Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-02-17/Blog

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I nominate NewYorkBrad. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:34, 19 February 2016 (UTC).

No offense to Scalia's legal mind but I had to laugh at the idea of Antonin Scalia making any concept "sexy". That's not an adjective that I would ever believe applied to him or his role on the Supreme Court. And that has to do with his personality, not his gender. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:44, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

I was never sure whether Jabba the Hutt was male or female. It seemed impolite to ask. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:43, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: If you go by the old Expanded Universe (now Legends), all Hutts are hermaphrodites capable of reproducing asexually. jcgoble3 (talk) 07:31, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I am often confronted with out-of-the-blue edits on BLPs announcing promotions, appointments or deaths. Usually I wait them out; a media release normally follows in a matter of hours. I guess we have to balance Wikipedia being first with the news against the danger of a short-term hoax. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:43, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Hawkeye7, we alluded to that problem in an earlier blog post, "Millions read Bowie biography following sudden death." Specifically: "Bowie had been subjected to a number of death hoaxes in the months leading up to Blackstar's release, so when his official social media profiles announced his sudden passing, the information was treated with scepticism. For the most part, editors elected to wait for verified sources to confirm the accuracy of the information coming from social media; the edits were made permanent minutes after Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones, confirmed the news on Twitter: “Very sorry and sad to say it’s true, I’ll be offline for a while. Love to all.”" Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I think I alluded to it in this post as well. It's important to note that Wikipedians take a very dim view on hoaxes. As Bowie's death broke, there was something of an edit war on the article as Twitter was ablaze with rumour and hearsay (not helped, of course, by the fact Bowie was already the target of death hoaxes on virtually a daily basis). Jones' tweet was definitely what tipped it from "probably a hack" to "wow, this is actually happening", for me. JSutherland (WMF) (talk) 13:57, 22 February 2016 (UTC)