User talk:Piotrus

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Reasons for my raising wikistress:

Some general observations on Wikipedia governance being broken and good editors trampled by the system

Wikipedia is a kawaii mistress :)

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Gediminas Žiemelis

Hi again Piotrus. I am writing this as a gentle reminder for you to take a look at an edit request I posted at Talk:Gediminas_Žiemelis#Addition_to_Biography_section. I wrote to you a few days ago, but the page has since been archived, and I am a little worried you may have forgotten about it. This is the link to my previous post to you:User_talk:Piotrus/Archive_69#Gediminas_Žiemelis Thanks again. Agne for ASG (talk) 18:33, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

@Agne for ASG Dear Agne, I am afaid I am just too busy with other items to devote much time to this. Have you asked for help at WT:LITHUANIA and/or WT:WPBIO? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:50, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks so much for the suggestions to help find another editor, and for letting me know that you are busy! All the best, Agne for ASG (talk) 09:55, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Oxford (toy company)

Hello! Your submission of Oxford (toy company) at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there at your earliest convenience. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 02:57, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Stuff of no relevance to the community

I assume this complaint is about the m:Knowledge Equity Fund. I think the WMF has struggled to articulate the purpose of the Knowledge Equity Fund. Perhaps I will be able to do better.

• The problem statement is: "Academic and mass media representation of marginalized communities remains insufficient, which in turn limits citations and primary/secondary sources for us to build from".
  • Relevance to Wikipedia: Wikipedia editors can't always write the articles we think are important (e.g., we should have articles like Gender inequality in the United States for every country), or we feel like our articles are weak (e.g., examples in articles are all from the US and UK), because enough reliable sources don't exist. This is particularly true for developing countries, where people's everyday sources are often WP:SPS or WP:QUESTIONABLE sources like social media or oral knowledge.
• The action is: Give money to groups that write more formal reliable sources, in the hope that they will write more.
  • Example: Give money to Arab Reporters in Journalism, which trained Arabic-speaking journalists in how to do investigative reporting around inequality, promote free press, and stay safe.
  • Immediate result: Their journalists wrote reliable sources such as these about how sexism, racism, disability, etc. affects people in their countries.
  • Hoped-for long-term result: These sources will inform and inspire other sources. The journalists will produce better sources for the rest of their careers.
  • Relevance to Wikipedia: Wikipedia editors will have more reliable sources for articles like Xenophobia and racism in the Middle East.

I don't know if you remember the kerfuffle around the article about Donna Strickland. The short story is that we didn't have the sources, so we deleted the article. When she won the Nobel Prize, the Twitterverse lit up with journalists complaining that Wikipedia was so biased that it didn't think she was worth an article. The WMF's Katherine Maher rather pointedly asked these journalists how Wikipedia's volunteers were supposed to write an article about Strickland if the journalists hadn't provided the sources that editors need for BLPs.

The situation is complicated. We might begin with wondering how the journalists came to notice that there was no article about Strickland. The likely answer is: the journalists use Wikipedia as their own source, and they were upset that, with no Wikipedia article, their "quick" article on the award was unexpectedly going to require more time and effort. We can't write the article until they give us the sources, but they can't write the sources unless someone gives them the money.

I believe that this incident is the source of the Knowledge Equity Fund. To get the Wikipedia articles, we need sources. To get the sources, someone has to pay for them. IMO the Knowledge Equity Fund should be viewed, especially from the POV of the English Wikipedia, as a way for the WMF to – ethically, at arm's length or more distantly, with no obligation for the journalists to produce sources we can use, and absolutely no obligation, or even encouragement, for us to use anything that is produced – exactly the kind of sources that the English Wikipedia frequently claims to want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:02, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about this. Your argument about creating sources is interesting. However:

• I do remember that kerfuffle, and I find your criticism of journalists interesting and insightful. However, my conclusion differs. The journalists are paid-for professionals working for paid-for companies. I know that many news sites are struggling with their income due to issues such as folks increasingly consuming free media and blocking ads, etc. However, I do not think it is our responsibility to rescue their businesses (some of which are doing well and are profitable). In addition to new business models (ex. Bellingcat) we have Wikinews). If WMF wants people to write up news stories - fine, throw money at Wikinews first. Wikipedia (Wikimedia) volunteers work for free, we get donations to improve our infrastructure (code, etc.). To send this money to paid-for professionals at media companies sounds just... wrong. And if we send it to volunteers at some NGOs, well, why not invest more in Wikisource? We could brainstorm how to revive this, for example by hiring some interns who are often terribly treated and underpaid at traditional workplaces.
• now, I might be more amenable to support KEF and like (i.e. outside NGOs) if the outcome (in terms of "Relevance to Wikipedia", because other points are simply not relevant for us as a movement or organization, i.e. mission creep) was better. You point out to [1]. Let's take a look. The first thing I noticed is "All rights reserved © ARIJ". So the content they produce is not compatible with us. Why WMF cannot require that recipients of our grants produce freely licensed content? Where on that website is acknowledgement of our support? Also, which of the articles there were produced with our grant? I.e. how are we tracking if we are getting value for our $ spent? Usage of this source is very small. ARIJ received $250,000. I am counting NINE uses of this website in our mainspace articles. So, we paid roughly 25k for a single reference? Sorry, but I am not sold. If ARIJ is the showcase example, that I stand by my view that KEF was terribly designed, has been a total waste of money, and needs to be stopped ASAP.

_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:20, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

It's very tempting to nitpick this, but I don't think that the details are the big issue.

I think there's a lot of room for people to disagree about whether this was the best use of the money. What I'm concerned about is this persistent myth that a grant program that produces reliable sources has nothing to do with Wikipedia.

IMO you are free to believe that it was a bad idea. That's a matter of opinion, and everyone's entitled to their own opinions. If you had said it was a completely misguided effort, I wouldn't have cared in the least. But you have made a claim of fact (i.e., that it is irrelevant to Wikipedia), and that claim is not true. Getting more sources is relevant to Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:47, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

DYK for Game board

On 3 June 2024, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Game board, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that scholars disagree on whether the earliest-known game boards (example pictured) date to the Neolithic or the Early Bronze Age? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Game board. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Game board), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Z1720 (talk) 00:02, 3 June 2024 (UTC)