Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2013-08-14

Comments

The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2013-08-14. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds case closes; invitation to comment on applicants for checkuser and oversight ends 16 August (2,879 bytes · 💬)

I hope that in the Tea Party case, individual editors can be evaluated instead of simply imposing topic bans on every person included in the original statement. Yes, it'll take more work on the part of arbitrators and clerks but not every editor who was designated as "involved" is equally culpable for the discord that exists. I just hope in the wake of these voting changes, the whole case doesn't get tabled again. Newjerseyliz (talk) 11:50, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Merely by way of clarification (of the article and of this comment), the proposed motion would have required that the editors named in it refrain from editing one particular page (the Tea Party movement article and its talkpage). It would not have provided for anyone to be "topic-banned", much less "banned" (which usually is read to mean complete exclusion from the site). Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:04, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

The Ironholds/Kiefer Wolfowitz debacle is a very sad story for both sides, and I openly disclose that I have tried to maintain friendly relationships with both parties. The case sheds light on behavioral problems, some of which appear intractable, and others the result of maturing visibly on Wikipedia. Both editors had (and perhaps still have) the intelligence and capability to contribute enormously to this project. An inability to let things go has prevented such an idealistic outcome. I will miss one editor's insights into the history of the U.S. labor movement, and if the incident proves to be a blot on the other editor's contributions as a programmer here, then that is also a very sad result. I am saddened, and wish both parties well. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:40, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Both of them were prolific content contributors, and it's too bad that KW was banned altogether. I hope he makes some sort of effort to change so that can be reconsidered. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.225.148.93 (talk) 01:33, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

I really hope so too, and I have reached out to him to try and make this happen. It is very difficult - we tried to help him in late 2011, as has been documented, but it didn't go very far. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:36, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Discussion report: Wikivoyage, reliable sources, music bands, account creators, and OTRS (1,089 bytes · 💬)

• Great report as always. Thanks Pine. Just wanted to note that wmfblog: is avaiable as an interwiki link. So [[wmfblog:/2013/08/09/wikimedias-email-response-upgrade/|Wikimedia’s OTRS email response system gets an upgrade]] might be a little easier than [https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/08/09/wikimedias-email-response-upgrade/ Wikimedia’s OTRS email response system gets an upgrade] and it keeps the HTTP/HTTPS protocol the same for the reader. Not that it matters, but I thought I'd mention it. 64.40.54.114 (talk) 01:14, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

• Noted. Thank you! --Pine^✉ 06:44, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

In the media: Chinese censorship (5,068 bytes · 💬)

Re:Wikipedia fails to bridge gender gap

Obviously we're not even close to where we would like to be, but if the 21% female number of Wikimania attendees [1] reflects the current editing population, this is significant progress from the 9% figure from 2011. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 11:01, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

The problem I have is that there's a lot of talk about the gender gap problem - but almost no attempts to propose solutions that I've seen. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 11:37, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Sadly, there's not much we can actually do. What little we could, we've mostly done (and if you know what else we can do, please let us & WMF know). The problem is society-wide (ex. consider the percent of women in a tertiary level CS class), and until we can successfully convince people that being interested in computers is an acceptable pastime/career choice for women, the situation will look as dire as it is now.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 18:03, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

There are various things that are being worked on. The biggest is the visual editor, the theory being that our current editor makes editing a daunting experience for nonprogrammers, and programming is a largely male profession. I understand that our current editing community has a strong skew towards programmers so this theory has some credibility. We have various chapter initiatives to tackle the gender balance, including offering training sessions to groups of potential editors where there are likely to be a higher proportion of women, and creating articles on notable women who've not yet been covered. There are also some longstanding bugzilla requests to reduce the number of edit conflicts, this would be useful in its own right but there is a theory that new male editors might see an edit conflict as a challenge to be dealt with as opposed to a rejection. However I wouldn't take too much comfort from the 21% female attendance at Wikimania, I'm pretty sure that is at least partially due to staff having a higher proportion of women than volunteers, which is only to be expected, especially for staff positions recruited from outside the community. ϢereSpielChequers 03:22, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

There are lots of ideas waiting for someone to act on them at meta:Proposals for more female editors. 98.220.58.72 (talk) 03:28, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

No, LukeSurl. The people who attend Wikimania are highly unrepresentative of Wikipedians, in many ways. Over representation of women at real life gatherings as opposed to their rate of participation online is a common phenomenon for web communities.

As far as I can tell, there has been no change in the gender composition of editors for quite a while. Yesterday, of 2730 editors with a known gender, 2564 were male (94%) [2]. Which is about what it has been for the last few years, IIRC. Xrt6L (talk) 04:22, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

• So according to WereSpielChequers, women are unable to use the traditional Wikipedia source editor because they are by nature nonprogrammers; they also need extra training and are frightened by edit conflicts. Just as well that all these problems are well on the way of being solved. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:39, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
• In fairness, a lot of the men at Wikimania 2013 were paid to be there too (either by virtue of being on the WMF payroll, a Chapter payroll, or on a WMF scholarship to attend) such that I don't believe Wikimania attendance is uncorrelated with the volunteer content contributing community on just the gender front.--Brian Dell (talk) 08:22, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Chinese Wikipedia editor Huang Zhisong barred from leaving the country

After Jimmy Wales makes a stand against China, Wikipedia’s Chinese editor banned from leaving country --Andreas JN466 14:43, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

News and notes: "Beautifully smooth" Wikimania with few hitches (6,541 bytes · 💬)

Hosting countries

"Locations since then have been in the Middle East, Europe, and North America." Argentina had one too! --190.134.84.121 (talk) 11:36, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

This has been fixed. Thanks! Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:21, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Charles Mok

"There are also 461 mobile users" : In China ? Most unlikely. JoJan (talk) 13:48, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I assume this was meant to say 461 million mobile users, but I'll leave it to someone more sure to change the article.-gadfium 18:52, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

gadfium, you're right. Thanks for noticing this! Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:21, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Attendance

Do we know how many attended this year's conference? Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 15:03, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Right in the first line—about a thousand. ;-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:21, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

non-keynotes

It is too bad that you focus here so strongly on the keynote sessions. While these are the only sessions that were attended by almost all attendees, it misrepresents imho the spirit of Wikimania - which is much less about the keynotes, and much more about 'normal' sessions on a range of topics. I would have expected that you would have at least lighted out a number of those, maybe the most juicy ones, or with the most surprising outcomes. Maybe something for next week? (warning: I was involved in two non-keynote sessions, so might be somewhat biased). effeietsanders 17:01, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Covering individual sessions is nearly impossible. For one, there are far too many of them. This article is already too long as it is. For two, there was no way we at the Signpost could attend all of them, and the videos won't be uploaded for some time. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:21, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Effeietsanders, I'm not sure you realize how time consuming it is to write Signpost articles. Ed has put many hours of his free time into writing these reports and I think we should thank him for what he has done. If you would like to write a report for the Signpost about the other sessions for next week I'm sure Ed would love to get an email from you. --Pine^✉ 06:53, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting to cover each one, but a selection of them. I wasn't even aware that Ed attended Wikimania himself - but I always thought the idea was to crowdsource the Signpost to an extent? This sounds like an excellent topic to crowdsource - ask people to describe their favorite sessions, what they learned and what outcomes there were and give an impression that way. I would be more than happy if that means less coverage of the keynote sessions by the way. Also, Pine, my remarks were certainly not to be taken as a personal criticism, but rather as constructive suggestions from someone who has attended quite a few Wikimanias and who feels this coverage doesn't cover the actual experience. The 'you' used was intended as plural, not singular (unfortunately English doesn't make that distinction). effeietsanders 08:43, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, my first response probably came off as stronger than I intended. :-) There is, of course, the option of crowdsourcing. For most sessions, this would be entirely uncontroversial. Then a declared and avowed opponent of the VisualEditor could report on the VisualEditor sessions, and I might not catch it. It's unfortunate that we can't cover them all, but the scope can only be so wide before casual readers lose interest. That's not to say that I or anyone who writes it can't include some sessions next year, though (or put out a call for individual blogs to cover the sessions, where we could link to them). Thank you for the feedback.

My preferred option would be linking to the videos themselves, but they take time to be uploaded. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 09:24, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

The ones in the JCA have been uploaded already btw (not to Commons, but on that live stream website - as one video per part of the day) effeietsanders 07:18, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Those vids sure do need editing back. Tony (talk) 11:00, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Wrong numbers in citation

There are two numbers wrong in this citation from Jimmy Wales' keynote: " there are now 28 million articles and 286 language editions, of which 120 have more than a thousand articles, 46 have more than ten thousand, and eight have more than a million." It should be: 120 have more than ten thousand articles, 46 have more than a hundred thousand. --Zeitlupe (talk) 13:48, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I must've missed a couple zeros in my notes. :-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 00:29, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

We're also up to 287 languages, but I think the latest one might've been added after Jimbo's speech [3]. Throw in a footnote, maybe? — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 03:31, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Special report: Jimmy Wales: media favors entertainment over raising public awareness (11,633 bytes · 💬)

• Absolutely agree with Jimbo's views on this, which are further strengthened by the fact that some of the most, if not the most active articles on Wikipedia tend to be entertainment or pop culture related, in contrast to the first few years when the reverse was true. With recent developments in relation to surveillance and privacy, we may begin to see a gradual spike in more editors, both veteran and new, taking on important and socially relevant articles. Laval (talk) 18:31, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
  • I agree that many of the "most active articles on Wikipedia tend to be entertainment or pop culture related" (professional wrestling comes to mind ...), but this rather undermines Wales' point. Andreas JN466 15:36, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
    • Or indicates just how far out of touch he might be with Wikipedia's actual content trends. Intothatdarkness 20:00, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
• This week in the Signpost, a glorified press release honoring our dear leader! Huzzah! 198.228.200.15 (talk) 20:21, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry that you see it that way. I wrote the piece because Wales' idea intrigued me, and I wanted to explore it beyond what he was able to include in his speech. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 04:58, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
    • I think this idea is worth discussing. COI disclosure: I write for the Signpost but work in different areas. --Pine^✉ 06:47, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
• Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process. On January 10, 2001, Sanger proposed on the Nupedia mailing list to create a wiki as a "feeder" project for Nupedia.... Now, the 'opposite' is happening. Wikinews was created from the beginning as a project where anybody can write news, and Wales proposes to begin a complementary project for Wikinews - a complementary project where articles will be written by experts and reviewed under a formal process..... Does anybody else see the irony of that? By the way, Laval, I am not interested in reading or editing entertainment-related articles on Wikipedia, but if I was not so lazy, I would have taken on science-related articles - too frequently, I have to read the paper books to find an answer.Wikiwide (talk) 22:41, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
• Part of the problem is that when one tries to work on an article with a serious but controversial topic, one gets into edit wars and incivility which are very discouraging. JRSpriggs (talk) 02:06, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
  • That's because Wikipedia primarily attracts people wishing to promote a cause or spin information, rather than people wishing to educate. I consider this the Foundation's dirty secret, because it would be hard to design a system (top Google ranking, instant visibility of changes, possibility of anonymous contribution) that would be more adept at attracting such contributors than Wikipedia.
  • It appears to me that the Foundation by and large measures its success by (1) its Alexa ranking, (2) the number of editors, (3) the number of edits, (4) the number of articles and (5) income from donations. It does not generally measure success by the quality of the information provided, or usefulness to the professed target group (the economically underprivileged who lack access to conventional education). Instead, the Foundation's initiatives are generally aimed at maximising measurables (1) to (5), of which (2), (3) and (4) are in some ways actually opposed to the supply of stable and reliable information. As articles flip-flop from one bias to the next, from puff piece to hatchet job, it strikes me that the only party who is a consistent winner in such fights is the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • Who are the losers? Editors invest years of unpaid labour, much of it spent in acrimonious discussions. Propagandists may make short-term gains through Wikipedia – even long-term gains in articles that attract little attention from editors – but over the long term, many experience significant stress levels trying to defend the territory gained against pseudonymous adversaries, becoming "long-standing Wikipedia volunteers" in the process. Readers never know who was the last person to edit an article, and whose bias it reflects (examples: [4], [5]; [6], [7]; [8]). As for subjects written about here, Wikipedia's Google ranking ensures that no one portrayed in unflattering terms (or actually defamed) in Wikipedia can ignore it, thus driving further involuntary "volunteer participation". It seems to me that biased, inaccurate or unstable articles are actually good for the Foundation, because they bring in new editors and up the edit count – both key measurables to the Foundation.
  • Meanwhile, the Wikimedia Foundation disclaims any responsibility for the quality of its content, arguing that this is a matter for the "Wikimedia community" (which after all, anyone can join as yet another unpaid volunteer!). It conveniently restricts itself to providing the venue where these battles are fought, taking care to reiterate time and again that it does so for purely humanitarian reasons, while in practice creating a monopoly, generating an annual income now running at $50 million, and putting information sources managed to professional standards out of business (even as it cannibalises them).
  • As Jimbo said recently ("Wikipedia wants you: 'We're a startup in stealth mode', says Jimmy Wales as he plans to open data to all"), he would like people to see Wikipedia as "the platform of choice for the entire world". Again, I would argue that the party profiting most from all of this is the Wikimedia Foundation and Wales himself; it's far less clear to me that the rest of the world (subjects, editors, readers) would profit in the long run, too, from giving Wikimedia in its current state an even greater amount of control over public information than it already enjoys.
  • I see Wales' attacks on journalism – which neglect to mention that it was the press who broke the NSA story in the first place, and neglect to acknowledge the huge number of professionally researched press articles on the issue, without which Wikipedia would not even have any coverage of the issues, as it is entirely based on aggregating and summarising "reliable sources" – very much in this light.
  • I would rather see the Foundation take steps to promote article quality and stability, to devise measures discouraging participation by activists (even if that means that edit counts go down), and to research, measure, track and prominently publicise the incidence of problems such as bias, defamation, inaccuracies, hoaxes, and abuses of anonymity (including sockpuppeteering). I would like it to foster a culture that promotes rather than discourages participation by disinterested, identifiable, real-world experts. I would like it to acknowledge that maximising the number of articles is not a good thing if many of these articles are beyond the community's ability to curate responsibly. I am not holding my breath. Andreas JN466 13:14, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
    • Reading through your post I see many valid points. Your comments about Wales' (and the author's) attack on journalism are especially true. It's also ironic that this editorial criticizing the press for their coverage of a topic (while failing to credit them for breaking the story in the first place) was published the day after the Washington Post gave details on how the NSA violated its privacy protocols. Is that not something Mr. Wales and the author consider important? 198.228.200.49 (talk) 14:54, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
      • Reading through his post, it occurs to me that propagandists being subjected to "significant stress levels" is not something that causes me to lose a great deal of sleep. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 15:32, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
        • To be clear, 198, I think some in the mainstream media are doing fine work, and I recognize that the popularity of human interest stories can be both vital to a general narrative and lucrative to an often cash-strapped business. You do get credit for subtlety insinuating that I am in Wales' pocket.
        • As for Wales' claims about the media, I think this piece makes it quite clear that Wales is disturbed by two trends—a perceived surge to human interest stories, and an inability or lack of desire to break down complex technical topics for general readers. As far as I'm aware, he's not alleging that everyone from every media organization is failing at their jobs.
        • Last, with regards to the Post, this story and Wales' speech were written and spoken, respectively, before that was published. Thanks for the comments, Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 04:51, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
• Question: Does the State of the Wiki 2013 have its own web page?Planeta (talk) 16:10, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
• "Investigative journalism" says Mr Wales? In many articles on Wikipedia involving issues/topics that can affect the profit of large corporations, blogs are used as "reliable sources". The pages are defended by a small clique of editors and administrators, who block any attempt at proper correction (In accordance with Wikipedia's stated rules and regulations.)

Is that situation part of the "[Jimmy Wales is] out of touch" comment IntoThatDarkness made earlier? Wikipedia is FAR from the open welcoming place it advertises itself to be. To me it clearly has a corporate-supporting agenda instead of practiced ideals and posted articles bent toward truth or reliability or verifiability.100.4.57.172 (talk) 15:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)