Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2017-08-05

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2017-08-05. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Featured content: Everywhere in the lead (1,363 bytes · 💬)

Photo caption "...its subject has been brought to the lead more recently." what does that mean? I can't understand it whether reading "lead" pronounced "led" or "leed". --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 14:44, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Definition #2 of wikt:lead#Noun_2 is how I understand it, where for articles 'in the lead' means being a featured article - Evad37 [talk] 23:45, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

I introduced that pun. ;) Parcly Taxel 07:49, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

I get that it's supposed to be a pun, I just (still) don't understand the idiom. "Brought to the lead" means being [dog] trained. But I'm and British ... and a pedant, and maybe this means something in USEng and maybe it just doesn't matter :-). --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 08:54, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Humour: WWASOHs and ETCSSs (1,161 bytes · 💬)

Our numbers soaring:

TWELVE!^{yeah I'm shouting}

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 16:56, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

• LOL. Thank you Barbara and Ritchie. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:45, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

It's all Richie's fault. (He can't spell, either) Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bfpage (talk • contribs) 00:33, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

In the media: Wikipedia used to judge death penalty, arms smuggling, Indonesian governance, and HOTTEST celebrity (3,645 bytes · 💬)

Court cases built on Wikipedia articles

Thanks to the journalists for producing this piece. This piece shows the substantial epistemologic hypocrisy and simpleton-ism that often surround applications of Wikipedia content even among some people who hold professional degrees (and thus are supposed to know better). What some of these lawyers and commentators are actually showing, beneath their emperor's-new-suit-style front of fabricated moral outrage, is that "to 'win the game', one is supposed to use Wikipedia to get clues and circumspection but then also deny that one did so, and leave no publicly/easily available evidence or paper trail showing that one did so. But I'll tell you, or imply, not to look at Wikipedia at all because it's unmitigated garbage. Thus, do as I say, not as I do." The plain fact about how to apply Wikipedia properly is that you use it to gain orientation on a topic but then you also go read reliable sources, including usually the very same reliable references cited by Wikipedia itself, before you base any critical decision on the Wikipedia content. This mode of use is not as different from that of a library reference desk as the fake moral outrage would imply. When one criticizes the defense lawyer who read about Texas capital punishment on Wikipedia, for example, the correct lesson is not that "she should have avoided even looking at Wikipedia"—the correct lesson is simply that "she should have also read multiple reliable sources after reading Wikipedia, and not allowed anyone to find any printouts of Wikipedia in her briefcase." People's hypocrisy about Wikipedia is tiring, especially because that same snarky asshole who acts like he knows better about the epistemologic approach to using (or avoiding) Wikipedia will casually read the Google answer box, which often cites no references at all and makes no attempt to show how or where it got its information, all day long. And, once again, what really matters to him is just to pretend that he didn't—to appear not to have done so, or leave no clear evidence of having done so. But of course, the simpleton-ism comes from all sides, because the lawyers and judges who cite Wikipedia in briefs and decisions (the ones that the snarky hypocrites attack) should have had enough sense to cite the reliable sources that they found via Wikipedia, not the Wikipedia article itself, just as they would cite the reliable sources that they found via the reference librarian, not the reference librarian herself/himself. For example, with the helicopter dual-use technology import/export issue, many or most Wikipedia articles on aircraft cite Jane's reference works—including the article on the Mil Mi-28. Among the laziness, ignorance, childishness, and hypocrisy in how people treat the epistemology of online content, I'm not sure which of the four is most inexcusable. Quercus solaris (talk) 03:48, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Speaking of sources...

Speaking of correct use of sources, the article on NTN EST and the Russian Mil Mi-28 helicopter is clearly referring to Estonia's Tax and Customs Board. It would be quite strange indeed for "Europe", with Russia being the largest country of Europe, to have a single tax authority. int21h (talk · contribs · email) 19:23, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

News and notes: Non-English special edition! 99% no news about English-based wiki communities! (6,362 bytes · 💬)

• [Patent and Market] court says that media shared online cannot be considered "avbildning", a Swedish term which means "a reproduction". Since avbildning is allowed under the freedom of panorama exception it means that online publishing is likely no longer covered by freedom of panorama.

  ...so what is "media shared online", if not a reproduction? And the Supreme Court didn't address the lower court's freedom of panorama interpretation? czar 06:34, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

• The Swedish court decision seems to be nonsensical. Can a Swede read it and explain what it means?

Does it mean that it would be a copyright infringement in Sweden to take a digital photograph of a copyright-protected artwork, when that photograph would be protected by freedom of panorama when taken with an old-school camera using a physical film that needs to be developed? If the digital photograph is ok, can it be copied to a home computer, or a laptop? Can it be uploaded to an online photo album? Can it become OK if the digital photograph is printed on physical paper? How about if the physical film photograph is scanned? Why should the answer change, depending on whether the image is electronic or physical?

Does it mean that for example a tourist is at risk of being sued for copyright infringement in Sweden if they take digital photos, or if they upload the image online, to Flickr say? Even in France, I believe it would now be ok, provided the image is not used for commercial purposes (although for some reason, Commons still contains lots of images of buildings and artworks in France that are not free to use for all purposes in France: see Commons:Template:NoFoP-France - and compare Commons:Template:NoFoP-Sweden).

Is it the possibility of commercial use that makes the difference? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.72.69.40 (talk) 11:47, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm no Swede and I don't really read Swedish, but I think the (yes, quite nonsensical) distinction is not about the means of taking the photo (digital or using physical film) but the means of reproduction. So, apparently, if you take a digital photograph of a copyrighted work of art permanently located in public space and print it on a postcard, selling that postcard commercially, that's absolutely fine, because you're selling a printed reproduction - Swedish freedom of panorama is applicable. You can sell postcards, posters, pricey coffee-table books with your photo freely, you don't need to ask the copyright owner of the sculpture or building. However, as soon as you upload that same photograph to an online platform, even if totally non-commercial, this is not fine, you need permission and to pay for publication, as freedom of panorama doesn't apply to online reproduction. Crazy, I agree. One of the weirdest concepts of "freedom of panorama". Gestumblindi (talk) 00:19, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Let's call this what it is: the courts are protecting rent-seeking behaviors by businesses selling reproductions of images. The courts don't have the political guts to restrict freedom of panorama to crack down on the postcard people but they sure as hell will go after a non-profit online venture showing those images. I hope the Swedish voters take this matter in hand. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:47, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

• I am perplexed by this article, which first says that the problem was the .se site's collection of links, then said that the images themselves are not liberated by "freedom of panorama". Now copyright is nonsense; intellectual property is a peculiar institution directly comparable to slavery. Nonetheless, you could be clearer about whether any images have been deleted from Wikimedia Commons or are currently being debated. Wnt (talk) 16:37, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

  The images should stay; those of us not in Sweden are not subject to crazy Swedish legal interpretations. This should be dealt with via the Commons:Template:NoFoP-Sweden template.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:57, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Cullen328

You know that Cullen328 fellow is a true gentleman and forgave me for accusing him of being crabby. It wasn't him, I discovered after another editor refreshed my memory with proof from my editing history. You know he set the record for supporting votes? Best Regards, Bfpage (talk) 00:38, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

The french connection

"The Signpost reminds readers that no part of Wikipedia is competitive, that all Wikimedia chapters should support each other..." And to what, exactly, does this refer? It seems opaque to me. Apparently there was some amount of malfeasance by someone in France and the political fallout looks considerable. FDC hands out a finite amount of money and maybe that money should be spent somewhere other than France. Does The Signpost have a criticism of other chapters in regards to this affair? Would anyone like to announce a conflict of interest? This piece isn't an op-ed so I'm not sure why the authors issue this injunction to the reader. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:52, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Recent research: Wikipedia can increase local tourism by 9%; predicting article quality with deep learning; recent behavior predicts quality (6,051 bytes · 💬)

• Can we trust this academic paper? Did they compare the 9% increase in improved articles to a control bunch of non-edited articles? The authors do not discuss the overall growth rate of tourism in Spanish cities - is it more or less then 9% ? Would Kippelboy know more? Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 07:09, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Without having read the full paper myself yet: The review already says that there was indeed a control group. That said, keep in mind that this is a preprint and not yet peer-reviewed, as also already pointed out in the review, which furthermore states that "it's not entirely clear to this reviewer how the statistical significance was ascertained".

BTW I took a slightly closer look at the statistical methods of a somewhat similar discussion paper involving two of the same authors (Slivko and Kummer) in this review two issues ago: "How does unemployment affect reading and editing Wikipedia ? The impact of the Great Recession", and also briefly compared them to that of another author in the subsequent issue.

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 05:35, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

• With regards to the paper on the spanish cities, the edits were reverted on Dutch Wikipedia because they were considered 'promotional spam'. Explanation is provided here. An example edit is this, which says (roughly translated back to English), among others: "In Mogán, it is roughly 360 days per year good weather. The village is also known as the village with permanently good weather. Mogán is situated right next to the sea, and because it is always good eather (sic!) in Mogán, it has been called out by the WHO, world health organization, as an ideal spot for rheumatic patients to recover from their disease" and "Mogán is very proud of her traditions, and this is visible in multiple ways. If you like historical traditions, then a visit to Mogán is recommendable. There are many traditional dance activities and traditional festivities.". These are subjective statements and indeed quite promotional. There were also strong suspicions that this was likely translated from copyrighted sources (although they were not identified). Now imagine users posting long pieces of text like this on multiple articles - that indeed triggers deletion and accusations of sockpuppetry. This is not in line with Dutch standards - I'm curious what the quality of the contributions was in other languages. effeietsanders 09:46, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Very illuminating, thanks! Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 05:35, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

I was pointed elsewhere to this explanation by the research leader: in this talkpage archive. You can read it, it's in English. Basically they admit that the translator added copyrighted text to the Dutch articles (which implies that they didn't do this on purpose, and that this only happened in Dutch), translated from tourism brochures. This text shows that the research leader was aware of this at least after the fact, and I'm quite surprised this is not disclosed in the publication. effeietsanders 12:46, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

And on the German Wikipedia (edits included [1], [2], [3], [4]), there was some milder pushback regarding e.g. lack of references, travel guide language, and unencyclopedic illustrations, to which one of the researchers responded, stating later that there had been an attempt to address the issues. See de:Benutzer_Diskussion:Oltau/Archiv/2014#Spanischkurs and de:Benutzer_Diskussion:Mefk81#Spanischkurs. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 22:06, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Oh, once you hit a wall on nlwiki, it is typically much harder to recover. I won't say it's one of the more welcoming projects. But the way this was conveniently left out of the article is striking - especially as it could signal impacts on other languages where the same method was used. effeietsanders 14:07, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, the authors didn't in any way imply that it was the Dutch Wikipedia's fault. One of my hypotheses was that their translator to Dutch had done a significantly worse job than the others, and I see this is indeed the case. Thanks! --Nemo 06:44, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

• So content was added to four WPs using tourism brochures as sources .... and the authors claim to show that this kind of promotional editing makes people buy more. Everybody in the paid editing editing ecosystems must be delighted and now has a "scientific" paper they can wave at clients. Nice job screwing the WMF movement by "proving" that promotional editing can "stick" and can lead to higher sales. Jytdog (talk) 16:29, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Special report: Sharing Wikipedia offline medical information in the Dominican Republic (6,374 bytes · 💬)

Neat! Do the devices record any information about access/usage? Statistics comparable to Wikipedia page-views data, etc., would be useful to measure performance/success of the project, but I could imagine potential privacy concerns might exist and have to be managed, too. --doncram 02:13, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

We have little data about specific content read. We do have the number of downloads of the android app.[5] And we have comments from people who have downloaded it.User:doncram Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:39, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

• Thanks for this excellent summary and also for the comment. We hope to record access/usage information, but as mentioned, there are privacy and other questions to be addressed. A member of our team is conducting expanded field trials in the DR this summer and we expect to learn a great deal more from her findings. We were very fortunate to have the essential support of SIPA's masters in development practice (MDP) program, its director, Glenn Denning, and administrator Kendal Stewart, as well as Mariela Machado, who joined me to designing and overseeing the research. Same goes for the excellent student team and Dr. Sam Zidovetski from Mount Sinai Global Health.Anelsona (talk) 14:59, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

• What an incredibly waste of time and money They could've simply sent the hardware by mail and asked a local to install them (you know, placing the device on a table, connecting a power cord and pressing the on/off button). They got a free vacation out of it. The usefulness of these devices is of course incredibly limited; it would make far more sense to provide Wikipedia in its entirety to a busy location. 64GB SD cards are cheap. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 08:25, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
  • What is super easy for one specialty (those in the tech world) is NOT super easy or intuitive for those in another specialty (physicians and other health care providers).
  • Our specific offline medical app in EN has more downloads now than the main Kiwix app. Now you might ask why did we bother to create a specific app for offline medical content in English at all? Everyone can simply download the Kiwix and than download the all of Wikipedia ZIM to make the same thing?
  • My response is simply have you heard of "One Click" by Amazon? The other answer is branding. And a third is yes 1.2 Gb is a big difference from 58 Gb. Why use a 16 Gb rather than a 64 Gb? A few dollars matters and to reduce the risk of the SD card walking away. We specifically do not want the SD card in the device to be better than what people have in their phones.
  • Also you make "connecting a power cord" sound super easy. In much of the developing world the electricity that we take for granted does not reliably exist. Also rolling out something new requires raising awareness and building relationships. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:49, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

1. True, but it must be possible to find someone who lives locally who knows how to place the device on a table, connect a power cord and press the on/off button. Detailed instructions can be provided.

2. I usually (try to) avoid asking questions I know the answer to.

3. I am an Amazon user. I have some spare 64GB micro SD cards laying around the house. I use them in a wildlife monitoring system. They are incredibly cheap.

4. See 1. I don't think this is an efficient way to raise awareness and build relationships. It is going to be difficult to convert them from visitors into editors. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 15:11, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

This is about raising awareness in a countries in which we have very little awareness rather than about recruiting editors.

Results from these efforts are also going to be published in the academic press. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:29, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

I criticized 2 decisions: the decision to travel there and the decision to exclude all Wikipedia articles about non-medicine related topics (which limits the usefulness of the device). I would assume locals know more about the reliability of their own energy network(s) than foreigners who visit for a couple of days. I don't think it is reasonable to claim that a potential thief will steal a 64GB SD card, but not a 16GB SD card. That is not how criminals work. A criminal would stuff something in their pocket quickly, and will inspect it in more detail when they are in a relatively safe location where no one else can see them. A thief is not going to pull a SD card from the inside of an SD card slot of a working device, look at the capacity, and make a decision (to steal or not to steal, that is the question) based on that information. You are probably unable to see the capacity of the SD card while it is inside the device, and if you are really worried about that then you can simply remove the sticker or use a sticker that says "1GB". If you want to prevent theft you may want to use one of those fake GPS stickers or hide the device in a boring and cheap looking plastic box. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 20:42, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Traffic report: Swedish countess tops the list (424 bytes · 💬)

"The other major placer in sports was wrestling." Followed by a reference to a forthcoming boxing match. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 14:41, 9 August 2017 (UTC)