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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2024-06-08. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Comix: The Wikipediholic Family (680 bytes · 💬)

Concept: Palimpsestuous (3,069 bytes · 💬)

  • This joke appears to be over my head. Regardless, I'm not sure how to feel about my apparent promotion to Administrator of FutureWikipedia; I definitely don't remember submitting that RfA. (Unless I haven't done it yet? Weebly-wobbly...) FeRDNYC (talk) 04:47, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    • To editor FeRDNYC: I could be wrong, but I don't see a joke in there. This is just another concept related to what we do here on WP. If you look up palimpsestuous in Wiktionary, you will be led to how this creepy ol' word applies. Best to you! P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 15:14, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
      I thought this was an [unintentional] allusion to Neurocracy, a game that similarly uses diffs to worldbuild an alternate reality and to allow players to explore the story of a murder. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 01:40, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
      @Paine Ellsworth: Aha, thanks. Although, given that the wiktionary entry basically defines "palimpsestuous" as a joke itself (a humorous blend of palimpsest +‎ incestuous), I suppose that's where the joke is here, as well.
      @Rotideypoc41352: Huh! The Neurocracy connections are definitely interesting, perhaps especially if unintentional! FeRDNYC (talk) 03:11, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
  • The headline The New York Times, NPR and Reuters block Wikipedia editors from citing their articles is seriously misleading because the problem is limited to editors using the visual editor and Citoid. I use the source editor and citation templates, and have no problem creating references to these publications. I may be wrong, but I believe that most highly productive editors use the source editor. Is there evidence to the contrary? Cullen328 (talk) 17:47, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Yes, I posted in the wrong place, and I thank you for noticing, Relativity. I've copied it over. Cullen328 (talk) 07:07, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Deletion report: The lore of Kalloor (7,185 bytes · 💬)

We do seek the truth, and will remove incorrect, inaccurate and outdated information even when it appears in reliable sources. The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is "verifiability, not truth". Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:59, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

"But should we not seek the truth? Yes, of course. Nonetheless, as Maher said, like the volunteer writers of Wikipedia, we also must focus on "the best of what we can know right now." That is a statement of intellectual humility, not of relativism. Complex topics and problems do not lend themselves to easy assessments of truth in real time. Through broad sourcing, the Wikipedia model in theory moves us to closer approximations of what is true." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:05, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Just wondering why I did not get the ping about my mention in this... In either case, interesting to see this tiny AfD led to a piece in TS. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:13, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

@Piotrus: I believe pings only take place if they're published at the same time someone signs their name. Presumably, that didn't happen here. Aza24 (talk) 02:29, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Fair. Perhaps there should be a best practice rule (and maybe even a bot) to notify people whose usernames appear in TS? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:42, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
I have never been so sure about how that worked. My main clue here is that prior to a couple years ago users were mentioned in Signpost articles with {{noping}}, which seemed to imply that linking their pages directly did ping them. I think it is good for people to get a ping when we are writing an article that mentions them, so if this doesn't do it maybe I will have to figure out something else. jp×g🗯️ 07:57, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
I believe that's just a common misconception. Check out Template:Reply to#Usage (which is what {{Ping}} redirects too), under "Single recipient" is says "The comment must be signed and belong to a named section of a "Talk" or "Wikipedia" namespace page in order for the notification to work". Presumably they stopped using {{noping}} because it didn't matter (or maybe they used to sign articles?).
In any case, it would make sense to me that people mentioned in articles are notified; perhaps they are all just separately pinged (with a signature) on the corresponding talk pages. Aza24 (talk) 18:49, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Could create a template "this Signtpost article mentions user x, y and z"? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 00:50, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
I pondered this for a bit today, but I don't know what a good solution would look like. The thing is that in some articles we're mentioning dozens of people, so it'd be very difficult to ping all of them without a bot or script or something. I have a hypothesis for something that might work though, testing it out right now -- basically just do one edit that blanks a page, then a second edit that restores all the content with a tetratilde at the end, then a third edit reverting the previous two -- this should be possible to do with a script, and it would automatically ping everyone who was mentioned on the page without needing to go through and use the ping template for each one. jp×g🗯️ 06:50, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Unless 51 usernames are linked on the page, of course. jlwoodwa (talk) 08:24, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
I still think that Wikipedia's implementation of a periodization of video game "console generations" has had a huge impact on the video game culture. The way we talk about the history of video game hardware and imagine its future is hard to separate from that lense, it's proven an extremely sticky idea. Citogenesis is an interesting source of new information and ideas: it has an air of officiality around it while having no real quality. Patrick Parker is not a very good name for the Riddler, Julius Pringles is fine I guess, Brazilian aardvark is quite boring; these names are sticky in part because they don't feel very lively. I think Pringles should make my 50,000 word Julius Pringles romantic fanfic canon instead ;p ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 07:41, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

The reason you could not find a picture of a Brazilian aardvark, User:Svampesky, is that aardvarks are native to Africa (at least according to our article on aardvarks ...). Another fun fact is that the "Brazilian aardvark" moniker made it into a Cambridge University Press book, where it occurred in a section about copying other people's errors: [1] Someone up there really has a sense of humour. --Andreas JN466 19:32, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Beastly. — Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 09:31, 25 June 2024 (UTC) —

I wonder if Craig Smith knows anything about it? All the best: Rich Farmbrough 11:23, 2 July 2024 (UTC).

Essay: No queerphobia (16,861 bytes · 💬)

  • "Possible manifestations" include "userboxes or userpages expressing anti-LGBT sentiments" and an example of these sentiments is the belief "that being LGBT is a conscious choice"? Apparently everything in this world is socially and personally determined, except sexual orientation, which is purely biological and an innate, intrinsic characteristic of a person.
    As Jane Ward notes in Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men, what’s interesting about many of these claims is how transparent their speakers are with their political motivations. “Such statements,” she writes, “infuse biological accounts with an obligatory and nearly coercive force, suggesting that anyone who describes homosexual desire as a choice or social construction is playing into the hands of the enemy.” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often cast as homophobic, and their thinking is considered backward – even if they are themselves gay.—BBC, 2016.
    One would hope this harebrained "essay" remains that instead of being used as a catechism to root out heretics, but that's not how these things work out in the end. TryKid [dubious – discuss] 14:42, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Not sure what nonsense exactly you're pushing here. Plenty of personal characteristics are inherent and biological in nature. Hence why they are frequently protected characteristics in legal systems around the world. Sexual orientation and attraction is inherent and while some amount of specifics of attraction might be socially determined, such as liking larger or smaller body types, there isn't evidence that the gender of who one is attracted to is socially influenced. There is literally decades of scientific research showcasing this. So, again, not sure what sort of fringe nonsense you're arguing for here. SilverserenC 17:36, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • No, there isn't "decades of evidence" to show that sexuality is "inherent". There's evidence to show that there's a genetic *component* to it, but you wouldn't argue that gender is something inherent to one's biology simply because it's highly correlated with one's biology? Yelling "fringe" seems to be the theme of this essay, but much of it's not supported by any actual evidence. Pulling up Springer, the first result on the subject I got: If in the past the scientific interest revolved around the question of “nature or nurture,” the current theories of sexology, which are placed in a sociological, biological, psychological, and social perspective, recognize the multifactorial nature of sexual orientation.—Sexuality and Sexual Orientation in the Twenty-First Century. A far cry from "there isn't evidence that the gender of who one is attracted to is socially influenced". TryKid [dubious – discuss] 18:22, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • My head boggles at the idea that someone could argue that the gender one is attracted to does not have a social component, while also arguing that gender itself is somewhat/largely social determined, or that it is a purely social concept. This is absurd a priori, before any "scientific evidence" needs to be called upon. Oh well. TryKid [dubious – discuss] 18:30, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • You’re confusing multiple topics to try and make your argument. The social component of attraction is obviously separate and quite often maladaptive to the individual, so the argument you’re making is having the opposite result of what you intended. Nobody wants to hear personal anecdotes, but I will share them anyway. When I grew up in the 1970s, gay men and women would often marry and have families with straight men and women because they were forced to hide for their own safety; this was also the only way they could have children at the time. It wasn’t until the late 1980s in the US that people started coming out of these marriages, and it wasn’t until the late 1990s that it was accepted. By the 2000s, the right wing began formulating their aggressive attack on gay people to force them back into the closet. Your argument, whether you intended it or not, appears to support this position. Viriditas (talk) 23:03, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • This is discussed at length in the BBC article in the first post and this paper, whether certain beliefs about the nature of homosexuality lead to greater acceptance or not. The conclusion seems to be that it doesn't matter much one way or another. But I don't think any of that is relevant here: Wikipedia isn't meant to be the propaganda arm of a social justice movement, righting great wrongs. What opinions one should express, what content one should add to articles should be based on what the sources say, not what is beneficial to the social justice movement, or what "plays into the hands of rightwing movements" etc etc.
    The essay seems to call for disallowing anyone to express something that is now widely recognised in academia: that there's a social and personal component to sexual orientation. This kind of ideological rigidity and gaslighting of anyone who doesn't want to fall in line ("fringe!!!") in the face of obvious evidence cannot possibly be good for something that is meant to be an encyclopaedia. TryKid [dubious – discuss] 00:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • I think you misunderstood the 2007 paper you cited. I don’t see how it has anything to do with this subject. Regarding the essay in question, you wrote, "The essay seems to call for disallowing anyone to express something that is now widely recognised in academia: that there's a social and personal component to sexual orientation.". I don’t see anything in the essay saying that, and the social and personal component you pointed to in the paper is not the one we are discussing. Not sure if you are intentionally misreading and misunderstanding or if this is on purpose to push a POV as others have said. Maybe take a step back and review the recent literature. Viriditas (talk) 00:54, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • It's not clear to me what you're trying to say, if you want to make a point, just go ahead and say it. The 2007 paper is investigates the connection between the etiology of homosexuality and public acceptance of it. In some polls and studies of heterosexual people's attributions for homosexuality, it has been demonstrated that when individuals believe that homosexuality is a matter of personal choice, their attitudes toward gay men and lesbians tend to be more negative, whereas more positive attitudes toward gay men and lesbians are associated with attributing homosexuality to something people are “born with”. I assumed this is the point you were trying to make: that implying homosexuality can be a choice is akin to wanting to force gay people "back in the closet". If this isn't what you meant, I apologise.
    The first response to my comment asserted that there isn't evidence that the gender of who one is attracted to is socially influenced and implied that any assertion otherwise is "fringe". The essay seeks to smear as "queerphobic" and thus disallow this, or at least the more specific assertion that being LGBT can be a choice (at least for some people). But the scientific evidence does not support this claim. My opposition is to this part of the essay. I hope I'm being clear. TryKid [dubious – discuss] 01:34, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • why would you want to make a "this user thinks some queer people are that way by choice" userbox in the first place? whether there is or isn't an environmental or social factor in being gay (which still doesn't mean being gay is a choice), what purpose does such a userbox serve except to be pointed and controversial? userboxen should be for info about you (or for comic relief, and none of this seems remotely funny) Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/my edits) 06:42, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Why might one? Perhaps they're an existentialist and want to affirm radical free will (cf. Sarah Bakewell's The Existentialist Café, chapter 9 (Life Studies): One major point of disagreement between Sartre and Genet concerned Genet’s homosexuality. Sartre interpreted it as part of Genet’s creative response to being labelled a pariah — thus, a free choice of outsiderhood and contrariness. Instead, for Genet, it was a given fact, like having green or brown eyes. He argued this point with Sartre, but Sartre was adamant. In Saint Genet he even had the effrontery to comment, of Genet’s more essentialist opinion, 'we cannot follow him in this'. Many people now favour Genet’s view over Sartre’s, considering that regardless of other factors that may enter the mix, some of us simply are gay, or at least have a strong propensity in that direction. Sartre seemed to feel that, if we do not completely choose our sexuality, we are not free.). And/or perhaps they themselves are homosexual, and want to affirm their own freedom, refusing to give into the narrative of preset, unchanging humans born to be a certain way; as Brandon Ambrosino wrote in the aforementioned BBC article: I was born the way all of us are born: as a human being with a seemingly infinite capacity to announce myself, to re-announce myself, to try on new identities like spring raincoats, to play with limiting categories, to challenge them and topple them, to cultivate my tastes and preferences, and, most importantly, to love and to receive love.
    But, @Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI:, instead of asking "why would you want to express such an opinion" after trying to get it tabooed with false assertions of "decades of evidence", "fringe", "queerphobia", one should ask what's the point of enforcing these political narratives and trying to ban dissent. Protecting people? From what? Other people's beliefs and opinions? An encyclopaedia ought to be the last place where poltical expediency is privileged over truth, the party line over intellectual diversity. regards, TryKid [dubious – discuss] 16:42, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
  • I hate getting into the specifics of a gender theory argument but.... "Preset, unchanging humans born a certain way" I've seen you bring this up a few times, with a very obvious flaw (I will charitably assume you are not intentionally trying to be intellectually dishonest). Supporting "nurture" in the nature v. nurture argument is not the same as saying being LGBT is a conscious choice. As I said, noting that society can play a factor in someone's gender ID in no way logically justifies saying "trans people choose to be that way", because just like genetics it's not like people have much conscious choice in the society that they grow up in either. In other words, even if "gender = nurture" is not fringe, "being LGBT is a conscious choice" very much is.
  • Anyways, that is mostly irrelevant to the main problem with such userboxes - an editor putting up such a userbox is using a well-known queerphobic trope with absolutely no context, whether they are actually being queerphobic or whether they're "just asking questions" or "just stating facts" or whatever. Our articles should reflect RS and should thus neutrally present the nature v. nurture arguments, but editors should not be going around telling other editors they are LGBT by personal choice. This harms collegiality, which is detrimental to a collaborative project - which is why I will ask you to stop justifying such userboxes further, and get back to editing articles. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/my edits) 18:07, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
  • I obviously do not anywhere say that a "social factor" alone would mean that homosexuality is a choice. Both of the above quotes deal explicitly with homosexuality as a choice, and "social factors" and "choice" are nowhere conflated. I brought up "social factors" only in response to Silverserene's false claim that Sexual orientation and attraction is inherent and while some amount of specifics of attraction might be socially determined, such as liking larger or smaller body types, there isn't evidence that the gender of who one is attracted to is socially influenced. There is literally decades of scientific research showcasing this.. And this isn't about anyone "going around telling other editors they are LGBT by personal choice", it's about someone putting generic opinions on one's own user page. It's hardly a "well-known queerphobic trope", as something accepted by LGBT people themselves now and even in the past; nevermind that "trope" usually implies something is false, which this isn't established to be. At last, one can hardly believe these attempts at enforcing some kind of restriction on expressing an opinion that even many LGBT people or "allies" would agree with is about "collegiality"; it can and has only resulted in the opposite, as is clear from the talk page of the original essay. regards, TryKid [dubious – discuss] 19:01, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
    Do you understand the purpose of a userpage? Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/my edits) 07:45, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
  • I agree with the essay and don't understand the arguments in favor of deletion. Essays aren't required to reflect consensus, and as far as I can tell no one is specifically being accused of being queerphobic (at least without evidence). It's not a matter of politics, it's a matter of respect and dignity. --Xacaranda (talk) 15:44, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Thanks for publishing this. I have mixed feelings about the essay ignoring the role of religion and right wing politics in creating queerphobia. It’s pretty obvious where it’s coming from and who is disseminating it, yet we aren’t allowed to say it. Strange times. Viriditas (talk) 17:42, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • The nature of science and understanding are constantly in flux. Our understanding of biology, psychology, neurology, etc are continuing to develop -- they are still rather nascent, despite our confidence. How should Wikipedians reconcile inevitable conflicts between science and your anti-LGBT list? What if at some point in time WP:NPOV tells a story that by your definition is anti-LGBT? Tonymetz 💬 04:41, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Comments here are likely to repeat some arguments from previous discussions about the essay. Not sure if there is a good summary available somewhere, but one starting point might the "endorsers" (currently 15) and "non endorsers" (currently 13) !votes at Wikipedia_talk:No_queerphobia. Regards, HaeB (talk) 18:27, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Friendly reminder that everyone is also allowed to work on creating and improving content instead. Choose wisely. Polygnotus (talk) 02:07, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Featured content: We didn't start the wiki (2,797 bytes · 💬)

Did anyone else sing the whole thing from beginning to end? QuicoleJR (talk) 15:18, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Me. ‍Relativity ⚡️ 18:11, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
I did, until I got derailed pondering whether Running Out of Time (song) would actually fit the meter better if it included the "(song)" at the end of the article title. FeRDNYC (talk) 05:22, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Yeah me too lol ―Howard • 🌽33 14:58, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Bravo! An ingenious and entertaining solution to a long list of excellent articles. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:40, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Reminds me a lot of We Didn’t Start The Fire, now I got that song stuck in my head. West Virginia WXeditor (talk) 20:24, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Great song though one question. Will the Fls and FPs be named? Questions? four Olifanofmrtennant (she/her) 00:28, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Image description for Wreck of the ship George Roper, Point Lonsdale (1883)

This image description on Wiki-Commons for

English: Wreck of the ship George Roper, Point Lonsdale (1883) by Fred Kruger. According to the website The History of Queenscliffe, the people seen are the family of G C Robinson. (emphasis added) may be incorrect or misleading.
The central foreground tableaux reads as posed group containing a policeman or Bobby whose baton, in his left hand, blurred by motion, is in mid-stroke, about to land on a man with a large pack or sack on his back. The image description ought either to acknowledge the nature of the foreground material or to replace the full image with the cropped image.

It would be shame to lose the whole of this striking historical photograph. Changing the Commons image description would be my first choice.

— Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 05:29, 21 June 2024 (UTC) —

Humour: Wikipedia rattled by sophisticated cyberattack of schoolboy typing "balls" in infobox (4,586 bytes · 💬)

  • No joke, but if Wikipedia tried to fundraise with a t-shirt that showed someone changing a page with the words "Pizza EVERY DAY" on the screen, they would probably raise a lot of money. I've often considered "pizza everyday" a core part of my overall life philosophy. Viriditas (talk) 20:39, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Of course the IP is from the DoD... Toadspike [Talk] 11:15, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    Ah, it's randomly generated. Clever. Also clever is the way this piece manages to skewer everybody under the sun, not just the vandals I was expecting. Toadspike [Talk] 11:20, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Ahem: University of Bridgertonshire-upon-Prestigiousham.[just kidding] Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 01:49, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
  • One of the best humor articles I've read in a long time. Thanks @JPxG: for such an on-point article! ❤HistoryTheorist❤ 04:04, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
  • I suppose the idea of someone using Wikipedia to declare there's going to be "Pizza on EVERY DAY" is funny. But the punchline seems to be 'fixing Wikipedia's problems is actually as easy as reverting, misinformation isn't an issue, and all this sound and fury is unnecessary because the only real problem is promotionalism'. It's a punchline that prefers preserving Wikipedia's status quo and seems to offer little to resolving or even at least objecting to the prevalence of misogyny, queerphobia, racism, colonialist legacies, and anti-intellectualism in the project. Here WMF's task forces and statements are skewered for being overreactions and unnecessary. From where I'm sitting, the problem is more that they accomplish little of substance and that this is by design because WMF is so timid in the face of objections it avoids pushing for anything even when something's necessary. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:41, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
  • So the IP originated from SoftBank in Japan while the hacker is in Wisconsin? The hacker showed some mad skillz! We better prepare a Committee to Address Misrepresenting of Internet Protocol Address now! ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 02:27, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Principal Hubert Glockenballs makes some strong points in this article. User:RossEvans18: talk 19:46, 15 June 2024
  • This fine young master hacker was speaking TRUTH to power when he pulled the curtain off the creamed-corn industrial complex. Too bad the sheeple who groom Wikipedia tripped over themselves to CENSOR it as fast as their effete elite paymasters could cough up the chump change. But seriously, thanks for this — by the time I reached the end, I'd almost spit out my creamed crap from laughing. Quercus solaris (talk) 21:35, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Damn, this is the best humor I've ever read. This humor cuts to the heart of everyone "involved." Can I call it one of those "masterpiece" humors? ▪︎ Fazoffic ( ʖ╎ᓵᔑ∷ᔑ) 01:32, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Bruh what kind of Wikipedia article about an random school that probably nobody knows about except for the students, the students affiliates and the staff have information regarding school lunches!?XD Spongebob796 (talk) 01:34, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

In the media: National cable networks get in on the action arguing about what the first sentence of a Wikipedia article ought to say (3,414 bytes · 💬)

One thing that constantly bugs me every time the media brings up trumps talk page is that no one every bothers to point out the massive current consensus list, a feature that didn’t exist until his presidency. It would be nice to see it mentioned in at least one major news publication or broadcast, since it helps serve an important role in prevent the constant rehashing of arguments or proposals for main space edits. 174.231.19.167 (talk) 17:03, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

  • Just updating the count on the RfC on including "Trump is a convicted felon" on the first line (as of the end of June 7). The raw count (without taking account of fine points like "Support but wait until Melania comments") 134 supports for including, 93 oppose including on 1st line. Somebody should recheck my count of course, counting to 134 is tougher than it might seem!
  • On the topic of the RfC (which I won't contribute to directly)
    • Folks have missed a few points - e.g. the prior point 50 on the current consensus list is now grossly out of date. A post-presidential conviction changes everything, we are now in a (brave?) new world. A new consensus can and will form, and it should be considered de novo. The old consensus is almost irrelevant.
    • There's no general rule that says convictions can't be mentioned in the first line, but the first line should reflect how people define the person, what he is best known for. It's quite likely that people in 10 years time will consider "convicted felon" or Trump's general contempt of the law, or of honesty in general, to be a defining feature. It may take some time, but this needs to be settled by consensus, the editors' opinions alone, since the facts are incontrovertible. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:14, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Orphans are not "invisible", the vast majority of traffic to WP is from external search engines. Mach61 12:37, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    • I generally tell newbie editors that "Wikipedia is an iceberg. 99% of it is underwater, invisible" referring to page histories, talk pages, user pages, project pages, policy pages, image pages and other pages not ordinarily found in Google searches. Jim.henderson (talk) 23:06, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
  • His latest article strengthens my opinion that Stephen Harrison is the best reporter covering Wikipedia on an ongoing basis, at least in English. Cullen328 (talk) 17:35, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
    I like Omer Benjakob too, they both have a significant understanding of the WP-world. But taste differs, some may prefer Andrew Orlowski or Hava Mendelle (new since last year, afaik). Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:12, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Il était une fois Wikipedia means Once upon a time Wikipedia". Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:13, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation publishes its Form 990 for fiscal year 2022-2023 (5,042 bytes · 💬)

The New York Times, NPR and Reuters block Wikipedia editors from citing their articles

  • Re: citoid - how much traffic could Wikipedia editors adding citations possibly be generating? Or does it refer to people subsequently using those links to click through to the news/journal sites? Because that would seem to be a boon to them, not a burden. It's a bit odd either way! —Ganesha811 (talk) 12:50, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
    Important information would be how many requests is it actually making, and how many unique requests is it making (e.g. is citoid trying to load the same article over and over again, or something like that). Hard to know if the block is reasonable or not without this info. If its not going to change, maybe citoid could as a backup look at the internet archive version of articles. Bawolff (talk) 19:55, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
This photo on Commons got 90 million hits per day!
    • I'm not a techie, but the only thing I can think of to explain this would be something related to this Signpost story Could it be Valentine's Day? Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:51, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
      • Well, hold on. Where's the evidence of that 90 million hits per day? When did it happen? Is it an ongoing issue? More details please. Risker (talk) 15:12, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
        • @Risker and CAlbon (WMF): The Signpost link I gave above links to a Vice story (Feb. 21, 2021) that should answer much more than I could even attempt. It does quote Chris Albon, director of Machine Learning at Wikimedia, who seems to have been around recently. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:05, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
          The flower image was being used by a company's mobile app to check for internet connectivity on launch, so it probably isn't directly relevant to this story. CAlbon (WMF) (talk) 15:08, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
  • I have not had any issues on those sites using WP:ProveIt, fwiw. Mach61 12:07, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

A WMF update:

"We're learning more as we are talking to owners of the sites who've decided to block Citoid, while also trying to be sure about how much traffic we're sending to them.

We're in conversation with the owners of one property who have said that the traffic pattern looks like abuse traffic. We're trying to learn in what way this is so - Volume? A nonstandard user agent pattern (which we've since changed)? Spikes?

More updates to come."

Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:53, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

  • The headline The New York Times, NPR and Reuters block Wikipedia editors from citing their articles is seriously misleading because the problem is limited to editors using the visual editor and Citoid. I use the source editor and citation templates, and have no problem creating references to these publications. I may be wrong, but I believe that most highly productive editors use the source editor. Is there evidence to the contrary? Cullen328 (talk) 17:47, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Hi, y'all – for people interested in understanding what the WMF is doing to ensure people can reliably use Citoid to generate citations, please see phab:T362379. Specifically, the section within that task's description titled Strategy and State. If anything you see there brings questions/ideas to mind, we'd value knowing. Oh, and I'm Peter. I work as the product manager on the mw:Editing_team; we're responsible for Citoid, the VisualEditor, DiscussionTools, and Edit check.PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 22:20, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

New administrators

  • The RfA for Elli was closed as successful 16:37, 7 June 2024, after we finished writing this article and just a few hours before our actual publication. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:43, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

News from the WMF: Progress on the plan — how the Wikimedia Foundation advanced on its Annual Plan goals during the first half of fiscal year 2023-2024 (1,098 bytes · 💬)

  • Thanks for the update from WMF! Communication and responsiveness both seem to be better since Maryana took over - I think the WMF-editor relationship can and should continue to improve over the next few years. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:54, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Meanwhile, whither graphs? WaikikiVice (talk) 16:31, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • I find it disappointing how Commons is mentioned so prominently under infrastructure, and yet actual backend infrastructure of commons is pretty ignored. User facing interfaces are not "infrastructure". Upload wizard is not infrastructure. Open refine is not infrastructure. How MediaWiki handles and stores files is infrastructure. We seem to be ignoring the basics here, but we need a solid foundation in order for the fancier things to work. Bawolff (talk) 16:46, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Opinion: Public response to the editors of Settler Colonial Studies (51,236 bytes · 💬)

  • At a minimum, Dr. Keeler could have learned how to correctly link diffs and old versions of pages on Wikipedia - most of the "citation" links in their article are completely malformed, leading to a serious verifiability problem that should be as equally unacceptable in a journal article as it is on Wikipedia. I also note that Dr. Keeler's proposed remedy—that the WMF convene a panel of academic experts to supervise relevant pages—is the same as Grabowski & Klein's, and equally unworkable for practical and technical reasons. I don't mind outsiders critiquing Wikipedia, but they should do so from a place of knowledge, which includes knowing what kinds of fixes are actually within the realm of possibility. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:22, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • I've been a member of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America since 2006, and so am somewhat familiar with most of the Wikipedians mentioned in the above letter. Like many other people in the southeastern U.S., a family tradition claims that my great-great-great-great-grandmother was at least part-Native American, but my other 63 ancestors of that generation were not, and I do not feel any connection to any indigenous group. I concentrate on pre-20th century Native American history, and rarely edit around current Native American topics. I do sometimes edit articles about unrecognized tribes and have removed some unsourced claims concerning various branches of the Sapony people, sometimes crossing paths with Yuchitown. I defer to his opinions on such claims (he has found sources to support some claims I have questioned). He edits prolifically in the area of tribes which are not recognized by the Federal government nor by any state government, and I think he does so with a very neutral point of view that always improves the encyclopedia. I think the claim that having "Yuchi" as part of his user name disqualifies him from editing about the Sapony is dreadfully wrong, and, at the least, falls under "casting aspersions". - Donald Albury 14:54, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
    I don't think anyone disagrees with that, really, since the editor who made a claim along those lines (when opening the linked-to "Spam, Vandalism and Bullying By Native Tribes" ANI) earned a WP:BOOMERANG block over the edit-warring and other misconduct that came to light during administrators' evaluation of that report. (Which, as Tamzin describes, then became an indefinite block due to their conduct in the ANI discussion.) FeRDNYC (talk) 06:18, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Excellent work, Tamzin. I had had my fingers crossed that Keeler's paper would not be uncritically summarized in the Signpost as "research". It's great that the Signpost editors chose not to do that, and seeing your thorough critique here makes my day. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:44, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • @Tamzin: Overall, I think this is a very good letter. But I must take issue with the first example you give of CorbieVreccan's promotion of their personal agenda: they promoted an obscure religious movement that they and Mark are prominent figures in, and advocated against the legitimacy of rival pagan movements. This betrays prejudice against CV's religion for being non-mainstream ("obscure"), which is not the same thing as not being notable by Wikipedia's standards (written about at length in reliable sources); the deletion discussion to which you linked was closed as "merge" not "delete" after I folded my cards there (here is the version after my last edit) and the key issue was self-published sources and CV's being the primary author of the main self-published source, which is to say, self-promotion not religious promotion. It's invidious prejudice to judge people badly for their religion, and it's also unconscious bias; I am unsure of the basis of your claim that CV sought to promote Celtic reconstructionism at the expense of other forms of neopaganism (presumably neo-Druidism and other forms of Celtic neopaganism?) but that implies that neopaganism as such is not unworthy of respect. In my opinion, that small part of your letter is both inaccurate and unworthy. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:55, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    • @Yngvadottir: Please don't think that my characterization of CR reflects any personal bias against the religious tradition. I said that it is obscure because it is obscure. And I mentioned this because it is relevant to Corbie's long-term promotion of it, which inflated its significance (and yes, Corbie's own significance, but the two went hand in hand). This is a criticism of Corbie's actions, not of anything about what Celtic reconstructionists believe. I would say just the same about someone who similarly promoted an obscure Jewish movement.
      As to promoting it at the expense of other movements, I was thinking primarily of their comments about the Witchcraft article, where Corbie often spoke about non-reconstructionist pagan movements in a way that promoted reconstructionism as a more valid system of beliefs. Or at least that's my reading. You are of course welcome to disagree, and either way, thank you for your thoughts. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 02:23, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • This should come as a surprise to no one. For those who don't remember, two academics released a similar paper last year about antisemitism in Poland. Like this one, it weighed in on a Wikipedia dispute, making accusations against several editors by name, to the effect of manipulating on-site activity. In most circumstances, this would be considered harmful on par with what you'd see in one of the "bad sites". The difference here is that those responsible had a platform that allowed them to publish to a wider audience. For whatever reason, the Arbitration Committee and the community accepted this off-site manipulation, and the effort to influence the topic proved successful. I warned the community twice about the potential threat of other off-site actors using publications to manipulate Wikipedia, but it fell on deaf ears. It has now happened again. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:15, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    • Out of curiosity, have there been any other instances of academic publications (or similar) making accusations against editors by name, besides this one and the one about antisemitism last year? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:05, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    For whatever reason, the Arbitration Committee and the community accepted this off-site manipulation... But that's not really true, @Thebiguglyalien. The paper which led to the Arbitration Committee proposing and accepting the WP:HJP case was only one of the last four "big event" climaxes in a series of decade spanning disputes. The other three were the 2021 Eostrix RfA, the 2021-22 concentration camp ARC, and the 2022 T&S report. For better or for worse, Arbcom prevented subsequent "big events" by opening the case-- whether that would've been some offwiki craziness, or something that would've looked like Fram 1.5 or 2.0. A case was inevitable-- and it's kind of a comedic, dramatic irony that someone would think otherwise-- the kind you'd see in an allegorical Young Adult novel where the main characters need to deal with "bad optics" because they can't tell the rest of the world about some "secret things" for "the greater good". And even then, when concluding the case, the researchers behind the paper still weren't really happy with the result.
    So damn we really got the short end of the stick! It sucks, but at the end of the day that's just how it is sometimes. I didn't run for Arbcom because I knew things would be easy, or that Wikipedia has no issues. That's why I think, counter to some of what you say, that academic coverage of the site is a good thing and not the real "misinformation enemy", even if some of the recent stuff has been of inconsistent quality. This site still has a lot of issues in various pockets, and having outside critique and review of them is good. Of course, editors know the site better than most researchers, so we need to keep a critical eye towards coverage as well. I think a bigger problem is the sort of coordinated spam and POV pushing operations, which we are increasingly seeing more of but are of a lower profile... those'll become a more defining issue to combat in this era of Wikipedia. I don't mean to call you out in particular-- I just wanted to put out a rebuttal to the whole "Arbcom was tricked into HJP" narrative, because I know a (small) amount of people might still believe it. Usually I just say nothing when I see something that isn't the whole story, but I think it's important to talk about in terms of the site's history, and because I think naturally critical, newer editors-- such as yourself, Alien-- are going to be the group that dismantles narratives and pushes back against the new spammers and POV pushers. Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 19:35, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    I totally agree, the battleground problems were an issue and did warrant a case. There are probably a few other topics that will justifiably get similar cases in the next few years, for whatever catalyst triggers it, and I'll be glad when they do. I assume you as an arb have a better idea of how close we are to this than I do. My grievance is specifically with Finding of Fact #9 and the general lack of response to the fact that, as I see it, people wanted to engage in a Wikipedia dispute and chose to do this by publishing a hit piece against several editors by name. We take canvassing and supervotes seriously, but those are minuscule compared to the type of influence that papers like this exert over a dispute, let alone the chilling effect it has on named editors. If I had access to some platform or audience and used it to shame editors I disagreed with, I'd probably get banned, and rightfully so. But the authors in these cases are forgiven because of their careers. My hope is that, while understanding there are positives to external analysis, these problems will be more readily acknowledged. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:07, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    Agree with this ☝🏽 I would have liked to see FoF 9 more along the lines of Revealing personal information of pseudonymous editors in an academic paper is not technically a breach of Wikipedia behavioural policy, and admonishment of outside parties is beyond ArbCom's remit, but it was unnecessary and shitty of the authors to do that. (Aware that one of the authors did have an infrequently used account here.) Folly Mox (talk) 23:41, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    @Folly Mox, @Thebiguglyalien; Speaking on my view on the matter, Arbcom was always in a rock and a hard place when it came to that particular aspect of the case. That's part of why there was a remedy asking for a White Paper for best research practices on Wikipedia to be formulated by the WMF (still in progress but expected to be finished soon, which unfortunately has led to it also kind of forgotten about in the public view despite being a key part of the case), and not just because of the outing aspect. Like I said in my vote there, I think Wikipedia is very much in The Real World and that this sort of research is only going to become more common. Alien, you have a point about the "chilling effect", but you've also got to turn it around-- we wouldn't want the case to also have a large chilling effect on academics and research efforts. It's like balancing two knife blades on your fingertips, you know? It kind of relates to your point about "a few other topics", Alien-- unless there's some T&S business, I don't see Arbcom opening a case like this in the foreseeable, but there's surely plenty of other areas that neither of us are aware of where we have some messed up coverage-- whether that's on enwiki or elsewhere-- and it's good to have an outside view highlighting and critiquing that. If what I'm saying makes sense... Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 04:02, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Quick suggestion: User:Tamzin, are you aware of PubPeer? I suggest you add a link to your letter (here) from PP. It's a good tool to know and use. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:17, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Another quick question & comment: Tamzin, did you send this letter to the journal in question and did they decline to publish your response? (For anyone who cares, since some above have already drawn pararells to G&K article to which I have written a response as well - I did send my responce (a formatted version of this) to that journal, and it was declined with the comment "our journal exclusively publishes peer-reviewed articles... unfortunately, due to our current constraints, we are unable to subject your submission to our anonymous peer-review process". I received no responses to my subsequent inquiries.). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:23, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    Yes, I used T&F's correction request form to send a link to the letter in my userspace, plus the omitted private evidence. As of 23:51 UTC on Thursday, it is being considered by the production team. I have no idea whether that means it's being hotly debated among all the editors or whether I'll get a form-letter rejection. Guess we'll see. :) -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 02:32, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    Stupid question, but T&F means..? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:45, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
    Taylor & Francis. Nardog (talk) 15:44, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
    Got it. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:19, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
    @XOR'easter and I had similar issues getting a response (to an email we sent) from the publisher of a different clueless paper misrepresenting Wikipedia policies. Journals just do not seem interested in correcting errors--even egregious errors in analysis that lead the authors to a conclusion exactly opposite to what their data say-- when it comes to how this community works. PubPeer hasn't been much better; I think between the two of us we had to submit our comments like 8 times before the moderators let them stay, even though in my experience the same level of detail pointing out errors in molecular biology papers gets through with no delay. JoelleJay (talk) 07:07, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    I think the problem that PubPeer had with my first attempt at submitting a comment was that my comment explicitly advocated for the paper to be retracted. XOR'easter (talk) 23:52, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    Is this against PubPeer's ToS? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 00:52, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
    I didn't advocate retraction in my comments, though. I think my issue was implying intentional deception for some of the problems--even though my language was no more accusatory than that of someone pointing out an image duplication, moderators might have thought what I was saying was simply an interpretation rather than clear-cut. JoelleJay (talk) 02:37, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
  • I do not wish to delegitimize the core message of Dr. Keeler's piece: And yet The Signpost isn't reporting on this core message, but has instead published this 'death by a thousand (proverbially speaking) cuts'-esque debunking that I can't help but suspect will for many readers amount to a delegitimization of the core message: In its current form, Wikipedia is hostile to Indigenous peoples. Its long-time editors, administrators, policies, and structure, refuse, are not equipped, or are not designed to make the adjustments necessary for meaningful change to occur (page 15 of "Wikipedia's Indian Problem"). It's a missed opportunity that The Signpost didn't emphasize this larger interpretive message and instead published this down-the-line debunking that emphasizes the cuts over the core, that will for some readers reinforce Wikipedia's culture of hostility to scholars and distrust of reliable academic sources.
    For instance, Gwillhickers has responded to the article with a horrific comment about, among other things, how all civil liberties are thanks to settlers and how Indigenous people who resisted colonization were genocidal. A quote like that would have made for a much more concrete example of racism and colonialism on Wikipedia: That diff appears to be from 17:48, on May 27, 2024. Keeler's article "Wikipedia's Indian Problem" was submitted to Settler Colonial Studies on November 22, 2023 and was published online on May 24, 2024. How could Keeler have included in his article a quote that postdated its submission and publication? In any case, I would argue we need more help seeing what isn't obvious than what is obvious. We're well served when scholars point out the subtler, structural biases and prejudices that aren't nearly as obvious as overt screeds that 'American Indians were actually the genocidal ones' (to paraphrase the diff from Gwillhickers), which—I hope, at least—we can more readily recognize as colonialist. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 05:15, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    @Hydrangeans: My point about the quote from Gwillhickers is in the context of the preceding sentences: This [context about Corbie] is the kind of added depth that Dr. Keeler's article could have had if he had interviewed a more diverse group of editors. ... He could have also strengthened his own arguments about racism. Obviously he couldn't have cited a response to his own article, but if he had interviewed Gwillhickers, he could have had access to similar comments. Whether the inclusion of remarks like that would have strengthened or weakened his case is, I guess, in the eye of the beholder. I do think that the existing quotes he has from Gwillhickers are pretty darn bad as it is.
    I do share your sadness that likely some people will be unable to distinguish between "article contained factual errors and an undisclosed conflict of interest" and "article's conclusion was wrong". But I think that if scholars want to not run into that problem, the solution is to avoid factual errors and disclose their conflicts of interest. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 05:54, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    This opinion piece might have read a bit sadder about that matter if more had been done to highlight the core message and emphasize its importance to the audience in the broad strokes and not solely in specific cases. Instead the editors of The Signpost seem to prioritize circling wagons against perceived threats to institutional reputation lest anyone walk away with the sense that Wikipedia's administrative systems have structural biases that favor settler POVs and settler-constructed sensibilities. Administrators lacking any personally held acrimony is better than administrators personally holding acrimony, but it's no antidote for systemic pressures and structural exclusions. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:55, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    Hydrangeans The core message here is that some editors wish to abuse Wikipedia to right great wrongs, they were appropriately called out, and a fringe academic (who was allegedly involved in the dispute) got all pissy about it. The solution is that editors who believe they're fighting some righteous crusade against imaginary "settler-constructed sensibilities" need to be removed from the project so the rest of us can actually build an encyclopedia. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:00, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    @Thebiguglyalien: I don't think that's really accurate, and actually perpetuates the false narrative that Keeler puts forward about Corbie and Mark. They weren't called out for being on a crusade to right wrongs against Indigenous people. The actual substance of their meatpuppetry was largely tangential to my AN filing and the subsequent ArbCom case, and the community's outcry about their misconduct should not be taken as any sort of statement about the underlying content questions, any more than banning Icewhiz meant the community was pro–Holocaust denial. And while I'm not here to take sides on the various content issues, I will say that at a minimum, anyone who thinks that "the Indians were the real genociders" (paraphrase) should not be editing about Indigenous topics—on competence grounds if nothing else. That's not simply wrong; it's a mockery of basically all contemporary scholarship on the topic. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 20:17, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    Tamzin, I didn't closely watch the situation with Corbie and Mark, and if it looks like I'm describing all mentioned editors in this light, that's my mistake. My experience in this is limited to the place where I'm quoted in the paper, and that's primarily what I'm speaking to. And yes, I have just as little sympathy for those who are waging their own crusade to push the opposite point of view, especially when it's so blatantly inappropriate. I simply disagree that it's as widespread or embedded as the author and those who share his opinion make it out to be, and I believe they're using that claim to create a battleground environment that lets them push their own point of view. I don't believe that challenging a POV-pusher makes someone a "settler nationalist", as I'm described in the paper—even if that point of view is that we should use questionable sources to give undue weight to historical genocides in tangentially related articles. I don't disagree with anything you've said, but to me this is the crux of the issue regarding the POV pushing and Right Great Wrongs behavior. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:48, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    I guess my thing about RGW is like: If the wrong being righted is that Wikipedia is out of line with scholarly consensus, that's a great motivation for an editor to have. If the wrong is that scholarly consensus should change, that's a very bad motivation. I think a lot of the time when we analyze "RGW" behavior, we focus more on attitude and less on who's actually bringing things closer to consensus. This has led to a few topic areas (and I'm not stupid enough to say which) where minority views have won out because the people who hold them have done a good job speaking calmly and looking more presentable. Something about Native American topics in particular seems to draw a lot of people, on both sides, into arguing based purely on how they feel things should be and not based on what the scholarly sources say. (These may be the same thing, but it matters which you cite.) I suspect that the overall balance of scholarly sources does demand that Wikipedia treat Indigenous topics somewhat farther in the direction that Keeler wants than is currently the case, particularly on historical matters... But you wouldn't know that from the debates I've read. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 23:35, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    That's a good point, and something I'll keep in mind about this sort of thing. It's complicated by the fact that POV pushers and RGWers often believe that the facts and the scholarship is on their side whether it is or not, but that really just brings us back to the unfortunate truth that there's no easy answer to this sort of thing. I suspect that this topic area is fraught with it because it's an issue of ethnicity and sovereignty, but the background is unique relative to some of the other disputes based on nationality and ethnicity. And of course, with the possible exception of AMPOL, it's the easiest target for those who wish to promote anti-Western sentiment. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:58, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    @Tamzin, I'm keeping that quote:[2]. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:57, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
    I think this is a complaint that should be forwarded to Corbie & Mark Ironie, not Tamzin. By breaking the trust of the community, they poisoned the well of discussion, making it harder to address such issues neutrally, not easier. Keeler essentially believing their very misleading "side" wholesale is part of the problem. SnowFire (talk) 06:48, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    The field of settler-colonial studies is founded on the idea that knowledge itself enforces Western hegemonies. In order to enact the decolonization of knowledge, what they view as alternative/indigenous ways of knowing must be given equal credit to Western epistemologies. Louis Botha describes these methods of knowing as fundamentally relational, in the sense that they prioritize the role of the relationships among actors, artifacts, and spaces in the construction of knowledge.[3]
    To truly decolonize Wikipedia, we need to retreat from our core content policies that characterize personal knowledge as inferior to dispassionate secondary sources which summarize them. Instead, we would have to acknowledge that indigenous editors fundamentally are more qualified to edit on indigenous topics than settlers, and understand that their lived experiences are more valuable than Western scholarship. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 23:22, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
    @Chess: The problem with characterizing personal knowledge as equal to or superior to secondary sources is that personal knowledge is often variable and unreliable. There is a story in my family that my great-great-great-great-grandmother was Cherokee. Part of the story was about how she and her husband (my great-great-great-great-grandfather) were killed by Confederate deserters during the Civil War. Several years ago I went looking on the Internet and found many versions of the story, such as this, but the different versions varied considerably on details about my g-g-g-g-grandmother, giving her maiden name as Robertson or Robinson, and her given name as Suki, Sukie, Suzi, Susie, Susan, Sarah, and some other variants I don't recall. She was also variously identified as Cherokeee, Choctaw, or "Indian". The story as I learned it was from a short written account that my grandmother had had for many years when she showed it to us some 55 years ago. The details had drifted a lot in three or four generations. Of course, a lot of older history started out the same way, but when sources derived from legends and oral history have been carefully examined and compared with other sources by historians, we do put more reliance on them. I know that some oral history preserves elements of ancient events (I have read The Edge of Memory), but details get lost and mistakes creep in. Donald Albury 01:23, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
    @Donald Albury: I agree, though I don't believe Wikipedia editors know what they're arguing against. As this becomes more prevalent in academia (e.g. how Dr. Keeler believes that his personal involvement does not make him less reliable), we're going to have to decide what to do with journals that don't exert editorial control or do fact-checking because they believe knowledge comes from personal relationships instead of scientific theory. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 23:48, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
  • the following letter is a response to a paper written by Tamzin, a Wikipedia editor. Just to clarify, the following is actually a letter written by Tamzin, a Wikipedia editor, in response to a paper not written by Tamzin, yes? FeRDNYC (talk) 05:27, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    • If you read the first paragraph of the letter, you should be able to solve the mystery. SnowFire (talk) 06:48, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
      @SnowFire I read the whole thing, which is why there is no mystery. But that doesn't make the unclear wording any less unclear. FeRDNYC (talk) 07:55, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
      • Agreed. The sentence construction makes it needlessly ambiguous and could do with a rearrangement to eliminate that. Axem Titanium (talk) 14:37, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Even ignoring the COI and factual errors, this paper reads like anecdata to me. I'm not familiar with academic writing in this field; is this common practice? Axem Titanium (talk) 14:37, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    @Axem Titanium Common enough in bad scholarship, some of which sneaks into journals that are supposedly "good". In the end, this is likely because peer review is a lottery. Ask any scholar including myself - papers we consider weak or meh can get accepted in good journals quickly, papers we consider good can get years of unlucky reviews. Peer review is a lottery. Not unlike what we see at WP:GAR and like, there are excellent reviewers and ones who do a cursory skim and miss major problems. Peer review is a bad system, but there are no great solutions (I like PubPeer I've mentioned before, but it is not a perfect fix). And that is assumung peer review actually happens - since there is no record of it publically disclosed in many journals. How can you be sure this very paper here was actually properly peer reviewed? Sure, the journal has a policy, but I've read about and even seen myself cases where journal policies were bent or disregarded by editors, with nobody aware of this outside the editor and the author (and if the editor likes the paper and publishes it despite, for example, insufficient reviews, do you think the author will complain?). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 00:59, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Depends on the journal typically, I'm not that shocked that a small and subjective field like this has drek like this. Usually these types of articles are written by one or two writers. Traumnovelle (talk) 03:45, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Axem Titanium The article Grievance studies affair might be interesting to read. Their findings suggested that many journals are willing to accept expressions of grievance politics as a form of academic study. Obviously it's not definitive without replication, but it's something to keep in mind when critically reading academic publications about identity. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 14:40, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Mistakes aside, I find it quite surprising that an academic article just recaps a publicly available recent conflict on Wikipedia. We need academics to transcribe oral tradition so we can cite it on Wikipedia. We need historians to correct racist narratives that arose from propaganda. We need researchers to rediscover indigenous knowledge and culture that settlers tried to destroy. I don't really see what is being achieved here.
    The suggestion that the WMF "[create] a network of trustworthy experts who could audit their areas of expertise" is, at least when those experts are paid, completely antithetical to what Wikipedia is. Why should experts in one field be paid when the rest of us volunteer? The author should learn about Citizendium and consider why it is so much less successful than Wikipedia. — Bilorv (talk) 22:06, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    It could be a good thing if a group of experts went over the Wikipedia articles about their field and pointed out problems: "This is confusing, this is oversimplified, this over here is outdated...". But the result of that process would deserve no more deferential treatment than any other academic publication. XOR'easter (talk) 00:16, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
    No good solution here, considering that lack of financial or other incentives discourages many academics from contribution to Wikipedia and like (according to research, including mine). In the end, we get only input from few very motivated folks, some of whom contribute, and some of who just complain about real or perceived (or intentionally misleading) issues. The good news is that the system(s) work(s), more or less (most of academic research is useful and a net positive, and so is Wikiepdia). Unfortunately, every now and then we get collateral damage, like here. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:03, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
    Last year, at a Wikimeetup here in Portland, I sugggested to Maryana that the Foundation hire academic experts in fields that are poorly covered by Wikipedia, who then can provide advice, critical reviews of articles, & bibliographies for editors to consult. (She seemed receptive to the idea.) One reason these areas are poorly covered is because it is difficult to find material to write the needed articles. (I've had to buy materials for this very reason. For example, I own more books about Somalia that are available at my local public library. While this may sound impressive, I only own three books -- hardly enough to fact check many articles about that country.) The Foundation seems to prioritize various praiseworthy social causes over helping volunteers to research & write useful articles. -- llywrch (talk) 21:52, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
    We need academics to transcribe oral tradition so we can cite it on Wikipedia. We need historians to correct racist narratives that arose from propaganda. We need researchers to rediscover indigenous knowledge and culture that settlers tried to destroy. I don't really see what is being achieved here.: These examples are certainly necessary areas of work (which in many cases have deep wells of resources, if only Wikipedians would leverage them) but does seem to rather conveniently leave Wikipedia out from under the microscope and magnifying glass, as if Wikipedia exists outside the world, always observing and never observed. We certainly need such scholarship as your post describes, and there's good scholarly work that does that, but Wikipedia's participation in the legacies of colonization, racism, sexism, etc. is also a worthwhile subject of academic study (and, I at least would add, are issues worth trying to attenuate and eliminate from the project, even if only to better achieve NPOV—even if I think Keeler's recommendations aren't very plausible, because of making unfortunately naive presumptions about what the Wikimedia Foundation is socially able, but more than that institutionally willing, to do). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 03:23, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
    I think Bilorv's point is that Wikipedia, willingly and by default, puts itself under scrutiny by having a publicly available history and discussion section for every page, and that the authors of the paper should probably focus on producing material that will actually better our coverage of indigenous people in settler colonial nations rather than write a whole ass """research""" paper because one of them was butthurt about being caught meatpuppeting. The charitable explanation is that they do not understand what consensus means in Wikipedia, and so think that since their POV is the neutral, "consensus" POV (because obviously everyone is absolutely correct in their own minds), they have to go into our articles and "correct" them. Unfortunately, Wikipedia does not lead scholarship - we follow. They need to go fix the settler colonial bias in their fields directly rather than using Wikipedia to do so. If they are successful, we will automatically follow their scholarship. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/my edits) 04:41, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
    If it wasn't clear, I do think Wikipedia has racist biases over and above that of the literature. I'm happy with us being scrutinised. But I don't see effective systemic critique being done by just describing some things that happened on the website (which anybody could see—it's public information) and naming a lot of individual editors. It could be done, for instance, by analysing the sources used in articles about North American history from 1600 to 1800. Or making a persuasive argument about our interpretation of "reliability" and the types of knowledge we don't accept (e.g. oral tradition). Or in many other ways. However, we do already have quite a density of research about Wikipedia in academia, lots of it fundamentally flawed or just not useful or actionable. — Bilorv (talk) 06:29, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Courtesy pings in case editors are not aware they are named in this Signpost story: @Yuchitown, Gwillhickers, Freol, Pingnova, and Mark Ironie: Clayoquot Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:04, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Oops, misspelled @Freoh: so re-pinging. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:06, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Some researcher should do a study of shoddily written academic papers as demonstrated by Keeler's conflicted pseudo-scholarship. Carlstak (talk) 15:25, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
  • The paper directly accusing editors of being "settler nationalists" is absolutely insane to me, in what world is that proper academic practise? The topic areas in question, indigenous history and culture, specifically that of north America in this case, do have some major problems, but backing up LTAs and casting accusations and insults are absolutely unacceptable answers to those problems. The paper does propose an actual solution, but it is not viable for Wikipedia (or any of the projects under the foundation). I am greatly concerned that this was an accepted and published piece of scholarship. Clone commando sev (talk) 01:20, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
  • There seems to be "retaliation" against Native topics since this paper was published. An admin removed Native American tribal citizenship from MOS:CITIZEN without discussion (later restored and discussed) and another editor, who is a top editor on this site, after getting involved in a discussion on Genocide of Indigenous peoples, keeps removing the style guides pertaining to the capitalization of Indigenous when referring to people from WP:Indigenous without discussing. As an enrolled Native American editor who has contributed a lot to this site about my tribe's history and culture, it's difficult to be sidetracked and sucked into dealing with editors who remove guidelines for dubious reasons; the guidelines are meant to help newbies to Native topics write better articles, not "right great wrongs" as some people use as a reason to delete. And as an FYI, I've been contacted a few times from other journalists about what's happening on Wikipedia about this topic, so I don't think it's ending with this paper nor do I think this letter in response really helps anything other than an ego response.  oncamera  (talk page) 04:07, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
    WP:INDIGENOUS was added without discussion, you can't add a guideline without any discussion then complain when it's removed without discussion. Guidelines need consensus to be added and this one had none. Traumnovelle (talk) 04:36, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
    It has been discussed numerous times at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?fulltext=Search+archives&fulltext=Search&prefix=Wikipedia+talk%3AManual+of+Style%2FCapital+letters%2F&search=Indigenous&ns0=1  oncamera  (talk page) 04:54, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
    Without any clear consensus for it clearly: [4][5] [6] Traumnovelle (talk) 05:09, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
    Been there for a number of years, needs consensus and discussion to remove now.  oncamera  (talk page) 05:16, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
    If there was never a clear consensus for a "guideline" to begin with, it was never a guideline in the first place and should just be removed. (t · c) buidhe 23:32, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
    It doesn't have to be a guideline to be a practice on Wikipedia. I will always capitalize no matter what. The United Nations updated its editing manual to say it should be capitalized. We have styles guides within the US that says always capitalize and most media outlets in the US and Canada have stated they will always capitalize. The issue becomes when I am reverted simply because someone doesn't like it which seems to be the only evidence for why people are against it. --ARoseWolf 14:00, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Today I stumbled on this article, "Forging the medieval on Wikipedia", and I was reminded of Tamzin's op-ed when i saw "Academic integrity and Wikipedia guidance on ‘Conflict of Interest’ declarations invite that we state our positions. We are Wikipedia editors...". Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:26, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
    That seems quite a good example of explaining Wikipedia processes to others. CMD (talk) 02:24, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
  • @Donald Albury: Donald, did Keeler ever get back to you with that "list of the articles from which he says Native American history has been removed or blocked from being added" you mentioned on the talk page of WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America? It's been three weeks now. Carlstak (talk) 03:48, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
    He said he needed to pull together a list of the WP articles he had left out of his article, but I haven't heard anything else from him. Considering the possibility that he is aware of what has been said on WP, I'm not holding my breath. Donald Albury 12:40, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
    Yeah, not surprised at all, thanks. He did himself no favors publishing that lame hit piece disguised as "research". Carlstak (talk) 13:40, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Recent research: ChatGPT did not kill Wikipedia, but might have reduced its growth (1,598 bytes · 💬)

  • Neat summary! Thanks for writing this! Toadspike [Talk] 11:42, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • WikiChat is extremely interesting. I tried a few prompts against both it and ChatGPT. I underestimated ChatGPT a bit—it gave me accurate information on some niche topics I've written about in Wikipedia and worked out that I was asking trick questions about a famous person's death and a made-up TV episode. I forced it to hallucinate with a question about a fictional sportsperson. It also told me about the four colour theorem when I asked When was it proven that five colours are enough to colour a planar graph?
    WikiChat was much more concise, which could be good or bad depending on your use case, and I couldn't make it hallucinate. Its correct answer on the five colour theorem was particularly impressive in comparison. It gave a better answer to my question about when "Dumbledore killed Snape [sic]", but an incomplete answer about "the fastest sorting algorithm" ("The fastest sorting algorithm in practice is typically Quicksort ..." – but under what assumptions?). — Bilorv (talk) 19:06, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Special report: RetractionBot is back to life! (7,949 bytes · 💬)

  • Good idea for a bot - never heard about it or seen it in action, but I'm glad it's back up and running - kudos to those responsible! —Ganesha811 (talk) 12:41, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
    See Special:Contributions/RetractionBot if you want to see some of its edits. Though the categories mentioned in the article are the best way to check what currently needs attention. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:44, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Aren't retracted articles below unreliable sources in terms of quality? With an unreliable source, we don't know if the information is good or not; with a retracted article, we know that somebody has found a major problem. No? —Compassionate727 (T·C) 00:48, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    That's why we're flagging them. This way we don't cite them thinking they are reliable. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:22, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    Generally, but not always. Upon reading this article, I took a look at Category:Articles citing retracted publications, and clicked through to Autism therapies, a topic I don't know very much about. The relevant text in the article reads:

    In the early 1990s, it was hypothesized that autism could be caused or aggravated by opioid peptides like casomorphine that are metabolic products of gluten and casein. Based on that hypothesis, diets that eliminate foods containing either gluten or casein, or both, are widely promoted, and many testimonials can be found describing benefits in autism-related symptoms, notably social engagement and verbal skills. Studies supporting those claims had significant flaws, so those data were inadequate to guide treatment recommendations.

    The claim in the first sentence—that there was a hypothesis of a link between autism and metabolic products of gluten or casein—is supported by a 1991 paper. That paper isn't online, but the abstract says it is based on a study of 30 children. It doesn't really matter whether it is accurate, because it does establish what it is being cited for—that a hypothesis of the sort existed, not that it is true.
    The second sentence is uncited—but it does not seem particularly unbelievable that people jumped on a hypothetical link between gluten/casein metabolisation and autism and promoted diets around it of dubious credibility. Wikipedia has an entire category on autism-related pseudoscience, after all.
    The final sentence—saying that there isn't really any truth to the hypothesis—cites a 2006 review article and a now retracted Cochrane review originally published in 2008. Why was the Cochrane review retracted?

    This review was withdrawn from the Cochrane Library in Issue 4, 2019, as it has not been updated since its last revision in 2008. The editorial group responsible for this previously published document have withdrawn it from publication.

    They're not saying "this is debunked nonsense", they're saying "it's old and unless the article gets updated, our policy is to retract it". If an article is retracted because it's trash, then yes, that's a good reason to not rely on it. If an article is retracted because a diligent body like the Cochrane Collaboration are concerned that it might be in need of an update... that doesn't immediately make it useless. Editors have brains, and it is fine to use them. Carefully considering how Wikipedia uses it as a source and the reasons behind the article's retraction would be strongly advised in deciding whether to continue using it. If the article was retracted because it is a load of made up junk, that's a real problem. But that's not always going to be the case. —Tom Morris (talk) 16:33, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    The Cochrane review being flagged here is what I was referring to by "several Cochrane Reviews were flagged as retracted for technical reasons". Ideally, RetractionBot would leave those alone, and let User:Pi bot deal with Cochrane Reviews (see BRFA and Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Cochrane update). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:50, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    It's incredibly bad luck that I happened to randomly choose this as an example then. I'm glad people who actually know something about these topics are thinking hard about it. Between the rapid rise in conspiracy theories, the replication crisis and the preprint-to-tweet pipeline that flourished during the peak years of COVID, knowing stuff seems to have had a tough time recently—any effort to try and fix that that is commendable. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:17, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
    I'd argue it was good luck. I didn't have room in the piece to got into the nitty gritty, and didn't really know how to summarize the issue concisely and intelligibly. But here, with more space, you summarized it better than I ever could. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:10, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
    (edit conflict)Tom Morris well, you've just cited the exact article which is partially why the bot stopped running in the first place and has been causing me struggles since - see User talk:RetractionBot#How to avoid an edit warring bot and (more recently) Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine#Dealing with Cochrane Review retractions. The consensus over there, seemed/seems to be that the 2008 paper had not been withdrawn, but I'm still trying to get my head around that and other papers and exactly how they've handled it before I actually process Cochrane Review stuff! Mdann52 (talk) 16:52, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    I'm personally just tempted to remove all retracted notices from Cochrane Reviews and let Pi bot deal with it. But we should have that discussion at WT:MED. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:04, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Currently resisting the temptation to wikilink humans like you to Viewers like you. → FeRDNYC (talk) 04:59, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
    Instead, I diddled the formatting of the example references; see edit summary for details/justification. FeRDNYC (talk) 05:11, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Wow this is a real public service, thank you to all involved. Innisfree987 (talk) 07:56, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Great article! Frostly (talk) 17:37, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Technology report: New Page Patrol receives a much-needed software upgrade (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-06-08/Technology report

Traffic report: Chimps, Eurovision, and the return of the Baby Reindeer (325 bytes · 💬)

Props for the Pixies shoutout. Just Step Sideways from this world ..... today 17:53, 10 June 2024 (UTC)


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