User talk:Jimbo Wales

(Manual archive list)

If IP editors were banned

(Reverse topic of "#Banning IP editing" above)

In this thread, let's imagine Wikipedia has banned all IP edits, and discuss what happens next. I wonder if it would be like, "Let's ban all children under age 4 in public until they can walk and talk better". Anyway, with IP editors banned, then every editor must create a username and login. The first result I think would be no more easy spotting of IP edits as potential vandalism; instead every username must be suspected, but perhaps the redlinked usernames could be considered more likely to post a hacked, or misguided, edit. How often would people ask about forgotten passwords? If we banned IP edits for 2 weeks, what complaints should be expected then? -Wikid77 (talk) 01:21, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Maybe it would result in a proposal to ban editing by redlinked usernames, since it would be easily established (during the two weeks) that redlinked usernames were responsible for the vast majority of vandalism. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 12:13, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

why stop there? It has been adequately proven that 100% of vandalism occurs because of edits. If we ban editing altogether, that would completely eliminate both the need for and the possibility to fight vandals. This would also stop editwarring, pov pushing, wikilawering, trolling, and many,many other problems. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:15, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

• Support - I support Wikid77's proposal to ban IP editing on a two week trial basis, although I am somewhat surprised that there was no reference to how Lua could speed up that process. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 04:24, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support - Anything is better than the status quo. Mugginsx (talk) 12:28, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is a perennial proposal, see Wikipedia:Perennial_proposal#Prohibit_anonymous_users_from_editing. It is also a Foundation issue and not subject to discussion lacking a change in WMF's central policies. Dcoetzee 13:17, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. As I explained in the other section above, this would primarily affect casual vandals. Determined IP-hoppers would easily develop swift and convenient work-arounds (I certainly know one way of doing it). As a result we would have a few determined vandals less, very few casual vandals (who are not a big problem), and lots of inconvenience due to the irreversible step forward in the arms race.
  Two weeks might not be enough time for the negative effects to kick in, and if they are, the damage would be done at that point. There is no step back once sophisticated tools have been developed and widely distributed. At the moment there is no market for these. Let's not create one. Hans Adler 14:05, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
• I don't think WIkid77 actually proposed banning IPs for two weeks. He simply asked what, hypothetically, we could expect. Actually implementing such a short-sighted and frankly idiotic idea is something I vehemently oppose. Resolute 15:12, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
• Many help-pages would need to be altered: The references to "IP editing" are scattered everywhere through the various help-pages about Wikipedia, and it would be confusing if new users then came to Wikipedia and read how "anyone can edit" (without prior approval of usernames) if it were no longer allowed. Even the login/logout text would need to be updated:

• The logout message would need to remove the phrase, "This computer may be used to browse and edit Wikipedia without a username".
• The edit-message would need to be changed to request login, rather than saying, "You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits".

Hence, even a 2-week test would require changing many pages to no longer state, "edit without a username". Then, after the test, all those pages would need to be reversed to mention IP editors being accepted again. Fortunately, as noted above, the acceptance of IP editors is a WMF decision, so we do not need to discuss every problem that banning IP edits would cause. Obviously, people who lacked usernames would not even be able to report a login failure, because their IP edits would be blocked, so another dialogue would be needed to allow questions from people who could not create a username. Overall, banning of IP editors would cause quite a mess at first, as more of these issues are considered. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:06, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. For one thing, we could expect a drastic drop-off in new editors. How many regular and semi-regular editors started off editing anonymously, without any issue or incident? Banning anonymous editing would make this "The Encyclopedia that authorized users can edit", and that's not what I signed up for. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 17:42, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I hate to break it to you, but "The Encyclopedia that authorized users can edit" is what we have now (since we ban users). Nor would making users spend a few seconds creating an account qualify as requiring authorization. Rd232 ^talk 18:21, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
• Since the point of the post was to prompt discussion: banning anonymous editing altogether is a difficult and dramatic step with many pros and cons that are hard to weigh. What we could do is remove privileges from anonymous editing - as we did years ago by removing the privilege of creating new articles. The obvious privilege (to me) is for edits to appear on the site live immediately to the public. Queue all anonymous edits, then tell users (again - tell them before/during/after editing) that if they want the edit to go live immediately, they need to log in or create an account - otherwise, it'll be queued for review. Rd232 ^talk 18:21, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

• Support - I consider IP editors in the same manner I consider the vermin in my garden, so anything we can do to cull the numbers is a good thing. Tarc (talk) 18:32, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

That's a tad harsh. Having said that, I'm starting to think that eliminating anon editing is inevitable in the long run. I don't think it is sustainable to rely on a volunteer army of patrollers to act as playground monitors. There will always be vandalism, but monitoring and blocking accounts would be infinitely more manageable than monitoring and blocking billions of IP addresses. Philosophically speaking, it would be a huge change and I don't expect it to happen anytime soon. But creating an account is far from difficult - it takes about 20 seconds, and it doesn't even require an email address. Honestly, anyone who wants to contribute wouldn't see this as much of a barrier. In my opinion, allowing anon editing is a gimmick that has outlived its usefulness. --Bongwarrior (talk) 23:18, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Err, this "gimmick" built Wikipedia. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:24, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely, no argument from me. But now that it's built, is it still necessary or prudent going forward? The cost/benefit of allowing anon editing for a fledgling website is much different than it is for a top-ten website. --Bongwarrior (talk) 08:12, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

It wasn't harsh at all; "harsh" was the first draft when I directly labeled IP editors as vermin, but altered before final submission. Tarc (talk) 14:22, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

@Tarc there is not so much a difference if you say they are vermin or if you imply they are as bad a problem which has to be handled as such. @Bongwarrior if you consider Wikipedia to be finished then yes but there will be fewer new authors and the effort which now goes into fighting vandalism has to be channeled into making the useful contributions of IP editors and getting the same amount of different information with fewer searchers is always difficult.--Saehrimnir (talk) 13:48, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Oppose a two week test isn't really sufficient to to test the important question "What fraction of new editors are we going to drive away with this kind of hostility?" It'd take a much longer test (and by the end of that, the only people left apart from Vandals will be Visigoths). Given how significant the issue of the dropoff in new editors (and correspondingly, admins) is viewed, something that severely exacerbate that process can't be done on a lark. We shouldn't burn down the encyclopaedia without first giving it significant thought. WilyD 08:37, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

• Support, per Tarc. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 07:56, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

• Support a test, without a sense of how it will turn out. The obvious "this will drive constructive IPs" argument is of obvious concern, but might be overshadowed by the increased communication we would have with those editors. Helping people get past the various learning barriers to making constructive edits often requires communication, communication which is nearly precluded (how often do we really see new editors reply at Talk:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx?) by a place and a notification system for that communication. If the goal is increasing the eventual number of constructive edits and editors, the idea that this might be a win, instead of a lose, is plausible enough to deserve a test. --j⚛e decker^talk 19:09, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. I consider Tarc and his like to be a bigger problem for Wikipedia. 86.121.18.95 (talk) 20:11, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
• Verifying IP edits will fix 90% of vandalism: Well, it seems clear that, in the past, over 90% of vandalism was posted by IP editors (while over 70% of IP edits were good). So, even though some hack-edits were posted years ago, we can fix most factual vandalism by easily re-verifying the old IP edits (and only those IP edits not already reverted) and look for a suspicious change in a date or other fact as made by an IP edit. By looking at mainly those edits, then we can easily correct facts from years ago, and less than 10% of hack-edits will slip past. However, if IP editors were banned, then we would need new tactics to detect most hack-edits, as "escalating the weapons of vandalism". Instead, perhaps we need to inspect only 6 edits per 50 history entries, going back 3 years, as pinpointing non-reverted IP edits, to fix such problems. That is so much easier, compared to vandals learning to create usernames so their edits would become hidden among long-term usernames, where most of each 50 history entries would then need to be checked for altered facts. I thank everyone, above, for clarifying those issues, as to how much worse it could be if IP editors were banned, and how easy it is, now, to verify just 6 of each 50 entries for non-reverted IP hack-edits posted 1-3 years ago. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:39, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
• The level of support for this proposal is disturbing. The negative IP contributions that we all know about necessarily receive much more attention than those small improvements to the encyclopedia made by anonymous passers-by from all over the world. I don't have stats, but I find it hard to imagine that IP contributions are anywhere near a net negative. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:31, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
• I'm not convinced that a two week trial would be long enough to test the premise that we need to allow IP editing as an easy first step to becoming a new registered editor. But a two week trial would be long enough to confirm the theory that putting up barriers is more likely to dissuade good faith editors who want to help than badfaith editors who despite the challenge want to commit vandalism. So my prediction is that if we did this we'd lose a lot of edits, but disproportionately we'd lose more of the hard to replace good edits than the easily reverted bad ones. We'd also have to be much less trusting of new accounts if creating an account became the minimum effort needed to start vandalising articles. ϢereSpielChequers 10:10, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose, "anyone can edit" is not true anyway, why make it worse? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:48, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

QRpedia - going forward

After at a protracted negotiation, a deal has been reached to transfer ownership of QRpedia to WMUK. Echoing comments I have made on Meta, I strongly believe that this is a facility that should be centrally controlled and supported. For that and other reasons, I suggest that the WMF create qr.wikipedia.org (or maybe qrwp.wikipedia.org) and the existing qrwp.org (as of now controlled by WMUK) be a redirect to that site. The code is available under a free license, but it would not be difficult to develop the same functionality. This is a mechanism that is likely to be used internationally and it seems misplaced to have it so strongly associated with a specific chapter, particularly under the circumstances which prompted the governance review. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 19:27, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

I think QR codes are robot barf that will fade into obscurity in due course. An unexplored part of this scandal is that people have been asked to do something stupid, which is slap QR codes all over their towns. There's a great technology that is comfortable for both humans and machines to read. It's called "text". I think WMUK and all chapters should be warned that the best technical advice around QR codes is this: run away from them as fast as you possibly can.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:16, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Can you explain which text you mean which could achieve the same result? Because the important part is the automated language selection without the need for specific software.--Saehrimnir (talk) 07:34, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

As an afterthought you are right for this purpose QR Codes are overkill one could just say languages.mobile.wikipedia.org/article and achieve the same result and the half of the world population who speaks English could be relatively sure that they get to the right spot without malicious content.--Saehrimnir (talk) 10:52, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

To any monolingual audience that would be true, and not just in the English speaking world, if you were somewhere where everyone spoke Spanish or somewhere else where they all speak Japanese then the whole multilingual aspect of QR codes would be wasted. However my understanding of them is that they tend to be used in museums and heritage venues and especially in places which have or aspire to have a multilingual audience. ϢereSpielChequers 10:00, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm not sure about that. The reason QR codes exist in the first place is because URLs are too long and cumbersome for mobile device users to type in. As long as that remains the case, machine-readable shortcuts like QR codes will be necessary. Of course, QR codes aren't the only way of achieving that. The other day I saw an unusually high-tech bus shelter that had, next to an advertising poster, a QR code on an LCD display built into the surround, with an NFC device below it. Both provided machine-readable shortcuts (reprogrammable, I assume) to the online version of the advertising campaign. It may well be that NFC will replace QR codes for some applications - I think it more than likely - but the ease of use of QR codes, which you can generate and print at home, is likely to mean that they'll be around for a long time to come. Prioryman (talk) 23:31, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

What nonsense. Any smartphone with Google Goggles (or similar) installed easily has the OCR capability to translate a text sign into machine-readable text, and will go to a website just by pointing your phone's camera at the URL, and anything capable of running a QR scanner is capable of running OCR. I have, quite literally, never seen anyone actually scan a QR code. I have often seen people photographing signs. 89.242.85.135 (talk) 23:36, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

One bored kid (and or "banned user") with a laser printer and some glossy adhesive paper could easily turn Monmouthpedia and Gibraltarpedia into goatsepedia. Worse, the same strategy could be used to install some malware on the way to Wikipedia. That will not be good PR for anyone involved. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 23:50, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

That would work with laser printers that produce ceramic plaques, but most print on paper. ϢereSpielChequers 00:00, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Plaques can presumably be covered by stickers, though as someone pointed out we may be dishing out the "WP:BEANS" by hashing out the theoretical possibilities ;-). My point is that vandalism in the real world might be harder to fix. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 00:07, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

If that's a real risk, presumably it's a risk for QR codes generally. Is it a documented problem? Formerip (talk) 00:09, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it has. Tarc (talk) 01:52, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

That article seems to be talking about an online thing, rather than a real world thing. Formerip (talk) 16:57, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

A lot of silly things are said about QR codes. QR codes are lot more trouble to vandalise than Wikipedia articles. As everyone knows Wikipedia should in the eyes of the uninformed be full of errors and misinformation, but this is not the case. QR codes will of course be superseded but they will make their 20th anniversary next year! Text is a fine solution - but as we know it has been superseded by hypertext. Towns are not sticking QR codes all over themselves are far as I know unless you look at every crisp packet. NFC is in some ways a better idea and QRpedia is upwardly compatible. However as Terence Eden notes you cannot put NFC on a packet of salt and you cannot get much text either. Thousands of new articles and hundreds of editors working together. Imagine yourselves in a museum in China or Korea with lots of text on display. All you have to do is type the text into your phone and Wikipedia (Or another similar site) can tell you what it is in Korean. I think we can do better. Victuallers (talk) 11:16, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Jimbo, your opinion of QR codes and the people who love them notwithstanding, when someone in a museum scans a QR code expecting a Wikipedia article and gets a poor result for whatever reason, it is Wikipedia that will look bad, not WMUK or the museum. Given that these are already out there, I think it would be wise to mitigate that risk to the project's reputation. If it is to be taken under the WMF's control, it would be better if this were to be negotiated before WMUK expends any effort or funding on the project (I believe there are some concerns over data privacy that they intend to address in the near term). Delicious carbuncle (talk) 11:58, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that we should ensure that these codes work solidly for a long time to come, and that the safety of this is an important consideration. My personal views of QR codes (that they are a technology that will go away very soon) should not be taken to be a negative view of museum/city partnerships in general, of course! Just this one little technical aspect.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 03:27, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

An interesting aspect of the QR system is that it would allow volunteers to decide to document local attractions even if they are not judged notable enough for Wikipedia. For example, what should the local volunteers do if they arrange for a museum to buy a dozen fancy ceramic plaques, then half the articles are deleted? Well, if WMUK controls a qr domain, it might point that article at some "local project", e.g. a standalone Monmouthpedia or whatever, where these "supplemental" entries can still be read by tourists. Personally I view this as a very good thing in concept, though one can see some serious potential problems that could come up. However the system is handled, I think it would be useful to plan ahead for that situation, to try to ensure that such a supplemental site is well-run - that it can exempt itself from notability but not become terribly biased, infiltrated by spammers, etc.

I agree with Jimbo (I've said it myself) that the alphabet is a remarkable cutting-edge technology to use in situations like this. I can picture a plaque with a cute little logo like "LnK:" in an oval, followed by text, e.g. "LnK: Wikipedia/Gibraltar Manhole Cover 136" - first, however, someone would have to convince people to use such an app, which is where QR has excelled, namely in marketing. Unfortunately, across the Internet we see people and companies feeling forced to establish presences on really bad platforms - like Facebook - distinguished only by their cleverness in using non-traditional methods to do their advertising. Wnt (talk) 15:42, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

More likely you'll just be able to murmur quietly to your smartphone "show me the wikipedia article for that whatsit", and it will oblige. The problem with QR codes is that they aren't human-readable, so you don't know what you're getting into when you point your phone at them. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 00:53, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

The future is more along the lines of location awareness in general, where specific apps use AR. As for the smartphone, it's probably going to go the way of the Dodo in favor of wearable computers, watches, glasses, and transparent computing embedded in everyday things like furniture, cars, etc. Hardware is quickly disappearing into the background as it gets smaller while data is becoming visualized as a normal overlay over everyday reality. Blissenobiarella 22:08, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

This concept image of a proposed Apple smart watch, made out of bendable smart glass and designed as a bracelet, is a pretty good example of the kind of thing people are thinking about. One could also envisage smart devices embedded in clothes. We certainly won't be interacting with them in the same way that we do with smartphones. Prioryman (talk) 22:20, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Stopping worst IP edits

(Another spin-off of thread "#Banning IP editing").

We should discuss what editors can do about protecting more templates. Just yesterday, another horrific IP edit hacked a template #redirect which could foul 20 major articles for 7 hours: garbled text "water is never pure in a chemical sense..." was put in shortcut Template:Ety (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), used to show the etymology after an article title, but reverted at 12:18 on 9 February 2013, within 8 hours as the only 2 edits by that IP editor. The nonsense intro (in 20 major articles: Science, Planet, Ocean, Disease, Gorilla, Epidemiology, Number, Neologism, Photographer, Epistemology, Egalitarianism, Vivisection, Cybernetics, Bazaar, etc.) was likely reduced because articles are slow to reformat after a shared template is changed. However, redirects still pose a loophole, where the popular original template gets semi-protected, but the redirect is left vulnerable because edits are so rare, and no one can "show a pattern" of recent vandalism as evidence to protect the tiny redirect, and then, "bam!" it gets hacked when many articles have used the shortcut name, rather than the protected template name. Some issues to consider:

Q1. Do we have a rule now to say, "Semi-protect the redirects of a protected template"?

Q2. Is there an anti-vandalism group who seeks to protect popular templates?

Q3. Do we have a page-impact formula (#transclusions × #pageviews) to trigger protections when used in only 40 (but major) articles?

Q4. What are some other "worst IP edits" and steps to stop them?

The fact that a horrific IP edit could zap the lede sections, of so many major articles for hours, while we were discussing IP-edit bans, is not mere coincidence, but rather more evidence that IP edits are still a massive, major problem (in templates), where more could be done to reduce the impacts. Meanwhile, we need to remove templates where non-protected in the lede of major articles: {{ety|la|scientia|knowledge}} = from Latin scientia 'knowledge'. To err is human, but to really trash Wikipedia requires contempt-lates. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:40, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

This looks like it could be a good faith edit; certainly whether in good faith or bad, a new account could have done it also. You're telling us that most of the vandal edits on Wikipedia come from a small, easily recognizable subset of the edits made - and you're complaining about that. Think about that. (But in the meanwhile, protecting or completely eradicating these protected template redirects isn't a bad idea) Wnt (talk) 19:50, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

provided https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8796 can be fixed, would it make sense to extend cascading protection to redirects to the page? Or define a new protection form that also automatically protects redirects? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 02:55, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

for indefinite protection a gadget could well work. I'll see if I can make something when I get home. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 03:23, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

• At least, if we had a list of unprotected redirects to popular templates, we could spot the weak ones. As I noted above, when 20 articles are major, then "20 transclusions" is reason enough to semi-protect a template. -Wikid77 12:40, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Why not just ban IPs from editing templates? The arguments for allowing IPs to edit articles apply much, much more weakly to templates. Rd232 ^talk 12:16, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Rd232. All we have to do is semi-protect all templates, and the problem is reduced by a considerable percentage. Jusdafax 22:28, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Now that idea may have merit. If there isn't support to ban IP editors outright project-wide, perhaps they can be confined to article and user-space only. Tarc (talk) 22:38, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Misadvertising: Fraud?

The WP-article-authoring-for-hire website wikiexperts guarantees "Expert Wikipedia article writing, consistent with all Wikipedia standards". But that can't be true, since their selling of article writing services violates the Wikipedia:Conflict of interest standard. The Transhumanist 00:43, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

That it does :-) No one claimed there was any truth in advertising. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:00, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Does that excuse claiming something that is untrue? The Transhumanist 01:39, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

See User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 70#WikiExperts.us selling editing to corporations (15 January 2011)

and User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 96#Money and expenses (February 2012).

—Wavelength (talk) 01:14, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

What's the remedy? The Transhumanist 01:39, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I think I heard in the news that Anonymous makes edits to webpages sometimes. Biosthmors (talk) 03:47, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

It all really comes down to the quality of their edits. If they make decent articles with reliable sources for notable entities, then whom does it hurt? RNealK (talk) 03:48, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

If you read WP:COI, it says you're perfectly allowed to write articles on commission, as long as the articles are the same as they'd otherwise be if you weren't being paid. You're discouraged from doing this because it's usually difficult to do so. If you work for a company, writing about it at your boss's behest, it become difficult to adhere to NPOV and please her. But as long as they're complying with WP:NPOV, they can write articles and get paid for it, and be fully compliant with Wikipedia's standards (though they'd be wise to get the money up front). WilyD 09:26, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

With respect to paid editing in general, according to WP:COI, transparency is key. Which accounts are WikiExpert editing under? Which articles have they edited? Where are WikiExpert's edit summaries?

By the way, WP:COI doesn't say what you said it says. On the contrary, it states:

"Paid advocates are very strongly discouraged from direct article editing, and should instead propose changes on the talk page of the article in question."

WP:COI distinguishes "paid advocacy" as a subtype of "paid editing", further elaborating:

"you are very strongly discouraged from editing Wikipedia in areas where those external relationships could reasonably be said to undermine your ability to remain neutral. If you have a financial connection to a topic (as an employee, owner or other stakeholder), you are advised to refrain from editing articles directly, and to provide full disclosure of the connection. You may use the article talk pages to suggest changes, or the {{request edit}} template to request edits."

That's pretty clear. The Transhumanist 20:49, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Even if paid editing was banned by policy (instead of "discouraged" by a guideline), it would be impossible to police and enforce. The best defense, in either case, are the main policies that already guide the improvement of articles: WP:NPOV and WP:Verifiability. If a paid editor follows those guidelines, they will likely be a net benefit to Wikipedia. If they don't follow those guidelines, there are already mechanisms in place to fix that. First Light (talk) 03:51, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

It is pretty clear, and it says exactly what I said it says. They get advised not to write about topics they're financially connected to. They're discouraged. But they can still do it anyhow, and if they can adhere to WP:NPOV, nothing's the matter with them being financially connected to the topic or not. And if you're familiar with Wikipedia, it's actually piss-ass easy to do this. I'm financially/professionally connected with this image I made, for instance, which now sits at the top of a featured article (and apparently more than two dozen language versions of Wikipedia - hey, who knew?), but nobody minds and everyone's happy to have it because it's quite reasonably neutral. For someone familiar with Wikipedia, it ain't that hard to write neutral articles even if you're getting paid to do it. As a business (or whatnot), it makes sense to pay for a neutral article, because it can raise your profile (indeed, I chose the location of my first date with my wife from Category:Museums in Toronto, no spamming necessary). Unpaid advocates are not better than paid advocates (indeed, they're usually worse, as their motivation is far less limited), and paid non-advocates are really a non-issue, discouraged because of the worry they'd become paid advocates. WilyD 10:19, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, unpaid advocates are no different—they are just getting "paid" in a different way, through some benefit to their point of view, political stand, religious beliefs, philosophical views (transhumanism, to give one example), professional life, etc. The fact that Wikipedia benefits from so many people with their own varied motivations for editing is, to a significant extent, responsible for Wikipedia's success. First Light (talk) 17:53, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

While there is something in what you say, First Light, in my view Wikipedia needs to draw a very bright line when it comes to paid editing. If it can not be banned officially due to enforcement issues, it must be discouraged with every means possible, as a serious threat to NPOV. It means that those with the money to afford it can buy their "slant." Most discouraging. I think we need a lot more clarification on this topic. Jusdafax 22:57, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Except that it isn't a "serious threat to NPOV", that's the point. POV warriors are a much more serious threat. Most paid editors are paid for something simple, such as just making an article on a topic. That doesn't mean the article is non-neutral. In most cases, the article written is perfectly fine. True, sometimes paid editors get asked to do something POV, such as removing criticism about a subject from an article, but most paid editors refuse those jobs, Wikiexperts included. The ones that do accept those jobs are almost all banned at this point. Silverseren^C 04:47, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Indeed one could argue professionals are less likely to write overly POV articles, because if they did the articles are likely to be challenged and their contributions edited out. Which means they don't get paid, or at least don't get repeat business. Paid editors (and note, I'm not one) have a financial incentive to write and edit articles that conform to WP standards. Otherwise they're out of a job. --Icerat (talk) 13:41, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's that easy. The problem with paid editors is that they are good at POV. The Trilantic article has various subtle biases introduced by its structure, composition, and layout that are designed to give it a certain 'glow' that corresponds to a difficulty of placing a negative statement if you had one. In other words, it focuses on present (and only present) investments, listing each company in a brief format that gives just enough room for what it is and does that sounds valuable, in a table format that allows no place to say "but so-and-so was hit with Better Business Bureau complaints". The well-composed paid article is structured in such a way that it is simply barren ground for some IP to try to implant a dose of harsh reality. In order to properly balance POV, it is necessary to compile a list of all the tricks the paid editors use to accomplish this 'glow', then devise suitable counters for each. Wnt (talk) 16:33, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

preserving the imaginary

I was wondering, if the block log was currently for admin eyes only. Would there be a good reason to put it out there, in public, until the end of time, for the world to see? I wrote a really long posting about this but I don't want to use that much of your time. There is a long list of reasons why these logs should not be public. If you want elaboration just say the word. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 08:23, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Block logs are public, and anyone can see them. What is it you want, or don't, want to see? Qwyrxian (talk) 09:17, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Could you please explain what you mean? 84.106.26.81 (talk) 10:01, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

The IP explained that (1) they are not sure whether block logs are public at the moment, and (2) they believe that block logs should not be public.

Sometimes a block summary is seriously problematic and will be suppressed. But even a relatively harmless block log could cause the owner of a real name account to not get a job, for example, as employers increasingly look for information on applicants on the internet. Hans Adler 11:00, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

If you want to see what someone's block log looks like, go to their user page, then go to Special:log/block and enter the person's username in the "Target" field. You will see a list of all of the times the person has been blocked or unblocked, along with the reasons that the admins gave for making those blocks/unblocks. Is that the information you're looking for? It does generally need to be public, because if it weren't then admins could block users and no one other than other admins would ever know why. Qwyrxian (talk) 11:19, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

You can ask for "oversight" of block entries in certain specific cases outlined by policy. Generally, if a log entry causes damage to your reputation in real life, you can simply send a request to the oversight email, and they will happily remove it. (This doesn't apply to sourced facts about famous/notable persons, for reasons too long to explain here).

People will have certain expectations: you won't repeat the behaviour that caused the block in the first place, if you use oversight to hide a conflict of interest then you will stop editing the article where you have a conflict (you are supposed to be open about conflict of interest), etc. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:55, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I have never seen any "long list" or even a "short list" of reasons why a block log should not be public ... some elaboration would be good, although this is not likely the right forum to discuss (✉→BWilkins←✎) 11:36, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

It's not the right forum to actually do something about it, but it seems as good as any for a brainstorm about the pros and cons. As we begin this discussion, let's remember that there are many gradations between 'public' and 'not public'. For example, I'm pretty sure (someone can check my work if they think I'm wrong) the block logs are set to NOINDEX so that they don't show up in Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. That takes us a fair distance between "there's no reason to trumpet it to the general public" and "it's important for internal purposes that people's reputations are based on their past behavior". Alternatives that might be considered would include: admin-only visibility (problematic from a power structure perspective, since part of the reason for the block log to be visible is to provide transparency into admin actions!), logged-in-only visibility (interesting), autoconfirmed-only visibility (interesting).--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:08, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I was curious what you thought about it. :)

I think the process of blocking and unblocking users strongly favors everyone going back to work asap. I thought this was a good thing 5 min ago. Our logs lack accuracy but that is ok,(I thought) as long as everyone can get back to work there is no harm done. (Except from the log entry)

Restrict access to auto confirmed users sounds great. I'm now pondering if it could be interesting to (also) improve the log to better provide transparency into admin actions. Currently the accusations have no evidence, the punishments are not necessarily deserved, and the user is not allowed to say anything in his defense on the page. The hard working careful admin looks the same as the trigger happy didn't really look guy. Both do a good job but the careful admin deserves extra credit. :)

Another angle is that any kind of log tends to perpetuate discussions about resolved issues. We wont be writing articles when that happens.

The puzzle is harder than I thought.84.106.26.81 (talk) 14:53, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

First, we don't do punishment. Period.

There's been millions of lines of discussion about "good blocks" versus "bad blocks" and "wheel warring" and "improper unblocking". Admins are selected based on trust. Blocking should be a last resort to protect the project. Sometimes, due to the nature of the protection required it becomes a "first" resort - based on the judement of the admin in question.

A good admin uses the right blocking reason, and often even provides a link to either the infraction *or* the discussion while blocking - that will appear in the block log. In most cases the admin then provides the appropriate block notice on their talkpage (difficult with rangeblocks, of course).

If the editor makes an unblock request that is accepted, the good admin will note "accepting unblock request" or "unblocking as per conditions", or "unblocking as per discussion at X" (with a link to ANI or wherever.

These kinds of annotations are not only good practice, they're recommended. They also leave a pretty good audit trail.

Now, a really interesting thing that could happen would be that if the person makes an unblock request and an admin declines it, that decline would be put into the block log as well.

Making the block log only available to logged-in/autoconfirmed editors does make a degree of sense ... although, how would an anonymous editor see they they're blocked ... or that the IP they are usign is blocked if they cannot see the block log? (✉→BWilkins←✎) 17:24, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Bwilkins' statement has great insight and I agree with it completely. Suggest we not make any changes in the visibility of the block log, a useful tool which should remain visible to all. For myself, and generally speaking, I find that someone with more than a few blocks has a partial or even complete inability to collaborate with others, and I will usually ignore or avoid such types. The objection that those editing under their real names may suffer if potential employers judge them for it carries little weight with me, as it was their choice to register that way to begin with. Jusdafax 00:20, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Bwilkins' statement lacks insight. It puts a fine "problem? what problem?" gloss on the situation. We do do punishment; not often, but we do. Blocking is often used without trying more productive, less hurtful, less disruptive options first. Blocking admins rarely provide a link in the block log to either the infraction *or* the discussion, and notes on the blocked user's talk page are often lacking a clear explanation and sufficient diffs for easy independent review. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:48, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Bad blocks should be deleted from the victim's block log. That would include "oopsy" blocks, where the perpetrator hit the wrong button or utterly misunderstood the situation; but blocks that are overturned as bad blocks after community review - or unilaterally overturned by another admin as a bad block, who is subsequently supported by the community - should also be deleted. A new log should be created, sortable by perpetrator and victim, of deleted blocks, separate from the block log.

Far too much blocking of good-faith editors goes on here, really. Newyorkbrad suggested here that temporary page-bans should be deployed instead of most 3RR blocks. Others suggested page protection could be used more often in lieu of edit-war blocks. A more nuanced approach like that could be taken in a number of different situations. One editor being rude to another could be told not to address or discuss the other for a set period by an admin. All of this would be backed up blocks, of course, in the case of defiance. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:38, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

• Newyorkbrad's idea might make sense, though as discussed there it creates more work for admins. NE Ent's call for a 'statute of limitations' that would include redacting the block log after a period of time is an idea I agree with as well. Last but not least, I'll just ask: is there a need to provide the block log under a CC-by license? If people are actually worrying about being discriminated against in employment based on this (which would be a travesty to begin with) then it might be possible to put a copyright notice on the block log page and say that it is provided for personal work as a WP volunteer only, not to be redistributed, and that by viewing this page you agree to terms and conditions including that you will not use the information in making employment decisions. Not at all sure I like that idea, but might as well ask. Wnt (talk) 18:01, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

In prison everyone is innocent. Whatever the block log says it is always wrong. Just ask whoever it belongs to. I think we don't really care what the truth is, we care only if your contributions are useful and your conduct is pleasant. The block log is useful at the point where your account merits admin investigation. (not before) After that we need the log to see if the administrator did his job properly. We dedicate resources to the investigation of the log. If there is a notice board discussion an admin will close it and then block the user. The link to the archive is 1 click away. It seems good to make it mandatory if there is a discussion. Hiding the link to the dubious report is of course a cleaver trick we shouldn't fall for. But generally we trust editors to do a reasonably good job reviewing another editor. We spend resources here. If there is a link to the discussion we can get something in return for the effort.

• mandatory link
• Only administrators can view all block logs.
• All registered/Auto confirmed users can view their own block log and block logs from IP editors.
• IP editors and readers can only view their own log.

That way log entries merit no further persecution. When a case is closed it is the end of story. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 20:24, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Problems with a moderator in Wikipedia

Hello, i'm a big fan and old user of wikipedia. From 4 months ago i started with a porject with some of my professors from university that could help some people. We are developing videos of all the philosophers, in an easy language, just with the term of present them. Maybe it happen in us or other countries, but there isn't ant relevand and reliable material in portuguese. So, we started to make this integrated with a magazine (revistaligados) and a blog (ligadosfm), to show how safe it is. And as the protocol of Wikipedia is not to be inventive, ilegal, or out of the canone, we started to link the posts fo the blog with the video of each philosopher in each page correspondent. However, a moderator Yanguas is saying that is spam, and refuses himself of see the video analise it. - That is terrible and now i'm afraid of lose my account here and can't comtribute with Wiki.

links: www.revistaligados.com ; www.ligadosfm.com ; www.youtube.com/user/felipobellini

Please contact-me :)

--Felipobellini (talk) 21:26, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Seems to relate to this and nearby messages on that talk page. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:07, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

yes, it is. and as you can see, all these spans advices just apeared yesterday, what look's as a inapropriate case of redicalism.

--Felipobellini (talk) 17:50, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

WebCite has responded

There was a reply from Gunther Eysenbach here. I assume at this point we should leave it up to the WMF to start discussions on what the proper action on the WMF's part would be. Silverseren^C 02:03, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia short on volunteer editors

This morning, news outlets are carrying a story about Wikimedia Exec Director Sue Gardner, stating that she is concerned about a steep decline in the number of new volunteer editors. See e.g., http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-13/wikipedia-faces-shortage-of-editors/4515928.

I'm not the least bit suprised by a decline in editors, but I am suprised by the reasons given by Sue, which don't seem to convey any conviction. Below I set out what I think the reason are.

I've consulted Wikipedia from a few years now - it's a terrific resource, but the quality of articles is definitely deteriorating. For about 18 months I have been monitoring the Science Reference Desk, and have occiasonally contributed answers. The experience is not good.

I am a university qualified professional electrical engineer with 40 years experience in diesel power generation. I'm currently doing research at Ph.d level into diesel engine combustion. So, I do know quite a bit about electrical engineering and the design, engineering, operation of engines, and related subjects. When questions on basic aspects of electrical distribution or diesel engine principles have popped up on Science Ref Desk, I have posted answers. The experience is NOT good. Subsequent postings of thanks and appreciation for good answers, and postings claiming I am a nut/troll/idiot are roughly equal. In some cases, after I have posted an answer that any electrically qualified chap would regard as straightforward textbook stuff, some other person has posted a conflicting answewr that would most likely mislead the OP. So what's the point?

After I answered one question on the operation of diesel engines, some peanut posted in disagreement. So I posted again, showing why he was wrong - some debate ensued. At the end of it, a Wikipedia editor requested I register and clean up the engine articles and put them right, as I obviously had the expert knowledge and the ability to present it. I've checked these articles out - they are a mess, with heaps of common misconceptions and errors. I'd LOVE to put them right. But why would I bother? I could spend 100's of hours on it, getting it all ship-shape, ensuring everything is referenced, etc. Then any twit, vandal, or troll can just stuff it up again, or revert all the changes. This issue could be largely fixed by requiring all editors to be registered (allowing unregistered dynamic IP users to edit Wikipedia articles is crazy), appointing moderators for each subject, and requiring edtors to supply their qualifications. There's nothing wrong with people editing subjects they are not officially qualified in, if they have sufficient genuine interest, but if editor X says something, and person Y with qualifications in the field says he's wrong, and person Z without appropriate qualifications says he's right and Y is a dickhead, I'd at least give Y's opinions careful consideration. It seems that Wikipedia gives Y's and Z's equal voice. I'd be HAPPY to spend the 100's of hours if I had some protection after reasonable moderation and critique. Nobody is perfect, we all mistakes. So I don't have a problem with intelligent critique. But it seems in Wikipedia editing all dickheads are equal.

A lot of problems woulkd be eliminated if Wikipedia articles, afrer a consensus was reached, were locked against further edits. If somebody then spotted an error/omission/desirable change, then that change be debated, and after consensus again reached, a moderator requested to unlock it, change, and re-lock.

The quality of answers on Science Ref Desk is low and getting lower, with much spurious off-topic debate not in the least helpful to poor OP's. This has the following effects: a) It discourages folk from posting really good questions; b) it discourages folk who know the answer from posting; and c) It shows Wikipedia in a bad light and discourages folk who know their stuff from contributing to Wikipedia articles.

I've made suggestions in good faith before to the Admin talk page on how to better manage the vandal and troll issue. But instead of accepting my suggestions, or politely showing me why my suggestion is not a good one (either of which would be good), I've got instead a lot of diatribe about me being a troll or vandal, and discussion on whether I might be someone else they don't like, and how I can be blocked again. That doesn't encourage me to register and edit articles, and I should think it turns others off as well. Even if I was socking or whatever, no harm to the community at large would have come from giving an intelligent response.

The Ref Desk talk page and the Admin talk page give one a marked impression that Wikipedia has a very serious problem with vandals stuffing up articles. That may be an incorrect impression I have, but it is one reason why I will not register, and why I will not waste time editing/improving.creating articles.

I hope for once this feedback can be seen in good faith. Wikipedia is a good resource - but it could be heaps better with only a few admin and process changes. If you want more editors, make it attractive to folk, treat them with some respect.

Keit 121.221.81.211 (talk) 02:58, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for posting here. I respect your efforts to answer questions. Thanks for that. We care about content and articles a lot around here. Once you get an article up to a respectable state, it's easier to maintain. I've spent considerable effort updating deep vein thrombosis and it's very low-maintenance, despite getting thousands of hits a day. Why not try editing articles with someone's guidance? You can always ask me questions at my talk page and I can watch the article you edit too. I respect your experience and knowledge. Now can you reflect those with edits? ;-) Biosthmors (talk) 03:05, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

• Editor decline by 2% still overpowers vandals: Although the active editor counts have begun dropping a slight 2% per year, still the decline has been gradual, as perhaps 10% in the next 4 years. However, the numbers remain strong: as if comparing a room of 90 people rather than 99 after 4 years. The party is still rocking, but Sue Gardner can wish for more visitors. We have about 18,000 casual editors updating several articles each month, but over 9,100 will update dozens of pages, and 3,200 editors still make over 99 article edits each month. If those people were focused on higher-priority improvements, then more could be done with fewer people. Also, while it might seem demoralizing, when considering the impact of people hacking articles, it is important to look at overall improvements to Wikipedia in a holistic manner, where there is often a positive synergism, as good efforts attract other good efforts, year after year. For example, a population region gains spin-off articles, which describe each district or town. Similarly, talking about ways to improve Wikipedia will attract other suggestions for improvements. Meanwhile, the expert editors tend to write text which remains in place, in general, for years. Yes, "theoretically" it might seem to be all articles that "anyone can hack" but in practice, the helpful editors outweigh the troublemakers, and hence, many articles are a net positive to readers, despite some rough edges of awkward or fringe text over the years. The illusions of "doom and gloom" are fostered because Wikipedia is often maintained by mere "skeleton crews" of people handling each topic area. If only a few editors write about diesel engines, then it can require years to make progress, but if a few experienced editors also join that effort, then details are expanded in just months. Conversely, a few editors who quit from a specific area might foster the illusion, "The end is near" but when a few (re-)join, then massive improvements can occur within a few months. Wikipedia uses "economy of scale" practices, which allow massive improvements by automation, or by small changes, which often have a huge multiplier effect to spread improvements quickly. Hence, even the fewer editors can accomplish more, by working smarter rather than harder. Watch the results during the next 4 years, and then judge for yourself. -Wikid77 (talk) 16:23, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
• To think that he's complaining. At least electrical engineers are on a level playing ground with the people who want to destroy articles. By contrast, the biologists are being subjected to WP:MEDRS, an overbearing guideline that is used to dictate that (a) any article about genes or biologically active compounds is solely about human health, and so studies in vitro, in animals, early clinical studies, etc. are of at best peripheral relevance, (b) any new research result, even in the most prestigious journal, is inferior to any review, even a "meta-analysis" of dubious validity, (c) the target audience of any article is "a general audience", by which is implied patients, whom it would be unethical to inform about any currently uncertain development, and (d) therefore, anything of interest to biological researchers can and should be exterminated whenever the reader finds it "reasonable" to do so. Wnt (talk) 16:42, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

No. MEDRS is about medical research not biology. And citing primary sources is fine, per WP:MEDREV. Why else would I have added two recent RCTs from NEJM at DVT#Research directions? Biosthmors (talk) 19:21, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia treats people not just unfairly. Wikipedia treats people as no human being should be treated. No wonder there's editors decline. Until "Vandals, trolls and malactors are given respect, whereas those who are here to actually create an encyclopedia, and to do meaningful work, are slapped in the face and not given the support needed to do the work they need to do." there will be editors decline. 71.198.214.81 (talk) 19:13, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

The best way to continue as a writing Wikipedian for many years is to be 'indifferent to both praise and blame.' Indifference to praise is a hard task for mere humans, but millions of potential anonymous readers demand it of you, for if you require praise you will burn out... Biosthmors (talk) 19:18, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Question - is there any stats on the amount of editors at the sister projects. What I am wondering is if the amount of editors lost here on English Wikipedia is actually dispersed trough the other projects. Is there a net lost of contributors over all to all the projects - or are they simply speared out over the many projects instead of all here.Moxy (talk) 19:29, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

• Global increase but decline is not loss of editors: Previous statistics have shown a slight increase in overall global Wikipedia active editors, while English Wikipedia (enwiki) had seemed level for 3 years (since 2010, or slight decline). After reviewing thousands of edits, it becomes apparent that many editors who were formerly quite active, several years ago, are still here but editing fewer articles per month. Even Jimbo counts as an editor who rarely edits articles, compared to years ago, but then posting talk-page messages can help others to edit even more. Meanwhile, other editors have increased their edits (after years of casual editing), or changed their usernames, and it is very difficult to "count" the truly new editors. The stats for English WP merely show a slight %2 decline in recent article activity (or projected 10% over next 4 years). As for motives, it is difficult to determine if users reduce editing due to continual moaning by bad-apple editors, or merely edit as other usernames or as IP editors. I confirmed one dynamic IP had updated related articles from over 105 rotating IP addresses, rarely repeated (which took me hours to confirm the patterns).
  However, another illusion (in the "decline") is the switch to "multi-change edits" where one edit-save might alter 250 details in a page, rather than just a few words. In several cases, I have made over 1,000 changes in a single edit-save, during a WP:GOCE backlog drive (working from an offline text copy), to avoid edit-conflicts with other users who might try editing after noticing the page has changed (in Special:RecentChanges). Other editors have also switched to multi-change edits, posting just 1 or 2 edits where, formerly, they would have edited a page 9 times, and that switch looks like a decline in editor "activity" from 9 edits to 2, even if some editors make more improvements in pages when it looks like the edit-count levels have declined. Anyway, lower edit-activity does not equate to a "loss of editors" just fewer edit-save operations in articles (not talk-pages or templates). -Wikid77 (talk) 22:26, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the reasoned responses. If I may summarise what's been said in response to my comments:-

• The actual deline in editor numbers in English Wikipedia is not significant, only 2%.
• Good editors still outweigh vandals.
• Editor count stats don't mean much - an editor is counted as having done an edit regardless of whether he/she change one letter in a word, or made thousands of changes for each Save.
• Editing and maintaining Wikipedia articles is not as onerous as I think it is.
• Some editors seem to think things are in fact not good.

Sue Gardner made a public statement, which I quote here: "A fall in the number of new people volunteering to edit articles and administer the site is [Wikipedia's] greatest concern." Well, is she right or is she wrong, noting that a fall in new editors is not the same as declining activity by old editors (declining activity by old editors could be a good sign - they've made their contribution about what they are knowlegable on, and their contribution is sound, and so requiring little amendment)? As Executive Director, she ought to know. Can we please get Sue Gardner to comment on this thread?

None of the responents above addressed the major thrust of my feedback, which is that what one sees up front is a right turn off. As a potential new editor, I dipped my toe in at Ref Desk. That experience was not good. The next thing a potential new editor does is have a sniff round the various talk pages, to see how Wikipedia works. He soon sees there's an awful lot of discussion about trolls, vandals, and sock puppets. Seems to be a huge problem - not at all enticing. He sees that some editors have been blocked, and the case for doing so in some cases is strong, in other case it seems weak. He sees that other contributors are right pests, but continue with impunity (There's one guy, no need to mention his name - anyone who looks at Ref Desk will recognise him. He posts on Ref Desk, multiple times every day, answers on almost anything. Sometimes his answers are good, sometimes middling, but often quite wrong and not at all helpfull to the OP. He clearly HATES anyone pointing out he's wrong. Not good. )

The perception gained this way might well be wrong, but without experience, it's the perception that counts. Upon posting comments about this in talk pages, one usually gets attacked - not a good sign at all. Some folk post comments saying it's not so bad, the tools are nice, so try it and see. Fair enough - but if it is a good experience doing good edits, why not show how and why up front? Lastly, but quite importantly, what about my suggestion of having moderators? What about article locking as I described? Surely, if editors had some assurance that their work cannot be altered without some sort of consensus, the work load of all maintaining articles will be reduced, and editors would be more willing.

Keit 121.221.86.115 (talk) 01:48, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Locking articles to never be changed would be a terrible idea. Even our featured articles are not locked, and those have gone through very extensive vetting processes and are (allegedly) the best articles on the entire site. A large portion of the value of Wikipedia is that it can be easily updated when new information becomes available. I can't think of very many subjects for which we could reasonably say "Well, everything that could be said about this topic has been said, there won't be any new research/reporting about it in the future, so we can confidently lock it down indefinitely." It's a trade-off, of course, in that it means articles can be vandalized in the future...but it's a trade-off that we basically have to accept because the alternative would fundamentally change the very nature of the project. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:56, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

You didn't take the trouble to read what I actually said in my first post. Permanent locking for all time would indeed be stupid. Here it is again: Articles should be prepared and feedback/comments debated. When a good consensus is reached, as seen by the article moderator, the article to be locked. If, at a later date, someone thinks a change/update/correction or whatever is required, a dicussion about it should occur. When a good consensus is again reached, a moderator be requested to unlock the article, make the change(s), and then lock it again. This is the basic concept, many variations are possible. It's called change management, and is used very effectively elsewhere. It means that (in this case would be a volunteer) a moderator must be appointed to handle each change, but the total work load on everyone is reduced, because vandals are kep out and reverts would hardly ever be necessary. From looking at talk pages, there seems to a lot of articles monitoring going on to manage vandals. While just how that is done is not visible to me, it seems obvious that it is a lot of work the Eikipedia community should notbe doing. Note I said "good consensus". In the real world, nothing is perfect, and perfect consensus is not always reached. Soemtimes no consensus is reached - you get stick-in-the-muds. It is for the moderator (or perhaps lead editor) to judge when to go with it and lock in a change. Keit 121.221.231.100 (talk) 02:50, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

• Appreciate the input Keit. One of the problems with treating everyone equal is that everyone isn't equal in all areas, if in any. A consensus model works good most of the time, but it does give equal voice to experts and incompetents sometimes. The essay WP:Randy in Boise is a good read, if you haven't already. I promise you will identify with it. We are perpetually in a Catch 22 here at Wikipedia. The easier it is for more people to edit, the more editing we get, but we also get more noise. I understand why we allow IPs to edit, although it wouldn't break my heart if we required all editors to register to edit. I do recommend registering, then picking your area, watch those articles for changes, and making a difference in one specific area. The "politics" are thick but easy enough to learn in time. What we depend on is people like you, who are experts in one area, to work that area regularly. Add enough experts, you have an encyclopedia. Unfortunately, we sometimes run off some of the best talent with the politics. We are still a work in progress, and haven't worked all the bugs out of this crazy but effective system of building an encyclopedia. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 02:12, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I din't know about Randy in Boise. I've read it now and I enjoyed it. I agree, producing Wiki articles, as with any document, is a compromise. You want to have the input of many, but letting many in lets noise in. The solution to this is to have lead editors or moderators. A moderator can monitor the debate and (diplomatically if possible) throttle back the incompetents, and work towards letting experts have their say. As the anonimity and volunteer nature of Wikipedia means that appointing lead editors on any rational selective basis is not likely to work as well, a moderator system should be tried. If a moderator system has already been tried, and it didn't work out, I would be interested in why.

Why Wikipedia lets folk identified by only their dynamic IP edit articles is a mystery to me. It's lunacy. Only registered folk shoudlk be allowed to edit Wiki articles. I'm not talking about Ref Desk here - rules should be relaxed a bit on Ref Desk.

One thing about Wikpedia I find hard to understand, is that policies and procedures seem to be cast in stone. Wikipedians are the most change resistant community I know. As an Engineer, when I see a problem, I want to fix it. Wikipedians seem to agree that vandalism and incompetent editing is a problem - can't we have another go at adressing it? Can't we continue to fix the bugs?

Keit 121.221.231.100 (talk) 03:11, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Poem and picture of the day

Ash Wednesday

Letting Go of the Past
It is frightening to let go of the past. It is like letting go of something that is precious.
That includes the feeling for everything that has been, and also, for what was once a solid identity built on deprivation.
Letting go of the past must be done gradually and with special care; one old belief at a time
and only one fear. ...
By Poeticbent, with permission, thank you.

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:52, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Does the WMF have a position on meta:WebCite?

Hi Jimbo, I was wondering if the Foundation had a position on the proposal at meta:WebCite to take over the service we use to archive our references and citations? I have not seen any comments there from any WMF personnel. Thanks for your input. 64.40.54.46 (talk) 15:28, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't know. You might want to ask Philippe to track down a comment from someone. :-) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:00, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. 64.40.54.46 (talk) 19:01, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:OWN

After reading so many talk pages it is very clear that most articles here are owned by two or three (or more), editors. They are guardians of their own private interests, and refuse to let anyone change anything without their explicit approval. Wikipedia is being transformed into the last dinosaur, before it rolled over and took its last breath.--andreasegde (talk) 16:08, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

It's very easy to make broad generalizations like that, but much harder to prove them. Perhaps a first approach would be to give examples so that others may examine them and think more deeply about the issue.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:25, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Andreasegde, I wrote an essay on this very problem. If you check that essay's history, you will see that a few activists then hijacked it. The reason small groups of advocates can take over a topic area (Intelligent Design is a notable example) is because there aren't enough active, regular Wikipedia editors around to overcome their article ownership and Wikipedia's administrators are unable and unwilling to enforce WP:NPOV. This is one of the major reasons why Wikipedia has, and will continue to have, major credibility problems. Since the WMF has no effective plan to fix this, I suggest that it's better to just find something else to do than participate as an editor here unless you're trying to use Wikipedia to promote your own cause. Cla68 (talk) 22:49, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Jimmy, a good example of article ownership would be here and then here where you can see Andreasegde's reaction to critics of his articles: overwhelming hostility. Given his subsequent topic-banning by the community from all Beatles-related articles, and blocking for violating an interaction ban that developed from that, I find his coming here to complain about the very subject he is guilty of both bewildering and breathtaking. Jusdafax 01:22, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Gibraltar and DYK... again

You wrote [1]. They are proposing starting up Gibraltar DYKs again [2]

It doesn't seem like this has been settled and it appears that there are still serious conflicts of interest.

Can you please chime in here? ThoughtYouShouldKnow (talk) 23:57, 13 February 2013 (UTC)