User talk:Jimbo Wales

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WP fixed for https/IPv6 pageview stats

This is just an FYI to relay the news that future stats.grok.se pageview counts are hopefully fixed now, and will, today, be re-including views via https-protocol links or any views by IPv6-format IP addresses. As promised, on 10 May 2013, by Diederik (User:Drdee) of the Analytics Team @WMF, the logged page requests were studied, and several software changes were made, to restore the pageview entries and fix related problems on 14 May, within just 4 days. I thanked him for the quick fix, as expecting a 2-week delay for some software-update cycle. Plus, note how two major populations of readers had been omitted from counts, not just https-protocol viewers (of the bogus Google-https links), but also anyone reading pages over an IPv6 address had missing pageviews.
Recent pageview tests confirmed other "missing" pageviews were not due to https-protocol omissions, because the totals were still hundreds too low after https-views had been discounted. With the recent fix to GWTW, renamed temporarily as "Gone with the Wind (1939 film)", the pageviews reported by stats.grok.se totalled only 3,600-3,800/day, as compared to former levels over 4,500/day for the GWTW film. The mystery remained about hundreds of missing readers, because we did not realize IPv6 pageviews had also been omitted. However, tonight, at 01:00 UTC, the 15 May pageview counts should return near March-2013 levels for many of the 300+ major articles which still have Google-https links, plus the thousands of other pages/images wikilinked from those articles. Meanwhile, the Google-https links remain firm (but counted) in search-results, while some Mobile-site pages "en.m.wikipedia.org/*" are still listed separately in Google, confusing many people, plus who has time to think about all these mega-problems even if they were simple, rather than intertwined complexities. More later. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:50, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

• Confirmed https pageviews resumed 14 May 2013: I have run tests (on 15 May 2013) to verify exact pageview counts for either http or https-protocol, pages or images, on both enwiki and dewiki (German WP also fixed). The pageview data logs, such as for stats.grok.se, have been fixed (at 18:44, 14 May 2013) to re-enable the https/ip6 stream to webstatscollector, where Google https-protocol links, for over 300 major enwiki articles (see stats: 201305/Email or 201305/Parabola or 201305/Shakira, and thousands of wikilinked pages), had been 55%-80% under-reported during late March, April and early May (see essay: wp:Google https links). The typical pageview counts, from March 2013, have resumed in pageviews, as 2x-3.5x times higher for https-prefix pages/images, during 15 May 2013. German WP pageviews were also fixed for different pages (see stats: /de/201305/Euklidischer Raum "Euclidean Space" or /de/201305/Oval). All https page requests had been omitted during 26 March 2013 to 18:44, 14 May 2013, and so there will be permanent low spots in the pageview stats of some pages during those 50 days (~7 weeks), for various articles, images, talk-pages, templates or categories which were viewed mostly via https-protocol links on some of those 50 days. Many thousands of pages/images were not affected, and those pageviews will seem relatively stable during that 50-day period. As of 15 May 2013, the http/https pageviews have been re-confirmed to log exactly "to the penny" and so, if a page/image was viewed 17x times during a day, it will show a total of exactly 17 pageviews for that day. -Wikid77 06:39, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

• • Seems to be OK again, thanks: First article where this was spotted is back at old levels, 4 times as high as during the past few weeks. Fram (talk) 07:42, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Thanks for your diligent work on this, Wikid77. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 11:53, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Well, I was surprised how many people still think pageviews are unimportant (and it took several people to keep complaining about the low pageviews to get them fixed), while some editors were decidedly ignoring or ridiculing all worries about more pages (over 600) dropping to low pageviews (including "Cancer" or "email" or "Oxygen" or "Shakira" or "Calculus" or "Lady Gaga" or "Film noir" or "Lolita" or "Alan Turing" or "American football" or "Geometry" or "Basketball" or "Hexagon" etc.). I guess we are seeing more direct evidence of the "age-old" warning: unless customers (the "readers") are directly mentioned in a computer system's goals or priorities, they will be ignored by pressures to appease worker hobbies rather than the customers. That also explains the self-focused wp:Data hoarding to create lists or giant navboxes, which few people would read. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:11, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

• Late pageviews after 23:30 seem logged next day: As another issue in verifying the exact counts for current pageviews, I have noticed several days where pageviews made after 23:30 UTC, did not get logged until the next day. I am thinking there is some time of "buffering delay" where the queue of page-request entries gets tallied, to update the daily counts for stats.grok.se, soon after midnight UTC, but that might cause most/all pageviews after 23:30-23:45 to get counted on the next calendar day. However, further tests failed to find the pageviews on either day (as if pageviews after 23:30 were lost), and so more tests are needed. More later. -Wikid77 01:28/20:40, 18 May, 18:42, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Confirmed loss of new-messages notifications

Within the past weeks at wp:PUMPTECH, more people have been complaining about yet another, yet more questionable, unneeded changes to the Wikipedia user-interface features, and the omission of the age-old  new-messages barline  was noted as a problem, with the new Special:Notifications(?) stuff. Some browsers give no notification, but show instead "(1)" [message] in the menu. I am thinking, of writing a blurb, to encourage former editors to return:

"Come back again to Wikipedia, where nothing works as it used to,

except severe limits in template operation or nesting, and nothing

seems intuitive now, but there are rulespam diatribes everywhere."

I think if vandals actively invented ways to make Wikipedia more difficult or confusing, for the greatest number of editors, I can't imagine better vandalism than rejacking the user-login dialog, redropping the 180-day login to 30-day timeouts (during edit-preview), dropping the new-messages bar for user-talk, removing the special-characters copy/paste box (wp:PASTE), removing fast Classic or Nostalgia browser skin, showing 2-page rulespam for every edit, or shifting the "[edit]" button away from the right-side of headers. It reminds me of anti-virus software which is so slow and disruptive to screen formats, wanting to be installed on every computer, that it has become a virus in its own right, delaying user actions, while trying to get infected into every other computer. Meanwhile, people have begged to fix "edit-conflict" to auto-correct and simply re-insert the non-interleaved text sections, but instead, we get suppression of the new-messages bar as a so-called improvement. This has been a general mood at wp:PUMPTECH, and I think you can see why techically-minded editors view the many such changes as excessive annoyance, where they spend hours discussing ways to un-rejack the features to simulate the old operations. It has reached the point where asking for important fixes is like asking a used-car salesman to fix the brakes on a car. It's just not a priority, despite the need for reliable brakes, it does not matter enough. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:38, 15 May, 06:39, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

This is a very pessimistic complaint, and I would like to contradict it. But I can't. The orange message bar has been restored in some form, but the astonishing thing is that it was removed in the first place, (1) without adequate prior notification, (2) without any regard for the disruptive effect on new users who don't know they have a personal talk page or the fact that then vandals can claim convincingly that they did not see the warnings, (3) without a solution for the problem of lumping together talk page messages and esoteric notifications such as "someone linked to a page you created", (4) without testing the feature on screenreader users (for whom the new Echo notification is even less apparent, and appears in a confusing area near the bottom of the page).

The obvious conclusion seems to be that user interface decisions are being taken by people who have no serious understanding of Wikipedia's processes (see 2 and 3), are not doing due diligence before changing a top 10 website (see 4), and have a problem with illusory superiority (see 1). I hope I am wrong. Hans Adler 20:27, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

• We need another method to prioritize real issues and get them improved: It is only pessimistic if considered hopeless, but instead it is realistic, and there are alternatives. Obviously, it is a top priority to keep the new-messages bar (to alert for thousands of new-user "improper edits" or for busy editors who do not check talk-pages every few hours). There should have been a setting in Special:Preferences to "Hide new-messages bar" such as for admins or wikignomes who get new messages every 10 minutes. There has been massive effort invested into new features, such as the Special:Notifications to contact each user when their username gets wikilinked, so we know WP has the resources to solve problems. Again, fixing the most-common "edit conflict" scenarios to auto-correct, where a user inserts a reply message into an active talk-page or changes a few words into a re-edited article, would be a relatively simple task, compared to rewriting the user-login dialog or implementing the score-tag "<score>" (April 2013) to generate a cached-image for a printed staff of musical notes. We need to focus on bigger issues. Definitely, more people need to voice concerns at the Bugzilla-sort-out meetings, etc. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:11, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

You ain't seen nuthin yet: WP:FLOW. Johnuniq (talk) 00:15, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

• Fortunately the WP:FLOW software doesn't exist yet: So, people wary of WP:FLOW messages can be reminded to try LiquidThreads ("LikewiseDreads") to see how slow and rambling and no View-history provided for message edits, unable to see who changed what when. Meanwhile, focus on autocorrection for edit-conflicts. -Wikid77 (talk) 04:49, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

• Anyone who attends any sort of IT course understands the basic flow diagram - Analysis > Design > Test Implementation > Testing > Feedback > Implement Live. Uniquely amongst top 10 websites, your employees appear to have forgotten this basic concept, and instead have modified it to the following complete screw-up; Analysis (amongst no-one who actually uses the site) > Design (based on Analysis of ... er ... no-one) > Implement Live. This has therefore gained the additional stage of "everyone who actually uses the site telling them they've fucked up". Yet oddly, no-one appears to be willing to actually (a) adnit the problems, or (b) fix the problems. Well done. Black Kite (talk) 00:39, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I can see your point. I also see WMF projects as having a smaller budget and nothing to lose. Wikipedians should accept lower budget upgrades and learn to adapt to them. Turnkey upgrades are for those that can't handle driving a car for two miles with a flat tire. If you don't like the ride then get out and hitchhike.--Canoe1967 (talk) 23:31, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

• People should run for the board on a sane technology platform. Remember, the biennial Board of Trustees election is coming up. II | (t - c) 00:42, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I am thinking if more people could re-emphasize what problems bother them, and if there were a recognized list of "Top 10 New useful features" then, perhaps, the whole organization (with the developers) could easily remember, "Oh right, many people are stunned by frequent edit-conflicts, especially adding phrases into hot-topic articles, or trying to reply during a busy conversation" and so something like having an Edit-merge preview page, rather than only Edit-conflict previews, could help numerous editors to better cope when trying to update busy pages of current-affairs topics. Instead, Wikipedia seems to break down, or crater, as unable to inter-connect contributions from multiple editors when a major event occurs. We need to find more ways to prioritize important improvements, over someone-might-like-this-feature enhancements. -Wikid77 01:28, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I assume you mean breaking news events. That is a common problem when CNN comes on at 10pm with updates and too many want to 'scoup' their edit into the article. I doubt spending time, money, and effort will ever change that. It will just be bingo as to who can edit/save fastest no matter how much we try to make a level field for all editors.--Canoe1967 (talk) 01:37, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

• Most edit-conflicts are medium-paced, minor & fixable: Actually, in tests of busy discussions, the edit-conflicts have been auto-corrected easily, because there is ample time to re-preview and re-SAVE an Edit-merge when conflicts only occur every few minutes. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:40, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Inappropriately named files on Commons

Hi Jimmy, thanks for coming across to Commons to advise us that some images need renaming. You are right that naming our male genitalia photos with "cock" in the name is probably not appropriate. We normally ask that inexperienced editors use the {{rename}} template to alert us to such issues, but it would be great to get you more involved in Commons (as it would be great to get other editors involved). As I noted here, I have used admin discretion and have given you the filemover right, as I don't believe you'll abuse that tool. :)

By doing this, when you are looking at penis photos on Commons, you will be able to do this on the spot. Just be sure to look at our file renaming policy before helping the community with renames.

Again, I appreciate you bringing that issue to the community's attention, and perhaps we will see more of you on Commons too. Drop us a line if we can be of further assistance. Cheers, Russavia (talk) 20:11, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi again Jimmy, sorry to come back here, I know you are a busy guy, and you would probably rather leave things like this to community to deal with.

But, earlier today I posted this to the thread you started on Commons, in which I suggested we use a colour picker to determine the pantone/HEX/RGB colour of the penis and rename them that in order to avoid having to deal with the "colour" issue. I thought this issue was jokingly raised by another editor, I didn't see that you yourself brought that issue up -- I simply saw the penis-cock issue that you raised, not noticing that you thought "black" might be racist. So sorry if you saw that and thought I was taking the piss out of you; we try to keep a jovial, mellow atmosphere on Commons, and that was just part of that. But as it was a serious concern on your behalf, we should look at it seriously.

Here's the dilemma, I'm not really sure how this could reasonably be addressed. Obviously we want to take your opinion into account, so perhaps you could make a suggestion on how to name such penises? Obviously calling it a Negro penis is out of the question because it is quite an offensive term. Using the word "coloured" might be considered offensive, especially if we were to rename a South African penis that way given the stigma of that term during apartheid. Calling it a black penis might be considered offensive by say Australian Aboriginals considering the history behind its use, although acceptance to its usage is increasing. Looking here on this project, I see Black people states this is an everyday English term for, well, black people, and there isn't really any racist overtone to it's usage (unless it is mean to be by way of its usage).

But I decided to check off this project on a site where I know people upload photos of their penis as part of their profiles, and see how it's done there. When I edit/create my profile on Gaydar, maybe you've heard of it, the options for ethnicity are:

• "Asian" - obviously means say "East Asian" (Chinese/Japanese/Filipino/etc)
• "South Asian" - obviously means from the Indian sub-continent
• "Caucasian" - obviously means what could be called "white people"
• "Hispanic" - obviously means from Latin America
• "Middle Eastern" - obviously means someone from Middle East (usually say Turkish)
• "Arab" - obviously means Arab
• "Mixed Race" - obviously means inter-racial
• "Other" - every thing else
• "Black" - obviously for everything covered in "black people"
• "Rather not say" - in my experience this is an option that is chosen by people who want to either hide their ethnicity for fear of not hooking up, or the odd closet case who wants to keep anyone from knowing that they are, well, queer.

Given that site was founded in South Africa, and they have always used black instead of coloured (or other such terms) I think that "black penis" would be fine. I'm not sure how it is on straight websites, but if it's important, you might want someone else to check that to confirm. But if you still believe that this is an issue that could be construed as racist, the last thing we would want is for the issues I've raised from being publicised; given the recent events on how categorisation on this project is sexist and broken.

I'm sorry that I've come to your talk page with this, I know it might be embarrassing under the circumstances for me to be asking you to discuss penises as openly as I am, but we really need to know about the issues above. If you would prefer to discuss this in private, feel free to contact me, and I'd be happy to discuss this and any other "penis"/"sexuality" related issues that you'd like to get off your chest. I'm all ears. Cheers, Russavia (talk) 17:01, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Ignoring the fact that there is no objective criteria that would allow the cultural heritage of a human penis to be determined from an image...Under what circumstances would the information be useful? What are the anatomical differences between Asian and Hispanic penises? — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 19:38, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Are you arguing that photos of caucasian penises are sufficient and we don't need photos of penises of other races? -mattbuck (Talk) 20:54, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely not, but the question does raise another issue; How do we label the images in a manner that avoids representing one as the "standard" by which all others are judged? Russavia's suggestion may actually be a good solution to the problem. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 21:40, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

• Btw there is a weird thing over there. When you search 'purpose' you get a very vulgar image at the top of the search. The same happens with 'result' but the image is File:PieCrust masked.jpg. It may be just a glitch but it could be someone playing with the search function as well. The two search words are not found anywhere on the file pages. If someone is playing and gets caught I hope I get to hear about it. Someone may wish to delete the one image before the Streisand effect happens.--Canoe1967 (talk) 10:22, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • There's probably a redirect or piped link to it somewhere. Peter James (talk) 13:45, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

AfD for comprehensiveness of article on controversial subject seems contrary to WP goal

Editors object to an article being comprehensive. Being informative is confused with promotion. An AfD is pending on Success Academy Charter Schools, which are highly controversial in New York City education circles, as is its founder/CEO, a city politician who said she'll likely run again. An admin wants a speedy deletion and some editors want stubification. An AfD on the article about the founder led to keeping after major chopping (I largely restored after talk). Talk is ignored by almost everyone except me. Good faith and civility are disappearing. Please help. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:05, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that the proposal for speedy deletion was inappropriate, and that AfD process that is now in progress is the correct approach. However, both the length of the article and the length of its principal proponent's comments in AfD are too long. The principal proponent's comment in AfD appear to be a filibuster. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:29, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Not a filibuster: Everything was on point and when charges are made we need to respond in anticipation that it will be credited. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:30, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I doubt it will be deleted. I think the main issue is that "the sum of all knowledge" has turned to "the sum of all knowledge we can easily source on the internet". I have seen similar articles that start very large and get shaved down to one sentence/one source. It has 250,000 bytes now with 472 individual references. I can see why it can be so large being a 'different' school in NYC. It will have lots of comprehensive content that is well sourced because of that. The main problem may be that many editors will compare the article size to there own schools. Your school may be smaller but at the same time may rate a larger article. The article may be doomed for a huge butchering not for the sake of the project but because it just seems too large for an article on a school. Welcome to Wikipedia.--Canoe1967 (talk) 17:33, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Plausible, the comparison to other schools. I also used offline books and not all knowledge, but I see your point. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:30, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Article size does not seem to be a clear indicator of importance or significance. See Bradfield College (I'm sure there are much better examples). --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:09, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

It looks a certainty from the AfD that the Success Academy Charter Schools article isn't going to be deleted. Instead, it will be reduced to a stub, and then rewritten as a proper encyclopaedic article, rather than the grossly-bloated collection of everything under the sun that it is now. There is nothing whatsoever in Wikipedia's 'goals' which justifies such a lengthy, rambling and trivia-filled rag-bag article, and it does a disservice to anyone actually interested in the subject to have to read through such endless waffle. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:25, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

You are, of course, completely misrepresenting why DGG took the article to AFD. Not because it is "comprehensive", but because several editors find its tone to be promotional, and because it is evidently being used as a WP:COATRACK. I skimmed through parts of the article, because it is nearly impossible to read as a whole, and found pointless trivia, a paragraph dedicated to pointing out people associated with these schools have Wikipedia articles, micro stub sections that have no point - "Governor" being one, "Congress" isn't much better. But perhaps most notably, the CEO, Eva Moskowitz, is mentioned one hundred and thirty one times. Many of those are preceded by "according to". That lends me to worry about POV, primary sources, and several other aspects of our alphabet soup of policies. Any concerns brought up seem to have been met with tl;dr responses that could quite accurately be described as filibustering. Truthfully, having now been alerted to this article, I find myself agreeing with those who want to torch it and start over. Resolute 22:35, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

No misrepresentation occurred. The nomination was not based on what subsequent editors at the AfD said, since they came after the nomination, unless they were in prior communication not at the article's talk page or AfD. If the article's tone is promotional, then surely someone can pick one sentence and write the same content with a nonpromotional tone; that hasn't been attempted with present content and that's why I don't think tone is the issue, but I appreciate your thought that it is. TLDR doesn't apply to answering charges with reasonable concision, as I did, because otherwise only charges and not disagreeing responses should be considered, producing bizarre results at best. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:30, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

@Nick Levinson. I added the commons media category to the article in external links. There is only one picture of your schools that I could find there. You could have some fun with students and faculty to take good school images and upload them. Have contests to get the best ones etc. You could also reward students by letting them choose images and add them to the article. The lucky ones get to choose the 'image of the day' type thing and change it in the article. I don't think this violates policy. They are also very welcome to take pictures for other articles as well. You will probably run into problems changing out the ones that have good pictures. Category:Wikipedia requested images has a whole bunch of articles that they can look through. I may actually create Category:Articles with lame images if it doesn't exist yet.--Canoe1967 (talk) 04:01, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not with the schools. If anyone wants to ask the schools they can, but school-submitted work would almost certainly be subject to COI and school-prepared work would need attribution in a caption as a primary source. The article briefly had an indoors photo with children combined with a logo such that each was about half the image; and somewhere in Wikimedia I raised a question about whether it was allowed because it was posted either as being in the public domain or under the standard Wikipedia licensing (I forgot which) but not under fair use, and I doubted the logo would have been released under the first two ways; another editor looked for but did not find a release on the schools' website and the image was shortly tagged and deleted from Wikimedia. I think I looked in Google long ago for free images but didn't find any. An image with children would also raise an issue about their rights of publicity that likely bars use of such images here. Since their schools are co-located, it may be that there wouldn't be many acceptable images that would be very different from the present one (I imagine that many of their schools have their logos on the outsides of buildings, often dull buildings, but that most other scenes or more interesting scenes would probably not qualify, but I have never been to any of their schools despite my relative proximity). However, relative to the article's eventual length, a few images would help; I just don't have anything more to offer. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:30, 17 May 2013 (UTC) (Corrected two misspellings: 16:38, 17 May 2013 (UTC))

Subjects are always allowed and encouraged to provide images for articles about them. I spam them with email almost daily. They get the same !vote as anyone else for inclusion though. Our aim it to have the best images available for inclusion. If they provide better than what we have then we are are pretty well forced to use them because consensus shouldn't decide on including images of lower quality. They would need to be a 'free licence' with 'consent' of indentifiable people when not taken in a place with public access and no expectation of privacy. I created File:Visual consent image.jpg that I hope commons will tweak and accept as an easier form of consent than the backlogged OTRS for images taken in private places. We would just need to do a 'stacked' upload like File:Pamela Reed 1977.JPG which has other versions of the same file to prove public domain through lack of copyright. I should actually write a wp:essay about image issues. Uploading, consent, licencing, copyright, public domain, and inclusion !votes, etc. We discovered a treasure recently with File:Nighthawks by Edward Hopper 1942.jpg that has been in the public domain since 1969ish and very few knew this or why. The place that owns it may be very choked when others clue in. They still licence it for big bucks to publish. They also sell prints, bags, and umbrellas of it, I think. If you, the schools, or any others would like to contact me for help with images for any articles then feel free to do so. The easiest way would be to create accounts at commons, read the 'images nutshell' that I hope to write, and just start uploading. Images can take a long time to delete once uploaded so that gives us time to sort out any upload boo-boos they may make. They can also create Flickr accounts for free. We can transfer from there as long as they don't use the NC or ND limits which we don't allow on commons. CC-by or CC-by-sa are the most common. I avoid the SA limit with my images because it may make it harder to combine and re-use my images.--Canoe1967 (talk) 17:45, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I didn't know subjects could provide photos of themselves and it's surprising if they can, since presumably they can alter it in Photoshop or Gimp in ways that would bar use or require disclosure if analogous alteration was done to text being submitted by a subject or, say, a publicist representing a subject (as for a movie star), which is why COI would apply to text, so I think it would apply to imagery (and I have been proceeding on that basis relevantly here).

I'm not going to ask the schools to submit photos. If you think it's a good idea to ask them, that's up to you, but I don't recommend it, because of COI.

With modern creative work, the lack of a copyright notice is irrelevant to copyright existing, since it exists upon creation of the work, even though adding the notice adds more protection for the owner. I don't know when copyright notice became optional (that has to do with a treaty), so I don't know whether that applies to the 1977 photo.

I don't know who had the right to renew an individual's copyright when the terms were 28 and 28 years, in that I'm not sure the right could not have been transferred outside of, say, a family of a deceased owner, to perhaps a gallery, although the owner under such a renewal would still be the original owner, so that someone else renewing would be likely to do so only if they held a license from which they could benefit if the copyright was renewed regardless of who did the renewing.

I did not try to sort out everything in the Hopper and Reed image deletion discussions to which you've already posted.

The right of privacy is important in many jurisdictions but the right of publicity is a separate right recognized under various terms in all states and sometimes in Federal law, and is especially important respecting children. Wikimedia, as of the last time I checked, does not have a system for registering publicity consents and relying on rights owners (maybe photographers) to keep those consents and make them available when Wikipedia asks maybe years later is probably too unreliable. Because liability attaches even when an advertisement is disguised as editorial content and COI editing can cause an advertisement to appear in Wikipedia and not be removed for a long time, we have to be extra cautious about using an image that might require written consent to publicity.

I'm dubious whether posing with a sign is legally equal to signing a consent and don't recall coming across that as a legal theory. I sit in a subway train with an advertisement behind my head and visible to passersby without that constituting my endorsement of what is advertised. I have seen film/video work being done and signs about consent being implied by a person walking somewhere that's public, but I don't know if that's binding; it may just be persuasive to a point, like clauses denying liability on tickets and packages, which are often without legal effect. Your sign's phrasing, especially "all involved with images of people in this picture", is legally vague and definitely needs tweaking, but that would not be hard.

Nick Levinson (talk) 17:49, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it does need tweaking and then I can print one. Like most lefthanded people my handwriting isn't the best. Most of our images are hosted at commons and I don't think enough are aware of using the 'personality' and 'consent' tags we have for them. I usually add them above the CC license as I did with File:Visual consent image.jpg because I feel we should make these two issues more prominent. Someone could actually create versions in bright red to make sure they are noticed. Copyright, consent, and personality rights are three very different issues and hopefully anyone that re-uses images from commons understands personality rights. Commons is only responsible for the first two and re-users for the third. We may not need an ironclad document to prove consent but my sign may stand up in court better than an email sent saying 'yes, it is me'. Mine would fail if I had someone that couldn't read English holding it. Commons does have issues, but as more learn the rules then the issues should lessen. I think I will start writing my image essay to put most of it in a nutshell instead of policy pages all over the WMF servers and legal documents all over the net. Someone claiming to be a friend of Talk:Quin Snyder said that Mr. Snyder didn't like his image here. We removed it and gave them almost a month to replace it. I even emailed his bosses but my English may have caused problems as I never heard back. I would rather see a doctored photoshop one then the one in the article now. Many of our images come from sites like Flickr where they could be doctored as well. I doubt subjects would doctor them too much. I had File:Kathy Hilton.jpg doctored at commons to remove lip glare. File:Leona Helmsley cropped mug.jpg is a crop from her mugshot that we could actually remove the lines on and simply include her height in the infobox. I see an all too common problem on en:wp with BLP infobox images. We keep uploading ones from fans as they get older and older. Then the day they die we replace them with youthful images. I fluked out with Malachi Throne and found a PD image or two a week before he died. I think the media used the ones from commons in a few articles after he died. I still don't know if I should grayscale it to remove the sepia tone. I may ask opinions at help desk unless someone here can advise.--Canoe1967 (talk) 20:11, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Child protection

Jimmy, we need clarity that the Wikipedia:Child Protection policy applies to the uploading or inclusion of sexually explicit photos or videos of minors on Wikipedia. Current written policy does not address whether users can upload (or include from Commons) sexually explicit images without any evidence that the subjects are of legal age. In my opinion, such images are a way to facilitate inappropriate adult-child relationships, but it would be easier to clean up this place if the rule was made very clear. Can you have legal staff review this? Can you apply some force of logic to the argument in the interrim? Most of our sexuality articles use drawings or paintings that don't raise any issue, or else they have medical type photos that may be nude or graphic, but are not sexually explicit. I don't think the encyclopedia would be harmed at all by raising standards in this regard. Jehochman ^Talk 23:42, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you completely, but wonder - is this an actual problem? (I'm talking here about English Wikipedia primarily, the conversation about Commons is of course a different one to some extent.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 07:45, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately it is a problem here on Wikipedia. Some of the sexually explicit images on Commons are being migrated into Wikipedia articles. For example you could review the conversation I'm having at Talk:Fingering (sexual_act)#Legal issue regarding my edit [1]. The article ejaculation has images of somebody's penis, and we have no idea how old that person is. Could it be one of our 15 year old editors? (The uploader's user page on commons has a solicitation. [2])The burden should be on those uploading or using sexually explicit images or videos of people to provide evidence of the age (not the burden on the editor removing an image to prove the subject is under age). While I understand that Wikimedia doesn't want to admit responsibility for section 2257 compliance, it is certainly possible to establish a policy requiring age verification based on a moral obligation to protect minors from being exploited. Just add a line to Wikipedia:Child Protection that says something like, "to protect minors from exploitation, all sexually explicit images in Wikipedia must have evidence that the subject(s) are at least 18 years old". This would also have the benefit of cleaning up Commons if the policy were extended there. People keep asking why Wikipedia is such a hostile place for female editors; the excessive and irresponsible uploading of porn is part of it. Jehochman ^Talk 11:09, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Have you tried that approach you suggest and then see how it flies beginning on the talk page of the policy, perhaps an RfC, etc.? It could be relatively easy to change that, ... and then you go to the harder row of enforcement (note you are likely to get questions about the meaning of explicit, and whether that is just left to consensus or not). Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:19, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

"Sexually explicit" has a legal definition 18 USC 2256 which we can import, and while there may be some edge cases requiring discussion, a policy would let us clean up the easy cases quickly. I've tried initiating discussions at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#New criteria 2 and Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#New criteria, but ran into objections, most notably that Wikipedia:Child protection already covered age requirements. Unfortunately, when I try to use Wikipedia:Child protection as justification to remove problematic images, editors then say, "The policy doesn't say that". The policy need to be made clear on the issue of age verification. Jehochman ^Talk 11:32, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

OK. So, shouldn't you address it at Child Protect laying it out in a well sourced and un-provocative fashion (eg here are the issues, here is what should be considered, here is a proposal)? Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:44, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I was under the impressions that WP:CHILDPROTECT had substantial input WMF, and was not entirely derived from the community. My request is for Jimmy to bring this matter to WMF legal's attention so they can draft a suitable addition to the policy that does not complicate WMF's legal obligations. This is the place where our policies intersect with the law, and we need the lawyers to check it carefully. Jehochman ^Talk 11:49, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I know that Geoff is very busy and also the WMF is understandably eager that policies be developed with strong community consensus and strong legal foundation as twin pillars of a wise and ethical approach to these and related matters. Therefore, I propose that we follow Alanscottwalker's suggestion and hash out some exact wording that we in the community would like to see, and then run it past WMF legal to make sure it meets their approval as well. (Although note well: it is extremely unlikely that a policy like this could cause problems for the WMF - NOT having a policy like this seems much more likely to cause problems, but IANAL.) As with many such things, my personal view is that going too quickly to "legal reasoning" tends to take the conversation down a bad path, as people start to think that the point is mere compliance with the law. Of course we do want to comply with the law, but we ALSO want to adhere to the highest ethical standards, which should generally far exceed legal minimums.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:10, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Link: Wikipedia_talk:Child_protection#Images. Jehochman ^Talk 13:11, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

This isn't up to the community. I've already seen what loose reasoning legal has applied regarding the display of the Virgin Killer album "art". I recognize we're not in a position of liability hosting that image, but it kind of, let's say, set the standard that others feel can occasionally be breached, if for no other reasons than to test the boundaries. We're either in compliance with the laws or we aren't, and that sort of thing isn't up to community debate. What your suggesting is just going to be a big dramafest, when what's needed is simply an implementation of law and reminders that anyone that isn't willing to be in compliance can go find a new playground. I'm already thinking that there may be a half dozen contributors at Commons that need to be given a free pass to troll elsewhere...I'm not paying for them to have free storage space for unused, unencyclopedic "art" that doesn't even have any proof that the subject in the image is of legal age.--MONGO 13:35, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Jehochman, I am pleased to see that these concerns are finally getting some serious attention. As you probably know, I have been trying to draw attention related issues on Commons for some time. Let's take a closer look at your example from Fingering (sexual_act) - File:Fingering close-up.jpg. This file was uploaded to Commons from Flickr by Commons admin TwoWings, one of several Commons admins who have worked diligently to increase the percentage of sexual content on Commons. (Note that Flickr, unlike Commons, would not have shown this image to users who did not wish to see sexually explicit material and would have provided a way, unlike Commons, to report the image if it had not been properly categorized as sexually explicit.) The Flickr account is now closed (which is often a sign that the images have been scraped from elsewhere). This image is actually part of a larger set of images, posted elsewhere on the internet before it was uploaded to Flickr or Commons. I think it is unlikely that a lower resolution copy was posted on Flickr by the creator (in this case, the subject herself). We have no way of knowing if the subject of this set of images consented to it being distributed, or if this is "revenge porn". In cases like this, consent is more of a concern to me than the possibility that the subject was underage (although that is a reasonable concern). Delicious carbuncle (talk) 13:47, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I've already nominated the image for deletion for those reasons, actually. --Conti|✉ 14:23, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Note that Flickr, unlike Commons, would not have shown this image to users ... Also flickr has on every page a link to a page where anyone can report an image to trained flickr staff. One of the options on that page "Other concerns" is monitored 24/7 the underage stuff gets deleted within hours of reporting. Flickr staff are also in direct contact with law enforcement, and as said above have the training to deal with these types of issues. John lilburne (talk) 15:01, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

You're surely not suggesting we just do it properly are you? I'm sure that must already have been considered, and there are good reasons we can't. Begoon ^talk 15:32, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

While we must stick to the law, we must also consider that the relevant laws are motivated by particular moral values which don't always have a direct relation to "child protection". Sometimes in the US, children are actually jailed for uploading pictures of themselves because they violate child porn laws by doing so. There can thus be a tension between sticking to the law and actually protecting children. Count Iblis (talk) 15:45, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Despite that tension, we must, as you say, stick to the law. If that leads to children being jailed for posting explicit images of themselves here, that is a terrible result but not one that is of our making. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:17, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure you're probably right, CI, and I've heard that said before, but [3] gives me nothing (probably crap Goole-fu on my part), so if you can, would be nice - not doubting you at all, but I'd like to be appalled at a real case rather than an implication. DC is basically right, though, as you are. Begoon ^talk 16:25, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I understand some people who think children should not be prosecuted for downloading, posting, or texting explicit pictures of themselves to others under their own free will, but as DC stated- it's against the law. To me, at least, I see no connection to a conspiracty theory about the moral police that the children are being "jailed" (and I assume it would be juvinile detention at worse, not jail, most likely a PINS petition, Boys or Girlstown, or some sort of probation, and/or suspension from school). It is not a moral issue, it is a legal issue- it is illegal. Children KNOW it is illegal, if an adult were to ask for the same pictures they would know to report it. Because they are sending them of their own free will does not absolve them in the eyes of the law (only NAMBLA I assume would defend their right to do so). Frankly I dont care about children's "rights"; I care about what the black and white letter of the law states; if a child gets arrested for breaking the law, well they broke they law. We shouldnt craft our policies based on morals (or being against a certain religious groups morals) or feeling sorry for children, we should base them on the law.97.88.87.68 (talk) 20:04, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

There are the US laws to content with but we also need to take into account this whole issue of child protection in general which paradoxically includes the possibility of persecution for precisely uploading illegal pictures. This means that while we should remove illegal pictures, the child protection policy should focus on all aspects of this issue, which includes not just the danger posed by pedophiles, but also the fact that many countries have repressive laws, that children can be bullied by other children etc. etc. If we only take the law into account, we would not do a good job of preventing problems. Count Iblis (talk) 20:31, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Ok, CI. Give me the citation I asked for above for "Sometimes in the US, children are actually jailed for uploading pictures of themselves because they violate child porn laws by doing so." That's not a challenge - it's an illustration of how these conversations need to be held. If you can provide one, then the comment is worthy of further discussion - if not, well, we need to move past it for now, because otherwise anyone has a license to derail any discussion by throwing in any old guff. It may not be guff, as I said, I've heard it said before, but if you're serious about this, then those are the rules we need to play by. Otherwise it's a pointless opinion shop. Until there can be a proper, evidence based discussion, what both you or I say is worthless. I don't need to cite the law for you, I think, you know it. You're implying it should not be the be all and end all, so pony up - concrete examples of any child jailed by not being allowed to upload child porn, or by being reported to law enforcement for doing so. Then we have an issue to discuss. Dead end otherwise. Once we have the example you can explain how/whether it could have been prevented by a different approach, or we can discuss it. Sorry if that sounds uncharitable, but vague handwaving won't move us forward. Begoon ^talk 21:37, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Count Iblis, we are not in a position to know if the uploader of child pornography is an adult or the child themselves - lacking that information, I see no other option than removing it from public view and alerting the appropriate authorities in each and every case. Do you have another option? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 21:44, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

How about not letting the image reach public view in the first place? Hillbillyholiday ^talk 21:58, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

DC, we should remove problematic pictures, but we should do more than just sticking to the law; the current text of the policy page suggest that we have taken the wrong approach, i.e. the idea that by just sticking to the law as rigorously as we can we will automatically protect children the best we can. The section on advice to children which should be the main and most detailed section is very short. Begoon, I think there were such cases in Florida, no one may actually have been jailed, though. Count Iblis (talk) 13:55, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

See that's where these conversations always go wrong. Please don't take this as a criticism of you, but it's a great illustration of why we need to look at real evidence instead of what we think we know (perceived wisdom). You started by saying "Sometimes in the US, children are actually jailed for uploading pictures of themselves because they violate child porn laws by doing so." You thought you knew that was the case. I remembered hearing the argument before, somewhere. Now it turns out we were maybe both remembering uncorroborated stuff from somewhere or other. We simply cannot base important decisions on that sort of woolly premise. We've both possibly wasted many words on something that may be an urban myth. (It also may turn out to be true, and someone may pop in with a link, but my point still stands, even in that case - we should not have entertained the diversion until we had solid evidence.) Sometimes this happens purely by accident, as I assume it did here, but sometimes it is used as a deliberate diversionary tactic to derail a discussion. We can prevent that if we treat our discussions like we do our articles, and refuse to entertain supposition until it is supported by fact. </rant> Begoon ^talk 14:13, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the general point you are making, but then the details about such prosecutions are actually a side issue here. Obviously, you do have in the US legal system a different approach toward sexuality when it comes to people younger than 18 compared to Europe. And if you take a world wide view, you do see that the law on sexual matters in general (not just in relation to children) can be quite repressive. We're not talking about just a few countries here (e.g. the extreme cases of Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia), but many more Westernized countries like Dubai or Uganda have quite repressive laws. Count Iblis (talk) 16:35, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Count Iblis, I believe you have agreed, twice now, that WP must follow the law. The law of the United States, not Saudi Arabia. Given that, I'm not sure why you are going on about the possibility of prosecution of children for posting images of themselves. You may make an argument following the law is not ultimately in the best interest of a hypothetical child who has posted explicit sexual images of themselves on WP, but since we are agreed that WP should follow the law, that discussion would be a distraction from the real issue. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:47, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

• Child protection policy should also include some regulations to prevent bullying of children on the sites that belong to the Wikimedia Foundation because bullying is a big problem here. As it stands now the Foundation does absolutely nothing to stop bullying, and the Arbitration Committee protects bullies with the administrative tools instead of protecting children. 76.126.142.59 (talk) 16:35, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
• The dais, the ditch, and the roads: We may wish to start with three levels of arguments. The ditch being the lowest standard which includes interpretation or bending the road which is the laws. The dias we could peg somewhere between the top of the beanstalk and The Vatican. Once we create these three sections of the discussions then we populate them with their common arguments. The best outcome would be a second, and much higher road, that would be our accepted standards.--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:17, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • What?--MONGO 20:47, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Basically most of us know the points that will be brought up by all factions. It may be easiest to list them at the start and then hack away at them from there until consensus is reached on higher or lower accepted standards for en:wp and commons. I see no reason why we can't have a 'not allowed on en:wp' category at commons.--Canoe1967 (talk) 22:09, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I can list a million reasons why this is a horrible idea. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 19:00, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Child protection

This issue is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Child protection. Why don't we take this discussion there to avoid duplication? Robert McClenon (talk) 20:39, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Nonsense the last post there was 3.5 years ago. The discussion is here not there. John lilburne (talk) 20:54, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

That's a weird redirect due to case sensitivity. I have corrected it. There is discussion now that I have corrected the old weird redirect. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:57, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually it was the space after the colon that prompted the redirect. I've corrected the link and further directed the target but I have to say that I don't see the issue you raised as being equivalent to the discussion above. I'm not entirely convinced that it has merit as this is not a matter that a parent can overcome through permission. My76Strat (talk) 21:08, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

My question about parental consent was not related to the suggestion to go to the proper Wikipedia Talk page rather than using a user talk page to discuss procedural updates. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:11, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I've redirected to the entire page, not to the paragraph. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:12, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

My bad. My76Strat (talk) 21:20, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Why not take a full shortcut and delete images which can be judged with values from "ambiguous" to "inappropriate"? Wikipedia being better than Britannica because of all these images about sex and kinky stuff is just a joke, the real facts are that Wikipedia is indeed better than Britannica for the general population because it helps people solve their homework and check for quasi-correct facts when they have a question about them at any time during the day. Kord Kakurios (talk) 20:45, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

I saw you in a video I watched in U.S History class about the North VS the South in the mid 1800's. Good job, Jim. I <3 Wikipedia. Good luck with the foundation un upcoming years. Sincerely, WorldTraveller101(Trouble?/My Work) 21:15, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Why was Jimbo in a video about the North versus the South in the mid-1800s? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 14:28, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Is it policy now that Jimbo is required to ask permission from Wikipedia editors before doing anything as a private citizen? --108.38.191.162 (talk) 20:21, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Demiurge1000, I have no idea, but I just thought it was cool. And to IP 108.38.191.162, I have no idea. Thanks guys. WorldTraveller101^{(Trouble?/My Work)} 20:37, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Is there a policy?

Is there a policy that dictates us to avoid deliberately placed imprecise words? Like instead of a precisely known number we put "many" to appease people. I am highly confounded could anybody please help me? I thought introduction of clarity and eradication of blurry claims was one of our goals, isn't it common sense or something that is prerequisite for an encyclopaedia? Mr T^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 06:29, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

[4] Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:28, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Is that a response or an insinuation? You shouldn't have presumed that it was only about that article and I don't care about anything else about Wikipedia. The issue is bigger than this. We should not discriminate basing on potential controversiality of an article here. Mr T^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 08:27, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Not knowing any context behind this discussion, I would cite WP:W2W, which is in the MOS. But of course, there is also a balance, with the other end being the addition of excessive detail or losing the forest for the trees. In the diff by Anthonyhcole, I think the edit being reverted has other issues. It takes only one statistic to replace the word "many" (looks like the number is 58 + 790 + 254 = 1102 in this case) and the reverts were probably based on the other additions. Arc de Ciel (talk) 09:13, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

"In the diff by Anthonyhcole, I think the edit being reverted has other issues." - you bet. BTW, if you want to comment on that discussion then kindly visit the talk and comment there. Mr T^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 09:30, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

You agree with me that your edit has issues? :-) Thanks for the invitation, but the topic is outside my interests. Arc de Ciel (talk) 09:45, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

As I am sure Arc de Ciel knows (because they mentioned MOS and are uninvolved) but Mrt3366 may not, W2W is a guideline, not policy. Excuse the dreadful grammar. - Sitush (talk) 09:49, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for throwing yet another assumption against me Sitush. Mr T^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 10:06, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I didn't assume anything about you and was merely clarifying, since you asked about policy: I have no idea what you do or do not know and thus worded it carefully. You are effectively shopping here, btw. You have a go at Anthonyhcole for perceived presumption in linking an article, then you suggest that Arc should comment on a discussion for that very same article. And your accusations below clearly relate to that same article - the timing of everything that you are doing suggests that - and are largely unfounded. Anyway, I'll let you get on with it. Sitush (talk) 10:43, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't have any money for shopping. I have not brought up the diff, have I? Anthony did, I didn't like it. You're assuming bad faith. But I understand your skepticism. I have not invited anyone to comment there by the way, if someone feels invited then that is not my problem. That is me clarifying. I am merely saying that this is not about Modi's article. Look what I wrote below. Mr T^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 10:48, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Ok. It is not for me to judge. - Sitush (talk) 10:53, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Kindly read Mr. Wales

The whole idea of consensus depends on the presupposition that

1. a fair percentage of honest and competent people would be involved in shaping the consensus.
2. the preponderance of the commenters would be honest in their evaluation,
3. most would be competent enough to acknowledge and admit the fairly objective assertions

The problem is most of the times when biased editors knowingly support a stance that is antithetical to the goal of our project itself and decreases credibility of Wikipedia, there is no provision for any speedy action to be taken against them or those admin who make numerous mistakes in closing such debates without due regard to the rationality of "votes". There is not enough deterrence in place. Consensus on Wikipedia does not mean unanimity, I know, but majority can be wrong too. May be I am not being articulate enough but I hope you get the idea. (I am not saying I am infallible by the way, I have my predilections too.)

Mr. Wales, this is worrying. How can we revert the community-wide biases and accepted but harmful status quos? Is there a mechanism in place for that? Wikipedia may become a propaganda piece if this is allowed to go on. I don't know what the solution is but I am certain that we need some mechanism to address the issues and although assuming good faith is good in day-to-day editing but there is no reason why we should preclude the possibilities that some special types of biases may take hold on Wikipedia's more controversial articles. One may say that these controversial articles are nugatory in number, I agree, but nevertheless our goal includes them too. You may not believe me but I have partaken in online discussions where they argued Wikipedia is not least bit neutral when it comes to controversial article (sometimes key info are omitted, sometimes unsourced synthesis is included, sometimes undue weight is given to minuscule assertions all these in the name of "consensus") and the reason they say is our flawed presumptions before building a consensus. I am worried! Mr T^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 08:27, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I beseech others, on this page at least focus on the claims not my image that would be more conducive. Mr T^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 08:35, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Support better governance for Wikipedia, including giving more power to ArbCom. To assume that "consensus" works for anything other than low-level content decisions is nothing but technolibertarian masturbation—we need to create a proper institutional structure on this encyclopedia. I've said many times already that Wikipedia has been hijacked by self-serving, angry cabals, and that that needs to change. Wer900 • talk 01:49, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

As it seems then you and I are on the same page on this issue. I wouldn't say "hijacked" but yes there is that "cabalistic" mental attitude in work. More power to ArbCom? The ArbCom is a like an apex Court, now I wouldn't call it speedy action if I had to go to ArbCom for such actions. It is really so darn hard that I don't know where or how to begin. There has to some sort of a new editing "privilege" or "user-right" that is bestowed upon only the most "trusted" users (much like CUs) and don't let everybody vote, let the Stewards, CUs and the Bureaucrats vote (I don't think every Admin is a trusted user) in the nominations. We are not a democracy there is no reason to pretend as though everybody should have equal scope when this is clearly not the case. Then create a noticeboard where only the accuser and the accused will leave their terse remark. And based on their succinct remarks and the contribution history, the proper course of action may be chosen by the jury.
When I talked about editors knowingly supporting a stance that is antithetical to the Project's goal, I wasn't leaving anything up to assumption. If somebody "reports" a guy with a reason, and the accused, in front of the jury (←just a temporary word to refer to those who may have the proposed user-right), can't justify up to a reasonable extent that why (s)he thinks that his/her vote will have improved the project, then they will be blocked or temporarily/partially banned from that discussion. If they can describe their action, then the accuser's edits/behavior would be reviewed.

P.S. That's just a sketchy idea of what I am hoping for. Mr T^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 06:58, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

With capability comes responsibility. Wikipedia, I believe, has already reached a stage from where it can influence a sizeable portion of general population. Schools, Colleges, etc, have started to encourage their students to use Wikipedia as a starting point for any research. The possibility of biases must not be ignored.
Misplaced trust can cost, or rather, is costing the Project its credibility. Mr. Wales, do something to counter it, before it's too late. I am not scaremongering here, btw, I am far from that. I am merely saying that we must have some sort of effective deterrence (mechanism for speedy action) in place for systematically biased group of editors. Maybe I am one of those, who knows? Even 5,000 article-edits would be very hard to trace back, and separating chaff from the wheat would then be nigh impossible. Mr T^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 09:09, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Salon shames Wikipedia

Jimbo, have you read the article Revenge, ego and the corruption of Wikipedia? It makes Wikipedia look pretty bad. I'm sure Andrew Leonard isn't a real journalist, though. Maybe his editor at Salon can be contacted, asking for his removal from the Wikipedia beat. - 50.144.87.194 (talk) 15:57, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Obviously a sarcastic suggestion. I found it refreshing to see really good investigative journalism, which is a rarity these days. Carrite (talk) 16:10, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Be careful here, the BLP police is watching this thread. Count Iblis (talk) 16:21, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the boredom police are watching too... AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:24, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

The user self-identified as "Bob Young" on Wiki, I don't think even the most crazy-eyed opponents of Wikipediocracy would have objections to linkage to this piece (or the related thread there, for that matter). Carrite (talk) 18:07, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

The linked article says "Wikipedia is one of the jewels in the Internet’s crown, an amazing collective achievement, a mighty stab at realizing an awesome dream: a constantly updated repository for all human knowledge. It is created from the bottom up, a crowd-sourced labor of love by people who require no compensation for their work but also don’t need to jump through any qualifying hoops." Seems fair. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:25, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Yep. But a jewel that must be defended constantly and vigorously from complacency and to correct those systemic flaws that tend to undermine its truthfulness, neutrality, and accuracy. Carrite (talk) 20:16, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

• Well, crowd-hacked yet righted by veteran editors: Consider "sourced" versus "soured". I guess it does no good to try explaining to magazines how a "crowd-sourced" encyclopedia is called a "blog" but WP survives by having veteran editors and Bots diligently revert or rewrite 70-90% of the crowd-souring of the pages. In fact, I think it could be shown, if pages were left to the quality of the crowd-based edits, then the readership would vanish like a ghost town, because people would close articles after about the 5th nonsense or ranting phrase which they read, especially after about the 5th such page. Even this year, I have confirmed many mid-range-article edits are over 80% hack edits+reverts. We know now, even with this diligence, how the wp:wikirot (with wp:linkrot) has still been a widespread problem, where some editors must rewrite whole sections to re-align the text with current data, common phrasing, or reduction of wp:data hoarding. As I recall, one sports-manager article had over 27 bottom navboxes. So, when many people "don’t need to jump through any qualifying hoops", then the reality is other people are jumping through those hoops for them, or over, under and around them. Just a reminder: WP is crowd-hacked while veteran-salvaged. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:40, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

• Useless edits exceed 80% hack edits+reverts: In reviewing the large number of hack edits, which are typically reverted within minutes, I also noticed other questionable, useless edits, such as removing 2nd comma in "1, 2, and 3". Other useless edits included altering footnotes to link to advert websites, or borderline, off-topic claims which need to be reworded or removed when the text gets rewritten later. However, most fringe claims are part of the 80% edits+reverts, often reverted instantly as "unsourced". Anyway, the 80% level tends to be a conservative estimate of "crowd-sourced" clutter. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:53, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The User:Qworty matter

I have cited this statement of yours on Qworty's talk page [5], from January of this year, in proposing an indefinite ban/block of the editor at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User:Qworty. You therefore may wish to comment. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 16:25, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

On the Internet, nobody knows that you are being sarcastic. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:27, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

As Carrite says, this was good investigative journalism in the real world, that should be used to identify a Wikipedia editor or editors who have been deliberately and systematically misusing Wikipedia. ArbCom proceedings take a while. Can this editor, and possibly his sockpuppets be banned by Jimbo Wales, either indefinitely, or until the ArbCom can decide? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:27, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Ironholds has indeffed for willful BLP violations, which seems reasonable. Carrite (talk) 18:09, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

A more serious concern is that Qworty was confirmed by a checkuser to be using sockpuppets in 2007. That check was initiated by a user who claimed that Qworty (who we now know is Robert Clark Young) was cyberstalking them. None of the accounts were blocked. Members of ArbCom, specifically User:Fred Bauder (although probably others as well) investigated another user's claims of cyberstalking at around the same time. Again, Qworty was not blocked. Jimbo's recent warning to Qworty has been mentioned elsewhere, but Jimbo made a similar warning to Qworty back in 2010. This is not a case of someone being sneaky and flying under the radar, this is a case of someone blatantly using sockpuppets, violating policies, coming to the attention of WP's most powerful and yet being allowed to continue unabated. This is perhaps the most concerning aspect of this case. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 21:10, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Really? All of the dots were connected now, and yet it's somehow arbcom's fault that they didn't connect the dots (some of which did not exist back then, of course) 6 years ago? --Conti|✉ 21:28, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

The dots were connected 6 years ago. The user who initiated the checkuser request also posted this request for help in which she said "To whom do I report Robert Clark Young for Wikipedia violations? He has archived the talk page on his site so that none of the discussions are visible, re-edited, and deleted sources Under the name "Professor Ron Hill" (a name from our shared undergraduate days) ... Bob has a very personal grudge against me and I do not feel it is right that he is basically able to manipulate whatever article he wants on Wikipedia with the administration doing nothing about it". Elsewhere, she wrote "User Qworty is an editor who was a former boyfriend of mine against whom I have had a previous restraining order. In 2001, he sent me a Trojan horse computer virus. He has, under the name Qworty, repeatedly followed my edits on Wikipedia and maliciously changed them". The checkuser confirmed that Qworty had two other sockpuppets and identified a long list of possible socks. None of the accounts were blocked. All of this was known in 2007. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 21:53, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's surprisingly easy to judge situations correctly in hindsight, isn't it? I have no idea why the account was not blocked back then, given the positive checkuser results, but if anything, I doubt it would have been an indefinite block. First time socking usually doesn't get you an indef block. And we know now that the accusations you cite were true. But people make accusations of all kinds all the time around here, and it's usually pretty hard or downright impossible to determine the validity of such accusations. It would certainly be nice to have more people that thoroughly investigate every accusation made around here, but I'm sure you know as well as I do that that's downright impossible. Making this somehow arbcom's fault is just silly. --Conti|✉ 22:16, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

There's absolutely nothing silly about it. You have a case where an editor is making the assertion that Qworty is Robert Clark Young, their ex-boyfriend, against whom they claim to have had a restraining order, and that Qworty is editing against policy with that account and with sockpuppets. The editor filed a checkuser request. It was considered credible enough that a checkuser was done and sockpuppets were identified. Even back in 2007, I think it was common practice to block sockpuppet accounts, even if the main account remains unblocked. That was not done. For abusive sockpuppetry like this, an indef block is quite normal. That was not done. At almost the same time, another editor, who happens to be an admin, made similar claims about Qworty and stated they were in contact with members of ArbCom about it. Fred Bauder appears to have done some investigation. It is unlikely that Fred was unaware of the checkuser result and the claims it was based on. I have alerted him to this conversation and suggested that he comment here. I believe that people knew in 2007 that the allegations were credible and very likely to be true and did nothing about Qworty. No hindsight is required. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 23:31, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Delicious carbuncle. Based on what is being said to have been reported in 2007, there has been a six-year lapse in sanctions. I would suggest that this episode illustrates that Wikipedia does a better job of dealing with "more obvious" problem editors, that is, blatant POV-pushers, uncivil editors and flamers, tendentious editors, and outright vandals, than it does with devious editors. Since editors are required to assume good faith until proven otherwise, devious editing stays under the radar, while it is easy to spot vandalism, and other obviously disruptive editing becomes apparent soon. In this case, the policy of assuming good faith is what allowed bad faith editing to go on for a long time. What I don't understand is how sock puppetry went unchecked. The process did not work, and should have worked at the time. The established Wikipedia processes are not designed to deal with long-term devious editing. They are designed to deal with sock-puppetry, when sock-puppetry is reported (which it was), and it isn't clear why they didn't work in that regard. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:08, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The foundation is to blame for any libel this man may have perpetrated on this site. It is responsible for any libel that appears on this site. It hosts those pages and negligently allows anonymous editors to say anything they want to about living people, while knowing full well that our processes are (however well-intended) inadequate to prevent this sort of abuse happening. In a just society, it would be liable. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:05, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

While libel and responsibility are complex legal issues, I agree with the basic sentiment that Wikipedia and its editors exist in a curious limbo, where the project is seen as vitally important to society as a whole, and yet the typical checks and balances we require of central social institutions do not exist, or at least do not have the procedural clarity and strength we typically ask of them. This is a deeply important matter and we should all take it to heart and work to come up with more responsible ways of dealing with many kinds of problems that have come up recently. That we can read several people defending anything about the processes by which Qworty was allowed to keep operating on this site only digs the hole deeper. This is serious trouble for Wikipedia's reputation, by no means the first trouble we've encountered lately, and we cannot afford to have more incidents like it--reading some of the UK Parliament "Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions" proceedings , it is now conceivable that governments may start to get involved with this project at a regulatory or statutory level, and we should do whatever we can to put our own house in order to make that as unlikely as it would be unwelcome. Wichitalineman (talk) 02:57, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I know we have a reasonable array of software tools for looking at content. I would humbly suggest that the available toolset for examining editor behavior is not as well developed. Personally, I think that is a problem, and one which is contributory to the problem being discussed here. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ] # _ 08:19, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The difficulty with Qworty's behaviour was that it was expressed over a pattern of edits, rather than in much that was itself sanctionable. There were times when the edits could have resulted in actions, such as when Jimbo placed his warning mentioned above, but generally what happened was that the warning would come from a different editor each time, without connecting the dots. This is something that software has trouble picking up. If someone had the full picture the community could have responded, but building that picture is tricky, and needed someone driven to do it. I'm glad that someone was, and perhaps off-wiki was the only way it could happen. (Which, of course, doesn't speak well of ourselves).

If the community does respond to this, and I hope it does, then I guess what I'd like to see is an effort to ask if our processes are sufficient for identifying difficult problems which aren't encompassed in a single edit. - Bilby (talk) 09:52, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

One of our guidelines may clash with this. If I read it correctly we are not allowed to use contribution histories to 'stalk' other editors. I came across a similar editor recently that is a borderline case so consensus would need to decide if their edits are POV. The edits aren't a violation but seem POV. Even mentioning the editor's name may be a violation. I may be wrong in this and if so let me know a way to bring editors like these to the attention of the community. One article did have other issues that I brought up at a notice board but that is as far I went with it.--Canoe1967 (talk) 11:16, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

That's part of the problem. Where a pattern of edits is the issue, you need to watch the editor carefully to connect the dots. Which creates a risk of harassment - whether real or just perceived. Or, in this case, if you believed that there was a connection between Qworty and Robert Young, you would have had a very hard time drawing it, as it would probably have required outing to make the case. Anyway, I'm not sure if the processes are wrong, or if they weren't used properly, or if the conflicting issues just prevent things from working, or if there are just things we can't do, but I'd like to know how to handle this better. - Bilby (talk) 11:57, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I can see it creating a huge backlog at ANI if we change guidelines to allow contrib checks. Perhaps an IRC reporting method? I have noticed that when an editor is taken to ANI then their contribs are looked into. I don't even know if this is proper use of them. They are taken to ANI for one issue and everyone starts posting diffs that have nothing to do with the issue they were taken to ANI for.--Canoe1967 (talk) 12:13, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I keep a close eye on the contributions of a few editors. I do not believe that I am violating any guideline by doing so, but I don't care if I am. Anyone is welcome to try to get me sanctioned for this. Good luck. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:19, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

There is no plausible suggestion that we do not "allow contrib checks". Policy says "The contribution logs can be used in the dispute resolution process to gather evidence to be presented in requests for comment, mediation, WP:ANI, and arbitration cases". --Demiurge1000 (talk) 15:06, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I am probably just reading it differently. I read it as they should only be used in reviews of editors as listed above. If an editor is taken to ANI for POV then do we start listing all the diffs that aren't POV like 3RR, copyvio, or civility, etc? Or should we just take them to ANI for 'general violations' and list them all in the lead of the ANI?

Bilby, did you read my statements just above yours? In 2007, two separate users (one of whom was an admin) complained about Qworty. A checkuser confirmed that Qworty was using sockpuppets and ArbCom members were aware of the allegations of cyberstalking. All of that was sanctionable. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:15, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I did. The problem is that there were a lot of similar events, all treated as separate issues. In each case, he could have been sanctioned, but people seemingly unaware of the previous cases decided to drop it back to a warning instead. My concern here is that the problems were seen in isolation. Once someone has a block log, or has a series of clear escalating warnings on their talk page, we can see the picture, but where the problem is scattered across a few years, with different people raising it each time, it isn't always the case that they recognise that this time something stronger needs to be done. - Bilby (talk) 16:04, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

They may appear to be separate incidents, but perhaps I should have mentioned that they were happening at the same time. I have no doubt at all that the case which sparked the checkuser was mentioned by the admin who discussed their own case with ArbCom members. User:Jpgordon, who ran the checkuser, was on ArbCom at the time. So here are two ArbCom members in 2007, Jpgordon and Fred Buader, with knowledge of alleged cyberstalking and proven sockpuppetry and abusive editing. It would be out of character for anyone associated with ArbCom to give a straight answer about why this resulted no action. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 18:36, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Careful of jumping to conclusions there. I have no recollection of discussing the case with other ArbCom members, but it would have been entirely within my work at what's now SPI to simply take an open case, get the results being asked for, and pay no further attention to it. I wouldn't have blocked based on the SPI result -- I would have left that to another admin, as was my procedure at the time. I don't know why the checkuser request was closed when it was (before action had been taken on the findings); that situation should have led to an immediate block of the master. Straight enough answer? --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 19:09, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The claim of stalking has certainly been used as an attempt to avoid scrutiny. (Fae comes to mind.) But if WP is going to look after its own house rather than rely on people going to Wikipediocracy and/or the press, then this so-called stalking has to become accepted custom and practice here. As it is, not only do we have someone banned for linking a Wikipediocracy blog that names one of the Commons admins who Jimbo regularly clashes with here, but people are even suggesting that saying that Qworty=Young can still be seen as outing here. Indeed if Young had not decided to out himself here under pressure from Salon, multiple users in this thread would be subject to blocking for outing the squirt. For this site to live up to its obligations as the dominant English-language reference source, then we need a radical re-alignment so that our responsibilities towards our readers and the subjects of our articles are put at least on a par with those to our contributors, and active gaming of policy by contributors in order to avoid scrutiny should become a blockable offence.--Peter cohen (talk) 18:51, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Turkish Wikipedia

When Turkish Wikipedias tackle other problems? -Writer: User:Aguzer 11:10, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Could you explain the question? You have written on this page before about abuses in the Turkish Wikipedia, but I don't know what question you are asking now. Looie496 (talk) 15:10, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Qworty

"For those of us who love Wikipedia, the ramifications of the Qworty saga are not comforting". That sums it up for me. More thoughts soon.

I would have banned him outright years ago. So would many others. That we did not, points to serious deficiencies in our systems.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:34, 19 May 2013 (UTC)