Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-11-01

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2010-11-01. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Arb resignation during plagiarism discussion; election RfC closing in 2 days (15,878 bytes · 💬)

Just hoping that people comment on the issue itself at the appropriate place(s), not here. The discussion is already being split between at least three project pages, an ANI subpage, Jimbo's talk page, and an FAR. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 23:52, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

About the only comment one could possibly make would be as follows. I fully expected to click on this page, find a statement saying that all active cases had been closed & none had been opened, & wonder how many Wikipedians might understand me were I to write that it's been a quiet week not only for the ArbCom but also Lake Wobegon. Instead, we read this. -- llywrch (talk) 05:39, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree. It was rather unsettling last week when several DYKs had to be pulled for these issues, but when Rlevse retired, I was shocked. For the record, discussions are at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Plagiarism and copyright concerns on the main page, Wikipedia talk:Did you know#Changing DYK, Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Plagiarism issue, Wikipedia talk:Featured articles#Problem article, Wikipedia:Featured article review/Grace Sherwood/archive1, and User talk:Jimbo Wales. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 12:57, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Wow, retirement? I get resigning but flat out retiring? ResMar 14:06, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Yep, this is a perfect example of how not to resolve problems. Guoguo12--Talk--  14:18, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I can understand the retirement, even to extent of scrambling the password, and it reflects poorly on neither him nor Wikipedia. Were I to be shown to have done the like, my feeling would be such acute embarrassment that I would probably want to retire just as he did. But even great embarrassment can diminish with time, and a new account started & declared. DGG ( talk ) 19:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

This is happening far too often. ResMar 20:06, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. De Administrando Imperio (talk · contribs) was having so much success at getting detailed articles about terrorist incidents in the 'in the news' section of the main page that complaints were raised about too much weight being placed on these incidents. It turned out that the articles were largely copyvios of online news reports after I blocked the editor after noticing a run of copyvios in new articles created by them (as a plug, any assistance with the cleanup at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/De Administrando Imperio would be great). Nick-D (talk) 07:38, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

How is this related to what I said? o.O ResMar 22:05, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I thought that you were referring to prominent examples of copyvios - did you mean that ArbCom members resigning is happening too often? Nick-D (talk) 06:12, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

No, I meant that prominent people are leaving and, worse, being hounded and kicked off far too often. ResMar 13:39, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

• Great embarrassments can be dealt with. I don't like the way people cornered Rlevse. He should have been dealt with more kindly. Instead of retiring, I wish his response would have been, "I made a mistake. Please show me how to fix it." We all walk a tightrope between no original research/source verification and plagiarism/copyright violation. Even experienced editors can make this sort of mistake. We should help them rather than tarring and feathering. Jehochman ^Talk 11:04, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Jehochman. And we should not try to second-guess what he weighed up in his decision—WPians often retire suddenly. It's a syndrome. Perhaps frustration builds, they are treated poorly for quite a while, and they snap. It's all a pity. Tony (talk) 14:38, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Was Rlevse really tarred and feathered? Was he really treated poorly? I didn't see any sign of this, but maybe I missed it. I don't know Rlevse from Adam, but I interacted with him just over a year ago when he nominated Black Hawk War to be a featured article. The poor quality of the sourcing, and his petulant responses to the concerns raised, makes this new incident completely unsurprising to me. Yes, we should be nice to people, and understand that we all make mistakes. But sometimes people cannot handle criticism as a grownup should. Rlevse is presumably a grownup; if he acts otherwise, the responsibility is his. —Kevin Myers 11:55, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Specifics

I added a parenthetical statement that the IP blocked was a banned editor. This is somehow relevant. I don't know how the Signpost works, but assume that like the rest of Wikipedia we are allowed to make bold edits for the purpose of improvement. Jehochman ^Talk 17:58, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

It depends. Substantive post-publication edits have the potential to cause controversy, and this is no exception. My understanding was that no details were going to be provided on-wiki except that the user was evading a block. If this was a banned editor, who was it? Which on-wiki confirmation are you using that links this IP to that particular banned user's contributions? Ncmvocalist (talk) 18:17, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I could confirm with Rlevse that it's a banned editor. Secret ^account 00:29, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Substantive edits to SP articles should be avoided after publication. Tony (talk) 02:46, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Another arbitrator told me it was a banned editor. Jehochman ^Talk 11:04, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

My concern is all this is that when somebody is banned, they should not be allowed to influence events on Wikipedia. It was unwise for everybody to run for torches and pitchforks after this banned editor made the accusation. It would have been far better for somebody to have gone over Rlevse's contributions. Selectively cherry picking a few bad edits from among a giant contribution history is not a fair way to review an editor's work. (Unless those few edits are truly egregious.) Rlevse did cite his sources so that it was easy to pick up the problem. This could have been calmly fixed, the editor's other contributions reviewed, and the matter deal with much more civilly than the way things went down. Jehochman ^Talk 13:03, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

<groan> Lots wrong there, Je. Who "ran for torches and pitchforks after this banned editor made the accusations"? I haven't followed his talk, so perhaps I'm missing something-- I know he had a tussle over his "jaw flapping" comment before he retired. The copyvio problem was first mentioned at ANI almost 12 hours into the mainpage: that was the first most of us knew of it, I immediately posted to Rlevse and asked him to deal with it immediately (also indicating I was unpleased about his "jaw flapping" comment), he refused and retired. Please get the chronology straight. Further, at that point, I didn't know the accusations were from a banned editor, and even if I had known, what difference does that make? I investigated as soon as it was raised on ANI, found a glaringly obvious copyvio on the main page-- don't shoot the messenger even if s/he is a banned user, when the message was correct. Third, many people are going through Rlevse's contribs and this is by no means "a few bad edits" in one article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:31, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Jehochman, caution is required in the way such a rumour is transmitted, since privacy and other matters may be at issue that might unpredictably impact on individuals and the project. Either way, it is irrelevant to the important matters that must be dealt with. (1) Has FAC developed better ways to address the accidental or knowing duplication of unattributed wording? Surely good automated means can be found. (2) I find the grave dancing unseemly, unfair, and unproductive. At this stage, we should be focusing on systemic reform, not personal angles. Chief among my concerns is the rapid widening of the definition of plagiarism at the guideline, behind our backs, without proper consensus. We are making a noose for WP in this precarious tightrope between "plagiarism" and OR, and by not recognising the unique conditions of WP, which differ from those that govern the notion of plagiarism for journalism and academic assignments. Tony (talk) 15:57, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

(1) Don't allow yourself to be used as a means of a banned user getting revenge on an arbitrator.

(2) Fix it immediately (paraphrasing in substance) is not a good way to talk to a volunteer. Rlevse owed you exactly nothing. If there's a problem, report it and ask somebody to fix it, or take the article down and replace it with another one. It is obvious that Rlevse was going to feel severe embarrassment about his error, and the situation was dealt with in a way that maximized that feeling, to the point that he apparently couldn't deal with it, and felt the need to leave. That's a bad result, and sets a bad precedent. Jehochman ^Talk 12:11, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

(1)To my knowledge, I wasn't used by a banned editor. The issue surfaced at ANI during an examination of DYK, was brought there by another editor, and I had no knowledge of the IP that originally raised the issue. I had to do the right thing once the issue came to my attention, regardless of who brought it.

(2) Fix it immediately was a poor response from me on many levels, not the least of which is that there was no quick fix for this problem (many editors are still trying to fix it), and none of us at that point realized how bad the problem was (I thought it was one paragraph that could be "immediately" fixed). Once I saw the extent of the problem, I did act to have Raul654 remove it (since I'm not an admin, can't remove it anyway, and would never step on Raul's toes to remove a TFA). Certainly, in hindsight, "fix it immediately" added to Rlevse's stress, did not help the situation, and for that I sincerely apologize. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:40, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia, you are a wonderful person. I hope somebody points out this conversation to Rlevse and he decides to return. Wikipedia's main goal is to educate. We can do that by publishing articles, but we can also educate by teaching people to be better writers. This was a teachable moment, a missed opportunity. If somebody as experienced as Rlevse could make this mistake, it means we need to do a better job guiding our editors toward best practices with respect to WP:NOR, WP:V, WP:COPYVIO and WP:PLAGIARISM. Jehochman ^Talk 14:49, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Confrontation vs. cooperation, calmness vs. agitation

Glancing briefly at the diffs I wonder why this could not have been characterised, instead of "No less than 8...." as something like

Eight sentences seems to have been sourced from the outside article, including a number that were close paraphrases or direct copies. Clearly this oversight needs to be fixed, good job referencing the source, Rlevse, that made sorting this out much easier.

I realise this was post retirement, and very much only using this as an example, the project has been running for eight years, because it is GFDL and regularly dumped it is not 100% dependent on the Foundation, USA Today are not going to sue over 8 sentences (in fact any mainstream news organisation would be crazy to sue without checking every article they have published in the past 8 years does not plagarise WP) and if they did it would not by the Foundation they would sue. So yes this sort of hiccup can be embarrassing, but we do tend to make mountains out of molehills and run around like Chicken Lickens. Rich Farmbrough, 16:50, 4 November 2010 (UTC).

It could not be phrased that way because that would not have been honest: "including a number" for 8 out of 8? Several instances of close paraphrasing in a row an "oversight" after two other Arbs had their earlier contributions looked at for possible copyvios this year? "Good job"? "Mountains out of molehills"?

The project being GFDL CC-BY-SA 3.0 is part of the problem. Others take our content and rely on having the right to publish it on their own, so long as they attribute it to us / in the way that we do. We are not just publishing someone else's work illegally on our servers, we are encouraging others to do so as well! Nothing against the Pirate Bay, but Wikipedia has a fundamentally different mission. For us the question is not what are the odds that someone will sue us, and if they do, that they will win. Hans Adler 23:09, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

PS: I explained the situation to you by email and proposed that you remove your exceptionally clueless comment. I did not get a response. I do not object to removing this section. Hans Adler 23:11, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Features and admins: Good-lookin' slugs and snails (6,745 bytes · 💬)

User:Hurricanehink's rationale: "My choice of the week is the December 1964 South Vietnamese coup, since high school kids might well come across that in their curricula." Um, how about the rest of the world, Hink? Don't think kids in the UK, for example, are at all likely to have this on their curricula. Yep, you guessed it - I'm coming out with that old cry of 'US bias in selection procedures'. 81.147.150.57 (talk) 17:53, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

It all depends on the judge. I'd be very partial to Pedro II because I am interested in modern Latin American history (and because of the ridiculous amount of sources they consulted!) We also had a German judge a couple weeks ago. Overall, I'd say Tony and Dabomb are doing an excellent job. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 04:12, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Why would U.S. students be more likely to come across an article on South Vietnam than students in the UK? Powers ^T 13:24, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm amazed anyone would ask this, but, since you did ... because Vietnam plays a massive part in US history; not so in UK history. We didn't fight that one. Just like I doubt the Falklands War would get as much of a look-in in US curricula as it would in UK ones. History studies are always slanted towards the national and international policies of the country that is teaching the history. 86.133.55.218 (talk) 17:27, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, my own curriculum didn't cover this particular coup, so I didn't realize its importance to the war. Powers ^T 19:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

It isn't that very well known; in many general books on the VN War such as by Karnow and Langguth only 1-3 pages in 700 touch on that particular incident. YellowMonkey (bananabucket!) 03:22, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

• Technically, good and featured topics aren't demoted for "not enough work done on them", it's because one or more of the articles lose their GA or FA status and don't get re-promoted within 3 months. --PresN 05:18, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

  Thanks; fixed. Tony (talk) 06:35, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

How does Moreno remind you of hurricanes? Nice week for admins, too. 68.98.31.172 (talk) 14:10, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

He sees a similarity between WP:OMT and WP:WPTC Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 15:01, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Essjay phenom

I raised concerns on the talk page here, and with HaeB, that The Signpost not go down the Essjay slippery slope by printing unverified credentials of admins. Concerns about this slippery slope realized: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Redthoreau in a recently closed RFA. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:03, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe the reason that your concerns were discounted is that they aren't important. So Leyo says he has a Master's of Science; my high school chemistry teacher had an M.S. in chemistry, & once told us that the only other work his degree qualified him for was being a lab tech. As long as Leyo makes his content-related arguments based on common sense & secondary sources that can be verified -- which is what everyone should do, & someone with an M.S. ought to know the secondary literature well enough to do that -- & doesn't try to pass himself off as an authority, what's the problem? Essjay wouldn't have been forced to leave Wikipedia in disgrace had he not attempted to use his unverified credentials not only to win discussions, but also to misrepresent himself to a journalist writing about Wikipedia. Doing so not only made him look bad, but more importantly hurt Wikipedia. As you were told, that fact fills out a little bit about who Leyo says he is; it's simply a part of his online persona. Please give the matter a rest & move on. -- llywrch (talk) 22:31, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Telling me to "give the matter a rest and move on" might work (doubt it, though), if the facts didn't stand in my way. The Signpost article says: "Leyo (nom) has a Masters of Science degree ..." That is asserted as fact; nowhere is it clarified in this article that "that fact fills out a little bit about who Leyo says he is", and with the reward culture on Wiki, we may see other RFA candidates alleging credentials they don't have, and other RFA !voters Supporting on that basis (I have no doubt Leyo is who he says he is, or ElenoftheRoads is who she says she is, and that is not the issue here). Learn from history. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:35, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Learn from what history? Essjay? While I'm tempted to respond with something along the lines of "one sparrow does not make it spring", a more nuanced response is that Essjay shows why lying about one's qualifications (or anything on Wikipedia) in order to boost one's stature is a bad idea: eventually the deception will be found out, & the fallout will force the liar to leave. (And maybe even those who associated with the liar.) Looking at the RfA you linked to, three people voted "oppose" because of that statement -- you were one of them -- & only one person voting in support of RedThoreau mentioned his academic credentials -- which was in response to your comment. Everyone with more than minimal experience on Wikipedia knows to handle claims about qualifications with a grain of salt; all that's needed is one interaction with someone who claims to be an authority in a given field. In fact, the average level of skepticism towards experts -- both alleged & proven -- is so high that we drive away far more real authorities than the fakes. -- llywrch (talk) 17:40, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

In the news: Airplane construction with Wikipedia, lessons from the strategy project, logic over rhetoric (4,339 bytes · 💬)

Mumbai meetup

An audio recording of Jimmy Wales' talk in Mumbai

Regards, HaeB (talk) 11:51, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Another summary of Jimmy Wales' talk, and an interview with him: [1]. Regards, HaeB (talk) 20:23, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The news...

Um, this is fantastic. Article about non-notability establishes notability. Next it will be PRODed for a WP:1E violation, then restored after a contentious AfD in which a comment about how the nice lady 'hasn't done anything worthwhile' turns into a BLP libel issue that is covered in national legal media, and then re-un-re-deleted for being a meta-cluster-f@9!, and we all know that cluster-f@9!'s are allowed on WP:META but not on WP:WIKI! Sigh. Ocaasi (talk) 12:11, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Say again?

Could someone translate the quotation from the critical editorial into plain English? I consider myself fairly well educated but I have no idea what it's trying to say. Powers ^T 13:08, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I was gonna say the same thing. Apparently it's written in High Academese. --Orange Mike | Talk 13:22, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

It reduces to something very simple: they want to use Wikipedia for original research, rather then a place for the straightforward presentation of established views. I think they understand us correctly; they just hoped for something more to their liking, and it reinforces our standard position about the need for removing promotionalism. DGG ( talk ) 19:37, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

They sort of understand us. They are right to say that WP favors "attested" claims of knowledge. But when they then go on to say that this approach favors "logic" over "rhetoric", they don't understand us well at all. The truth is closer to the opposite. Our notability rules allow articles about completely contradictory beliefs, provided there is sufficient public discussion of them. They seem to think that we have articles on subjects because we favor them and delete articles because we think the claims they document are false or invalid. That might happen sometimes, but it isn't WP policy. --RL0919 (talk) 03:31, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

They get us, they just don't like it. They don't approve of the hierarchy of knowledge in which socially approved views are privileged over new ideas. They are looking only at the margin, however, since it won't be long before any 'new' view worth repeating is repeated. They are making an sociological/epistemological point--that knowledge can't be confined to socially sanctioned memes--but they are ignoring the pragmatic issue; if we don't use a notability/reliability guideline, how do we separate the wheat from the chaff? Sure new ideas can be good, but which? All scholars fancy their ideas wheat. That doesn't help up a) with the scholars who are wrong; and b) with everyone else who's not a scholar but wants to be treated as one. Ocaasi (talk) 08:25, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

the rhetoric of WP "inhospitality" to the diversity of new knowledge is pretty entertaining. is he not notable enough for a bio and passing discussion of the book and idea? (full professor) if he gets a higher h-index, or on google scholar, then we can revisit. Accotink2 talk 16:02, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

"hospitality to new knowledge and understanding of the diversity of views", they should go to wikiversity, they'll get lots of that there. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:48, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

News and notes: Foundation's finances, geodata milestone, interim counsel, museum conference (1,751 bytes · 💬)

Office hours

Additionally, in the office hours session, Sue Gardner was also asked to commit to disclose the amount of the no-bid contract given to Q2 Consulting for the Wikimedia Foundation 2010 Donor Survey. Note this question has been asked before. It is hoped in good faith that the matter has been taken under advisement. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk)

Geodata

The article says that Open Street Maps were added to the Norwegian Wikipedia, that is wrong. There is no Norwegian Wikipedia, there is however one in Bokmål/Rikmål and one in Nynorsk (new Norwegian). Ulflarsen (talk) 11:36, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

They were added to the Bokmål/Rikmål Wikipedia (which happens to be called "the main Norwegian site" in the article Norwegian Wikipedia). Thanks for the note, I have made the wording more precise. Regards, HaeB (talk) 11:59, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I imported the Gadget to my personal JavaScript on English Wikipedia, and it works well. How soon can we implement it sitewide here? :D {{Nihiltres|talk|edits|⚡}} 15:27, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Technology report: Foundation office switches to closed source, secure browsing, brief news (4,484 bytes · 💬)

Secure browsing: it is possible to use a combination of server side scripting and JavaScript to create signed URLs: using encryption on the content of WP pages and the edits thereto,which are public knowledge, would be a waste of resource indeed. Rich Farmbrough, 09:51, 2 November 2010 (UTC).

It's already planned that 'Wikipedia' will be added to FireSheep. Your Wikipedia account can be taken over completely. My advice is don't use public Wifi without WPA encryption enabled. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 12:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Signed urls ? Isn't that for content only ? Wouldn't protect you from cookie hijacking, which is the problem with firesheep, right ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:43, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Firesheep is a session-stealing attack utilizing packet sniffing on a shared medium. Signing URLs does exactly nothing to prevent this. --Carnildo (talk) 01:47, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

An OpenSearch search bar plugin has been added: Wikipedia (SSL) search, which can replace the default Wikipedia search-bar in browsers like Firefox. You can review the source code for the plugin as well. Nimur (talk) 02:00, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's HTTPS Everywhere add-on makes Firefox use the secure server for every page viewed on Wikipedia (and various other sites). Regards, HaeB (talk) 10:58, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the number of active editors is much, much smaller than the number of anonymous readers. I don't know whether the secure server would support us editing securely all at once, since WMF has not yet dedicated any special resources to scaling SSL, but you should always use it when editing from a network that you don't control such as an open wifi network, particularly if you have a privileged account. A hybrid solution that encrypts session data and not page content might be useful, but I know of no way to implement it and it still presents privacy risks (which articles you read says something about you). Dcoetzee 18:49, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Note, that well the secure site does protect your session, it doesn't really (overly) protect your privacy. Images are still loaded from the non-secure site. If you notice person A downloads 10 images in about 5 seconds, and there is only one page on wikipedia that uses precisely these ten images, it is a pretty sure bet that person A is looking at that page. (Of course, if someone is watching you that closely, you probably have bigger problems...). Bawolff (talk) 05:33, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Interesting, I didn't know that. I hope WMF will consider also protecting inline images by SSL, eventually - although I realise the cost of doing so would be somewhat greater than pages alone. This would be particularly important for people who are interested in learning more about topics related to sex and pornography and may not want this to be known. Dcoetzee 05:36, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Well there is a long standing bug - bugzilla:16822. But If you're really that concerned about your privacy, you can always use something like TOR. (which has the added bonus that even if the foundation was evil, they still wouldn't know who you are ;) Bawolff (talk) 00:24, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

But we block TOR, remember? :P - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 17:46, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

No comments on the Wikimedia / Gmail story? Doesn't that concern some poeple? 128.59.179.238 (talk) 18:37, 18 November 2010 (UTC)