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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2016-09-06. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Blog: Switzerland’s ETH-Bibliothek is uploading 134,000 images to Wikimedia Commons (3,737 bytes · 💬)

  • Unfortunately, the various generous gifts of tens of thousands of pictures usually just sit in their source categories. Most are not categorized by subject or location or other attribute that could attract an editor seeking to illustrate an article. Jim.henderson (talk) 04:03, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
    • Sounds like a project, though it can be difficult to confirm any of such information... ~Mable (chat) 11:24, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
    • Cataloguing them will prove to be a challenge for anyone but an expert, on the life of Mittelholzer & likely on the subjects photographed.

      I had a brief glance thru the images in the "Mittelholzer-Abyssinia flight 1934" group, which by their name ought to be images mostly about Ethiopia. Since I've had a hand in writing the majority of the articles about that country, I'm probably as qualified as anyone to categorize them. What I found was while many of these could be valuable contributions, almost all need much more background information to be truly useful. For example, one of the first I looked at was labelled "ETH-BIB-Abessinier an einfachem Grab-Abessinienflug 1934-LBS MH02-22-0281.tif", which, as the title says, is a photo of a simple grave in Africa; however, there is nothing about the grave -- which is a simple wooden cross -- or the man sitting next to it with his head covered -- is he crying? Was the person buried there a relative? Or is he simply resting in the shade of the trees & has nothing to do with the grave? And then there is "ETH-BIB-Alte abessinische Wandmalereien in Kirche-Abessinienflug 1934-LBS MH02-22-0299.tif" -- a photo of a wall painting inside of an Ethiopian church. The style is clearly Amharic, & since it was taken before the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, this may be an image of a lost work of art that has been destroyed in the 80 years since. Yet all we know is what the title of the photo tells us. A third -- & stupidly frustrating -- example are several photos described as "Die zwei Töchter des Kaisers im Palastpark" ("Two daughters of the Emperor in the Palace Gardens"): which two daughters of the Emperor are these? Haile Selassie had four.

      Interspersed with these "Abyssinian" photos are photos of adjacent countries: several of Petra in modern Jordan, some of Jerusalem, & some of Sudan. As a result, photos tagged simply "Markt im Abissinien" could actually have been taken anywhere. As I said, there are some potentially invaluable images here, but it will take a very long time to provide more than some simple & possibly unhelpful category tags for them. (I added one, which I suspect is wrong.) -- llywrch (talk) 22:03, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Oh god yes, inadequate metadata is one of the most aggravating issues for Commons (along with bad provenance). We don't even know if Mittelholzer kept track of those details! DS (talk) 13:42, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
I am reminded of the episode "Close Up" of UFO (TV series) in which intelligence photos obtained at great expense and risk prove worthless due to the loss of metadata. Jim.henderson (talk) 18:04, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Any ways, they seem to have a good will, I appreciate the step IKHazarika (talk) 04:39, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Featured content: Entertainment, sport and something else in-between (280 bytes · 💬)

  • I love those bird shots. Thanks. Praemonitus (talk) 19:38, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

In the media: Librarians and Wikipedians—meant to be together? (5,426 bytes · 💬)

  • Love the title and the coverage of the libraries conversations: "Yet, the above initiatives evidence Wikipedia receiving more credit as an established institution, and thus becoming the target of more projects from the traditional institutions that curate knowledge. Perhaps Wikipedia got to where it is without as much formal support (and indeed in the face of many detractors), but the old guard eventually incorporating the nouveau riche is human nature." That wit gave User:Ocaasi and I a good laugh! Keep up the great reporting! Sadads (talk) 21:57, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
    • That nugget was all Milowent -- and I had the same reaction when I read it. Thanks! -Pete (talk) 22:07, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Creative Commons newsletter - is there a link available for this item? I couldn't find anything with a brief skim through https://creativecommons.org/blog/ and the "archives" link at https://creativecommons.org/about/contact/newsletter/ only lists older newsletters (2007-2010). Thanks! Quiddity (talk) 22:43, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the catch -- fixed in the article now, and it's on Medium. -Pete (talk) 23:07, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Can I have the link to the Search Engine Optimization story, please? I would have really wanted to read what they have to say, and omitting it is just plain silly. Surely there are worse things people could read (intentionally not linked). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:45, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
    • If you enable email on your account, I'll email it to you. -Pete (talk) 23:07, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
      • Go ahead, Pete, but I was really hoping for an explanation for the omission as well. Does Signpost think its readers will resort to spamming links? Or are you SEO-minded enough to deny thousands of clicks to that despicable story? – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:39, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
      • While I can't speak for them, just a note that Wikipedia uses nofollow for external links so their search engine rank wouldn't really be influenced much. However there are still other reasons not to link to them such as driving traffic to sites opposite the goals of Wikipedia, and because you don't want to give sites like that ad revenue. Opencooper (talk) 03:37, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
      • Sent, Finnusertop. The story constitutes advice on how to circumvent Wikipedia's intended purpose, and its policies. The Signpost editorial board prefers not to play a role in broadly propagating that kind of information. -Pete (talk) 17:43, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
        • Peteforsyth, is this similar to Matthew Woodward's tactics? See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive267, section "SEO spam attack". Nyttend (talk) 12:48, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
          • Yes. Thanks for pointing out that prior coverage, Nyttend. -Pete (talk) 18:04, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
            • You're welcome. My response to such activity is typically (1) block the account as {{uw-spamblock}} without warning, since such people clearly aren't here for any other purpose [they're professionals, so we can't persuade them to stop], (2) blacklist the spammed URL, and (3) write a block message that includes a personalised note explaining that they need to tell their clients that the link now cannot be added to any Wikipedia page, because of their actions. At worst, the effect of the personalised message is no different from a normal block message, but there's a chance that it will hurt the spammer's reputation with the clients and reduce the chance that they'll re-hire spammers to do this. Nyttend (talk) 00:40, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
      • This is a well-written piece, offering a glance at the two varying perspectives of librarians and Wikipedians. Although it is true that Wikipedia has gained a significant amount of popularity in the past few years, the growing efforts to link libraries and Wikipedia will benefit both parties in the long run. On another note, would have loved to have a peek at the Search Engine Optimization article if it is, by any chance, possible. by seo uk — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.89.212.0 (talk) 16:26, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

News and notes: AffCom still grappling with WMF Board's criteria for new chapters (2,527 bytes · 💬)

Q: Is it even possible to hold older chapters/thorgs to the higher standards? I was under the impression that the previous processes did not allow for any mechanism to hold chapters accountable, nevermind decomissioning them.Thelmadatter (talk) 22:32, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Thelmadatter The only requirement for chapters is to make a brief annual report to the WMF. The report only needs to be about three sentences long and can be seen at meta:Reports. Other than that, since expectations are not higher, accountability is not higher. I would like to see higher accountability requirements. The ones proposed above are fine, but I regret that there are no plans to apply these rules to existing chapters. I wish that they could apply to all chapters, and not just new chapters, and I wish that these rules could be in place in time to de-commission inactive chapters before the meta:Affiliate-selected Board seats in 2019. That vote is the one power that goes to all chapters, even those chapters operated by single users who almost never log in to Wikimedia projects. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:10, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
@Peteforsyth: I'm pretty sure that you mixed the admins up. Oshwah's the software engineer, not Vanmonde. I've fixed it, but if I shouldn't have edited it, you can revert. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 11:27, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
"Unlike user groups, chapters and thorgs are eligible for annual operating grants"—Someone has commented to me that the first phrase is incorrect. I'm trying to locate information on Meta about the differences in funding opportunities for user groups vs chapters/thorgs, but it's surprisingly difficult (and I think FDC grant eligibility changed in the recent restructuring). What led me down the possibly wrong path was the appearance of "chapter" and "chapter agreement" at the top of the 2016–17 eligibility checklist. Tony (talk) 22:29, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Recent research: AI-generated articles and research ethics; anonymous edits and vandalism fighting ethics (8,821 bytes · 💬)

No comments on this yet? What a fascinating story. A huge helping of "thank-you" to the authors, with a generous side of gratitude. Well done. 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 15:37, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

I've got one, but it's going to upset some people. The first story here is about a kind of Turing test ... an attempt to get a machine to successfully mimic the kinds of things a human would write. This kind of research is proceeding at light speed; no one in the field is betting that machines won't be much, much better at it 10 years from now, across a range of applications. This will inevitably have dramatic consequences for Wikipedia. We can expect to see a variety of bad actors, including convincing, machine-generated sockpuppets that promote their master's articles, and show up at community votes, and generally cause mayhem. We can expect to see good actors, who create tools that efficiently do a variety of tasks that have to be done manually now, including tools that fight the bad actors. Most of the machine-users will probably be neither good nor bad; they might just be curious about how the software will work, as these researchers seem to have been, or they might be using these tools in other spheres of their lives, and never stop to think that we might object to use of those tools on Wikipedia. One thing that concerns me: if we yell at every neutral editor and researcher who uses similar tools and tell them we think they're scum (and that happened in this case, a little bit), we might, over time, convert all the neutral actors into bad actors. - Dank (push to talk) 17:09, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
Ever since seeing CGP Grey's "Humans Need Not Apply" video and reading Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies upon which the video was based, I have become increasingly concerned with changes in this industry. Those of us that enjoy writing an encyclopedia will not survive for long against AI that will generate a free encyclopedia for those who are only consumers. Clearly as a biased humanities student I have little regard to the professionalism of engineers mucking around in Wikipedia as they selfishly seek to solve a perceived problem without a care for either the human editors or the larger enterprise. To that end, I have no qualms about biting or "profiling" so-called neutral actors. Anyone that's not an encyclopedist is a bad actor, anyway. Chris Troutman (talk) 13:37, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
FWIW, the Quill software mentioned at the 8:54 mark in that video is described at https://www.narrativescience.com/quill. Google has a team headed by Ray Kurzweil that plans to deliver a customizable chatbot by the end of this year. So the threats (and opportunities) already exist to some extent. - Dank (push to talk) 14:14, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Regarding the commentary on the paper by "de Laat", I'm sure it's a well thought out work, but I fail to see why this form of profiling (or as I think of it: filtering) is "eroding the moral order". Editing Wikipedia is not an innate human right, it's a privilege that can be taken away. To me the anti-vandalism tactics are somewhat equivalent to requiring seat belts to drive on the freeway; the police can profile the unbelted drivers, thereby focusing their efforts on (presumably) higher risk targets. How is that eroding the moral order? de Laat's reasoning seems more appropriate for a court of law. Praemonitus (talk) 19:59, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
    • I've long been of the opinion that IP vandals should be permanently banned after three strikes, and more generally that we ought to treat anonymous edits differently from edits by named editors. Bearian (talk) 17:57, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
      • Maybe that would be fair, but is it possible? We only have the technology to block IP addresses, an individual vandal is likely to move on and if we've permanently blocked their former IP address it is no skin of their nose. If anything they have provoked us into permanently disabling editing for future users of that IP address. ϢereSpielChequers 09:31, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Interesting article. I'd have critiqued the IP profiling article differently. Firstly the question of intrusiveness, I can understand drivers getting annoyed if they are pulled over and breathalysed when sober. Antivandalism patrol is more like the highway patrol that looks at all the traffic and then goes after the car that is weaving all over the road or speeding. Unless you get thanked or your edit accepted you don't normally notice the time someone checks your edit and decides it isn't vandalism. Secondly it conflated the divide into IP v registered. In reality the divide is three way, IP, new account, trusted account. The main difference is in the way we treat the regulars as opposed to newbies and IPs. In effect we are like an airport with special light touch express lines for frequent flyers and staff, or a barman who doesn't repeatedly check the age of the regulars - prove you are a trusted known quantity and we will focus our security time elsewhere. If you make the comparison between IP editors and Newbies then I'm not sure the IPs have a case to gripe. In practice an IP vandal will usually get a 31 hour block for something that a newbie would get an indefinite block for. A better analogy for the IP editors and newbies is with office blocks that operate a keyfob system. I wouldn't be surprised if the researchers work in an environment with such a system. If so I challenge them to persuade their University or other workplace to drop special treatment for regulars, no side doors that only work with a fob - everyone gets to use the main entrance and sign in at reception. Anons, such as people wearing full face motorcycle helmets and having forgotten their keyfob, get the same access as everyone else. Such a system might work OK at a public library or in a village on a sparsely populated island, but not in an organisation with hundreds let alone thousands of people and in a big city. ϢereSpielChequers 09:31, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
    • It is common for organizations to issue members identification cards or badges. People who have such IDs are treated differently from visitors who do not. They can enter and leave buildings and areas within buildings without checking in at a front desk. People who do not display a badge in a work place may be politely challenged by employees or security guards ("Can I Help you?"). A library card allows one to take out books. A passport permits border crossing. Cards holders are trusted more by the organization that issues the card. None of this behavior is considered profiling or ethically dubious. Having a Wikipedia account is a form of ID. We can easily contact you if your behavior is inappropriate and block you if your bad behavior persists despite repeated warnings (3 at least). By contrast many IP addresses come from schools or cybercafes where the addresses are shared by multiple users, making warnings and blocks more difficult to deliver. A vandal may come from more than one IP address and can easily evade blocks. Finally vandalism as defined by our policy is clear cut stuff like deleting blocks of text or inserting obscenities or gibberish. Its removal is an unquestionable good. If one goes into a poor neighborhood and quietly picks up broken glass from public playgrounds without attracting any attention or making any fuss about it, would that present ethical problems? Even if the reality is that there is just as much or more broken glass in richer neighborhoods, the playgrounds cleaned up are still better for it.--agr (talk) 01:00, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Special report: Olympics readership depended on language (1,806 bytes · 💬)

For what's worth, Yoshida (4th Olympics, gold at all three previous attempts), Uchimura (world champion every year since 2009) and Fukuhara (on the national team since she was 11 years old, flag bearer at the Beijing Olympics) were all household names in Japan long before people read their Wikipedia bios this year. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 01:26, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

  • thank you for sharing that context. It makes sense.--Milowent • hasspoken 01:31, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

In the article, you mentioned that Germany won silver in both men's and women's football; they actually won gold in the women's tournament. Dynaboyj (talk) 05:32, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

  • Dynaboyj, thank you for catching that! I guess its clear I'm not German! I changed the word "silver" to "medals" to correct the error.--Milowent • hasspoken 15:45, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

I wondered why only these languages were sampled, so I quite appreciate your comments about why other languages were excluded. Nyttend (talk) 12:32, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Technology report: Wikimedia mobile sites now don't load images if the user doesn't see them (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-09-06/Technology report

Traffic report: From Phelps to Bolt to Reddit (6,016 bytes · 💬)

Influence of Reddit on Wikipedia pageviews

Reddit is part of the tiny "other referrers" rectangle in this chart

Regarding "Reddit, which bills itself as 'the front page of the Internet' because Wikipedia doesn't, has been a major factor in driving traffic here":

That's probably true if "here" means the Top 25 pages, and in any case there is no doubt that the traffic of an individual page linked from a popular Reddit can spike considerably. (By the way, there is an academic paper about this, which we haven't yet covered in the "recent research" section - if anyone is interested in writing a review, let me know; otherwise I might possibly do it myself in our next issue a month from now.)

However, before we get too excited (or worried) about Reddit's "role in aiding Wikipedia", let's not forget that the top 25 articles receive only a tiny, tiny sliver of Wikipedia's pageviews overall, where the ratio of Reddit referrals is so small that it was not even called out separately in the above chart (from this 2015 research). Of course I absolutely agree that it's worth thinking about how to better draw people's attention to the information on Wikipedia (there has already been quite a bit of work on this by editors, the Foundation and other Wikimedia organizations, but there may be many more opportunities that we have not made use of fully yet).

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 03:03, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

PS: Out of curiosity, I ran the actual numbers (for August 24, the day after the TIL for Tic Tac was posted). On that day, 0.5% of pageviews on the English Wikipedia had a referrer from Reddit - so very much not dominant, although still twice as large as the traffic coming from Facebook. The Tic Tac article itself though had 81% of its pageviews coming directly from Reddit.
Extended content
Data source: 
SELECT SUM(IF(referer LIKE '%google.%',1,0))/SUM(1) AS google,
SUM(IF(referer LIKE '%.facebook.com/%',1,0))/SUM(1) AS facebook,
SUM(IF(referer LIKE '%.bing.com/%',1,0))/SUM(1) AS bing,
SUM(IF(referer LIKE '%.yahoo.com/%',1,0))/SUM(1) AS yahoocom,
SUM(IF(referer LIKE '%.reddit.com/%',1,0))/SUM(1) AS reddit,
SUM(1) AS allviews
FROM wmf.webrequest WHERE year = 2016 AND month = 8 AND day = 24
AND is_pageview 
AND agent_type  = 'user'
AND normalized_host.project = 'en'
AND normalized_host.project_class = 'wikipedia';
google	facebook	bing	yahoocom	reddit	allviews
0.3600752916003187	0.0023931338194005474	0.014221534826641381	0.008654790611702571	0.00523757841064597	254312565
1 row selected (396.326 seconds)

SELECT SUM(IF(referer LIKE '%.reddit.com/%',1,0)) AS redditrefs,
SUM(1) AS allviews
FROM wmf.webrequest WHERE year = 2016 AND month = 8 AND day = 24
AND agent_type  = 'user'
AND normalized_host.project = 'en'
AND normalized_host.project_class = 'wikipedia'
AND pageview_info['page_title'] = 'Tic_Tac';
redditrefs	allviews
263560	324843
1 row selected (214.299 seconds)
The webrequest database used in this query is not public; for privacy reasons only some WMF staff under an NDA have access. But if someone is interested in related data and takes it on themselves to modify the above queries accordingly, I might be able to run it for them if they post a request as described here.
Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 07:21, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Tbayer (WMF), that paper does look interesting, I'll give it closer read and see if I can't write something up about it. And yes you are correct that the commentary was referring to articles making the Top 25. Redditors on TIL clearly use wikipedia's vast store of articles to find interesting things to highlight, and thus random articles will make the Top 25 as a result. I don't think this is bad, if anything it probably influences why reddit seems to like wikipedia so much.--Milowent • hasspoken 03:08, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Can we talk about how the Signpost allowed a biased and factually-incorrect rant be published for all the world to see? Also, wouldn't Wikipedia trying to push popular articles force the site to cater to clicks and go down the road of clickbait that has befallen many other websites? 24.113.234.93 (talk) 20:59, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

@24.113.234.93: No and no. The folks that do this report always do a bang-up job. You're welcome. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:51, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
  • The commentary above that you complain about is not really about articles that make the Top 25, but about other well known issues with Reddit. I am on reddit and aware of these issues, as are many of us. Don't take it personally.--Milowent • hasspoken 03:01, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject report: Watching Wikipedia with the project devoted to television (1,351 bytes · 💬)

@Megalibrarygirl: Just FYI,You might want to replace the logo-image. See c:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Hell on Wheels logo.svg. (t) Josve05a (c) 22:07, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, Josve05a. I'll ask the SP staff about it. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:30, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
Megalibrarygirl, Josve05a already found a replacement image (thanks again). I think it makes the point equally well -- hopefully not an issue for you? -Pete (talk) 23:59, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
Sweet! @Josve05a and Peteforsyth:, awesome! Thank you, Josve05a!!!! :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:00, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
I forgot to say I like it better actually. ;) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:00, 7 September 2016 (UTC)


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