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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2020-12-28. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: 2020 election results (504 bytes · 💬)

  • I'd just like to note a key facet of ACE2020 that should be included here - every candidate was over the 50% vote margin! Nosebagbear (talk) 11:48, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
    not sure if that's a feature or a bug... Beeblebrox (talk) 01:54, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Essay: Subjective importance (495 bytes · 💬)

  • This should be made a must-read essay for newbies. But I've one question: why are the example usernames not linked to User:Example in each subsection except the NGO subsection? Hope the editors will edit it for consistency. 45.251.33.98 (talk) 06:24, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Featured content: Very nearly ringing in the New Year with "Blank Space" – but we got there in time. (2,452 bytes · 💬)

The image text for the first picture (directly under the header) currently states Canary Wharf, one of our newest (if you ignore that we work thr. While I'm not certain what it is mind to say I'm guessing something is missing here Merry Christmas! Asartea Talk Contribs! 07:36, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

@Asartea: ...I'm sure I completed that thought, but I think I did it on my tablet just before publication, and that's always prone to possible error. Oh, well. I've re-added some variant of the commentary on "newest" featured content that I had written before. Because you always talk about the "Newest" featured content in these sorts of articles, even if actually getting to publication means you need two weeks after the cutoff date for when content needs to be promoted by in order to have some chance at having the time to put it together, so... Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.8% of all FPs 08:54, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Gallery: Angels in the architecture (268 bytes · 💬)

Humour: 'Twas the Night Before Wikimas (9,875 bytes · 💬)

  • A brilliant comic poem - thank you Nick Moyes! Bibeyjj (talk) 12:49, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Neat, but I have it somehow in fairly recent memory [citation needed] that any form of humour is discouraged not only on Wikipedia but almost certainly on The Signpost. Wikimedians according to [names redacted], are expected to be po-faced, irritable, and cantankerous at all times of the year, and never, never dare to be friendly and use first names. In fact if our language were French or German we would all be saying vous and Sie or risk a block or a ban. Happy holidays. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:06, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
    • I'm guessing you're referring to Getting serious about humour, which I thought was a pretty funny headline given the circumstances! I'm definitely not giving up on humor in The Signpost, but it's a tough fight on 2 fronts. Comedic talent seems to be fairly rare among Wikipedians, or perhaps those who have it don't want to risk putting their heads above the trench. From the practical point of view, I don't think The Signpost should risk losing large parts of our readership by publishing jokes that seem aimed at demographic groups. Yes, people can be real sensitive about this type of thing. I admit that I can be grumpy at times, especially about humor! I thank thee for the comment. Smallbones(smalltalk) 05:05, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I was, and I could never understand the furore, as I explained to SMcCandlish recently. The cultural dichotomies, Smallbones, between the different enthnies and genders of EN1L users make humour a very dangerous exploit on en.Wiki. There are also the people who deliberately analyse every word in the hope of claiming they have been insulted - it can even get you blocked, banned, or even desysoped ;)
That said, we Brits are very good at something most other cultures aren't: laughing at ourselves, especially at our sexual and racial stereotypes, and by those of us (like me) who were brought up in the austerity of the postwar years, and the effects of decolonisation of the British Empire throughout the 50s and 60s. That's why British sitcom is so hugely successful (in Britain) and why the campest of comedians really are gay (mind the gap) and the darkest humourists are not wearing blackface.
Sadly due to the fake modesty of modern political correctness many of the best loved sitcoms would not be made today and a chunk of our best humour - including the likes of Monty Python and Blackadder and ever earlier, Curry and Chips, Love Thy Neighbour, and Rising Damp - is now missing from our culture. Even the famous British music hall and working men's club jokes about 'An Irishman, an Englishman, and a Scotsman' would be disallowed today - in public at least. It used to be written on the back of a matchbox that 'Laughter is the best medicine', but there is hardly any use for matches nowadays and the younger generations that are trailing along behind me will probably succeed in getting all forms of humour made illegal by the middle of the century. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:01, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
And my essay in question wasn't about gender anyway, it was about unreasonable demands to do odd grammar/style things for aggrandizement reasons (commercial, religious, egotistical, etc.). I've had to go over this so many times, I put up a FAQ about it at User:SMcCandlish/TG-NB. I was still arguably in the wrong for writing something that was easy to misinterpret as being about gender, and that's the rub here. It's difficult if not impossible (especially in these "cancel culture" times) to write any humor piece that someone somewhere cannot think of a reason to take offense at, whether their interpretation is even correct or not. So, SP writers are risking their wiki-lives when they go there. Maybe risking more than that. The SP humor editor who ran my essay in SP ended up getting harassed offline at work about it, and felt compelled to resign a position at a university. And the harasser was never punished or even admonished for it (should probably have been sitebanned), though is now incidentally topic-banned from the general subject for an overall battlegrounding pattern on gender and sexuality subjects. What it comes down to is this: if you write a humor piece and it offends someone, it will not matter what the intent of it was, it will only matter whether those taking offense and their viewpoint are more popular than you and than the straw man misinterpretation of your viewpoint being advanced by those people. If they and theirs are the more popular, then you will have no recourse at all. ANI, AN, AE, ArbCom, etc. will not do anything to restrain harassment, verbal attacks, editwar hounding, and more against you. So, yeah, I would never try to do a humor piece in SP again. I would rather stab myself in the eyeballs.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:27, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
I really hadn't intended to revisit this. The wound is still too raw - and if it's still too raw for me, it must be very painful for others. Still, I think it should be obvious that the following, from Getting serious ... is the best policy for The Signpost
"We pledge that we will never attack or mock any group whose members include those who do not have a choice about their membership in the group. Groups covered by this pledge include, but are not limited to, those based on race, nationality, sex, gender, age, disability, social or economic status, veteran status, body type, or religion.
Is it even possible to write humor that doesn't ever mock these groups? Of course it is!"
Wikipedia is a multiethnic, multiconfessional, multi-gender community and, for the sake of everybody involved, the above policy will minimize conflicts.
I did not blame anybody for starting the confrontation, and it still would not be a good idea to try to do that. But some of the things said here make a lot of sense now. Good humor is really hard, good humor in a multi-multi context is really, really hard. But IMHO it is worth the all trouble when humor succeeds. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:46, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
Yes, people can be real sensitive about this type of thing - indeed, @Smallbones and SMcCandlish:, and I would emphasise once again that there is an unhealthy large number of users - including superior elected ones - who deliberately parse every sentence typed on Wikipedia in the hope they can detect and identify something they claim to be insulting and take you to ANI or Arbcom for. In today's climate, wow, how glad I am that I'm no longer an E-in-C of this publication - just far too dangerous! Happy New Year 😋 Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:52, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
And just the fact that this is couched in terms of "attack or mock any group whose members include ...", which is emphatically not what my material did, proves my point and Kudpung's. The question isn't really "Is it even possible to write humor that doesn't ever mock these groups?" Rather: "Is it feasible to consistently write humor that cannot ever be bent by anyone to seem to mean something it did not say, then used to attack, character-smear, and even off-site harass the author?" If there's even the faintest whiff of doubt, then one is foolish to decide to be a humor writer for SP.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:18, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
Or, SMcCandlish, even sharing a totally harmless witticism with a friend on his or her talk page for fear that a non-involved, mean spirited talk page stalker will get the wrong end of the stick and drag you by the scruff of your neck to the meanest of arbitrators (it's happened). Not to mention the non-humourous and harmless friendly use of a user's first name. I once held myself - as a linguist - in check from commenting on Polari in connection with the stereotypical characters Julian and Sandy for fear of reprisals[1]. Doing almost anything on Wikipedia these days other than minding one's own business and editing a safe, non controversial scientific topic is is nearly as hazardous as walking bare foot across red hot ploughshares or running for adminship. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:58, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
BTW, this article and talk thread is the kind of topic that might invite a first-class comment from Iridescent, but perhaps the don't read The Signpost - how wise;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:11, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

In the media: Concealment, data journalism, a non-pig farmer, and some Bluetick Hounds (9,820 bytes · 💬)

  • Much kudos to Michael Perry for an amusing, constructive and successful way to correct a Wikipedia article about yourself. I've been musing recently on a recurring trend: people arrive at Wikipedia articles about themselves and try to change incorrect but reliably source content; when this fails, they begin attacking unpaid volunteers for repeating a factual mistake made by somebody who was paid to know better. Hardly fair to us, but one can see how it would be frustrating to be unable to correct something which causes continued misinformation about you (in the public sphere or in things future journalists write about you). Smallbones' suggestions of YouTube and a press release are plausible, but a Tweet might be the most successful if we encouraged such people to do so. However, if the issue is with online news content that was wrong rather than simply outdated, it seems to me that the real solution is to contact the newspaper which published the incorrect material and get them to change it. I don't know how likely that is of succeeding, but if newspapers decline to make such changes then this is a serious fault in their editorial practices.
    As for Twitter, their latest move is a good step in speeding up the death of Wikipedia, as they encourage thousands of SPAs and COI editors to act maliciously in any form possible in order to chase a blue tick that doesn't care how badly they behave on here as long as the end result is an article still standing at the time a Twitter employee installs the tick. Did they consult the WMF over this decision? If not, how dare they act with such entitlement? At least when YouTube sends us flocks of climate change deniers and neo-Nazis (videos on climate change and contemporary fascist ideas now sometimes highlight a link to a Wikipedia article) it could plausibly have the effect of reducing misinformation, though each decision was made in bad faith by tech companies looking to outsource their moderation responsibilities to unpaid, unappreciated volunteers and to pretend that they care about the disinformation which they profit heavily from deliberately promoting. — Bilorv (talk) 11:41, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
    • Thanks @Bilorv:. Part of our paid editing problem is that our rules are so complicated - so somebody like Perry (especially if they are not in the media) usually don't have a clue of what to do, so turn to paid editors who don't really want to follow our rules. When I see something in the news about somebody who seems to have solved their particular problem on their own I try to put something in this column, e.g. Mark Davis of the Las Vegas Raiders. The video method could work if our editors were looking out for it - or the article subjects let us know about the videos on talk pages. The "What did Wikipedia get wrong about me" genre has been around for at least a decade on YouTube and radio broadcasts. Loudwire has a long series of videos mostly about heavy metal bands. See the article on Ice-T for my favorite example. The funny thing is that they usually pretty much agree with the facts as presented on Wikipedia, but have some minor quibbles with the interpretation of the facts - fair enough! And most people (or companies) that are really notable have the resources to make and post such as video. Publicity agents should take note here - this would be one type of paid editor I would not mind at all - if you've got a client who is complaining about the article - just make a video of you and the client talking about the facts. I'll suggest giving the date of the article version you're talking about, and giving the agent's email (or at least the agency's name) so that we can be sure of the person being interviewed without original research. License the video CC-BY SA, so we can use it in the article, or we can use the external link format if necessary. What are these agents getting paid for anyway? Just to get the facts out! While they're at it, please send a good, freely-licensed photo to Commons. As I wrote above, it's questionable whether folks who don't have a publicity agent, or know how to make their own video, or find a reporter to talk to, are really notable. Writing a press release won't be as effective, but it is better than the current situation - at least we'll have some evidence that the person making the complaints are who they say they are. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:59, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
      • While they're at it, please send a good, freely-licensed photo to Commons. Seconded! I imagine a lot of figures look at the article about themselves and go "why isn't there a picture?" I can't really imagine anyone in the entertainment industry, for instance, who'd prefer not to have a recent picture in the infobox. Most news sources are happy to license one or use one under fair use (not quite sure how it works for them) but we need something free. If they came here to ask we'd be very happy to tell them how to go about things. — Bilorv (talk) 15:21, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
        • Or even simpler for them, make some of their images on their webpages Creative Commons compliant. Motivated volunteer editors will find the images & do all of the skut work themselves. (And putting a CC-BY image available on the Internet is far simpler for all involved than relying on an unpaid & possibly inexperienced volunteer take a picture of a public figure/place/organization that may not be flattering!) -- llywrch (talk) 23:02, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
        • @Bilorv: makes a good point, that If they came here to ask we'd be very happy to tell them how to go about things. But I wonder if that's expecting too much? (Where, even, is "here"? Certainly not this Signpost comment thread.)
          Perhaps this is an opportunity for some proactive dissemination of information. Something like, say, a notification template at the top of BLP article talk pages. (You know, mixed in with the 3-20 other ones already there.) Some kind of message that's addressed directly to the article subjects (and their agents), rather than Wikipedians, with specific instructions on both the requirements and process for submitting a photo of the subject for use in the article. They'd still have to find that, which is still asking a lot, but I figure it's the most likely place they might visit other than the actual article. (If it became established/reliable enough, external howtos / coverage could also raise awareness by explaining that any person who's the subject of a Wikipedia article can go to the article's Talk page to find information on photo submission.) -- FeRDNYC (talk) 11:53, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
  • FYI, the Northern Territory is not an Australian State. It's only a self governing internal Territory, and is heavily dependent upon the largesse of federal taxpayers. We Australians also know that the Northern Territory Government is little more than a comedy show. So, eg, in the 2015 Country Liberal Party leadership spill, the Deputy Chief Minister tried to overthrow the Chief Minister, but the latter simply refused to resign, and eventually persuaded the Deputy that the Deputy wasn't clever enough to lead a government. Not surprisingly, both later lost their seats in the 2016 Northern Territory general election, which was also the worst defeat ever suffered by a sitting government in Territory history. Sadly, that government's replacement is not much better. Bahnfrend (talk) 14:41, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
    • Thanks, I've made the change to "territorial". Of course similar (or more serious) problems happen in much larger places as well. (I'll plead the 5th amendment if you ask where!) Smallbones(smalltalk) 15:08, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
  • By FAR my favorite entry on that "most read article for each day of 2020" list is April 21, when for just one day it was Category:Unified Modeling Language stubs' time to shine. Surely bot activity, but nevertheless probably the driest topic to ever make a yearly round-up list. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 03:26, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Twitter: *wants to use Wikipedia to decide on who gets a blue tick*
    Me: Quick! Let's nominate Donald Trump for deletion! He'll lose the tick mark! :-P
Seriously though, if Twitter does this, I propose that we demand 1 American Dollar per month for every person who gets a blue tick because they have a Wikipedia article, and Twitter should pay for it since they are the ones insisting on using Wikipedia. Twitter's decision is simply terrible for Wikipedia (as an aside, this reminds me of a joke. If YouTube, Twitter and Facebook merged, we would have YouTwitFace! :-D ) 45.251.33.98 (talk) 05:55, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Regarding the Farrukh Dhondy article on origins of words, I tried searching Wikipedia for the hindi m**c** word, but no success. Closest I got was chinese grass mud horse. Pelagic ( messages ) – (09:58 Sat 02, AEDT) 22:58, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

News and notes: Year-end legal surprises cause concern, but Public Domain Day is imminent (9,112 bytes · 💬)

Section 230

This is a rather positive end to the dumpster fire aka 2020. But I have a question: many people here are apparently worried that Trump's repeal of Section 230 will negatively affect Wikipedia. But if I recall correctly, Biden also wants to repeal Section 230. Is anyone worried that Biden may also negatively affect Wikipedia if he repeals the law? 45.251.33.98 (talk) 05:29, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

There is definitely reason to be concerned about Biden's position in this matter as well. In January 2020, during the primaries, he called for Section 230 to be "revoked, immediately", which on the face of it isn't a much more thoughtful stance than Trump's. But I think the difference is that once he is in office, people expect Biden to leave this kind of campaign-time ranting behind him, and to be much better than Trump at listening to experts and taking potential negative consequences of his actions into account. In any case, presidents can't repeal Section 230, only Congress can.
Still, presidents have lots of other levers affecting internet and communications policy, such as the FCC. As summarized by Protocol.com earlier this year, there is concern about "Biden's fervent support of SOPA-PIPA, two Hollywood-backed anti-piracy laws that the industry [and Wikipedia] protested in 2012. 'Biden has always been viewed as sort of Hollywood's guy on tech and telecom policy,' [a] Democratic campaign veteran said. Biden's deputy campaign manager for communications strategy, Kate Bedingfield [now designated White House Communications Director], was a former vice president of communications with the Motion Picture Association of America, a trade group that counts Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner as members." Techdirt also reminded us that "while [Biden] was a Senator, he was a reliable vote on whatever terrible copyright bill Hollywood pushed for, and then in the White House he was, again, a giant proponent of Hollywood's agenda. He convened a 'piracy summit' that was only representatives of legacy industries -- with no one representing internet companies, independent artists who use the internet, or any of the many artist and consumer groups out there." I guess one needs to hope that he has evolved a bit on these matters, like he has on his past tough-on-crime and anti-LGBTQ policymaking.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 10:27, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Billionth edit

I've just made some tweaks to the billionth edit blurb. MediaWiki proper wasn't used until July 2002. Graham87 06:48, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Is that article edits, or edits in all namespaces (user and talk pages, etc)? AnonMoos (talk) 08:07, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
Edits in all namespaces. Graham87 12:40, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
Also file uploads, I think, see Special:Diff/997082405 for example. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:02, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Section 230, CASE Act, & the Digital Services Act

It's looking more & more that instead of separate countries, or even finite groups of countries (such as the EU) establishing differing laws about free speech, we need an international treaty concerning copyright, defamation, & hate speech for online fora. This is approaching the unworkable situation described by one medieval commentator: one could have three people sharing the same room in an inn who are governed by three entirely different sets of laws. Too many online communities are international in nature, which inevitably causes problems for all involved. I don't know if this will result in a good thing -- by guaranteeing some minimum expectations of freedom of speech -- or a bad thing -- by enforcing the worst practices of any country upon all of the others. Nevertheless, the need for a level ground is clearly needed, & hopefully we average netizens can be involved & protect our natural rights before the corporations impose terms that benefit only them. -- llywrch (talk) 22:42, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

There are international treaties governing copyright. And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 19 covers free speech: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. So, what now? ☆ Bri (talk) 02:02, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
In the context of copyright, one more thing is the never-ending issue of freedom of panorama. While there's 50% chance of FOP introduction in countries like ours and South Africa (Wikimedia South Africa's subpage detailing track progress of the Copyright Amendment Bill), I have a gut feeling that there might be a reversal of FOP statuses in several countries. For instance, the conclusion in this Art Law Centre of Australia article on public sculptures seems to advocate the removal of FOP for 3D works in Australia because "sculptors in Australia should not be treated differently to other visual artists." This, however, may kill thousands of CC/PD-licensed images of Australian 3D public art at Commons and may collaterally damage many enwiki articles on Australian 3D public art (forcing these to use "non free images"). I don't have any latest news on FOP from EU and other regions and areas. Theoretically a global FOP is possible, but very unlikely for this year, this decade, or the next decades to come. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 08:15, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
Addition: not to mention the restrictions to FOP made by the Central American countries of Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua during 2000s, each restricting FOP to "personal use only" (see also c:Commons:FOP Costa Rica, c:Commons:FOP Honduras, and c:Commons:FOP Nicaragua). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 12:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Delayed appropriations

The article says "Failure to override the veto would delay $740 billion in defense appropriations, so would also be very difficult." Note that the bill that was vetoed is an authorizations bill, not an appropriations bill. The President signed the omnibus appropriations and COVID bill, including appropriations for the Department of Defense, on December 27, 2020. So the veto of the authorization bill does not delay the defense appropriations. —Salton Finneger (talk) 16:30, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

I inferred a couple of words not there: "Failure to override the veto would delay [expenditure of] $740 billion in defense appropriations..." which I think is closer to correct. Overseas contingencies are already authorized, so the totally correct statement would be "Failure to override the veto would delay [expenditure of much of] $740 billion in defense appropriations...", which is probably puzzling to "lay" readers, and I'm not sure it's better to write it that way. - Bri.public (talk) 17:47, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Just to be sure everybody knows now, the NDAA veto was overridden by the Senate at long last today, so there is no pressure to remove the Section 230 protections right now. This may of course come up later again. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:57, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

News from the WMF: What Wikipedia saw during election week in the U.S., and what we’re doing next (8,975 bytes · 💬)

Can any of the editors who interacted with the WMF team give their views on what the process was like? WMF teams like this are much closer to content, which always sets antenna wigging - this article is well written and not problematic, but always good to get more viewpoints Nosebagbear (talk) 11:50, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Similarly, does anyone have a rabbithole of links they can drop where such activities were coordinated? I'm finding the lack of links in the WMF statement a bit odd. — Bilorv (talk) 11:59, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
Ditto, I'm not aware of any such activities, but that's what this makes it sound like. I'd like to see statements like Overall, Wikipedia protected about 2,000 election-related pages. Restrictions were put in place so that many of the most important election-related pages made clearer. I know what it means (or at least I believe I do): At some point during the election process, editors requested protection/administrators protected 2000 pages (or protected pages 2000 times?) due to active disruption on those pages. But it could be read to mean that some sort of Powers That Be pre-emptively protected pages in service of WP's nefarious plans for world domination. —valereee (talk) 20:10, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
Sorry, are we not planning world domination then? I thought we were the liberal elite, poisoning people's minds with access to um, facts and statistics. And that American conservatives hated us because it was our propaganda that made Trump lose, ahem, win the 2020 election. — Bilorv (talk) 21:48, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
SHHH OMG BILORV... —valereee (talk) 13:36, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
This is the first I had heard of any such effort. And from the other comments here, I'd opine that this task force numbered far fewer than 56,000 volunteers. -- llywrch (talk) 23:24, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

I've been meaning to comment here for awhile, but have been enjoying the conversation also. @Nosebagbear, Bilorv, and Valereee: I think its important to realize that if we're protecting against, say Russia, Chinese, or even Vatican City (just theoretical examples) intelligence forces trying to disrupt Wikipedia - then there are things that can't be completely transparent. That said I do think that the WMF has been pretty open about what they are doing and trying to do. A couple examples from *before* the election involve talking to (non-Signpost) reporters for these two stories (which we reported in in "In the media" last month.

vox/recode and cnet from those I concluded that the WMF worked with ArbCom and likely checkusers and other bureaucrats, though it didn't spell that out in any detail. Presumably WMF staffers, including the "security team", and perhaps some "outsiders" were also part of the team. How the other participants were chosen - I have no idea. And let me emphasize that that is my reading of off-Wiki articles.

Somebody - who will not be mentioned - emailed me asking whether we factcheck our articles. Yes we do, but there are different levels of factchecking. All articles - even opinion articles of people reporting on their own opinions - are read and have to pass the smell test. Statements presented as facts are checked if they don't look right, but not every statement of fact is tracked down in detail. If you see an article with footnotes or extensive wiki-links, we do check those (often we ask for this documentation on specific facts). Emails are saved so that we can send them to ArbCom if somebody says "I never said that" and takes us to ArbCom. All in all, we're not The New Yorker but I'm comfortable with our level of factchecking. If I'm not comfortable we'll kill the story or just wait until I am comfortable.

Factchecking the WMF is a bit different, however. Much of what they state - e.g. the number of unique visitors in a month - they are the ultimate authority on. Like other publications we'll accept their word as fact on these type of things. Other statements we can check out to some extent, and I believe we can do that better, as experienced Wikipedians, than even the large mainstream newspapers can. Other statements about the inner workings of the WMF, we report on the basis that while it might be their opinion, that will be obvious in context, and nobody else is likely to have better facts available. So like I said - there are different level of factchecking.

Finally to @Llywrch:'s question on the 56,000 volunteer editors monitoring the 2,000 election-related pages. That did catch my eye on first reading - it seems way too high - somebody would have reported something to us if 56,000 active Wikipedians had been asked to do this. My interpretation after thinking a bit was that they probably meant the total number of page watchers on those 2,000 articles, that's an average of 28 people per article having it on their watchlist. That's very possible, even a bit low. But it's not 56,000 individual editors watching the articles. I should have asked Ryan for clarification. I'll ping @RMerkley (WMF): to see if he has anything to add. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:07, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@Smallbones: it was less that I would expect the Signpost to be able to provide more details, but I would hope that @RMerkley (WMF): can provide them - if the WMF believes that disinformation attempts are being made by state actors, that is important to know. Additionally, while we are happy enough to trust the WMF on, say, viewer numbers, on these content-related areas, we either need to be able to verify ourselves the extent of WMF involvement or know which groups, such as the en-wiki CUs, they are utilising. Hopefully it is not giving too much away to find out what form the changes are coming in - Ryan, is the team notifying purely of sock possibilities, etc, or is it things like "could you have a look at x paragraph, could be dubious/BLP", or is it "We've checked that, see source y, please remove it"? Nosebagbear (talk) 10:49, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
Regarding 56,000 editors, only around 40,000 editors make five or more edits to the English Wikipedia per month. [1] To get to 56,000 you would either have to include editors of other projects or include people who make between 1 and 4 edits per month. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 01:28, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
If user X is watching US-politics-related article A, then they are probably also watching B, C, etc. So 28 watchers per page is only a lower bound. The number didn’t jump out at me until reading the comments above, but 56k unique watchers seems surprising given Clayoquot's note, even if you include inactive accounts. A better metric would be "editors who have the pages on their watchlist and who logged in during the election week".
Also, just because I have pages on my watchlist, doesn’t mean I regularly watch my watchlist. I suspect many other editors are in the same boat. Short of doing some serious pageview logging (how many of the watchers logged in and viewed their watchlist), I can’t think of a way to factor in that effect, though.
— Pelagic ( messages ) – (21:01 Fri 01, AEDT) 10:01, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
Add:— If it’s across all languages, then the watchers:pages ratio is more feasible. There won’t be many polyglots who watch US election pages in all of English, French, Russian, ... etc., etc. The overlapping-interest effect would be partly countered by user language fragmentation. But then, could things written in languages other than English and Spanish influence voting in USA? If the US Election page is protected in Igbo, Telugu, and so on, should those be counted in the 2000 protections total? Were they? Pelagic ( messages ) – (21:24 Fri 01, AEDT) 10:24, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Op-Ed: An unforgettable year we might wish to forget (6,394 bytes · 💬)

  • It's also been a year where for the first time Wikimania did not take place (with current restrictions now extended until March, it's unlikely to take place in 2021 either). But it's also been a year in which due to COVID-19 the WMF has made significant savings on staff travel that may demonstrate just how unnecessary many of those 'business trips' are. With the increased level of homeworking, it might also reveal just how important it might not be after all for the WMF to maintain a headquarters in one of the most expensive places on the planet.[2]
I'll give no guarantee of accuracy in my figures that follow, I'm no statistician, but COVID-19 might uncover a lot about the expenditure that volunteer users have taken for granted as being necessary - in 2006 when I joined, there were five employees for 1,560,000 articles (in the English Wikipedia) and about $2.7 million in revenue, today there are only 4 times more articles but now over 450 employees and the WMF is still hiring.[3]. The Wikimedia Foundation's total revenue for fiscal year 2018-2019 was US $118.6 million, an increase of 4296.30%.
The number of (theoretically) WMF owned projects may have grown considerably, and the number of articles from volunteer contributions in the encyclopedias may have increased (but no longer exponentially), forcing an increase in the server capacity (and the many costly moves and locations of its data centres) but if by 2019 13% ($15,418,000) of the funds go on 'Administration and governance', [4][5]
All I can suggest is that some of the savings brought about by COVID-19 could be carried over and put to better use for the direct support of the volunteers than heretofore. Like - just for example - making the next Wikimania the biggest and best ever for the volunteers - and getting it right for once. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:06, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Hey Mr. Kudpung, do you really really think that any Wikimania world meeting of some hundreds/thousand priviliged people to party for Wikipedia's sake makes any difference at all? You are a most critical guy as for WMF but in misjudging of all things a Wikimania as deserving the highest grades of luxury (really?) you are certainly underperforming. Try again with another approach? -- Well you 're right we have a WMF that has got more fundraised millions than good ideas to spend it for community quality developments. And just like the WMF Bingo table states: it's a shame when there could be actually WMF staff members that have no clue in community needs b/c not having any own editing stats and no own conflict experiences with vandals and with own referencing problems. Not one of them should be hired without at least 2000 edits of good quality and at least one year of continuously editing a chosen field of serious wikipedia cooperation works verification before application for employment. The focus of WMF staff members should be supporting the basis workers and to do this they need to know the field work and the practical problems that occur there. Of course, most of them might be personally quite nice persons, no doubt. But if they don't focus on being "Service staff" but instead dream of becoming managers, rich and powerful like in any other corporations we can't afford those career sluggards. That's a strategic mission of 2021: How to win back and repower WMF managements 'grip on reality' /'road adherence' about Wikipedia basic workers' needs? No Wikimania will help anything for that goal. Just parties for international upper-class offsprings who can afford the flight expenses. Serious staff members who visit local basis work meetings are a much better idea. --Just N. (talk) 00:26, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
Perhaps try again in your native German, Herr Nussbaum, because your first three sentences don't make any sense to me. (Don't worry, my German is as good as yours). Frohes neues Jahr!🙂 Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:26, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm torn between hating this year and loving it; my grandpas died, but I also discovered the heaven that is Wikipedia.

Rosefeather of WindClan (talk) 01:19, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Hooray! That most bitter Covid burdened year 2020 is gone, gone, is past now! But the Covid pandemia blues is still with us as the restrictions will remain. I long for some life quality provided by live concerts and theatre performances to become possible again. And no way that online music shows etc could be an adequate replacement. Wikipedia editing sometimes helps to forget about the low cultural quality of life for a short while. Corona Blues you are the ugly ghost of 2020! And we still can't get rid of you except in our most private relationships. --Just N. (talk) 00:26, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

  • This is quite a year. As Reddit puts it out, 2020 is a burning tire colorized by an out-of-tune choir, but nevertheless, it's a beautiful year. I've got stories to tell to my grandkids in the ensuing decades. GeraldWL 13:32, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ [The Guardian]
  2. ^ Timeout
  3. ^ WMF (vague and which raises more questions than it answers)
  4. ^ WMF support, I see a discrepancy, but I'm not an expert in such things.
  5. ^ Bingo!

Opinion: How to make your factory's safety and labor issues disappear (2,845 bytes · 💬)

  • This COI editor seems to have been astonishingly brazen in their lives, but one can afford to be when there's little scrutiny of actions. It is a concern to have so many articles which receive no experienced editor attention for years—I wonder what could be a pragmatic step to take in this area. I believe admins have access to this page, which I can't view: Special:UnwatchedPages. Perhaps each one reading this could pick a few such pages and see if there's anything suspicious in their edit history, and then add the pages to their watchlists. But the issue here could be with pages that have one watchlister, a COI editor... — Bilorv (talk) 11:11, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
    I think one good step would be to be very harsh in applying CoI policies to low-attention areas. I don't know if that's policy already, but it definitely should be. These areas receive little enough attention already, every bit that has to be wasted on cleaning up behind CoI is even more of a loss. Zarasophos (talk) 08:34, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
  • If these companies "care a lot about their image", why don't they fix things? Wouldn't repairing a column be cheaper than battling a union for years on end? - Sumanuil (talk) 21:45, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
    You could see this as the purpose of a union, to make it more expensive for a company to resist workers' rights than provide them. But it doesn't seem difficult for me to imagine that repairing all of your companies' crumbling deathtraps in full would be more expensive than hiring a third party to whitewash your online image and losing a handful of days' labour to strikes. — Bilorv (talk) 22:19, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
    Hiring one person (or having a computer-literate relative) to edit Wikipedia is far cheaper than making serious structural changes. Profitable businesses always pay as much as they have to, but only as little as they need to. -- llywrch (talk) 23:20, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
  • I thank the author for writing this piece; it's illustrative of the COI problem we, as a community, face since W?F cannot be bothered to help us. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:47, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Recent research: Predicting the next move in Wikipedia discussions (1,433 bytes · 💬)

  • 1.4.1. IBM Research's AI division - Citation: "Specifically, we aim to identify such 'wiki-worthy' terms in a massive news corpus, and see if this can be done with no, or minimal, dependency on actual Wikipedia entries. We suggest a five-step pipeline for doing so, providing baseline results for all five, and the relevant datasets for benchmarking them." As for me as a regular contributor to Wikipedia I strongly dislike even the approach of these AI researchers. The subtext, the real ambition meant in this lines of action, is to replace on the long run the human Wikipedians by SW driven fake accounts or at least make possible masses of automated Paid content that our admins fail to detect and eliminate. Indeed I can imagine that a lot of dictatorial regimes all around the world would be happy to buy scripts and algorithms that facilitate to smuggle in fake information into Wikipedia that's not easily noticeable. Thus the researchers that formulated above mission have revealed themselves as Gordon Gekko devotees, IMHO not at all as respectable researchers. Definitely not supportable by honest Wikipedians. -- Just N. (talk) 21:01, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Traffic report: 2020 wraps up (510 bytes · 💬)


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