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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2022-11-28. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Book review: Writing the Revolution (513 bytes · 💬)

  • Great review, might have to give the book a read!— Ixtal ( T / C ) ⁂ Non nobis solum. 10:39, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
  • Great piece. Bought the book. Re-read the review. Vysotsky (talk) 11:52, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

CommonsComix: Joker's trick (529 bytes · 💬)

  • This gave me a good chuckle, especially because some hoaxes took many years before they were ever discovered. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 15:46, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Concept: The relevance of legal certainty to the English Wikipedia (10,283 bytes · 💬)

  • How did this anonymous, evidenceless rant make it into the Signpost? Was it ever published? I was unable to find it in a quick perusal of the 2018 archive TOCs. If it was not published, I can imagine why not, but it would be useful to see the 2018 deliberation around it. I have had my problems with admins in the past, but I have found most of them to be helpful and even-keeled. The writer should have considered whether they had the cause and effect wrong: perhaps administrators get blocked infrequently because the sort of person who is likely to get blocked is very unlikely to be given administrator rights. Also, the writer of this essay clearly didn't frequent enough drama boards, where administrators are often chided and sometimes desysopped for their transgressions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:03, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
    To be clear, I am not blaming any of the hard-working volunteers here at the Signpost; having briefly been one in the past, I know that every issue is a massive amount of work. I am curious, however, about the editorial process, if any, that rejected this piece in 2018 and accepted it for this issue. Having poked around a bit and been unable to find information, I thought I would ask here, which seemed like the logical place. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:11, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
    Co-signed. I am also curious about the editorial journey this one took. Axem Titanium (talk) 07:43, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
  • @Jonesey95: The people to blame for this being published are here. It isn't so much that I disagree with this drivel, it's that it's drivel. A suggestion to the "editors": if you don't have anything of quality to add to a Signpost section, don't add anything that month. Any editorial decision based on "let's do it!" is not an editorial decision, it's laziness. Kudos to Eddie891, apparently the editor back in 2018 (sorry, I should probably check), for having the judgment to mark it "not ready". --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:15, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
    • "Drivel is mild, it's also ignorant. Monitor Admins? Some group of editors (presumably made up of Admins if it's going to have any power) has to spend their time watching the contributions of 1000 Admins? And "User groups", what in the world is that supposed to mean? Who would be in these groups? What would be done about IPs? How would we pick the Admins? How would we make sure they were active? Why in the world would anyone think this could work? I've seen a lot of uninformed unworkable proposals on Wikipedia, but this tops the list. Doug Weller talk 11:12, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
    Just a note that I was not the editor, but fairly involved with publication at the time, if memory serves. Eddie891 Talk Work 18:26, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
    As always, dissatisfied readers can request a refund of their full purchase price from The Signpost circulation department. Or, alternatively, they can become contributors and/or editors. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:44, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
    🙄 So I guess you're immune from criticism, then, unless it is coming from people who want to become contributors or editors. How convenient. Floquenbeam (talk) 18:56, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
  • I really don't understand why this was even published. I have stood up for The Signpost in the past, back when a certain editor wanted the entire leadership sanctioned, but when I see things like this published I wonder why I bothered. If you want drivel and rants published, just ask me - I'll at least sign my name to them. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 19:49, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
    • I would also count myself among the (silent majority?) of Signpost defenders (or apologists). I usually find something interesting or something to like about a Signpost article. This one is testing me and I'm found wanting. Axem Titanium (talk) 07:43, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
  • Not ready then and now. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 12:18, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
  • Be honest: This is AI-generated text, the product of a machine-learning model trained on 15 years of why-I'm-leaving-Wikipedia rants, right? Impressive work. The model gets so many things right—the sententious window dressing ("from the German Rechtssicherheit..."), the word salad (what is "emotional fortification", and where do I get some?), the just-asking-questions conceit, the invocation of "free speech" as a thought-terminating cliche... :P MastCell Talk 17:40, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
    Well played, friend. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:44, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
    Are you saying we can now expect AI trolls? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 18:38, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
  • I'm just baffled that the Signpost editors decided to publish an article that had been rejected 4 years before, by an anonymous editor. Aside from it being poorly written, it's reflective of a single person's mindset from....four years ago? Really? Signpost can't persuade anyone to write an opinion piece reflecting the 2022 realities? That's kind of sad. Risker (talk) 03:46, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
    If it helps, I'm of the view that I don't have to agree with an article for it to be worth publishing. And I feel the delay of four years somewhat helps this article by separating it from whatever the inciting events were. Do you need to follow its advice? Of course not: Articles like this that advocate for a change in policy or its application should never be seen as more than a start to a debate. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 05:49, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
  • I thought this piece would spark an interesting discussion so I'm surprised to see the backlash. I am seemingly in agreement with all that the piece is wrong, but I think identifying why and where it is wrong is worthwhile. To me, it's the level of power that it assumes administrators have. Admins should only be acting to enforce decisions made by the community—in obvious cases that leaves room for a level of judgement ("trolls should be blocked" gives precedent for an admin to identify a user as an obvious troll and blocked) and in non-obvious cases it doesn't (applying BLP to a contested piece of text by protecting the article on the admin's preferred version). Another is its idealist (rather than materialist) outlook: rules on Wikipedia should not be made with fairness to users in mind, but with what practically creates the best environment for producing a high-quality encyclopedia. "Free speech" is not a value here, nor is "fairness"—if you're wasting volunteer labour without progressing our mission then you can either leave of your own accord or get blocked. That's why we take a very narrow approach to what is allowed on talk pages (removing discussion-like comments) and even in userspace. — Bilorv (talk) 19:35, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes, there's undoubtedly much wrong with the system, but this article's author totally failed to nail it. Was it worth (re)publishing? Barely. Let's move on. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:24, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
  • The response here, jumping on the Signpost editors for merely re-publishing the column, demonstrates the validity of the concerns expressed therein. Not only do these editors object to reasonable on-point discussions, they object to meta-discussions. That's one way to avoid addressing the issues raised. Fabrickator (talk) 18:23, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
  1. As far as I know, admins are held to the same standards as anyone else. If anything, a bit higher: an admin's behavior is much more likely to be a topic of broad discussion than that of a random user.
  2. There are plenty of places, including in actual government, where lifetime appointments subject to recall are the norm.
  3. Vague talk of cabals on the Internet isn't worth the paper it (isn't) written on.
  4. Hyper-legalism is a troll's paradise. - Jmabel | Talk 22:33, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
  • In these comments, we have the prima facie evidence why reform is needed. Those elevated to positions of authority are so convinced of their own righteousness, that they scorn those who dare say otherwise. To be neutral, we must thoughtfully consider the opinions of those we disagree with. Not only to be fair, but also to evaluate our own position to ensure it isn't we who are in error. Senator2029 【talk】 03:57, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Disinformation report: Missed and Dissed (2,486 bytes · 💬)

  • Great write-up of a story I had assumed was BS and am glad to have been right about. I didn't realize there was a WMF report on some of these concerns but I appreciate that they didn't just make office actions on the impersonation issue. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)Talk to Me! 20:27, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
  • Conspiracy theorists will always try to look for reasons to accuse governments/corporations of maleficence. As far as I'm concerned, WP:DENY applies to conspiracy theorists of all kinds, on the internet and in real life. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
  • While I'm highly skeptical that the WMF is plotting with any government to influence encyclopedia content, I do worry that the issue of government-driven efforts to systematically influence Wikipedia articles is a potential threat to the encyclopedia that does not get as much attention as it deserves. (t · c) buidhe 21:26, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
  • If the DHS or any other agency or entity, domestic or foreign, wanted certain narrative in Wikipedia's articles, they don't need a formal and public collusion. They could very well have some strategically placed collaborators among the volunteer editors. It is hard enough for government agencies to detect spies among their ranks. Therefore, it would be harder by Wikipedia to detect editors planted by intel agencies and nearly impossible by unsuspecting neutral editors. Specially if "conspiracy theory" or "outrageous allegations" is what many yell at the first sign of some editors expressing suspicions. Who knows how many times editors have been quietly threatened to change content if threatening that became public has been done by the French government in the past. I can only imagine what may happen to editors in third world countries. Thinker78 (talk) 21:14, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Essay: The Six Million FP Man (15,794 bytes · 💬)

  • Why exactly was this published? I realize this isn't a professional newspaper, but on what planet is it a good idea to have someone write a whole essay about their own work, and how proud they are of it? Adam, you're well within your rights to be proud of the image restoration work you've done. But how does that translate to this getting put in the Signpost, written by you? That you lampshaded it by saying So how does one write an article about oneself while not appearing completely vain and self-promotional? Well, one doesn't, but let's do it anyway because it'll be at least a couple years until the next milestone really doesn't make it okay. I'm thoroughly disappointed in this month's Signpost. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 19:54, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
It was originally meant to be by someone else interviewing me, but holidays and timeliness proved an issue with availability. It was do this or get very annoyed at an offer being rescinded. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 20:22, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
  • "Why exactly was this published?"
    Because this is a significant milestone worthy of celebrating. Congrats to Adam and their hard work. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:09, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
    The point is that the subject wrote the article themselves. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:46, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
    @Trainsandotherthings: Responded to you higher up. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 23:52, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
    I don't see a problem with it, @Trainsandotherthings and Adam Cuerden:. I'd be just as interested to read someone's account of how and why they wrote a selection of featured articles. It would be nice to see the Signpost focus more on the making of the encyclopaedia rather than just being a vehicle for some people's opinions on the WMF. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:16, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
    It's clearly labeled an "essay". Not sure why you have a problem with it. It just goes to show, people will complain about anything, and when they can't find something to complain about, they will make something up. Viriditas (talk) 21:54, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
    It just goes to show, people will find any method they can to assume bad faith towards others. Shame on you. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 22:55, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
    "on what planet is it a good idea to have someone write a whole essay about their own work, and how proud they are of it". On a mostly harmless ocean planet, where an essay is defined as "an interpretative literary composition usually dealing with its subject from a limited or personal point of view". Viriditas (talk) 23:00, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
    Ah but you ignore the whole accusing me of malice part. Of course. This is the last time I bother with these comment sections. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 02:03, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
    Or, alternatively, you could try celebrating the hard work and efforts of others and engage with the subject of the piece. But please, continue to police and gatekeep what other people write instead. That’s so much more constructive… Viriditas (talk) 03:00, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
  • May I invite you to wax philosophical about the topic of "image restoration"? Obvious image artifacts aside (coffee stains, creases, etc.), there seems to be a wide latitude in your restorations to "be creative", so to speak. For example, in the Illustrated London News, there's what appears to be a misprint in the long double horizontal line under the heading on the right side that you've "fixed". The misprint likely existed in the original printing---it's not an artifact introduced in the scan, it's part of the "original work". What motivated to you fix that? In undoing creases, such as with the Utopia, Limited poster, you may be forced to invent details under the crease that likely was but may not have been there. And the color correction certainly involves creative/aesthetic choices. Of course, I agree subjectively that the restored images "look better" to my untrained eye. What's your perspective on what you think you're doing? Are you "restoring the image to how it (may have) actually looked like when it was first produced"? Are there cases where you think you may have made the image look better than it ever has in the past? Do we lose anything by presenting restored images as if they were the original? Axem Titanium (talk) 22:21, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
    @Axem Titanium: I think that's probably a whole secondary essay. I'll try to write it up. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 16:50, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
    This seems to touch on issues raised by Viriditas below as well. I'll look forward to it. Axem Titanium (talk) 20:28, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
  • They should just rename the process something like "Adam Cuerden Memorial Featured Pictures" like how people who donate a lot to a college tend to get halls and buildings named after them. casualdejekyll 14:15, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
  • I would be interested in hearing more about the tech-heavy side of this in a second essay; details about your tools, workflow, and maybe some speculation about where it's all going with the new AI tools increasingly being talked about, and if you've had a chance to play around with them. For example, lots of people are talking about using deep-fake-like software to bring dead images to life, and to give them voices and movement. It may be the case that we are entering a new era where static images become a thing of the past, and a new generation arises that expects an old image to speak, read poetry, sing a song, or recite the Gettysburg Address, depending on who they were in history. I think it would be an incredible and worthy endeavor, like the famous videographer who restores old films of cityscapes from a century ago and turns them into 4K videos complete with added sound. Viriditas (talk) 22:07, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
    Put simply, I think a lot of the AI things are interesting, but they're hardly encyclopedic. You're adding details that we don't have - we don't have a recording of Lincoln; old photography had constraints, like a long exposure time, that means that the base expressions are going to not be the full range, so you're speculating. We don't have the sound of a cityscape from a century ago, we're doing it in foley. Used well, it's a powerful tool, but it's not that much different than an actor playing Lincoln in a play. It's not going to be a perfect reconstruction. Further, we don't have a lot of the things of the past. We aren't going to have the noise of twelve bathing machines at a beach, or the squelch of people driving through that much horse shit on the road. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 16:58, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
    We use artist's conceptions all the time on the encyclopedia and elsewhere (astronomy and maths articles, for example) to show the "extrapolated appearance of something for which the actual appearance is not known or cannot be seen". The same would be true for recreating the past. Philosophically, this argument is just one of purism (or conservatism) versus pluralism (or liberalism), and while the purists will always have their place, technology promotes pluralism by its very nature. You can see this everywhere. The latest example in the news this last week was the reissue of Revolver (1966) as Revolver: Special Edition (2022), which was only made possible by creating a new stereo remix using de-mixing technology, creating an entirely new recording in the process. And there are entire fields and disciplines that exist solely to recreate the past and predict and forecast the future, such that the content and the images they create are nothing but artist's conceptions. I don't see the process of photographic restoration wholly removed from these issues. History itself is nothing but an artist's conception of the past, and the same can be said about human memory, which reconstructs events in a crude and often fictional way. While it's nice to think that there's an objective, encyclopedic reality we can lean on for stability and guidance, no such singular reality can truly be found. We are always recreating the past in some form or another, even when we document it with cameras, since we choose to highlight and frame one thing over another. The very act of observing something is a form of bias, and there's no escape from it. Viriditas (talk) 19:50, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
    At the same time, we need to be clear about level of knowledge. And some tools aren't ready for primetime. The further we leave the sources, the less accuracy we're going to have. This doesn't mean animating paintings or photos is bad, but it's not good for us. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 21:33, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
    Forgive me, but I think something might have been lost in translation. I’m not talking about animating paintings or photos. I’m talking another bringing dead people back to life and recreating their identities using our sources to inform their avatars, which can then be used for education and entertainment. In the near future, 2D images will be perceived as we view cave paintings today. "Why don’t they move? Why don’t they speak?" kids will say. That’s where the technology is going. Nobody is going to sit down at a desktop computer to study these things. It will be created as needed and presented as if they are sitting on a chair in front of me. I’m not talking about restoring images, I’m talking about recreating the past. This is already happening, of course. It’s called digital immortality. And despite your objections, we are already doing it. We do it every time we write about the past, and every time we upload media illustrating that past. The next step is to simulate it, or in other words, recreate it, beyond the written word and static images. I don’t expect you to agree. But it’s going to happen. Viriditas (talk) 04:25, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
    Well, under those grounds, we've been doing that for millennia. What's, say, Aeschulus's The Persians if not that with the tools of the time? But such things are corruptible. There's plenty of examples of people bending famous people's views to support them; A digital avatar is no less capable of being used for an agenda.
    But this doesn't make things bad by default. Thucydides isn't bad because he made up speeches in the style of the people he portrayed to try and convey the impact despite not having exact words available. Gettysburg doesn't cease to be educational for having reenactments. Inherit the Wind isn't a 100% accurate portrayal of the Scopes monkey trial, but it's hardly bad or uneducational for taking dramatic liberties. Hell, for that matter, Roots doesn't lose its importance to encouraging the study of African-American history for being based on a novel.
    But there's a difference between a primary source and a dramatisation. The latter might well be highly educational, but it can also be used to push an agenda. For example, in America, there's a lot of looking to the intent of the founding fathers when interpreting laws. A malicious avatar creator can make sure those founding fathers, or whoever they want, all agree with them on the points they care to. We see things like this being done today already. All it takes is not caring about actual facts, or using biased sources to inform your avatar. Or it might get scrubbed of elements. Do parents object to avatars Cole Porter or Tchaikovsky being open about their sexuality?
    Avatars aren't some new concept. Having dead people come to life is as old as theatre. There's nothing inherently wrong with them, but, for purposes of an encyclopedia, they're not necessarily any better than theatre. That's not to say there's no educational merit in them, but, by their nature, where records conflict, they're going to have to choose one of the two sides, and that smooths over the roughness of the historical record. They're not bad, they're just not a final word. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 21:16, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
    Great work, Adam, and obviously this is great as a Signpost article where the criteria are quite rightly nothing to do with the criteria for Wiki-articles. Of course it's right that we can read and celebrate editorial accomplishments of all kinds. More, please! Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:33, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Featured content: A great month for featured articles (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-11-28/Featured content

From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-11-28/From the archives

In the media: "The most beautiful story on the Internet" (4,947 bytes · 💬)

  • There having been no shortage of cryptocurrency collapses and frauds, I'm a bit sad to see disproportionate energy spent attacking the philanthropy movement SBF supported as responsible for the latest one (eg. the WaPo article linked), absent evidence for this. (Are our comments expected to stick to the Wikipedia-specific ramifications?) CharredShorthand (talk) 16:11, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
  • We as The Signpost are here to report about what the media report about things. They said the movement "shielded" SBF. "Shielded" is pretty strong language coming from a top-tier national newspaper, and that's why the item exists in this column. If they were saying such things about other movements with a Wikipedia nexus, that would show up here too. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:55, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
    I have nothing against the Signpost inclusion! I was commenting about the original WaPo article, not objecting to the Signpost's coverage of thus, which is only proper. Apologies for any lack of clarity. CharredShorthand (talk) 16:58, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
As long as WP:BLP is followed, I think we can say what we want. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 22:57, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
It seems kind of juvenile to me as well. My theory is that novel takes are a market; when somebody does something shitty, it creates a large demand for takes about why they suck. The obvious reasons are, well, obvious, so they are written into takes within the first couple days. But there is still demand, so the market responds by creating more: this is how we get all of those opinion pieces about how some mass murderer listened to heavy metal music, or drank Pepsi, or whatever. They don't make a lot of sense, but so it goes. jp×g 05:38, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
Effective altruism seems a bit of a buzzword to me, but I get the idea of get rich, then donate. The Andrew Carnegie route, as it were. Has the whole "but who will do the charity work you fund?" problem if everyone does it, but it's fine. However, if it's true the movement worked to promote itself and it's fellow members on Wikipedia, that' s where it's notable for us. We may have buried the lead, though, in my efforts to make sure there was context. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 05:47, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
  • The words "paid advertisements" and Wikipedia or Wikipedia Foundation should never appear in the same sentence (except for this one) let alone ever contemplated, lobbied for, or be remotely thought of by any board member and/or principled human being. The WMF by-laws should contain a firm "never" when it comes to advertisements appearing on their projects, Jimbo should issue a statement in support of never-no way-don't-even-think-about-it when it comes to paid ads (the WMF and Wales may have done so in the past, I'm not aware of the history of Wikipedia and contemplation of paid ads), and every editor who hopes to sell advertising space on their user page (ha!) should turn over their keyboard and sulk off into the day/night. In any case, just look at what advertising has done to Britannica, a once proud and universially respected encyclopedia now looking like a scene from Idiocracy. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:55, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Interview: Lisa Seitz-Gruwell on WMF fundraising in the wake of big banner ad RfC (2,105 bytes · 💬)

  • You might want to remove the draft article template. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:52, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
Bizarre bug. I guess this is karmic punishment for fixing the other ones earlier this month! jp×g 16:08, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

No questions about Tides? That's... a bit disappointing. That's been one of the more opaque parts there, and it would be good to see some light shed on that. Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:36, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I was trying to cover that with the question about the endowment, but if there was anything I missed might be worth putting a question here in the discussion and pinging Lisa and/or Julia? WMF certainly seem to be in dialogue mode at the moment... The Land (talk) 08:29, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
  • @The Land: simple request - can you give me a link re: "do you expect fundraising to be decentralised, in line with the Movement Strategy recommendations?" There must be too many layers for me to navigate thru the movement strategy. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:51, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
So there's an overall principle of "Our Movement will make decisions at the most immediate or local level wherever possible" which suggests that many things the WMF does ought to be decentralised. It's not specified anywhere that fundraising (as opposed to, say, making grants or recognising affiliates or indeed anything specific) but the idea of WMF continuing to raise 95% or whatever of movement funds seems fairly inconsistent. The Land (talk) 08:29, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

News and notes: English Wikipedia editors: "We don't need no stinking banners" (11,346 bytes · 💬)

Page views item is misleading

This note is very misleading:

Page views in September for all wikis have been up in relation to the past months with 23,657,615,038 views in comparison to 23,033,712,122 in August. Wikipedia has been growing in popularity since January of 2016, when page views were 20,865,413,322.

As the small print under the linked chart warns: By default, this data shows page views from automated traffic as well as human traffic. To focus on human user page views, please use the Agent type filter.

Filtered to human page views, there is no such "growing in popularity since January of 2016". In fact the October 2022 number (16,043,576,424) is lower than the October 2016 number (16,573,593,158). And this view shows that there has been an increase of over 2.7 billion in monthly "Automated" views from March to October 2022.

(In fairness to Helloheart, this is easy to overlook. It's a common fallacy to go with the default view of https://stats.wikimedia.org/ , I've seen several other people make the same mistake. The Foundation's team who maintains this tool should have fixed this and other usability issues years ago.)

Regards, HaeB (talk) 17:21, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Re: Fundraising

Not really a comment on the discussion, but a datapoint: every year there are a lot of complaints in the Archive of Our Own community about fundraising to support the website & its staff. Enough complaints that a defense of fundraising for that website has been posted every year on Tumblr. This leads me to wonder if complaints about fundraising are common at other community-based projects (such as, for example, Internet Archive), & if not how they avoided this blowback. In some ways, we Wikipe[d|m]ians can be very provincial in our outlook. -- llywrch (talk) 18:47, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

This might be of interest. --Firestar464 (talk) 10:21, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
@Llywrch: I've seen the complaints on Tumblr as well, though I don't think they're close to the same very specific objections to fundraising methods and the doling out of said funding. Some objections definitely seem to be in the "don't donate to people who support/host insert-thing-here I find objectionable!" camp, and the list of things that are 'objectionable' (on a website where you can really specifically tag content for what's in it and then...avoid that stuff) and 'shouldn't be allowed' are invariably silly (some people apaprently can't separate fiction and reality in their head). Those complaints, I don't think AO3 worries about; they're not based on anything reasonable to worry about.
But I have seen some that genuinely wonder what they do with all that money. It's true that they generally go over their donation goals, but it's worth noting that their owner, the Organization for Transformative Works, has some large main avenues that money goes down: legal advocacy (necessary for copyright-derived works, hello Anne Rice), archival services (the open doors project imports fanfic collections that can no longer be supported independently), an academic journal, as well as their own wiki and a directory of resources.
I don't think they have the same problems that we do, and I don't remember them ever having had to make a post about criticism with their funding; for a website that hosts derivative works of non-free content, providing solid legal support that doesn't leave creators trying to figure out a cease and desist themselves is incredibly necessary work. There's a writeup of a reddit post on the subject here on fanlore.org that does a pretty good rundown of all the arguments.
What probably helps also is that AO3 doesn't write their fundraising banners like we do...—Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) ({{ping}} me!) 12:41, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
From what I've seen of the AO3 banners, they are indeed very different from the Wikipedia ones, and it seems like the complaints they get are not generally about the form or content of the banners. The Internet Archive is an interesting example because their banners are like ours—indeed, they frequently appear to be virtual copy-and-pastes (their current banner starts with "Please don't scroll past this" and talks about "the one in a thousand users that support us financially"). But IA is not primarily based on user-generated content the way AO3 or Wikipedia is, so the "why do they need my money?" question is more obviously answered.
Also, fan fiction is a traditionally social and participatory medium, and the stereotypical fan fiction consumer is extremely online; wank is not unexpected. I'm not sure who the (stereo)typical IA user is.
Finally, tangentially related, the Organization for Transformative Works (which is a membership nonprofit) just had their board elections. Some interesting comparisons to be drawn. —Emufarmers(T/C) 22:27, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Re: "We don't need no stinking banners"

Quoted audit report data in the Notes section is mis-representative, misleading

Hi, I’m from the Foundation’s Finance team. I want to note that the meaning of the “investment income (loss), net” section of our annual financial audit is explained in the audit report FAQ section. In essence, the $11,665,241 number in the audit report represents the value of the assets we held as of June 30, 2022 vs June 30, 2021, which did indeed go down; this was a period of global economic downturn that affected most people. Most of this number is an unrealized loss, meaning that we held onto most of our assets and will continue doing so until markets improve, rather than selling at a loss.

In the article, this data is presented as unexplained, with implied questions about whether Foundation finances are mismanaged or wrongly reported. Neither implication is correct.--SLangan (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

@SLangan (WMF): Thanks for your note. However, all it says at the place you link to is this:
"Investment income (loss), net" is primarily interest, dividends, realized gains/losses, and unrealized gains/losses earned on the Wikimedia Foundation's cash and investment portfolio. During this audit period, some of the Foundation's cash was invested in mortgage backed securities, U.S. Treasury securities, corporate bonds, and stocks (Note 3). It is the Foundation’s investment intention to preserve capital, income and liquidity over‎ capital appreciation, which has higher volatility."
This is completely generic and hardly likely to enable the average community member to understand what caused the loss, all the more so as there was an economic downturn in 2020 as well, and WMF investment income remained several million in the black.
What I actually say in the article above is "At the time of writing, the Wikimedia Foundation had not responded to questions about the precise circumstances responsible for the negative result." This is indisputably true. I asked on the mailing list on Nov 10:
Dear WMF Finance staff, I inquired over a week ago on Meta-Wiki why the WMF is reporting a negative investment income (–$12 million). There has been no answer to date.[1] I am a layperson, but how can an investment income be negative? Would you mind sharing what this is about? I was also surprised to find that the reported increase in net assets for the 2021–2022 financial year was "only" $8.2 million. The third-quarter F&A tuning session published in May (based on data as of March 31) forecast a far higher surplus, with an increase in net assets of $25.9 million.[2] Would you mind sharing what happened in the fourth quarter to reduce the surplus by so much?
And I asked a week before that (twice) on Meta whether more information could be shared, and received no reply in either place.
You replied on Meta today, which is greatly appreciated, but frankly I am still none the wiser as to which of your assets specifically went down by so much, and why and how a projected $25.9 million increase in assets at the end of the year (I am reading that right, aren't I?) was reduced to just an $8 million increase in the space of three months.
I am not implying anything. I am asking you to help us understand. Regards, --Andreas JN466 21:28, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
Please also note my reply on Meta. Best, Andreas JN466 13:56, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
No you are not reading it correctly. The projected $25.9 million and $8 million you quoted represent very different calculations, across different types of reporting and different periods of time. They should not be compared directly. We have answered more fully on the audit report talk page. --SLangan (WMF) (talk) 20:19, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Taylor & Francis

"The Wikipedia Library has made Taylor & Francis academic journals automatically available for anyone with a Wikimedia unified login" – Anyone? Even if you don't meet the criteria? Nardog (talk) 04:58, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Obituary: A tribute to Michael Gäbler (1,939 bytes · 💬)

Truly great pictures.--Dutchy45 (talk) 18:49, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

  • What a wonderful, lasting contribution he made to this global project. Condolences to his family and friends. Liz Read! Talk! 19:46, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
  • Beautiful pictures, and a great loss. Miniapolis 02:35, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
  • I hate to be that guy, but "resurrect" has two rs and only one s. The quality of the pictures deserves the best presentation we can give them. Happy days ~ LindsayHello 15:59, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
  • I have had some problems with Michael in writing articles in the german Wikipedia because he wrote very much and long about the villages in his region. I did not know that he made such beautiful pictures. --AxelHH (talk) 17:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
  • Outstanding imagery on a range of themes. His work will benefit our readers (across many languages) for years to come. — Bilorv (talk) 18:27, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
  • I finally had the chance to read this story. It and the accompanying photos are truly beautiful. If there's a Heaven, I hope Michael is enjoying taking photographs there. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:49, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Op-Ed: Diminishing returns for article quality (23,738 bytes · 💬)

  • Lots of interesting observations in this op-ed but I disagree with the author's conclusion that The day Wikipedia is replaced, it will likely be by something completely different that didn't even set out to compete with the Wikimedia wikis. I have previously written about 3 scenarios I see for how something fundamentally similar to Wikipedia could usurup us. In particular one of the advantages Julle identifies - the years of insitutional work - doesn't strike me as an insurmountable obstacle given the ability to port Wikipedia and use that as a basis especially if it could be accompanied by successful AI writing which could out produce human editors. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:00, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
    Thanks, Barkeep49, for reading and commenting. Indeed, there is even a comment in the technology report of this very Signpost issue on attempts to do so. Should machine learning get to that point where it becomes significantly better than our efforts, so that readers find their way to something new simply because we're lacking content they are looking for, we might perhaps also want to try to use similar tools if they were available to us – not necessarily automatically but as a tool for the writer, with the added benefit of manual oversight. As a movement, we have tried various ways to include content in a semi-automatic manner: bot creation, mw:Extension:ArticlePlaceholder, now the work on Abstract Wikipedia for languages which lack a lot of content. I guess this would most likely be first adopted by smaller languages, always more desperate for article content, and then move to bigger ones if it proved superior to what we are currently doing.
    But I think English Wikipedia is comprehensive enough that it would be difficult to compete on mainstream topics, because of the inherent inertia in people's habits. Maybe – thinking out loud here – the real threat to our existence from AI would be it was used to create content to lock people into the platforms they are already using? As a way to keep people from having to leave Facebook, TikTok or other platforms, because the information was already there. /Julle (talk) 02:07, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
    And to clarify: When I talk about the years of institutional work, I don't necessarily mean the content. I primarily think of name recognition, links, reader patterns and processes. /Julle (talk) 09:44, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
    @Barkeep49: Interesting scenarios. They remind me of these ones from the WMF's 2018 revenue strategy - though those were attempting a slightly different scope but seem to hit some similar themes. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 11:24, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
    The obvious AI/LLM advantage, looking at the last few months of development, isn't quality or even amount of information, but rather convenience. We could very well be replaced by someone being able to ask a simple question and get an answer, instead of having to read – few want a long article if they're just looking for a brief answer to a question. /Julle (talk) 21:55, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
  • Some insightful commentary here worth thinking about - thanks for writing this Op-Ed! —Ganesha811 (talk) 18:24, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
    Thanks! /Julle (talk) 02:08, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
  • Following on from Barkeep49's comment, my thinking is that the next step would be automated information synthesis via AI, but would this replace Wikipedia or transform it? As I understand it, there are some article types, like place articles, that have been auto-generated en masse via interpretation of GIS data via an algorithm, but this is a far cry from AI article creation. One thought is to proactively consider what policies and guidelines would need revision in the face of truly competent AI authors. Would they be treated and held to the same standards as human authors? Or would AI contributors start as vandalism eradicators and new article patrollers - which comes with its own set of policy and guideline needs.
    As for the notion that a Wikipedia replacement might come from an unanticipated quarter, that is certainly a possibility. Consider the Cochrane Library; this is a medical knowledge repository consisting of detailed reviews which are frequently updated. The content of this resource is used as source material for more general Wikpedia articles, but if either AI or other human collaborative technologies could compose meta-reviews based on these detailed reviews, then much of the medical article content of Wikipedia could be supplanted. This would be 'replacement by evolution' and is consistent with the notion that particular content domains covered by Wikipedia could be addressed more thoroughly and authoritatively by focused repositories (e.g. Wookieepedia, Memory Alpha). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:07, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
    Thanks! I took this comment into account when replying to Barkeep49 above. /Julle (talk) 02:08, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia has done what it needs to do to become the top product in its field, but that's why it's so important that we keep improving article quality. Wikipedia is a public service, and its position as the most popular encyclopedia makes it that much more important that information in Wikipedia is verifiable and neutral, not to mention as comprehensive as possible. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:33, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
    Thanks for reading and commenting! I appreciate it.
    I don't think anyone disagrees – as the penmultimate sentence states, "[a]rticle quality is important, as a method to achieve our mission". To clarify, the main point isn't that quality is irrelevant, or that it's pointless to have better articles than we have now, but only that we are probably way past the point of what is good enough to persuade readers to use or not use something as a source of information, and to think about what this means for others. In short – not "article quality is not important" but "article quality won't save us".
    There is also an inherent conflict between being as verifiable and as a comprehensive as possible. Look at the discussion around Olympic atlethes, for example, where English Wikipedia has decided to require more and better sources for inclusion. This, one could argue, makes the individual articles better, but comes at a cost when we're looking at a comprehensive encyclopedia.
    As I talk about in the "Quality and the reader" section, it's not obvious that what we define as quality corresponds to reader needs. The more work we put into having the best sources, into making sure our articles match reality as described by the best works we can find to build on, the better, but I'd argue our definition of "quality" also comes with assumptions regarding what makes a good article which might or might not live up to what our readers are looking for. For example, we celebrate length, in our FA or GA articles, because we serve the reader with more information, but someone looking something up in an encyclopedia might often be looking for a briefer, quicker overview than we're giving them, somewhere between the article as it is and our summary in the lead section. /Julle (talk) 01:49, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
  • Regardless of what an article concludes, I personally still am interested in improving the quality of content on the encyclopedia. It also helps me improve my writing skills, I think. casualdejekyll 14:11, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
Hey casualdejekyll, thanks for reading. As the article states, "[a]rticle quality is important, as a method to achieve our mission". The text doesn't say we shouldn't improve our articles – of course we should. It just comments on how article quality, past a certain point, relates to reader retention. /Julle (talk) 08:23, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
  • Dear Julle. your essay above is great, a well structured text with a thesis (we should scrutinize our concepts of "quality"!) to hit the bull's eye. Even in a well-maintained context like The Signpost this OpEd excells. And as a German I may add that it's much better than most all contributions in the German Wp equivalent "Kurier" where even the debates tend to be argy-bargy and tedious.
As for the content I want to comment that I've often compared wikipedia decorated articles with classical Encyclopedia Britannica articles. The latter were mostly much better structured, had good subtitles and an optimized length. And I've asked myself: why couldn't we use those well-known technics to collapse the abundance of details in order to get an optimized length at least in our "excellence" decorated articles? But I'm afraid there's no willingness in broad parts of our community to enter a path of innovation like this.
Last not least I'd like to emphasize the broader context of Wikipedia in a increasingly messed up Western society. The public educational system in America is not very good, even in rich Germany it's not good and underfinanced. Maybe Scandinavia is better off in that reference compared to most of the world. The cost of living crisis (inflation of 7-12% in core Europe) we are facing doesn't make it easier to appreciate classic standards of text quality. Isn't the Tiktok mania like other hypes before not also an evidence that most individuals nowadays are psychologically struggling for attracting notice instead of fulfillling standards of quality like pre-neoliberal generations before? Only in older (1960-1980) feature films or literature we can find a much slower pace of everyday life. But the postmodern lifestyles nowadays leave the good old path of the achievements of the Enlightenment. --Just N. (talk) 16:16, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for the kind words. /Julle (talk) 08:23, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

To the point that convenience often supersedes quality, look no further than the shift from land lines to cell phones. AT&T (COI note, I worked for that company for 15 years) put a lot of effort into improving long distance & land line quality, only to be thwarted by the adoption the more convenient but lesser quality audio of cell phone calls. It is true that cell phone quality has improved over the years, but this was not much of a factor in general adoption of the technology. Peaceray (talk) 22:11, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

And quality can continue to improve long after adoption – as in the case of Wikipedia. /Julle (talk) 23:26, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
  • Really interesting and much needed! Thank you for this and especially the note on mobile editors (as I type this now on my phone it feel particularly pertinent). I think something that is at the periphery of this discussion is the 133,000-odd articles tagged as unreferenced which is a) an undercount because there are many more not tagged and b) a significant decrease from about a year ago when we were at 145,000 or so. While this is a relatively small percentage of English Wiki articles, if combined with the others that are poorly, insufficiently, or questionably sourced, this is a serious weakness in what has been correctly described as one of the main principles of Wikipedia that must survive beyond any expansion, technology change, or other adaptation: how did we get this information and where did it come from? (I think this is a major weakness of many Fandom Wikis that cite their subjects recursively.) Article quality is important; content verifiability is a major component of that quality we must uphold. What are the consequences to the health and longevity of this project of having junk articles that throw sand in the gears? While I am neither a deletionist nor an inclusionist, it seems like the only wrong answer is to do nothing. I imagine other projects that have tried to walk this line of breadth vs quality have failed by tilting too far in either direction and we are on a narrow and possibly fraying tightrope. And yet the lack of a better alternative is possibly what’s keeping us going. Late night food for thought. Kazamzam (talk) 02:53, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
    Thanks for your kind words. (: /Julle (talk) 15:30, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia used to be really popular for most of 2000s, but once we enter 2010s whatever visits and editors we had at the early times of Wikipedia mostly lost. As such article quality mostly suffered. Not just that, but my language's Wikipedia also suffered from this - while there were some attention in recent years, article quality seems not be improving. Also, Google really seems to moving away from Wikipedia, as my searches don't show Wikipedia at the top. Don't forget that hobbyist wikis (mostly) catering to gaming space and Internet culture are where Wikipedia is not competitive. To compete with today's internet, we should try to compete and strive to increase coverage and quality of our articles, as well as keeping our principles, and regaining enough trust that Wikipedia can be used as a trusted source. MarioJump83 (talk) 12:24, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
    @MarioJump83: Wikipedia used to be really popular for most of 2000s, but once we enter 2010s whatever visits and editors we had at the early times of Wikipedia mostly lost. The statistics don't support that characterization, at least on the English Wikipedia.
    Monthly pageviews stats for July 2015 – November 2022 show an increase from the the stats for December 2007 – July 2016, despite the fact that we know more people are accessing Wikipedia information via other means (like Google search results pages or YouTube fact-checking boxes, as two examples) that wouldn't be counted in those stats.
    Even the worst month of 2022 exceeds the best month for all of 200x. The peak for pageview counts here occurred in the period from 2010 – 2015, when monthly views would occasionally spike over 10 million billion; since July 2015 we've only broken 9 million billion once (April 2020) and rarely exceed 8 million billion. But the raw readership numbers, at least, trend markedly upward from 2007– 2014, then slightly dip over 2015/2016 before turning effectively flat since 2017.
    Editor counts, I can't speak to. The current 30-day active user count is ~121,000, up insignificantly from ~118,000 in January (found in some random article written then), but if there are any historical archives for that figure I don't know where they live. FeRDNYC (talk) 03:09, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
    The number of active editors on English Wikipedia started falling in 2007 (the most cited article discussing this is "The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia’s Reaction to Popularity Is Causing Its Decline", by Halfaker, Geiger, Morgan and Riedl), but the curve flattened out and stabilized in 2014. Other wikis follow similar patterns – around 2007 or 2008, what had been a steady growth of active editors turns into a net loss. A more likely connection to quality seems to be that as article quality grew, it became more difficult to add to them; many of the older and larger wikis gradually shifted focus from semi-desperately wanting new content to being more concerned about the quality of the content they had, partially fuelled by a number of unfortunate statements in biographies of living people. The time and effort involved in adding new content to Wikipedia increased. /Julle (talk) 15:29, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
    I don't think it's really about the difficulty of contributing to Wikipedia so much as the strong negative reaction that newcomers received in response to their contributions. In that paper, we include an analysis of the quality of contributions of newcomers and note that there is no meaningful transition that corresponds to the sudden drop in newcomer retention. Instead, we see that the negative feedback to newcomers was the strongest predictor. This also bears out in a multivariate statistical model that accounts for other potential factors. Talking to people about their experiences as a newcomer in Wikipedia confirms supports this conclusion. This result has also been replicated across a wide range of hobby wikis. See Revisiting “The Rise and Decline” in a Population of Peer Production Projects. When quality control activities increase and it starts biting newcomers more, retention rates go down. It's not about the difficulty of contributing, but rather how we treat good-faith newcomers when they find somewhere to contribute. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 17:22, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
    One of my underlying assumptions is that quality concerns is a factor in how we treat newcomers. I hypothesized a bit more about this in m:User:Julle/Essays/The Patroller's Dilemma back in April, on how quality concerns means that patrolling gets more difficult because you can't just fix something without significant effort, which means that it becomes more of a binary "yes or no" thing even without semi-automatic tools (since we see the same development on wikis which didn't mirror English Wikipedia's technical development in that area). /Julle (talk) 23:08, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
    (Note: All of my "million"s above should've been "billion"s; I've corrected them inline with the previous text struck out. Sorry about that.) FeRDNYC (talk) 19:10, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
  • I am a bit late to the party that is this comment page, but I just wanted to plus-one the comments elsewhere herein, affirming that this is a great and useful essay, displaying the kind of great analytical thought that humans will always need if they are to keep themselves out of the ditch regarding quality of life, quality of epistemology, and quality of civility among themselves. Great work. Also, kudos to the several commenters who had useful and interesting thoughts to add as well. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:46, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
    Thank you! And yes, it's a privilege to be blessed with a good comment section. /Julle (talk) 01:33, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
  • I think that this is an excellent essays like others have said. I personally think of one other scenario that something like this can happen: a company making 1000 featured-quality articles that is built from scratch and is in WP:Vital articles, then make it widely accessible for readers. They don't need to replicate Wikipedia, they just need to write it themselves, look at Wikipedia's sources and ask experts to make sure that the info is correct. You don't even need AI to do this, though it would greatly accelerate the cause. Because the content was written from scratch, they can just sue Wikipedia if we borrowed information from them, but more likely we won't catch up in time to compete with them as they would've produced even more quality articles. The company would be heralded as the conquerer of Wikipedia, just like when Wikipedia was heralded as the conquerer of Britannica. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:46, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
    @CactiStaccingCrane: Well, it's a funny thing, that. To look at https://www.britannica.com/, you'd be forgiven for thinking that if they've been conquered, nobody told them! Wikipedia has forced Britannica to pivot heavily away from stodgy encyclopedia-writing and diversify into a more general publishing company, but they've done that successfully and don't appear to be going anywhere. (Which, don't get me wrong, is great. I don't know about Jimbo Wales, but personally I've never been here to be a giant-slayer. I'm here to build an encyclopedia.) The thing that "conquers" Wikipedia may ultimately just force Wikipedia to reevaluate how it operates and what it represents, and that's rarely a bad thing. FeRDNYC (talk) 10:31, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
  • I found it interesting that most threats to wikipedia's survival and domination are identified within the same perspective where Wikipedia excels: the supply side. WP has massive and obvious technological limitations from the demand side, which place it already way behind the technological development curve. Think of the capacity to gauge reader's use and feedback (it takes a full team of academics writing a journal's paper to gain some light, whereas other social media know instantly what I am doing); or to integrate multimedia or external data sources. As it was said well long ago, you cant fix a problem with the same mindset which generated it.Tytire (talk) 13:46, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
  • What, if anything, does the upper bound on user quality expectations mean in the graph adapted from Clayton Christensen? - Jmabel | Talk 22:38, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
    Jmabel: It merely indicates that quality expectations differ a bit from person to person, so even if we're ignoring outliers, having one line saying "this is what people expect" would be a bit too far from the truth. But – yet again, adapting from Christensen – the majority of users will have roughly similar quality expectations. /Julle (talk) 17:56, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Opinion: Privacy on Wikipedia in the cyberpunk future (3,712 bytes · 💬)

Since The Signpost invited Ladsgroup to give us permission to publish his essay, I didn't want to modify it before publication. But it is worth mentioning that the stylometry techniques discussed, whether AI assisted or not, can be used to link real-world identity to on-Wiki identity by comparison to off-wiki writing such as blog posts or other published material. Something to think about? ☆ Bri (talk) 17:16, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

The third paragraph of the second section addresses that, I think. I'd go on to add that it's not just oppressive governments or big companies that could do that, but also basically anyone with a grudge and a target - could be Kiwifarms, 8chan, terrorists, extremist partisans, and other such undesirables (in fact, I'd say they're even more dangerous than Big Brother or Big Tech). This is definitely something everyone should be careful about, both within Wikipedia and elsewhere on the Internet. Doxxing and IRL harassment based on Wikipedia edits has already happened on Wikipedia, in relation to the 2020 Delhi riots article - a well-respected editor was doxxed and harassed by far-right "news" site OpIndia.
Stay safe, people... W. Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/c) 18:19, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
  • I see this article as being essentially fair warning of the technology we can't stop - either Wikipedia uses it for making Wikipedia a better place, or it's used by outsiders for their own interests; or probably both. We really can't afford to ignore it. It will have different impacts on various groups, however.
    • The main group that it should have a large negative effect on is commercial editors such as undeclared paid editors. It should be easier to catch these folks when they sockpuppet. We should embrace this use of stylometry, but not overuse it.
    • People who write here under a pseudonym, but who are published elsewhere under their own name, may have undeserved troubles because of stylometry.
    • As with any tech that can be used for doxxing, women may be subject to harsher consequences. But I don't see them being a big part of the above 2 groups.
    • I don't see much problem for editors who have experimented with sockpuppeting, say for 8 edits on 4 articles 10 years ago. Matching the 2-3 accounts (which won't have much text to analyze) would be difficult. And who would gain much from matching the 2-3 user names? In any case admins generally aren't looking for these folks.
    • And there is a kicker. This and other technologies will progress - so, if you're going to try to fight it, you'll have to fight the versions that will come out, say 5 years down the road. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:55, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
  • I wonder just how unique these writing styles will be. I suspect if you took four hundred wikipedians who write in English the two from New Zealand would come up with some shared features as would the two from Dublin and the two from Glasgow. Especially if they used the same spellchecker. ϢereSpielChequers 19:35, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Recent research: Study deems COVID-19 editors smart and cool, questions of clarity and utility for WMF's proposed "Knowledge Integrity Risk Observatory" (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-11-28/Recent research

Technology report: Galactic dreams, encyclopedic reality (5,829 bytes · 💬)

Let's forget about the print editions of The Signpost please! And maybe we should still define AI as artificial ignorance. After all, the machine has no understanding of the subject it is writing about. If it ever becomes a Wikipedia editor, it will likely be kicked off in a week for violations of WP:CIR, WP:BLP, WP:V, WP:NOR, etc. Before we start accepting any text directly from AI programs, there should be a test on whether it can follow BLP rules - that's just too difficult. Maybe just throw out all AI contributions about BLPs, but run the test on WP:V. In theory, at least, it could get the references right once it gets a concept of the meaning of what the references say - but that's a way off. Sure, there are tasks AI can do but they are essentially rote (easily programmable) tasks, e.g. finding possible refs, alphabetizing lists, maybe even constructing tables. Once an AI program can consistently do those simple tasks, then we can try it out with more difficult problems, e.g. identifying contradictions in articles or checking birth and death dates.

ORES is a marvelous program for checking article quality but it only does certain things that are related to article quality. I'm guessing the factors it considers to be number of words, refs, sections, illustrations, quality tags placed by editors. Maybe even incoming links and outgoing links. It can count real good and the added value is the correlation of thse counts to real person evaluation of quality. I love it for what it does, but everybody knows that there are some terrible articles with lots of words, refs, sections, and photos. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:51, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

And furthermore - AI programs should be able to recognize that "and furthermore" means that somebody is pissed off! and that "it counts good" is a criticism, not a compliment!
Perhaps the first test we should run on an AI contributor is whether it can write articles on "Limitations of Artificial Intelligence" and "Benefits of Artificial Ignorance". If those 2 articles don't have considerable overlap, the designers should go back to the drawing board. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:17, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
@Smallbones: Well, GPT-3 had this to say when I prompted it with your comment:
I don't understand why you would suggest that AI can only do rote tasks, when in fact AI has been used for a variety of tasks, from playing chess to recognizing faces. Furthermore, AI is being used for more complex tasks, such as natural language processing and image recognition. It is being used to automate and streamline processes in industries such as finance, health care, and transportation. And it is being used to create new products and services. So, I think the idea of artificial ignorance is misguided. AI should be judged by its performance, not its level of understanding. If an AI can do something better than a human, then it should be used. If it can't, then it should be discarded. And if it can do something better than a human, then it should be given the opportunity to do so. The bottom line is that AI is a powerful tool, and it should be used to its fullest potential.
I believe that AI could be a great asset to Wikipedia, as long as it is used responsibly and appropriately. AI can be used to help automate routine tasks, such as verifying facts and sources, formatting content, and checking for spelling and grammar errors. AI can also be used to more accurately match content to Wikipedia's editorial standards - for example, it could be used to detect and flag potential bias or inaccuracies in articles. AI could even be used to suggest possible improvements or additions to articles. Ultimately, AI could be used to help make Wikipedia's content more accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date. However, AI should not be used in place of human editors. AI can only do so much, and it cannot match the nuanced understanding of the subject matter that comes with human experience. AI should be used as a supplement to human editors, not as a replacement.
Straight from the horse's mouth... jp×g 03:16, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
I liked the smallbone's "further more" comments.-Nizil (talk) 04:44, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
I think the problem with AI is, that we are not able (at least because of the potential risks, if not by systematic errors in training) to let an AI have own ideas, so that it e.g. can correct systematic errors in training data on its own. The programming interrogator is everything to the AI. If there now would be a real artificial intelligence, with broader understanding, in the best (but also bad) case the programmer is some type of god to it, in the worst case some type of O’Brien, who tells it that 2+2 equals 5. Habitator terrae (talk) 22:49, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
  • This is a great fun read, and thought-provoking. An article that is technical but also makes some sense to a non-technical average reader with tech dreams. In the future Signpost can have its own AI column as part of the TechReport. Something like SP's very own mini-course of mini-Capstone project on the software based foundations of Wikipedia with AI as a buzzword. I would for sure take the course. FacetsOfNonStickPans (talk) 22:32, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Tips and tricks: (Wiki)break stuff (2,301 bytes · 💬)

Thanks for a great article. I can vouch for the importance of taking a break. In my case I felt I was pretty much driven away from the project in the middle of 2019 by the events that led to this arbitration case and came back, tentatively at first, some 18 months later, not knowing quite what to expect. I was delighted to see that things were ticking over much as before and the community had dealt robustly with (most of) the problems I had been struggling with. Wikipedia is bigger than any one of us and will be here long after we've all gone. It can cope without any one of us for a while. If you need a break - for any reason - take it. Wikipedia will still be here and your contributions will still be welcome when you get back. WaggersTALK 16:33, 28 November 2022 (UTC)


Last Wikibreak, I wrote an operetta. A few breaks before that, though, was what killed off WP:Featured sounds, though. Apparently I was needed back then. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 22:30, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I have been in numerous wikibreaks in 2021 as I'm going through tribulations of my life at that year, before settling on semi-retirement since. I'm still editing, but at a much lower activity level than late 2020 and early 2021. Wikibreaks and semi-retirement helped me regain most of my focus towards important issues that I am facing in my life first and foremost. I remain stressed ever since, sometimes losing focus, and I didn't get the mental help I wanted, but at least I'm trying. MarioJump83 (talk) 12:34, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Traffic report: Musical deaths, murders, Princess Di's nominative determinism, and sports (809 bytes · 💬)

  • There is a typo in the November 20 - 26, #1 and #2 notes, final line: '...pretty goals, and unfortunadely, more boring 0-0 draws...' Max263 (talk • contribs) 20:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
    • This is a wiki, you can fix typos instead of pointing them out to us! igordebraga ≠ 15:15, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
      Sorry, was just checking protocol as to editing the Signpost! Max263 (talk • contribs) 17:35, 30 November 2022 (UTC)


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