Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2013-07-17

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2013-07-17. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds case opens; July 22 deadline for checkuser and oversight applications (10,094 bytes · 💬)

• I think that naming Keyes in conjunction with "threats of violence" doesn't live up to Wikipedia BLP standards. The fact is, what I read of that comment was some momentary quip about oil and torches on a talk forum that would readily be apparent as harmless humor to anyone in the world, except a veteran Wikilawyer or the occasional idiot prosecutor. I never stumbled across the now-deleted counterjab but I bet it's equally innocuous. The Signpost is damaging its reputation and its usefulness to Wikipedia by making such an unsubstantiatable statement, especially when it fails to do what it ought when covering such a thing and quote the original primary sources i.e. the "threats" directly so that readers can make up their own mind. Wnt (talk) 20:58, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Please do not make unsubstantiated attacks at the Signpost's writers, specifically Neotarf. What s/he wrote in the report was, and I quote: "ending with statements that could be interpreted as threats of violence." S/he did not attack either Kiefer.Wolfowitz or Ironholds. I'd also like to remind you that what is reported in the Arbitration Report is based upon the content which the writer has before them. S/he merely paraphrased Mark Arsten's statement and I quote:

Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk · contribs) and Ironholds (talk · contribs) have made several comments about each other on off-wiki forums, and this dispute has spilled over onto Wikipedia, although some of it has been revision deleted. Some of these comments could be seen as personal attacks make reference to violence.

• What shocks me is that users will take every opportunity to stir up drama and lob accusations without first substantiating their claims. Pot calling the kettle black. James ^{(T • C)} • 12:15pm • 01:15, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

When editors accuse each other of violating BLP, the bar of evidence usually is not very high. Mark Arsten's statement is unquestionably a single primary source, and that it does not present the allegations as true. Either is usually enough for editors to exclude content from BLPs, though in my opinion they are generally overzealous about it. I might not be as concerned about parroting primary sources regarding anonymous pseudonyms, but this article tars someone under their real name, so standards equal to those for an actual biography article should apply. I wasn't criticizing Neotarf specifically, because the whole team working on the Signpost is responsible for upholding standards - I suggest they do that. Wnt (talk) 15:36, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

It's a very hard task to write this report while retaining what every reader will regard as a strict sense of balance. In my view, Neotarf is highly skilled at the forensic analysis of text and as a writer (not to be at all negative about James's contributions, which have had to be put on hold because of his high RL workload). Personally, I'd probably have used a title without the names in it, since it does broadcast the matter around the WM movement. I may be so bold as to say that Oliver—whom I like and who does excellent work for the WMF—might adjust his style of interaction as a result of this incident. His style sometimes blurs humour, genuine insight, smut, and frivolity in ways that other people can take the wrong way. He doesn't seem to be sending the right signals to Arbcom to maximise the likelihood that the case will be rejected. It would be sensible for him to walk the pragmatic line: arbcom is not about truth or justice; it's about keeping the game afloat. Tony (talk) 15:59, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I would invite Wnt to read the arbitration report again, more carefully. The report has accused no one of anything by name, it merely says statements were made that could be (and in fact have been) interpreted in a certain way. If you look at the case, you will see there are in fact two editors that statement could apply to.

I see no point in quoting any of the original statements directly, especially since one of the comments was made on-wiki and has now been scrubbed. There is much nuance in this case, and it needs to be read in its entirety to be fully appreciated. It would not be fair to either editor to quote anything here out of context. My goal here is not to represent every ping-pong of every argument, but to indicate in broad terms what a dispute is about, and provide a link for those who want to read further.

Likewise I see no point in redacting the name of the case just because one of the named parties is a WMF employee. The Signpost has long used case names in its headings, see for example this report from April of 2012. The original name of Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds was "Offsite comments and personal attacks". It was the arbitration committee, not the Signpost, that changed the name of the title to reflect the parties named in the dispute.

That said, I would have to say that I feel very strongly about the way accusations about individual editors are represented in the Arbitration Report, whether they are WMF employees or ordinary garden-variety users. This is something I have made clear in private communications with other Signpost volunteers. My write-ups usually name only the party bringing the request, not any named parties, and I have taken care not to repeat unproven, and possibly untrue accusations. I do however report findings that have been voted on by the committee, but even then it is impossible to say whether something is empirically true or not, only that the committee has reached a conclusion.

What is notable about the Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds case is first, the interplay between on-wiki and off-wiki interactions, second, the fact that some comments were interpreted as being threatening, and third, the relationship between one of the named parties and the WMF. These are not just peripheral issues, they have been identified by the participants as being central to the case. For the Arbitration Report to not to report on this would indeed be a dereliction of duty.

—Neotarf (talk) 04:34, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

• This so-called case may be summarized as follows. Party A told a bad joke about Party B on IRC. Party B, instead of slagging off on Party A off-wiki, ran on-wiki with a tough guy movie quote. Dramahs ensued, fueled by a desire of some to take Party B on the proverbial long walk on a short pier for having made a pain in the ass of himself on unrelated matters W, X, Y, and Z. Six weeks later Arb Com slaps Party A on the wrist and teaches Party B to swim with the fishes because of their annoyance at matters W, X, Y, and Z, using the current case as a convenient pretext. It's all very stupid and junior high school. Carrite (talk) 06:16, 22 July 2013 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 03:55, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

• • @Carrite:

    Correction. Oliver Keyes/Ironholds's statement about lighting me on fire was reported at User talk:Newyorkbrad, which is where I responded. I certainly did not "run on-wiki". At my talk page, administrator TParis confirmed the accuracy of the quotation of Oliver Keyes's "bring my lighter" etc. The above hand-wrining about BLP and "allegations" are just denial---minor league denial, but still denial.

    Before we turn to the big-league denial, a comment: The case is notable for other issues, although it need not be as abusive as ArbCom's years of harassment of Malleus Fatuorum / Eric Corbett. Arbitrator AGK still sits despite his personal attack "net negative", for example. We should keep perspective about this case.

  Nick's charge that IRC was used to canvass administrators to go to ANI and support an indefinite block of me is just one example of Wikipedia's IRC scandals damaging the encyclopedia. The IRC discussions of sexual degradation, violence (including murder through sadistic suffocation), especially of women (particularly Jennifer Aniston and Sharon Osbourne) need to be dealt with---by the IRC participants, especially administrators and WMF staff/officers and by the community. What I see now is a cover up—from Newyorkbrad's scrubbing of the talk pages of Aniston and Osbourne and the Popes to the rules imposed on this case, which do not include my being allowed to ask questions to Mark Arsten (who proposed the case).

  Honest discussion on the case occurs at Wikipediocracy, which has several threads:

  • "IRC Highlights",
  • "Down with Ironholds" (a title to which I've objected),
  • "Ironholds lecturing Drmies on LadyofShalott's body AN post" , and
  • "The Visual Editor is a huge failure".

  In 2007 Jimbo Wales stated that ArbCom was in charge of IRC. This ArbCom is doing its best "Sergeant Schultz" routine: "I know nothing! I see nothing!"

  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:01, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Featured content: Documents and sports (1,200 bytes · 💬)

• Lovely page this week. Who chose the thematic and colour-composition of the images? Works well. Tony (talk) 08:37, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

• That was me. Thanks for the compliment! --Pine^✉ 06:13, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

• The last three issues have shown a significant drop in the number of featured articles. Is this a seasonal variation? Praemonitus (talk) 18:17, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

• Possibly, but the 24 July FC report will have twelve FAs. --Pine^✉ 01:27, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation's new plans announced (6,409 bytes · 💬)

• Thanks for the informative article! One clarification around this statement: "What is clear is that the new Individual Engagement Grants program is expensive to run, and that the FDC is still at an early stage of development and involves intensive face-to-face interactions: "very few international foundations give individual grants, which are highly resource-intensive (of the 89 grants we gave over 2012–13, 43 were grants to individuals for projects, events and travel)."" In fact, most of those 43 individual grants were not part of the Individual Engagement Grants program (which only ran 1 pilot round so far, and accounts for 8 grants out of 43). The larger portion of this number was made to individuals for projects and events in the WMF Grants program, and for travel via the Participation Support Program. And for accounting purposes in closing out the fiscal year 2012/13, funds spent on Fellowships during the first half of the year were also counted as individual grants. Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
  • +1. I wanted to agree with Siko on both the appreciation and the clarification. :-) In addition, to make it clear, the WMF bid is not excluded from the FDC _process_ (the FDC and WMF are currently in conversation over WMF's application in Round 2 of the FDC process in March 2014), but simply from the base amount projected as grants spend for this year, i.e. 8 million USD. Thanks, Signpost team.--ASengupta (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
    • Thanks, Siko and Anasuya. A complex and long story, so regrettably a few errors crept in. Fixed now, and please let me know if it's now not accurate in fact and angle. Tony (talk) 02:44, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
• VisualEditor will be a hot issue for the time to come. The Dutch Wikipedia is holding a vote to disable it until proven stable! They know what they are talking about, as many Dutch Wikipedians are also active on the English Wikipedia. The Banner talk 23:04, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
  • See Wikipedia:VPT#.22Opt_out.22_of_VE_needed_under_preferences and WP:VisualEditor/RFC, and compare User_talk:Eloquence#I_need_a_way_to_turn_off_VisualEditor_globally._Please_give_us_a_way. The opinions of the userbase don't matter to the WMF with this one. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 23:37, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
• I am not saying that WMF overpays salaries, from what I have heard the salaries seem reasonable. But this point seems odd "Erik Möller's point about "fairness adjustments" does imply a recognition by the WMF that salaries have had to be adjusted upwards since the crisis hit in 2010" - the crisis in 2010 resulted in more unemployed engineers - hence I would imagine it would be easier to pick up an engineer at a lower salary than had the crisis not struck. Am I thinking of the wrong 2010 crisis? Good article and all, but this point bugs me Jztinfinity (talk) 06:03, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

The external databases we use have salary data from the late 2012/early 2013 timeframe. The 2010 crisis certainly hit (I was affected by it when I was consulting), but some specific sectors/types of engineers weren't much hit or recovered pretty quickly. For instance, mobile developers and site performance engineers are in very high demand, and so the frame of the 2010 crisis in picking up lower salary employees doesn't quite apply universally. Gyoung (talk) 07:01, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

• The article uses the word "foregrounding" which I feel is not only a regrettable piece of management jargon (I had to look it up) but also may not mean what it is being used to mean - it apparently means "Make (something) the most prominent or important feature". Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 09:03, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Yeah, it did flicker through my mind. Changing to "backgrounding. Well spotted, thx. Tony (talk) 12:11, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
• despite (perhaps in anticipation of) the wave of technical complaints I think you mean "in a half-finished state, causing a wave of technical complaints". — Scott • talk 08:01, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
• " the movement seems to be on a path of rapidly creating incorporated, professionally staffed entities, and it is not clear whether that is the best path towards achieving programmatic impact." - interesting statement. Wikimedia UK seems to be a classic example of this - have you asked them for comment? AndrewRT(Talk) 21:25, 23 July 2013 (UTC) (ex-Trustee of WMUK)
• "The Signpost asked chief revenue officer Zack Exley why the costs of fundraising will increase by some 35% (up by $1.2M to $4.6M) while the funds to be raised are projected to fall by 1.6%, but did not receive a reply." Zack Exley: fail. WMF: fail. If journalist ask something that important, not replying smacks of another Giblarpedia snafu. I am sure this is nothing as serious here, still, silence doesn't sound good at all... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:42, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Traffic report: Most-viewed articles of the week (436 bytes · 💬)

The sudden drop-off in views of the Yahoo! article strongly suggests that this was being driven by a bot of some sort. Genuine drop-aways of views on topics which are in the news tend to be a bit more gradual. Nick-D (talk) 00:59, 21 July 2013 (UTC)