User talk:Jimbo Wales

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What is the rate for advertising on Wikipedia?

Hi, I was researching "enzymes" on Google when I came across this useful adverting page on Wikipedia - one of countless thousands I am certain. I just wondered what you charged businesses for a web presence like the one I so-easily found? Biz (detergent) [1] Regards, Matt Lewis (talk) 17:14, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

The only cost is the shame of one blocked account. The content, however, mostly stays in place. -- 2001:558:1400:10:5C3D:2DFC:4102:FCD8 (talk) 17:33, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

There is nothing like being 'told' that the content stays by a 3-edit string of letters. I cannot see what the blocked account did that is so "shameful", whereas the rest of the slightly-edited content somehow is not. That account basically used the name of the company, CRBRands (and was duly auto-blocked)- the content it added last September mostly stayed [2]. Perhaps you think anonymity is the key to using this place, 2001:558:1400:10:5C3D:2DFC:4102:FCD8|2001:558:1400:10:5C3D:2DFC:4102:FCD8?

The issue here is that the whole article is a clear advert for a product, written like an advert, edit/passed by admin (DGG), and boosted above its real-world competition to the top of Google, via the placement-boost Google clearly gives to Wikipedia content. Wikipedia content is always at or near the top when I make a Google search. I don't think it's fair on competition. But despite this clear unfairness, we simply have to trust Wikimedia's word when they say they don't accept money for pages like this. Then why allow them? How do they help anyone apart from in finding a suitable product? Matt Lewis (talk) 19:52, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I took a look. In its current state IMHO I'd call it reasonably encyclopedic but slightly promotional. North8000 (talk) 19:56, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Can you define how it is encyclopedic? Matt Lewis (talk) 21:53, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

It's a useful reference for people who wish to remind themselves about the subject/look up details. When it was introduced, who has produced it, that sort of thing. WilyD 08:35, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

For a cleaning product called Biz? Give me a break. It's just the insane inclusionism that made this place impossible to edit in. Matt Lewis (talk) 13:20, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Sure, why not? If you have no interest in a subject, don't work on its coverage. I have no interest in soap, so I don't work on articles about soap. Whether there are one, ten, a hundred, or a million articles about soap doesn't change how hard it is to author & edit articles in my areas of interest (mostly the history of Ontario these days. Articles you don't work on are benign. This isn't a printed book children's encyclopaedia, it can easily provide comprehensive coverage of the history of soap. WilyD 15:16, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

So a comprehensive coverage of the "history of soap" (as you say) involves giving a top-5 Google product page to all brands of cleaning products? Or is it to be most brands? The best brands perhaps? Perhaps Wikipedia should be the top 20 page for every single search result possible? Businesses spend a fortune to get as high as Wikipedia on Google, and in terms on educational content your suggested 'articles' provide 0% to anyone but advertising train spotters. If you're a list freak why don't go for a list. At lest then we can remove the picture CR Brands so kindly provided. Matt Lewis (talk) 17:42, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

If someone googling for information on the detergent Biz gets offered the Wikipedia article as a first or second result (and a corporate page as the other one), I would consider that ideal. If I google some product, I want the Wikipedia article and the maker's website as the first two hits. Maybe some retailers and product reviews after that. The education content of any article is 0% to someone uninterested in the subject. However, there's no advertising content in it (now - it did have some problematic style at one point). That we obtained a high quality freely licensed picture is a plus. Ideally, we'd get such photos of every branded product (and person, etc.) The picture does not, as far as I can see, misrepresent the product, and would be suitable for a featured article on the subject - what's not to like? If you're convinced it's an intrinsically evil thing that someone might read the article and decide to buy the soap, and that this evil must be stopped by cutting off our nose to spite our face; I can't agree with that (and I'll note it quickly leads to burning the whole encyclopaedia - I've chosen locations for dates with my wife from Wikipedia, but it'd do a terrible disservice to the readers to delete all the articles on Museums to stop me.) WilyD 16:16, 7 March 2013 (UTC

The whole existence of the 'article' is problematic, and regarding advertising 'style' it clearly needs to be policed just to remain being a basic advert, rather than actually reading like a corny one again. What a colossal waste of people's time. It's not just the brand name that people type into Google to find these pages is it? People type in query-searches like "detergent" and "enzymes", and they get the best-ranked Wikipedia advertising page at the top of the list. But best-ranked why in these cases? It's nothing but a cleaning product competing with other cleaning products. That whole industry is actually an exploitative one as it happens. You people just can't seem to mentally deal with the ethical side of these things. Nobody is "cutting off anyone's nose" and threatening to burn the best Wikipedia content! When reading comments like that, I always wonder what unconnected 'pov' on this encyclopedia that people like you are really trying to protect? You can almost guarantee that there is a position/article somewhere on Wikipedia that you protecting based entirely on the godless doctrine of 'NOCENSORSHIP!'. Remove Biz detergent and the like and you worry that the position on 'x' that you strive to maintain will be threatened by liberal, regulatory and (Oh my God!) exclusionist values. I've seen it a thousand times in this crazy place: it's all battles to win battles. Otherwise arguments like yours are just nothing but madness.

Obviously I didn't expect an response from Jimbo, I was just pretty disgusted with the polished and verified nature of the advert I found using Google and wanted to make a quick point somewhere, but maybe if he is reading he might want to chip in. I can't see how he can possibly agree with you on this, and neither can the majority of Wikipedians (not that any abstact majority means much here). What I think is insane is that the two positions are clearly allowed to co-exist here. On the face of it it's simply madness, and an utter, utter waste of people's time. A cynical would say it just has to be deliberate in some way: ie the foundation must somehow benefit. If anyone thinks that all decisions like this should come down to per-article consensus I would say that this encyclopedia will end up duly collapsing - over complications arising from obesity and exhaustion. Matt Lewis (talk) 18:04, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Typing "Detergent" into google, the first Wikipedia hit for a brand of detergent was on the 9th page of results - the notion that someone's getting top google placement out of this is entirely bunk. The position I'm defending is quite straightforward - arbitrary and capricious deletions based on a dislike for the subject, or wanting to use Wikipedia for advocacy as you're doing, are incredibly injurious to moral and chase away people who'd like to be involved in the project. When someone takes the position you're taking here, they need to be reminded that our goal is to write an encyclopaedia, and positions like yours that are expressly hostile to that are not only unhelpful, but actively detrimental to the collegial atmosphere that's necessary to encyclopaedia writing. The foundation has identified the shrinking rates of new users as an issue of top concern, and allowing this kind of hostility to people who're working on writing an encyclopaedia to rampage unchecked is a key component of the forces driving people away. Who would want to spend their time writing articles if you're going to come by and say "Well, I think this is dumb, you're a waste of everyone's time, and everything you've worked on should be deleted?" - in comparison, someone who comes by and says "Ah, this is a good start, but it has some tone problems, and some balance problems" or whatever - is a helpful colleague. If a reader is interested in Biz, we should do our best to give them a neutral, encyclopaedic reference. The same is true of any other subject they may be interested in. We shouldn't sacrifice that goal over concerns about what's sitting on the umpteenth page of google search results. WilyD 18:31, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

How am I going to politely say to people this is a "good start" for the article "but it can be improved", when I am TRYING to explain to you why I think it shouldn't exist? Why don't you argue with my actual arguments? I don't appreciate you Wikilawyering by typing "detergent" into Google to prove that these articles don't score highly (only 9 for a WP/product was it?). People often type in strings of connected words, and this product is just one example. I originally typed in 'detergent enzyme' (if I remember now) and the Biz advert which Wikipedia for a time flagrantly promoted was in the top few search results. You'd do well to appreciate exactly why people get so upset about these things, and perhaps respect someone who at least cared enough to actually bring it to your attention. I'd suggest that any shortage of editors here is not at all because of forthright question-askers like me - many editors surely leave because they simply can't make any sense of this place any more. I've never said anything was "so evil" (as you suggested), or that I even "dislike" anything (in the sense of IDONTLIKEIT) - imo that is rhetoric needed to defend what is a totally untenable inclusionist position. If only the Foundation could identify that as a problem: it's probably just a question of what they are looking for. And of course I am now "uncolleagiate" and "need to be reminded that we are here to write an encyclopedia". Well that is extremely tedious for me personally to read, but I've made my point and there is (literally) no point in me labouring it. And sorry I forgot you are actually an admin, I've made that mistake a few times when I've come back in recent times. Matt Lewis (talk) 20:12, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

If your goal isn't to produce and maintain an encyclopaedia, then we don't really have a common ground to work together here. If it is, it's quite easy to see that this article is a good stub/start for someone without alot of experience - yes, it has problems, but most newly involved editors are going to have a lot of problems when they start out - the learning curve is quite steep (and unforgiving) these days. Nobody's asking you to author articles about soap, nobody's asking you to edit articles about soap, nobody's asking you to maintain articles about soap. If you don't want to - don't. It's really okay. The point isn't Wikilawyering (by any definition), but that Wikipedia isn't being used to push information to the top of google that readers aren't looking for. If a reader wants to read about Biz, why send them away? No one's asking you to do work, they're only asking that you not try and prevent them from writing a quality, neutral encyclopaedia to benefit the readership. I find it tedious to remind people why we're here too, but (like many) I'm quite concerned about how intimidating the environment is so I feel it's necessary to push back where people are looking to exclude new users and deprioritise the readers over whatever cause they're promoting (such as what order things appear in a google search - we shouldn't care at all, except where we're harming people - but of course, "detergent enzyme" doesn't return any such articles for me either). There are plenty of places for you to engage in advocacy - but this isn't the place. For what it's worth, it doesn't matter that I'm an admin - it doesn't give me any extra clout, it just means I spend time deleting actual ads (and copyright violations, etc.), but I do have a horse in the race, since I have authored an article about a business, which I'd hate to see the effort of wasted. Why would anyone want to write and maintain an encyclopaedia if other people were successfully tearing it down?WilyD 21:34, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you've properly read a single damn thing that I've written. You've just felt you've got the general idea and have thrown cliches at me. You have understood next to nothing, and have said next to nothing. I'm not preventing anyone from contributing to Wikipedia, and I'm not looking to exclude new users. How can you suggest this stuff? And can take flipping my word for it when I tell you that the Biz article top-ranked when I typed in "enzymes detergent" (or whatever it was) into Google - it was simply what prompted me to come here, and the ranking has changed only because the article has been further condensed. Show 'Good Faith' for heaven's sake, and don't suggest I'm a bullshitter. I'm going to step out now before I get quite angry. What a surprise you have a 'horse in the race.' Don't be such a paranoid nutcase: policy combined with guidelines must dictate what works or not, not making sure everything is allowed so anything passable stays in too. Wikipedia has NEVER believed in it's own set of policies almost on principle. Admit it people - it never, ever has. Some people will surely know what I mean. And AGF just stops people from repeating the one great truth here: that whatever else this is, this place is a home to idiots. Matt Lewis (talk) 23:13, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, excellent point. Ryan Vesey 15:42, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Do you really mean that? I am 100% serious, because the argument above is completely insane. Matt Lewis (talk) 17:42, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea how much of your comments are meant to be taken sarcastically and how much isn't, and, as a native speaker of Smartass, that's saying something. Any company paying for advertising on a Wikimedia project would be putting themselves in an untenable situation, as the content is liable to be altered by anyone who sees a problem (you, for example) at any time (before wasting everyone's time at Jimbo's talk page, for example). Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 19:59, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

But the admin and the wikignome above saw nothing wrong did they? There is far too much plaster-correcting of these kind of problems on Wikipedia, and far too little pointed question-asking imo. To copy-edit an advert someone would normally charge money wouldn't they? Editing a valid Wikipedia article for free for the project is one thing obviously, but 'softening' (and that is exactly what is happening) a plain advert for a product is completely another. You just can't expect your average Joe to do that. Most people coming to that page from Google would naturally assume Wikipedia is a valid place to sell products, and far too many Wikipedians just assume the general public understand the vagaries of Wikipedia. Why would they? And how could they? Talk to them and see what they say.

I wonder if there's been a big battle over censorship here in recent times, and the warped logic of EVERYTHINGGOES won. Matt Lewis (talk) 21:53, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

If you believe that the article is an inappropriate topic, you could be bold and redirect it to CR Brands (the company that owns it) or you could be less bold and nominate it for deletion. --B (talk) 23:10, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

What's with your tirade against the IP who made the same point as you? Ryan Vesey 04:10, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

If that's a question to me I don't understand it. Are you saying I've missed something? Matt Lewis (talk) 13:20, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

(←) I notified DGG since he was mentioned by name, not a requirement for this page, but seemed appropriate for this discussion. Rgrds. --64.85.215.188 (talk) 07:52, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Looking at DGG's page he may be one of those ultra-inclusionists. Even now the Biz ad/article is just a bit more watered down (after how many views and edits since I commented here?) - why isn't it deleted and merged. ie made into a single line in the CR Brands article (sans company-included product picture)? What happens when you just water it down is that it gets built up again in the future. That is guaranteed unless you protect these articles (a decidedly 'anti-ideals' solution that WP is clearly prepared to take with certain of it articles to control the dancing content). It's about the unnecessary work load involved in future editing, and is why I wonder sometimes if these editing insanities are not just 'all in the game', a kind of acceptable ebb and flow that keeps Wikipedia forever ticking over. Perhaps that's a little more realistic than ad money exchanging hands for high-ranking Google placement. Either way WP is consistently counter-productive in pure 'labour' terms, ie the actual-anonymous 'man hours' I've always felt they should matter a little more than I think they've ever done to be frank. The people you can't give barnstars to – a not unlimited supply of people, many of whom will feel resentment quite quickly.

Regarding this Biz detergent example, it's pointless placing the onus onto people who will be disinclined to touch product advertising - it's Wikipedia itself that needs to deal with these things efficiently when the Wikipedians come across them: in my view not enough sensible decisions are made, and the amount of 'hymn sheets' there no-doubt are around cannot help. You should compile a careful questionnaire on how Wikipedians regard this place and analyse the results. Except you'll go loopy allowing/disallowing various questions, and it will simply highlight how hazy the whole 'ideal' has become. I also expect that WP cannot rely on editors like myself (and better) as much as it once could in these areas, largely because we've just had too many bad experiences with procedures like AfD's, eg through being patronised and seeing them quickly-closed etc. Newer members of the project may well actually assume that that ultimately anything goes here, just subject to a little tweaking. The big fear there of course is plagiarism itself. I've ignored 99.9% of the issues I've come across via Google for a long time now, and I can see things daily if I'm using Google a lot. Apart from the ever-present 'extra-Wikipedia' events and projects that come up in the watchlist, I see little improvement in terms of the base-level quality of Google results: the area that ultimately matters in my opinion. Matt Lewis (talk) 13:20, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

As suggested above, if you feel that strongly about it, either redirect it to CR Brands or send it to Afd, it's as simple as that.--ukexpat (talk) 14:55, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

What is clearly "simple" to you is plainly Wikipedia not working to others. Your suggestions shouldn't need to be embarked on especially at the stage the article had got to. I've given reasons why people just aren't doing what you suggest. Obviously I am taking my time to write this, although I do know that I am wasting that time too (that is in the sense of not being listened to, if you need that much explained). Eligibility for Wikipedia shouldn't be a case of how strong someone like me "feels" about removing it or not: that's almost a battleground suggestion. The 'remove-it-if-you-can' route plainly involves millions of hours of people's wasted time, and in my view is almost Stalinistic in its disregard for the humanity behind labour. I'm sorry to put it like that but as an editor I've seen scores of thousands of hours of people's work lead absolutely nowhere, with a strong feeling all along that nothing less was ever expected by those who stand a little higher here.

Encyclopedia-building should be based on clear guidelines and policy, but clearly nobody knows what that entails in this particular area. What we have is a giant free-for-all dumping ground (product adverts being an obvious part), where people have to work at arguing over the safety/toxicity of all the gathered stuff. When no one (admin or otherwise) can actually agree on what kind of things are suitable or not, endlessly going through it involves a colossal waste of people's time. When it comes to discussing the overriding matter, the curt suggestion of avoiding argument for the usual choices of "action!" at very best can only save a minuscule fraction of all the wasted time, and all too often proves to be a bum direction anyway (resulting of course in just more wasted time.) Look at North8000 and Ryan Vessay above. They think that a "comprehensive coverage of 'soap'" requires articles on detergent products like Biz. How people like them and me exist in the same encyclopedia? It's not about "agreeing to differ" - we just logically can't co-exist in the same place. To make it work involves about 95% needless bureaucracy (such as first spotting then continually watering down the tide of advertising) to what about 5% progression? I'm being kind I think. I just don't have life to squander like that, and neither do most. Matt Lewis (talk) 17:42, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I am not an inclusionist of any kind with respect to promotional articles; if fixable & a major company I fix; otherwise I nominate for deletion at AfD or if utterly hopeless tag for speedy. I've deleted over 13,000 articles, at least half half of them for promotionalism. Quite literally. a day never goes by when I don't delete at leas a few, as by log will show. In fact, I seem to be more strict than many, for not all my AfD nominations get deleted, and there have been occasions when other admins decline to delete my speedy tagging.In covering afield , any field, the purpose of our notability guidelines is to keep the major topics in, and the minor ones out--we only cover major-league baseball players, we only have politicians who actually get elected, we only write on the most important household products. The most critical reason to avoid the minor ones is that articles on them will inevitably be promotional, as there won't be anything else to say, and they will also get neglected because nobody cares about them and therefore accumulate all sorts of crud, negative as well as positive.

There are some fields I think WP over-represents; if there's a consensus to do so , I don't waste my time fruitlessly trying every means to change it, I just ignore those articles and let those who do care work on them and make the decisions about which ones to keep. If there happens to be an RfC over the matter, I'll give my view, but then go by whatever the decision may be.

All systems run down unless work is done to keep them going. Unless work is done, WP will degenerate into a mix of advertising, internet directory content, POV articles on politics & religion & everything else people can argue about, and a memorial of everyone whose family want an obituary. People can choose to make contributions to the work by writing good material, by fixing bad material, by correcting errors, by dealing with all sort of inevitable problems, or by deleting the unsuitable & unfixable the content & if necessary blocking the ones who insert it. All these are necessary. If you want to write or improve articles on those things you think are important, you should do so--we very much need people who continue to do that. As in the RW, we need janitors. In the RW they deserve respect, and here we respect both their work and the work of article writing so much that don't let anyone become one who has't first shown their ability to write or improve articles. DGG ( talk ) 20:13, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to be blunt, but why then didn't you just put the Biz page up for AfD instead of copy-editing some of the ad-speak out of it? You can do it in a click or two now it seems. Look at the time people are spending trying to justify it, on the edit table too. It mystifies me. And yes I know I can place it in Afd myself, but I felt that people really need to make this point. I think that many people here are frankly institutionalised - you basically look at Wikipedia from within, as a giant ongoing sandpox project. Can you imagine how it looks from without? And how it operates in real life - ie through Google, the primary distribution centre for all this information? Matt Lewis (talk) 18:04, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Trying to do the research to determine if a topic is truly notable takes a lot more time than just leaving an article that isn't in itself problematic anymore, IRWolfie- (talk) 21:57, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Then let me give people some advice. If there's nothing in the article to say that it is notable, use that useful little link in that top corner of your screen and let people at AfD have a look. It's what it's there for. Don't worry about any backlog. When it comes to a blatant advert like this it's crazy to edit out the excess ad-blurb and then give it the benefit of the doubt. Is Wikipedia really short of these kind of articles to watch over? Don't worry about offending people who put the wrong kind of things into Wikipedia (in this case CR Brands, or other comrades in arms), worry instead about offending people who spend time producing decent stuff who then find that it's part of giant marketing machine. And worry about those who think that the AfD system is crucial to Wikipedia and really want it to work properly. And worry about those who still have no idea where Wikipedia is going and what it is really about - and who find that something worth being critical about. Matt Lewis (talk) 23:13, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Advice flows both ways. In four days it will be six months since you've made an edit to mainspace. Perhaps a few contributions of new content would provide a more balanced perspective about the efforts of others, I suggest you give it a try. See also: Antandrus's Observation No. 59. Carrite (talk) 21:44, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Well advice can flow both ways... I appreciate that you are nearly in the top 1000 most active people here, but the past I've seen some users update their ticker account every few hours - it's hardly a game to see who can edit like mad. How much does Jimbo edit I wonder? Six edits an hour or six in a year is none of your business. You have no idea what my life entails: I have in the past edited at some personal expense when I've really committed to things, and I regret all of the time I've spent as 0% change has ever happened as a result. A lot of the time time has just gone and I've had to back out. Do you really believe that the only people who should be welcomed to comment on Wikipedia are the regular contributors?

Thanks for the link, though. I have to say I find the curious 74-point 'essay' a real mix of emotions: much of it is either rather rude about people or just plain ill-thought out. Much of what's sensible in it is rather obvious (and laboured), and the constant pitting of Wikipedian/Good Admin vs Troll/Dissenter is very repetitive I think: there's not a great deal of depth considering it's a such long list. The most interesting point to me is possibly the very first point on censorship, but it's hard to be sure which way it's actually intended. Comments like ”31. People who loudly accuse the community of some vice are almost invariably guilty of, but blind to, some variant of that vice themselves.”' and "72. Truth" is a big word. Editors who make abrupt claims about either having, knowing, or insisting on "truth", and editors who include the word in their usernames, are probably doing something that does not belong in an encyclopedia, and the more stridently they argue, the more suspicious you are right to be." are hardly sensible observations in any sense, and "17. There IS a cabal. It's a core group of editors united by the belief that the encyclopedia must protect itself against jerks, and against people who write junk" – hmmm. As for "4. People who have the insatiable need to retaliate for perceived wrongs should be removed from the project as quickly, but gently, as possible." - one of the attempts at humour perhaps, although that urge to remove non-performers is repeated a few times in the list.

A lot of the essay involves sharp solutions/judgements to ambiguous problems. Even probably its 'nicest' point ("71. The very existence of Wikipedia is a massive proof that there are more people in the world wanting to build than to tear down. Were that not true, vandals would have overwhelmed and destroyed us years ago.") crumbles when you really think about it. And to suggest that Wikipedians are "the few actually useful people on the internet" (73) underestimates the internet actually a little worryingly imo (there's a Freudian slip in there on "write" and "read" too - check it out, and no I don't think it's 'ironic.'). 'Wikipedians' were only ever part of the story of Wikipedia, and is probably the biggest reason the Foundation insists on accepting IP's. This encyclopedia partly survives on passers-by correcting Google-discovered mistakes on the fly, yet when it comes to bragging about Wikipedia's achievements they are always subsumed into "our great community", regardless of how each individual editor may personally feel. Think about it. And by the way, I may not be particularly welcomed here at times, but I've actually never not been constructive along with my criticism. I long ago realised that just "Going to work!" (fine if you want to do it) does not help the things that I can see are wrong at all: and in a sense it just continues those problems. "edit, edit, edit" is the biggest cliche on Wikipedia and certain people do plow it on, you know. Fifty fifty it's the first response that any considered but critical comment gets. And again the fourth, and then the seventh...

For sheer pretentiousness I have to include this one from the list: “56. As Freud observed, we are most courageous when we feel most loved. Conversely, the lonely are often the most craven, and their anger is the most vindictive. Wikipedia is filled with the lonely. “ Name-check Freud and conflate his observation with an unconnected (and rather vindictive) point of your own! Matt Lewis (talk) 01:11, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Matt, thank you for your criticisms: they encourage me to write more. It is exactly because some people wouldn't get it that I needed to write it. Right now I have over 500 backlinks, and I didn't put them there: other people who liked the essay, and understood it, put them there. A handful of them (now including yours) are hostile. I find this amusing, and very encouraging indeed. Antandrus (talk) 22:20, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Please, it's not really an essay, it's a numbered list – there is no need to abuse that word wholesale. 74 repeating points and counting then is it? Mercy on us all then. Perhaps now there is a barnstar for verbal diarrhoea. I am sorry you find my so-called hostility encouraging. I wonder if that feeling (along with the list in general) isn't just the kind of battleground mentality that causes the most permanent damage of all on Wikipedia? It's not the constant battling over POV here, but broader and wilder fire stemming from an entrenched 'them vs us' attitude. In my opinion your list is nothing but a link used by particularly arrogant people to insult a very wide variety of other people on and even off Wikipedia: it's no surprise to me at all 500 people here link to it. How you can even talk of such a scatterbrained list in terms of "getting it" (or not in my case apparently) really demonstrates the mystery of the human mind. Matt Lewis (talk) 17:26, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Articles on products

I'm not denying that promotional or POV language is a big problem in the area of commerce, but I definitely feel that any product you've ever heard of, and most you haven't, should have an article about it. We have this weird disconnect between a culture that runs a fresh Today's Featured Ad every time somebody at Square Enix farts, and a culture that doesn't think you should have an article about most corporations unless there's literary criticism about it. I just ran into a speedy deletion over a stub I started at Topsy (social media) despite having a New York Times reference about it. Apparently there's some new threshold for speedy deletions, much stricter than that for AfDs, of "significance", which means whatever somebody wants it to. We had multiple mentions of the company in articles already, and a dozen people linking to its search results as references (to which I added one more, hence the stub). I have no real interest in it, but I thought we should have a short explanation of what it is. What is our article about a random company supposed to look like? Just a stub, because we don't want to promote it? Not a stub, because we don't explain significance? To be clear, I have no interest in trying to fight/resurrect for this article - Wikipedia doesn't deserve the effort, and it's a job only a paid specialist will want to take the time to learn to do effectively. This is becoming a system we should strive to learn from, not to contribute to; its time has passed. Wnt (talk) 21:08, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I think there's a real problem with (parts of) Wikipedia's culture in which any mention of articles having a possible economic value leads to accusations of COI, POV, commercialisation and bad faith editing. Fundamentally, I think that certain editors confuse effect with intention and, seeing a possible effect, accuse other editors of intending to cause that effect. For instance, an article about a place might inspire people to visit it, one about a product might make it more interesting to buyers, and one about a person might raise that person's profile. But unless the article is explicitly promotional, those are just side-effects of Wikipedia's main objective of compiling and disseminating reliably sourced information about topics of encyclopedic interest. Unfortunately there has been a trend lately of certain editors interpreting articles as being inherently "promotional" explicitly assuming bad faith on the part of the authors. In my experience, this has more often than not been based on unfounded speculation and paranoia. It's a destructive, demoralising pattern of behaviour and needs to stop; if we have to ban people who repeatedly engage in it, so be it. Prioryman (talk) 22:14, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Can you provide any evidence of that paranoid behaviour in parts of Wikipedia? (I can look at other arguments then, and get a better picture). What I think I see is a prevailing wish to include most things into Wikipedia and try and keep the problematic ones (like products) in as benign shape as possible, and I personally haven't seen much to the contrary (certainly in this conversation - although I admit I haven't looks far into WP). I find it extraordinary that you suggest banning people who express worry about this - I assume that was in jest. Regarding effect vs intention - we have to AGF I suppose (in some cases it will be impossible to know), but the effect is what matters at the end of the day. I think its Wikipedia's responsibility to consider the effects it has on society in general, however good the intentions are (and they are always good if you take AGF to extreme of course). Matt Lewis (talk) 00:44, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Sadly it's not hypothetical and I'm not speaking in jest. Over the past six months, editors who have been writing articles on Gibraltar - including myself and others - have been subjected to a campaign of harassment, defamation and personal attacks that's been unprecedented in my ten years of contributing to Wikipedia. It's been so bad that one well-regarded and very productive editor, User:ACP2011, quit Wikipedia after being threatened with outing and being accused of someone else's sockpuppet (she wasn't, obviously). This has been largely the work of a small group of editors associated with Wikipediocracy (notably User:Jayen466, who's banned from this page, and User:Cla68, who's now banned from Wikipedia) who have run a relentless campaign of attacks in the belief that any article relating to Gibraltar or several hundred square miles of Spain and Morocco near it is intended to be "promotional". In my own case, when I mentioned on-wiki that I was visiting Gibraltar on my way back from a trip to Morocco, these people and their friends started harassing me with demands on this page, on my talk page and elsewhere that I disclose who was paying for my trip, even though there was never any suggestion that anyone other than me was funding it. They persistently assumed bad faith of myself and others. In the process they caused considerable harm to the project, even going so far as to leak Jimbo's private emails to the media. In any sensibly-run community that kind of campaign wouldn't be tolerated and such people would have been kicked out. Prioryman (talk) 08:16, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

e/c Regarding having an article for every popular product (“that people have heard of, and some they haven't” - until it's on Wikipedia – so you end up having to include everything don't you?), I'd say about 80% of people who donate money to Wikipedia do not realise that this is the prevailing attitude now, and about half of that percentage would actually wish for their money back if they knew. Note that when it comes to non-donators I'd agree that most people out there hardly care - as long as they quickly get that useful titbit of information when they need it: I'm talking about honest donators. It's not just that the position is ethically shallow (shallow meaning without actual depth), it's detrimental in terms of progressing the encyclpodia - progressing in the sense of bettering rather that simply forever expanding it.

So far people have had to exaggerate the argument in some way in order to promote inclusionism, either by extending it into articles about actual corporations (not just products), or into frankly-silly areas of baby/bathwater either/or extremes (eg claiming it threatens all of Wikipedia, and that clear lines cannot be drawn - when they easily can in with the will to do it).

I've seen attitudes towards notability change radically in the time I've been on Wikipedia, and it's become a place where literally everything goes, from breaking news (where 'the community' is expected to correct the almost-guaranteed early-reporting mistakes that should never find their way into Wikipedia for any length of time), to copy-reducing articles on totally formulaic detergents: placing them in the Google-led chicken/egg popularity cycle that is the Holy Grail of political maneuverers on here. One person above has even admitted that the Biz argument for him is really about another article (which is I would say is the kind of 'borderline' article that is generally accepted - a now-closed bookshop with a most-minor politicised past), which he admits that he's emotionally invested in. In doing so he's effectively proved my argument that people really do fight for extreme inclusionism to keep in what they hold dear themselves.

Wnt mentions a company that he thought deserves an article because it's been mentioned in Wikipedia a few times. But didn't Jimmy Wales once say that the idea of Wikipedia is for people to follow links out of it (or rather - less problematically - be inspired to research for more information outside of it?) - ie use Wikipedia as a “starting point”? It seems to me that the idea now is to keep people within Wikipedia any way possible. I think the problem with Topsy (social media) was that it was just a stub, and the idea is to have more than that. If that's the reason for the 'speedy delete' then overall it's a good thing that it was deleted – not much gained, not much lost. Keeping stubs as stubs can just mean work, work, work, as Wikipedia clearly abhors a vacuum. I've Topsy deserves more then give it more.

Regarding Biz in this wikilinking sense I would say that Wikipedia itself should not be used as weight/sourcing in this way (that's even policy isn't it?), and on how many occasions would Biz need to be mentioned anyway? What would the BBC do, even if a bottle of Biz appeared on the screen? The vox would be something like "using an enzyme-based household detergent". Adding "often used for the job" is even going too far given the 'echotising' nature of these things. The BBC isn't perfect by any means, but Wikipedia could certainly take a leaf out of some of the standards it has regarding product reference. And I'm stretching to find a good reason for Biz's likely use. Wikipedia will be almost entirely the colour of linkable text before long. I don't know about anyone else, but the more links I see in a sentence/paragraph, the harder it is I find it to follow,

Sadly I suspect that some jaded people on Wikipedia now simply hope that it's easier just to include pretty-much everything possible, and trust that people will polish them up from time to time - it isn't, and they don't, won't (or won't properly) or just for whatever reason can't. Matt Lewis (talk) 00:21, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

The Topsy article was a starting point for research - though rudimentary, it made it perfectly clear what the company was, when it was started, who ran it, where its capital came from. While it could have been longer I frankly don't think it really needed much more effort than that unless somebody really cared to put it in someday. If you think I'm going to sit down for hours poring over an article about a company which I don't care about, just to get it up to some arbitrary threshold, guess again. If you want to be my Editor, hand me orders about just precisely how the article is supposed to be, but I have to do all the writing on my own, then try paying me $20 an hour to work for you. But even then Wikipedia would be at a disadvantage, because if I were writing for a company they would value the article, but here it would be likely to be thrown away or stripped back down to a stub anyway. Hell with it. If I write articles by myself for free then I am going to be the author and copyright holder of those articles, and if I then choose to give them away for free I'll look for some more reliable means of web publication.

The Golden Age of Wikipedia was not deletionist - you're at odds with the literature there. Wikipedia grew and flourished when people could write one sentence stubs, unsourced stubs, articles about anything, and deletion only came up if it wasn't actually anything useful at all.

If the color of links in your text is bothering you, that's a browser issue. We didn't do all this editing just to be told that hypertext is a bad idea. That is kin to the people who complain about "too many" references in an article - which is the very thing that makes it a good starting point for further research! Indeed, while we don't presently attempt it (with the current editing interface it would be mad, and it takes away from a useful extra function as a way of signifying conceptual flow) the notion of Wikilinking every phrase is conceptually sound, and perhaps a successor project can implement it effectively. Wnt (talk) 14:46, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Your Topsy article possibly proves that a) leaving in stub-form is not the best way to encourage research (and with investable topics it never stays in that form anyway), and b) the research to be 'encouraged', if such a thing is acceptable at all, should probably be just be regarding core-academic articles. People aren't completely stupid - they can use the internet outside of Google-Wikipedia when they want or need to. The is something a bit sloth-inducing (or mothering even), a bit pushy, and a bit dominating about it all: there's a real lack of perspective on what Wikipedia needs to be here I think, especially when the pitfalls are so real. Matt Lewis (talk) 16:55, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

You say that it is pointless for a company to pay someone to write a product article as they are guaranteed to be reduced to stubs? The Biz example (remember why I came here) showed me that if I was paid to write a product article, even senior admin/editors would merely water it down a bit - it would not be reduced to a stub (and even now Biz has it's professional company-provided image, with a link to the product page of course). Revising editors simply know that reducing to a stub is a thankless task. So as a paid editor I'd fill it with company blurb, see it edited-down a bit, then sit back as it becomes inclusionist ballast for a multitude of POV, and smile as the product sits at or near the top of Google for a variety of different searches.

I never once said that Wikipedia used to be "deletionist", esp when it was simply building articles. I said that I've seen Wikipedia become more and more inclusionist, and I think this discussion proves it. It probably runs parallel to the prevailing argument over censorship: ie that all information, however put, must be of benefit to at least someone out there, and that fact is all that matters. I don't remember seeing the prevailing attitudes I see now in the mid 00's. It could be minority power (and/or minority noise), but things have clearly (if maybe steadily) changed imo. At least there is that 'quick delete' now: perhaps that was introduced as a partial fix to this perception people have now that 'anything goes' here.

Regarding the amount of possible wikilinks in an average article sentence, the important issue isn't how hard it is to read is it? It's the quite-problematic question of why/when to wikilink to these products you want. But thank you for pointing out that in this regard legibility is clearly outside of Wikipedia's responsibility. Nobody is saying that hypertext is a bad idea: my main point was clear, and as usual routinely repositioned. Matt Lewis (talk) 16:55, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Your position seems to embody an attitude that I am running into here more and more here that Wikipedia is not a serious tool for research. You speak of 'core academic', 'effects on society', 'ethically shallow', 'titbits' ... if I interpret these things correctly, you are joining with those who essentially - even if you don't realize it - dividing the world between Things The Peasants Should Know and Things The Peasants Don't Have A Right To Know. This is the principle behind WP:MEDRS as overbearingly applied, behind removing "fancruft" and articles without "significance". The peasants need to know how to read, write, do calculus, sure. But peasants most assuredly do not need to know how to start a business or incorporate a non-profit organization, or look up the newest scientific literature about ideas of how to treat a disease that their doctor hasn't heard of yet. The reason why they look up a company is to buy its products, not to decide whether it has a good business model that they could learn from, or how the guy who ran it managed to negotiate his first venture capital. The result of this attitude is that, ironically, Wikipedia is made up of nonprofit chapters run by people who, judging by the recent FDC proposals and other controversies aired here, may have primary interest in legitimizing a paycheck and not so much interest in starting citizen cooperatives that work together non-hierarchically to crowdsource real world projects without costing money. Because the peasants don't know how to do that. Wikipedia is not a lot of things - Wikipedia is not the CRC Handbook, it is not the Open Directory Project, it is not a newspaper morgue, it is not a complete reference about much of anything. "Significance" is a good way to ensure that it will always remain a Cliff's Notes, an abstract, a coffee table book, a little free blurb that doesn't seriously threaten copyrighted competitors, and doesn't give its impoverished readers the power that paying for privileged access would give them. I see this as a social agenda, and a very bad one. I still picture the sum of all human knowledge available, free, to everyone. Starting with the smallest stub and progressing through a gentle inclusionist snowfall into a massive and transparent edifice. Wnt (talk) 22:05, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Well there we have it: yet more ultra-inclusionism, and yet again I feel at a cost to intelligent discourse. Where is your evidence that I (and the 'increasing others' you mention) say that Wikipedia is not a serious tool for research? Yes you are reading me" wrong. You've basically just gathered a handful of my phrases and suggested they show I'm an autocrat at heart, unconsciously keeping the 'peasants' from the information they need to liberate themselves. And (or so seems to read) with a 'bad social agenda' of course. It's just another variation of the same old regarding my non-inclusionist position basically, and I find it so silly. Regarding your digression on Chapters - they were always going to be treated like ladders to money and power, just as Wikipedia is always going to attract POV pushers. Unfortunately the WMF tends to believe it's own blurb when they exaggerate the great qualities of the 'community'. I'm not being cynical about Wikipedians, I'm just being observant and realistic. Wnt, I'd respect you much more if you just had the courage to proudly state your last lines, "I still picture the sum of all human knowledge available, free, to everyone. Starting with the smallest stub and progressing through a gentle inclusionist snowfall into a massive and transparent edifice." - ie without it appearing in part like a response to conjured-up threats.

I know Jimmy Wales must have at least scanned this discussion, as he's commenting on other discussions here today - so what do you say about the views arising here, Jimbo? Do you personally see this encyclopedia maintaining (acceptable or otherwise) articles on everything: the "sum of ALL 'knowledge'"? People need to know where others stand on this: I think there could be a huge divide here, and I think some direction is needed. My view is that the bigger this place gets, the weaker it gets - so please don't think I'm just out to belittle the show. Editing or not, I look at Wikipedia almost every day and like most of its readers I access it via Google, which perhaps not that many Wikipedians do. This encyclopedia is already astronomical, and nobody knows the extent of its hidden sins. Do you think that it will always be in a state of flux (which is surely guaranteed with limitless stubs and topics), or can you see it approaching at least some 'level' of completion? (although it can never be completed in ongoing and ever-changing world of course). One thing about the eternal state of flux is that it will keep Wikimedia going up to a point - but will people keep donating when they see problems continue to arise rather than content issues solved? Do you think there is a possible moral dilemma of the expanding charity finding there is longer such a cause? (ie Wikipedia becomes much safer and more complete). Or will people just donate for the server/admin costs?

Do you think (to go back to my original question) that Wikipedia should offer an 'article' (stub or otherwise) for every product on sale? It surely must be accepted that the only way to properly manage a product-filled encyclopdia is to provide a clear COI interface, and be a lot less fussy about who edits here and how: if editing content policy is truly believed in (for the first time ever as far as I can personally see) then it shouldn't matter who writes the content: style alone would dictate the acceptability of it, with 'the community' (working in tandem) checking and balancing. With such a massive amount of content you would frankly need that to be the case. Right now it seem the community has some very different ideas of what Wikipedia is supposed to be about: so nothing can be guaranteed on the error-correcting front. Personally I'd like to see some better guidelines on what kind of content is allowed here and not, and at least some direction what forms it should take (ie there are lists, articles, and sections etc). Matt Lewis (talk) 23:59, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia should be like the Vicsek fractal. A particular article will get more and more complete, but there should always be even more which are bare stubs. It should be the model of a new kind of public community that continually produces new offshoots, moving into new areas, implementing a federal model somewhat reminiscent of Bakunin. It should be, in short, like a living community, always replicating, growing and colonizing. It was not meant to be molded and confined.

Under present conditions, Wikipedia's encyclopedic form - which is only one part of the overall structure even now - cannot escape the WP:GNG, but it can and should interpret it minimally - i.e. two independent sources should be enough. That limitation, however, could be overcome by collaboration with existing or new parallel projects, such as using Wikinews or some other mechanism to get citable, reliable interviews on the record that document news from scratch (also better incorporation of government documents). I would say that under such circumstances we certainly should have an article for every corporation that hires employees on the open market. Documenting every product should, under ideal circumstances, be a natural part of that. I do recognize that every step forward requires social and technical progress - how we collaborate, how we search, even how we organize the labor market. We are stopped where we encounter resistance. But the resistance we encounter here and now is premature; it is a point where the original volunteers of the project should have been able to keep pushing through. They didn't throw up their hands at the idea to index every species or every protein or every chemical and cover "just the interesting ones". Wnt (talk) 05:14, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

We know it's the all-consuming flux with you: except it seems that you think it will eventually lead to some kind of socio-encyclopedic harmony. But are you trying to document the world or effectively take over it? Mother Wikipedia with a finger on everything? You really do read like a brain scientist in a sci-fi film. I don't yet know how but it WILL be done! No, no, think of how the species will benefit! I can't believe you said "We are stopped where we encounter resistance." I still need to know how many people your brand of inclusionists represent here, and the more I hear frankly the more I need to know.

I do still believe somewhere inside that Wikipedia can stabilise and genuinely work (though I can never be casual over any single thing it does wrong - I just don't think it has a God-given right to ever do any kind of harm, and especially not wilfully to achieve these kind of ludicrous aims), but I think I'd fight to the grisly death to stop it touching everything in the way you want it to. There has to be an escape - there has to ultimately be democracy in life (I don't mean the party-based system I mean the chance to decide and escape). Are these Chapters going to contain soldiers of peace I wonder? Warriors with a two finger pen? Survival often dictates that resistance eventually has to be fought. Can't you see that your road is the road to more problems, more work, more editor/encyclopedic decline and a whole bag of more trouble? Matt Lewis (talk) 12:53, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

The democracy should be internal; Wikipedia is already greatly limited by having a single internal authority and the endless struggles this creates. One approach that is ideologically appealing, but seems like a big step backward technically at least for now, is Ward Cunningham's The Federated Wiki. Another is simply to have lots of Wikis, which has happened, but they are not integrated with each other well enough. Dumping more and more articles in wikipedia.org per se is for now not quite a perfect solution, because Wikipedia has been tainted by those trying to take control of the massive resources accumulated and shape them for their own purposes, but the underlying "inclusionist" ideal remains valid - that all knowledge can be brought out and effectively organized where people can freely and easily learn it. Wnt (talk) 14:18, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

It's like you're posing the ideal communism: the single-party democracy. Except that certainly here it will collapse under it's own weight and will never ultimately work for the people at all: especially with the influence of a completely separate world outside it. As I've said, inclusionism - both as an ideal and in practice - is just nuts as far as I'm concerned. One approach has to win out eventually, or things will steadily get worse and worse regardless. The one thing I would agree with is that 'breaking news' should be only allowed on the news wiki, if anywhere at all in wiki-form. Nobody is or can be trained to recompose and make-encyclopedic on-the-fly references at that level of legal and social importance – I find it just crazy that people think “we” can: we 100% can't – and it seems to me that it's largely enthusiastic but arrogant and often-ignorant kids who tend to pile in in this area: the very people with the least ability to achieve it. It only works at all on the basis that it can all be changed at some point – I find that 'get out' totally immoral in this area. It's been a real stain on Wikipedia that people will find hard to rub off if the crap ever really hits the fan for any reason. The last thing the WMF would want is for every dodgy matter to pile up all at once: the more they don't deal with, the more chance there is of that happening. Matt Lewis (talk) 17:01, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Well, anyway, Biz Detergent is one thing, the world financial system another -- a bit more important, I think, and lots harder to understand. Now there's an area where we really want disinterested and intelligent experts to expound for the benefit our readers.

Instead, at least regarding Hedge fund and Short (finance), we've got that those articles were written by the Managed Funds Association "The Voice of the Global Alternative Investment Community". (If you want background on these topics, albeit by a non-neutral non-expert, you can un-hide the next paragraph.)

Some background info

The main value of hedge funds, as I understand it, is that they charge extremely high fees while performing (in aggregate) no better than normal investment strategies, thus serving to transfer inherited wealth from credulous dolts to clever predators, which I suppose serves a social good. So I don't much care about that. But regarding Short (finance), shorting is OK, but "naked short selling", which is shorting stocks that you don't own and probably can't get, is... ah... well if a person is doing it in preference to just betting a bundle on the ponies, I suppose it's OK, but financial institutions shouldn't do it -- it's risky, even if you're convinced that you're a genius. They do do it though, despite it being illegal or at least heavily restricted generally (although you won't find that in article). It's all part of the "alternative investment industry", which transcends mundane practices such as providing capital to worthy enterprises and so forth in favor of... I don't really understand what, and more importantly no one does really, including or especially the "alternative investment industry". But if you liked the financial crisis of 2007–2008 you should love what they're gearing up for next. I'm not sure how civilization will end, but if the "alternative investment industry" has a big hand in I shouldn't be surprised.

Anyway, this high-finance stuff is way beyond my pay grade -- and most everybody's. I see there's a lot of "Well, some say... but others say..." which is fine, or not, depending on the subject. It's fine if you're talking about whether Koufax was better than Grove. It's not fine if you're talking about whether the capital of New York State is Albany or Buffalo. It's not fine if you're talking about whether financial institutions should, or do, engage in naked shorting. For most of the other stuff, I don't know if it's fine or not. I do know that I don't trust The Managed Funds Association to decide.

I'd like to see, let's say, the respected financial journalist Matt Taibbi given equal time. (Admittedly, we don't use passages like Taibbi's "Goldman Sachs is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" and so forth, but I'm sure we could get the gist of the across another way) But Taibbi's busy. He's one guy, and he's got a job. That doesn't apply to The Managed Funds Association. So they get to write the article. Funny way to run an encyclopedia. Herostratus (talk) 04:57, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't get your 2nd parag. Are you saying that the articles are biased, and largely written by an invested group? Matt Lewis (talk) 17:26, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and yes. But it's complicated and depends on one's interpretation of "written by" as well as "bias". It's off topic and too complicated to explain here (I may address this over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Integrity, but not tonight). I was just noting that it's one thing to push a product, quite another to control the public discussion, which is what the big boys do. It's the difference between BizCo pushing Biz Detergent and (let's say) the National Detergent Council quietly pushing the idea that, while there are some who do hold that detergents are not so great for our lakes and ponds, on the other hand and to be fair there are plenty of really expert experts who feel that a nice layer of suds in the old town pond is just what the doctor ordered. Herostratus (talk) 04:48, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Not all PRs have a positive message or are trying to hide, rather than exaggerate, negative information. For example, with a little help, PETA could add a lot of great content about how poultry and beef are processed, while a Beef trade association could add information about its health benefits, but the FDA may add some cautions RE health. I've done PR work for non-profits and they often do publicity around protests and criticisms. Also, legal antagonists will often do publicity for a lawsuit; for all intensive purposes, if the publicity is successful, they could request the lawsuit be added to the respective Wikipedia page. If both democratic and republican think-tanks pitch their side to an impartial editor on a heated political dispute, this could be an incredibly useful asset in equipping the editor to easily write a great piece.

Maybe there are some corporate "experts" advocating for suds in the pond, but there are also environmental special interest groups with their own "experts" motivated to exaggerate its effect. CorporateM (Talk) 20:20, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

He's saying that some PR people wish to put benign and genuinely useful things into Wikipedia, and if it comes from two sides of an argument, someone neutral person can produce a masterpiece from their input. Can't people just declare their 'interest' and go ahead and do things when it really is worthwhile? Either directly or via someone who knows how to (and who really cares if he or she's paid? Editing here can be a nightmare for many people in any number of different ways). Providing it fits genuine policy and it's not made by a blocked IP or something it's hardly going to be deleted. I don't think people really understand Conflict of Interest on WP - certainly many if not most 'interested' people out there are afraid of editing Wikipedia, which I find ludicrous. The stuff is about or effects them. It's mainly people who have little knowledge of the net worrying about netiquette and making a potentially-embarrassing ethical booboos I think. Just declare it and edit - they can't sue you. Policy/guidelines alone should prevail! And I'm not talking about product page ads! Matt Lewis (talk) 00:28, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I contribute as a PR person routinely. I find that requiring approval from a disinterested editor is a powerful way to incentivize good behavior. Meaning, if a company is only required to edit in a way that "sicks" this is a very low standard of neutrality and quality, while asking for permission in advance sets much higher standards. In principle if a COI editor edits directly and they include all the controversies and criticisms and write a genuinely neutral piece, this is a good thing, but in practice, this happens rarely enough with that model that it's practical to simple dean it inappropriate behavior. Also, most of my work has one or two things that need an impartial editor to take it over the home-stretch; where I have done everything I can from my position, but I can only take it so far. CorporateM (Talk) 16:53, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Please enjoy this joke, which is obviously not anti-Polish at all

So much of what goes on at commons exhausts me. This is no different.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:53, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Uploaded by Commons admin and bureaucrat User:Russavia. I think I heard someone mention him here recently but I am at a loss to recall exactly where. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 21:17, 6 March 2013 (UTC) As an inhabitant of Poznań, I am absolutely outraged that Russavia chose pierogi instead of pyry, and I think that he should be severely punished for that. A year-long community service at the Polish Anti-Defamation League seems like a reasonable sanction. odder (talk) 21:56, 6 March 2013 (UTC) Nice shot at trolling Russavia there, DC :) Next time, it might help if the first responder isn't Polish, clearly understands the joke and finds it bloody funny! FishBarking? 22:11, 6 March 2013 (UTC) I don't see how hosting these jokes on commons falls within commons' scope. Is this educational? Ryan Vesey 22:16, 6 March 2013 (UTC) It seems to be a Reddit thing [3]. I can't see how it's in scope for Commons; I don't know if there's a Commons equivalent of WP:NOTWEBHOST, but if there is, Russavia might need a reminder. It's hardly a big deal though. Prioryman (talk) 22:19, 6 March 2013 (UTC) I disagree that it's hardly a big deal. All of the other projects manage to regulate their projects according to their rules. If commons were to choose to expand its scope to all free images, then there'd be no problem, but if they're willing to remove family photos or fuzzy photos, they should apply Commons:COM:SCOPE elsewhere. Ryan Vesey 22:26, 6 March 2013 (UTC) That would be nice, wouldn't it? But Commons' scope is interpreted in an entirely arbitrary fashion, and in deletion discussions the usual argument is "You cannot prove that this image might not be used in an educational context somehow somewhere and some point in time". People will make up educational uses if they have to ("This can be used to illustrate badly drawn, mildly racist comics!"). And then the images will be kept. --Conti|✉ 22:31, 6 March 2013 (UTC) "This can be used to illustrate badly drawn, mildly racist comics" is actually prohibited by commons policy. See [[4]] which says that they shouldn't keep a blurred photograph because it could be used to illustrate "common mistakes in photography". Ken Arromdee (talk) 16:56, 7 March 2013 (UTC) I know that Commons policy says that. But that doesn't seem to matter. Literally anything is argued to be of educational use by certain users. See commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:What about the children.jpg for a fun example. --Conti|✉ 11:21, 8 March 2013 (UTC) (ec)Having a sense of humour is essential when criticising humour. This is why people had such problems with that Polandballs thing about unicorns. The ability to understand humorous imagery, satire, and similar "controversial" content as being potentially as much a valid form of commentary as any other, is not something equally shared by all. I think there's a BBC piece somewhere about the role of cartoons in preventing censorship in the UK. (Summary, it was mostly seen as "not on" to censor cartoons, even in the days when a more pedestrian or literal form of criticism might end up losing you your head.) I have no comment on the specific cartoon that Delicious carbuncle decided to display here today, having not viewed it in a form large enough to read the text. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:20, 6 March 2013 (UTC) I have no comment on cartoons in general, but perhaps you should look at this particular one. You might find it funny. It is a joke, after all. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 22:28, 6 March 2013 (UTC) Not the highest form of wit, I don't think? Oh, I found that BBC piece. You should look at it too - you might find it educational, rather than funny. The 1740 cartoon should probably be uploaded to Commons (if it hasn't been already?), so that we can add that to the pictorial discussion here, as an illustration to what some people thought was apt or "funny". --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:31, 6 March 2013 (UTC) This isn't a discussion about political cartoons. The image I posted is not a political cartoon, it is an illustration of "a classic joke" done in Polandball style. I don't think it is intended to comment on or lampoon the powerful. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 22:40, 6 March 2013 (UTC) Some of these "polandball" cartoons do indeed appear to be trying to make political, philosophical or other points. The last pane in this one drew political analyses from Wikipedia editors that didn't occur to me. There's no Polish people in it either, as far as I can see. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:43, 7 March 2013 (UTC) Ah, I see. I'm not very familiar with Polandball style, but allegedly the topic is considered notable on dozens of WMF wikipedia projects, so maybe that's why the people over at Commons think it might be in scope. Regarding the BBC piece, I think discussion of how cartoons helped some constitutional monarchs (and others) defuse problematic elements is definitely of relevance to Jimbo. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:45, 6 March 2013 (UTC) Actually, it's the other way around. As far as I can see, all or most of the Wikipedia articles on Polandball exist because of the commons users/admins who keep uploading those pictures to commons. Russavia created an article about the subject here, too. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Polandball might be of interest. --Conti|✉ 00:40, 7 March 2013 (UTC) Russavia's racist cartoons fit hand-in-glove with the general mentality of categorizing shirtless boy scouts into the sexualized "toplessness" category, Fae's flickr-washing, the Beta M disaster, and so on. The danger here is that Commons is becoming so degenerate is that people just become desensitized after awhile. "Oh, that's just Commons being Commons." Tarc (talk) 02:55, 7 March 2013 (UTC) I note that after I placed this joke on Jimbo's page, Russavia renamed it from "File:A Classic Joke -Polandball Style-.png" (which was the name on the Reddit thread) to "File:An atypical Polish joke in Polandball style.png" with the edit summary "more descriptive, uploader request" (that uploader was, of course, Russavia himself). The joke is, in fact, a typical Polish joke in that the joke relies on the reader finding humour in the Polish person (or, in this case, Polandball, which represents the country of Poland) "being of inferior intelligence". Here's a variation on the same joke. The image file is used in two places: here, and on the Polish-language Wikipedia where it was added to Polish jokes by an Australian IP editor. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 04:27, 7 March 2013 (UTC) The image was placed on Polish Wikipedia by Russavia himself, that's always the easiest way to ensure that an image is considered part of commons' scope. Just glancing through the category shows that there is a huge problem related to Polandballs. Images like [[:File:Camouflage World Games - Group A.png] may or may not be amusing, depending on who you are. That, however, is not a factor in commons' scope. I've left a note at Commons:Commons:Village Pump#Commons:Scope and Category:Polandball (and related subcats) for anyone interested. Ryan Vesey 04:49, 7 March 2013 (UTC) This is actually just another instance of Wikipedia being trolled by Reddit or ED or GNOAA or whatever (it happens all the time) but Wikipedia being too stupid/lacking a process for dealing with it, because, you know, assume "good faith". Russavia got banned for posting these kinds of ethnic cartoon jokes. Instead of realizing that maybe his actions were sort of offensive and not actually helpful to the project and admitting to the fact and revising his actions, he went on a spree where he tried to get the same damn thing published on every other Wiki project, where he wasn't banned. To their credit, English wikipedia, German wikipedia and a few others refused and this stuff was deleted. A lot of the smaller Wikipedias (WMF projects) have... like five active people on it, so he got these things up there. And of course on Commons where he managed to become an admin (!!!!) - but that's Commons, not the cousin project of Wikipedia but rather the "porn obsessed pervy uncle of Wikipedia" (I didn't make that one up, I wish I did). And oh yeah, this whole latest kertufle with Wikipediocracy, Kevin, and Cla68 also has origins in Russavia's trolling. He trolled Wikipediocracy (by making a host of sock puppet accounts on there, attacking people, posting a photo of naked children - until he and his sockpuppets got banned) until he pissed them off enough that they posted that infamous blog post on him. Which was stupid and wrong of them but still. It's not like he was an innocent bystander in this. And then you get all the present Wiki drama. He's indef banned from here until May (I think). It's probably worth considering extending that to an indef. You will save yourself and the project A LOT OF TROUBLE.Volunteer Marek 05:01, 7 March 2013 (UTC) Apparently on commons, Bureaucrats are the policy. I give up, at least until someone else who understands commons policy is willing to take part. Their scope is probably the most poorly enforced policy they have. They don't understand that nudity is allowed on commons does not equal "commons must have all the nudity". In one deletion discussion I took part in one editor went so far as to assert that the image should be kept because commons didn't have a large enough compilation of nude women with septum piercings. Soon enough it will be that commons doesn't have enough images of nude women with three earings in their left ear, two on their right, one tattoo directly above their navel, etc. In any case, I'd love to see a WP:JIMBOBAN (that needs an article, or at least a redirect) of Russavia. Let him be unknowledgeable of policy and run around promoting polandballs on any project but this one. Ryan Vesey 06:00, 7 March 2013 (UTC) Told you. The sad thing is that it's just a handful of users/admins that basically do whatever they want and back each other up on all relevant deletion/policy discussions. A handful of regulars is all it takes to decide the outcome of a discussion in a smaller wiki. Commons would be perfectly fine otherwise (and it is perfectly fine in areas not related to polandball and anything to do with sexuality). --Conti|✉ 11:59, 7 March 2013 (UTC) Unblocked today. No doubt making an appearance here shortly. Not sure what Arbcom are thinking this week. As during his block he has spent his time on other projects spreading this racist rubbish, perhaps its time for a community ban discussion at AN instead. I cant believe this is the sort of editor you envisioned contributing to wikipedia & commons Jimbo. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:09, 7 March 2013 (UTC) Oh do grow some, please. It's got its own article translated into Polish, on the Polish Wikipedia. I'm sure we can hardly call Polandball "racist" when those on the Polish Wikipedia clearly don't give a flying fish about it. Russavia's been doing bloody good work elsewhere, and I think that the lifting by arbcom of this ban has been the absolute correct thing to do. It has already been to community ban once - arbcom extended it - and arbcom have lifted it. That's their decision following a very strong appeal (which I happen to know about because I talk to Russavia outside of WP), of what I and others considered to be a punitive block. Get over it and let's just get the hell back to work. FishBarking? 13:46, 8 March 2013 (UTC) "It's got its own article on the Polish Wikipedia", well yes, but it was created there by Russavia (just like most of the many other language versions, including already deleted ones like the Dutch version). "Those on the Polish Wikipedia clearly don't give a flying fish about it"? Then why is there currently an AfD runnning for that very article? pl:Wikipedia:Poczekalnia/artykuły/2013:01:17:Polandball. Fram (talk) 14:10, 8 March 2013 (UTC) I missed that then, Fram - and probably with good reason. Unlike our AFDs where information gets put on the article's page to state it's up for deletion, pl:Polandball doesn't show anything of the sort - and since I'm not fluent or even basic with my understanding of Polish, it'd be pretty easy to miss an AFD when you have no freaking idea where to look for it, or that it's even happening. FishBarking? 20:52, 8 March 2013 (UTC) There isn't "currently an AfD runnning for that very article". It was closed as "no consensus" on 20 January. Next time, Fram, please read to the bottom before posting. -- Prioryman (talk) 22:15, 8 March 2013 (UTC) Thanks for that, Prioryman - however, I had actually already notified Fram of that same thing on their talk page :) And just in case any of the rest of you are interested, the Polish Wikipedia's "Polandball" article was, no less, patrolled by a member of their Arbitration committee :) Now I'm pretty sure if shit'd been wrong, they'd have said something about it :D FishBarking? 22:45, 8 March 2013 (UTC) Well that came out of left field. Hopefully, he read the portion which states "We remind Russavia that, if he makes any further edits mentioning Polandball and similar cartoons (broadly construed), he will again be in violation of his topic ban and may be summarily re-blocked by any administrator in line with the usual methods of enforcing a discretionary sanction". Do you see his edit summary "hey bitches I'm back"? And he has an agenda. If you raise a community ban discussion, please inform me. Ryan Vesey 15:22, 7 March 2013 (UTC) Looks like russavia has stopped uploading racist cartoons for now. He has just found another interesting encyclopedic topic, which is certain to add some free knowledge to Wikipedia. Especially it will benefit the students in developing countries: "Pricasso, the alias of Tim Patch, is an Australian artist who has gained fame for using his penis, scrotum and buttocks to paint portaits.<sic>"71.198.213.240 (talk) 14:50, 8 March 2013 (UTC) Never miss an opportunity to smack a guy, do ya? He's contributing - as long as it's not a hoax, not offensive and within BLP (this being a living person), and he's notable, I really don't see the problem. So the guy paints with his meat and two veg. Big whoop. FishBarking? 22:45, 8 March 2013 (UTC) It's a very big whoop to the middle school "omg a naughty word!" grade kids who want to make a big deal out of it. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:21, 9 March 2013 (UTC) I still have no idea why this Polandball stuff is of any interest to anybody, for or against. At least this one is recognizable as a Polish joke. There is not, and should not be, any prohibition on uploading Polish jokes to Commons, or out and out authentic Nazi-era propaganda about them for that matter. (It might, however, be valid evidence if someday there was a huge "case" between Russavia and some Polish guy who said he was being mistreated out of racial prejudice, but Commons doesn't even end up there) Wnt (talk) 20:54, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Jimbo, how do you deal with your "New Messages" box?

That must pop up 100 times a day. Just curious :) I'm also curious: does Larry Sagner have a username or did he delete it when he left for Citezendium? Thanks! — nerdfighter 02:23, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Here's a guess: the template probably doesn't appear for the founder. ZappaOMati 02:40, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) True, that would explain why he never seems to comment. — nerdfighter 02:50, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

You are both mistaken. The new messages box works the same for me as anyone, and I comment here very often.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:06, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

See Larry Sanger and Larry Sanger. Bielle (talk) 02:48, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Okay — nerdfighter 02:50, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh no!

When you see the orange message bar do you ever think "Oh crap, what did I do now?" Like some of us? LOL!--Amadscientist (talk) 09:22, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I for one always think that, though I have no idea why... Tarc (talk) 17:47, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Me too.... :-/. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:18, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Same here. It's pretty iconic. I recently proposed a de.Wikipedia magic mug with the orange message bar (You have new coffee) ;-) --Atlasowa (talk) 21:47, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

And I thought I was the only one....Lectonar (talk) 17:10, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Qorvis and WikiBilim

Is it safe to assume that the whole Qorvis issue (and its connection to WikiBilim) has been swept under the rug, or are you still working on a solution, Jimbo? (Oh, by the way, searching Google for Qorvis and WikiBilim no longer shows so much support for the notion that the two entities are not connected.) - 2001:558:1400:10:C4AB:899B:9151:74ED (talk) 17:40, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

What's to be swept under the rug? I think it's all out in the open, is it not? Is there new information or does it stand as it did the last time it was discussed here? What steps do you propose I take?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:06, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, a few days ago, you said "anyone who can explain to me what happened could email me, and I can make the decision what to do about it". We then largely explained what happened, out in the open. You did not re-engage in the discussion, and then it was removed by bot from your Talk page. So, some of us are wondering, did you "make the decision"? What do you intend to do about it, if anything? To say "swept under the rug" may have been an unsuitable comment -- apologies. However, to the outside observer, it did appear that you sought information, upon which you would act; but with no further updates, it did appear that the conversation went away without any "decision" whatsoever. - 68.87.42.110 (talk) 19:01, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

No one produced any actionable information in email or otherwise. The story was just as I thought and so far nothing new has emerged. I made a clear statement here and to the press and to the spokesperson for Qorvis condemning the alleged actions of Qorvis. I'm afraid that so far, no one has shown me an NPOV writeup of the whole situation... that would be very valuable to me, to have a strong community consensus about the facts of the Qorvis case overall.

The connection to Wikibilim remains extremely tenuous, per my earlier remarks. Alexander Mirtchev was the apparent beneficiary of inappropriate editing alleged to be done by Qorvis. (As a side note, I personally think those allegations are true, but Qorvis has denied it, and it's incumbent upon us to be very very solid with evidence). He is one of 7 members of the Board of Directors of the sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna of Kazakhstan. And that sovereign wealth fund is one of the funders (and the major funder) of Wikibilim. Keep in mind that according to Wikipedia, Samruk-Kazyna "controls $78 billion in assets, or nearly 56% of GDP" - this is a very large organization in an authoritarian country.

I thank you for your apology for the "swept under the rug" comment. It's important to understand that the "gotcha" some people are apparently hoping for just isn't going to happen. The UK papers tried to tie this to me knowing Tony Blair, a rather absurd connection that has nothing to do with anything. Some have hoped that I would show some inconsistency on the issue of freedom of speech, the independence of Wikipedia - that I would in some way condone allowing a dictator to control some aspect of Wikipedia. Well, no. I condemn it in no uncertain terms. I want us to continue along the trend line we've been on for the past year or two in terms of clarifying and tightening up on the issue of paid editing.

We also need to have a long philosophical discussion about how chapters are funded. Note that Wikibilim is an independent organization, not a chapter. They would like to become a chapter, and an important thing about chapters is that we can insist on clear standards for fundraising. We've never had to do that because there haven't been any major problems, but I think it's worth considering - what kind of money should chapters turn down? What kind of enforcement and monitoring mechanisms are feasible? Similarly, what kind of money should the Foundation turn down?

Anyway, going back to this particular case, I'm open to concrete suggestions about what I should do. Make it clear to Wikibilim that they should not accept money with strings attached? Done. Make it clear to the President's office in Kazakhstan that this sort of thing is extremely problematic? Done. Make it clear to Qorvis and the press that we won't stand for unethical Wikipedia editing? Done. Demand that Wikibilim give the money back? Not within my powers, I'm sorry to say, as they are an independent nonprofit organization halfway around the globe. (And, to be clear, I don't think Wikibilim has done anything wrong with the money: I regard them as information / free culture activists operating in a very difficult environment. The sad thing is that in the effort to jack me up about this, people who don't care one whit about Kazakhstan have given a completely false impression of Wikibilim.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:39, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Your response was very well handled. I would disagree only with your characterization of your association with Tony Blair as a "rather absurd connection that has nothing to do with anything". Most readers of the press articles about that issue seemed to conclude far differently than you, if the "comments" fields are to be believed. Anyway, not to get bogged down in that matter, it is very refreshing to see you speak up very clearly about your stance with regard to this tricky case of possible COI editing by Qorvis. I think two matters remain to benefit from your attention. (1) Does WP:OUTING apply to the letter, when it is a case of investigating COI or paid editing? (2) COI and paid editors continue to complain that following the "proper channels" of community engagement often leads nowhere, and you typically respond that if all else fails, they can come to your Talk page or send you an e-mail. Not every COI or paid editor feels that you will appropriately judge the content dispute, so are there any other efforts that might be extended to assist COI or paid editors with prompt and intelligent handling of their concerns through the "due process" that should exist long before your Talk page is a last resort? - 2001:558:1400:10:92:86AA:83DE:CEE0 (talk) 14:49, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

That various commenters on news articles "seemed to conclude far differently" doesn't explain to me why you might conclude differently. I have never spoken to Tony Blair about Kazakhstan nor any aspect of his political consulting business. I stand by my firm statement that trying to tie him into a story about Wikibilim is "an absurd connection that has nothing to do with anything."

To answer your questions. First, I think our WP:OUTING is deeply flawed for a number of reasons. Well-intentioned but poorly written. I'm not willing to make a blanket statement that it doesn't apply with respect to COI/paid editing investigations, because that would invite abuse and people would rightly yell at me for speaking carelessly. What I would recommend is that if people have information and fear that they may get into trouble for WP:OUTING, they should email ArbCom and me and possibly the Foundation to get guidance.

I think claims from COI and paid editors that following the proper channels of community engagement often leads nowhere are false, and in most cases, are deliberate lies designed to defend their unethical practices. To date, I have never seen even one example of someone who followed the right chain to the end and who didn't get appropriate results. Having said that, I think we could do a better job of making it clear to people what those steps are. I think we have seen a significant number of cases where someone misbehaves because they didn't know (because they didn't bother to ask anyone) what else to do. Well, even if I think the best thing to do is RTFM and do the right thing, I think we should continue to try to improve the instructions to make it easier. I'd like to see every company article and biography article tagged with a very simple "If you are the subject of this article, or in some way work for the subject of this article, and you think it needs to be improved CLICK HERE and follow these steps." And the steps should be super easy. But let's not forget that most of the people complaining about this are just liars. It's not that hard.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:01, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Dear Jimmy

Thank you for creating Wikipedia Jimmy. I use your site every day to learn new things and like many others have learned so many things I never could have without your site, the best source of knowledge in all human history. Thank you for your great website — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shoobey (talk • contribs) 07:24, 12 March 2013 (UTC)