User talk:Jimbo Wales

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Qworty

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

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

This can't be the sum total of your response to this issue. Please weigh in Jimmy. InconvenientCritic (talk) 23:23, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

What about "the system" stopped you? Why didn't you?Dan Murphy (talk) 20:40, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

In past cases, he did: Often, when Jimbo has used his admin rights to block users or delete nonsense files, then several people have launched endless complaints, tirades, diatribes, potty tantrums (etc.) to flood message boards with numerous insults (even on other websites) to almost shutdown meaningful work. Meanwhile, you might think other admins would instantly come to block the haters, issue warnings, or redact insults, but no, its like no one left will help in a visible way, as if they, too, would become likewise hounded, as part of an imagined "Jimbo conspiracy" of tyranny to suppress anyone who is badmouthing "questioning" or insulting "correcting" the horrible intelligent, experienced, accomplished, and generous people in the world who "do not have consensus" to oppose the ideas of the uninformed. In fact, some admins move quietly to help (very quietly), but when Jimbo walks away from insults and ridicule seen as weak, he is probably providing the strongest leadership to avoid the hate-mongering that would lash back against his admin actions. In earlier years, Jimbo was directly involved, writing articles, inspiring massive fundraising, and setting major priorities to keep Wikipedia from total failure, and then people had the gall to refer to him as "Co-founder of Wikipedia" (just too funny). Extremely intelligent people can see how Jimbo has won amazing victories against what could have been extended petty battles with bad karma to waste his time, which he used instead to spread positive news worldwide, and hence, thousands of people see Jimbo and Wikipedia for those big, worldwide accomplishments, rather than trivial mudslinging fights. It might take a while to understand the social dynamics of those actions, but I hope I have offered some insight into the process. -Wikid77 10:40, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

jpgordon's comment above suggests that, for whatever reason, procedures that were (and are) normally followed, were not followed in one instance. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:48, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I look forward to hearing your thoughts about this in greater detail, Jimbo. Even more so, I look forward to substantive actions. I was exceptionally disturbed by Qworty's intemperate and crude talk page rants and revenge editing a few weeks back, and if anything, more disturbed at the willingness of several other editors to defend and protect this gross misbehavior. Hand wringing is not enough, and disruptive editors must be identified and have their editing privileges removed if they are unwilling or unable to comply with our policies, with a special emphasis on BLP. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 21:49, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The "fight the Man!" instinct around here is strong. No matter whom is banned, there is a vocal group of people who will argue against it. If action is taken by ArbCom, they will be accused of star chamber-type justice--with side accusations of favoritism, capriciousness, or ideological motivation to boot. Qworty's problematic behavior was brought to Arbcom's attention six years ago... yet here we are, only now having given him the boot. Jclemens (talk) 22:32, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The last time Jimbo acted to ban an editor with a conflict of interest, ArbCom overturned his action with extreme prejudice (see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/TimidGuy ban appeal). That context may explain how "the system" constrains him from acting. MastCell ^Talk 22:50, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Jimbo honestly has two choices—create stronger institutions on Wikipedia such as an elected assembly, content review boards, and professionalization of the admin force (with an admin review subcommittee of ArbCom hiring, sanctioning, or dismissing admins), rather than handing the encyclopedia over to the mercy of corrupt, self-serving cabals; alternatively, he can reassume the role of a god-king. I would prefer the former. Wer900 • talk 23:06, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

That would be because Jimbo's ban was wrong on a number of different levels, MastCell. You'll note divisions in the committee over whether and how Will Beback was to be sanctioned for his behavior in the matter, but there was not a single dissenting voice among the committee of the time who said that Jimbo's ban was correct. Jclemens (talk) 23:40, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Your argument appears to be that the whole committee agreed ergo Arbcom was correct and Jimbo was wrong. Considering the pressures to conformity that would exist I think that argument has little value, IRWolfie- (talk) 10:59, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Jclemens, I'm not arguing that Jimbo's ban was "right" or "wrong". I'm just saying that the last time Jimbo intervened to address a conflict of interest, he was very publicly reversed by ArbCom. In that light, it's not surprising that he feels constrained from acting in these cases. MastCell ^Talk 22:14, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough, MastCell. The problem with your statement is the assumption that a conflict of interest actually existed. In fact, the evidence as I saw it said that 1) icky invasion of privacy was needed to draw that conclusion, 2) Even if we assumed everything that was inferred to be true was, in fact, true, nothing done would rise to the level of a policy violation, and 3) the evidence was tenuous, out of date, connected via suppositions, and thoroughly insufficient grounds on which to base a banning. So in that sense, no, I never saw the TG appeal case as being about actual COI, because COI was never established. Jclemens (talk) 04:22, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to continue this tangent here but: a conflict of interest definitely exists with regard to the TM advocate in question. The charge of paid advocacy was disproven. Whether that advocate and several others in the subject-area are editing tendentiously is yet to be proved. Proving problematical but civil tendentiousness is hugely difficult and time-consuming, but where it exists polite, relentless tendentiousness - paid or not - is one of the biggest threats to the reliability of our medical content.

Editors who attempt to counter civil tendentious editing with uncivil bullying and gaming do us a disservice; they obscure the real problem while attracting sympathetic support for the tendentious editor/s. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:58, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

• Mr. Wales contacted Qworty at his talk page on two occasions (both times in regards to severe BLP violations): in 2010 and in 2013. So, Mr. Wales, could you please explain what serious deficiencies in your systems have prevented you personally from banning Qworty ? Thanks. 76.126.142.59 (talk) 01:49, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

We have policies and institutions to handle these sort of situations, insufficient and flawed though they may be. Jimmy Wales has enough on his plate not to be expected to run around as judge, jury, and executioner. Moreover, none of us should WANT a system in which one individual has such power. The failure to stop Qworty from malicious editing is a failure of all of us. And this failure was exacerbated by Wikipedia's unhealthy worship of editing secrecy and its failure to install mechanisms to halt the ability of one person to start and use multiple accounts. Along the latter line, one good idea I heard recently was that WMF should unilaterally begin including IP addresses in the signature of each post at WP. This would serve as a red flag on multiple accounts being used in close proximity to one another by a single editor. In the long run, Wikipedia needs real name registration and sign-in-to-edit mechanisms to further limit the use of multiple accounts and to make sure that content can be attributed to a real life individual — which would incidentally slice vandalism massively. Carrite (talk) (Tim Davenport, Corvallis, OR, USA) 06:00, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

That is certainly one step in the right direction. However, I think a broader issue is that the rules have been created by editors for editors and they therefore receive more consideration than either the readers of our articles, who want balanced and accurate information, or the subjects of our articles, who do not want to be libeled or to be represented unfairly. Consideration for Qworty in his capacity as an editor ahs meant that our readers and the people he hates were ill-served. Of course, now he has been declared a non-person, he will himself be receiving the same loving care which his enemies did from him. Commons is particularly extreme in looking at ways to ban those who expose multiple copyright breaches by members of the in-crowd and in banning the whistleblowers, but the whole span of Wikimedia projects need a whistleblowers' charter that protects those who seek to protect stakeholders outwith the editor/admin core. --Peter cohen (talk) 15:30, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

(ec) I do (want a system where one individual has such power). Essentially 100% of other successful organizations that produce reference works have such a person. They are called Editor-in-Chief. Having one here would not impinge on the community aspects of creating content and deciding most issues. Jimbo decided not to have one, so for better or worse we don't and won't. Instead he have a rather nebulous and very vexing and labor-intensive system. We have to make it work as best we can I guess. We need to accept that situations like this will likely arise, again and probably forever. It doesn't mean the Wikipedia as a whole doesn't work, though.

Requiring editors to use or link to their real identities would mean the immediate exit of me and many editors like me. I have standing in the community, vulnerabilities, dependents, and so on. I can't get into a real-life pissing match with someone who lives in his mom's basement and has nothing to lose. Phone calls to my employer and so forth are not part of any deal I want to be a part of. Requiring editor identification would basically allow the participation of two groups: the truly strong (who have resources to engage lawyers and PR men, tenure or independent means or other secure income or position, many friends, a secure pubic reputation, and whatnot) and the truly weak (who have little to lose, no reputation to tarnish, no assets to seize, no job of any importance to lose, and whatnot). Many many everyday people like me would go, and that at once. Whether that'd be worth I don't know. I don't think so. Herostratus (talk) 15:42, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I wonder what a pubic reputation might be... Pgallert (talk) 21:45, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

By "public reputation" I mean a reputation with at least some segment of the general public, rather than just with one's friends, neighbors, colleagues, and so forth. A whispering campaign, or letters to his hometown paper, or calls to his employer, or emails to his neighbors, or anonymous threats to his relatives and yadda yadda, by some small collection of random mooks, is not going to much bother say Paul Krugman. They would me. Herostratus (talk) 01:49, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

No offense intended, but if I had to choose between you editing and Paul Krugman editing, I'd choose Krugman (-: On a more serious note, I think that there might be advantages to going half-way here, by providing some advantages to editors who do choose to expose their real-world identities while not requiring it. I haven't thought through what appropriate advantages would be, though, I'm just throwing that out. Besides, there are a lot of editors who do expose their identities today, yet, excluding people very high up in the project, I can't think of anyone who has been targeted in Real Life by another editor, so I don't see that possibility as a major problem. Cheers, JYolkowski // talk 18:14, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

It most certainly happens and is a real threat. I'll give you an example from about three or four years ago. There's one particular article – I won't name it – whose subject is rabidly hostile towards Wikipedia and doesn't believe it should be allowed to have an article about him. Unfortunately he has a number of online followers who take their cue from him. He told them to come to Wikipedia and vandalise his article as much as possible. Naturally, editors and admins stepped in to prevent that, block sockpuppet accounts and so on. He retaliated by targeting those editors and admins personally - mobilising his followers to find out who they were and who their employers were, so that he could call them up and threaten them and their employers, with the obvious aim of making them lose their jobs. I believe he did actually do this in several cases. There are other incidents I'm aware of, as well. Death threats aren't unknown, particularly where hardline nationalists are concerned. In one case I know of, an admin was tracked down and phoned at home by a Turkish ultranationalist who was offended by edits on a Turkey-related article. Considering that Turkish ultranationalist groups have been responsible for hundreds of murders of critics and academics who have offended them (see Grey Wolves), not surprisingly the admin was quite perturbed by this incident. People have certainly been targeted for harassment in the past, and unfortunately that's probably inevitable given Wikipedia's prominence as a source of information. In many parts of the world, Wikipedians may face not only the threat of harassment but of being persecuted by the state or subjected to physical violence. That threat isn't necessarily confined to the usual Third World hellholes, either - it only takes one extreme or unhinged person, and there are plenty of those in every society. Prioryman (talk) 00:32, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

• In general Internet harassment is becoming more and more prevalent. A few kids committed suicide because they were harassed on the Internet, and in particular on Facebook, but I do not know any other site, but Wikipedia, where human beings are being harassed by the community of anonymous users. Of course, as you once said there's no such thing as the Wikipedia community, and you are right there isn't, but there's a bunch of anonymous users, most of whom add little or no content to Wikipedia, and who call themselves "the Wikipedia community". Most of them are bullies, others are simply clueless users, yet the Wikimedia Foundations finds nothing wrong with allowing those users to govern Wikipedia to harass human beings. It is sick and scary. I understand everybody who'd rather would not have his/her BLP on Wikipedia. I would not have liked to have my BLP on Wikipedia either. 76.126.142.59 (talk) 02:36, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes of course its a problem. I only have the one life and have enough problems already. Anyway, whether it's a problem or not doesn't matter: I think it's a problem and so would most prudent and savvy people, I think, and that's what matters. Yes of course I'd trade myself for Paul Krugman, but Krugman's not on offer and anyway there are a lot more bohunks like me available than there are Krugmans. I'm not saying that identity shouldn't be required. I don't know that. I do know that a very large number of editors and potential editors would become immediately unavailable if it was, so let it be understood that there would be a hugely massive cost. Maybe the benefit would be even more hugely massive. It would have to be. Herostratus (talk) 01:47, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you're quite right that the cost would be massive. Not only the directly resulting loss of existing editors (which I agree would be very substantial) but the accompanying controversy and the bad feeling it would engender, which would of course drive away even more editors. I would go as far as saying that it would probably destroy the Wikipedia editing community. (I can't help wondering if that is part of the reason why the Wikipediocracy people – some of the most extreme of whom hide behind their own pseudonyms while avidly outing others – are pushing it.) Moreover, verifying identities would have a huge logistical cost. There's nothing to stop people registering under fake names. The only way around that that I can see would be to require people to submit ID documents like a driving licence or passport, but that would have massive implications of its own for privacy and availability – like voter ID, what do you do for people who don't have those kinds of documents? – and who would store and process all of that data? On the English Wikipedia alone there are over 6,000 new user registrations a month and about 14,000-15,000 across all languages; that's up to 500 a day. The logistics of having to verify the ID of each and every one of those would be huge and, I guarantee, very expensive. The cost would be completely disproportionate to any benefit we would accrue. Prioryman (talk) 07:27, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Of course, that only looks at the time investment of a new system on one side of the equation. There would be, theoretically, tens of thousands of fewer instances of vandalism which might well be an even more gargantuan time sink than the investment in verification. Moreover, I'm quite sure the number of registrations would fall if real live registration and verification were followed — both dubiously-motivated editors and sock farmers would be deterred from the process. Serious-minded people would not be halted. Carrite (talk) 16:13, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Only allowing confirmed identities to edit here would make the involvement of Krugmans far more likely, and allow the actual banning of problem editors (as opposed to just forcing them to change their usernames. How many people here think "Qworty" isn't editing now, as we speak?) It would detox the atmosphere here overnight. Concerns about personal security are real, as they are for all writers and journalists. But our present solution - allowing anyone to edit anonymously - is, in my opinion, hobbling this project, harming our subjects and short-changing our readers. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 09:32, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I think one big problem here is that enforcement efforts are weighted too much towards finding and fixing things that don't really hurt the encyclopedia, while things that really do hurt the encyclopedia are completely ignored. Think about all the time spent reverting vandalism and warning and blocking "vandals". This run-of-the-mill vandalism doesn't hurt the encyclopedia, because it's quite easy to find and undo (sure, maybe the occasional non-editor will, very briefly, see bad content in an article, but it would never be so bad that they'd write an article in the New York Times about it). One big side effect of this emphasis on vandalism is that new users editing in good faith are inadvertently painted as vandals and removed from the project before they can really contribute anything. Meanwhile, it's pretty easy for people who know how the system works to make insidious edits that can cause a lot of damage. It's a lot more difficult to spot these sorts of problems, but if there were a way of encouraging people to spend their time and energy finding these problems instead of looking for run-of-the-mill vandalism, I think it would be of much benefit to the project. Cheers, JYolkowski // talk 18:14, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I think that the statement about finding and fixing things that don't really hurt the encyclopedia is absurd. How can anyone say that vandalism does not hurt the encyclopedia? It certainly does hurt the encyclopedia. It is just easy to identify and correct. Perhaps User:JYolkowski is really saying what I said, which is that our processes do very well at identifying blatant short-term harm, such as vandalism, obvious POV pushing, and edit-warring, but that we do not have an effective process for identifying long-term devious editing. I disagree with any suggestion that we shouldn't put our current effort into fixing run-of-the-mill vandalism. I agree with the comment that too many experienced editors fail to assume good faith on the part of clueless editors and revert them as vandalism, thus biting the newbies rather than reverting them as good faith edits that are not good edits. Does User:JYolkowski have a suggestion for what process changes are needed to deal with insidious edits? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:44, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Also, although we do not have an effective process for identifying and correcting long-term devious edits, if User:Qworty was using sockpuppets, which we do a reasonably good job of detecting, it is hard to understand why he was not banned as a puppeteer. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:44, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

If you compare Wikipedia to the real world, then Wikipedia is like a country without a parliament and government, where the judicial system has to deal with everything. This leads to the judicial system being focussed due to public sentiment on high profile political matters and allows for smart criminals to exploit the situation and get away with their crimes by keeping a low profile. Count Iblis (talk) 13:00, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I thought we were an anarcho-syndicalist commune...--ukexpat (talk) 16:25, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

See:Userboxes@WikiSpeak -- Hillbillyholiday ^talk 23:19, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

"You're fooling yourself! We're living in a dictatorship! A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes..."" Carrite (talk) 17:48, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Vote for the Socialist Editors Party to change things for the better. Count Iblis (talk) 18:03, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

There you go, bringing class into it again.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 23:04, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

That's what it's all about!!! Carrite (talk) 01:42, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

And let's not forget that in order to seize the malevolent despot crown Jimbo first had to get rid of his brother Prince Larry. Any one for a republic? MOMENTO 07:26, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Let's fix edit-conflict problems

We know how to fix them, and edit-conflicts in section-based editing are already auto-corrected. So, let's fix more problems, and the more we discuss the issues, then perhaps we can reach consensus on how to merge multiple changes. The rationale is simple: as more people join Wikipedia, then more edit-conflicts are likely, and we need to prepare to reduce them before the crowd arrives. I think we should just start talking about various scenarios, and suggest patterns to auto-fix the edit-conflicts. Some scenarios (numbered as "Sn") to consider:

• S1: Two replies after same message: I think this might be the most-common fear, and I suggest to insert the 2nd reply after the 1st reply, so the logic would be to insert an edit-conflict reply not exactly after line n, but rather, insert the 2nd reply before old line n+1. In practice, it is often easy to spot the original line n+1 after the message, and hence to auto-correct, then insert reply_2 after that message+reply_1.
• S2: Two edits change the same line: A simple fix would be to treat a line as two halves, and simply combine changes to each half deleting/adding text, else the latter change overrides the first change. However, I think, with a little analysis, the removal/addition of text could be combined in subtle cases, as perhaps matching 10 characters either before/after the changed text, else use the line contents from the 2nd edit (as replacing that line).
• S3: Line(s) deleted during 2 edits: When the 1st edit deletes the lines, then changes to those lines in the 2nd edit should be ignored, but conversely, lines deleted by the 2nd edit take precedence and should be removed. As in S1, new text lines (or replies) should be inserted before line n+1, after the deleted lines. To re-sync with the original line count, then deleted lines should perhaps be considered as empty text at those old line numbers, until the page is saved. The software might need to have extra internal line-counters to skip the deleted lines after combining the texts.
• S4: Numerous lines differ: In cases where perhaps, 50-100 lines differ, then I am wondering if the software should issue a warning, where the text might actually be editing a different page.
• S5: Changes could be interpreted in 2 ways: In some cases, the software might judge a change as 2 different possibilities of changes, and in such cases, perhaps look-ahead and choose the simplest path which avoids multiple differences after that point. Often the easiest solution is to merely count the number of "unchanged" lines after that point, and the "right" path will have far fewer mismatched lines.

In the initial analysis of edit-conflict problems, it can be easily seen that many talk-pages involve mainly the accumulated additions of multiple replies, as perhaps the easiest type of auto-correction during an edit-conflict. So then, merely retro-insert the 2nd reply, as inserted before line n+1, to appear after the 1st reply. In fact, the auto-correction of talk-pages might use some different (simpler) rules, as compared to the auto-correction of article edit-conflicts. The more we discuss these various issues, then the more we can find a consensus where the 2nd edit should override the first, or perhaps the auto-correction should warn of numerous changes, as if trying to edit after vandalism, or hack edits, which should most-likely be halted, to allow totally reverting the prior edit, not auto-merging of the changes which might conceal the prior hack edits. The auto-correction could be kept simpler, at first, then improved later. For example, by treating long lines of text as "auto-lines" or sub-lines of 50-character segments, then the auto-correction could be treated as simple line-for-line recombinations of changes, even with thousand-character lines, if that were easier to verify. Start with simple ways to auto-correct the text. Anyway, let's fix those many, many simple edit-conflict problems.

Conclusions so far: Most of the talk-page edit-conflicts are very easy to auto-correct, and I see no excuse for having edit-conflicts in busy talk-pages. It indicates a serious failure to correct a very common, easy problem, as perhaps due to fears about more-complex edit-conflicts within articles. So, let's fix them separately, not let fears of complex cases then paralyze the fixes for simple cases. -Wikid77 23:56, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Further considerations about edit-conflicts: Some areas of Wikipedia have numerous edit-conflicts, such as the wp:Help_desk, where I have tried to assist in answering questions several times, but the edit-conflicts seemed to happen in "85%" of all help-replies (although edit-conflicts in 55% might be more accurate). Anyway, it did not take long to realize how answering the questions at the Help_desk involves redo for numerous edit-conflicts. Now it might seem the edit-conflicts merely show, hey, "that question was already answered" so just focus on the next question, but in practice, very many Help_desk questions could have 5 alternate answers, and so edit-conflict does not really stop duplicate answers, it typically rejects alternate solutions to those same questions. In short, the "only good edit-conflict is a vandal being thwarted". As for new articles about a major event, or recent tornado, or shipwreck, then I dread trying to help the editors update those articles, and I feel sorry for their edit-conflict suffering. -Wikid77 04:11, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Further analysis of edit-conflict pages: Fortunately, for years, many people have been logging the actual incidents, of each edit-conflict event, by embedding the "{{ec}}" template (which says: "(edit conflict)") into many of the affected pages. So now, there is ample edit-conflict data to analyze, in WhatLinksHere/Template:ec as "9,918" links (10 thousand pages). A quick breakdown of the first 3,000 edit-conflict pages: 31% article-talk pages, 22% user-talk (like this page), 13% Wikipedia-talk (about policies or guidelines), 5% help-desk, 5% reference-desk, 2% village-pump edit-conflicts, but I will check more edit-conflict pages and refine the counts somewhat. Anyway, 31% (as article-talk conflicts) then means 69% of edit-conflicts were logged in user-talk (this page), policy-talk or other forums. Of course, people cannot mark live articles with "{{ec}}" even if the article main-namespace hid the message "(edit conflict)" then other editors would continually remove the "ec" tags cluttering the text. I think to simulate the actual edit-conflict of article "xx" then check for "Talk:xx" in the WhatLinksHere, because the edit-conflict levels are likely to be similar, where conflicts in talk-pages would tend to reflect conflicts in the related article text. More later. -Wikid77 04:11/10:40, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

• Current support does Edit-merge but also Edit-clobber: To double-check the current handling of edit-conflict scenarios, I have re-tested as two editors concurrently changing top or bottom of the same page, where edit-conflict does auto-correction to edit-merge different areas of a page. So, the good news is that potential edit-conflicts were properly auto-corrected as edit-merge when the changes were in separate portions of the page, so a prior edit to page-top (infobox format) was then edit-merged with changes to page-bottom, as combining both edits. However, trying to re-edit the page-top (infobox) was reported as "Edit-conflict" until those attempted changes were removed, and then the SAVE was accepted as auto-correction to edit-merge the top/bottom of the 2 conflicting editors. However, when the same username ran 2 edits together for the page, then the 2nd edit (in conflict with infobox changes) caused an implict override, or "edit-clobber" of the first saved edit and removed all prior changes to the infobox, with no warning. So, that is a condition to beware, if a user edits the same page from multiple windows, then a 2nd edit might override the first edit (not warn edit-conflict), so be very careful to re-run a 2nd edit using the current revision. -Wikid77 16:23, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

• • I agree but as long as long as the priority is on fixing things no one cares about like the Login page, forcing the notifications or killing off the Orange Bar of Doom there is little chance at this happening. I find it to be a real pain on active discussions when I have 3 or 4 Edit conflicts in a row and sometimes I just give up and go away until it slows down. Kumioko (talk) 19:34, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
    • If more people keep noting the edit-conflict problems, then the developers could see them as a priority, such as noting "3 or 4 edit-conflicts in a row". -Wikid77 22:22, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I expect that part of what is going on is that the developers don't want to spend much time improving things that will be made obsolete in any case when Flow comes online. One of the central goals for Flow is to complete eliminate edit conflicts on talk pages. Looie496 (talk) 19:58, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

The clear advantage of fixing current edit-conflicts, before installing Flow, is the fixes for article edit-conflicts not just talk-pages only. -Wikid77 22:22, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I admit I just read the link to Flow just now and so am new to the idea of what is being planned. However, based on what I read there I see the following being a rallying call in the future "We aren't Facebook!"; as that was a common compliant with what replaced the orange bar (which I always thought was a shade of yellow personally...). And so is Flow really going to be a solution that the Community can or will accept? We shouldnt put off improvements because a comprehensive solution to ALL is "around the corner". If scientists said they would stop working on the issue of what dark matter and dark energy were because they were SURE that a unified theory of EVERYTHING was around the corner and therefore solve what those issues were anyways, well those scientists would be waiting for a long time twiddling their thumbs.97.88.87.68 (talk) 20:15, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

• Old stuff remains years longer as people oppose change: The value of fixing the old talk-pages can be seen by problems in other new-talk products, such as wp:LiquidThreads which is slow, rambling and had lacked the view-history of talk-pages. Hence, many people will likely support fixes to edit-conflicts now. A common complaint about LiquidThreads was inability to reply to multiple comments at once, or search within replies, where users were forced into an "opinion forum" where each message replied tediously to only one post per edit, as laboriously stretching a 5-person discussion into hours of cumbersome chained replies, many of which were likely not read as chained too far from original comments. However, unless people knew how much faster the old talk-pages were, where a single edit can post replies to 7 comments, then the hours of tedium of chaining replies in LiquidThreads was not immediately understood as boredom mired in a lengthy snail trail. A typical 20-line talk-page dialog with 12 replies could ramble across 3 or 4 screens of message-reply boxes. Truly, hours and hours were needed to post all replies, and then re-post to cross-update the replies, chained across a bloated network of multiple separate message boxes. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:22, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

• Recorded edit-conflicts are 12% worse: over 11,180 logged: In my initial analysis of edit-conflicts, I was lulled into thinking only 9,918 talk-pages had logged edit-conflict events, but the Template:ec redirects to another major name, Template:Edit_conflict, linked into 11,182 pages, as over 1,200 more logged cases of edit-conflict events. I guess we had begun to think edit-conflicts were "unavoidable" (seemed like it), so not many people have been discussing the "11,200" known cases of edit-conflicts, logged to the exact messages during each conflict. -Wikid77 19:46, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

• 20 more edit-conflicts logged, perhaps over 2% per month: The log of edit-conflict templates already increased by 21 new pages in 2 days, indicating problems in more articles than just the "typical" 21,000 pages already having edit-conflicts. So, the problem continues to widen, and some people log more incidents, even though few people are complaining in major forums any longer. -Wikid77 17:30, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

• Recent edit-conflict about major tornado article: As evidence of more edit-conflicts in current events, the page Talk:2013_Moore_tornado (Oklahoma, US) has the phrase "(Edit conflict)" posted on 21 May 2013. The phrase does not use the template {ec}, so that woke me to searching the talk-pages for text as "(edit conflict)" rather than just WhatLinksHere to the {ec} template, as tallied below. Wikid77 09:11, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

• Wikisearching "edit conflict" lists 35,992 tagged pages: So, beyond WhatLinksHere to template {ec}, when also counting people just putting phrase "edit conflict" in discussion pages, then the counts are:  8,662 (24%) article talk-pages; 14,058 (39%) user talk-pages; 8,369 (23%) Wikipedia-project pages; 3,360 (9%) Wikipedia-talk; 1,189 (3%) user pages; 250 (.7%) template-talk; or 330 other pages. Overall, 36,000 pages directly mention edit-conflicts, including 21,200 links to {ec} templates. -Wikid77 09:11, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Fix the problem not the blame for edit-conflicts

I am adding this edit-conflict topic, as a separate thread, to vent any ill-feelings about not fixing the trivial edit-conflict problems, as easily possible, all those many, many years ago. It can be very easy to get hopping mad, once truly realizing how very easy the talk-page edit-conflicts could have been auto-corrected. However, as the adage states, "Fix the problem not the blame" because we could spend more years finger-pointing who to blame for the misery, or trying to rationalize why the edit-conflict problems were "deliberately left unfixed" (or so it seems), for years and years, as thousands of editors (at least "9,918") were suffering the humiliation of recopying or retyping entries, like busywork for some antiquated school official demanding to complete the form as hand-written, in triplicate (no machine copies). Surely, numerous clever people had seen the edit-conflicts over the years, and then concluded this "Version 1.0" software would be updated soon, but later rolled their eyes and left. However, I will let others express whatever justifiable anger, below, but meanwhile, we should re-focus on emphasizing the time is now, the time has come, the angry mob is at the gates, and we need to fix the simple edit-conflicts soon. Yet I would like to hear other horror stories about past edit-conflict nightmares, such as most edit-conflicts in a row, or what people did after the umpteenth edit-conflict pushed them to the brink, and I think people's pain needs to be acknowledged, but if this thread gets out-of-control, then feel free to hat whatever parts of the discussion. Also, as a point of overall perspective, the editor community also shares the blame in not helping to resolve the scenario of 2 adjacent replies, where we need consensus to resolve the edit-conflict by deciding a 2nd reply should be appended after the 1st reply. -Wikid77 (talk) 04:11/16:23, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

• Trying to get wider opinions from community: I have been posting more messages, to get a wider sample of various opinions, including more technical insight into, perhaps, earlier attempts to auto-correct more edit-conflicts, and trace the history of the current edit-merge capabilities. I found one message from 2004, noting that partial edits to separate portions of a page were being successfully auto-merged, if several lines separated the conflicting edits to the same page. -Wikid77 19:46, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

• Perhaps people have lost hope of fixing edit-conflicts: There is a old term in psychology, about losing interest, known as "psychic numbing" (recently added article), and that is why some opinion polls can fail to measure the extent of problems in computer systems, while objective measurements might better reflect the priority of impacts. Another measurement problem, with judging user interests, is the "silent majority" of thousands of users who rarely post to talk-pages (or surveys), but often edit articles, categories, or (navbox) templates. Who knows what they think? So, again, collecting objective data, even from silent users, is an important part. -Wikid77 17:30, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Why do you always post this stuff here?Moxy (talk) 20:23, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that Wikid77 knows that Jimbo appreciates him doing so. Which would seem a good a reason as any to post something(s) on someone's talk page. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:38, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I guess i should have been more clear - why copy and paste the same thing here that is posted at other locations - why not just a link to the original post where the conversations are taking place over the copy and pasting?Moxy (talk) 20:53, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

• Post here as other talk-pages have other readers or scope: The reason is because Jimbo's talk-page tends to reach a cross-section of numerous users, who might provide answers not posted elsewhere, not to mention Jimbo has this page as a central place to post his long-term opinions about the topics, and get feedback. In many cases, issues discussed here will get resolved in ways (or speeds) not directly found at Village-pump discussions, such as some concerns related to Commons images. For example, I initially viewed the edit-conflict problems as a technology issue, not aware that choosing the order to post 2 replies, at the same line number, is also somewhat of a wp:VPP policy issue than just wp:PUMPTECH, and so I might start posting there, for the policy aspects of deciding edit-conflicts between 2 users, based on a cross-section of replies seen here. In general, the click-through rate is very low for wikilinks, which is a major reason to limit navboxes to perhaps 100 wikilinks, because navspam from navboxes tends to double the mid-range article sizes, with wikilinks almost never used. Hence, merely cross-linking to another forum tends to funnel the cross-section of users into a narrow set, who are clicking links to leave this page, while depriving the broader set of users the opportunity to voice opinions for Jimbo and others here. For those multiple reasons, it can be beneficial for users to repeat some sentences here, also found in other discussions, although most of the text posted here tends to be unique. However, several people have asked why to post messages here, so perhaps we need an essay to explain for general users. -Wikid77 09:11, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Mail

Hello, Jimbo Wales. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Suri 100 (talk • contribs) 05:39, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Developments from political players in Norway

In 2011 Norway's cabinet erased its debt to an African country that had two Norwegian soldiers (with valid Army identification cards in their possession) on death row—convicted of spying and murder. Are there any references in regards to their repatriation to Scandinavia about a week before the 2013 elections in September? (If the timing is wrong, the applicable Scandinavian government can be seen as having an inept foreign service, or being too soft on Norwegian convicted criminals/spies/murderers.)

Also the upcoming election might indirectly bring a new article to wikipedia. The reason is that a former leader of School Student Union of Norway, and a later victim of 22/7 (Norway's 9/11) is the subject of a book by a Norwegian political player (of the left-wing) and author. With Håvard Vederhus' name in the news, some of my countrymen might think that he is an international significant person, and therefore write an article about him. (I am guessing that his notability might be close to that of a student president at the largest high schools in the U.S. Except that I am guessing that he never has been directly elected to anything, by thousands of students. Maybe his notability can be compared to the following, except that they don't even have a language link to Norwegian: publicist Bjørn Wegge, winner of Toronto-based beaty pageant Saiyma Haroon, special adviser (without notable references) Gry Tina Tinde and circus worker Yellow Pagee Veronica Ljosnes.) How can one ascertain lacking notability for any or all the above? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rasta lørenskog (talk • contribs) 11:58, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

WP:SOAPBOX. Your first paragraph is pure speculation and political commentary, your second paragraph is is pre-emptively poisoning the well, again on a political subject. These are your very first and only edits to the English Wikipedia, making one wonder why you are actually here. Is there actually a reason that new Norwegian editors are coming to this page so regularly? We've had User:Whatthatspells, first edit (April 2013) here, then User:One Direction of norw, only edits (15 April) here; User:Normash made some other edits besides coming to this page, and has since been blocked as a sockpuppet of a blocked user (similar to User:Barnstar candidate school, first edits here, soon after blocked as a sock). Fram (talk) 08:34, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

How many edits would one need before you approve? You're talking about well-poisoning, while I am indirectly questioning if there are notable reasons to translate an article from Norwegian about Håvard Vederhus. And I have pointed out that we probably should not be blinded by the fact that a book (about him) was written by a known political player. (The author was interviewed for 10 minutes on the TV2 Nyhetskanalen, and I was waiting for a clear reason to be explained about why the subject was notable. I was suprised to see that the author brought a guest to the TV show, that might help explain the notability of the Norwegian victim. The guest was the mother of the subject! I am sure that books will be sold, but not to me since I still don't know why he is notable, except that an author/political player wrote a book (3 months before the national elections)—and the subject has an article on Norwegian wikipedia. --Rasta lørenskog (talk) 09:38, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

More than zero at least... "Hey, I've never edited this site before, but I would like to warn you that someone may someday create an article about someone who isn't notable in my opinion (and, coincidentally, was a politician). Oh, and I also would like to mention that the politicians from a country you know next to nothing about may perhaps do something in a few months time". Your motives in posting here are at least dubious and seem to be motivated by a political agenda instead of a genuine interest in improving Wikipedia. Fram (talk) 09:54, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

We know something about that country—thru the articles about its publicists, beauty pageant winners, circus workers and special advisors. What we don't know is your opinion about the notability of the deceased student politician. --Rasta lørenskog (talk) 10:06, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Question about article title

Do you have any opinion about having an article renamed as The Murder of Abedi Kasongo. --Rasta lørenskog (talk) 11:54, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

The objection to doing this seems to be based on a famous quote by Groucho Marx, namely "Military justice is to justice what military music is to music." Also, WP:BLPCRIME applies here.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 16:39, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Ginseng Coffee

Hey Jimbo, can you help fix and expand the page? There could be more information to be added, and i can't find an image for that at the moment. Kord Kakurios (talk) 22:41, 22 May 2013 (UTC)