Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2021-06-27

Comments

The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2021-06-27. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Discussion report: Reliability of WikiLeaks discussed (2,047 bytes · 💬)

• Thank you Mike for this clear report. Look forward to reading future discussion reports from you. Ganesha811 (talk) 23:15, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

' Thank you'for the kind comments! I'm happy to be a contributor and I look forward to producing future reports. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 05:21, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

@Mikehawk10: as someone who clearly knows more about the field, is there a reason this is particularly key - as an inherently primary source, but mainly covering controversial topics, how much use was it likely to get? Nosebagbear (talk) 10:30, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

@Nosebagbear: Sorry for the delay in my response. As you say, it's inherently a primary source that is used in covering controversial topics, and it's currently used currently used in just under eleven-hundred articles despite being marked as WP:GUNREL at WP:RSP. It's awaiting a close (I assume it will be an admin close), but I would expect it to be consequential considering its relatively wide current use should guidance on using the source change.

• This is admittedly a late comment, but thanks for the write-up, Mikehawk10. I hope you're doing well and that you'll be back again soon. The discussions at Talk:Uyghur genocide have been poorer for your absence over the last few weeks and I for one have sorely missed your input. Jr8825 • Talk 00:01, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Disinformation report: Croatian Wikipedia: capture and release (18,874 bytes · 💬)

• Eh? How on Earth did may have been resolved with the help of a report published this month on Meta by the Wikimedia Foundation apply? It hasn't, yet, done anything at all? The partial resolution was done by various efforts by Community members, including global bans, some new good admins on their side and the further removal of 3 of the worst eggs by the hr-community. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:46, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Well I did write "*may have been* resolved *with the help* of a report" (new emphasis) Yes the admins, folks at the RfC, the communities, etc deserve all the credit. Make that ten times all the credit (from 10 years worth of trying with little help from the WMF). At first when I saw the report, I thought "Here comes the WMF trying to grab some credit". I don't think so now. The official reason for publishing it was "for the sake of transparency" which aligns with what WMF employees are usually allowed to say. The report itself I think does deserve some credit - not for this round of the battle - but for the next time. So there's a method available to deal with this type of thing that might only take 3-4 years, rather than 10. But I shouldn't get started on this ... Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:13, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

So if it was "may help resolve future hr-wiki issues" then that would be fine, but saying may have been resolved without knowing if it has seems...premature, at best Nosebagbear (talk) 22:51, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Well "*may have been*" does mean "*may have been*" Words do matter in journalism. But at the same, you do have me wondering whether I was being completely honest in my reporting here. There's a difficult step in writing a straight news story - and I do believe this needed to be a straight news story before any real analysis could be done. The step is to try to give up all your biases and POVs at the start, including some of your skepticism and assume the folks you're dealing with are acting in good faith. Then as the facts become clearer you can start asking deeper questions. Perhaps I could have concluded that this was a show report with no real meaning. But I didn't and still don't believe that. In any case I got the report on Thursday and some good info from the WMF on Friday, and more or less made sense of a 60 page report in 1200 words (or whatever), so I'm not going to be too hard on myself. Believe it or not, this is fun. Anybody who wants to try it, The Signpost needs some good news reporters. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:15, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

• +1. The Kubura ban was enacted on November 28th, 2020, the new administrators were elected between November 2020 and January 2021, the desysops/decrats were completed on March 1st, and the Meta RfC was closed on March 20th. The report was published on June 14th (just under two weeks ago), so I fail to see how it has helped anything, unless I'm missing something. Giraffer ^{(talk·contribs)} 22:04, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

  +100 @Giraffer excellent points. WMF did not make any explicit or strong efforts to handle this in any significant way, aside from now (post-festum) content research (which is only part of the problem, but the one WMF is focused on due to reputation)... @Smallbones this article needs much more updates. --Zblace (talk) 19:06, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

• "... the risks of having separate Wikipedias for parts of pluricentric language communities." There are quite a few of these communities, are there not? The decision as to whether something is a "dialect" or a separate "language" is always political as well as linguistic, and the decision as to whether there should be a separate Wiki for some dialect/language is equally fraught. What controls do we have, if any, to prevent other Wikis from being splintered as Serbo-Croatian was? Bruce leverett (talk) 22:22, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

  There was no split; the other three Wikipedias were founded later, starting from zero. Serbo-Croatian is a language as much as Scandinavian: it's good for linguistic book-keeping, but not a language taught in schools. The three Scandinavian countries have not three but four wikis (2×N, D, S ), yet no one calls that a failure. In the end, this wasn't about languages, but about people and their abuse of power. And that can happen in any Wikipedia, even the polycentric ones. Ponor (talk) 13:44, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

• Very few would agree that the split of these language communities should have been done - and it is rare, with it not occurring really post-2010. However, merging these communities now would be functionally impossible. Merging is a tough task, and doing that for many thousands, if not tens of thousands, of different articles and differing policies would be a nightmare. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:51, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
• I would amend the report’s recommendation to "strengthen global governance" to "strengthen global governance for small projects". We all know the dangers of this when applied to large ones like enwiki. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 00:51, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
• This is welcome news, although I note that the long-term POV-pushing on hr will take a long time to address. As someone who edits in the Balkans space on en wiki a lot, but who can read Latin script sh, I agree with Nosebagbear that the split of sh wiki was a very bad idea and enabled a lot of nationalist claptrap, but that it is essentially now impossible to put the pieces back together. We should robustly examine any such proposals in future. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:25, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
• I remember the original Signpost article about the Croatian mess. Glad to finally see some progress on this issue, though I share concerns about what pythoncoder alludes to—that this will only be used by the WMF as evidence that they need to assert themselves over communities that don't really need their oversight. Their lack of attention on this issue over a decade until enough enWiki users joined the chorus of complaints speaks volumes about what their priorities are. -Indy beetle (talk) 04:51, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
• As discussed in length on the discussion page of the report on Meta, i think that this whole report is a PR stunt and that the „expert“ who wrote it is a fraudster. It's quite telling that neither the author nor any of the Wikimedia people tried to answer any of the questions or take part in a serious debate. The so called expert has no idea of the inner life of the 4 projects. The purpose of the report was to whitewash Wikimedia and LangC in front of an audience which has very little to do with hr,srwiki&co whatsoever. It's a propagandistic device. The report and it's conclusions thus should be rejected in it's entirety. And Wikimedia should apologise for a smear campaign. --Ivan VA (talk) 07:59, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
  • I believe it's Ivan who said this elsewhere, and I still do not believe the report whitewashes LangCom in anyway. They don't have the authority in their remit to reunite projects against their will, and the fault for the original unwise split is laid very clearly at their doorstep. Wikimedia is everyone involved, so you need to clarify if you mean the WMF Nosebagbear (talk) 10:23, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
    • @Nosebagbear: As i said in the discussion (and answered to u there as well), the people who order this kind of report and, not for the first time, play the same music like in this report. I call them Wikimedia. I rly don't know how else to call them, coz i don't know the inside of the organisation. Anyway, let's call them „the guys who have the power to order such an report and then put the Wikimedia signature on it“. As for the merit, it's a clear whitewash. As i already have said to u on the discuss. page, they play the double game. They say we'd like to see them merge, but it's up to them not us. Meaning, if these communities (sr.wiki&co.) don't listen to the advice of the heads of the (wiki) movement, and that of the 7 scientists at LangC, then the kind of stuff/encyclopedia they are creating there is suspicious, odd etc. And from there is the explicit leap to the (bad) N word — nationalists. Basically labeling the efforts of hundreds of contributors as nationalistic trash. And, as the reports says, if these people reject and rebel against the label, it just reinforces the statement made in the report. And for what? For a group of people who claim to the world that they always act enlightened, to show a clean cheek and hide the dirty stuff in their closet. And, by my standard, look even more stupid than they did when making that decision to split. Coz of defiance to logic (exploring the implications) — whole communities have been built around that decision. And community reasoning is different than that of 7 linguists.
    • As for the 2nd merit, u said fault for the original unwise split...Who said, in reality, it was unwise? I can easily bring u the arguments to refute that. As im familiar with the situation on sr.wiki and in Serbia (and Bosnia somewhat), i can tell u that sr.wiki is a success story. U can compare the market stats yourself. Sr.wiki is 10 times or more being read daily in these 2 countries than Sh.wiki. It's in the top 10 visited sites every month. The market doesn't lie. The customer has a right to choose which product he want's to buy/use. So, as a product, it beats the competition (sh.wiki) easily...And that's why i said it's a label (nationalistic), the WP people use. Meaning, has no substance. How do these people know that 1 wikipedia would be better than the 4 existing? The market tells a different story. Perhaps the readership base would go buy another product? Secondly it's a label coz it tendentiously exacerbates an argument made by a small number of people on that merger discussion which starts now-and-then, mostly on Meta pages. That the merger doesn't take place coz the editors are overwhelmingly nationalists. I have to disappoint u, but that's not the reality of the most of the opinion. It's conservatism regarding the projects. As i told u, it's a success story. Why jeopardise that? Risk a leap into the dark? For what? U can make a cost-benefit analysis yourself with the assumptions i wrote above, as a poker player, and u'll see that the benefits are unknown, the loses present (with a varying impact) and that the status quo is too good to be changed. It's not vitriol what keeps the merger from happening, it's the success of the project. And the broad social legitimacy it enjoys. It's going too good to change anything. --Ivan VA (talk) 11:40, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
      • That more people read a distinct project now doesn't have any bearing on whether it shouldn't have been split to start, unless you have some way of clearly demonstrating that no-one would read it had it always been a singular combined project. So that reasoning is a wash. Wikimedia is the movement (projects, affiliates, Foundation etc), the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) is the actual non-profit whose Trust & Safety team commissioned the report. The report has a number of examples and reasoning on why having the project split is a bad idea, not to mention the duplication of effort. You also seem to then morph your argument into saying you shouldn't now be merged...which isn't something I propose, as you should know from our discussions on meta and if you read my comments above. I assume you did read the previous discussion before commenting on it? I'd also note that lots of people reading something isn't really grounds for not changing something because it is a source of conduct issues - that's akin to the argument that productive editors should never be blocked. One primary point about being a nonprofit is we aren't obligated to make choices depending on what drives the most traffic. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:20, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
        • U didn't go in to the merit of my argument about the volume of traffic, u just recanted why it shouldn't be taken into account. U didn't go into the *why*, but if it is good or bad. As for your response, i didn't say that **LangC** should take traffic volume into their account when granting projects. As for the argument itself and the motive behind it, i think it's a noble one; (btw, i use the markets analogy as a metaphor, not meaning literally, i know this is a non-prof but none the less). A lot of ppl who become editors (me, partly included) do it for the goal of giving. They want to share knowledge with the world. My motivation for writing would drop if i knew no one reads the articles. So i want the the stuff i'm writing about to be read. I'm quite sure i'm not alone in this. Which brings me to the *why*. U have it black on white that sr. and hr.wiki have a much much bigger readership than sh.wiki. Theres no manipulation. All 3 options are on the table, on display, transparent, and people choose freely to opt much more for sr. wiki than for sh.wiki. No coercion no force. Obviously there is something in reality (i indicated what in the discussion on Meta) which makes people go much more to sr. than sh.wiki. As for the report, i doesn't go into that something. The report is a travesty. All what is being said in the report on this issue is completely false, has no value whatsoever. I said what i think about that, don't wanna repeat it. As for the actual impact of this report or the discussion we are having right now...there is none. The purpose of the report was for WMF to extract themselves from the merger debate and put the blame of a result they (and some people around them) see as unsatisfactory onto the communities badmouthing them. Implying, that it's up for the communities to decide if they wanna merge or not. Since this is the case, i rly don't see any point in this discussion being taken here. If u want to propose a sr&sh wiki merger, there are official procedures u can do that. Go to the sr.&sh. wiki village pumps, make a call for a debate, it will probably last for a month, then it will got to the ballet box, and we'll see what happens. --Ivan VA (talk) 15:12, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Croatian and Serbian languages are not variants of the so-called Serbo-Croatian language. There was a great political effort in the past to make Croatian and Serbian one language, and Croats and Serbs one nation. Neither occurred; regrettably if you ask some people today. A number of those people with regrets exist even among linguists; and also among wikipedia editors - mainly among the editors of Serbo-Croatian wiki.

You have there, though, closely related languages: something like Swedish, Norvegian and Danish, which are closely related, but NOT variants of the same language. The clue to understanding the "complication" with Serbo-Croatian is in Bosnia and Herzegovina (it is, between the territories of Croatia and Serbia) - where for a very long time the schools thought the children (Croats, Serbs, Bosnians) the same language. Well, this language ("Serbo-Croatian") is - more or less the modern Bosnian language. Speakers of Croat and Serbian languages understand Bosnian, too (like speakers of Slovak understand Czech language, but the attempt to make Czechoslovak language - failed). However, only Croats from Bosnia and Hercegovina and only Serbs from Bosnia and Hercegovina tend to be proficient in the Bosnian language.

I will cite the examples from here: https://hrcak.srce.hr/30869

A slight difference is demonstrated by:

Sr. (Serbian) Sačekaj minut da uporedim tvoja i moja dokumenta.

Cr. (Croatian) Pričekaj minutu da usporedim tvoje i moje dokumente.

‘Wait a minute so I can compare your documents and mine’.

Greater differences are demonstrated by the following:

Sr. Što ga biješ?

Cr. Zašto ga tučeš?

‘Why are you beating him?’

Sr. U januaru sam rešio da uradim sve što me ranije mrzelo.

Cr. U siječnju sam odlučio učiniti sve što mi se ranije nije dalo.

‘In January I decided to do everything I didn’t feel like doing before’

We could even make up similar or identical phrases that have different meanings in the two languages, or in fact only one of them, while in the other they may sound as nonsense: suprotni pol Sr. ‘opposite sex’ Cr. ‘opposite pole’; Zemljina osa Sr. ‘Earth’s axis’; Cr. ‘Earth’s wasp’ ; prava stvar Sr. ‘straight thing’, Cr. ‘real thing’.

Sr. Odojče igra na zraku. ‘An infant is dancing on the ray’.

Cr. Odojče se igra na zraku. ‘A piglet is playing on the air’.

Or: Pravi zrak igra svoju igru.

Sr. ‘Straight ray is dancing its dance/Real ray is playing its game’.

Cr. ‘Real air is playing its game’.

Kad počinje slovenski čas?

Sr. ‘When does the Slavic lesson begin?’

Cr. ‘When does the Slovenian moment begin?’ RadioElectrico (talk) 15:22, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Forum: Is WMF fundraising abusive? (41,524 bytes · 💬)

• Why are the editor-in-chief, the active interviewer, someone having a strong opinion on the discussed subject and the person having the last word the same person? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:46, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
  • I liked this style, even though I disagree with Smallbones completely. You can see two fleshed out and justified opinions on the topic, much better than a journalist's usual style of filtering the subject's opinions through the interviewer's biases. — Bilorv (talk) 08:05, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree, kind of a weird format. It initially gave the impression of being an interview, but gradually came to feel more like a debate. I totally expect an interviewer to challenge the viewpoint of the interviewee and have them respond to opposing views, but inserting your own opinions and framing them as fact ("you're dead-wrong", "you haven't shown any examples of abusive fundraising adverts") seems pretty unusual for a journalistic interview. Colin M (talk) 17:48, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Well, this feature is labelled "Forum". I have not reread other instances of "Forum", but it seems to have the form of a debate; an economical choice. Many news 'stories' make use of 'economical' framing. <Anyone remember "Point/Counterpoint"?> I imagine this is especially true of Signpost given the size of its budget. Perhaps expanding the number of participants could happen: the topic choice could be 'evergreen', with a flexible deadline, that can be used to flesh out Signpost issues as needed. (On the other hand, the story bank is the only bank in which deposits draw less interest as time passes.) — Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, him) 05:22, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
• I think fundraising is the wrong target, though some of it has seemed deceptive to me. I agree with Smallbones that one should raise funds before the situation becomes dire, but they should be raised honestly. Portraying the situation as dire when it isn't is dishonest and unethical. (It also is crying wolf, in that if the situation ever does become truly dire, people will sigh, say "Oh, this again, is it?", and be desensitized to that. That should be held in reserve for a possible time when it really is an emergency.)
  But. And there's a big, big but. As the WMF has gotten larger, those within it have, as the saying goes, seemingly forgot where they came from (as can be seen from the repeated allegations of harassment and bullying against the very organization that is trying to cram a "UCoC" down the throats of people who don't want it, in a stunning display of hypocrisy). Wikipedia founded the WMF, not the other way around. It is there to serve the projects, not rule them and put forth a bunch of initiatives with "Well, you're getting this whether you like it or not!".
  Similarly, many WMF employees, including our last ED, seem to prefer communication channels outside the wikis, and that is unacceptable. While of course there should be those at the WMF handling social media and the like, the primary communication channels should be on the wikis, and it should be expected that WMF employees will know how to use them (preferably from being volunteers themselves) and communicate in the appropriate way and in the appropriate places on the wikis, not on Facetwittubegram. Similarly, requests for feedback, surveys, etc., should take place on the wikis, not via anonymous surveys outside them. But the common thread is that business which affects the wikis should take place on those very wikis, not elsewhere.
  Yeah, that's tough to both do and interpret. But that's how our projects operate. Anyone unwilling or unable to work in that setting is not a good fit for employment with WMF.
  Yes, the community of editors needs the WMF. But WMF better not forget that the opposite is true, too, and that it is their primary responsibility to serve the editorial communities, not lord it over them. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:02, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
• @Smallbones: You should do the right thing and let Andreas Kolbe have the last word. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:25, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

• I asked about this during the copyediting process, and Smallbones' answer was that he and Kolbe agreed to let Smallbones have the last edit. Ganesha811 (talk) 23:10, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

  Did Kolbe see Smallbones' last comment before they agreed to that, or was it in principle? I would like to see the agreement, given the shocking final comment from Smallbones. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:25, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

I really doubt that @Jayen466: (Andreas) has any of these concerns, but if he does he should feel free to respond here or by email. Strange as it might seem, we had a very good relationship during the writing of this, exchanging 5-7 emails over the last 2 weeks, keeping some track of word count. I'd originally proposed 2 parallel essays (with each of us getting to see the other's essay as they were written) and a couple of variants. He wouldn't bite until I essentially gave away the store - we'd exchange questions and answers and each of us could say whatever they wanted to. I do think there is some comradery berween us as Signpost EiCs. In some ways I think it was a failed experiment - we both got a bit carried away at times. I mean it sounded almost like an ArbCom page a few times. But we both got what we bargained for, the right to say whatever we wanted to - on a very broad topic. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:20, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if Kolbe has concerns, I am expressing my concerns. I am especially concerned with To conclude, Andreas, you haven’t shown any examples of abusive fundraising adverts, which is an obvious lie given that there are pictures of examples on the same page. It would have been less repugnant to have said this if it wasn't the conclusion of the article, and if Kolbe was able to respond.

I take it that Kolbe did not agree with you publishing your final comment at the end of the article, and that they only agreed to the idea of you concluding the article without seeing what that conclusion would be. Please clarify if this is not the case or if there is something missing. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:30, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Onetwothreeip. Smallbones is right though. We agreed that as editor-in-chief of the Signpost, he should have the last word. I'd seen his conclusion before publication – we edited the page together (see edit history). Smallbones has strong opinions and jumps in with both feet. That's fine. I assure you he was a perfect gentleman behind the scenes, and I do indeed feel a sense of camaraderie because he's kept the Signpost going all this time. I know it's a heck of a lot of work.

We agreed that we should try to keep the piece to about 3,000 words. If I were to say anything further in response, it's that I never meant to imply that the WMF should only fundraise once the money runs out – only that it shouldn't claim the money is running out when by any measure it is richer than ever. To go to Latin America, the global epicentre of the pandemic right now, with fundraising banners claiming "We need you to make a donation today so that we can continue to protect Wikipedia's independence", when the Foundation had already taken about $50 million more this financial year than even its own annual plan originally asked for, seemed altogether perverse.

I didn't write the Daily Dot headline by the way – my working title was "Monetising Wikipedia".

The German language area had better fundraising banners for a while – nothing about "humbly", "awkward", "really need", just a matter-of-fact "We fundraise once a year, now is the time, we're aiming for x million, right now we are y million short, if you can help, please do." And they actually stopped when the target was reached. If the WMF did that, that would already be an improvement. Putting a little more info on the banners about what the WMF is actually doing, rather than pretending it's all just to keep Wikipedia going, would be better still. That's what we should shoot for. Best, --Andreas JN466 12:34, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I do not think they are wrong in their comments to me and I'm not concerned with their attitude towards you. What is wrong is that they made the final comments in the article, which contained at least one significant lie. As I'm now aware that both of you agreed to their final comment, I have to place responsibility with both of you. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:19, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

I agreed that Smallbones as the host should conclude the piece. I didn't say that I agreed with what he said! But it's not for me to tell him what he can and can't say. He is entitled to his opinion. People can agree or disagree. Regards, --Andreas JN466 12:22, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

• @Smallbones: I also feel that the WMF is too pushy with its donation advertising, and I am far from the only OTRS (VRT) agent who hates December because of some distinctly distressing emails we get along these lines. I have also talked to a number of WMF staffers on the topic, though I suspect they'd struggle to go on the record on the issue, who share the concerns. I by no means agree with a number of Andreas Kolbe's more extreme views on the issue, but it would be really interesting to see a follow-up with the head of WMF fundraising and another editor, as to the acceptable level of push on the topic. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:48, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
• "The WMF is asking for about US $2.00" - the median per capita annual income in India is $616. DuncanHill (talk) 23:07, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Thank you for pointing that out, Duncan. --Andreas JN466 12:48, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
    • @Jayen466: thanks for noticing! By that measure (and my maths) $2 for an Indian is like about $50 for an American, and I think it is misleading for the article not to point that out. Smallbones any comment? DuncanHill (talk) 17:58, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
• I may be being anal here, but did you really have to italicize half the whole text? It felt unnecessarily hard to read. Nardog (talk) 06:23, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
• From past discussions, I think I'm in quite a minority position of strongly opposing the fundraising banners. If I thought it had any chance of passing, I would start an RfC on the English Wikipedia to ban all fundraising banners (I think some tech person can do this with some CSS or something) and wheel war or threaten mass exodus if necessary to enforce this, until the WMF voluntarily agreed not to show fundraising banners on en.wiki (and hopefully something like this would cascade into other language projects). One fundamental reason is Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion #5, which includes the sentence: Those promoting causes or events, or issuing public service announcements, even if noncommercial, should use a forum other than Wikipedia to do so. More practical is what Andreas lays out in quite a lot of detail: the fundraising banners are very misleading, prey upon people who should not be donating to Wikipedia, and propagate wilful misinformation. They also create an impression in the minds of readers that the small, simple thing they can do to help Wikipedia is to donate. It isn't. It's to edit. If you just want to fix typos and make small grammatical improvements anonymously, great, you're helping. Moreso than that $2. If you want to make a substantial contribution to our mission then you do it through editing labour hours, not donation money. Lack of editors is what could make us die on Thursday, not WMF server budget.
  Now, I gather that the WMF employees have pretty good wages and labour rights, impressive for an American company, and I don't object to this use of money. The WMF also does plenty of projects which are worthwhile and plenty of its tech stuff is necessary. The money that you and I put aside for charity could be spent in worse ways than donating to Wikipedia, but I think there are better causes for me to donate my money to, at least while the WMF has the assets and income that it does (and is planning to with its for-profit plans). Smallbones' argument seems to be that most other companies, including non-profits, are worse. Yes, that's true. But we should hold ourselves to higher standards, particularly higher standards than America does. (Firefighters begging on the streets is nothing like I have ever seen in the UK. Why does your country not have any proper public infrastructure?) — Bilorv (talk) 08:05, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
  • I think you are indeed in a minority of opposing them using the fundraising banners at all - certainly I wouldn't agree with that. I think I am part of a much larger group (though as editors don't normally see the banners, it's tricky to identify where the majority of people with an actual awareness lies) who dislike the execution. Disliking certain ways in which the WMF spends its money is definitely a majority viewpoint, but it much harder to act on. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:27, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Yeah, well we're agreed on what is majority/minority opinion, at least, and I do support reform of the banners as a step in the right direction. I suspect that if we surveyed Wikipedians on what the WMF should and shouldn't be spending money on, we'd get the classic Wikimedia problem that everyone agrees overall that the WMF is misusing money, but on no single issue would there be a consensus on what to change. — Bilorv (talk) 14:52, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
    • @Bilorv: - I'll just see if I can explain volunteer firefighting here - it pretty much goes back to Benjamin Franklin operating at a time of British rule. Franklin's very practical political philosophy was one of self-organized self-help groups (very Wikipedian!). Yes, forming governments is one way of doing this, but government is not always the best way of doing things (e.g.Wikipedia or the press in general). Besides, those darned Brits were in charge of the government. I was quite surprised when I moved to this area how strongly the Franklin model of firefighting is supported, but it is used in other areas, particularly in rural areas (with fried chicken dinners a common way to raise money). My hypothesis on the support in more urban areas is that the firefighters really like it. Perhaps they like it for the comraderie, the free training, the adventure, but I'll guess something else as well - they form a local institution that has a lot of local power - something like the Junior Chamber of Commerce.

I should emphasize that I was never truly offended by the "boot in the driver's face." It's just something that a useful and successful local institution has to do. I also always feel free not to donate. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:14, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

• I was certaily under the impression that WP was under financial duress because of the banners. I was also surprised by Smallbones (who I rate very highly) taking the last word. Dutchy45 (talk) 11:36, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
• That counterpunch diatribe read like conspiracy theory nonsense about Wikipedia from the left. It's not as frequent as the right-wing garbage, but just as partisan and unhelpful. I do think the daily dot article raises some fair questions; namely, why is the WMF doing all of this? Also I don't think anyone has previously mentioned -Indy beetle (talk) 14:00, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Must be the mood of the moment --Andreas JN466 17:32, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Ugh. As always with criticism of Wikipedia, the problem is not that the logic doesn't make sense but that its factual premises just don't relate to how Wikipedia actually works and operates. It's a really complicated thing. In this case, it's not best viewed as a capitalist enterprise with financial conflicts of interest based on who funds the WMF, nor is it best viewed as an oligarchy run by a very narrow range of American white men. You can even see contradiction in the way we describe ourselves at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Community: actually, we are an anarchy, and a bureaucracy, and a democracy, as well as a liberalist community and an oligarchy and more. We're just not all of these things in all situations. We are whichever is practical in the moment to maintain an internal community that writes the encyclopedia, tidies up useful contributions by people not in the inner community, and defends against outside threats (vandals, POV pushers, COI editors). — Bilorv (talk) 18:16, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
      • Well, but we are (mostly) white, Western males who naturally think (mostly) like white Western males, prefer certain sources of information, have certain values, and so on. Nobody has to ask us to be like that. If we had grown up elsewhere, we'd just as naturally be different. The WMF's declared global strategy is to become "the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us". Clearly this infrastructure will be coloured by our culture, our very conception of reality. And if via Wikifunctions and Wikidata our worldview can be translated into any regional language in Africa, India, etc., this will spread our ways of thinking, our consumer habits – opening up new markets (but also impacting the environment). At least, you might grant, that's one facet of the big picture, one that'll have occurred to many people long ago. Why do you think, e.g., Google and the WMF asked Indian volunteers to create articles in Indian regional languages for Indian search terms trending on Google? It's to increase Google's revenue and market penetration in these regional-language communities. You don't Google if there's nothing of value to find. Any wealth generated in this process flows to the West, as it has always done. No one gives money to the WMF without expecting to profit in some way. Wikimedia is, for better or worse, a cultural ambassador. --Andreas JN466 19:43, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
        • Disproportionately white Western males, but on "mostly". I guess my comment wasn't directly tied to the Counterpunch article enough. I agree that we have plenty of biases based on our contributor base, and that who donates to the WMF and why is something of interest. But this Counterpunch article conflates internal/external community (no mention of our perspective on paid/COI editing) and misrepresents the relationship of Larry Sanger to the community. There's all sorts of misleading implications in the headline and first paragraph about Wikipedia being statist and donors/editors being the same group. But even if we are disproportionately white Western males, there's substantial diversity of belief on topics like war and I think editors are more radical in beliefs than our base demographics would imply. Hence, neither capitalist enterprise nor groupthinking oligarchy is the right view here. Or at least, the piece is so sensationalist and simplistic as to be a net negative. — Bilorv (talk) 06:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
          • I actually agree with you about that article as a whole. I posted it more tongue in cheek, because I happened to see the Wikipediocracy thread on it right after reading the above comment on Counterpunch and found the coincidence funny. As for WP demographics, did you see the Recent Research section of this Signpost issue? (Edit: Actually, you commented there, so you clearly did.) Cheers, --Andreas JN466 08:44, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
• I find Andreas's point about the (unwarranted) urgency implied by the language of fundraising banners very compelling (though I think the US politics tangent is one that's liable to create more heat than light). Another turn of phrase that stuck out to me in a recent banner was "Show the volunteers who bring you reliable, neutral information that their work matters." (example banner). As one of those volunteers who has spent hundreds (thousands?) of hours editing Wikipedia, I was disappointed that WMF would presume to speak for me in this way. To me, the measure of whether my work "matters" is not in how many hundreds of millions of dollars the WMF brings in. When the topic of supporting Wikipedia comes up with friends and family, I urge them to, rather than making a cash donation, spend a couple hours adding citations to an article, or fix typos as they come across them, or raise issues on talk pages. Heck, if you want to show volunteers that their work matters, leave a nice 'thank you' note on the talk page of an editor who contributed to an article you found useful.

For those who haven't seen it, it's worth mentioning User:Guy Macon's related essay "Wikipedia has Cancer", though its focus is more on the rate of growth of WMF expenditures/revenue rather than the tone of fundraising appeals. Colin M (talk) 18:24, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

The "Show the volunteers who bring you reliable, neutral information that their work matters" is offensive to many editors. The WMF knows that. There were complaints about it on the mailing list last December. Following similar complaints by the Brazilians in April, it was taken out of the banners on the Portuguese Wikipedia ... only to be used again a couple of weeks later in Spanish-speaking Latin America. (It's included in the Spanish version above.) --Andreas JN466 18:44, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, this is a really terrible phrase. 95% of the feedback I get is negative, most of it deliberately hostile and often politically charged, because there's a selection bias of only people who disagree caring enough to say/do anything. So maybe you could thank me by... thanking me, not by paying some money to a company whose assets I couldn't tell you in dollars to the nearest power of 10. It is concretely a practical thing that a layperson can do: when you read an article and learn something important, find the most primary recent contributor (if one exists) and write something nice on their talk page. I try to do it from time to time. — Bilorv (talk) 06:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

• I have always found the fundraising banners annoying at best and downright pandering and hypocritical at worst. I found the editor's defense of them disingenuous, honestly. You want to show volunteers their work matters? Maintain standards on article content and verifiable, reliable sources in those articles. Value that work instead of turning us into children in late-night television ads begging for money for some unverifiable "charity" doing who knows what with your twenty dollars a month. Intothatdarkness 20:31, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
• @Lgruwell-WMF and MeganHernandez (WMF): - it's not quite obvious who the fundraising leads are, so please feel free to ping someone who may be more appropriate. If you've got 15 minutes, could you have a read of the interview, and then the discussions/concerns above. As you can see, while many of us don't agree with everything claimed by Kolbe, concerns about the aggressive tone, as well as claims about editors, are common. Your thoughts and participation would be appreciated Nosebagbear (talk) 20:42, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Nosebagbear, I've made a post to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, quoting some of the comments here along with your request that Megan and Lisa come and participate. I don't think they log in here very often, and therefore it may be some time before they get your ping. Unfortunately, I am newly moderated on the mailing list, so my post is currently stuck in the moderation queue. Cheers, --Andreas JN466 10:49, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Now published: [1] --Andreas JN466 13:07, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
• WMF is one of the only few organizations that give enough credit, respect and security to the crowdsourced content. The for-profit companies have time and again betrayed the public by shutting down abruptly without even an archival. Yahoo!Answers recently vanished without even respecting the millions of people's contribution, when they followed GeoCities path. Flikr recently deleted billions of valuable images. The selling of Github, Mapillary, Stackoverflow , etc., to the enemies of open source affected the communities' morale. I would call it the "tragedy of digital commons". It is very sad that even in 2020s there are not many promising open knowledge and free content projects. So please stop criticizing them for raising funds, rather make them focus on solving issues of Wikimedia projects. I am only grateful if WMF collects and spends more money for keeping the open knowledge missions alive. - Vis M (talk) 03:36, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure I agree that WMF respects crowdsourced content, when English Wikipedia is considering banning IP editing and other languages have already done so. 04:18, 29 June 2021 (UTC) TOA The owner of all ☑️

  I wish they hired more technical developers to implement Wikipedia:Timed flagged revisions and other lighter anti-vandalism measures as a less harsh step - Vis M (talk) 05:46, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

  • I think this is similar to Smallbones' argument, that other companies are worse. You're listing some very big and genuinely disgraceful problems with other projects. But I don't donate my labour hours to other projects. I donate it to Wikipedia and no, the WMF does not give me any credit, respect or security. We see this through their insanely slow response to technical restrictions that stopped my messages to IPs reaching the targets, their lack of off-wiki action against malicious UPEs who waste so much of my time, their attempts to work with Google without negotiating that Google stop knowingly take credit for my writing, and in this case their fundraising banners that marginalise and de-emphasise the importance of my volunteer labour (implying money, not edits, is the primary way to help). — Bilorv (talk) 06:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

• One thought about Wikimedia fundraising. I've long believed that were the WMF to fire half its staff, the average volunteer to any project -- the people who contribute content, not those who regularly interact with the Foundation -- would not notice any difference. A lot of assumptions or conclusions could be drawn from this thought experiment, but I believe it is a significant cause for resentment towards Foundation fundraising. (The aggressive fundraising tactics is, of course, another cause.) -- llywrch (talk) 07:57, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • The current number of WMF staff/contractors is twice what it was in 2015. --Andreas JN466 09:35, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
• The frustrating thing is that Smallbones doesn't seem to really grasp how many of us feel about those advertising banners. We're not suggesting that "advertising be delayed until Wikipedia is really in trouble". We're suggesting that advertising be far more honest than it currently is. There's a big difference. MeegsC (talk) 10:37, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
• ? The more money the better, as there is never a limit to fund new and innovative Wikipedia projects. For instance, many more full scholarships to conventions could be arranged, travel and lodging costs could be paid for long-time editors who work and photograph on location (artwork travel for articles seems one way to improve the project's coverage), and I've recently advocated adding a few long-time editors as Wikipedia ombudsmen to WMF staff (at least one per shift) to solely protect and advocate the Wikipedia project (they would quickly interface with editors and staff when problems and/or solutions arise, and the rest of the time edit as usual while also monitoring key pages). A great deal of income seems preferable to saying "We have enough, thank you" but of course WMF shouldn't mislead contributors either by claiming near-poverty. Large benefactors always preferred. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:54, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

The most important thing we should not be doing is seeking--or even accepting--donations from large benefactors. We don't need them--I've been told small donors contribute about 80% of the funding. WP is at base a populist egalitarian project, and should stay that way. If we become dependent on a few foundations or individuals, we lose our freedom of action, and we lose the perceived independence of our content. (I do not thing the CFR or any such group has any actual influence on enWP content now, and that's the way we want to leave it. But the mere fact this could be seriously questioned in this Forum illustrates the problem.) We're open resource written by the general public, and addressed to them, and we need to retain that perspective. The closer we approach to an ordinary foundation or business model, the less the influence of the volunteers, and the less likely we are to retain and attract them. As the largest information technology firms get more and more dominant, there needs to be one place at least where their influence does not extend. The board should not be just 50% from the volunteers--it should be entirely or almost entirely from the volunteers, and elected directly. At the very least, nobody who has ever held an executive role in the information industry should be on it--their experience will contaminate us. We shouldn't be part of their world.--I would even say, we exist in opposition to it. (Though I recognize the paradox that we and all independent sites exist only because the large firms pay for and operate the basic structure of the internet for their commercial purposes, and the further paradox that Google et al get much of their value from our voluntarily provided content. WP is enmeshed in the commercial and official world , just as we individually are in our life generally. ) DGG ( talk ) 21:45, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Accepting money from those who realize the value of Wikipedia has nothing to do with how they and their articles will be treated, or will they be allowed to dictate in the slightest how the money is used. If Bill Gates wants to give $500 million to the upkeep of Wikipedia, no strings attached, because he knows its unique place in society, he should be welcomed with the understanding that because of that his page will be even more scrutinized by long-time valued editors. I agree with you about the board, the more real editors selected the better. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:02, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

David, I'm absolutely fine with the idea of a board 100% elected directly by the volunteers. That would be democracy. How do we get there from here? And I agree that any influence organisations like the CFR have on Wikipedia content is likely to be minor to non-existent. That's not what I was implying: there is no need. Wikipedia has firm rules about which sources are allowed to be cited. I remember your comments from a few weeks ago where you expressed the view that Wikipedia could be a little more liberal in this respect, a view I share. These rules by and large already make sure that Wikipedia's content is broadly consistent with America's – or more broadly the West's – interests. There is no need to micromanage every Wikipedia article if the broad thrust is right, and Western establishment values and viewpoints enter minds and cultures across the globe, in hundreds of languages, through projects like Wikidata and Wikifunctions, amplified by Google infoboxes, Amazon and Apple voice assistants etc. Information is soft power, especially when done on a global scale (which is of course why China e.g. doesn't want Wikimedia, and Russia has an uneasy relationship with it).

Making Wikimedia "the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge", the strategy that came out of this process overseen by a CFR member (and which many volunteers actually think of as weird, or overreach, and more or less imposed on them), aims precisely in this direction. It is surely an idea the CFR could only approve of. The idea of exporting Western culture and making it globally dominant is not even intrinsically bad: Western culture has good and bad elements like any other culture. Western culture offers valuable freedoms many other countries lack. Most people in the West consider it altogether superior (although if 8 billion people on earth lived Western lives, it would probably be fatal for the environment). So Wikipedians by and large may be entirely happy and proud to play a part in this endeavour of cultural ambassadorship, spreading free (Western) knowledge and values in the service of freedom, democracy, economic growth and wealth generation, fighting against poverty, oppression and lack of access to Western-style technology, knowledge and education. But I submit it's worth thinking about these things, and trying to see them from different perspectives, and noting the political and business motivations involved.

So if Wikimedia strategy processes can conceivably be influenced by CFR consultants, what other types of influence are possible? Think back to August 2011, when Wales surprisingly endorsed the Kazakh Wikipedia, run by a government operative in a country with a deplorable human rights record (but huge mineral wealth and a useful stance on nuclear disarmament). Wales told Wikimania of his intention to go to Kazakhstan and give that award in the presence of the President or Prime Minister of Kazakhstan. Now in October 2011, two months after the award, the WMF announced that it had received its biggest ever donation from the Stanton Foundation: $3.6 million.

You may recall that the Stanton Foundation is run by the wife of Graham Allison, who was then director of the Belfer Center, and who is the possessor of a friendship medal from Kazakhstan's president Nazarbayev. He is also a CFR member and former assistant defense secretary in the Clinton administration. Clinton, like his mate Tony Blair, had had well-publicised and controversial dealings with Kazakhstan, delivering "a propaganda coup" to its President, as the New York Times put it. So I submit here is one possible explanation for why a free-speech advocate like Wales might suddenly sing the praises of a dictator who brutally suppresses free speech in his country, in the process delivering to him – just like Clinton before him – another propaganda coup that was promptly touted by Kazakh officials on multiple embassy websites: "Kazakhstan wins Wikipedian of the Year award!" But even if all of that was mere coincidence, what we do know is that a few years later there was a very public scandal involving a Wikipedia editor working for the Belfer Center who was paid by the same Stanton Foundation. One of the last things Sue Gardner did before she left was to analyse what had gone wrong and should never be repeated. So influence can be of many kinds, and arguably yield results that a volunteer-run board would not have supported. --Andreas JN466 23:54, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

There are reasons why things have not been structured to encourage a democratic approach. Part of this bias is due to early libertarian influences on Wikipedia -- which I won't go into, but considering that Jimmy Wales considers himself a small-l libertarian (a well-known fact), that statement should not need a citation. Part of this bias is due to fear that any elected board could be subverted by an outside group who could overwhelm the core of dedicated volunteers, the vanguard party. It was a realistic fear in the earliest years: I remember when the EN-Wikipedia list was abuzz with news that Neo-Nazis planned on taking over Wikipedia by mobbing us with their followers. When you consider that at the time we had only a few hundred volunteers making edits on a regular basis, that was a credible threat. However, when the attack came, instead of hoards of Neo-Nazis, it turned out to be barely a corporal's guard -- who were swiftly dealt with.

I'm sure there are other reasons -- besides inertia -- for this prejudice against a democratic process. -- llywrch (talk) 19:00, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Humour: Wikipedia's best articles on the world's strangest things (2,449 bytes · 💬)

• The question about when wikipedians are considered "extremely online" was likely intended as rhetorical, but I did want to mention that there is the option to check a box where you can stay logged in to your Wikipedia account for a literal year (365 days). Clovermoss (talk) 21:01, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

• Actually, in that regard WP doesn't go as far as most sites, which allow you to remain logged in indefinitely. - Novov T C 01:11, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

• I enabled that. The advantage: You don't have to remember your password. The disadvantage: When the year expires, you forgot your password. 🏳️‍🌈 Chicdat  ^{Bawk to me!} 10:43, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

• Fun story, but I'm soooo disappointed that you didn't include my personal favorite: The Museum of Bad Art, which is a truly great and outstanding article. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 21:18, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

• A definite oversight on my part! Ganesha811 (talk) 21:24, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
  • It is sad that images of the remarkable artworks have been removed from the article. It is still quite humorous, but does not have the same impact of astonishment. ~ Ningauble (talk) 22:29, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

• I always remember the Heidi Game, not that I myself was anywhere near old enough to comprehend at the time, but because it's my wife's birthday (She was born in the morning, so when I asked my mother-in-law, who was a huge Joe Namath fan at the time, if she had been able to watch it, she said oh yes ... all the drugs had worn off by then so she could completely follow the game). Daniel Case (talk) 20:33, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

In the media: Boris and Joe, reliability, love, and money (3,808 bytes · 💬)

• Gee. About two years ago I was planning to ask on the Teahouse "Has there ever been anyone here that found their soulmate through Wikipedia?". I thought that was a stupid question and I dump it on my personal notepad. I guess that question is answered now... --Regards, Jeromi Mikhael 03:40, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
• The Frederick Douglass photo has just been nominated for deletion on Commons, with the nominator arguing that the UK's laws exclude 2d works such as this from freedom of panorama. Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:47, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

  @HaeB: sadly, yes. There is no FOP for 2D graphic artworks by living artists in UK (Freedom of panorama#United Kingdom). The only hope for the people opting to retain the image is to get licensing permission from the artist, if he wants to have Wikipedian uploader's image of his artwork released under a commercial license. But so far it seems there is no update from the artist. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 04:43, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• Wrt the mural, saying that the photo was "taken from Commons" would not appear to be correct. The photographers' own page says that "Downing Street offices" "found my picture of a mural of Douglass on Wikimedia and contacted [her]" "The mural is by Edinburgh artist Ross Blair (AKA TrenchOne)" "I gave them a high-res version and the Prime Minister’s Office got it printed up and framed." It isn't totally clear but I think that last "gave them" suggests the high-res version was given to Ross Blair (the mural artist) and in turn to the PM. Either way, the high resolution version that was gifted as a photograph came direct from the photographer, not Commons. The version on Commons is only 2MP. -- Colin°^Talk 09:12, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
• Inside Wikipedia's endless war over the coronavirus lab leak theory, a June 27 media article from cnet.com that editors may find interesting (posted here because it came in just after The Signpost's publication and useable in the next issue). Copied the link from Jimbo's talk page. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:25, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

• This one was already included in the Signpost, it's the last story given a full paragraph above! Definitely worth reading, though, thanks for sharing it again. Ganesha811 (talk) 14:54, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

I thought [2] was pretty good, but since I'm too lazy to create an account, I can't even request to share it on the semiprotected discussion pages for the articles. I was surprised to see that it was sponsored by Discord. I'm not sure it covers all of the viable animal transfer theories (such as [3]) but it explains the uncertainty well. MEDRS sources need to have stood unchallenged for years, and we just don't have any of those yet. 107.242.121.42 (talk) 09:41, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

News and notes: Elections, Wikimania, masking and more (1,732 bytes · 💬)

An Office Hour has been scheduled for tomorrow June 29 at 15:00 UTC to discuss the issue of María Sefidari's paid consultancy position. For further details see the relevant page on Meta. --Andreas JN466 11:06, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Banning unregistered/IP editing is just wrong. 04:02, 29 June 2021 (UTC) TOA The owner of all ☑️

That's not what's being discussed. --BDD (talk) 17:59, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

@BDD and Jayen466: No, but apparently it's what pt.wikipedia.org did last year. Be interesting to hear the outcomes from that change, once they've had time to distill all of the collected data.

Surprised the revert rate for IP edits here on enwiki is as high as 27.4%, though. Yikes. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 05:10, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Whoops! Sorry — I pinged Jayen466, instead of The owner of all like I should've. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 05:14, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

News from the WMF: Searching for Wikipedia (916 bytes · 💬)

What, no comments? This is quite interesting, at least for me (I am researching global aspects of Wikipedia's popularity or lack of thereof). Question: When I asked for Korean data, I got Google 55%, Naver 31%. Dau, 9%, Bing 1%, other 2%. Am I understanding this correctly - that out of all search engines referrals from Korea, Google accounts for 55%, while Naver for 31%? Since Naver accounts for 70-90% of the Korean search engine market, this would suggest that Naver is prioritizing Wikipedia much, much less than Google does. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:00, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Obituary: SarahSV (4,229 bytes · 💬)

• Thank you for having this obituary in The Signpost. Several amazing editors have died this year and it's a great loss for the project. Thanks for reminding us about some of SarahSV's contributions. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:37, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
• Thanks to all who contributed to this obituary in Sarah's memory. Her spirit shines on, and not just through her momentous accomplishments. El_C 00:28, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
• Don't get me wrong, I appreciate this. I just find it a bit too late. --Firestar464 (talk) 03:46, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
  • This is the first issue of The Signpost published since the death of SlimVirgin. ☆ Bri (talk) 03:55, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Aye. The Signpost is undermanned, if anyone thing this should have been published earlier, WP:BEBOLD and help TS team to wrap things up more quickly. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:17, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
      • I appreciate this, no matter how late. R.I.P. Slim Virgin and thank you.--Mark Miller (talk) 06:57, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
        • I'm very sorry to learn this. It was when researching The World and Wikipedia (many years ago) that I first saw SlimVirgin's work. I described her as "brave enough to court all kinds of controversy" and noted that she "withstood the pressure of scurrilous attacks from the shadows beyond the encyclopedia". Andrew Dalby 12:54, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
• Oh, that's sad news! I never had the pleasure to work with her, but if we indeed owe Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth to her, then for that alone I salute her. Although such a prolific editor can not be replaced, I feel like her legacy will live on in the work she did, and the policies that we follow. Thanks for the obituary. --LordPeterII (talk) 12:48, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
• She did so much to help make Wiki what it is today. Thank you, SV, for everything. XFalcon2004x (talk) 13:45, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
• I'm sorry to hear this. From my early interaction with SlimVirgin I liked her. Springee (talk) 02:35, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
• This is very sad to hear. One way to honor her memory would be to help at WikiProject Women as there is still a huge gender gap on Wikipedia. –Gladamas (talk · contribs) 07:13, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
• A great loss to everyone. She was a giant! She was very supportive! What a wonderful person. She will be sorely missed. Rest in peace, from your friend, IZAK (talk) 08:47, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
• Very sorry to belatedly learn this sad news. May she rest in peace. She will be sadly missed. A few years ago I found myself having to briefly try to offer info to a feminist newbie on the pitfalls liable to be encountered if she wanted to survive as a female and feminist in Wikipedia (not so long after some leading feminist editors had got booted out), an area about which as a male I inevitably know almost nothing, but it was then just a simple matter of pointing her in Sarah's direction. If I ever have to do the same again, it will probably require me to do some Original Research to find out in whose direction such a newbie should now be pointed. Tlhslobus (talk) 21:00, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Recent research: Feminist critique of Wikipedia's epistemology, Black Americans vastly underrepresented among editors, Wiki Workshop report (49,523 bytes · 💬)

Initial discussion

These papers would be more convincing if they were written in something resembling the English language. "An alternative set of pillars developed through the lens of feminist epistemology" is about as meaningful as "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously". The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:25, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

• Hahaha. They're finally trying to remove free content as one of Wikipedia's founding principles. (User:Markworthen/sandbox/Feminist critique of Wikipedia's epistemology/2nd draft#Comparison between the current five pillars and the authors' proposed revisions) How much money do you think it'll cost for WMF to bribe Lawrence Lessig to update the CC-BY-SA so we can switch over to BSD? The fact the 5P change is proposing "Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute → The integrity of Wikipedia is a function of the size and breadth of its community" makes it clear what the true motivation of the author is. It's all about sacrificing freedom (no sixth pillar ofc; it is impossible to be both diverse and have free culture) so we can pay lip service to diversity. Just fucking merge this site into the Knowledge Graph already. We can let Google pre approve editors based on ethnicity; unless they're Uyghurs from China because that's too big a market to piss off again. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 21:37, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

• So I decided to actually find a copy of the original article on the five pillars. It's worse than the excerpts posted here. For instance, the first point on changing Wikipedia to a process is justified by the claim that the existing first pillar excludes certain people from the encyclopedia building process. The specifics people that the authors believe should be included are "individuals who are knowledgeable about and want to contribute information related to complementary and alternative medical practices such as acupuncture, meditation, or Ayurveda." The article details how bad it is that Western medical practicioners "block" the participation of alternative medicine providers (not in the WP:BLOCK sense necessarily) and "leave little room for other kinds of expertise, including patient expertise". The amount of fucks I could give about pseudoscience practicioners being blocked from contributing pseudoscience to Wikipedia is close to zero and I would hope MEDRS never allows the vaguely defined "patient expertise" to be used as a source if that entails patients contributing their experiences directly to Wikipedia.
• The proposed second pillar envisions a fundamental shift of Wikipedia as a collection of knowledge being neutral to Wikipedia editors being neutral. This is worded in a deliberately obscurantist fashion because at its heart it advocates a system where we actually debate content and points of views and then collectively take a position on the topics that the encyclopedia covers and abandon any pretenses of being objective. The article explicitly says this, by outlining how Wikipedia should have structures for "communal inquiry" and describes as an "upshot" that "whatever we end up endorsing as the product of inquiry, is in no way neutral or objective itself". This misunderstands how Wikipedia should function. We are not scientists engaged in "communal inquiry" nor a source of knowledge unto ourselves. We summarize the existing knowledge and don't take sides.
• The proposed third pillar misunderstands Wikipedia and focuses on openness of "participation". It misunderstands that what "anyone can edit" actually means. It's not that anyone can go on Wikipedia and type in whatever they want on this website. It's the idea that anyone can take the content here and use it for their purposes, so long as they attribute and preserve the freedom of reuse. If someone wants to go ahead and take the Ayurveda article we have and put it on their website; but edited to talk about how good Ayurveda is, that's OK. So long as they attribute us (but don't say we wrote their edits) as well as preserve the CC-BY-SA it's fine. It's the freedom of content; not the freedom of community and while the article understands this is the case the authors fail to understand that the focus on the former was an intentional choice (calling it an "inappropriate focus on content"). While I don't have a problem with adding a new pillar based on valuing participation; removing the third pillar is a non-starter for me.
• The proposed fourth pillar believes in killing civility and replacing it with a statement about "epistemic and discursive responsibility". The authors justify this by claiming that "what counts as civil or respectful can vary from person to person and context to context" and that individuals are incapable of having a neutral point of view. These are both true (although I don't see how the second conflicts with the fourth pillar), but the proposed replacement that "Editors Should be Epistemically and Discursively Responsible" has the same issues yet is far more difficult to understand. The author elaborates that this responsibility is "to create a thriving and objective epistemic community", yet the ideas of what this might mean also differ from person to person or context to context. It's the same as the civility except the civility policy actually says you can't justify bad behaviour if it's for a good reason. Saying that editors should be "discursively responsible" entails that it's OK to say things like personal attacks if it's in the interests of the community.
• The fifth pillar is the only one I actually completely agree with. I can't actually see the difference between it and the existing fifth pillar though so that might be why.
• The 5 pillars article proposes foundational changes to Wikipedia so that pseudoscientists can POV-push alternative medicine and unironically believes we should repeal WP:NOTFORUM.

Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 22:50, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

A cogent, incisive analysis Chess. Thank you. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 00:52, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the compliment despite our obvious disagreement on the article. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 00:59, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

@Chess: One reason I finally posted a review was to elicit thoughtful discussion to help me (and others) better understand the authors' arguments, and to learn from other Wikipedians' confutations. My opinion of the Menking & Rosenberg (2021) article continues to evolve. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 14:04, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

The entire sentence is worth quoting: Take, for example, individuals who are knowledgeable about and want to contribute information related to complementary and alternative medical practices such as acupuncture, meditation, or Ayurveda. Health information on the English-language Wikipedia has become increasingly influential (Laurent and Vickers 2009) and, consequently, it is often closely guarded by a community of editors who are also trained as Western medical practitioners (Shafee et al. 2017). If the latter considers the former to be “dangerous,” then they may block their participation. (p. 15) It's very strange—and, frankly, somewhat "Western supremacist"—to assert in 2021 that medicine is a field of knowledge that is distinctly Western. If you have a heart attack in China, they will treat you with "Western" medicine. If you have cancer in Uganda, they will treat you with "Western" medicine. Researchers at the the Universidad de Chile medical school research "Western" medicine. Only people who are obsessed with the idea that individuals are determined by their ethnic background will fail to see that medicine—the academic kind—is a global field of knowledge with practitioners and contributors in literally every country in the world. JBchrch talk 22:30, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

"Editors should be epistemically and discursively responsible" is a cruel and unusual sentence. DuncanHill (talk) 22:53, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm not a huge fan of the conclusions in the paper about why black people participate in Wikipedia less. Considering that they participate at, what, 1/20th of the rate of white people, we could say that we're only engaging 1/20th of the black people who would potentially be interested in editing. Of the ones we do engage, they're interested in black altruism - but what about the ones we don't? I think that's the more important question. The fact that the ones we do engage tend to not cite "entertainment" as a reason is somewhat interesting I think - perhaps we should look at that among non-editors? Since I'd assume there is a large base of black people who would potentially find Wikipedia fun to edit, yet for some reason have avoided it. I do appreciate the effort to look more into demographics, I'm only concerned about a form of survivorship bias interfering with getting useful information. Elli (talk | contribs) 22:37, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

These are different papers. Stewart and Ju looked at existing African American contributors and their motivations ("black altruism" etc.) but did not try to answer the question why black people in general contribute less. Hargittai and Shaw's "pipeline" paper on the other hand was based on survey data that did include non-contributors. Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:26, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Fair, I was addressing how things were presented in Signpost. Elli (talk | contribs) 00:05, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm interested in where any of us find "amusement" (as the paper put it) in Wikipedia. By making on-wiki friends? By joining the peanut gallery at ANI? By reverting amusing vandalism? But I can see why black editors might struggle to find Wikipedia entertaining just from the amount of overt and extreme racism that unregistered/NOTHERE people spew: it's easy for me (a white person) to brush this off as not reflective of the Wikipedia community as a whole, but maybe not so funny when you know the comments are maliciously targeted at you. And then you do get long-term editors who express consciously racist views. Often it takes just a single really aggressive editor to dishearten you or trigger an enraged retirement. So editing can quickly become unamusing and stressful, but if your purpose is altruism, then this is less likely to take away your motivation. But all of this analysis should really apply to most of us (replacing "racism" with other issues), circling back to my confusion about who is here for amusement. — Bilorv (talk) 09:09, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure that amusement is my primary motivation, but I do think it's fun to add content to an article. For me, the more obscure the subject, the more fun it's likely to be. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Yeah this reeks of bad conclusions based on poor evidence. Maybe consider systemic and socioeconomic factors before torpedoing the 5 Pillars and how wiki has functioned decently for a long time. ~Gwennie🐈｟💬 📋｠ 22:41, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

• It's hard to take the recommendations of a paper seriously when it advocates our adoption of pseudoscience topics. Fun fact, some things—such as specific knowledge systems—can and do work better than others, and thinking that we should displace modern science rooted in peer-reviewed research because it was created by a bunch of Western men with patent nonsense because patent nonsense isn't as heavily monopolized by them is absurd. The authors clearly did not read any of the press coverage on how we have tried to prevent people from killing themselves by using pseudoscience to treat COVID-19. -Indy beetle (talk) 04:40, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

• Do I want to pay £ 29.00 to access this document? Such an important question deserves a full-scale study (requiring another £ 29.00 to access). And so on, recursively. Pldx1 (talk) 14:04, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

  • And with the user-unfriendliness and myoptic limitations of WP:LIBRARY, you wonder why so many editors use Sci-Hub… ~Gwennie🐈｟💬 📋｠ 17:41, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

• Assuming that the folks at OUP are OK with copying just one paragraph: Education, Internet skills,and age have robust associations with outcomes at every step in the pipeline. Otherfactors, such as income, employment status, and racial/ethnic background, helpexplain earlier stages in the pipeline even though they do not associate with whocontributes content. Gender only matters at later stages in the pipeline, despite theimportant and valid emphasis of prior research and public debate on the Wikipediagender gap. Distinct from prior studies, we provide evidence that participationdivides in who creates content online are likely due to variations in who has visiteda site and has the requisite knowledge that such contributions are possible Does that mean that most of the bias is because of who is likely to be familiar with how the Internet works? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:03, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Jo-Jo Eumerus, I think it's not just knowing "how the Internet works", although I do hear from event coordinators in developing countries that very basic skills about web browsers and how to type are barriers for some participants. I think the bigger factor is who [has time to] visit the site. We're missing lots of different types of people, such as people who put in 60+ hours every week at work, parents whose children need a lot of their time, and people who are heavily involved in supporting their local communities. I believe that a thorough demographic analysis of editors would show a disproportionate number of unmarried editors, childless editors, editors whose contribution pattern aligns with their child custody arrangements, people who are well-off enough that they only need one job (but not CEOs, long-haul truck drivers, commercial fishing, or other jobs notorious for long hours), etc. You can't spend 10–20 hours a week contributing to Wikipedia unless you have 10–20 hours a week that aren't needed for some other, more urgent task. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

  • I agree with this and would go further: I'm guessing that much of the different participation rates by gender is ultimately explained by the varying amount of true leisure time enjoyed by each gender. I'm a little less sure of this with respect to those rates seen when we break down by social class and race. — Charles Stewart (talk) 17:16, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

• There is absolutely nothing feminist about opening up Wikipedia to 'other ways of knowing' (i.e. other epistemologies or "other kinds of expertise"). Our article on women's health, a WP:GA, states: Gender remains an important social determinant of health, since women's health is influenced not just by their biology but also by conditions such as poverty, employment, and family responsibilities. Women have long been disadvantaged in many respects such as social and economic power which restricts their access to the necessities of life including health care, and the greater the level of disadvantage, such as in developing countries, the greater adverse impact on health. I see it as deeply un-feminist to give validity to the charlatans who profit from "alternative medicine", whose deceptions and waste will victimize women disproportionately. Though some radically relativist and postmodernist academics may deny it, such ways of knowing are rightly marginalized - not because of the identity of (some of) their advocates, but because they are based on pseudoscientific mysticism. In fact, Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine are powerful in their respective countries, though still rightly fringe in the scientific community. That science has in the past been disproportionately done by white men does not discredit the cumulative process of science, and with time science happily continues to become increasingly diversified to better match the world. Doubtless the many women who work in medical research would not take kindly to being told that supporting equality of the sexes, or feminism, involves taking pseudoscience seriously.
  The idea that the current 5 pillars "contribute to the implicit values further excluding women" is puzzling; I would think what's feminist is to recognize that women are just as capable as men of valuing and implementing them. The solution to the gender gap lay elsewhere; it is very unlikely to lay in undoing what makes Wikipedia useful for readers (including women) in the first place.
  The fact that such anti-science apologetics are taken seriously by some sectors of academia reminds us of the importance of heeding WP:MEDRS and WP:Secondary, as well as WP:Due weight, especially when writing about politicized topics. We should also be vigilant that the WMF, influenced as it is by its California Bay Area nonprofit milieu that will naturally tend to look very kindly on something that claims to advance diversity and inclusion, and affiliated as it is with a group that believes that "decolonizing knowledge" means to "center indigenous ways of knowing, feminist’s [sic] ways of knowing, plural ways of knowing", does not try to assert changes to what Wikipedia is due to misplaced prioritization of things other than writing an encyclopedia. Crossroads ^-talk- 04:14, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Really well-written first paragraph, very much agreed. — Bilorv (talk) 06:50, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

    Seconded! ~Gwennie🐈｟💬 📋｠ 22:47, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

  Illuminating refutation Crossroads. Thank you. // I agree that Menking & Rosenberg (2021) damage their credibility by supporting unscientific medical practices. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 14:12, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Crossroads, how would you describe a "feminist way of knowing"? Do you know much about feminist approaches to research? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:07, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

• An illustrative example would be enlightening. The Classic of Burial says:

  Where the mountains advance and the waters encircle, there is nobility, longevity and wealth.

  Where the mountains imprison and the waters flow (directly), the king is enslaved and the prince is destroyed.

As everyone knows, epistemology is one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with ethics, logic and metaphysics. And its aim is to study the nature, origin and scope of knowledge, the rationality of beliefs and various related issues. The exercise is as follows: (1) Examine the origin of the two given assertions, e.g. find historical events that could have been used to illustrate such claims. (2) Find subsequent historical events that came across these assertions. (3) Examine the rationales that were used to cover up the failure of the prediction. (4) And, obviously, perform all of these tasks in a way that illustrates how the new form of epistemology works at least slightly better than the biased epistemology of the past. Pldx1 (talk) 09:24, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

We need an article about ways of knowing and/or forms of knowledge. They keep getting tossed around in discussions, but I'm not sure that we have a shared understanding of what we're talking about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:12, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Having now had an opportunity to read the Menkin & Rosenberg article in full, I have to say it's definitely not worth £29. There is a huge amount of "filler" - it could easily be cut by a third with no loss of worthwhile content. It is also written in appallingly dense jargon and so hedged about with mays and mights that it is a real struggle to see what, if anything, the authors are trying to say, except when they throw in the occasional bit of the bleeding obvious such as "judgments about what counts as civil or respectful can vary from person to person and context to context". DuncanHill (talk) 22:31, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing's discernment

In the talk page discussion I referenced in my review—WP:5P sidetrack (part II)—WhatamIdoing wrote (on 21 Apr 2021 @ 03:23 UTC):

"The integrity of Wikipedia is a function of the size and breadth of its community" means "biased people create biased content". I believe that "epistemically and discursively responsible" means that they want editors to have epistemic responsibility (do good research, including actively seeking out information and views that have been overlooked in the past) and to intentionally make space for voices that are being excluded. ... I do think [Menking & Rosenberg (2021) are] correct about the English Wikipedia being norm-driven; there are things that we do because we always do that even though the rules technically discourage them, and things you can't do because we don't do that, even if the rules permit them. We can't really be rule-governed when IAR is one of the rules, or when some of the rules contradict other rules.

The discussion continues after this, with additional insightful posts by other smart Wikipedians. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 14:46, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

What if they were right?

I'm inclined to reject the argument, but I think it is good intellectual discipline to seriously consider the possibility that they are basically right about the 5P being responsible for the diversity gap in the editor population. I think, though, even if they were right, it would be a mistake to attempt a radical reengineering of core principles: to use nautical terms, the Wikipedia community, at least for en.WP, is the analog of an oil tanker with a turning circle that takes hours to execute. I doubt the enterprise could survive such an effort and remain fruitful. If we did want to remake WP on new principles, I think it could only work in the context of a new project. — Charles Stewart (talk) 17:24, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

I have been trying to do this exercise for the last 15 min, but I am having trouble moving forward. 1) I fail to understand how the concept of a "neutral encyclopedia" can be construed as oppressive (even after reading the article multiple times). 2) I do not understand how we could build a neutral encyclopedia out of the principles proposed by the authors. Aren't they basically arguing for a sort of ethic-weighted and class-weighted summary of what people think is true? 3) I cannot get past the part of the analysis where one considers that the inequalities in society in terms of higher education and socio-economic conditions are the causes of the lack of diversity: I don't see any serious objection to this idea from the authors' material. JBchrch talk 18:19, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Further to this (rambling) comment and after skimming the article once again, I see a quote that sums up the issues I have: Acknowledging the ways that knowers are situated leads us to abandon the possibility of having an unbiased position isolatable from an individual’s background beliefs and values, and even their affective or emotional state. Without the possibility of individual or community neutrality, no amount of civility or respect alone is sufficient to allow “the truth” to rise to the surface of discourse. If one holds this view, then one is automatically opposed to any sort of encyclopedic endeavor. JBchrch talk 23:09, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this, and while I don't know that I can answer your question, here's what I've come up with.

When we look at a subject – I'm going to use hand washing – we (and all good encyclopedias) tend to boil it down to the summary statements: "Washing hands with soap and water before eating improves health". Right?

But this isn't always true. There are other valid perspectives:

• If you're stuck in a desert/don't have much water, you probably should save the water for drinking.
• If you're allergic to the available soap, then your health might be best if you wash in plain water, or not washing.
• If you have aquagenic urticaria, you should avoid using water for washing.
• If you're in space, hand washing is not an efficient use of water.
• According to the hygiene hypothesis, it's possible that washing your hands before eating will improve your short-term health at the expense of your long-term health.
• And if the water's dirtier than your hands, you might be better off not washing in it.

You'd go back to the person who said that washing hands is healthful, and you'd hear something like "C'mon, guys, you know I was speaking about the general situation in which there is plenty of clean water and no other contraindications. This is an encyclopedia, not a detailed description of every possible situation that might affect some tiny fraction of people in non-standard circumstances."

Generalizing and summarizing is a valid (and IMO encyclopedic) approach to knowledge. But that doesn't mean that other approaches are wrong. An approach that looks at what's best for (in this example) the health of an individual person in a given set of specific circumstances, rather than a statement that applies in most circumstances, also counts as "knowledge".

I think the difference is that an encyclopedia aims to be the sum of human knowledge, not all of human knowledge. We are not perfect, but even if we reached perfection, there would still be things that would get omitted or glossed over as being Wikipedia:UNDUE for a general summary. If you want to represent the full knowledge of our world, you don't want an encyclopedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:55, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: thank you very much for the illuminating explanation and example, they are very helpful. Here are just two thoughts in response: 1) Would it ever possible for a an encyclopedia to be entirely inclusive and diverse? I would argue that, by nature, an encyclopedia (i.e. a bunch of summaries) discriminates in that it rejects some information, even though the rejected information may be relevant to some people. The case made by the authors then, is an easy one : yes summaries are not inclusive. But if you value inclusivity to be the most important value (as the authors seem to do? [In our critique and reimagining of the five pillars, we are concerned with reliability as it relates to the processes by which knowledge is produced on the site and who is excluded from these processes]), an encyclopedia will always be unsatisfactory. 2) I still think that the issues that are discussed boil down to a garbage in-garbage out problem, one that encompasses society as a whole, and not just Wikipedia: if access to education and advanced literacy is not provided equally to all groups of society, this will be reflected in the composition of the people who contribute to Wikipedia, leading to content that excludes and perpetuates bias. In that case, the 5P are still sound: what is more urgent is general societal progress. JBchrch talk 12:54, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

@JBchrch, I think that the answer to (1) is "no": it is not possible for an encyclopedia to be entirely inclusive and diverse.

I'm not sure about (2). I think that GIGO is a significant problem, but even if it were entirely solved, there would still be a problem. Consider an article like China–United States relations. It needs to include both Chinese and US viewpoints, right? But maybe it shouldn't be limited to that. Okay, we'll add something about the viewpoints of their neighbors. Maybe that means we add POVs about this relationship by India, Russia, Japan, Canada, and Mexico. Oh, wait – what about more distant groups? Okay, we add the European Union. And the UK and Australia, because they speak English? But now we're over-representing wealthy countries. There wasn't a single poor country on the list, and if the US would pay more, and China wouldn't have such cheap prices, maybe poor countries could boost their manufacturing. And Cuba and Vietnam and Laos are also communist countries, so what do they think? And… and… and… and… – and we don't have an encyclopedia article any longer. We have a book instead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:29, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

It's not a problem of how the 5 pillars are phrased or how they're implemented or whatever. On a fundamental level the authors of the paper disagree with Wikipedia's goals. The proposed changes to 5P aren't mere rephrasings (except the fifth) but subtle and massive alterations to the purpose of Wikipedia. Trying to reconcile this with the idea of a neutral encyclopedia is impossible because the author's do not believe neutrality exists, that Wikipedia should attempt to attain neutrality, and advocate that the Wikipedia community spends its time discussing what point of view it wishes to adopt. The authors don't want to change the oil tanker's direction they want to blow it up entirely. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 01:11, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, Chess, and here is the problem I see with the arguments of academics who deride notions of objectivity and say that we need specifically ideological or identity-based ways of knowing to be added on to science or mainstream scholarship. Yes, it's true that all humans are biased by various things, including our social position, or our "positionality" in activist-academic jargon. However, the whole design of science, institutionally and philosophically, is to cancel out scientists' personal biases no matter where there come from. So, yes, scientists being diverse (not just in terms of race or gender but also culture, background academic training, life experiences, etc.) is a good thing. But that institutional and philosophical design is at least as important. Even if perfect objectivity is not possible, we (as a species) need to aim for it, and we'll get close. If one rejects objectivity as the aim, on the grounds that one's social identity strongly influences peoples' views so badly that science is actually just Western Male Science, one is instead only left with competing identity-based claims with no basis to judge between them except which identities of those making the claims one wishes to favor. What an intellectual and political mess and dead-end that would be. For Wikipedia, replace "objectivity" with "neutrally represent reliable sources with due weight", and the same point applies. We need to aim for that even if it is never completely and fully reached. Crossroads ^-talk- 04:28, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

• I'm personally skeptical about objectivity: for the sake of argument, I could say objectivity exists in the formal sciences, but if you can't define the topic in first-order logic, then you can't formulate a perfectly objective criterion for knowledge claims in your topic. I do think neutrality as we work with it here is usable and useful: Jimbo used to say that NPOV is the standard that you expect in good newspapers, and actually, I think we've achieved a higher level of neutrality in large swathes of articles than that. Note that while Menking, at least, is critical of the notion of neutrality, she does generally think WP has overall been a good thing; she's hoping that radically different pillars would make the encyclopedia better, which I'm pretty sure they would not.

We have plenty of policies that require obviously controversial judgement calls to be made; the two most important, in my opinion are: What is a reliable source? and When does an article have WP:DUE issues? Menking and Rosenburg also singled out WP:NOT, which is a policy that tends to get applied in a Procrustean fashion at AfD. — Charles Stewart (talk) 12:11, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

@Chess: I wouldn't say "blow the oil tanker up completely" -- it seems to me like they'd also be open to dumping out all the oil and filling it back up with other substances. jp×g 11:44, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

• Acknowledging the ways that knowers are situated leads us to abandon the possibility of having an unbiased position isolatable from an individual’s background beliefs and values, and even their affective or emotional state. Without the possibility of individual or community neutrality, no amount of civility or respect alone is sufficient to allow “the truth” to rise to the surface of discourse.

So what, if knowers are situated? Why can't knowers reflect on what they are doing and put their personal beliefs aside when writing an encyclopedia? Is it so hard to just describe the debates rather than engaging in the debates themselves? Is it really unrealistic to expect that editors can look after each others' edits on controversial articles and make sure that only description of the debates are being done? We aren't trying to write using a view from nowhere (as Thomas Nagel would put it). What we are doing is presenting from every angles proportionally to the weight they have on the composition of views held by expert researchers. Also, feminist epistemology is originally concerned with researchers, not with the summarizers (i.e. encyclopedia writers) of the findings of those researchers. So the concepts in that area aren't automatically applicable to Wikipedia. So why are the authors referring to 'the truth' when Wikipedia doesn't lead, it only follows?

• a community of editors who are also trained as Western medical practitioners

• This statement assumes that, even how much interconnected the world was since ancient times, there is really such a thing as 'the West'.
• At Wikipedia, we don't make exceptions for "Western" practices of bloodletting, humorism, Western astrology, homeopathy, and trepanning. Modern medicine as practiced today just happened to mature in Europe, that's all. Also, variolation, the precursor to vaccination, had a non-European origin.
• There is no such thing as "Western" mathematics, "Western" science, nor "Western" philosophy. For examples, Archimedes (Greek) Avicenna (Persian), Aryabhata (Indian), Yang Hui (Chinese), just to name a few

VarunSoon (talk) 03:39, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

We could perhaps expand the "view from nowhere" to say "from anybody to everybody". The Wikipedias that are more closely tied to a single country/culture have a more obvious audience. Haiti's view of China–United States relations is "undue" for us, but of obvious interest in a version of Wikipedia written in Haitian Creole, by Haitian people, for other Haitian people. That sort of situation makes it easier to determine which voices to include or exclude. I imagine that something similar would happen if you had a "Wikipedia for <identity group>": you'd know that you needed more about how the subject relates to that particular group than outsiders would think reasonable. "Wikipedia for Teens" would have more information about youth rights or how certain "adult" illnesses affect younger people. "Wikipedia for Autistics" would have more information about which jobs are better or worse suited for people with different characteristics of autism (e.g., working in a glass recycling center is fun for some but a nightmare for people who dislike the noise). "Wikipedia for Christians" would have more information about whether subjects (e.g., Hair coloring, Luxury cars, Plastic surgery, Dancing) are moral. These would all implicitly exclude other groups, but it'd be easier for that group to decide whether they were representing the subject reasonably through a specific lens. That's easier than figuring out whether you represented the subject reasonably on a global scale – fairly balancing views held by people at all income levels, of all health statuses, at all education levels, of all genders, of all races, in all countries, from all cultures, of all religions, of all ages, etc. And since we are all the protagonists of our own stories, anything that fairly represents the viewpoints that I happen to hold will feel like it underrepresents my view. Because we are each only one of billions, but we all believe that our view is the right, reasonable, and rational one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

However, Wikipedias that could seem more closely tied to a particular culture should have to uphold the 5 pillars, including and especially NPOV. Consider the Croatian Wikipedia, which for many years had been dominated by nationalist and far-right POV pushers. There's another article about it in this very issue of the Signpost. That's not okay regardless of how many Croatians agreed with that POV. There may indeed be a natural tendency for other language Wikipedias to reflect certain POVs more than ours, but this should be kept within limits.

As for other identity and ideological groups - I am glad that there is only one Wikipedia for them all. We all share one reality, and now more than ever as misinformation and misleading material abounds across social media, and as people divide themselves into impenetrable echo chambers, people need to see what the mainstream views are and why, and what others' ideologies and points of view are and why (in the appropriate articles and with due weight). The latter can and should be described with in-text attribution. People are free to set up other wikis if they want to expound particular points of view, and many have done so. But this should never be part of what Wikipedia or the WMF does. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:34, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

The Five Pillars aren't universal. It's an English Wikipedia thing, created as an expansion of the older Wikipedia:Trifecta. The m:Founding principles have a different way of stating the ideas.

It's generally agreed that NPOV is necessary for Wikipedias (but not for other projects), and even there, we get different ideas about what "neutral" means. Here's an example: Go to ht:New York City, New York or ht:Miami. One of the section headings translates to "Relationship to Haiti". Is it "neutral" to call out the relationship between a major US city and a small country? We wouldn't think so at this Wikipedia, which is more Anglocentric and global in focus, but if you are using Haitian Creole sources to write articles at the Haitian Creole Wikipedia (which is not unreasonable?), then you will get a very different picture of what "all the reliable sources" are saying. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:59, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Is it neutral that so many of our articles on any given topic have a "United States" subsection at some point? Is it "neutral" that the education section in our article on Port-au-prince barely mentions indigenous education but devotes multiple sentences to American-style intl schools? That two sentences in the sparse "culture" section talk about how streets in Haiti are named after American abolitionists (maybe)? That it's a coincidence that 3/4 of the sister cities mentioned are American while one is Canadian?

Give me a break we do the same shit they do they're just willing to actually admit it. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 23:37, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it's actually non-neutral for an article written for speakers of Haitian Creole to provide more information about Haiti's connection. The balance of information that we call "neutral" might not be universal. It might be that "global" languages (English, French, Arabic) need a different balance compared to highly local languages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:24, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Talking about the Haitian Creole wiki for the Haiti centric viewpoint when so many of our articles are US-centric is like the pot calling the kettle black. We do it too and any discussion of geographical bias would be incomplete if we're not going to acknowledge our own bias. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 00:52, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Survey percentages

I don't understand how if there were 195 respondents reporting their race/ethnicity in the US, First Nation people can make up 0.1%. Even if there was just one such person in the sample, that would be 0.5%. What am I missing? --Andreas JN466 09:00, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Presumably something to do with the weighting - see the report endnotes. DuncanHill (talk) 09:08, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Still isn't really super enlightening. Maybe @RMaung (WMF): can add context. GMG^talk 15:15, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Publically available version of Menking and Rosenburg paper

The article links to a paywalled version of the paper, which is available OA at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0162243920924783?casa_token=EfdSjisfZf8AAAAA:EB-0LLFClccB0CVNc8io5W46u4DoBWAx9gX-bBDf3PHbsRq3xDMbs1Fh_uePmIJ4RpxXh1WGZg9j

The link should be updated. — Charles Stewart (talk) 10:22, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, we always try to link open access versions - however, your link is still paywalled for me. Regards, HaeB (talk) 18:22, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

If it is available for you, that is because you are already logged in to Sagepub in some way. Both that link and the DOI end up at a (the same) non-free location for me. Izno (talk) 18:23, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Hmm? The only institutional access I've ever had from the computer I accessed the Sagepub article from is JSTOR access, which is available to active WP editors via our Wikipedia:Library program. — Charles Stewart (talk) 12:28, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Which does not make it free. Izno (talk) 22:24, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

But you say that the current link (https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0162243920924783 --> https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0162243920924783 ) is paywalled for you even though the one you gave above (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0162243920924783?casa_token=EfdSjisfZf8AAAAA:EB-0LLFClccB0CVNc8io5W46u4DoBWAx9gX-bBDf3PHbsRq3xDMbs1Fh_uePmIJ4RpxXh1WGZg9j ) isn't? Then perhaps you encountered a bug in the Wikipedia Library access mechanism and should consider alerting its maintainers about it. Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:43, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

What inevitably mathematically dominated the study

With our sports SNG "did it for a living for one day" criteria to bypass GNG, we have an immense amount of articles (many permastubs) in this numerically male dominated (and even more so collectively over history) field which heavily influence overall numbers in such studies. I hit "random article" a few hundred times and 43% of ALL of the articles about men were about sports figures. This mathematically dwarfs any other category, with politicians being a distant second at 11%. So sports figures would have mathematically dominated that study. North8000 (talk) 00:05, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

"Sports" in general have dominated human culture though. Athletes have had fame far beyond their relative proportion society for millennia. You can look at the gladiators in ancient Rome or the Mesoamerican ballgame or Go players in ancient China. This has lasted well into the modern era. Maybe athletes are considered by society to be more important than they actually are but notability guidelines are meant to reflect what society considers important. Like it or not but athletes get a lot of coverage in reliable sources, now and historically. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 01:20, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

This is premature but I wanted to post something. I did a more careful sample (so far 200 articles) Of the articles about individual people (59) , I divided them into recent (active in the last 15 years) and not recent. Here was the breakdown of articles on individual people:

• Articles on individual sports people: 29% All other articles on individual people 71%
• Non-recent sports: Male 100% Female 0%
• Recent sports: Male 90% Female 10%
• Non sports, non recent: Male: 81% Female 19%
• Non sports, recent: Male 45% Female 55%

North8000 (talk) 21:12, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Traffic report: So no one told you life was gonna be this way (980 bytes · 💬)

• I just wanted to say that I always enjoy the traffic reports. They have a personality that makes it a lot more interesting to read compared to just the raw data. I like to make at least one guess about what is likely popular enough to end up on the list before I read, and I won my self-bet with Loki (TV series). I don't watch much television, but I've been looking forward to Wednesdays where I watch it with my family. Clovermoss (talk) 20:44, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
• "Cruella [...] the newest Joker movie" I shat myself from laughter from reading this -Gouleg🛋️ ^harass/_hound 14:50, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

WikiProject report: WikiProject on open proxies interview (1,355 bytes · 💬)

Thank you, Tom (LT) and all participants for this interview. This was a whole world I didn't even know existed on Wikipedia!--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 00:02, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for this article! I found it really interesting to learn more about a corner of Wikipedia I've never interacted with. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 03:30, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

• Quite interesting but for those (like me) who don't know what an open proxy is, zzuuzz's answer is hidden away towards the end of the article! Would have been better in the intro I think. --Dutchy45 (talk) 11:02, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

This article contains a disambiguation link to "VPS". I don't know what it's supposed to link to. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:05, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Virtual private server. MarioGom (talk) 19:52, 29 June 2021 (UTC)