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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2015-05-13. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Featured content: Four first-time featured article writers lead the way (558 bytes · 💬)

I always enjoy reading this article each week although I appreciate the content more than comment upon it. Liz Read! Talk! 20:19, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Foundation elections: WMF Board candidates share their views with the Signpost (23,941 bytes · 💬)

I find it disappointing that so many candidates don't want to merge the affiliate-selected and community-selected board seats. The former is not always aligned with and is certainly not representative of the latter, yet they are granted two seats on the Board of Trustees. In comparison, the community gets three. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:38, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

So you're saying that once again the editors of the en.wiki Signpost gave prominence to an item to push for a personal wish of theirs? (A dead horse, by the way.) --Nemo 07:38, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Nemo, this is a repeat theme of yours, in which we're damned whatever issues we choose to survey from debates that have occurred on Meta and within the WMF. Very easy for snipers to sit on the sideline. Do you have anything substantive to say about the results? Tony (talk) 6:05 pm, Today (UTC+10) [Reinstated after Csisc inadvertently removed it in posting his section below.] Tony (talk) 09:32, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
@Nemo bis: As one could readily ascertain from the byline, I had nothing to do with this story. I would wager that Tony's question stemmed from that very page—which, incidentally, seems to catalog part of an ongoing debate rather than your "dead horse." Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 09:06, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
And I don't see how being a volunteer editor at a newspaper gives me any less of a right to holding an opinion. ResMar 12:59, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
If anyone doesn't like the issues that are focused on by the Signpost, they can always contribute to the Signpost and focus on issues we overlook. Gamaliel (talk) 18:45, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Just want to give props to Tony1 and the signpost team for this excellent piece of coverage. Winner 42 Talk to me! 18:56, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Csisc responses

I did not give my overview to Signpost as I had exams from 10 to 15 May 2015. However, I have the great delight to show it here.

Part A: (a) The Board should implement a merger of affiliate-selected with community-elected Board seats 4. (b) The Board should should appoint more technology experts as trustees 2. (c) Wikimedia’s two big annual conference formats—Wikimania and the Wikimedia conference—should be merged 2. (d) The WMF's current reserves of some US$47 million should be transformed into the seeding for a WMF endowment, thus increasing yearly returns from the endowment 3 (e) The WMF's terms of use should forbid paid editing of any type on its sites 3

Part B: Increasing reader and editor participation in the global south. 5. Increasing editor retention 6. Investing more in mobile. 8. Investing more in collecting data relevant to our mission. 4. Funding more offline meetups (e.g. conferences, editathons). [My priority 9. Implementing VisualEditor 7. Reducing the gender gap in the editing communities 1. Advocating for freedom of information on the internet 10. Providing more engineering resources to improve readers' experience 3. Providing more engineering resources to improve editors' experience 2.

If elected, I will give more interest to the amelioration of the localization of WMF wikis and the implementation of more independent wikis in the WMF ones. I will ensure more importance to community as I will create a council of admins for each wiki that will take decisions on the regulation of projects and policy change in that particular wiki. --Csisc (talk) 08:18, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Note: With concern over due weight, I've rationalised the formatting of this post; it was essentially a copy-paste from our email sent out to candidates, and inappropriately included the instructions. Csisc's reponses arrived just before we published and after all of the stats and graphs were done—nearly three days after our deadline to candidates; so I suggested that he post here on the talkpage with just the sequence of numbers for each part (rather than a whole page equivalent, spaced out). Tony (talk) 09:26, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
I probably should explain why I had chosen these priorities. I think that Feminine Users could perform good works. As you already know, rate of success of women in Education in Tunisia and in some developed European countries is higher than the one for men... There are many talents that are not attracted to wikis because of the deficiency of the designs and the inexistence of tutorials that are developed to explain projects to women... I think that the new board should think of that and try to recruit feminine users and that is why I choose it as my first priority... As a users of several wikis, I face some problems in engineering bots and templates as I am creating some new wikis and works... I think that many users suffer from the same thing and that is why I had chosen doing tutorials explaining this as my second priority. As for the priorities I had chosen as least, I think that they will occur as results of the first priorities... In fact, when the output is ameliorated and the work in wikis in efficiently explained in a better way, more people would be interested in WMF wikis... More people will contribute and more fundings from governments and organizations would be given to offline regional meetings... --Csisc (talk) 19:38, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

On me placing the Global South second rather than first

I think at this point, I should explain why I placed editor retention first rather than onboarding the Global South despite being a Global South candidate, because had I voted the other way like the other candidates from the Global South, it would've tipped the balance in favor of the former. (If I was able to, I would've voted 1.5 in favor of both.)

Unlike the other candidates from the Global South, I predominantly edit on the English Wikipedia like most Filipino Wikipedians, and editor retention is very important to our community where we've lost editors, new and old, either to real-life commitments or arguments on-wiki. This was a very difficult decision for me to make as I was answering this survey, but I feel at this point that we need to grow our existing community so that we actually have new people to welcome. As much as we want to make our new editors feel comfortable (and we definitely should bring them on board!), we can't onboard new editors from the developing world when they have no tight-knit community to look forward to who could help them with on-wiki issues or who could better translate Wikipedia's "quirks" if you will to an appropriate cultural context. New editors, especially on the English Wikipedia, are some of the most vulnerable members of our community, and I strongly feel that it's the responsibility of older, more experienced editors to make them feel at home and to help them grow into becoming more experienced. This doesn't happen when there are no older editors.

That being said, I am still strongly committed to the onboarding of Wikimedians from the developing world, I still believe that we need to grow our developing world presence in an environment where editor trust is present, and retention of good editors is a good strategy towards realizing our goal of expanding our reach in the developing world. Thank you. --Sky Harbor (talk) 11:05, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

I probably should add a line or two on my Global South stance. I believe that increasing editorship and readership in the Global South is important, but these priorities can be often better achieved through technology (hence, priorities for tech, mobile, etc.), and also through solid work of chapters and thematic organizations in the region, not necessarily WMF. In fact, I think that an indirect influence, of organizations understanding the region well, and without being directed from San Francisco, is the best way to go. In practical terms of tech: I believe that it is important to develop partnerships allowing free access to Wikipedia, develop light, mobile websites (low on bandwidth), allow easy access to light versions of our pages, etc. All these can and should be achieved through targets covered by other priorities listed by the Signpost, while direct addressing the issue of readership/editing in my view may not. Pundit|utter 16:53, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
As a candidate from Global South, I had discussed the issue in WikiArabia this year... I think that the problem is difficult to solve because the technological issue is not the only reason behind this... There is some scientific and linguistic issues behind this... I think that this problem should be solved by the implementation of the Education Programme in South and this is just what former members of WMF Board had done and by the creation of wikis in regional dialect that are divergent from original languages in order to localize the recognition and the consciousness about the importance of WMF wikis. --Csisc (talk) 19:46, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Csisc that the education programme can help greatly. Not just in the south, but everywhere. This requires local wikimeets. It is nearly free to have these small Wikimeets. Yet they can help us increase our editorship, and improve our content. Long term wikimeets, local workgroups who teach others and encourage them to contribute. Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 20:08, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Small correction

I'm from Namibia. That should be Global South, not Global North. --Pgallert (talk) 08:38, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Pete, I did ponder this. Not easy. You're a native-speaker of German, and I'm guessing you migrated to Namibia. Sorry if I got it wrong, and in the end you have a foot in each camp. A few others caused pause for thought in this respect, too. Tony (talk) 10:31, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
There are native Germans in Namibia. You got it right that I wasn't here when the country became independent, but I'm here for a really long time. My kids are citizens, thanks to some legal nitpicking I am not. I understand you cannot update all the charts, but from what I do and where my priorities are, I count myself as 'Global South'. No worries, and thanks for the overview on the candidates, Pgallert (talk) 20:33, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
  • It's not a small correction, it's a fairly major one that will affect at least one of the graphs in the article that is supposedly comparing "global north" and "global south" candidates. Peter is pretty obviously a candidate from the global south; "speaks German" isn't a valid way of determining this, any more than "speaks Spanish" would be. Were candidates asked whether or not THEY believe they are global north or global south candidates? I think several of those you've lumped in the global north group could make a very good argument that they should actually be classified as global south or (to use the current terminology) "emerging communities" candidates, or for that matter "global" candidates. Depending on the definition, up to 10 candidates could be classified "global south". Risker (talk) 12:30, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for your opinion and your support. Tony (talk) 15:43, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
Given broad definitions of global scope, it is a certainty that individuals will have backgrounds that will defy easy categorizations. Tony did the best he could with the information he had at hand. Your suggestion about asking the candidates about their personal categorization is a good one, but their personal categorizations may clash with how many voters may view those categories. We will try to incorporate your suggestion into our coverage of the next election if we can, but keep in mind we do ask the candidates many questions and we don't want to overload them. Gamaliel (talk) 17:18, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Is this article a sufficient lens into candidate qualifications?

For those who have looked at both the official candidate questions page and this article: What do you think of this article as a tool for evaluating candidates? It seems to me that the questions (from many different Wikimedians) reflect a broad array of concerns, interests, and hopes around Wikimedia. This piece, which according to discussion above was prepared by only one reporter, reflects a view which seems to me rather narrow; and yet it is presented as the totality of the Signpost's news coverage, not as an opinion piece.

I brought up this issue with Tony1 when I was still a candidate (as noted above, I have since withdrawn), suggesting that broad, emerging themes in the questions and answers (such as those in Question 3) were not reflected or addressable with these questions. Tony's response was:

"We purposely didn’t deal with superprotect because it’s been so prominently discussed at the question page. You’d have us bore readers?"

I don't think readers, who might or might not take the time to read all 31 questions and each of the 21 candidates' lengthy answers, would be bored by summary and analysis. I'm concerned that many voters will look to the Signpost for comprehensive analysis (even if that is not a fair expectation of a volunteer publication). I respect and value the efforts of Tony and the Signpost editorial staff to produce this publication, and I certainly do not think there is any intent to advance an agenda here. My question is not about intent, but about the consequences: are voters adequately informed/guided here? What do others think -- and if you agree, are their ways this can be improved, either in this cycle or in the future? -Pete (talk) 20:38, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

I'd like to reiterate one point in stronger terms: as someone who has written and/or participated in a number of Signpost articles over the years, I am impressed and grateful to anyone who consistently takes the time to produce this publication. It takes a great deal of work, much of it thankless -- and it provides tremendous value to the community. My post is not in any way meant to disparage that work; my interest here is in how voters get information about the election. I believe there are many important things at stake in this election -- in my view, a renewed community focus and WMF transparency are the main ones -- that do not receive significant attention in the analysis above. -Pete (talk) 20:50, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
My understanding is that Tony's objective was to give a broadly scoped yet accessible election guide. I firmly believe that he's given a strong overview of the election and the important issues at stake. To go into the specificities that parts of the global community care about (Meredith Kercher, apparently?) would have greatly expanded the piece, increasing our (volunteer, I must emphasize [thank you for recognizing that]) effort while driving away readers, like what I suspect happened in our extremely long, two-week 2013 coverage. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 22:19, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I am sure that was Tony's genuine objective; but it does seem (in spite of his use of "we") that he was the only one producing the methodology for that, correct? Having worked for a number of newspapers (with, yes, paid staff), I find it hard to imagine one of them producing coverage they would call "broadly scoped" without extensive deliberation among newsroom staff. I think many of those asking questions on Meta also wanted a broad scope.
The Meredith Kercher example is quite different from the Superprotect one -- I think, actually, they define the range pretty well. I believe every candidate who answered the Kercher question more or less said, "this is a matter for English Wikipedia, not for the Board of Trustees"; so you're right, there's no compelling difference coming to the fore there, and no reason for the Signpost to cover it. But with Superprotect, you have either two or three incumbents saying more or less "nothing happened here that required Board intervention," and many others saying "this was a big deal, and merited a response." It highlights an important difference (as Tony acknowledged). What I'm suggesting is, broadly scoped coverage of the race should include all available information about important differences among the candidates.
To use a comparison from US politics, you wouldn't expect a newspaper's coverage of presidential candidates to skip over candidates' opinions of Obamacare, simply because it has been covered elsewhere. If a long page of questions and answers has, hidden within it, clear indications of what differentiates the candidates, I propose that news coverage should highlight that fact -- even if it's just a couple sentences that invites the reader to dig deeper. -Pete (talk) 02:04, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Candidate names in the table

Is there any particular reason why the first names of all candidates *except* Ali Haidar Khan are used in the table? Why is his the only column using his username? And would it be possible to add in the name you are using in the tables for each candidate with the list of candidates at the top of the page, or at least sort the names in the order that they appear in the list of candidates? Thanks. Risker (talk) 12:30, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Risker, please check your facts. The candidate's username is not used in the tables; on the contrary, "Tonmoy" appears—his preferred short-form name, which he has displayed in parentheses in the title of his candidate statement. In at least one other case a short-form name is used where a candidate commonly uses it: "Ed" for "Edward". Short-form names were used in space-constrained tables, which are too wide as they are; perhaps you object to the friendlier tone of first names and nicks. I see no complaint that surname initials appear in just two columns (that was to avoid any confusion by readers). The order in the tables is exactly that in which I received the responses in my inbox—perhaps I might have spent another 15 minutes changing that, but I was very tired at the end. Could you write to User:The ed17 to complain about the form of names bulleted at the top (he did that bit)?

This coverage was an enormous task that I did as a volunteer in good faith; just sending the emails and posting talkpage notifications involved some 70 actions, including thank-yous and clarifications. Let's not even mention tabulation, data analysis, and writing it up. It took days, just when I had clients with sharp deadlines; but I'm keen, just as are my Signpost colleagues who watched it progress, to provide community coverage separate from the election pages themselves. One of the rewards for me was that candidates were a pleasure to communicate with.

At the moment I'm finding your comments to be in bad faith; I'm happy to engage more positively when you're in a better mood. I don't think you realise what a tricky and time-consuming undertaking it is to try for balance—with a close deadline—where there are 21 candidates in a complex, multi-linguistic global organisation. Tony (talk) 16:47, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you!

Thank you for this article and the work it took to produce it. I found the prioritization exercise very insightful. Ijon (talk) 00:49, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

My opinion

I think that:

  • Affiliates are very important to the Wikimedia mission and they shouldn't be ignored. Therefore, I disagree with affiliate-selected with community-elected Board seats, and with merging Wikimania and Wikimedia conferences.
  • The terms of use should forbid paid editing, period.
  • We don't need more tech experts or more investment in engineering. Wikimedia's biggest issues are social.
  • Wikimedia should focus on increasing / retaining editors, especially women and in the "global south". (I prefer the term "undeveloped countries", like my country. Plus Australia is in the south.)
  • Wikimedia should advocate for freedom of information.

Therefore, my top two candidates are Cristian Consonni (CCantoro) and Josh Lim (Sky Harbor). The top six is completed by Phoebe Ayers, María Sefidari (Raystorm), Syed Muzammiluddin (Hindustani) and Peter Gallert. --NaBUru38 (talk) 01:11, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

@NaBUru38: Surely you mean paid advocacy? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:55, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
@The ed17: Well, no. It's hard to be neutral when you are paid. --NaBUru38 (talk) 13:37, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

In the media: Grant Shapps story continues; Wikipedia's "leftist ties" (1,886 bytes · 💬)

Ha! Take that Shapps. —  Cliftonian (talk)  07:03, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Magna Carta (An Embroidery)

  • Further images of Magna Carta (An Embroidery) can be found at c:Category:Magna Carta (An Embroidery), including details of the embroideries of the individual illustrations in the artice. They're really quite something to look at, zoomed close in. Jheald (talk) 08:50, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia's "leftist ties"

They cite this blog item by Anthony Watts as an example of Wikipedia’s "obvious" remaining bias, where factual, credible sources were removed to censor information that reflects badly on global warming alarmism – specifically this 12 October 2010 edit by William M. Connolley. They neglect to mention that the information is basically back in the current Harold Lewis biography. So yeah, right. Editors were able to expand the stub. I wonder if Lewis realized that when he came out with this public pronouncement in the final year of his 87-year life, that Wikipedians would give his Resignation from APS nearly equal weight to his entire Career as a physicist which preceded it. But yeah, someone will get around to expanding the "career" section eventually. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:33, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

News and notes: Swedish Wikimedia chapter organizes simultaneous Wikidata contests (3,927 bytes · 💬)

Graph extension

So we can now insert graphs into articles not as images but as pieces of code? Cool! I can't wait to try it.
Do you know if anyone has done it already? Is there a way to search for all instances of an extension's use?
Of course, the chances are, it will scare the living crap out of most editors, especially the new ones — wiki source without syntax highlighting can be intimidating as it is. But then, it's nothing compared to the Lua fiasco (or can we officially call it a travesty already?).
Primaler (talk) 16:06, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but the underlying system is so sophisticated that it will take a while for parametrization via Lua templates to reduce it to something manageable for the usual editors. Lua fiasco? ResMar 16:35, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Before it gets more readable, "template per graph" approach may be the way to go:
  • it makes them instantly re-usable
  • history for the code would be much easier to access (imagine searching through hundreds of edits to find the few relating to code)
  • graphs will need tracking and managing, categorizing articles with graphs is one option, but categorizing graph templates sounds better
Fiasco seems an appropriate word for a poorly documented pile of unreadable code written in an esoteric language (why, why Lua? why not Haskell, then? why not Brainfuck?) — but anyway, this is probably neither time or place to discuss it, sorry for bringing it up.
Primaler (talk) 17:36, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 Primaler: Looks like this VDE is an intended way to go, for now. ResMar 18:18, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Is it all behind the scenes for now or is there a project devoted to this? I think I'd like to follow the developments. It's high time, wikipedia has been looking somewhat out of date for a while now. Primaler (talk) 18:51, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
I sure can't figure out many of the "visualizations" demos, for example this "force" one, and I consider myself fairly technical. What is that one supposed to visualize? Are labels for the nodes and/or arcs just not rendering in my browser? EllenCT (talk) 23:25, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 EllenCT: I'm concerned by the fact that the interactivity that was present in the extension a little while ago seems to have vanished now. For instance, hovering over the graphs on this page no longer turns them red; and the country map in the demos no longer updates its outline on mouseover. Considering that was all the pretty in this, I'm mildly concerned. Are you also getting this bug? It doesn't seem to be just me... ResMar 04:40, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Oh, it's working alright! Here's what I can do now:
List of most expensive paintings: Scatter plot
Primaler (talk) 02:18, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Op-ed: What made Wikipedia lose its reputation? (14,294 bytes · 💬)

  • One may better ask, "How can Wikipedia lose its reputation" if the reputation has long been of shoddy, dishonest, frivolous propaganda. Any change in reputation might be seen somewhat more clearly if the light of public opinion polls years apart had been thrown on it. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:03, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
  • ... the environment that allowed "anonymous editors" to create the aforementioned incidents has long since dissipated.
    • I don't agree. See last month's Washington Post article The story behind Jar’Edo Wens, the longest-running hoax in Wikipedia history for details of a breaching experiment carried out this year: On Monday night, Kohs wrapped up an experiment in which he inserted outlandish errors into 31 articles and tracked whether editors ever found them. After more than two months, half of his hoaxes still had not been found — and those included errors on high-profile pages, like “Mediterranean climate” and “inflammation.” (By his estimate, more than 100,000 people have now seen the claim that volcanic rock produced by the human body causes inflammation pain.)
  • The Seigenthaler incident happened right as Wikipedia's popularity was beginning to explode. Wikipedia had about 12,000 active editors in October 2005, a number that has climbed to close to 137,000 now.
  • All of the press articles linked here are recent, ranging from October 2012 to April 2015. Andreas JN466 08:35, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Good information, Andreas. This trend will continue because there is no limit to how many articles can be created but there is a limit to human resources to manage those articles. Bots etc can solve a lot. The hardest problem is the correct-looking but not actually correct fact intentionally inserted. I think people know this, if not intuitively, which contributes to WP reputation as unreliable. Also, many people who disparage Wikipedia are disgruntled ex-editors who may have been reverted and treated unkindly by those core overworked and surly 3,000 editors - in part our problem is systemically self-inflicted. -- GreenC 15:32, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
I agree that the superficially plausible fact is the hardest hoax to identify. I do not agree that the number of articles is a problem: the amount of hoaxes is dependant on the number and activity of hoaxers, which at the size Wikipedia has been for some years is more or less independent of additional growth. Therefore the size of the problem is the size of the edit stream. Deeper inspection of edits (or more draconian restrictions on editing) is required to decrease hoaxes. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 12:40, 21 May 2015 (UTC).
Surely it's both the number of articles and the number of hoaxers, Rich. Imagine 3 people busy hiding easter eggs in a field: it's your job to find them before a visitor accidentally steps on one. If your field is the size of your living room, with 10 visitors an hour, you can stay on top of things. But if it is the size of a football field, with bushes and hedges blocking your view, and 50 site visitors an hour, you'll find you can't be everywhere. And of course the superficially plausible lie is not always a hoax: sometimes it is just an error, a misunderstanding or an unsuccessful paraphrase. Andreas JN466 01:28, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Indeed, for pragmatic purposes the distinction between edits based on motivation is irrelevant.
But the analogy is largely false: we don't need to be everywhere, just in the recent changes: furthermore the growth in number of articles in the mature project does not correspond to a growth in the amount of bed edits, at least not in a linear way. Someone could perhaps run some stats? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 12:53, 22 May 2015 (UTC).
There is no need for a growth in bad edits, and none was stipulated: it's enough for bad edits to survive longer. You're right in theory: staying on top of recent changes would be enough. But that's all academic. As things are, even gross vandalism sometimes gets through recent changes. [1] Moreover, recent changes checking has never approximated anything resembling a rigorous check, incl. verification of sourcing, suitability of added content in article context, etc. It doesn't even approximate that in projects that have pending changes installed (though I believe pending changes cuts down on hoaxes, removing the instant gratification a hoaxer gets from seeing their change go live immediately, and if installed in en:WP would free up time currently spent by RC patrollers on competing with ClueBot). With such holes in the first line of defence, the fact that hundreds of thousands of articles are not on any active contributor's watchlist (or literally not on anyone's watchlist) comes into play. Andreas JN466 18:10, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Per "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written by, for the most part, laypeople". For medical content I would disagree. The majority of our medical content is written by health care professionals. [2] And many Wikipedia editors are experts. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:01, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
  • About the headline: somehow I think it might be better if we played to the viewer's opinions of themselves, and change it to "the free encyclopedia that you can edit", like French Wikipedia currently does. (I first found this idea on Basemetal's userpage, but then I noticed that some other WPs actually do use that amended headline.) Double sharp (talk) 10:46, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia will never be what it wants to be, a solid source of reliable info, because it lets the masses edit and will always be incapable of putting sufficient control mechanisms in place to control the bullies, POV pushers, and outright mentally unbalanced users who have far too much control here. HalfGig talk 10:55, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
  • It's unclear to me what the source is for the statement that there are currently 137,000 active editors. Per the official statistics for Wikipedia, there just under 76,000 active editors in March 2015, across all language versions. That's down about more than 15% from the peak in 2007; it is also sharply up from the 2005 figures. (To be specific, March 2007 had just under 89,000 active editors, compared to just under 51,000 in March 2006 and about 14,000 in March 2005.) So yes, the number of active editors has sharply increased since 2005, but essentially all of that increase occurred between 2005 and 2007; the count has been generally downhill since then. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:29, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I think that one fact that is easily overlooked is that the number of former Wikpedia editors (say, who haven't edited in three years or more) outnumbers the current number of active editors. And it might outnumber the very active editors by a hundredfold! So, there are a lot of people who speak of Wikipedia with familiarity who were either blocked or got disillusioned or chased off or just got busy with life and quit editing. In a forum like Quora, a person who answers a question about Wikipedia could have, say, edited intermittently between 2005 and 2007, had a few bad encounters and left. But given their participation, I imagine they feel as qualified to answer questions about Wikipedia on Quora as an enthusiastic new editor who has been here for 4 months and thrown themselves into the project.
Meaning, because Wikipedia is such a highly ranked and familiar website, there is an incredibly varying level of experience and knowledge about it among individuals, and an appreciation of how it has changed over time really probably is only apparent to a small sliver of editors and readers. Liz Read! Talk! 20:17, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I think the 'Don't use Wikipedia' statement is misunderstood: I don't want students to use it because it is tertiary information, an encyclopaedia. They should use papers and monographs instead. Usage of Encyclopaedia Britannica is likewise improper in an academic context. That has nothing to do with trust. --Pgallert (talk) 08:55, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Thank you for your comments. Just yesterday one of my brothers complained about the misinformation that keeps popping up in the English Wikipedia article on Adam DeVine as evidence that you can't trust Wikivoyage. I know -- it's a logical error -- but that's what people think. One reason I got involved in Wikipedia was the over-use by my students. I solved that problem by limiting students in their citation of tertiary sources: to one (in a 200-level course) or two (in a 100-level class). Bearian (talk) 11:54, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Standards for sources seem pretty low to me. There's a reason legitimate news organizations don't cite many of the publications wikipedia will happily accept as a source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.66.218.131 (talk) 13:52, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
  • More simply, Wikipedia suffers any number of people (celebrities, media, etc.) upset about inaccurate articles without either learning why the inaccuracy exists or doing anything about it. Wikipedia doesn't have a chorus exalting how good our articles are. We only have readers that show up, get the content they want, and leave. Many readers are impressed with Wikipedia until they find clickbait that tells them otherwise. I don't think beating the drum about how n00bs get treated is germane here. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:40, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Traffic report: Round Two (1,788 bytes · 💬)

I never knew that Boxing was so popular, I thought it was just an American thing, but $500 million from payper-view? WOW. I've seen the new Avengers movie in theaters, a small one, there was about 20 other people there. It is a great movie. Lightspeed2012 05:34, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

I recall my mothers comment on boxing low these many years ago; when asked if she was going to watch the "big fight" at the time she replied, "Why would I pay to watch two grown men beat each other up when I can watch my kids beat each other up for free?" That is advice I've taken to heart over the years. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:34, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Like football and Formula 1 racing, I think interest in boxing is very international and isn't a strictly American thing at all. I'm not sure how the pay per view was handled overseas though. If the charges were high, that could explain a lot of people coming to Wikipedia to learn more about the fight. Liz Read! Talk! 20:22, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Reading the Wikipedia page on Cinco de Mayo has been part of Internet culture for a surprising 6 years now... Shii (tock) 21:06, 16 May 2015 (UTC)


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