Talk:Jimmy Wales

why no 'see also'

I noticed that the links to Jimbo's user page and to WP:JIMBO are both listed in external links, rather than a 'see also' section. why? Aunva6 (talk) 06:18, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I am too gutless to change it but you are welcome to. If it gets reverted then discuss the reasoning?--Canoe1967 (talk) 20:19, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I think the reason is, cross-namespace links are normally frowned upon in body text. So the uneasy exception-to-the-rule is, you put them in the external links section, like is done here.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:37, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

off-topic
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Why dont you examine Turkish Administrators Superyetkin and Garbino Why dont you examine Turkish Administrators Superyetkin and Garbino? http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kullanıcı:Superyetkin http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kullanıcı:Garbino — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.212.230.49 (talk) 11:38, 22 April 2013 (UTC) This is the article about Jimmy Wales. I think you may be looking for Jimbo's talk page instead. Rivertorch (talk) 14:25, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Pricasso image

There's this fine image of a painting of subject Wales by renowned Australian painter Pricasso. Where would be the appropriate section to list this well-licensed Commons image? Cheers, ☯ Bonkers The Clown \(^_^)/ Nonsensical Babble ☯ 13:47, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

As I noted on your talk page, I reverted the inclusion of that painting because your edit summary, "More recent photo; identifies subject well; done by a notable figure," is misleading. In your reply, you stated that it is indeed a photograph of a painting, which simply confirms the deceptive intent of the edit summary. I don't care one whit about whether the painting belongs here, but it is not superior to a photograph of the subject, and your stated reasons for including it are transparently false.--~TPW 13:54, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't know that photographs outranked paintings; I thought that they were of the same superiority. I'm not so mean as to be all out to fool you. Shall not commit this mistake a second time. :) Cheers, ☯ Bonkers The Clown \(^_^)/ Nonsensical Babble ☯ 13:57, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it belongs in the article at all. --Onorem (talk) 14:12, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

There is reason to believe that the creation of this image was instigated and publicized for the express purpose of harassing the subject of this BLP. As such, the image should not be included. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:33, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Additional sources

I am not sure if these will be useful, but I found:

• Chozick, Amy. "Jimmy Wales Is Not an Internet Billionaire." The New York Times. June 30, 2013.
• Brown, Larisa. "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales marries Tony Blair's former diary secretary in star-studded ceremony... and Alastair Campbell played the bagpipes!" Daily Mail. October 7, 2012 -- Mentioned in the Chozick article.

WhisperToMe (talk) 14:42, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales denies being on board of Socialtext

Somebody should fix the biography to reflect Mr. Wales' statement here. - 2001:558:1400:10:DD57:6356:A8FF:8049 (talk) 14:27, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

 nope Jimbo's talk page is a primary source, if it can even be considered a Reliable Source. WP:BLP requires that controversial information be supported by secondary/tertiary sources. see WP:NOTSOURCE, WP:SELF, WP:SPS and WP:OR. -- Aunva6^{talk - contribs} 18:23, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

I removed Socialtext from the infobox on the basis that he isn't listed as a boardmember on the Socialtext website – I didn't realise it was mentioned in the article as well. I think Jimmy's statement, combined with his absence from the Socialtext site, is good enough reason to change the description to "former boardmember". DoctorKubla (talk) 06:10, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

I've boldly made this change, since there's been no response here. DoctorKubla (talk) 10:37, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, I was reverted with an edit summary of "WP:NOTSOURCE", which is a completely irrelevant essay. I have to say, I don't entirely understand Aunva6's objection to this change. If you doubt the credibility of Jimmy's statement, fair enough (although I don't know why he'd be lying), but it's clear that the claim currently made in the article, that Jimmy sits on the Socialtext Board of Directors, is directly contradicted by the company's own list of boardmembers. This has to be fixed somehow, so we can either change it to read "former boardmember", or simply remove all mention of Socialtext from the article. Which would you rather do? DoctorKubla (talk) 07:10, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

former sounds acceptable. the only problem is that wikipedia, especially talk pages are not allowable sources, albeit with a few exceptions. to be honest, I completely forgot about undoing this earlier (it's been an eventful august for me)... unless that was what I reverted, in which case, let me know, and I will check myself into a sanatorium... -- Aunva6^{talk - contribs} 07:29, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

It shouldn't go unsourced, so I've restored the reference. Happy ending, I guess, but for the record I'd like to say that I think we should probably take any Wikipedian in good standing who edits under their real name at their word on basic stuff like what boards they do and don't currently sit on. Suppose Jimmy had still been listed as a board member on the Socialtext web site . . . what would he have to do, jump through OTRS hoops to get the article fixed? Complain to a fellow staff member and have it changed as an office action? It boggles the mind. Rivertorch (talk) 09:30, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Jimbo's talkpage can probably be considered a primary sources for what Jimbo says, sort of like a personal blog. The problem with self sourced information about the subject himself is that it is highly partisan and haven't been verified by a third party. Problems arise if someone assert they are something they are actually not or vice versa. Not saying there is a problem here but in general it is a bad idea. Space simian (talk) 23:36, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I take your point, but context has to be considered and each instance judged separately. The information on many websites has gone stale and is no longer correct, while it may be presumed that a statement made in the present by a living person is up to date. If the claim isn't extraordinary or isn't refuted by compelling, verifiably current information elsewhere, I'd be inclined to take the person at his or her word. I also think the threshold for accepting someone's word about not having a particular professional affiliation should usually be lower than claims that they do, since the former is often more difficult to verify using secondary sources. Rivertorch (talk) 04:08, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Sigh. Let me see if I can sum this up. Why don't we approach this like a pop quiz?
1. When an unnamed government official says famous person $foo is a card-carrying member of the communist party, and the year is 1952, and a newspaper reports it, what is the correct action?
2. When historical documents show that rocket scientist $baz was a card-carrying member of the nazi party, and the year is 1952, and no newspapers report it, what is the correct action?
3. When prominent hollywood celebrity $qux is claimed to be a follower of the church of scientology by a supermarket tabloid, and the celebrity denies it on their blog, what is the correct action?
4. When a not-very-well-known dotcom puts out a press release claiming that founder X of top-ten internet site Y has agreed to be on their board, and X denies this is true, what is the correct action?
For extra credit, does your answer to #4 change if the alleged press release is now a dead link?[1][2] For double bonus points, if you are a volunteer on project Y, does your answer to #4 remain the same?
Hint: [3] The correct sentence structure for this is: "Several years prior to 2013, Wales was on the board of SocialText, a wiki-technology startup founded in 2005; since then Wales has left the board, and the brand (and the startup) were acquired." Full disclosure, I have never met Jimbo, anybody who has ever even mentioned the *name* of SocialText to me, let alone anybody involved with the former or current corporations. And yes, I always edit as an anon. HTH. Oh... the answers: Joe McCarthy bad, Werner von Braun mixed, Scientology bad, Jimmy Wales good. In borderline cases, it pays to carefully assess the ethics and motivations of *all* parties involved, not just the ones that give you some editorial outcome you may prefer. Here, the situation seems glaringly obvious: Wales said he used to be on the board, and SocialText put out an old press-release to that effect. Wales says he has not been on the board for many years, and SocialText no longer lists him. tl;dr? suffice it to say that Rivertorch is correct. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 02:33, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Please change this:

He is a former co-chair of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2008, and a former board member of Socialtext.

Into this:

He is a former co-chair of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2008. Several years prior to 2013, Wales was on the board of SocialText, a wiki-technology startup founded in 2005; since then Wales has left the board, and the brand (plus the startup[4][5]) were acquired in 2012.

Thanks. Or, if somebody disagrees, build a consensus-edited-version (I hereby pre-emptively agree to it), and use that. p.s. Semi-protected since January 2007? Don't we have enough regular wikipedians now, not to mention watchlists and bots and such, to make this somewhat-canonical page typical, rather than a special exception to the philosophy of the site? Just on first principles, this page of all pages ought to be something anybody can edit. If nobody else wants to propose de-protection, please ping me on my talkpage, and I will submit the proposal myself. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 03:07, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

No comment on the proposed changes, except to say that the sourcing doesn't look reliable. I did want to say that I don't think this is a "canonical page" at all; it's an article about a notable person who happens to be a co-founder of Wikipedia. Rivertorch (talk) 04:23, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree about the sources... but if the sources are the trouble, then the best result is to remove any mention of SocialText. The current article's sentence-fragment is 'sourced' from a self-published press release; I cite the same. That self-published source is backed by another self-published source, Jimbo's comment. WP:SPS says that such things *are* allowed, if the source is self-referentially discussing itself (press release is about the company's own board, check, Jimbo's statement is about his membership thereof, check). Jimbo's claim the SocialText was acquired is *not* about himself, so I did a bit of googling to find out if that was true, and it was -- they got acquired in 2012, per ventaraResearch and AlanLepofsky. I'm assuming you are not complaining about those being reliable? Anyways, maybe I missed something, and better sources can be found, but in this particular case the sources used that are self-published ones are valid exceptions to the usual rule, methinks. If you disagree, then please re-examine the self-published source *currently* used in the article concerning SocialText, and take out the whole shebang. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 05:32, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

No comment on the proposed changes either but I would like to make a short comment on the "pop quiz". The problem with the quiz questions is that they assume we somehow know the Truth and that media is not reporting the Truth, you then ask whether we should print the Truth or what the tabloids (also known as reliable sources) report, despite the fact that that is not the Truth. Obviously, in that case, we should always print the Truth. The problem is that we have no way of knowing what the truth really is, which is why we defer to reliable sources and let them do the fact checking and difficult decisions for us. That way Wikipedia remains somewhat neutral and the readers can rely on the information to the same extent as they can rely on big media (in theory, in practice no-one should rely on anything written here of course, as anyone who's seen the insides of this sausage factory can attest to, but we can try to keep things as honest as possible).

With regard to #4: a press release is also self-sourced information, ideally we would have some third party journalist assert the status of membership in print, then we could rely on that journalist and news outlet for fact checking. If no reliable sources mention the fact we normally do not bother mentioning it either since it is probably not notable enough. That said, I do recognize that in completely uncontroversial cases we sometimes can accept less ideal sources, but I think we should show extra care with Jibos bio... --Space simian (talk) 23:16, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

You are selling wikipedia short -- it is *way* more reliable than the Big Media, especially in terms of politically sensitive issues. I'm talking about the USA, btw, not just places like China where the big media is actively the enemy of truth. Furthermore, you are selling humanity short. Where did you get the idea that we have no way of knowing what the truth really is? (That's not a rhetorical question... maybe, if you think back to where you got that idea, you'll realize it was not from a Reliable Source.) The truth is, we know Newton was correct, except in scenarios approaching the speed of light... and we *know* he was wrong in some of those cases, as Einstein proved. Does that mean we know The Truth about gravity, and that there will never be a correction to Einstein's theories? Of course not; that's why we still call them theories. Does that mean we know the truth about SocialText? No... it is possible that we are all just simulated beings used for battery-power by sentient AIs. But failing that, and failing any motivation for *both* Jimbo Wales and *also* the founders of SocialText and *also* the current owners of SocialText to form a conspiracy to deceive the general public, we can pretty firmly say we know the truth there. Ditto for McCarthy -- now dead btw and thus not able to edit wikipedia. Ditto for Scientology -- now banned from wikipedia btw. As for von Braun, arguably there *was* a conspiracy to deceive the general public. The truth is, so far as I can grok, he joined the Nazi Party, because he wanted to build real rockets, and only military funding would let him achieve his dream; he and several hundred of his fellow rocket scientists engineered their capture by the Allies. He did not care who paid, as long as he got to space. However, that is one case where The Truth is probably unknowable; was Von Braun, or was he not, a Nazi in the usual horrible sense of that term? He is a mixed bag, and barring time travel, will so remain. But that type of difficulty is going to be rarer and rarer, if wikipedia has anything to say about it.  :-) p.s. I believe I addressed your self-sourcing comments in my reply to Rivertorch above. p.p.s. Not all the questions assume the media is misreporting things... Jimbo's question is a case where all sources back up all the self-citing, and furthermore, I believe the Big Media when they tell me Tom Cruise is a Scientologist... then again, he does not deny it, and if he did, I'd consider him a more reliable source about his religious beliefs than a tabloid journalist. My friend, the truth is pretty easy. What's hard is getting somebody to step up to the plate and make an edit on a semi-protected page, even when the edit is prima facie the truth. Hint hint, nudge nudge. Figure out what is closest to The Truth, and then put in into the article, please. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 05:32, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

 Not done: The {{edit semi-protected}} template is intended to allow someone who is not auto-confirmed to edit an article which had to be semi-protected for some unrelated reason. That is why it requires a "please change X to Y" degree of detail; the editors who process these requests are just acting as a typing proxy after verifying that there is no obvious reason not to do so. In this case, there seems to be a lack of consensus for this change which you acknowledge in your request. You need to build that consensus yourself before using the template. Thanks, Celestra (talk) 15:15, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

So, let me get this straight. Wales says he's not on the Socialtext board. Socialtext's website indicates that he is not on their board. Why does his article, months later, still say he is on the board? I think the search for the perfect source obscures the fact that there is an untrue statement in this biography. Let me put it this way...is there a reliable sources that says he is on the board right now? Because if there isn't a recent reliable source that claims he is on the board (as of 2013), then this statement is no longer supported and can be removed. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:28, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

@Liz: I'm not seeing that text. All I see is "former board member". --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:36, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh, NeilN...you are oh-so right and I am so, so wrong. What is strange is that this conversation was still going on last month, but the article text was changed on August 31, 2013‎! Such a minor detail and Editors continued to argue two months after the change was made...and because it looked like the issue had never been resolved, I dove into it without double-checking (I remember seeing "board member of Social Text" but didn't think it said "former"). Thanks for pointing out my mistake. Consider this topic...RESOLVED. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:30, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Rcat inappropriate

This redirect was incorrectly tagged with the {{R to talk}} Rcat, which is used to categorize redirects from outside the talk namespace to a page in talk namespace. Please correct this error and, additionally, tag it with the {{R from alternative name}} template in the following manner:

modify this...

#REDIRECT [[Talk:Jimmy Wales]]

{{This is a redirect|move|protected|to talk}}

to this...

#REDIRECT [[Talk:Jimmy Wales]]

{{This is a redirect|move|from alternative name|protected}}

Also, please add the {{R from alternative name}} template to the article redirect in the following manner:

modify this...

#REDIRECT [[Jimmy Wales]] {{R with old history|printworthy}}

{{This is a redirect|move|protected}}

to this...

#REDIRECT [[Jimmy Wales]] {{R with old history|printworthy}}

{{This is a redirect|move|from alternative name|protected}}

Thank you in advance for your consideration! – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 09:26, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

 Not done: According to the page's protection level you should be able to edit the page yourself. If you seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:36, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Going by the link immediately after the {{edit protected}} - the one that's been artificially coloured red for some reason - the page to be edited is Talk:Jimbo Wales, which is fully protected. Paine Ellsworth didn't use the first positional parameter of {{edit protected}} to specify that page, which is why all the links in that box were to Jimmy Wales, and also why it showed up under the wrong name at User:AnomieBOT/PERTable. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:48, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah, so it is mybad! I've never used that first parameter, and I should have many times in the past. I shall use it from now on when appropriate. Also, please remember the change I suggested to this redirect, as well. Forgive me for any confusion I caused. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 10:57, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, so if there's two pages to be edited, we need two {{edit protected}}, which will provide a second set of links, and should also give two rows in User:AnomieBOT/PERTable. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:15, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Redrose64 – Mr. Stradivarius has helped me and performed the edits I requested. Thank you very much, Mr. Stradivarius, for your help with these edits. Again, very sorry for the confusion I caused. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 11:20, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Table of contents

Why is there no visible table of contents on this Talk page? - 2001:558:1400:10:E1C7:8438:5E48:3232 (talk) 20:08, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea why one wasn't generated automatically but I added the markup tag to force one to appear. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:39, 8 November 2013 (UTC)