any claim to copyright. The copyright belongs to the photographer, who is a member of the army and took it during an active mission. Thus, we have no reason to give any credence to the Der Spiegel request. SilverserenC 09:34, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
  • In fact, you could say that Der Spiegel violating the copyright and using the photo themselves seems to say that the image IS Public Domain. Unless they were purposefully violating copyright laws (which would make them extremely pretentious to be asking us to remove it). SilverserenC 09:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

My take on all of this is that the image is clearly public domain, and I'm really glad that we have such detailed and intricate discussions about such things.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:40, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I would also like to point out one related issue here. When an Image is loaded to Wiki rather than to commons a WikiProject can tag that image as related to the project so that if someone submits it for deletion (or other things) more than just a couple of people have visibility of it. When the image is on commons its much less likely; in fact I have seen many many editors removing WikiProject banners from the Wiki image page that links to the commons image because the image is not in Wiki and in some of their views shouldn't be tagged to a project. --Kumioko (talk) 16:01, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Just a reminder Kumioko, don't abbreviate Wikipedia as Wiki (but I totally agree with the substance of your point). Qrsdogg (talk) 02:36, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
A reminder to you in turn: not everyone agrees with this. Without taking sides in the issue, I quote the admirably succinct summary from the talk page: Prescriptivism is futile; and Language evolves. Deal with it. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 06:09, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
Very true: "not everyone agrees". In fact, disagreement seems to be pretty common around here. Qrsdogg (talk) 13:13, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Examples of incivility

Hello, Jimmy. Sorry for the interruption, but I think I read here a while ago that you would like to be shown specific examples of editors behaving in an incivil manner. What do you think of this editor's tone? I understand from Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of Wikipedia.org, that we're having trouble keeping new editors. I'm a new editor, and I'll say that reading hostile commentary like the one presented above makes me question whether this is a civil community or not. - Wacomshera (talk) 13:15, 13 April 2011 (UTC) (Sherri)

I think that sort of behavior is unacceptable and immature. Ryulong is a good editor; he could do better on this front.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:24, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
While obviously your comment is correct, a closer inspection of the situation will show a serious problem that I think warrants more attention than the glib "let's be nice to the new editors" suggestion inherent in the OP. The issue is that as Wikipedia ages, natural selection retains two main kinds of editors: disruptive POV pushers who have learned to be civil and stay (just) within community limits, and good editors who have to deal with the former time and time and time again, and then deal with them again and again, without limit. I have no solutions, but the problem of retaining good editors is more pressing than the unachievable aim of converting many of the new editors into featured article writers. Johnuniq (talk) 03:15, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
So the argument is that "good" editors are allowed more disruptive leeway because they are "productive"? Wink wink nudge nudge. --scuro (talk) 03:35, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps you did not notice my "obviously your comment is correct". No one is supporting bad behavior, but there is a meme developing that significant resources need to be applied to avoid the departure of new users, and while of course that is desirable, I am pointing out that there is another even more significant problem. The problem is that the very nature of Wikipedia ensures that certain kinds of problem editors are accumulated—tenacious POV pushers who learn to be reasonably civil can wear down good editors until those editors are driven away, which allows the POV pushers to insert their slants into articles. I am suggesting that as well as considering how to be nice to new users, we need to consider how to reduce the nonsense for good editors. Johnuniq (talk) 23:53, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
It's simple, one standard for all. I think where wikipedia gets in trouble is when it gets sucked in by narrative. "Oh we have these wonderfully productive editors and look what they have to put up with. Why of course their behaviour is excusable because all these bad editors are causing them so much grief. Isn't it normal to blow off steam"? In reality things are rarely as black and white as the narrative commonly makes it out to be. Bad behaviour is bad behaviour period. Enough with the double standards.--scuro (talk) 15:25, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Talk:Magnetic-core memory#Issues of bias and Talk:Magnetic-core memory#Magnetic-core memory History Section, suggested modifications: PLease HELP Me! —Ruud 23:28, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
This is a good example of a bad reaction to an inexperienced editor who is a subject expert (and an industry legend, actually). I put a long comment on the users talk page in an attempt to explain the situation, but it's tricky. Johnuniq (talk) 23:53, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Persistent harassment against Italian users

Hi Jimbo, I request your assistance because some admins systematically ban every account or IP from Italy which edit on Dalmatia and Istria or ex Yugoslavia related articles! What is this: incomprehension or political agenda of those admins? These cases are evidences:

I know Nanazo, Mat003second, Barba Nane, Luigi 28, ANTE RAKELA and Miranovic personally or by e-mail: they are not user Ragusino or PIO! Other IPs are obvious used by many users! If you want, we can meet you: when and where? You decide! Now I request your security against admins user:LessHeard vanU and user:Fainites who have hostility versus all contributions from Italy in topic articles! Cheers,--MILAZERO (talk) 14:39, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I've just blocked this chap as a ducksock of User:Mat003second. Hopefully some editors who aren't socks of banned users can deal with the points he raises about Tito, the Partisans and the Foibe killings if there is substance to them.Fainites barleyscribs 19:39, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
I suspect that Mat003second may prove to be a sock of this account. The interests regarding Tito, the Partisans, Foibe killings and the Republic of Ragusa (better known as Dalmatia today), plus an ability to know where a number of accounts are editing from when claiming they are not sockpuppets - and disregarding Wikipedia:Meatpuppet, is standard modus operandi... LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:58, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia on war or war on Wikipedia

Could please have a look at this. I think that is highly important and i think it is necessary that you get involved in the interest of the public and Wikipedia. IQinn (talk) 03:43, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Iqinn, you really shouldn't try to enlist Jimbo's help when you're afraid you're losing an argument somewhere on Wikipedia. Jimbo's page is, however, watched by a lot of people so it may increase participation at the photo deletion discussion you link to. Indeed, it attracted my participation. I've seen discussions like that one before. I don't understand why some Wikipedians try to argue that photos taken by US government employees/military members depicting possible illegal acts are coprighted photos. Cla68 (talk) 05:11, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Cla68, you shouldn't try to persuade people not to talk to me.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:31, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the advise Cla68. No i did not try to enlist Jimbo because i am afraid of losing an argument. This is simply one of this highly important issues that we need to get right. That includes also that our leadership has knowledge of these kinds of issues where possible wrong decisions could be very damaging to our reputation and the trust people used to have in us. IQinn (talk) 05:39, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
This is just reinforcing my view that on-wiki image uploading is better than Commons, since we have our known defined rules here and not the esoteric rules over on Commons. SilverserenC 05:52, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
That's a good point, although in this specific case I'm not sure if it would have made a difference. Cla68 (talk) 06:48, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Well, it would be easier for me to comment, for one. My account on Commons isn't allowing me to log in, though I guess it's not that surprising, since I haven't used it for a year. And I never assigned an email to it, which makes recovering a password rather difficult. :/ SilverserenC 07:16, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
  • If Der Spiegel requested photo deletion 29-Mar-2011, as noted in this edit claiming Der Spiegel requested the image be removed, then it seems the photo should have been blanked, allowing Google to re-index the image, then deleted a day later, rather than left over 16 more days. If the version from Rolling Stone is needed, then change the ongoing deletion-discussion to consider re-creation from that off-site version of the image, with possible photo-blurring of image. -Wikid77 09:06, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
  • As was pointed out in the discussion itself, Der Spiegel asked for it to be deleted, but they didn't do it on copyright grounds since they don't have any claim to copyright. The copyright belongs to the photographer, who is a member of the army and took it during an active mission. Thus, we have no reason to give any credence to the Der Spiegel request. SilverserenC 09:34, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
  • In fact, you could say that Der Spiegel violating the copyright and using the photo themselves seems to say that the image IS Public Domain. Unless they were purposefully violating copyright laws (which would make them extremely pretentious to be asking us to remove it). SilverserenC 09:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

My take on all of this is that the image is clearly public domain, and I'm really glad that we have such detailed and intricate discussions about such things.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:40, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I would also like to point out one related issue here. When an Image is loaded to Wiki rather than to commons a WikiProject can tag that image as related to the project so that if someone submits it for deletion (or other things) more than just a couple of people have visibility of it. When the image is on commons its much less likely; in fact I have seen many many editors removing WikiProject banners from the Wiki image page that links to the commons image because the image is not in Wiki and in some of their views shouldn't be tagged to a project. --Kumioko (talk) 16:01, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Just a reminder Kumioko, don't abbreviate Wikipedia as Wiki (but I totally agree with the substance of your point). Qrsdogg (talk) 02:36, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
A reminder to you in turn: not everyone agrees with this. Without taking sides in the issue, I quote the admirably succinct summary from the talk page: Prescriptivism is futile; and Language evolves. Deal with it. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 06:09, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
Very true: "not everyone agrees". In fact, disagreement seems to be pretty common around here. Qrsdogg (talk) 13:13, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

New 'fact' template

Sometimes [citation needed] is insufficient. Sometimes even [dubious – discuss] isn't enough. For statements of truthiness which describe an alternative wikiality, even though some may find it nit-picking to provide a specific template, we now have {{nit}} which creates [ not intended to be a factual statement ]. An example of its appropriate use would be:
Wikipedia is 90% wrong.[ not intended to be a factual statement ]
Other examples may be found here.
Flatterworld (talk) 05:54, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately User:Edgar181 found this Template (which was only referenced here) was more important to patrol than such articles as Scott Brown (see below) which actual users read (and roll their eyes at). Priorities. My point had to do with the sudden spikes in popularity of the Wikipedia articles on Jon Kyl and Planned Parenthood (links to Henrik's ever-useful traffic statistics). Flatterworld (talk) 23:35, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
I know some examples

Jimbo Wales is not a Communist[ not intended to be a factual statement ]. --SomeDudeWithAUserName (talk with me!) 23:02, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Somebody watches way too much Colbert Report...Camelbinky (talk) 00:15, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Deemed a Reliable Source for Political Information, According to Study

Wikipedia Deemed a Reliable Source for Political Information, According to Study... in Science Daily http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110414131855.htm

Now it does say that sourced information was correct. Nothing about information in political articles that were not sourced. But two very accurate observations IMHO.. 1) that the more a topic is debated in society,the more it is "battled over" in WP, (hence any one source is less reliable overall) And the second, which falls under "duh" is that encyclopedias are to start with, not finish with. Thats called critical thinking and should be applied everywhere.Thelmadatter (talk) 16:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Do you know how they determined whether a fact was accurate? Did they just verify our article with the cited sources or did they actually fact-check the sources? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:09, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
I dont know. Good bit of critical thinking on your part.Thelmadatter (talk) 17:23, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
"Brown fact-checked biographical information and voting statistics and found very few inaccuracies." - You should have fact-checked before questioning the study! It's been peer-reviewed and published by the American Political Science Association, the researcher (Dr. Brown) did, of course, make those basic checks Jebus989✰ 18:07, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Limiting it to specific facts in biographical information (yes, we can copy from VoteSmart) and voting statistics (yes, we can copy from Secretary of State websites) misses the point. What's questionable is the general tone of the biographical descriptions, and the 'Political positions' section (what's included, what's ignored, how it's 'portrayed') and the 'Campaign' sections which generally appear to be lifted from campaign websites (which is why I've tried to separate those sections from the actual job of being an elected official, such as current Committee assignments, but those have been repeatedly reverted to keep the focus on campaigning). Want a different example? I noticed Scott Brown ('Organizational associations and honors' section) was finally updated today. This clip was added back on 4 January, sitting there for over four months, and was made as 'eye-catching' as possible in formatting as you'll see if you follow the link:

"Scott Brown had a profound impact on national politics in the last year. His surprise victory upended conventional wisdom, inspired a legion of long-shot challenges, and energized Republicans and Democrats alike. Brown’s election showed the country that anything is possible, that no seat or incumbent is safe from challenge. And his maneuvering once in office produced the tiniest rays of bipartisanship in a Senate dark with dysfunction. For all of these reasons, he is our 2010 Bostonian of the Year." —The Boston Globe

The rest of that section wasn't much more 'encyclopedic' in tone. iow, don't be so quick to pat yourselves on the back. (Added: Hang on! That article's up for GA status now, and the reviewer thinks it's just peachy-keen. So apparently 'campaign fluff' is exactly what Wikipedia's looking for. Flatterworld (talk) 23:07, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

See below about more of that - in the case of teh Premiership of Stephen Harper AfD, which just failed because of partisan manipulation, it was outright stated that "We need more articles of this kind" (i.e. partisan tracts/pamphlets) = "more articles on Stephen Harper. Flatterworld's comments weren't here when I began my post, which follows and had an edit conflict or two in the way).Skookum1 (talk) 00:07, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
This is a completely different issue... its WP:RS vs. WP:NPOV Jebus989✰ 08:34, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

My final resignation

- How ironic the topic of the previous section; as reliable source for political information? What a crock. Wikipedia is so easily manipulable by spin doctors and "information management" and "media consultants" masquerading as regular editors and/or also as well-established admins, as is so painfully obvious to me now, that it's beyond roast duck at this point (WP:DUCK) I mean, it's one big fat WP:TURKEY. My final comments at this ANI are likely to have me blocked, permanently, for daring to tell the truth and not holding my tongue in face of obvious political railroading, so I'm posting this note here before that block is in place. It's clear to me now that Wikipedia guidelines and various posturing/wiki-lawyering methods have made it very unlikely that Wikipedia can ever be secure from POV-rigging by political agents, or COI/AUTO by corporate p.r. people etc....admins have power, but little political discernment, and too much obsession with their own soft-spokenness to recognize the value of genuine anger and disgust with what's gotten away with by political manipulators, well-placed or interlopers/SPAs/IPs in some cases. That someone can be castigated for being "biased" for pointing out something is POV/SPAM etc, that's just illogical; that a politician can have a pack of articles planted about himself to advance his career/stature and that be considered anything better than rank SPAM, that's just stupid (see {{Stephen Harper}}). If someone pointing out that something is POV is derided for saying that's so, as if their own POV weren't sufficient to prove the other POV is FALSE - it's just too easy to "game" that and get away with info-murder. The politician in question is known - infamous for - his efforts to control all kinds of media, and also for his campaign's efforts to use/subvert social media and UGC to "correct" it; apparently pointing that out is biased and should be discounted; needless to say an article on Political policies and behaviour of the Harper Tories would be not tolerated, but it's perfectly OK for lengthy political brochures like Economic policy of the Harper government to survive, and NB that was part of a rebranding campaign (where govt departments were ordered to stop using "Government of Canada" in their materials and use "the Harper government" isntead). In the course of the current election campaign, brow-beating of journalists and bureaucrats alike has taken place, police were used to stalk/oust people from Tory press conferences who had been seen photographed with teh Opposition leader, ballot boxes were grabbed by campaign staff (hotly denied but witnessed by many)...the list of anti-democratic behaviour is so long, it's hard to begin....but what's just happend with the AfD referred to in that article is now another notch in the Tory record of trying to control and shut down information/opposition. I'm gone from Wikipedia, I can't stand it anymore, this kind of crap....add on the endless and pointless efforts to rejig the English language in MOSTALK and utterly stupid code improvements that make it more complicated to add information/citations....I'm done, done, done....as you can see I'm in the Top 400 editors, and it would serve you well to know that a lot of that was done whiel i was virtually homeless - often when actually homeless, and always struggling to survive and finding ad hominem riggin of Wikipedia and baiting and other things keeping me addicted/preoccuped here...I could ahve done so much re history, geography , etc but my own sense of principle and duty have kept me trying to keep the political oeprators at bay because they are so easily recognizable. And in many, many cases, such as the current one, it's very clear to me that their are paid political operators at work, but because of teh anonymity of accounts and the Turing-test lies/denials so common, there's no way to bring that to heel, likewise COI editors etc...despite the "no paid editing" rule there's a clear dollar value on what p.r. agencies accomplish here, and in the case of the Harper articles there's an advertising-dollar value to pages that are designed to come up on the first page of googles, and which mirror political press-release content as recycled through partisan "reliable" sources.... while independent news sources are dismissed/ deleted as "fringe" or "POV" and political-research/public-interst blogs bearing facts the major media won't publish are excluded from citability, very doggedly so, by defenders of the mainstream/establishment media who want only their vetted information to be used as "reliable" sources....I'm done with it Jimbo, I don't see a way to fix this rotting hulk...my writing time is better spent without the yoke of teenage admins telling me how to behave, and obvious fact dismissed as POV by people either not sophisticated enough, or who have their own axes to grind and agendas to defend. Being slammed for being "liberal" for wanting the truth presented....well, needless to say it was an (Alberta) conservative who pulled that slag.....I'm not gonna fight a lifetime block of my account, it's worth leaving...what's left of my life (I'm 55 and ahve been here for over five years) I'm going to spend without carpign and badgering and evasion/manipulation from paid operators and egotistical teenagers equipped with admin status.....Done, done, done.....Skookum1 (talk) 00:07, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your time here. Your contributions will be dearly missed. Good luck with your future affairs, Albacore (talk) 00:15, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Forgive my ignorance, but why are you resigning on someone else's talkpage? — Fly by Night (talk) 00:41, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
As an FYI to the Big Boss Man about how corrupted Wikipedia has become; it's become all the things it's not supposed to be (WP:What Wikipedia is not). It's become exploited by information-controllers, who rely on attrition to drive away people who try to confront their obfuscations and obstrutionism; the result is either partisan tracts like those tolerated in that AfD, or neutralized content without real meaning...Skookum1 (talk) 05:23, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Skookum...political articles get political.--MONGO 00:52, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Yeah? So why are all POVs not represented, and anyone that's allegedly "anti-" the topic of the article condescended to and effectively told to go piss off and/or "you don't know how to play with others? The guidelines hand control over to passive-aggressives and wiki-lawyers and are so thinly written that clearly POV material is tolerated, and criticism of it is not - either in talkpages, AfDs or in article content itself. Stevie's "walled garden" has proven to be a walled fortress. "You can go build your own castle" has been the rejoinder. If political articles are inherently political, as indeed they must be, then some method better than what took place here, where people unfamiliar with the political milieu in question took sides with the originating (conservative) POV helped ramrod "no consensus" and since have been taking passive-aggressive potshots at me, people who whine about NPA and being too heated on my part while engaging in personal attack to discredit the issue at hand based on personal/character assassination, not an examination of the content and the true nature of the sources; and chiming along with the POV's defenders as if it's all fine and peachy-keen....to the point where one intervenor at the ANI said "why are the Wikipedia Canada people agreeing with Skookum1"? WHY? Because they agree that the articles are unabashed SOAP and SPAM and recognizably part of an aggressive and heavily funded media machine the government in question is very notable for; more notable for that than its environmental policies, in fact; the only Canadian defenders of the POV material in question can clearly be shown to have a history of pro-Tory edits, though they all deny that and one has challenged me to "prove it"....which means going over ALL their contributions, more F*****g waste of time....the other Canadians agreeing with the AfD were discredited by the non-Canadian admins in fact (see that ANI), and again try and blame it on me "why do they agree with him? They're endorsing his conduct" What they're doing is endorsing the reasons I started the AfD, the articles in question I'd tried to raise for discussion/chagne repeatedly but was ignored, or shunted aside, until the election campaign was underway and the "Harper government" rebranding agenda in the headlines....they understood my anger, my outrage, my frustration...they understood the issues and the context (which the ToryCanadians refuse to admit are there, but that's also typical of the Tory denial-machine).....Wikipedia has been "played" by the Harper information machine, and those from outside who say thats' "biased" are clueless children....I still am aghast that WikiProject Canada opinions were dismissed on a major content-issue re Canadian politics by people who know nothing about Canadian politics....what a crock of elephant dung.Skookum1 (talk) 05:23, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
So, essentially, you're saying that editors like User:Klingoncowboy4 and User:JForget, the users that created the articles you objected to as splits from the main Stephen Harper article, are a "part of an aggressive and heavily funded media machine". Somehow, I find that unlikely. SilverserenC 05:34, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
More moving the goalposts huh? The "X Policy" articles date to 2006, when King Stephen ascended to power, and were nearly as long then - at the start of his reign - as they are now, only embellished with even more recycled PMO/CP press releases and friendly "reliable source" content....my mistake to have included them with the so-called "Premiership" article (renamed in mid-AfD to Prime Ministership of Stephen Harper which you didn't have a problem with but went after GoodDay who renamed equivalent UK articles); likewise they date back to the start of Harper's regime (geez, I was even criticized for using the term "regime" even though that's commonplace in Canadian politics, as is also "reign", partly because of His behaviour/attitude); they're the "walled garden" that Franamax described, as noted here more like a walled fortress, defended by guard dogs. And yes, "Harper government" if you bothered to read those articles linked in the AfD, is very definitely a sell-job/rebranding campaign and those articles date from its inception. "Environmental politics in the Harper era", "Foreign policy debates in teh Harper era" would have been valid time-frame topics, but as they are they are written with a Steve-at-the-centre gist; their entire intent was to use Wikipedia freespace to circulate the Tory agenda on those topic areas; this is obvious to the non-Tory Canadians who agreed with me; they were ignored in the course of the so-called "consensus" (which has all too often come to mean respecting non sequitur "votes" liek "they seem neutral to me, and they're well-cited". They're obviously political pamphlets and SPAM in origin and purpose it's nauseating to anyone but the smug Tory-supporters who've been making personal attacks at me (unchallenged and unadmonished) and you, apparently an American, were led down the path of that walled garden without smelling the manure under the roses, like the Canadians who were aghast at them. "Work on them and make them less POV" or whatever- too much work, too much agenda/structure as defined by one political agenda, don't you get it? They were designed to be un-fixable, too much work; even basic wordings and logics in them are Tory-skewed to the point where they're unrepairable and any attempts to do major changes would have been met with vociferous resistance by the Tory-defenders....who yes, I don't know the history of thsoe admins, but the Tories have HUGE financial and professional resources and it's not inconceivable that they were "planted" long ago...anonymity of accounts is a wondrous thing....but when somebody who specializes in comic books all of a sudden starts coming into political articles with guns blazing....well, it's clear they were just messing around with hobby articles until called for. REsolute, as is typical of conservative activists, derided me for claiming there is a "conspiracy"....actually that conspiracy is well documented, even in the Canadian mainstream media (when not directly part of it, as often they are).....the role and intent of these articles were obvious to other Canadians who agreed with me; but you, as an outsider, decided that all those pretty citations were enough to validate them, even though teh bulk of those citations were just recycled press releases in very recognizable Tory/p.r. machine language.....Skookum1 (talk) 05:50, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
It's a really REALLY REALLY good idea to avoid topics on Wikipedia that you feel strongly about in RL. It's always a real temptation to edit them, but you're honestly better off leaving those articles to the rest of the world to maintain. It's best to leave this kind of POV issue to those who don't have strong feelings about the topic, as hard as that often is to do. Qrsdogg (talk) 05:57, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
I can only note that when I went to see what all the outrage is about, in the articles Economic policy of the Harper government and Environmental policy of the Harper government, I thought that the talk page would show me the substance of the debate. But, Skookum1, there are no discussions on the talk pages of those articles at all That's surely the place to start before going into a frenzy of outrage.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:12, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Because they were part of the same bundle of irredeemable Harper-spam, there was little point in discussing them piecemeal as if separate items, when really they are chapters from the same pamphlet/brochure/press release compendium. I have a busy real-world day coming (or two) but will dig around in WP:CANTALK and find the times they've been raised there for "what to do". Thet main issue the AfD was launched is that they are cross-border advertising in the context of a heavily-information-war election campaign now underway (the election's May 2), and inherently have a dollar value to the Harper campaign (which is non-stop and has been going on since he was elected, and since he started the "Government of Canada" -> "Harper government" rebranding campaign). They've stood through previous elections since most of us didn't know they were there, and general distaste for this man and his politics mean most of us didn't bother to read them; partly because they don't link anywhere and were a "walled garden" from the start. I'm aggravated at the incredible posturing by non-Canuck admins that critics of these articles can be dismissed because they have a "liberal bias" (which most Canadians do, clearly that admin has a conservative bias..."liberal" is not a dirty word in this country, for one thing), and that WPCANADA people's views on CAnadian political articles should be ignored. The CANTALK discussions were short, sometimes, because we were all nonplussed at what they were, and how much work it would be to edit/change/deal with it, and we all knew what the political hoo-hah would be; mahny of those discussions are now archived, because they were discussed long before now, which was one of the comments in the AfD; just not on their own talkpages because it would have been a fractured conversation. I'll dig around in CANTALK archives when I get a chance....as you can see from my last night's posts, I"m really really angry and disappointed that there is not more political perspicacity among those empowered to make decisions on political articles, or more pointedly to recognize political spam/POV when they see it. Even those of the CANTALKers (other than their diehard shrug-supporters) who say that they're only POV and so not deletable for that alone also aver that they need lots of work to turn into genuine NPOV, non-SPAM political sell-job hype....BTW thanks for your response, I know you're a busy man....and one of the first in this affair to treat me like a human being and not be so damned dismissive and condescending....Skookum1 (talk) 17:26, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes, please take some well-deserved days of wikibreak, but don't quit when you seem to know what could be changed to avoid these problems. People like you are needed to advise, "If the policy is changed to state this, then a new loophole will open here instead." Many of us can help change policies, but we are so distracted by other issues (such as why there was no article to cover "U.N. ambassador" for 10 years). We also need a policy to ensure forensic data is allowed in crime articles, rather than removed as claims of WP:OR or POV of inconvenient sourced facts. So, yes, this is a multi-month problem to fix, but take some break time and then return to help craft solutions. You could also start a WP essay "WP:POV problems in political articles" or such to explain the problems and recommend policies (or edit restrictions) to thwart the POV-pushing. -Wikid77 17:33, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Not sure y all this is here - but since it is - i want to help point people in the right direction - The Main (most recent) talk was at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Premiership of Stephen Harper that started Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 12#UNDUE and SPAM re "Harper government".Moxy (talk) 15:53, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
I notice that a main point is not being considered here. All of the information in these articles used to be in the Stephen Harper article. The two users I listed above directly split the information off into their own articles because the main one was getting too long. There was no forking here, it was a direct transfer of info, a classic use of the split protocol. SilverserenC 22:33, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Jonathan Swift would be proud. Collect (talk) 16:09, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Look, I'm not Canadian and I generally get sent over to that building when crossing the border, so I can speak with neutrality. And knowledge, since I have four FAs on Canadian politics (one Progressive Conservative, one Liberal, a Liberal-Conservative, and an election). But it is simple. Do not use your beliefs, political, religious, or otherwise in editing. Check them at the door.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:41, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Skoom, I suggest you read WP:WallofText. The more you type, the less people read.--RaptorHunter (talk) 05:01, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I believe that POVs are valuable and can work together productively. But what is crucial is that people choose to express their POV by going out and scouring the world for articles to summarize so that they can better explain their party's POV - rather than removing text and AfD-ing articles that they don't like. In the end the reader should know why each side believes what it does and why they disagree with the other. Wnt (talk) 08:15, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Skookum1 - your post/resignation was quite enlightening. Thanks and good luck but I'm hoping you might reconsider as Wikid77's suggested. It is somewhat discouraging to note that the issues that present themselves in the Harper Govt articles are hauntingly reminiscent of those presented here and seem to be endemic in the editing process of Wiki itself and not isolated to a few instances; it is regrettable to to be losing an experienced voice that isolates then elocute's the issue as well as your letter does. Some are just inclined to 'gang up' it would seem and there's little to be done about it. As per truejustice.org, one of 2 of the most biased sites that clamor for conviction and disparage the characters of those involved and those who don't share their views so often and so vehemently they've come to be known as "hate sites": "It also seems clear that Jimmy’s initial accusations of censorship and abuse of administrator powers (committed by what might be called either “anti-Knox” or “normal” editors, depending on your perspective, a clutch of whom have resigned in response) are never going to be substantiated...Actually, Jimmy has been back to the article talkpage. While I’m here…...maybe truejustice (.org) has the rights to an image or two that could be released under CC-BY or similar for use on Wikipedia. Just a thought. Posted by Wiki Editor FormerIP on 04/01/11 at 07:54 PM | #/" "Thanks Former IP. A lot of images here are our own and we certainly could check this out. Anyone who goes to Google Images and enters any key name in the case will find that a large number of images have been thumbnailed by Google from this site. Posted by Peter Quennell (site creator/administrator) on 04/01/11 at 08:53 PM | #" "The Open Letter published by “Bruce Fisher” was swallowed line, hook and sinker, and Wales entered the Murder of Meredith Kercher article rather like an elephant in a china shop, essentially accusing established editors who had laboured for years to try and maintain the article of having conspired to suppress and censor other points of view. His point is aided, obviously, by the scores of media coverage generated by the Knox PR campaign, in publications and reports matching the letter of a 'Reliable Sources'. See, there is a loophole in the policy in the sense that anything appearing on CNN Reliable because CNN is a network with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. As CNN’s own disclaimers state opinions offered by people appearing on their talk shows are explicitly not endorsed by CNN. But the loophole in policy does’t (sic) address this nuance, and this is mostly where Wales is trying to give much more prominence to the Knox story. Fortunately, Jimbo is also increasingly seen as out of touch with the rest of the Wikipedia community, and in practice enjoys no particular privileges. Concerns have been raised on his manner of refusing to hear to the other side of the story. Gwaendar has been a wikipedia editor for several years. Posted by Gwaendar on 03/29/11 at 08:36 AM in Reporting on the case". "Assuming for a moment..the article could have done a better job representing the pro-Knox media coverage in the US the three contributors who have hurt the Knox side of the story most are PhanuelB, PilgrimRose, Zlykinskyja, Yoyohooyo and Wikid77. Their absolutely obnoxious attitude is the primary reason why every contributor who wanted, in good faith, to expand the coverage, was not really made welcome..Jimbo Wales does the same thing. Never since his intervention has he used the prestige attached to his name to ask for people to stop attacking each other. Smears posted on the talk page against the prosecutor, the Kercher family, and attacks against users who have left Wikipedia are left standing - Jimbo turns a blind eye to the toxic editing climate his intervention has restored. Posted by Gwaendar on 03/31/11 at 08:34 AM | #" The fallacy of a well-funded "media machine" repeats itself as well only in the case linked above it is responsible for creating the bias in favor of the defendants, (at least where any exists). Regardless of the efficacy of ones patience, best efforts and intentions, navigating the trenches of those so strangely attached to any POV is daunting.Fancourt (talk) 09:41, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

  • Jimbo, I will refute those remarks from Fancourt. The above section contains a lot of wrong information (as posted in this edit by Fancourt 09:36, 18 April 2011). First, in late March 2011, Jimbo asked people to stop being hostile in Talk:MoMK and expanded those remarks in April, clearly posting as "Jimbo_Wales" and "used the prestige attached to his name to ask for people to stop attacking each other" (multiple times). As being User:Wikid77, I can also refute the totally false claims that "three contributors who have hurt the Knox side of the story most are PhanuelB, PilgrimRose, Zlykinskyja, Yoyohooyo and Wikid77" (not true), because I remember I did not post any obnoxious remarks, nor did Zlykinskyja who only noted that 2 American editors had been blocked from editing, and PhanuelB only claimed that sourced text was being removed from the article, plus he was almost always very courteous to other editors. In fact, the 3 of us tried to expand the information which refuted 30? false rumors about Amanda Knox bleaching the crime scene (no evidence of bleaching), or never crying (the police, her sister and Sollecito said she wept with them), or the sex-game rumor (Italian: gioco erotico) when no lotions, photos, toys, restraints, potions or even wine were found in the murder room. In fact, the evidence even noted the victim was almost totally dressed when stabbed. So, falsely claiming 3 WP editors had an "absolutely obnoxious attitude" (not true) is just a remote violation of WP:NPA, by using another website to smear English-Wikipedia usernames. Meanwhile, the truth is, I was blocked for 24 hours after I made a quip that anyone working on the article who doesn't know Knox liked Sollecito because he looked like teenage Harry Potter, needs to get out more. Another admin even posted an objection to using a block in that circumstance. Anyway, the recent attacks against Jimbo, when he has merely asked questions focused on editing at Talk:MoMK, are just more false rumors, trying to smear his name, using other websites as the forum. The general advice about Internet usage is: do not respond to trolling and those people will eventually get bored and leave. Most cyberspace users know to ignore outrageous claims, and Wikipedia has policies to block users who repeat malicious smears. -Wikid77 10:28, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
I am afraid there is some confusion here. Fancourt was not making the comments that Wikid77 is refuting. I looks like Fancourt was actually highlighting negative comments made by others. BruceFisher (talk) 22:51, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Interesting article on Wikipedia's difficulties with fringe topics

Hi Jimbo -- it might be worth your time to take a look at the article on pages 2-4 of Skeptical Adversaria, the quarterly newsletter of the Association for Skeptical Inquiry. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 22:36, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

That's helpful. So, we should all go look at Levitation, Electronic Voice Phenomenon, Integral Theory, and Neurolinguistic Programming for one-sidedness and fix any of it that tries to represent it as a proven thing. SilverserenC 22:55, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
"Wikipedia has an administration which is supposed to be neutral, but it was long ago infiltrated both by members of the pseudoscience establishment and sceptic groups (prominent among early members of the administration were both antiscientologists, who are a sort of sceptic, and members of Ayn Rand’s ‘objectivist‘ cult, who are not). Regular battles in the rank and file are mirrored by intense secret battles in the administration, including the powerful ‘arbitration committee’, who are the final court of appeal. A number of editors, most of them with academic credentials, were banned between 2005-2008 by a powerful member of the administration (later a member of the Arbitration Committee) who apparently had a commercial interest in ‘Neurolinguistic Programming’ - a lucrative variety of pseudoscience whose business model is selling the methods of curing people of their emotional and existential problems, rather than selling the cure itself."
._. Is any of that true or are they just making stuff up? SilverserenC 22:55, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Ah! - this may be that well known conspiracy theory that's been around for a long time regarding NLP. Some people think it's a powerful cult.Fainites barleyscribs 23:02, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Huh, I didn't know about this. Where's the Intense Secret Battle Noticeboard? --JaGatalk 23:24, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I think I understand now. You see, the ArbCom member probably acquired a rare and prized audiotape of a therapy session with User:Genial 23 for $1500, and hence became a mere meatpuppet of the neurolinguistics movement.[24] Nothing is true, everything is permitted. Even a race to seize (and sell?) the coolest username on WP. For the fairest! ;) Wnt (talk) 00:28, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
(ec)This complaint is wrong in some ways, such as in saying that proof is required to remove unsourced information. But those charges at the end are weird. From a Web search it looks like it comes from a Wikipedia Review campaign to claim that an ArbCom member has a COI with neurolinguistic programming.[25] FT2 has made some singlehanded changes to major policies that I disagree with, but it sounds like the real lunacy is over at WR, and this newsletter swallowed it without any critical thinking at all. And Wikipedia admin accounts on sale for $1-2000? Really? I hope not! Wnt (talk) 23:08, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Note: Based on evidence below and in the next few headings I am now quite convinced that the allegation against FT2 was not an unbiased report, but was motivated by a direct conflict on Wikipedia with this newsletter article's author. Further explanation is hindered by WP:OUTING, but I wish to make it clear that I believe this allegation against FT2 should not be given serious consideration. Wnt (talk) 21:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
That's a really old allegation against FT2. The arbitration when the sockfarm was busted was about 5 years ago I think. I fell out with the same NLP obsessed sockmaster who started an account with an NLP group in what he thought was my real name in which it was claimed I was a practitioner, sent a link to all the anti-pseudoscience editors and then raised it on WPR. Fainites barleyscribs 23:18, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
"This complaint is wrong in some ways, such as in saying that proof is required to remove unsourced information." Yes, you're right, of course, but I think this may be the author (inaccurately) alluding to WP:CONSENSUS. Once article text has been established, you have to gain consensus (prove) that it should be changed. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:27, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
There are a number of things that the article gets wrong, but there is one very important thing that in my experience it gets right: WP:FRINGE carries in practice so little weight that editors who work in accordance with it have only minimal advantage over editors who systematically violate it. The result is that many editors (including me) feel that trying to weed out bogus articles is a waste of time. Looie496 (talk) 00:15, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Indeed, Its a serious issue I think the Author hit the nail on the head with lack of motivation to combating it as the huge barrier. I dont have the time to track White nationalist who spends making 200 edit a day furthering his assertion that black and Hispanics are inferior in every way to white people. Much less waste megabytes of talk space arguing him down from his pulpit. We seee this reoccuringly in the fringe section... True believers that wont abide by policies of NPOV. Trying to get something done about is huge barrier too... Trying to show diffs of Civil pov pushing is difficult. We can enforce issues if its Editwarring personal attacks and such but when some one is harming our encyclopedic content but is doing it nicely is near impossible. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 01:31, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't know about cabals and don't follow the various science related discussions, but we do have a general problem with fringe theories. The problem is partly because our five pillars say nothing about balance across subject areas but rather focuses on reliable sourcing. Fringe theories do come with sources, often 'reliable', and it is relatively easy to cobble together something reasonable looking from a few 'reliably sourced' fringe writers so that we get articles like Race and crime or United States and state terrorism. Having separate articles on fringe topics raises their importance and makes them appear more credible than the really are. --rgpk (comment) 02:07, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
There are editors over at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration Enforcement sanction handling/Proposed decision#An overdue comment on bullying who seem to be asserting that efforts to enforce FRINGE amount to bullying.   Will Beback  talk  04:45, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
And there's also Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Noleander where the Arbs are going rather too far (in principle, not in sanction) to protect certain groups from criticism. I think it's a good thing for fringe views to be documented - we just need to make sure that they are not misrepresented as mainstream beliefs, and that sources aren't twisted, data deleted etc. to improperly serve the editor's POV. Wikipedia's proper role is not to maintain a quarantine against bad beliefs, but to analyze and explain these wrong ideas to help stimulate a lasting societal immunity. Wnt (talk) 06:35, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Okay, sorry, sorry, I didn't mean for that to be outing. Can I just say then, without any links, that that article in the Skeptical Adversaria was written by a member of the Wikipedia Review, so any information in it should be taken with an extreme grain of salt? SilverserenC 19:34, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
  • You could, but it's worth pointing out that that describes 50% of the arbitration committee, possibly the majority and certainly a significant proportion of Wikipedia's admins, who knows how many regular editors, and–er–yourself. – iridescent 19:40, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
  • There's a big difference between those who post to WR occasionally, and those who do so habitually or in place of editing Wikipedia. Regarding this issue, the WR tendency is to complain so they find fault whether WP editors are adding fringe material or deleting it.   Will Beback  talk  21:13, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
(ec)This is an example of Wikipedia's censoriousness run amuck. A majority of editors and administrators should not have to go join a forum hostile to Wikipedia in order to frankly discuss what is wrong with third-party criticisms of Wikipedia. Nor should discussions be instantly "revdeled" to conceal information instantly available to anyone who searches an article's author's name on Google or on Wikipedia Review. There was a time when WR and Wikisposure sounded like kooks and cranks out to bad-mouth the project - now I feel like their opinions have the force of law. Wnt (talk) 21:14, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Now hold up, We all agree that this guy obviously was influenced by Anti-Wikipedia sites but there are legitimate observations between the mud slinging material.
  • The observation that removing bad material from any of the fringe topics is painfully hard when arguing with SPAs
  • We dont patrol all the obnoxious material that accumulates in the fringe topic areas and purge it
  • most of our volunteers dont have the back ground to accutely diagnose issues as Psudeo Science and fringe articles are relitavly easy to develop.
These problems are one's we have long known and this article correctly points them out. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 21:15, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I agree. Regardless of the background, the contents of the article accurately depict several of the problems Wikipedia faces dealing with this type of material.   Will Beback  talk  21:59, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
More needs to be done to make sure UNDUE is followed more strictly...fringe issues, conspiracy theories, rumors, innuendo, gossip and even lunacy should always take a backseat to the known evidence.--MONGO 00:18, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
In the short time I spent over at Talk:September 11 attacks, I thought we had a pretty good lid on it there; now if we could take that no-nonsense mentality over to other places, we'd be good. Just my thought. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:01, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm beginning to despair over fringe stuff in our archaeology articles, eg Measuring rod and Megalithic Yard. Because so few editors are interested in such articles, it's easy for fringe stuff to take over. Dougweller (talk) 04:38, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

"Right to be forgotten"

I think that the present conflict[26] between Google and the Spanish Data Protection Agency bears watching. The Spanish are seeking input from the EU, and could in the worst case become a model for EU countries. Many of the 90 people who the Spanish want censored from the Google results would not be affected the same way by Wikipedia - hopefully people would add information about a lawsuit's dismissal, and a principal known only for public urination wouldn't be notable. But Wikipedians might believe that someone who murders but gets off on temporary insanity is notable, and shouldn't be allowed to move on with his life until the victim moves on with his.

Wikipedia might be a natural ally for Google, since balanced articles here, appearing high in the rankings, can offset the impact of raw hits on news headlines. And Google's deletions, if forced, would hinder our research. In the end, the way to deal with petty prejudice by human resources functionaries is to fight for equal and widespread access to employment, rather than to impose censorship. The latter approach only helps those who have actually done things wrong, not those who simply have an appearance that bigots don't like. Wnt (talk) 17:10, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

The linked news article states that Google "almost always refuses to preserve the integrity of its index." Is that a misstatement of some kind? -- Ed (Edgar181) 17:32, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
I assume so. I think you have to have a typo somewhere, or it wouldn't be an AP wire. Wnt (talk) 17:34, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
If google loses this fight, I assume they'll only censor google.es, but we'll see. It's a bit absurd. It'd be absolutely impossible to have a law like that in the US, what with the First Amendment and all, but in European countries, the situation is less clear, despite a generally very strong situation regarding freedom of speech.
It's worth noting that the problem people are complaining about in this case actually is a real and complicated problem. In the past, if you were convicted of some minor offense, that would be part of the public record, but there was no google, and it would not be the first thing people would find out when they first met you. That's a side-effect of the Internet that I don't particularly regard as a great thing, and a good argument for naming your kid with a very common name.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:39, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Indded - I must send you some new photos of Yahoo Drupal (now nearly 5) and Youtube Facebook windows-complaints (so charming in her little outfits). Seriously, Jimbo makes a good point but surely we are able to manage this through the WP:BLP policy - or at least a version of that policy with some strengthening if needed? Pedro :  Chat  21:42, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure how well "Youtube Facebook windows-complaints" would fare in trademark court, but I don't imagine Jimbo would have any problem* naming his next child "New South" *other than from his wife of course. user:Thryduulf failing to resist the joke 00:29, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
This issue has been quite on top these days in many countries in Europe, and it can have a domino effect on the entire internet. It seems that if a person decides to want to erase its name from the internet every website will have to cooperate and clean that guy´s record, with the penalty that if not, it´s page´s will be blocked from free access until they don´t agree to. At least that is what has been on the public opinion. There is some wish to adopt a law to EU, rather than particular countries. But, I´m not sure how will this affect WP, cause rather than notable people, this seems to be directed towards the info about normal people. FkpCascais (talk) 01:05, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Why I resign as editor

The reason I resign as editor is that I am unable to cope with the “admin culture” in Wikipedia. Note that I am not saying that there is a conspiracy. Certainly, there are groups of editors who gang up on individual editors, but such behavior does not constitute a conspiracy, let alone an “admin conspiracy”. I repeat, there is no conspiracy.

The “admin culture” pervades all levels of Wikipedia and is essentially an attitude of maintaining ‘law and order’ without regard to the human person of the editor. It shows itself in being ‘politically correct’, both positively and negatively. It also shows as being pedantic and giving more adherence to the letter than to the spirit of the ‘rules’. To be sure, those who concern themselves with those ‘rules’ have precious little time and there are those who are difficult to handle, but that should never go to the detriment of the individual editor.

Note that comparable complaints have been made at the March 2011 Update talk-page.

I do like Wikipedia, I do not like the “admin culture” in the Wikipedia. Being here has been quite stressful at times and I find my health more important than improving Wikipedia. Consequently, I resign as editor. I will not check my talk-page. Anybody wishing to say something to me can email.

-- Hpvpp - 06:22, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Adminship is no big deal. There is no class system, classism, or classist behavior on Wikipedia. Administrators are normal community members with a few extra buttons, and don't behave any differently from non-admins.
The Earth is in fact a cube. Staring at the sun is good for your eyes. Covering your body with salt water is an excellent and pain free way to treat rashes and burns.
The first set of statements is no less false than the second. The day that the community recongizes this is the day that changes can start to be made. Until then, invulnerable acting elitist admins, which, mind you are a minority of the admins here, will continue to drive off users. Sven Manguard Wha? 07:03, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
While I don't dispute that "invulnerable acting elitist admins [...] will continue to drive off users." may sometimes happen, I don't believe that is what happened here. This user unknowingly created an article by copying text from another Wikipedia article which turned out to be a copyright violation of a scholarly publication from 2003. He removed the copyvio notice from the article, clamied that it wasn't a copyvio because he changed things like "e.g." to "such as", claimed that the deletion of the article as a copyright violation was an abuse of WP:IAR and didn't follow the WP:BRD cycle, and finally left when his attempt at an ArbCom case about this was declined 10/0. Fram (talk) 07:59, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Ah well. So this one is a false positive. Still it's nice to know that I'm not the only one who thinks that a small group of socially dysfunctional admins are doing more damage than they are worth and making the whole of adminship look worse off. Now we just need to figure out a way to change things. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:22, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Mind you, there are also a small number of high profile socially disfunctional non-admin editors with the same problems and effects. Restricting this to admin vs. non-admin is perhaps not the best context to see this in, although it may be more prevalent among admins. Fram (talk) 19:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
I am well aware of that. This was just the piece that came up in this situation. I am of the strong opinion that the entire community suffers from these problems. My less ranty more consicse problem summary is at NYB's talk page. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:33, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Re Hpvpp: The ANI discussion is here[27]; the ARB request[28]. Jon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.137.36.228 (talk) 15:30, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Outrageous allegation by director of Wikimedia UK

There was an argument having nothing to do with me; there was an apology. The matter seems closed.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Please ask Martin Poulter to take down the allegation he made here. It is blatantly untrue. I have already tried to contact him by various means. Poulter has written "Ed [Buckner] claims to suffer from mental health problems. I have no personal experience of whether he does or not, and it may well be naive of me to assume his real name is the one he’s given. He blames Wikipedia to an extent for these apparent problems and has written that the Foundation that runs Wikimedia should provide counselling to him."

I said nothing of the sort. Please ask him to remove these absurd allegations. An apology from the WMF might be helpful. 109.148.152.127 (talk) 23:11, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

He does not represent the WMF in any way, and, we cannot sanction his off-wiki activities.Jasper Deng (talk) 23:13, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
The WM Foundation is not responsible for its autonomous individual chapters, and this complaint does not belong here. 94.174.34.193 (talk) 23:14, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
They are funded by and supported by and claim to represent the WMF. Please ask him to take down these absurd allegations.109.148.152.127 (talk) 23:15, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

This page says "Wikimedia chapters are independent organizations founded to support and promote the Wikimedia projects within a specified geographical region (country). Like the Wikimedia Foundation, they aim to "empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally". More than 30 chapters currently exist in nearly every continent of the world." The claim that they are independent does not amount to their actually being independent. Poulter claims to speak for Wikipedia. 109.148.152.127 (talk) 23:19, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

They are not funded by the WMF, but by local contributions, and claim only to represent a local interest group. You remedy, if there is one, lies elsewhere but certainly not on Wikipedia. Meta, perhaps, but not here, since it does not impact upon the conduct of Wikipedia. 94.174.34.193 (talk) 23:21, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
I have seen the accounts for the WMF and these include funding for local chapters. What is your authority for speaking here? 109.148.152.127 (talk) 23:34, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
In any case, complaints like this should not be sent to our founder's talk page - it would be better to directly contact the Foundation. I saw your comment, and frankly, I don't find it any better than his comment (assuming you were the one who posted the initial comment). That comment also says some libel against our founder ("Jimmy Wales, is a pathological liar and a manipulator").Jasper Deng (talk) 23:22, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
I did not post the initial comment and had nothing to do with it. Why is Poulter bringing my name into it? 109.148.152.127 (talk) 23:26, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

<--- This says that chapters receive grants. Why is the WMF paying grants to organisations that are accusing me in public, without a shred of evidence, of being mentally ill? Who do I actually have to complain to?109.148.152.127 (talk) 23:38, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia has no direct control over the actions or speech of its members or of the members of organizations linked to it. Wikipedia itself cannot be held legally or even morally responsible for what this person has said, and certainly does not have the power to compel this person to delete his comment. As for the charge of libel, I certainly don't know British law, but from an American law perspective, you don't have a leg to stand on here. Nothing here comes close to the threshold set by Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc.. My advice is for you to ignore this. Your full name isn't included, so no one really knows who you are. Further, I'd advise that anyone that participates at WR should not be surprised that people at WP will respond coldly towards you. Whatever good WR could have done, it's a hater's playground now. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:06, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict) One, if I say your user name, it'll be oversighted, so not bothering with that, but just be glad I haven't blocked you for ban evasion (because that would be an abusive attempt to silence you, right?). Two, that's Poulter's personal blog, not a WMF or WMF chapter site, so the Foundation has no authority over what's posted there. It's hosted by Wordpress, you'll have to complain to them. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 01:11, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Actually, his full name is included, Sven. Also, Sven, I don't know if you've quite kept up with the latest WR threads, but I'd advise you to read the posts by this user over the past few weeks before jumping in on this. It might provide a shred of context. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 01:11, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
I rarely read WR, I don't know the context of this. My point is that WR is a very hated organization here. Can they do good? Yes. At the same time they are the playground for banned users with grudges, and it shows. I tend to take anything coming from WR with a heavy heaping of salt. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:19, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

What has Wikipedia Review to do with it?

I don't see what the Wikipedia Review has to do with it. I am the author of the article published [29] last week in Skeptical Adversaria. That publication has nothing to do with Wikipedia Review. The article was mildly critical about Wikipedia, arguing that 'crowdsourcing' theory doesn't work very well on fringe topics.

I was invited by the editor of Skeptical Adversaria to take place in a discussion on the ASKEnet forum, which is a members-only group. This is also nothing to to with Wikipedia Review. Poulter stated he agreed with my factual claims, but objected to my personal recommendation to disengage from Wikipedia (which was simply that: a personal recommendation). I made some remarks about how editing on fringe topics can be difficult for certain people, including myself. Then without warning, Poulter makes a comment on his blog that "Ed claims to suffer from mental health problems. " I said nothing of the sort. I can only suppose that this is an attempt to discredit what I wrote, by claiming, or implying I am mentally ill. I would like him to retract that. I am sure there is no legal basis, but it would be simple politeness. Perhaps those with influence, including Jimbo, could persuade him to do that.

Poulter advertises on his blog, and on the private forum, that he is a Wikipedia contributor and a board member of Wikimedia UK. I therefore don't think it unreasonable to be making a complaint here. 109.148.155.157 (talk) 08:32, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

It's unreasonable in the sense that you have now clearly outed yourself as a banned user. I suggest you use the Contact us details of Wikimedia UK if you wish to make a complaint Jebus989✰ 08:57, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
No I have outed myself as Edward Buckner. 109.148.155.157 (talk) 09:35, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Are you Ed Buckner? Did you write The Logic Museum? Did you start a thread about your article at Wikipedia Review? Policy prevents me from speaking specifically about your identity on Wikipedia, but it sounds to me like you told readers of the newsletter, posing as an impartial reporter, that a Wikipedia administrator (presumably User:FT2 as I inferred from WR above) was improperly banning scholars and had a COI with neurolinguistic programming - but in fact you were someone who had run into a direct personal dispute with him immediately before being banned. That kind of undisclosed personal conflict of interest doesn't seem right from a journalist, though no doubt it occurs now and then even at the most prestigious newspapers. Wnt (talk) 09:10, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
I am Edward Buckner, and I am the publisher of the Logic Museum. Any other identity is irrelevant to my complaint here. I strongly resent the allegation that Poulter made about mental illness, mentioning my RL name. On the COI you imply, I was never banned for my cleanup work on NLP articles. (I believe I was blocked once, but the block was immediately overturned. A number of sceptical editors were blocked or banned, in the period (2005-8) that I mention). That issue is not relevant here - if you want to discuss the NLP problem, or anything else, please email me at the Logic Museum - my contact details are here 109.148.155.157 (talk) 09:28, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Very, very, sorry to everyone about this. I have removed the statement from my blog, because of Ed's clarification. His legal threat to me was not necessary. I read Ed as making claims about his experience of Wikipedia editing, and asking the Foundation to do a particular thing about these outcomes for himself and other users. I disagree strongly with what he said, and in fact it seemed so extreme that it reflects badly on his more general point. I used this as context when someone used my personal blog for another WR participant's attack on Wikipedia's "corrupt" admins which attempted to smear three individuals. Since Ed was making his complaints against Wikipedia publicly, and was posting extracts from the mailing list on Wikipedia Review, I took this as part of a discussion that he wanted to have in public. Ed, I published my interpretation of your statement on my own personal blog, which is totally unaffiliated with either the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikimedia UK. You now have a full retraction and apology, and the matter would now be totally hidden from view if you had not made it public via this page and my talk page. MartinPoulter (talk) 11:18, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

In response to a comment upthread, I claim "to speak for Wikimedia UK" in very specific circumstances. The mailing list and blog under discussion here are clearly not those circumstances. Ed, your complaint is with me, not these organisations. MartinPoulter (talk) 11:23, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
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