:::::::Does CorporateM's polite and reasonable approach hold back progress, in your view? --[[User:Demiurge1000|Demiurge1000]] ([[User_talk:Demiurge1000|talk]]) 02:04, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
:::::::Does CorporateM's polite and reasonable approach hold back progress, in your view? --[[User:Demiurge1000|Demiurge1000]] ([[User_talk:Demiurge1000|talk]]) 02:04, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
This whole thing is related to why we do need to allow some corporate editing, and why we already allow some BLP editing by subjects: Often the party with the conflict of interest is the only party motivated to fix anything. If Wikipedia had had a sane policy of this sort created by non-shills, then there wouldn't have been any need for a shill to start one. But just like there's often no interest in fixing bad articles about corporations, and sometimes no interest in fixing bad BLPs, there was no interest in coming up with a workable extant organizations policy either. [[Special:Contributions/208.65.89.141|208.65.89.141]] ([[User talk:208.65.89.141|talk]]) 17:50, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
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Mentioning Sarah's cause for dismissal and her 'mistake'
Jimmy, why the hell is Frank Schulenburg making public statements about why Sarah was let go? This is opening the door for Sarah to sue WMF for damaging her reputation even if the statements are true. He also mentioned that, "everybody makes mistakes" which is damaging Sarah's reputation as Frank is implicitly stating that Sarah made a mistake. Frank is neither a legal nor an HR professional. If anything, it should be Joady Lohr (HR Director) making the announcement and it should be as short as possible: "The WMF announces that Sarah is no longer an employee of the Foundation. We wish Sarah the best in her future endeavors." But mentioning why she was let go? The scandal has now been picked by the media and Sarah's name and the cause for her dismissal and her alleged mistake are spreading out: [1] Bad mojo Jimmy, bad mojo. Can any HR American/California attorneys and Public Relations professionals chip in this discussion please? What would be the best course of action for the WMF right now? —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 13:12, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Arguably, she made several mistakes: not declaring COI on the talk page of each piece and gibraltaring one on the main page as a Did You Know? snippet. As for the paid editing, that's not banned by en-WP policy although WMF may have employment contracts that you know about and we don't. Speaking of which, is there non-disclosure language which is keeping SS from speaking on the matter? Carrite (talk) 23:26, 10 January 2014 (UTC) ///// Note: redacting the comment on gibraltaring, after further scrutiny of her edit history it is my considered opinion that the piece in question wasn't a paying job, as it was worked on repeatedly over time. My apologies to Sarah. Carrite (talk) 04:03, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's not libel if it is true. End of case. Also, she can be counter-sued as the door swings both ways, which people should remember every time someone mentions a lawsuit when raised as an alarm. Search legal records for massive countersuits awarded. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:30, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ahnoneemoos asked for a PR professional to chip-in and I do have a PR background. In my opinion, it was a pretty standard letter and the cause of the layoff would have been presumed by the media anyway, who regularly watch Jimbo's page for Wikipedia stories. If the community wanted it handled with discretion, the community would have had to do so in the first place, by emailing Jimbo/WMF rather than posting here, but in most cases that is not what the original poster wanted. However, it will be very hard for WMF to fight against covert, non-neutral paid editing when their own staff and partners have been exposed for similar practices. For that reason, if I were in WMF's shoes, I would have been forced to advise the same action, as regrettable as it may be. CorporateM (Talk) 18:16, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, this is real news now: [2] Unfortunately, Stierch is taking the media flak over the fact that we can't come up with a clear answer and a consistent policy, one way or the other, about anything. Wnt (talk) 23:04, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Real news? Are you sure? Have you compared the Independent piece with the Ars Technica piece, to see how much they differ and if they are separate articles? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 06:49, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying I want to start an article about it based on GNG (the thought may have crossed my mind, but it's absurd). All I'm saying is that sometimes I actually read The Independent, not as an external link but as a newspaper site. Wnt (talk) 06:58, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Jimmy, you and the WMF did the right thing. I hope this discovery will act as a catalyst to prompt further remedial actions by the WMF and yourself. The editing community should have little to no say; we are talking about the good reputation of the project, critical to editor retention and public trust and acceptance. As for the adminship status of this editor, enacted by over 200 !voters in 2012, it should be removed at once. Repeat, the administrator flag should be removed at once, by you or an office action if need be. Thanks again for seeing this overall problem as significant-to-crucial. Jusdafax06:29, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Petition to un-gag Sarah
I am unaware of any nondisclosure agreements and do not intend to intervene in a staff matter. Leave Sarah some dignity, people, she's a human being, not your cause celebre!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:35, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The undersigned urge Jimmy Wales to pressure the WMF to release Sarah S. from any and all non-disclosure agreements, so that she can be free to tell the English Wikipedia community the truth about what she did, what the WMF did, and anything else the community should know.
The undersigned urge Jimmy Wales to pressure the WMF to insist that any newly-appointed administrator on the English Wikipedia, before taking up their office, avow they will not engage in paid editing; and also disclose any paid editing or COI editing that they have engaged in previously.
Is administrator status an "office"? If this is important to you, why not ask the question during RFA? What do you propose doing about the 2,000 or whatever administrators already minted? Do you think that the most problematic paid editors at WP are administrators, or are they actually non-administrators? What is the policy basis for JW having approval rights of those approved for administrative buttons? Carrite (talk) 00:56, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You'll probably have to make sure they also provide an official notary public's affidavit that they did not cross fingers while swearing their oath of undying loyalty. Unless the WMF flies all newly elected admins to the nearest chapter to swear them in. MLauba(Talk)02:09, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose until such time as a fixed policy which is 100% against paid editing is established. There is no reason to hold admins to an ideal which does not have wide enough support to actually become a coded policy. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:16, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The only relevant "vow" is the WP:Terms of use; if the WMF wants to do this top down, they would need to consult some lawyers and try to work up a wording to go in there, whether it affects everyone or only admins, and then if desired editors could hold a plebiscite on it (at the rate things move on WP, if they get the ball rolling now, they might squeeze it in with the next ArbCom election). (note I'm not actually calling for this; a vote is a poor substitute for political organization) Wnt (talk) 06:40, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support: minimal and obvious. If there really is a "bright line rule," and that's not just a figure of speech, then this should be a no-brainer. Don't you think so, Jimbo Wales? Further comment: I just read about the Sarah Stiertch dismissal for paid editing. Assuming the reports are correct that she left the Foundation for that reason, it's outrageous. There are no rules against paid editing on Wikipedia. There should be, but there are not. Rather than throwing this person under the bus, the Foundation should change its terms of use to prohibit paid editing. Persons currently engaged in the practice should stop what they're doing, but not subjected to ex post facto penalties. If the Foundation feels so strongly about paid editing (which would be great), it should take action. Coretheapple (talk) 21:12, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The English wikipedia can simply establish this as policy, including provisions for a desysopping process as appropriate. And that's not a bad idea. And it's probably unlikely that candidates who refuse to make this commitment will succeed in the future, even in the absence of a formal policy. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 21:47, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support ...at the very least. (Comment: knowing that some 'are' being paid to work on articles has taken the wind out of my sails, frankly, for working on this Project, and I am no longer willing to put long-term effort into difficult pages like BP, or into addressing the recent takeover and spin-job to the Cannabis articles by WikiProject Medicine. Not for free, anyway.) petrarchan47tc22:01, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support - who ever came up with the idea that it was ever ok for an admin to engage in paid editing? Hasn't it been obvious from the very beginning of the idea of "admin" that they would not be working for somebody else while they were working on Wikipedia? That said, I'm not sure that this page is the best spot for an RfC, or that the words "urge Jimmy Wales to pressure the WMF" are right. I think a simple petition to the WMF board to please make this clear, in light of the recent scandal, to the folks who are looking to create new "paid-editing rights" that it just doesn't fly to have an admin (or WMF employees for that matter) accepting pay from anybody other than the WMF to edit Wikipedia. Smallbones(smalltalk)22:31, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Administrators are just editors with extra buttons for the performance of site maintenance tasks. There are already mechanisms to remove tools from abusive administrators. I'm opposed to anything which creates the impression or reality that there are two distinct castes, administrators and non-administrators. Carrite (talk) 21:28, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I do not think we should isolate sysops from other editors by holding them to a separate set of rules than that of other editors. In doing so you will be ultimately transforming being a sysop into something that should be no big deal. I agree that paid advocacy is a problem, but it is a community wide one. Mkdwtalk02:39, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. As pointed out above, we need to have a policy on paid editing that prohibits such activity before demanding that administrators not do it. I think it's clear by now that the bright line rule is not actually Wikipedia policy, either de jure or de facto, even though Jimbo wants it to be. I am also of the belief that such a policy is unwise because as a bright line rule it has no exceptions similar to the exceptions editing your own BLP has, and per IAR *everything* has exceptions. It also encourages outing. Ken Arromdee (talk) 01:08, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Paid editing or whatever one calls it has a corrosive, corrupting effect that ripples throughout this project. We hold admins to a higher standard, via community consensus, that they be given the tools. In my view it is absurd not to request a pledge from all admins to not take cash or favors of any kind in exchange for their broad powers, including the block button. These powers set them apart from other editors the way an armed policeman is different from the average citizen, in terms of influence and chilling effect. And no matter what some may say here or elsewhere, there is a very real caste system at work in Wikipedia. Jusdafax01:43, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose What? First, Jimmy cannot do that. Second, the Wikimedia Foundation cannot do that. And third, the English Wikipedia community, by no means, has expressed unity against paid editing. — ΛΧΣ21Call me Hahc2104:07, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This suggestion is just unrealistic at this point, even if it had support, since we'd have to poke and prod the 1,400 administrators we currently have. Regards, — MoeEpsilon04:23, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Heaven forbid we should upset admins with a poke or prod to pledge not to do COI editing or act in other ways as paid agents. And the Wikimedia Foundation can take any action it deems needful to preserve the perception and reputation of this online encyclopedia. Jusdafax05:57, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Jusdafax: Back in reality, they have already made this "pledge" by going through the rigmarole of the dying RFA process, by showing they would not damage the project in any way with their tools, etc., etc. Why do we need extra confirmation that they won't do what they know is already frowned upon by the community? We wouldn't have given them tools if we thought they were going to be engaging in paid editing, that is pretty clear. We already expect them not to. Do you think a "petition" or "pledge" with a signature from every administrator would even make a difference here? Say this had already been the case, we had every administrator on record, including Sarah, who told us they would not engage in paid advocacy. She still engaged in paid editing as an administrator when she knew it would not be taken kindly to here in 2013/14. A pledge is empty, and we have to trust those we give the tools to. Likewise, we can't slap every administrator on the wrist for the actions of one editor. Regards, — MoeEpsilon06:14, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you are unaware that another admin has recently admitted to "paid advocacy editing." To date I know of no actions taken to correct that. The community is deeply divided and arguably compromised. Something needs to be done asap to correct the existing precedent of admins editing for money. I take a hard line, myself, and call for such admins to be not only desysopped, but banned, as an example that there will be zero tolerance. Enough is enough. Jusdafax06:39, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I've followed the paid editing discussions as well, including the suspected paid editing of another administrator and other discussions, and I'm aware the deep divide. To me, if you previously expose your COI and still improve an article, then it shouldn't be a problem if it's a net positive for Wikipedia. The problem is secrecy and the 'shock' of exposing someone being a paid editor. We shouldn't be discouraging paid editing, as much as we should be encouraging transparency. Had Sarah previously disclosed that she was going to be using another account, linked to her main one so everyone knew who she was, that was used in mind of COI and relevant policies to improve articles for pay, there would be considerably less drama. Their edits could easily be scrutinized if they were making malicious edits (such as deleting criticisms of who they are getting paid from) and they wouldn't have to hide it from us. Paid editing is going to occur, just like vandalism will always be around. "Banning" paid editing isn't going to happen, because you can't stop it. It will only make paid editing harder to detect and that isn't what we need, we need to know where paid editing is happening. Regards, — MoeEpsilon08:18, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There will undoubtedly have to be continuing discussion about it, in the foundation and outside. COI, as so far explored on wiki has basically been limited to a simple editorial issue. Admins actually present a whole different dimension, which appears to have been largely unexplored. The use of tools is largely "unregulated" except for criticism, and a promise by the admin to not act while "involved" - but involved is limited to a type of interaction "on wiki." To the extent that there are paid admins, acting as "the admin for Organization Y", or "the Admin for industry Z", or "the Admin for PR company ten" in thier admin actions - those are, it appears, basically unreviewable, at this time. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:00, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I do not believe that Jimbo's talk page is an appropriate place for an (impromptu) RfC which is essentially the concern of the broad Wikipedia editing community. And, FWIW though, while I'm here, I do not believe that adminship is compatible with paid editing. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:46, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
For god's sake people...shut up. Stop dragging Sarah and the foundation through the mud. That is far more disgraceful than anything Sarah or Jimbo has ever done. Are you all seeking the destruction of all that these fine people have achieved...or is it that a controversy is just to enticing to avoid? Disgusting. I feel so much shame in being associated with those that cannot just shut the fuck up and let things die naturally.
It is time to let this go. Nothing will bring Sarah's reputation back but her own work. She did NOT overshadow the good she did by a mistake I know I can forgive.
She didn't kill anyone so just shove it back in and move forward....or was the point just further character assisnation. Srah let us all down. I can forgive that. I cannot forgive her being mutilated by a continued bullshit discussion. So shut the fuck up and move on or destroy the very ground you walk on. the c choice is yours. I am not sure which course this community will take but I have the fucking freedom to express myself. Not like I have anything left to lose here. Tis place has becaome a wasteland of arguments, hate and criticism of our very existence. As if the very people that work here are trying to destroy everything that has been built.
Fine......but expect resistance....STRONG RESISTANCE! This is an encyclopedia....but we act as if the very world we live in depends on us! It doesn't. We can be wiped away in an instance by people who care more about themselves and the income they receive from this site. STOP IT NNOW!!!! You disgrace yourselves and the very idea of free flowing information. People are putting their very lives on the line to shre with us. And you people just shit on it. You shame us all!--Mark Miller (talk) 05:33, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I, too, am disgusted by anyone who disgraces themselves and the very idea of free flowing information; also by people who shit on those putting their very lives on the line to share with us; by those who shame us all; by those who do not, as Mark puts it "just shove it back in and move forward"; by anyone who engages in character assassination; by those who engage in mutilation by a continued bullshit discussion; by those who do not, as Mark puts it, "shut the fuck up and move on or destroy the very ground you walk on"; and in general anyone who creates a wasteland of arguments, hate and criticism. Mark has a lot of very valid points here, and we should all learn from them. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:48, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The Day We Fight Back
Note to those just arriving at, or re-arriving at, this discussion: there seems to be emerging support and excitement for a proposal by Jehochman, below. Please engage with that now, rather than a blackout, as there also appears to be emerging consensus that a blackout is not right at this time for this issue.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:29, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt that is what Jimbo means, regardless of anybody's opinion on government surveillance and related issues, they do not threaten Wikipedia directly enough, imo, for any action to be taken. SnowolfHow can I help?19:05, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No kidding. But aside from shutting down the website for a day, what other means of protest are both available and obvious enough to make our opinion obvious.--MONGO19:20, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Uhm...without that Google data collection...Wikipedia articles would not appear in a google search. Some collection is part of how your search engine provides data to you.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:11, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Umm..and their scanning of e-mail for targeted advertising purposes and other activities relate to Wikipedia articles how, exactly? It's not just searching...Google collects and uses far more than that. Intothatdarkness19:42, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Have essays or related articles ready in time: We can use the words "avoid" or "counter" while the word "fight" is problematic because of connection to wp:ANIWP:BATTLEground mentality, but there might also be conflicts with some users who like mass surveillance. I suggest a new essay "wp:Avoiding mass surveillance" but be prepared that everything new will be dragged to AfD or wp:MfD and allow extra time for people fighting against any progress to improve coverage. Meanwhile, it is good for people to remember those who have been arrested over false perceptions, and those celebrity sex tapes, with people a few months underage, have led to charges of child pornography where perhaps 19 is considered legal age. It is good to remind people to clear the browser's temporary files, to erase controversial work files, and beware of mobile phone zoom-lens cameras at an Internet cafe, or even in public restrooms. There are cameras and snooping everywhere. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:16, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yet another case where Wikipedia should avoid politicizing itself. I recall posting several times on this user talk page asking if Wikipedia were co-operating with "collection agencies" (pun intended) and was assured Wikipedia was not so doing. That is far different from the "action" being called for in a political manner. Cheers. Collect (talk) 18:38, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Another useless protest? Can we avoid politics and attention-grabbing gimmicks and just focus on building and improving the encyclopaedia? Thank you.--ColonelHenry (talk) 19:52, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
First, because of our community consensus policy, Wikipedia cannot respond as fast as reddit.com or icanhas.cheezburger.com can. If we are going to participate, we need to hammer out the details now, not later.
Second, before Wikipedia got on board the SOPA protest, news sources kept speculating on us: "but will Wikipedia join the protest?" Wikipedia joining or not joining is a very big deal.
Third, we need to be really careful not to overuse the idea. Wikipedia protesting one thing in four years has a lot of impact. Wikipedia protesting four things in one year has far less impact. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:56, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The relative importance of this thing needs to be considered, though. It's true that if Snowden's revelations came along ten years from now, the potentially watered-down effect of Wikipedia's response would be a nonissue. But revelations such as these have no precedent in history, so the third point may have less validity than the first two. petrarchan47tc21:31, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
He provided hard-core, undisputed evidence straight from the source which has enjoyed 8 months of nonstop, excellent media coverage and sparked indignation and action across the globe. Previous NSA whistleblowers and Congresspersons like Wyden were all but ignored, and have expressed deep gratitude that Snowden blew the lid off this story so that it can finally be addressed in open courts and by the general public. Remember, "We don't spy, not wittingly" was the NSA's accepted line prior to Snowden. petrarchan47tc21:54, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh dear..some countries with similar forms of government, outlooks and language have been working cooperatively behind the scenes...big shock! Thank goodness Snowden blew the lid off all these things or else we would have all been in total darkness as to the nefarious activities of big brother.--MONGO02:33, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"The fact that this has made it to the floor of the House of Representatives is unquestionably good. It is another step…in the march to a real debate,” Wyden said, and added that Snowden’s disclosures made it possible. “We wouldn’t have had that seven, eight weeks ago.” This fact was acknowledged—albeit begrudgingly—by other House members... during a... hearing with officials from the Department of Justice and the NSA. “Snowden, I don’t like him at all, but we would’ve never known what happened if he hadn’t told us,” said Representative Ted Poe." *petrarchan47tc02:45, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
“So, today I’m going to deliver another warning: If we do not seize this unique moment in our constitutional history to reform our surveillance laws and practices, we will all live to regret it,” Wyden continued. “The combination of increasingly advanced technology with a breakdown in the checks and balances that limit government action could lead us to a surveillance state that cannot be reversed.” petrarchan47tc03:21, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A little while ago it was proposed that we join with various multi-national corporations in taking a stand for Internet freedom, and I commented that we would be better aligning ourselves with other Internet non-profits. I still think that, but the aesthetics of the facebook banners they are proposing leave me a little cold. The Franklin quote: try telling that to Winston Churchill. And I'm particularly nonplussed by the image of of some guy (is it Rosanne's husband? have they run it by him?) who's so annoyed with the NSA he's about to kill his work colleagues. I know its just what some random people thought would grab people's attention, but it strikes a tone that's a bit too right-of-centre for my liking. Maybe Wikipedia should be part of this once they've had a re-think about what it is they want to convey. Formerip (talk) 01:53, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Is Snowden's revelations and the spying a big enough deal that we need to shut down Wikipedia? That's the question we should be asking. KonveyorBelt01:58, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The question we should be asking is what can we do to support people's right to read freely, without fear that their reading habits on Wikipedia will be used to harass them somehow. This would be a good time to remind people that "Freedom from fear" means freedom from being oppressed and targeted for harassment based on your Internet use. For those who think this is "no big deal," I'd suggest you take a look at "Top Secret America," a reputable, open-source book and website that came out way before Snowden, and get a handle on what we're talking about here. When serious thinkers in intelligence ethics are formulating arguments along the lines of, "Well that guy was a national level legislator, he should have known better that he's fair game for anything anyone can possibly dig up by hacking his digital trail and exposing it to the public ..."-- with social norms like that, what chance do the rest of us have to defend ourselves against smears, harassment or worse? Who's going to want to run for public office under those circumstances?
We already know one thing we can do to support people's right to read freely without fear that their reading Wikipedia will be used to harass them. We can set up a TOR exit node in Wikipedia's server room, set up so that it can only access Wikipedia and Wikimedia, and with the ability to edit Wikipedia blocked. That way, anyone can read Wikipedia in an untraceable way. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:48, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Except Wikipedia bans TOR because admins can't easily catch sockpuppets if they use TOR. You see, Wikipedia and the NSA do have something in common (the NSA usually has to DOS tor users; direct spying on TOR directly being more difficult). Someone not using his real name (talk) 15:50, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I can write up detailed instructions or even provide an image of a virtual machine that is already set up, but I doubt that the WMF developers need either. I have found them to be extremely competent in the past.
To expand on what I wrote above, the TOR node I am describing would:
Talk to a strictly limited set of domains (Wikipedia, Wikimedia, etc). It would not have access (read or write) to any other domain.
Be blocked from editing Wikipedia or any associated project (Wiktionary, Wikinews) that we may decide to give access to.
It should have bandwidth throttling. Just being a TOR relay node that is unlikely to be controlled by the NSA has value; every new node increases the security of the network. That being said, we don't want to give the TOR traffic unlimited resources.
For my part, I would like us to take a stand in favor of the general principle of informational self determination. That's how we run our site-- and that's how people want to live, they want a say in what is done with the information collected about them, and how it is used. Djembayz (talk) 03:33, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'll pipe up as a marketing guy. A message is most effective when it matches the format of the media. We're an encyclopedia. On Feb 11, I suggest we fill our front page with articles, blurbs and news about mass spying and privacy. That will send a strong message, and help educate people. It's sort of like what we do on April 1, except serious instead of foolish. JehochmanTalk02:22, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Like What I love about it is that it is NPOV and still allows us to show, in a neutral way, that we think the issue is important. Let people make up their own minds - but let them be informed when they do. As a side note, and I guess this is an odd place to put it but people are probably curious - I am generally in favor of a blackout in cases where we can have a real material impact, i.e. just before a major vote that is about to do something awful. But a blackout with no specific ask, with no specific legislation looming, strikes me as overkill.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:26, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Like Definitely a better idea than a full blackout - still gets the point across, but does it in a way that matches Wikipedia's purpose of educating. Perfect compromise. ~SuperHamsterTalkContribs15:41, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, we do know the percentage as a steady rate, from pageviews of Main_page during the prior 2010 Winter Olympics (Feb. 2010 Main_page stats), as 5.1 million/day unchanged during the event (2014 average: 9.0 million/day). However, the Olympics will take space on the Main_page, as covered each day. Also, "viewing" does not mean reading the page, and so a Main_page banner might be needed to get attention on 11 Feb. -Wikid7706:00, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
First of all...this is NOT a Wikipedia protest. Just because Jimbo brought this to our attention here does not mean he is sponsoring this or involved in any way. Guys...this has been out there for a while and Jimbo is not the first to share this. If you don't want to take a stand as a group because that is what our guidelines and policies state then don't...but those guidelines and policies ARE NOT TO CONTROL US AS A GROUP and/or whatever we want to support or protest as that group. Those policies and guidelines are meant to help us write articles not control us as a community.
Very strong support. Let's not go black over this, but a banner and a tailored main page are fitting. It just wouldn't look right for all our closest allies to participate only to have Wikipedia remain silent on an issue of such gravity. --HectorMoffet (talk) 05:58, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
We should not silence our coverage of the Olympics. That and other things can continue while we highlight the issue of Mass Surveillance. JehochmanTalk11:06, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support as clearly educational in contrast to a blackout which would be the opposite of educational and what we need is to educate our readers generally, and specifically on this issue. Annoying them with no wikipedia will irritate people without informing them of these very real surveillance issues. I do though wish wikipedia would allow editing with tor, the use of which is one of the best ways we can all show our opposition to mass surveillance♫ SqueakBoxtalkcontribs14:38, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If it were done naïvely, it would be tantamount to lifting all blocks and bans, a radical affirmation of the principle that anyone can edit. If edits from the Tor network could be clearly identified in the history, or if they all went through a review similar to pending changes, then edits by Tor users could get extra scrutiny. —rybec05:01, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I could only see supporting this if it was expanded to deal with the sort of surveillance conducted by Google and other tech companies on a daily basis. Otherwise it's just more politically-motivated electronic masturbation. Is Google's surveillance "good" because they do it in the name of advertising profits? If we're going to NPOV it we should include all these activities. Intothatdarkness14:41, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I see no reason why non-governmental global surveillance isn't worth mentioning too. Although, to put it into perspective Google doesn't have prosecutors, prisons, an army, an air force, or armed drones. --HectorMoffet (talk) 06:56, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support - And as we are an encyclopedia with much in the way of information, I think should last a full week, not just a single day. Out goal, as noted above is to inform by sharing what others say. I think that this is something we can do well here. - jc3720:22, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Caution - Ideally, this could be the beginning of a series of one-day featured topics on timely concepts from politics, as well as other fields like extrasolar planetary systems. But filling the entire Main Page, even for a day, means creating and polishing a lot of material. We have to make sure that we don't declare to the world we're going to do something big, then show them a sloppy job. We also have to make sure that the NPOV is not compromised, as this is not something that we can easily argue is strictly necessary for our continued operations. Wnt (talk) 21:06, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Jecochmah's idea of using our own articles in a protest stunt as total madness. A potential banner or similar on the issue must in no way be linked to Wikipedia's ordinary content unless is a very neutral manner to explain background. Using our own articles to argue a cause would totally damage our principle of neutrality. Iselilja (talk) 02:42, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify, we would never change articles away from NPOV. What's proposed is to display a custom, one-day-only message at Main, and to have a banner of some type above articles. I suspect your objection still stands, but just wanted to clarify that our articletext is sacrosanct.HectorMoffet (talk) 06:51, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Not because it so much matters, if you could get it together in a few hours, but that seems doubtful, making it a considerable distraction for far too many resources (our editors' time) from article creation/curation, which given the size and difficulty of that vital task cannot actually afford such distraction. These libertarian/authoritarian issues are undoubtedly as ancient as the first time two people decided to live together but this project is not going to do much for it, except to create informational content that people demand/desire -- by hook, by crook, through persecution, and prosecution -- to read and pass along. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:46, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This would completely contravene the no advertising, it doesn't matter if the articles were neutral, so were Gibralterpedia articles in DYK, and I know enough about that to know it caused uproar. We should not resort to backing any cause, (almost) no matter what. Matty.00717:41, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose in the strongest possible terms. This is a political statement and we must not take political positions. It is antithetical to our mission. Everyking (talk) 03:41, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose - Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, that's it. It is not a vehicle to promote ANY political agenda, at all, no matter how nice or nasty it is. If the WMF wants to jump on the bandwagon for this campaign and they feel it is line with their goal to promote free knowledge, then fine, they can issue statements and do interviews etc., but they're encyclopedic projects must remain neutral. I opposed the SOPA action, and I will oppose this for the same reason: we must not stray from our original purpose to provide a compendium of neutral free knowledge into some kind of internet activist group. It's an insult to our donors, we promised them that we would not be like all the rest of the internet wikis with clear POV's (e.g. Conservapedia), and would be genuinely neutral on political matters. Please stop. Acather96 (click here to contact me) 18:26, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Strongest possible oppose this is a bloody awful idea that ignores two of our five pillars. Just to remind you the first states at "Wikipedia in and encyclopaedia ...[it] is not a soapbox". Pet projects on political issues fly in the face of that. NPOV is the second pillar being utterly ignored here. This issue also needs to be discussed in a centralised forum (WP:CENT springs to mind), rather than the talk page of an admin, which isn't somewhere most editors will have bookmarked. If you're going to try and play political games, you need to get a wider buy-in than this. - SchroCat (talk) 08:16, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The Main Page Project
On the assumption that the proposal has already been supported, I've gone ahead and created Wikipedia:The Day We Fight Back in a similar vein to the April Fool's Day Main Page campaign, due to the already-overwhelming likes for Jehochman's (IMO brilliant) compromise above. Please don't hesitate to add to the basic framework I created (and partly ctrl c, ctrl v'ed off the AFD pages) :D.--Coin945 (talk) 14:59, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I believe you're jumping the gun in declaring this proposal supported. There may be support to make the proposal, but it should be taken to the community as a whole, not just the limited group that follows this user talk page.--Cube lurker (talk) 16:13, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure you realise just how massive and fractured the Wikipedia community actually is. If anyone who has every touched the edit button is required to have a say so all thousands of us can have an organised discourse on the topic, then I really don't think we'd ever get anywhere. This is a genuinely good idea and I see no reason why we can't just go with the flow rather than resort to overly-bureaucratic systems. In any case, I didn't actually declare the nomination supported. Instead I explained that I created a page (created prematurely because I think the proposal will go through anyway), so when it eventually does we'll already have a basic framework to work off of. But Ben Moore is right. We don't have much time at all to be flapping about.--Coin945 (talk) 16:21, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No need for hyperbole, no one is suggesting "anyone who has every touched the edit button" need be consulted. Just e.g. a week-long straw poll or mini-RFC with a limited number of properly-developed options, per precedent. benmoore16:42, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Centralized discussion needed, or this will look like a hijack by the few. Also, there are other main page interests in addition to DYK that need to be included in a consensus. — Maile (talk) 16:39, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's a good idea to put together a concrete example of what the page might look like. People will have a much easier time evaluating the proposal if they can look at something. We can prepare the page while concurrently having a centralized discussion to decide "go" or "no go". That way we aren't caught short of time. Lastly, I suggest Edward Snowden be considered for the featured article that day. We'll have to work hard to get it up to featured condition in time, if it's even possible. Love him or hate him, he's been a central character for this issue. JehochmanTalk20:43, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No worries, Maile-- I think everyone recognizes that a decision of this magnitude can't be made by insiders on Jimmy's talk page. As Jehochman says, we're informally just working out what it is we're proposing. --HectorMoffet (talk) 21:05, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think there is plenty of Support for this, but I also think it should hopefully only help to try to garner a wider consensus from the community, and/or seek out consensus from members of the community that frequent the above-mentioned individual project pages for the various subsections of the Main Page. — Cirt (talk) 00:14, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Editors who support a one-day banner on every article:
Only a tiny percentage of users start with the main page. There is a reason why our fundraising appeals appear on every page instead of just appearing on the main page. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:48, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support We can't just sit by and let this continue without putting up some sort of fight. As you can see with all the people that got around the blackout on American Censorship Day, people will still find a way in. Therefore, if we let them in and flood them with anti-spying and other related topics, it might actually work out better than the SOPA/PIPA stuff did. Supernerd11 (talk) 06:38, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support Just using the main page won't work. People come here for the content, so we must display a message alongside articles to get the message out properly. -- M2Ys4U(talk)11:17, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support a concise, one-line banner, tastefully designed and not intrusive. Any banner should be neutrally worded. – SJ +19:13, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Editors who support a one-day banner on the main page only:
Only as an explanation of what's going on on the main page that day (Jehochman's proposal above). And it should be neutrally worded as noted by Jimbo Wales, above. - jc3719:30, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I support both of the above proposals to be placed simultaneously. Fine with Jimbo wording it, as it eliminates wrangling over the wording. Jusdafax21:16, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Acather96 (click here to contact me) - Wikipedia is an enyclopedia, that's it. It is not a vehicle to promote ANY political agenda, at all, no matter how nice or nasty it is. If the WMF wants to jump on the bandwagon for this campaign and they feel it is line with their goal to promote free knowledge, then fine, they can issue statements and do interviews etc., but they're encyclopedic projects must remain neutral. I opposed the SOPA action, and I will oppose this for the same reason: we must not stray from our original purpose to provide a compendium of neutral free knowledge into some kind of internet activist group. It's an insult to our donors, we promised them that we would not be like all the rest of the internet wikis with clear POV's (e.g. Conservapedia), and would be genuinely neutral on political matters. Please stop. Acather96 (click here to contact me) 18:24, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
Honestly, I think most people don't give a shit. Just look at the rather undeveloped pages for the more interesting and recent leaks about MUSCULAR or TAO, from the last fall. (The pages were even more stubby before I worked on them yesterday [3][4].) I think the general public now thinks: "NSA/GCHQ/FVEY spies on everything I do electronically using OMGWTFANOTHERPROGRAM? I don't care as long as they don't van me." Someone not using his real name (talk)
Ask (for community discussions), and you shall receive
The conversation has become rather fractures, but here's the various discussions that have been going on over the past 2 or so days. Please weigh in.--Coin945 (talk) 15:30, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The requests were for a centralized discussion, optionally an RfC/straw poll or the like. Format is less important than notifying people of what's being discussed and expanding the discussion to more than the tiny number of people active at the current WP space page. benmoore15:48, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Not one of those is a central discussion on the true question: Does community consensus support using the main page to join in on this protest? This is exactly what I feared. A small group trying to push this through not by consensus, but by Fait Acompli.--Cube lurker (talk) 18:35, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Cube lurker, the proposal is less than 72 hours old. I don't think anyone want to "push this through" with only a small group-- this message only has power if it has the support of the community, the whole community. Once we know what it is we're proposing, we'll almost certainly want to put a dismissible banner on Watchlist to let our entire community weigh-in on this. --HectorMoffet (talk) 04:03, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
So I'll ask the same thing I asked before: wouldn't it be a better idea to come out against TPP? Copyright limits are a lot more germane to Wikipedia than surveillance, plus TPP has a deadline and has been publicized a lot less. Ken Arromdee (talk) 19:01, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Email from Miss Bono
Hi Jimbo, I am not spending a lot of time in Wikipedia for conection problems and I wanted to let you know that I have sent you a couple of emails. Please, if you read them, can you reply back? Also, if you see this message, can you reply via email? I dont know when I will be able to check my Wikipedia account. Thank you very much and have a wonderful 2014. Best wishes, --Miss Bono [hello, hello!]00:15, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Jimbo, I too appreciate your efforts to reach out to Miss Bono, who tries very hard to contribute productively to this encyclopedia despite severe problems with internet access. I do my best to assist her whenever I can. Cullen328Let's discuss it23:13, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Instant CirrusSearch ready while indexing
Although the overall search-index is still being populated, we can already run instant near-real-time searches (including pages updated within recent minutes) by using the new CirrusSearch backend on typical Special:Search for text. For example, to search user-talk pages about recent "SOPA protest" discussion, use:
Note the user-talk prefix is "User_talk%3A" where colon ":" is encoded as "%3A" and spaces are "%20" in the URL encoding. Alternatively, just run a typical wp:wikisearch (MWsearch), and then rerun the URL with "&srbackend=CirrusSearch" appended, to also search pages recently edited within the last few minutes. Currently, the search-index seems about half-populated, but it is being expanded ASAP without overloading the wp:Job_queue(s). Anyway, for recent edits, the CirrusSearch results seem current, while the remaining older pages might take another dayweek or two to be indexed. Because the search-results have the same format (except with recent edits also searched), I think the long-term plan is to switch to CirrusSearch as the default index, rather than MWsearch as re-indexed daily 4-6 am overnight, once users feel the overall instant results are dependable. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:31, 14 January 2014, 01:53, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps a tool at wp:WMFLabs could be developed to search the edits made by a specific user, as opposed to searching the current contents of pages up to the prior minute of recent edits posted. -Wikid7705:02, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That would sure help us out at WP:DRN, and I am sure that ANI and Arbcom would also benefit greatly. Right now, if I want to know whether Guy Macon has ever discussed fleemishes I manually cut and paste every talk page comment made by User:Guy Macon into a text file, then search it for occurrences of the "fleemishes". This is a lot of work if the editor has made a lot of edits. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:08, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To show 100 results, append "&srbackend=CirrusSearch&limit=100": Remember that a wp:wikisearch defaults to 20-results-per-page, and so the option "&limit=" must also be appended to get more than 20 CirrusSearch results per page. The CirrusSearch index seems to be about 60% complete, but the re-populating of the index might become even slower as more articles are re-edited and must be re-indexed during each minute of each day, as the overall index is being expanded and populated for older pages in the CirrusSearch system. -Wikid7701:53, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Naked woman in Niqāb as an illustration of adequate muslim dress
Я напишу по русски, ибо уверен, что добровольцы охотно вам переведут. Пожалуй, я бы дал такую же оценку (смотри предыдущее сообщение) вашим обвинениям в расизме участника, о котором вы ничего толком не знаете. Я бы дал его потому, что мне этот участник известен давно. Ну а автору топика обратится к вам посоветовал я, но он откровенно слукавил, на форуме Википедии поднимался вопрос о допустимости ссылок на Викиновости и именно с этим вопросом я его к вам и отправил. Однако он похоже струсил и сжал обсуждение до формата допустимости иллюстрации. Если вы считаете, что ссылок из Википедии на Викиновости быть не должно, то скажите это. Или скажите что-то прямо противоположное. В этом вопросе давно пора поставить точку, уже откровенно надоело, что примерно раз в полгода форумные троли начинают подобные обсуждения. скажите уже наконец своё окончательное слово и мы его зафиксируем в правилах Викиновостей и Википедии. Заранее признателен. --Schekinov Alexey Victorovich (talk) 17:37, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Google translate, which is clearly broken in many respects: I write in Russian, because I am sure that you are willing volunteers translate . Perhaps I would have given the same evaluation (see previous post ) your accusations of racism party , which you did not really know . I would give it , because I have long known this party . Well, the author topic will appeal to you advised me, but he frankly slukavil Wikipedia forum raised the issue of the admissibility of references to Wikinews to this issue I had and sent to you . However, he chickened out and squeezed like the discussion to illustrate the format of admissibility . If you think that the links from Wikipedia to Wikinews should not be, then say it . Or say something quite the opposite . In this regard, it is high time to put an end already frankly fed up about once every six months forumnye Trolls begin such discussions . has finally tell his final word and we will fix the rules Wikinews and Wikipedia . Advance grateful . - Schekinov Alexey Victorovich (talk) 17:37, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
Alexey asked me to translate his speech, so I'll make a try. "I'll write in Russian because I am sure that volunteers will help with translation. Perhaps I would have the same assessment (see previous message) to your accusation that a person you know nothing about is a racist. I would give it because I know that person for a long time. As for the user who started the thread, it is me who advise him to write you but he is somewhat cunning. The discussion at the Russian Wikipedia was about admissibility of the links to Wikinews, and this was the question I suggested him to ask you. However he, seemingly, quailed and shrink the discussion to the question of acceptability of the image. If you think that there must not be links from the Wikipedia to the Wikinews, say this. Or state something opposite. It's time to close this question, I really fed up with forum trolls starting this kind of discussions. Tell your final word and we'll fixate it in Wikinews and Wikipedia rules. Thank you in advance." Artem Korzhimanov (talk) 06:19, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
После того как я назвал вандалом человека, который массово убирал ссылки на Викиновости из Википедии без консенсуса Викисообщества меня заблокировал администратор русской Википедии David.s.kats. Я не желаю работать под "патронажем" таких персоналий и посему покидаю Википедию. Единственным условием моего возвращения может быть снятие флага с этого человека, который позорит админкорпус руВики. Я отдал много сил Википедии и давно уже являюсь человеком Викизависимым. Чтож, есть повод с этим покончить, есть немало более комфортных для созидания мест. Спасибо, Джимми за всё что вы сделали и делаете. Удачи вам в ваших дальнейших делах. С уважением, Алексей. --Schekinov Alexey Victorovich (talk) 21:27, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
English mutation: "After I called the vandal the man who cleaned the mass of links to [Russian] Wikinews Wikipedia without consensus [of] Wiki community, administrator has blocked me [by] Russian Wikipedia David.s.kats. I do not want to work under the "patronage" of personalities and therefore leaving Wikipedia. The only condition for my return may be the removal of the flag from the man who dishonors adminkorpus ruViki [ruwiki]. I put a lot of effort and Wikipedia has long been a man Vicky [wiki-]dependent. Well, there is reason to do away with it, there are a lot more comfortable for the building sites. Thanks, Jimmy for all that you have done and are doing. Good luck in your future business. Sincerely, Alex." --21:27, 14 January 2014 (Google Mutation from me. -Wikid7707:34, 15 January 2014 (UTC))[reply]
You wouldn't be the first person to miss seeing a smiley, I've made that mistake myself. There was a smiley at the end of Jimbo's post to which you're replying. If that's not enough, you should presumably start an RfC/U :-) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:14, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Could be wrong, but I don't believe that Jimbo was joking at all; the smiley was more of a "we all know what we're talking about here" rather than lol just kidding" thing. Commons is an embarrassment to the rest of the Wikimedia projects. From refusing to deal with a sexual predator on their own to fighting to retain that appalling Pricasso-in-action video, they are corrupt from top to bottom. Tarc (talk) 20:53, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much for the compliments. :-) (did you notice the smiley? I'm not sarcastic at all) +I would appreciate an answer of Jimmy. Trijnsteltalk21:58, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hard to respect a leader of an organization that prefers to perpetuate the stereotype that Commoners are all deviants than address the specifics. Saffron Blaze (talk) 05:15, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Not only is it not what I said, it is not even remotely close to what I believe. I do believe that there are certain commoners who, when presented with any comment of any kind about commons which isn't positive, will respond by making up out of thin air an allegation that was not said, in an attempt to spread the idea that only people who are not worthy of respect (because they hold such ridiculous ideas such as that "Commons are all deviants". And Tarc is right about the meaning of the smile - it means "we all know what we are talking about here" and Saffron Blaze has courteously stepped in to provide yet another example of why and how for so many Commoners, rational discussion of the problems of Commons has become a waste of time for the rest of us. If you aren't ready to listen, if you hear in every concern "Commoners are deviants" then there isn't a lot of point in trying to talk to you.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:17, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the explanation; otherwise I too have to disagree with you. Please note that Commons is not the old Commons. The days Commons was hijacked by a closed group of people who always shout "Commons is not censored" had gone. There are so many fresh bloods there who know how to keep the community in a positive direction. Jee16:28, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I won't thank you for the explanation given it looks to demonize a Commoner that is trying to be helpful. It is hurtful when every chance you get you paint Commons as being broken. You frequently make snide comments, and I could provide numerous diffs, where you tar the lot with a wide brush, as you did here. Perhaps it is not what you mean, but it isn't unreasonable that many on Commons are perceiving it that way. I am simply asking for you to address the specifics, or the person, not the whole community. Saffron Blaze (talk) 17:42, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I can get a general idea of the discussion from Google translate but it's definitely imperfect. The worst case is the russian discussion on this page. (I think Google was better with the article talk page and edit summaries. maybe someone wants to provide better versions for what's on this page) Anyway, in addition to ludicrous/racist it seems to be irrelevant to the content of the article. Seems at least one person tried to move it lower on the page and was reverted and ~3 removed it entirely and were reverted. (reverts generally referred people to discuss on talk first) --Jeremyb (talk) 14:37, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The Google Translate results for Russian-to-English have produced some confused phrases, so perhaps try a 3rd intermediate language, such as Russian-to-Arabic and then Arabic-to-English, as a trick to give some better phrases. I formerly used other websites, for machine translation, but some of them have quit translating whole paragraphs or switched to Google or others with problems. -Wikid7719:51, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you can explain, while you're here, why you added that image to the article? I recognize it is a strong socio-political statement by someone notable for creating provocative art, but I also recognize it as something that only should be used within the appropriate context. Plopping it into a generic article about Muslim dress seems like an attempt to demean, mock, or otherwise attack certain religious sects.--The Devil's Advocatetlk.cntrb.21:07, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Tarc, that gratuitous nudity is no more offensive to the average devout Muslim than the four gratuitous images of Muhammad on our article, Muhammad. The effective difference is you can empathise with the degree of offense in one case, but not the other. (The image was removed from the Russian Wikinews article on the 14th and hasn't been restored.[5]) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:11, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Apples and oranges. This image's inclusion is an act of provocation; the Muhammad images are included for the sake of information. I view it the same as I view this that was once at Talk:Muhammad/FAQ. No purpose other than to piss someone off. Tarc (talk) 02:58, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It is my sense that in both of these cases, if the article had been created, it would have survived an AfD quite easily. So why is AfC following what appear to be much higher standards
for inclusion than AfD? The inconsistency strikes me as deeply problematic.
Note that in addition to the inconsistency between AfC and AfD there is the deeper inconsistency of coverage of what anyone would admit are quite obscure and unimportant bits of pop culture cruft (which I don't mind, on the premise that as long as it is well-referenced and is what people want to write about, that's fine) while simultaneously rejecting an article about an academic society which is clearly notable.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:36, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Likely because recent pop-culture cruft tends to be documented with many easily-accessible web-based sources (which Wikipedia tends to bias toward), while the two articles you link would rely more heavily on either older print sources or items generated by the organization itself. If it can't be quickly verified, it's easier to reject as not notable. Intothatdarkness19:47, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I proposed an AfC review/AfD merge recently [7] - the people there didn't go for it, but if someone wants to reopen the idea you have my vote. Wnt (talk) 19:55, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Do we have any studies about AfC and whether or not it delivers on its promise of being a friendlier process than classic New Page Patrol? (To me as an almost outside observer, it seems that AfC is gentler in terms of not hitting new articles with lots of cleanup templates and speedy deletion requests, but quite strict in what is deemed acceptable for mainspace, but as I said, I would welcome any data). —Kusma (t·c) 21:02, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Kusma: I am not aware of any (recent) studies into this subject, but i can give a limited account of my own experience in new page patrol / afc reviewing. Back when i still did new page patrol a page tagged for removal was virtually always deleted (Often quite soon after its creation) and the majority of the editors didn't make any edits after that occurred. The amount of questions regarding a tag or removal was also very low: Just a handful for every couple hundred tags i would say.
AFC Reviewing on the other hand tends to yield a boatload of questions by comparison. During the heights of the January backlog drive last year i received several questions a day on my talk page requesting another review \ advice \ explanations for a review i did, and another couple question of the same type by mail. Since the review template also points users to the IRC help channel I am quite certain even more users ended up there to ask assistance.
AFC is not perfect by any stretch of the word, but i do like to assume that it is preferable over new page patron in a majority of the cases - and at least in cases where editor feedback is required. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs)19:04, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A nursery for new articles written by new editors is a good idea in principle, but too often, AfC just doesn't want to cut them loose and let them grow up.
Articles for Creation has some intractable WP:OWNership issues. Outside editors who have attempted to intervene have encountered stiff opposition. Arbcom is poised to desysop an administrator who ignored AfC processes and would not kotow about it on WP:ANI afterward. It's a real shame. HiDrNick! 21:04, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
From my experience, I find myself getting in a negative, non-inclusionist mindset when I review AFC articles. Taking Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Society of American Historians by itself, it's pretty good, but a majority of AFC submissions are not suitable for inclusion, and a large portion of those probably never will be. After reviewing more than a couple AFCs in a row, I start to get discouraged and I find myself wanting to just decline the article and move on. Howicus(Did I mess up?)22:29, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, AfC reviewing can be mentally exhausting. I review from the back of the backlog (so possibly the easier articles have already been handled), but a typical period of reviewing for me might include ten to fifteen declines - of which at least three-quarters are articles obviously created to serve as advertisements or PR puff pieces, usually by editors obviously linkable to the article subjects - and maybe, if I'm lucky, one or two approvals. And I'm by far not the toughest reviewer out there, and I really enjoy when I am able to send an article live. AfC as I experience it is an ocean of crap punctuated by the occasional raft of good stuff; it can be very easy to slip into the mindset that everyone submitting an AfC is there to sneak in some puffery/advocacy and that it's your job to hold the line against such COI incursions. If someone's being paid for working on those articles, it's sure not me, and I've come to resent being asked to to such PR staff's work for them. Jimbo, I know you dislike paid advocacy; I would encourage you to try patrolling the AfC backlog or staffing the IRC #wikipedia-en-help channel for a few days to see just how much of the flow AfC deals with is exactly that and how exhausting it can be. If the advocacy spam wasn't gushing in at such an astounding rate, I suspect we'd be able to do a much, much better job with the articles that their creators actually, genuinely cared about and thought were encyclopedic. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:43, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And, after having ruminated on my own words for a while, let me add a few more things. First, that we're drinking from a firehose of crap does not excuse poor-quality reviews. Reviewer exhaustion might explain some of it, but it doesn't excuse it. It's absolutely true that sometimes articles that could fly on their own are declined at AfC because a reviewer is too conservative or doesn't know what they're doing, and that's not something that should be happening. However, that leads me into...
...the second point, which is that AfC, other than some basic, non-binding guidelines drafted by Wikiproject:AfC, is pretty much anarchy. Each reviewer does their own thing, according to their own standards. No one reviews reviews, except in unusual cases. No one judges whether reviewers are qualified to be doing reviews (yet. An RfC was just closed on this issue and brings us closer to having reviewing be a user right). No one really knows where the line is for "this article is good enough to move into mainspace", so everyone sort of rolls their own. New editors, for whatever reason, are drawn to AfC as "somewhere I can help", and sometimes make a mess of things. Old editors, for whatever reason, decide that AfC needs to be cleaned up right now, and also sometimes make a mess of things.
I've been brainstorming, very vaguely, some possible ways to ameliorate these problems lately. As far as the firehose, a trial balloon on the CSD talk indicated that there would be support for a CSD criterion that would apply to AfC submissions which could not ever meet our inclusion standards (submissions that would meet A7 or A11 in mainspace, for example). Support was lacking for making AfC an "X tries and done" system and for disallowing AfC submissions from editors who are clearly the article subject or their representative. As far as the anarchy...that's tougher. I suspect we need an RfC of some sort firming up the guidelines according to which AfC reviews should be done; the trouble is that there are so many possible threads to that that I'm having trouble visualising how such an RfC should work. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 23:56, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Fluffnutter AfC was created long before WPAFC ever came on scene to service the queue. Each volunteer has tge basic ruberic of things they should be checked, but beyond that it's typically left up to the volunteer's discretion when looking for specific things that need to be in a candidate mainspace article. AfC is the only place for editors who have a CoI to submit their proposed article, so a CSD to obliterate CoI submissions makes it imposslbe for a CoI editor to ever get a article in even if the article were appropriate. As to the "X tries and done" proposal, that was turned down because the consensus has been that as long as the editor is making forward progress to getting their submission to acceptability, we're happy to give them as many tries as they need. It's only when the submission gets re-submitted ~4 times without the issue being corrected to the level of the reviewer's satisfaction that we start looking at other tools in the box (MfD, page protection, deleting the active submission template, etc.) to deal with the submission. Hasteur (talk) 13:49, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A major problem with AFC reviewing is that a lot of the editors doing the reviewing aren't qualified to review. They frequently deny requests that would otherwise stand up under scrutiny and hold articles to a much higher standard than if the editor just creates them from scratch. I also agree that there are serious ownership issues with some of the admins who "run" the AFC process. If you don't agree with them you aren't welcome. AFC is a good place to see some very abusive admin conduct towards new users. Kumioko (talk) 22:52, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The burdeon isn't on me to prove it anymore. I no longer care. I left the comment in case Jimbo or someone else cares enough to try and fix it. Believe what I am saying or not, it doesn't really matter. Its a fact that has been repeatedly stated in multiple venues (including this one) and all anyone needs to see it is to go and look. Yes there are some good reviewers and some good work is done there but there are also a lot of process ownership issues and new users are frequently insulted or ridiculed in the comments on the AFC's. That is also a major reason why backlogs are so long there, people don't want to help out with it because of a few jerks. That is also a contributing factor to why there are over 1000 articles pending review and about 17000 eligible for G13 speedy deletion. Because too few are allowed to participate and those who do are often the wrong ones and share a decline and delete mentality. Kumioko (talk) 14:22, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
KumiokoCleanStart If there is such a grave problem then that problem should be fixed by all means. However, the comments above are akin to calling a plumber to repair a leak, while only providing the name of the city you reside in. Sure, you may not truly care anymore but you still minded the issue enough to spend time to write several posts about it. If the problem is as widespread as you mentioned, it should be relatively simple to provide a diff or two for people to have a start. If not for the sake of you caring anymore, then for the sake of giving people a handle to actually do something with your comment / observation.
As for the backlog on AFC i don't believe the rationale provided is entirely valid. Deletion criteria G13 is quite new, yet from its interception applied to several tens of thousands of declined AFC submissions made in earlier years. If it were not for the diligent efforts of several editors (Hat tip to DGG and Anne Delong among others) that backlog might still be be more extensive, or might have been cleaned out without verifying the declines themselves. The 1000 article backlog of current submissions is about three to four days worth of submissions, so while it is definitely bad i cannot see how that would be directly related to a couple of people being jerks or having a high bar on allowing people to participate. If i am missing something here please do correct me on that one. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs)19:37, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Then feel free to ignore my comments, everyone else does, which is precisely why I have no intention of spending time mining through AFC submissions. I've seen the comments, others have seen the comments, anyone who's worked there for more than a day has seen them. Their not particularly hard to find if one simply spends a little time there. But I know without hesitation that anything I say will be summarily ignored as it has in the past, so there is little reason for me to spend my valuable time when no one will believe me anyway. That's why I invite you all to perform due diligence and look for yourselves. Do not take my word for it. But as your reading the comments think about how hard it is to learn the rules here and how those comments affect the submitter. Many don't come back because the first contact they have to the site is some burned out reviewer calling their article "nothing but crap" because they just spent the last 4 hours declining and deleting article submissions. Kumioko (talk) 19:51, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Here are a few random things, but I am not going to waste much time on this issue:
Stubs never get approved in AFC, yet any editor can simply create the article without going through AFC. If the article wouldn't meet Speedy deletion criteria or would survive an ARC, then it should not be declined which is standard practice currently.
Angelo Frattini (Sculptor) - This version was declined and its currently being improved further but this is not a bad start for a work in progress. Should we require all AFC's to be B-class or better? Also the message says it might be 2-3 weeks for a review...sure seems like a backlog to me and doesn't really matchup with the 3 or 4 day assessment by Excirial. It took a month for it to be reviewed the first time.
The list goes on and on. Just look through some of the articles at Category:Declined AfC submissions and you'll find a lot more. Especially look through needing footnotes and non notable. Notability is so subjective that a lot get declined and meet criteria. Anyway, I have invested enough time in this considering I don't beleive anything wil come out of it anyway. Kumioko (talk) 20:21, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for taking the time to search those, i appreciate the effort.
The Incite decline reason is likely one of the largest problems in past declined article's. That decline reason used to be a default decline reason in the AFCH script that the vast majority of the people use to review content. It was removed some months ago for obvious reasons, but it left quite a legacy from the time it was still in active use. Newer article's should no longer have to face this decline reason though.
True. I like stubbies because they are easy to check (and source, if so required) but they are declined way to often. Agree on the acceptance criteria as well; those criteria are sometimes set to unrealistically high levels for a new article. Sometimes it DOES seem as if the accepted article should be at least C class, instead of being a starter class article.
I should have explained that "4-5 day comment" to start with. If i recall correctly there are about 200-300 new AFC submissions each day, so the 1000 page backlog is about 4-5 days worth of new submissions. That said there are quite a few caveats: During December the backlog grew to some 2500 pages, likely due to the holiday period. As a result the average waiting time for a submission was quite a bit higher than the usual wait (Which isn't all that short either). What also factors in is that some editors such as myself tend to review from the front of the queue (Newest first). The rationale for that this is that it makes no sense to have someone wait two weeks for a review if the page is clearly a decline on first glance. Also, reviewing recent submissions first increases the chance that the original submitter might still see the review and stick around. There is a side effect to this though: Article's that already look decent on first glance might end up waiting somewhat longer on average for a review.
*Sighs* Can't argue on that matter. Notability has always been somewhat subjective, and the decline reason is often overused rather then underused. Your second comment ties in with this issue - if the page wouldn't be CSD'd or AFD'd it should be fine in most cases.
Partially, but this is also being done IMO to help eliminate the thousands of pages in userspace that just sit around for years taking up space. Kumioko (talk) 14:22, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Let us go a further step back and ask just what it is that gives total newbies the idea that their very first act on Wikipedia should be to write a new article? When I joined the project back in 2007 I stuck around for many months and thousands of small edits before I worked up the nerve/cheek/arrogance to start writing a new article from scratch.
As a semi-regular AfC reviewer I can confirm that the "in-tray" is an ocean of raw sewage that we are forced to dive into to seek out the far too rare pearls. IMHO a fundamental flaw in AfC is that there is no "this is crap, go away!" decline option. We are far too polite to the vast majority of spammers and time-wasters that submit their rubbish - all the decline templates include an invitation to fix the abovementioned problem and submit it again. Spending an hour or two at the front end of the submissions list (the fresh stuff nobody else has taken a look at yet) is enough to burn up all the AGF of a saint.
I have just reviewed and approved Society of American Historians. At the time of the previous review none of the independent references that exist in the current version existed. You need to judge a decline by the state the article was in then, not how it looks now.
The notability problem that many such "worthy" subjects struggle with is that their adherents hardly ever publish anything outside of their own walled gardens, thus genuinely independent reliable sources are hard to find. Basically academics seriously suck at publicity - pop singers, wrestlers, etc. (or at least their managers) are masters of the art. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 23:29, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I signed up because an article I was looking for was missing and decided to write it. In previous discussions about article creation rights the amount of people joing and getting stuck here has long been a consideration against restrictions to eG autoconfirmed. Agathoclea (talk) 13:17, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I fully agree with your observation that a declination ought to be discussed in the context of the article as it appeared at the time. However, at the time User:Chris1834 first edited it with a comment Half of the sources are internal, you need independent sources to establish notability. it did have three independent sources. While I can view only one of them, I'm troubled by the notion of looking at the ratio of sources. The comment about "half" troubles me, as I suspect we have over a million articles with fewer independent sources, and I bet we have many with under half independent. I don't recall ever seeing such a concern used as an argument for declination. (I can imagine it being an editorial concern re wp:weight etc.). At the time of declination, it had 14 reference, eight of which I believe are independent. I wouldn't be surprised if this exceeds the median number of independent references.
Actually at the time of decline it had eight references, five of which were primary, one of which noted the society in passing and two that couldn't be checked online but based on the titles didn't seem to be about the society. To me it didn't seem to have enough sources. The decline did not mean the society was not notable, it meant they didn't have what I was lead to believe is a requirement for a new article. AFC states "Articles require significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." This article didn't have that. I would be happy to follow whatever guideline is put forth, as I have shown that I did in this case. Based on current policies, I would decline this article at that point every time.
Yes, it was a fair decision to decline the draft article, based on the fact that possibly only one source was independent, reliable and about the Society.
Generally I think AfC does an excellent job, though there are many people that delight in bashing their efforts. It requires a good level of knowledge about Wikipedia's various notability guidelines, about page-naming, copyright, MOS (and good judgement) then from this subset of Wikipedia editors you have to find people with the time and the patience to be consistently involved. New articles continue to arrive in waves, day-in-day-out. I worked at AfC a lot last year and rapidly got burnt out - the older drafts can be very complex and, occasionally, the authors can be abusive and/or time consuming.
The problem comes down to a lack of experienced editors, in my view. And part of the process of encouraging new reviewers to take part would be forgive the occasional mistakes. We're all human and have to start somewhere! Sionk (talk) 03:21, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The start of a solution to this interminable mess was the Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles - a way to allow us to standardise treatment of new articles from new users, to give them all equal assistance, and to re-focus of positive encouragement for new editors rather than stark automated deletion messages. Two-thirds of the community supported it, and agreed to try it, but Wikmedia Foundation refused - WP:ACTRIAL. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.25.248 (talk) 05:29, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
We have a one-time-only opportunity to create a new system from scratch in the new Draft namespace, one that takes the best bits from AFC, NPP and even ACTRIAL. However the longer we take to get it designed and implemented the more the "old ways" will become established as "standard practice" in the new namespace so let's do this properly and not drop the ball. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:09, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Accredited reviewers"? "Standards followed to the letter"? Wikipedia should work hard against bureaucracy like that, and shouldn't apply criteria at AfC that are contrary to the "anyone can edit" spirit that has made Wikipedia's article space as awesome as it is now. —Kusma (t·c) 10:56, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Anyone can edit" ≠ "Anyone can competently review drafts and properly help newbies" - try not to confuse the two concepts. It is precisely the absence of accreditation and standards that has landed AfC in the condition it is in. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:56, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Having our first line of defense-cum-introduction squad staffed by people who enforce their own rules as they like and refuse to discuss why they have rejected an article is just a recipe for disaster. Hence why a vetting process is very much necessary. Not necessarily as strict as RFA, but much better than allowing anyone to review. What if a vandal or sockpuppet chose to review (I can imagine the latter... "needs more tits")? Or would you rather potential new editors be driven away so that anyone can edit is understood in the widest possible way? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:49, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Why can't we just revert, warn and block people who make bad edits at AfC just like we revert, warn and then block people who make bad edits in mainspace? We allow vandals to edit our featured articles, but we revert and block them afterwards. I don't see a reason why it has to be different just because edits happen in a different namespace (other than the MediaWiki: namespace). —Kusma (t·c) 12:59, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Reviewers or writers? Yes, we can block vandals posing as reviewers, but the damage is done: the once-hopeful editor who submitted an article for review is probably not coming back. You're forgetting, our goal at AFC is not to provide information to readers, but to provide a venue for people to try and write articles without having to worry about arbitrary deletion or drive-by tagging (like in main space). We are trying to reduce bad experiences. If they have a bad experience there, they're gone. As for undoing or reverting an actual editor who made a bad close, that's usually when WP:OWN pops up. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:05, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Crisco 1492 says "the damage is done." Yes, the damage is done this time, but if we block the person who did the damage, it will make one less person to do similar damage 100 more times in the future. However, I see other problems with Kusma's suggestion of "Why can't we just revert, warn and block people who make bad edits at AfC just like we revert, warn and then block people who make bad edits in mainspace?" For a start, an average AfC submissions is never seen by anywhere remotely near as many people as the average article, so that most often the bad decision will never be noticed. In fact, one of the biggest causes of problems at AfC is that the number of submissions is far too high for the number of people assessing them, which is bound to mean that many submissions don't get looked at by more than one person. Then there's the question of what counts as a bad enough "bad edit" to justify a block. If I start blocking editors just because their judgement as to how much sourcing a new article needs is different from mine, it's a good bet that I'll find myself being hauled before ANI pretty soon. Blocking for outright vandalism, spam, BLP violations, etc, is one thing, but blocking just because of poor judgement is much less straightforward. JamesBWatson (talk) 17:12, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Of course it isn't quite as simple as I try to make it sound. However, if reviewers often make bad decisions at AfC, they should be told to make better decisions or stay away from AfC. Speedy deletions at least get looked at by nominator and deleting admin (and when doing CSD work one should always tell people about bad tagging); if AfC submissions are declined by just one editor and then never looked at again, the process needs to be improved, and more people need to get involved in double-checking each other's work and giving each other feedback on their reviewing. Unfortunately I have no good idea how to get more people into AfC work (I do have bad ideas like starting to use "no AfC reviews" as RfA oppose rationale). —Kusma (t·c) 21:50, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Crisco 1492 if you're going to bash my assertions and judgement calls (Like the Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/List of Rhode Island International Horror Film Festival award winners and List of Rhode Island International Horror Film Festival selections), mind doing it to my face? Being that other editors reviewed and agreed, how about you let this bone go? Are you going to tell me that the current state of the "selections" article is what we want to have in mainspace. Did you not get advice that we don't need a bulk copy of the content that is on the Rhode Island International Horror Film Festival site? Did you not understand that the DYK nomination that you were shepherding and trying to get past the reviewers does not have any bearing on the review of AfC articles? In short the submissions were declined appropriately, declined by an editor who knows what they're doing with respect to policy and therefore is "accredited", and your retreading the same argument over and over again only serves to prove that you have a personal vendeta for my having taken an action that displeases you. Hasteur (talk) 14:03, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hasteur, you have just proved my point. Do you see how combative you are coming across? I deliberately did not name you (talk about the action/content, not the editor), and did not intend to single you out. I have no personal vendetta with you, but those two edit summaries were the freshest in my mind (and you did ask for diffs). If we were to, say, meet at an FAC or GAN, I would not consider you any better or worse for our past interactions.
Thanks to Sphilbrick for notifying Wikiproject Articles for creation about this discussion. Yes, this discussion did start out with a specific Afc submission as an example. As an experienced Afc reviewer, I would like to say that I also would have declined the article which originally sparked this discussion, with a comment encouraging the submitter to improve the referencing and resubmit. At the time of the decline there were no independent sources. The Society's web site is cited extensively. The book sources were all to people who were not only members of the society, but had had their work sponsored by it. The book about American Heritage was written by the son of its managing editor. As another editor commented (sorry, I don't remember who), just because there are currently a lot of poorly cited articles in the encyclopedia is not a good reason to create more. It's true that the article may not have been nominated for Afd, but only if no one happened to take the time to examine the neutrality of the sources. Wikiproject Articles for creation, or any group of editors in the future who attempt to apply standards to the articles, will always be open to regular criticism by those who interpret the standards differently, and that's a good thing because discussion is how consensus develops. I have interacted with many new editors who have submitted initially unacceptable articles and who, after making improvements at the advice of Afc reviewers have gone on to be great editors. —Anne Delong (talk) 14:19, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I do agree that AFC is trying to follow higher standards of inclusion than AFD. I tried to have an article about Michael Pollack created (draft at User:WhisperToMe/Michael Pollack) and I felt it would survive AFD, but some other editors denied it on grounds that it has a little too promotional sounding of content. I'd rather just post it on Wikipedia and let the AFD process take place if needed. If editors think it focuses on wrong aspects of him, they can cut it down at their leisure. Also, I found some film articles in AFC and I want to move them out of the AFC process and into the mainspace, to free up room for articles that are debatable. WhisperToMe (talk) 17:40, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As I have just said in reply to you at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk - which page is worth reading in connection with this topic - if you are confident that a particular subset of submissions all meet Wikipedia policy, you should go right ahead and approve all of those submissions. It does not seem to me that Articles for Creation imposes any bureaucracy or restrictions to prevent people from doing exactly that. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 17:54, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Applying higher standards than AfD? I don't quite get that. AfD is a subjective process too, where questionable decisions are often made. And involves a number of participants over a long period. Unless Wikipedia is written entirely by robots there will continue to be a variety of interpretation, preferences and decision making. Including at AfC. I suppose a useful tool for AfC would be a method to overrule or change another reviewers decision, politely and without confusing the author of the article... Sionk (talk) 18:19, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The whole point of Afc is to have a place where new editors, COI editors and unregistered editors could make articles. Very often the reason new editors start editing is that there is a topic which they feel is missing from the encyclopedia. That's the way it was for me. (Here's my first article, an Afc graduate.) We'd lose large numbers of productive editors if we didn't let them create new articles right away. Afc is supposed to guide potential contributors in the way of NPOV and referencing, while weeding out attack pages and non-notable topics, getting copyvio material removed and rewritten, etc. Aside from the backlog (which has been bad lately because of the bounceback from the G13 notifications) it has been doing a reasonable job of this. However, some new editors just drop off a submission and never come back, or give up after one decline, and the articles are abandoned. For many this doesn't matter, as they will fade away under G13. However, perhaps 5 - 10% of these could be made into decent articles, and once the original editors have stopped working on them the only benefit to having them in Afc is that they aren't deleted right away. Since they need adoption by new editors anyway, why not move them into the new Draft space where they are more likely to be worked on? They are clearly categorized and easy to find. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:58, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oooh! Clever! Is there some link to these transclusions from the AfC project page? Could a holding category be created? I realise DGG and youself were looking at old drafts, I should probably pay more attention to conversations on the Project talk page! Sionk (talk) 21:15, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
All these discussions need to bear in mind the sheer imbalance between the volume of the in-tray (about 200 articles per day) and the number of people reviewing them (the bulk of the work is done by about 20 people). It would be ideal to have a system whereby promising editors and articles could receive personalised and dedicated support, but there simply isn't the volunteer hours at the moment to do this. We barely manage to give each submission a boilerplate review within 3 weeks with the numbers we have. What AfC really needs is another two dozen or so people. --LukeSurltc00:39, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To me that imbalance seems like the same disease I commented about at WP:ACC - it's a problem of make-work. People come up with more and more elaborate processes that "have" to be done, and when there aren't volunteers to do them, that excuses doing them arbitrarily. Let's just focus on the basics: provide some reliable sources, be at least marginally comprehensible (in English), have the purpose of providing information about a topic. Wnt (talk) 06:33, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It should also really help to transition to the Draft: namespace and more normal ways of commentary. For example, consider an article like this - the poor guy obviously has no idea of how he's supposed to write an article. I just want to dash off a quick comment, but it seems like you're supposed to put it in a special review box or something - bu not now ... why the heck is the article in talk namespace anyway? To one uninitiated it seems inaccessible. Wnt (talk) 06:41, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Suggestion for AFC criteria
As I mentioned above, I think having some explicit criteria against which AFC submissions are checked and passed/failed. Nothing fixed in stone, but a checklist which writers can check their work against and reviewers can cite when failing nominations. A very rough wording (as I'm heading out the door in a few minutes to catch a flight) could be like this:
Submission is written in grammatical English (the title is not 100% important, IMHO, as the person passing the AFC can change the title during promotion)
Submission explicitly shows the significance of the subject and has sufficient independent, reliable sources with in-depth coverage to establish notability (a suggestion for writers could be three or four)
Submission uses references to support all potentially contentious information and direct quotations (this is all that's required per Wikipedia:Citing sources; citing absolutely everything is not required by policies or guidelines, just recommended; also note that formatting is not included here, as WP:BURL is just an essay and running Citation Bot or a similar tool takes very little time)
Submission is written neutrally and does not contain promotional language
Submission does not contain violations of copyright
Those criteria look very onerous, far more so than the existing AfC guidelines (or, at least, my understanding of them). Like you say, the drafts that are likely to fail at AfD need to be held back. As long as there is reasonable evidence of notability and the article is not a complete car crash, it will be likely to survive AfD. There's no need to reliably source everything, or remove all problematic grammar/language. In most people's books, "multiple" independent reliable sources means "two or more". Many things can be cleaned up and improved when the article is in main space. Sionk (talk) 21:26, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
These are roughly the criteria I judge articles by, though "grammatical English" is a higher bar than I'd aim for (is it understandable? yes? then who cares at this point in the article's lifespan if there's a run-on sentence or two), and the number of sources that are adequate to demonstrate notability will vary based on the topic. At a minimum, to pass an AfC I expect to see an assertion of notability and enough reliable sourcing to back up the notability claim and any BLP content or contentious facts, no copyvios, and neutral language. However, notability is a very fiddly thing (cf: the crapshoot that is filing an AfD), and it may be that any "guideline" that says "article must demonstrate notability" is just passing the fight one step down the line, so we can argue about what constitutes notability instead of whether we need to consider notability. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 21:40, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sionk, those criteria are basically the current reviewing criteria anyway.
Someone, I think it may have been Anne Delong had in fact created a rather elegant process flowchart for AfC reviewing, the chart contains "checkpoints" similar to Crisco 1492's suggestions. The chart was displayed and discussed at the AfC Project talk page where it was well recieved. Unfortunately it was not subsequently incorporated into an "AfC Reviewers guide", thus it is currently languishing somewhere in a Talk page archive. I would really love to see it resuscitated and adapted to the process flow we need to develop for the new Draft namespace. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:40, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Fluffernutter: "grammatical" as in "not a broken Google translation", not "grammatical" as in "follows the whole MOS". As I said, very rough wording.
@Dodger67: Perhaps they are (I should hope so), but considering the discussion above it appears people are going above and beyond the current guidelines (and that's not a good thing). I could certainly get behind a flowchart like that, so long as we actually follow the flowchart.
Comment: While Jimbos's original post is perfectly appropriate, some participants in this discussion may not be aware of the progress towards improving AfC over the past few months:
Creation of the new Draft namespace (originally essentially an AfC initiative)
Creation of a set of minimum 'qualifications' for reviewers.
Further discussion will take place on how such a 'permission' will be implemented. Due to issues of quality and timeliness of reviewing that are common to both AfC and NPP, perhaps it may be time after all (two years further down the line) to revisit just exactly what the community agreed by consensus at WP:ACTRIAL (emphasis on 'trial') which was rejected at the time by the Foundation as being contrary to Founding Principles. I have reviewed these principles, and while the Wikipedidia is undoubtedly the encyclopedia anyone can edit, I have been unable to find any mention that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia where any editor can immediately create an article in mainspace. I'm not sure that Jimbo actually followed the WP:ACTRIAL - at least i'm not aware of him having commented on it at that time or since. There is no question that a very large number of articles submitted through both AfC and NPP are unmitigated crap and nonsense (with a great many more pages created in good faith that would never stand the test of AfD), no substantial discussion has taken place however as to how the numbers of competent reviewers for both tasks can be increased. In deference to Crisco 1492's list of criteria (which I broadly support) and various suggestions by others, I feel that the scope of such detail would be better discussued at this juncture in a more appropriate venue. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:19, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, the way I think things ought to be is as follows: AfC and the incubator both feed into Draft space. Their tags are taken solely as an appeal for help. Articles can be moved on an editor's own initiative from Draft: to mainspace or from mainspace to Draft: if he really believes it is uncontentious that they either have or don't have what it takes to meet GNG. This could be abused as moves can be abused, and it can be resolved at AfC review/AfD like contentious moves are resolved, but AfD/AfC review doesn't have to be a mandatory stop up or down. Articles should only be actually deleted if they fail speedy deletion criteria, which can be found for really bad articles in any space; this is more of a behavior issue while the Draft/mainspace question is more of a content issue. Nonetheless, a stub sentence with two reliable sources belongs in easily searchable mainspace, because something is a lot better than nothing. Wnt (talk) 19:08, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
IP's excluded again here
Jimbo, did you know this page is fully protected? I only stopped by to glance at something and I saw yet again that this page is fully protected. The message states due to socking but its really just admin laziness. A lot of IP's comment here and protecting this page prevents them from commenting and forces them to either create an account or not comment. Is your intent really to force people to create an account to edit or that IP's aren't welcome here? Just a rhetorical question, but I wanted to let you know the page was protected. Kumioko (talk) 22:47, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Was it really fully protected or just semi-protected. I generally prefer it to be unprotected, but there are some times when there's sufficient disruption that semi-protection may be necessary. It's hard to imagine why full protection would ever be needed!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:48, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It was fully protected and not scheduled to end until the 17th. For what its worth the over protection of content just so the admins won't have to do anything is only one example of how some admins are abusing the tools and it is a severe problem throughout the project. Not just on your page. If people can't edit it certainly makes things easier for the admins to control, but its not very healthy for the project. Kumioko (talk) 12:39, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
While I agree that timing was excessive, I think it's not really appropriate to use such strong language as "abusing the tools" for such a minor thing.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:59, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify I have no problem with the admin that performed the protection, the existing climate in Wikipedia sees admins performing unnecessary blocks and protections on a daily basis. The action is a symptom of the times and not an isolated incident. So while you may think my wording to be harsh, the reality is there is no working mechanism for dealing with abusive admins. They are free to do whatever they want as long as they want until someone takes the time to perform a month long arbitration hearing...which frequently don't get resolved. According to a discussion recently on the bureaucrats noticeboard they have neither the power nor desire to be the admin police. Admins deal with editor abuses but who deals with admin abuse? No one! So bearing the scope of the problem in mind my comment was appropriate, because it is not a "minor problem" sitewide. Kumioko (talk) 17:31, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Banned paid advocacy editor using sockpuppets to influence discussions
User:I'm not that crazy and a series of IP addresses registered have been blocked as socks of banned user Thekohser/MyWikiBiz [11]. The user used the sockpuppets to enter into discussions concerning paid advocacy editing, including opposing proposals [12][13][14][15][16][17]. MyWikiBiz was run by Gregory Kohs as an outfit for paid advocacy editing on Wikipedia, but was subsequently barred from editing [18]. It is not clear if anyone else was involved in this activity. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 23:58, 14 January 2014 (UTC) I changed this post to avoid any misunderstanding. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 22:30, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I somewhat doubt that Comcast has any idea that he has been doing as such. Though I do find it amusing that Wikipediocracy in their outing efforts have often criticized people who edited from a workplace and made suggestions of informing their workplace about such non-work activity. Other than one situation, I do not think it was ever actually done though. I don't believe such action, however, is appropriate in any situation less than actual found law-breaking, so I hope you aren't suggesting Comcast is to be informed in your comment here. However, I do enjoy the irony of such criticism on Wikipediocracy and then it turns out that Kohser is someone that does the same as those being criticized there. SilverserenC00:17, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Much as people are amused when us Wikipedia editors are similarly hypocritical, I'm sure. Wikipediocracy, like Wikipedia, isn't a single voice; it hosts many different users with many different opinions and goals. To think of them as a monolithic entity with a single set of principles would be a mistake. And credit where credit is due: I'm not as who should say an avid reader of Wikipediocracy, but I do browse it from time to time, and from what little I've seen, Kohs himself seems to be pretty consistent in this regard, whatever other issues one may have with him. I haven't seen any hypocrisy from him about this, though I'm sure people will be quick to provide counterexamples. Writ Keeper⚇♔00:30, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) I'm sure others can, but i'm not going to waste the time to. My comment was only to express some amusement at the revelation and to also suggest that, well, nothing to needs to be done about it at this point. I am firmly against any notification of Comcast, I do not believe forms of blackmail or job threatening are appropriate in any case. Not that you made such a suggestion, Athethnekos, i'm just making my opinion known on the subject. P.S. I don't think I should be commenting while watching Sherlock, it makes my sentences rather stilted in tone. I was seriously supporting the possibility of using imperilment rather than threatening there for a moment. SilverserenC00:46, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, there is no evidence that this involved any workplace. To clarify the last statement: There is no evidence that anyone else at Comcast Business—and, in turn, the corporation itself—is implicated in anything disreputable. That being said, this user had a keen interest in the Wikipedia article Comcast Business, including advertising a list of clients [19], and the article's development at the Reward Board [20].--Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 00:46, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Comcast Business network resources were used for this purpose" but "there is no evidence that this involved any workplace". Well, which is it? Make your mind up.
How about you? Does your employer know about your Wikipedia editing habits? I mean, you do make a lot of edits during working hours. What kind of network resources did you use during the course of your investigations?
How do you justify your comments here when DoRD, a checkuser, declined your recent sockpuppet investigation, informing you thatthe Privacy policy prevents us from publicly linking named accounts to IP addresses?
Okay, that's right; so perhaps there is evidence that it involved a workplace in some insignificant way (i.e., Comcast Business supplied the internet access, and they have a workplace), but what I mean to say is that there is no evidence that any of the relevant activity mentioned took place at a workplace.
I'm not sure of the relevance of that quote to my reporting here the results of the SPI, since what DoRD is talking about it is the use of checkuser, not the otherwise normal course of an SPI. Anyway, justification is that this page was a major centre for this sockpuppeting, and reporting the results of the SPI here helps affected people here be aware of what happened, not only so that they can have an improved understanding of the context of discussions that already happened, but also so that they can be more readied for any further activity. As can been seen in the archive for this case (Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Thekohser/Archive), this has been an ongoing issue, so it's not likely to stop now. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 22:15, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The phrase "using sockpuppets to influence discussions" implies that this person took part in discussions in multiple guises in order to drum up support/consensus for a particular point-of-view, but the diffs provided do not seem to support this assertion. Tarc (talk) 00:58, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Because of WP's anonymous editing policy, it's fairly common for banned or blocked editors to continue to participate with new accounts or without using a registered account. Although this fact seems to quickly screw a small percentage of WP admins to the ceiling, WP as a whole appears to continue to lurch ahead with minimal damage in spite of it. Cla68 (talk) 01:34, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I'll have to strengthen my assertion: The user used both the account User:I'm not that crazy and the IP 2001:558:1400:10:AC79:7A9:FAF6:9668 in order to influence a discussion on this page about Jimbo's brightline-rule, while pretending that they were two different people [21] and [22]; and did this again for another such discussion here [23] and [24]. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 03:34, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Curious, should we even be associating real names with their employers let alone implying what they are doing is against their employer's internet acceptable use policy? Irrespective of this case, what you are telling any IP is that you are willing to out them to their employer just because you can. I guess if you don't like an 'encyclopedia anyone may edit' then the chilling effect would be most welcome. Saffron Blaze (talk) 02:32, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The line "It is not clear if anyone at Comcast Business—other than Kohs himself—is aware that Comcast Business network resources were used for this purpose" was a very strong insinuation that you would do just that. Tarc (talk) 17:53, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, I mean no such insinuation. That statement rightly makes clear that there is no evidence that Comcast Business (despite being mentioned) has any significant involvement with this activity. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 22:15, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You're engaging in a bit of backpedaling and revisionism here, as that really has nothing to do with what I quoted. You were commenting on whether or not Comcast is/was aware of what once of its employees was doing on company time. Tarc (talk) 22:44, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Every editor or admin that I have challenged for doing this has claimed that it isn't outing to link an IP to his/her employer since it so easy to do. Yet, they only do this when they are annoyed at the IP and trying to intimidate or otherwise shut them up. Saffron Blaze (talk) 23:08, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I make no claim that anything took place on company time, even in my statement that you quoted. Yes, I regret making the statement because obviously it was understood not in the way I meant it, and for that I do mean to backpedal and revise. Yes, there is a connection here to Comcast Business in this activity (in terms of content of edits, and in the allocation of IPs, and the employment of Kohs who has and continues to run MyWikiBiz), but none of that should be taken as implying usage of company time. I'm sorry to anyone negatively affected by my misleading remarks; my only intention was to report on the results of the SPI. I'll try to keep it simpler in the future so that I don't mislead. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 23:13, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Atethnekos. You're being disingenuous, at a minimum. I will say here what I say over at Wikipediocracy when this sort of nudge-nudge-wink-wink real life retaliatory crap happens. It shouldn't. Narcs suck. People that try to win debates of principle or to win the "World of Wikipedia Warcraft" by real life retaliation against their opponents' jobs not only are out of line, they have no place here. I suggest you go back and do some redacting. It's needed. You should be ashamed that you ever went there. Carrite (talk) 03:44, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I hope you tell them off for it on Wikipediocracy every single time as well, since someone over there "goes there" at least every other week. SilverserenC07:08, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's less frequent than you intimate (generally taking the form of posting a home address and/or a phone number), and yes I do squeal every time I see it. Carrite (talk) 20:52, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Resolute, we have a WP editor here outing an IP address and you attempt to insult the IP, who you apparently perceive to be an "enemy of the people" instead of correcting the WP editor who is violating our policies. This is as classic a passive-aggressive WP response as I've ever seen. Please keep it up! Cla68 (talk) 23:35, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, come off it, Cla. Unless you're trying to say that all sockpuppet investigations are outings, which is ridiculous, you have no point at all here. You're just trying to defend Kohs for his unethical behavior because you're "friends" with him now. Though I suppose if you were an actual friend, you would try to get him to own up to his behavior, even though we all know that's never going to happen. SilverserenC02:35, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Cla68, you listed Comcast Business on the reward board, with a $75 cash reward for creation of the article.[25]. Did you dig into your own funds to offer this reward, and if not, if it was Comcast who was paying you and/or is behind that payment, why aren't you disclosing that here? I notice that User:I'mnothtatcrazy chimed in on the Reward Board concerning that article, and has been very active and aggressive on it since. I have no idea whether he is connected to that article, paid or unpaid, but I have to tell you that I think this whole situation illustrates how pernicious it is to have paid editing, especially without any disclosure requirement. In this case we have a discussion of whether or not Comcast Business was involved with a particular editor. You chime in aggressively, but don't bother to tell us that you offered $75 for anyone willing to create an article on that very business. Nor are you required to, because our COI guidelines are a joke. Because of those policies, it's impossible to tell who's paid to edit and who isn't, which gums up the works and creates a healthy feeling of skepticism as well as a "why am I not on the gravy train" feeling that I think is perfectly natural. This is really a corrupting influence on Wikipedia. Coretheapple (talk) 19:24, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if you wanna talk about the paid editing gravy train, may I point you to the Jan. 8 edition of Wikipedia Signpost,which notes: "The [Wikimedia] Foundation uses oDesk to pay its contractors and most of its non-US workforce; the screenshot clearly shows that [Sarah] Stierch's account had previously been credited for more than a thousand hours of work for a previous WMF position—a community fellowship—as far back as January 2012." So, you see, some paid editing through oDesk is fine and some is not, as the unfortunate Ms. Stierch learned when she took a few hundred dollars of private money instead of a five-figure amount from the Wikimedia Foundation. So much for the black-and-white worldview of this topic... Carrite (talk) 20:57, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It is black and white, and if you think that the Foundation's behavior on this, one way or another, makes it less black and white then you have another think coming. If the Foundation is being hypocritical on this issue, then that just magnifies it, it does not justify it. What you seem to be saying is that if the fire department employs arsonists, why bother fighting arson and why bother fighting fires? Coretheapple (talk) 22:16, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
What I'm saying is don't look to WMF for guidance here, they are hypocrites. We all agree — we all agree, we all agree — that POV editing is not only to be discouraged, but that it is to be ripped out at the roots. The question is how to do this. Whack-a-Mole just drives it underground. We need to regularize and supervise the inevitable paid editors. You might be interested in a video I saw last night, WIKIPEDIA WEEKLY 108. Jump in about 33 minutes and watch for half an hour. You'll find it stimulating. Carrite (talk) 22:33, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'll try to get around to that. I agree with you only to the extent that the WMF is a big ball of nothing when it comes to this issue. I part company with you on the "regularize and supervise" stuff, which is akin to "regularizing and supervising" pickpockets just because they are "inevitable." Coretheapple (talk) 22:39, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't see much of anything new in the Wikipedia Weekly video. However, I was struck by the youth of the people involved. It occurred to me that the situation is even worse than I thought: a powerful website administered by people who are too young, don't have the experience with these things, to appreciate the dangers of COI and the machinations of the PR industry. They keep on saying how "complicated" it all is, but it's really not complicated: they just don't understand it. Coretheapple (talk) 14:35, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad Atethnekos helped clear this up. I had thought it pretty obvious that Mr. 2001 was a banned editor, but thought that perhaps Jimbo didn't mind him posting here -so that was up to him to take action (correct me if I'm wrong Jimbo). But the status of User:I'm not that crazy was not that clear and the idea of "them" editing other pages and discussions is completely disgusting.
Cla66 above mentioned something about banned or blocked users having the right to edit as anons (he seemed to approve). I'm not clear about this at all. Does this mean that B&B editors are allowed to sockpuppet? What would we do if we really wanted to ban somebody? Wouldn't a practice like this negate the entire meaning of our rules on banning and sockpuppeting?
In any case I've run into something similar recently [26] where a blocked editor says he will edit as an anon AGAIN unless somebody takes the actions he demands.
He was then blocked from his talk page, and soon unblocked by the same admin [27] on condition that he only calmly edit as an anon. Does this make sense?
I'm looking for general principles here, not comments on the individuals involved. If, after understanding the gps, I decide to do something about this individual case, I'll then probably take it to ANI and/or SPI. I'll notify the admin involved. Should I also notify the anon? Smallbones(smalltalk)21:32, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Smallbones, here's my advise to you: don't look at the contributors look at the contributions: delete bad edits, let good ones to stay. Doing otherwise is simply absurd. I am not a friend of russavia, but if he wants to point out copy violations on his talk page, what's the problem? 69.181.42.248 (talk) 02:59, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There was a lengthy period quite recently where the majority of new sections created on this talkpage were obviously created either by one of three banned editors (let's call them G, M, and C), or by an editor who is not banned but got his former account globally locked deliberately, constantly insists he's left, but still edits alternately as an IP and a registered editor in a way that is potentially misleading. Edits here by actual unregistered editors (i.e. people who do not have any past or present account, banned or unbanned) are really rather few and far between. That's a ridiculous situation, and although a 7-day semi-protection is regarded as excessive, nor is it unreasonable for a number of admins to have tried to do something about that ridiculous situation. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:06, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Demiurge1000, it is you and others like you who create that "ridiculous situation" at least partly. As I told you quite a few times before, you and others like you should learn to let people go. By the way I forgot to complement you on your great knowledge of the Wikipedia community. I mean the last time when you first trolled my comments here, and then took my case to the drama board without my knowledge and my agreement, but of course you knew what you were doing, you know the Wikipedia community very well. 69.181.42.248 (talk) 02:59, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
What a great observation, but honestly if I were you, I would have been more concerned that a human being is being treated as I am, than looking for socks.First behave as a human, and second behave as a human, and third behave as a human and only fourth as a Wikipedian. 69.181.42.248 (talk) 13:20, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Jimbo, I'd like to ask you to state your opinion on the transparency of the arbcom's proceedings. I understand that there are some cases, which cannot be discussed on public forums, but there are only few of these. Most cases could and should be discussed here on Wikipedia, and a person who's being discussed should have a full right to take a part in the discussions concerning him, of course as long as he acts within policies. I don't even say that doing otherwise looks more like closed tribunals, and looks like the Arbcom has something to hide, but besides no matter what as we all know truth will out. Sorry I asked you to state your opinion, but stated mine instead. Now I am ready to hear yours. Thanks.69.181.42.248 (talk) 03:36, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nearly all cases should be public, and except in those rare exceptions all votes should be public. Clear reasons should be given in public. But some private discussion is perfectly ok. Certainly everyone should have the chance, in public, to face their accusers and rebut claims.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:52, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Not surprisingly I don't share the enthusiasm of some here. Wikipedia is like a child. It used to be fun to be around and enjoyable to associate with. Now that its reached its teen years its demanding, petulant and frustrating. A couple more years of the current environment and the police will be bringing it home for shoplifting and underage drinking. :-) Kumioko (talk) 16:12, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The teenage years are absolutely critical in terms of the development of any mature adult, shoplifting and underage drinking at this time would have long term repercussions♫ SqueakBoxtalkcontribs17:04, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'm sure we'll be forgiven for the odd beer or nicked lolly. Seriously impacting someone's health by allowing any moron to live-edit our medical articles, maybe not. Fingers crossed. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:40, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
What if we put in a feature that lets you only see stuff that's been unchanged for, say, 2 weeks? If a user selects that setting, it can show the much-less-likely-to-be-vandalism stuff, keeping people who consult this for medical advice. Should this maybe be taken to the Village Pump? Supernerd11 (talk) 18:54, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nice idea, but instead of not showing it (which would badly break the grammar) just have a faint yellow highlight for text that has been changed recently (and ideally, only if it was in a different version for some time). Note that this requires a better diff than the one we get in the present History, and that is long overdue. The one we have isn't exactly PSI-BLAST! Wnt (talk) 19:04, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Inclusion of one such image for specific reasons does not create broad consensus for general inclusion of such images. There are no BLP concerns, the image is neutral and by no means derogatory, and there was testimony at his trial about his attire, as reported by Toronto newspapers at the time and in books later. His defense attorney made that point while cross examining a prosecution witness. I would be happy to add referenced content to the article about the testimony at the trial. Cullen328Let's discuss it21:06, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
What Toronto newpapers at the time discussed his attire? I'm not aware of any books that discuss his attire on May 3, 1969. Which books are you talking about? GabeMc(talk|contribs)21:09, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(ec)Several points: "Mug shots" are per se "primary sources" unless they have been reproduced in reliable secondary sources, and deemed to be specifically relevant to the person involved, whether dead or alive. They are not "neutral" as a rule -- they generally show a disheveled person holding a police department identification card. And if the person is at some point deemed "not guilty" the mugshots remain -- there are cases currently about "private companies" placing photos online and charging people to have them removed -- and such has been called extortion by some. Cheers. Collect (talk) 21:13, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Towards the end of the article, where cross examination of the customs agent is discussed. I am away from home and don't have access to the other sources right now. Collect, he looks great in the mugshot. There is nothing humiliating about the image. Cullen328Let's discuss it21:29, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
All I see is: "Wilson agreed with the defense lawyer that Hendrix had been a conspicuous sight at the airport, drawing attention to himself with his loud clothing." Which is directly contradicted by 'all eyewitness accounts, which assert that they had all been warned ahead of time that a bust was eminent. If Mitchell and Redding both say they were warned before landing in Toronto, then how was Hendrix's attire that day a factor? They planned to search him regardless of what he was wearing. Perhaps the customs agent was lying to cover the fact that they searched him without due cause. Also, "Wilson agreed with the defense lawyer", sounds like he was led by the defense to make a statement about Hendrix's appearance, i.e. "Did you notice Mr. Hendrix at the airport and was he wearing 'loud' clothing? GabeMc(talk|contribs)21:37, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The defense argument was that if he was actually trying to smuggle heroin, that he wouldn't have dressed in that "mod clothing" and been loud in the airport, and that if he was a heroin addict, he would have had needle marks on his arms. Those points buttressed the central claim that the drugs were planted. Cullen328Let's discuss it21:56, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Right, but unless I have completely misunderstood your FFD keep rationale, you think that how Hendrix was dressed that day (May 3) was a significant factor in his being searched and arrested, but I have provided multiple sources that confirm that the Experience knew about a planned bust the day before travelling to Toronto, when Hendrix was presumably wearing different clothes. My above point is that the Hendrix defense team wanted to build a case that he was not intentionally smuggling drugs because he would have dressed differently if he was, so they asked (read led) the customs agent if he thought Hendrix was "a conspicuous sight at the airport, drawing attention to himself with his loud clothing", he agreed with the defense, which implies that the point was already made, by the defense, not the customs agent. Hendrix's attire was absolutely not a factor in the pre-planned search that revealed he had drugs in his bag. In no way will a reader lose comprehension if this disparaging image is deleted.GabeMc(talk|contribs)22:11, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The image is not disparaging, in my judgment. The Rolling Stone reported right after the arrest that his attire may have been a factor in the search. I don't think so but a source back then did. The attire was portrayed differently in the trial, but the attire was discussed by reliable sources after the arrest, and also after the trial seven months later. As I have read more, my understanding has deepened. Cullen328Let's discuss it22:28, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that the paragraph beginning "The populace of Toronto . . ." is referring to his appearance and demeanor at the airport. I concede that the description of his dress at the court hearing is far more specific, presumably because one of the reporters was there. Cullen328Let's discuss it23:52, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Cullen328, nope. That's a 1) vague generalization about his appearance, and 2) a speculation by the writers; they are not in any way suggesting that its a formal report of his appearance on the day of the arrest. As far as I can tell, you havn't produced a single source that discussed his appearance on the day of the arrest. GabeMc(talk|contribs)00:23, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have never argued that he was searched because of his attire, but rather I pointed out than the Rolling Stone discussed that possibility in its initial coverage of the arrest, an article that anticipated much of the successful defense strategy many months later. His attire at the time of his arrest was the subject of testimony at the trial. The successful defense theory was not that he was searched because of his attire, but rather that his attire and demeanor at the airport was inconsistent with someone trying to smuggle heroin surreptitiously, as was the absence of needle marks on his arms and the lack of drug paraphernalia in his luggage.
On the matter of other mugshots and Wikipedia becoming a "repository, it is you GabeMc who is the one who uploaded a mugshot of a BLP today, and are proposing uploading many more. I have been discussing only one specific mugshot and will gladly accept community consensus (or even the intervention of the WMF) regarding this specific image. Let's not get pointy here please. Cullen328Let's discuss it04:16, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Cullen328, even if Hendrix's appearance on the day of the arrest was the subject of sourced critical commentary by reliable sources, and I still have not seen any proof that it was, the threshold for inclusion requires that the subject of sourced critical commentary is the actual work. From the upload Wizard: "The discussion is about the photograph or painting as such, as a creative work, not just about the thing or person it shows." (original emphasis) So even if you find sources that discuss his appearance on May 3, that still would not cover the requirement that the actual image be the subject of the discussion. GabeMc(talk|contribs)18:41, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The closing administrator will decide, based on the strength of the arguments pro and con, and I will not contest that. I find it incongruous that screen shots from copyrighted video games are routinely added to articles with no independent commentary about those specific images required. Cullen328Let's discuss it21:24, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Two wrongs do not make a right. If the writers of video game articles are uploading non-free images then that's an issue that should be dealt with in much the same way we are dealing with this non-free image that is not the subject of any critical commentary in the Wikipedia article or the high-quality reliable secondary sources. GabeMc(talk|contribs)22:30, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As a result of this debate, coverage of Hendrix's arrest and trial in the article is vastly better, and the impact of those events on his career is shown far more clearly. These debates improve the encyclopedia. As for "wrong", policy states that "Iconic and historical images which are not subject of commentary themselves but significantly aid in illustrating historical events may be used judiciously", doesn't it? Cullen328Let's discuss it07:50, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm just posting to say that I don't have strong opinions about the general case. I don't think we should be a "repository for celebrity mugshots" - but I don't think anyone is proposing that. In specific cases, there is no doubt that mugshots can be used in ways that do raise ethical (BLP) concerns. As I was thinking about this issue, I thought of the famous mugshot of Bill Gates and wondered if we had it in that article. I was preparing to argue that if we do, that's probably a problem because in the context of his entire career it is just an amusing curiosity. It would be tabloid-y to include such a silly detail. The arrest was for a minor traffic violation and had no impact on his further career, which has been long and incredibly noteworthy. But then I went to the article, saw the mugshot, and saw the text - which describes a humorous tv commercial he was in: "As Gates is buying the shoes, he holds up his discount card, which uses a slightly altered version of his own mugshot of his arrest in New Mexico in 1977 for a traffic violation."
Ok, then. Well one might argue that the commercial with Seinfeld wasn't significant enough to warrant a whole paragraph, and that's possibly interesting, but we aren't in the realm of a BLP issue anymore. Gates himself apparently views the image with some bemusement.
So that's the kind of case-by-case reasoning I'd have to go through for any given shot. I can imagine there must be many quite boring business executives who got arrested in their youths for minor traffic offenses and those photos have not been used in commercials and may not ever have even been published in any magazine or newspaper in such a way as to make them notable. And those may someday soon show up on some kind of celebrity mugshot website. If there were one of me, for example, I think it would be silly to include it. (Out of respect for Mr. 2001's time, I'll note that I've never been arrested, so there's no point in wasting your time on public records searches!)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:13, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
School filter censoring articles about WWII
Hi, I'm a school student doing an essay on wartime literature (poems, diary extracts, that sort of thing) about world wars one and two. However, my school's filter (London grid for learning) blocks pretty much all Wikipedia articles about the Nazis, which are obviously an essential part of the topic I need to research. Adolf Hitler is blocked, as is World War One, the Nazi Party, the SS and the Holocaust (as well as many, many others). On each of the block pages, the only reason given is "intolerance". No other online webpages I've found about world war two are blocked, so the only thing I can think of is that the Wikipedia articles have been blacklisted. I'm sorry if this isn't the right place to post this, but I think it's ridiculous that such an important learning resource is being censored just because it might somehow offend someone.
A dig around LGfL website suggests that a company called Atomwide may be responsible for maintaining and updating these filters. Someone may wish to email them at the email address on that page to draw their attention to this discussion. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 13:33, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yikes, I hope not. I think the most useful thing whoever is behind this problem could do would be to go out of business. Wnt (talk) 13:41, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure why you (Arthur) can't email the company yourself, but I've just done so - they have now been informed of this discussion (assuming they read their sales email). --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:24, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Aethersniper:, I'd say that this is the level of competence I expect from professional purveyors of "filter"s, but I have to admit... even I overestimate them at times! You have access to this page but not key educational articles ... geniuses at work. Anyway, try this: take any page (come to think of it, maybe not this one, depending on how annoying their program is, but any random page or a new one) and PREVIEW (don't save!) the following text: {{:Nazi Party}}. If that doesn't work let me know and we can get to work seeing what in the content sets off the "filter" and I can write a Lua script to strip it out without otherwise damaging the content. Wnt (talk) 13:50, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Wnt: I honestly don't think it's any word or phrase that does it; I must've visited tons of obscure pages with phrases like "Nazi Party" or "Adolf Hitler" and it didn't block a single one of them. The only explanation seems to be that the Wikipedia articles have been manually blacklisted for whatever reason. The good news is one of the teachers finds it just as ridiculous as I do but the filter on those pages is so strict that even the staff can't access them. I'll help you as much as I can but I'm only able to see the effects of the filter while I'm in school. Probably the best thing I can do on my end is get one of the teachers to send a complaint to LGFL. Thanks again. Aethersniper (talk) 14:05, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Come to think of it, there's a risk that the school is under a "schoolblock" from the Wikipedia end (sigh...) and you won't be able to make edits there - can a blocked user/site preview a page?, I don't know - anyway, good luck and let me know how these ideas work for you. It should still be true that "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Wnt (talk) 14:16, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
All but one of the articles you mention are semi-protected, which implies that they are vandalism targets or otherwise problematic. I wonder if the filter might be crawling for that and blacklisting articles with a murky history. --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 15:07, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt it. I've been able to access semi protected articles before, and it's also blocking smaller pages such as obscure concentration camps and Nazi laws. As much as I'd like this to be true because it at least makes some sense, it doesn't look like it is. Aethersniper (talk) 18:55, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Besides, I don't think people doing this kind of thing put that much thought into it, or else... no, my suspicion - I'm looking forward to data! - is that it will turn out that the company blocks any page on which its software can identify a swastika in an image. Wnt (talk) 18:59, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Probably the best thing you can do is contact your local newspaper. Explain that due to the filtering, you can't do your homework. It's a good story and will embarrass the people who need to be embarrassed and will make it clear that these filters just don't work and do more harm than good.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:07, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Good plan. One of the teachers has sent an email to the company who provide the block, so I'm going to see what happens there before doing anything else. In the meantime I've been able to get around it by using HTTPS instead of HTTP, but this filter is in place all over the country so there's potentially millions of schoolkids who can't access these articles. Aethersniper (talk) 18:55, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Possible answer A nice trick I've learned to get around filters of that sort is to put the direct link into Google Translate and click the link in google translate. That might get around a manual filter. KonveyorBelt17:27, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I encountered a similar problem in the early 00s and the only thing that appeared to offer any kind of explanation was that the company that provided the filter software was German and that they had formulated a very conservative block-list based on post-WWII incitement legislation. I complained to our IT dept (I was a Librarian and had to manually override the blocks for Library internet users) and they ended up removing the filtering entirely. I would have thought/hoped if automated filtering software was being used (personally not a fan) things would have improved in the last decade or so! AnonNep (talk) 11:39, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I've been told that the transclusion above does defeat the filter, and so does simply using https![31] I wonder how much taxpayers spend for that "service". Wnt (talk) 13:46, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Should the Wikimedia Foundation obtain classified documents about global surveillance and actively disclose them?
Over the past few months, numerous media outlets around the world have obtained and released some of the 1.7 million documents leaked by Edward Snowden. We now know that there is a global surveillance network spanning numerous countries, and involving countless commercial firms aiding government surveillance on entire populations across national borders.
A significant portion of Snowden's documents are of a highly encyclopedic nature, and that is why I believe we should play an active role in disseminating such information to the world.
The premise is weird. You're suggesting Greenwald is setting on a vast trove of classified documents he hasn't released yet, and all he needs for that to happen is some organization to graciously walk up to him and say that they'll put them on the web for him? I think he can still get stuff on the web, though I feel like there's the appearance that the world's last reporter has been paid to shut up. And once these documents are on the web, anywhere, they're some of the few things we can freely copy, as US Federal work, ironically enough! What do we have to offer here? Wnt (talk) 13:29, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Documents prepared for the U.S. Federal Government might still be copyrighted to a contractor corporation, just as public-domain photos/videos must be filmed by a U.S. Govt employee while on duty or else have the copyright release granted by contractor personnel. Of course, if the document is stamped "TOP SECRET" then I recommend we do not post it into Wikisource! A released secret document will be re-stamped as "de-classified" as with those Manhattan Project papers declassified in 1967. -Wikid7701:26, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Glenn Greenwald has acknowledged that he needs more time to correcly analyze Snowden's information since the documents are quite complex, but we could also approach other sources like The New York Times or The Guardian or The Washington Post, who are in possession of at least tens of thousands of documents. Ultimately, we're not offering anything to these media outlets. We're doing this to improve our encyclopedia.
Take a look at Lustre - a secret treaty whose existence was revealed by Snowden but whose Wikipedia article remains nothing more than a stub because the corresponding documents were not released. In contrast to the newspapers, we don't have to suppress information just because it "damages national security". We simply release anything that adds value to our encyclopedia
yah, the New York Times is going to gladly hand over their winter larder of scoops set aside for slow news days, once they know Wikipedia wants them. They'll gladly turn over the expert editorial discretion of carefully "vetting" the documents down to a shadow of their substance in the name of "ethics" and future favors to the legendary discretion of our legions of volunteer editors. There may be an issue of economics here. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing Snowden and Wikileaks must desire to dribble out these kinds of releases not solely for personal advantage (I think) but perhaps also because if the media doesn't have a way to profit off the stories they're just not going to cover them. By all means, we should welcome this stuff, but ... I wouldn't hold my breath. Wnt (talk) 15:15, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia does not publish or host documents from others, it publishes encyclopedia articles which are (supposed to be) sourced to works published elsewhere. I suppose in theory Wikisource or Wikibooks might host such files, I'm not as clear on what their policies are. DES(talk)14:42, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Theoretically speaking, many of the documents are published by the NSA and its foreign partner agencies. -A1candidate (talk)
I was going to be meeting with Alan Rusbridger of The Guardian tomorrow morning but unfortunately had to cancel, but I'm sure that will be rescheduled and I'll see him soon. I could encourage him to release (or to encourage Greenwald to release) anything that has to do with us more quickly than they might have planned. I suppose they could do a global search through the documents for relevant keywords and see what comes up. I don't think we are well equipped to get into the business of being a point of publication for original documents, though, so other than me nicely asking, I'm not sure there is much to be done here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:58, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia does not use unpublished source documents, per WP:V and WP:OR. We can use what the Guardian, New York Times, et.al. publish about the documents, but we cannot cite the original documents directly. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:06, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with A1candidate that documents distributed in classified networks can still count as published. The whole point of the Bradley Manning disclosures were that something like 500,000 people had access to SIPRNet - a lot of the obscure paywalled academic journals are more restricted than that! Publication occurs because some established editorial process looked over a document, not because anyone can download it. Wnt (talk) 16:14, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes we can "cite the original documents directly". WP:PRIMARY doesn't contain such ham-fisted prohibition. (It says "Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia; but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them".) Actually, as I was working on the NSA ANT catalog article, I found that the original sources were often poorly interpreted or even misinterpreted by numerous low quality secondary sources in the cornucopia of on-line journalism (which is most journalism today). We did have this kind of discussion on Jimbo's page before of "verifiability not truth" and the consensus was that we want "verifiability and truth", and if primary sources have to be used to achieve that, there's nothing in Wikipedia policies prohibiting it. Someone not using his real name (talk) 16:28, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
PRIMARY has nothing to do with the matter, we can't cite the original documents because they have not been published. How and where will the average WP reader get access to these documents per WP:Verifiability. If that is not the case then there is nothing preventing me from using my great-grandfather's personal letters as sources to edit the article on Field Marshal Jan Smuts. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:50, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This is an interesting claim - it was my reaction about what they should do from the time Bradley Manning's material first came out. I don't know if others agree with me, but I do understand the idea that you need to keep some secrets. The identity of people working with U.S. forces in Afghanistan ought to be kept in the memory of a few soldiers, or if absolutely necessary, locked in a safe in the embassy next to the emergency paper shredder. The thing is, I want secrets to be secrets. It's one thing to have even a large group of trustworthy people to not tell the Germans where they're landing on D-day -- it's something else again to have an information caste system where a substantial fraction of a percent of the population is allowed to know everything, and they know that most other countries know it, but then they tell ordinary people that they won't get a government job if they read about it at a public website in a foreign country. But I don't see where any reform is mentioned in the article, and my feeling is I'll believe it when I see it; I suspect a caste system is exactly what they want. Wnt (talk) 07:04, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
An obvious Wikipedia issue would be that we should only uses secondary sources (whereas Snowden docs are arguably primary ones). However, taking a document and examining all of its mentions (people, places, strategies, organisations, facilities) and then looking at secondary sources for those is another thing. I worked on a similar, pre-Snowden, crowd-sourced project looking at the US/broader Surveillance state called ProjectPM (or 'Panther Moderns' to chose the favoured phrase of currently jailed project founder Barrett Brown). There may be some role for Wikipedia in developing/expanding articles based on secondary source references to mentions in Snowden primary source documents. In other words, to provide further context, in an organized way. Two notes of warning: (1) the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is sooooo broad that even linking to 'stolen' documents can be viewed as a crime, and, (2) Julian Assange originally set up (& named) WikiLeaks, with the intention that it would be a crowd-sourced wiki that wrote articles on leaked documents, and he didn't get enough interest, so it morphed into a publishing platform (at least initially) aligned to mainstream media outlets. In any case, worthwhile discussion to be had on the various issues. AnonNep (talk) 13:56, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Survey
Editors who support active disclosure of Snowden's documents
Support. I agree that this is "selling the bear's skin before we have it" (great phrase!) and it's not going to happen. However, there is still a chance that someone involved with Snowden or Wikileaks would want to upload a document to Commons or publish an interview on Wikinews. We don't actually have a policy against this; despite much bluster to the contrary, it's not illegal for members of the public to retain such documents released to them. We may not be the New York Times, but the principle behind the Pentagon Papers still stands, even if there are some who might genuinely attempt to attack today's generation of journalists. Should that generation turn out to be some Commons admins who don't delete something the moment they start receiving threats, that would seem well matched to this generation - and they will need us to stand behind them. Wnt (talk) 05:23, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose' Wikipedia is not the place for original reporting, and the organizations who are doing it seem to be doing a good job. I am happy to inquire as to whether they have anything directly relevant to us that they'd like to publish sooner.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:58, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Pointless. I seriously doubt Snowden or any of his press contacts will turn over documents in mass to some Wikipedian given that Snowden wants a measured, responsible release; quoting from [32]:
But Snowden also understood that giving the documents to WikiLeaks, or simply posting them himself, had drawbacks. "I don't desire to enable the Bradley Manning argument that these were released recklessly and unreviewed," Snowden later said. "I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest. There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."
Strong oppose. Why are we discussing this? We are not WikiLeaks. We are not here to reveal government documents. We also are not in the business of posting documents in general. That's Wikisource's job. We are here to create an encyclopedia, and should act like it. Obviously if access to these documents is legal and their content includes encyclopedic information, then I have no problem with citing them. But posting them on Wikipedia just to make some kind of political statement? (for that is what this reads as, despite A1candidate's claims otherwise) What is the point? --Jakob (talk) 16:58, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The point is to use the documents to improve and expand on some of our articles such as Lustre, Stateroom, etc, which are currently nothing more than pitiful stubs despite their importance in international politics. -A1candidate (talk) 17:08, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Incompatible with Wikipedia's core values. The basic idea behind Wikileaks is that they get some secret data, share it with a select group of trusted journalists, and together they decide to publish that which is both newsworthy and does not endanger anyone by, for example, unmasking spies or revealing secret military capabilities. The whole idea of a select group of trusted individuals keeping secrets is against our core principles, which are to make the entire process of creating an article completely transparent. We do have some trusted individuals who are allowed access to confidential information, but those cases involve things like outing or checkuser results, not content creation. Everything about creating an article is open, with full histories of the state of the article and of the talk page discussions, and all citations, including the context, can be verified by anyone. This is incompatible with this proposal. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:19, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and in any event object strongly to running this sort of discussion and straw poll on this particular page which seems to attract a disproportionate number self-publicists, kooks and cranks not entirely representative of our editors as a whole or, more importantly, our readership. Leaky Caldron17:26, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose completely contrary to our purpose. I also doubt the nominator's claim that this proposal is not about "political activism". GabrielF (talk) 18:13, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per AndyTheGrump - the role of Wikipedia is not activism, leaking documents, fighting against international surveillance etc. etc. This isn't what we told our donors we would use their money for. Acather96 (click here to contact me) 18:45, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, though others have already said it better than I can by now. Snowden, Greenwald, and WikiLeaks know what they're doing, so let them do their thing and we'll do ours. Namely, creating articles about the notable released documents after people who know better than we do have ensured that they can be released safely. Novusunatalk20:09, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Clearly a political venture. It wouldn't be a bad idea, however, for Jimmy Wales to use his bully pulpit as an individual to make original suggestions to help move the situation forward. Such as, for example, advocating that Snowden be allowed to live out his life in peace in Switzerland free from US government kidnapping or assassination. (I can't imagine a crueler fate for anyone with libertarian ethical values than being stuck in Putin's Russia...). Carrite (talk) 21:15, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose There are academic organizations (George Washington University's National Security Archive, to name one) that are better-suited to handle these things...let alone more qualified. They also provide analysis of those documents. Not our business. Intothatdarkness22:21, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Years ago you commented on the Talk page of 1.800.Vending that the article was basically a collection of trivial complaints. The article relied exclusively on primary sources to include legal disputes from a prior company by the same founders.
When I deleted the poorly-sourced contentious material (again), an edit-summary accused me of being part of an organized white-washing attempt (I do not have a COI here). Also, two AfDs resulted in a KEEP consensus based on the premise that they were infamous, even though there were no reliable sources to verify that sentiment. I added a Template:COI editnotice to the Talk page and someone from the company dutifully followed the instructions and used Talk, only to be told by a well-meaning editor that they felt the lawsuits (only cited to court records) should be kept.
We have special policies for articles about medical topics and people. Given the tension around corporate pages, isn't a guide on pages on organizations long overdue?
While I am not planning on taking it out of user-space for the obvious reasons, I whipped something up in two hours that - for whatever faults you may find - would be a huge improvement to not having a policy: User:CorporateM/Extant Organizations. Certainly there are a few regular editors experienced with company articles that could do it better.
Sincerely, a former PR pro, frequent COI contributor, regular volunteer and author of 18 GA corporate/org pages.
I am not sure why this is here rather than at Village Pump. (Thanks to OP for notifying WikiProject Companies)
Is this limited to a small number of companies, or is this a huge problem that justifies instruction creep? Aren't the unverifiable complaints covered by existing policies and guidelines?
I really like the OP's proposed guideline on lawsuits and awards. Would you like discussion of the content of your proposal here or at the proposal's talk page?
Because I have a conflict of interest with a large number of company articles, I do not think I should actually write it. That would inevitably lead to discomfort that someone with a potential financial interest in corporate pages wrote the guideline for them. My hope is to inspire someone else to. I noticed that large portions of both BLP and MEDRS are basically repeating or simply interpreting pre-existing policies, but they are helpful nonetheless. CorporateM (Talk) 13:18, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If we have a special policy for every article, the outcome is that there is no policy at all, just groups of people mandating how each article must appear. There should be no need to have special rules for how to handle an article about a company as opposed to a religious cult, commune, scientific academy, sports team, etc. Wnt (talk) 13:41, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Since it's for "organizations" a scientific academy and maybe even cults would fall under the same category I would think, as would churches, non-profits, government organizations, etc. Promotional editing is equally problematic on articles about schools and non-profits, though the community tends to find it less offensive than on corporate pages IMO. Many of these issues like when to include awards/lawsuits are common topics of RfCs and editorial disputes and areas where policies need to be clarified and interpreted for a specific case. CorporateM (Talk) 13:50, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Good point. Going further, almost anything can get an award or be the topic of a lawsuit: a person, an artwork, a product or even a country. I wonder if a consensus on inclusion can be found by digging into all those RfCs and disputes. If not, your form of words makes sense to me. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 14:21, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think when it comes to actors for example, there are different community standards on when to include awards. I am not so sure though, because it is not an area where I edit heavily. CorporateM (Talk) 15:27, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the "significant controversies" section is extremely problematic. And yes, as a COI editor, one who uses AfC to create articles you are paid to create, I think that you should not be proposing such things as a kind of template for people to work from. Very innocent title, very bad idea, coming from a paid editor. It's not "you" personally, I just don't think that people who derive an income stream from editing/creating Wikipedia articles should be involved in policy discussions concerning the format of the articles they are paid to write. Wikipedia COI practices are extremely weak, so obviously there isn't a force on earth to prevent you from engaging in this kind of thing, but I think that you should voluntarily not participate in such things. You make money off Wikipedia. It's allowed. Great. More power to you. But I think that the unpaid people should be originating and drafting stuff like this. Coretheapple (talk) 17:14, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
What he did was the equivalent of taking it to the talk page. He is being transparent about it. He provided a start and wants non-COI editors to take it the rest of the way. I fail to see the drama. Saffron Blaze (talk) 17:30, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that's my point. He shouldn't be doing it. I'm not saying he broke any rules here. That is the problem. I'm asking for self-restraint, for Pete's sake, for people who make money off Wikipedia to not make Wikipedia policy in any way shape or form. Is that so terribly unreasonable? Has Wikipedia gone so sour that it's just unimaginable that a paid editor be asked to not get involved in drafting policy about the articles he is paid to write? Coretheapple (talk) 17:37, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The chief problem is that when I say "like BLP" I only mean that it is a guideline for a group of articles in a similar category, not that we should slant NPOV in favor of the article-subject. So this is the best way to communicate an idea. The draft is not even intended as a starting point - it's terrible. But I hope someone will be inspired to do it better and if no one is inspired, then it probably was not a good idea. CorporateM (Talk) 17:41, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Gotcha. But someone other than a paid editor who writes corporate articles should be drafting policy on corporate articles, lest Wikipedia find itself in another p.r. debacle. See, even though you suggest otherwise, people will use your draft as a starting point. See the "take it from there" comment below. Coretheapple (talk) 17:46, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This draft includes the phrase "Unsourced or poorly-sourced promotion or contentious material should be removed immediately and without discussion." This is obviously baaed on the WP:BLP standard. It is probably needed on BLPs, and has gained wide consensus, but it has also lead to more than a little trouble and drama. IO don't think it should be extended into this area. Insted discussion should be recommended.
On procedure, i think this should be made a proposal, or perhaps a pre-proposal at the idea lab or some other project-space page, so that it can be widely discussed, and the resulting text will not be uniquely identified with CorporateM or indeed any single user. DES(talk)17:39, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(ec)For a paid editor to draft a policy on corporate articles, which is the very center of the paid editing controversy, and then for non-COI editors to "take it the rest of the way" is as much a potential public relations disaster, as any of the black eyes this project has gotten recently over paid editing. I can see the headline now "PR Man Drafts Wikipedia Corporate Articles Policy." It doesn't matter how much it's changed. Coretheapple (talk) 17:46, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with DES and Core. Someone should just start from scratch for the obvious reasons. I also do not want to foster detailed discussions or prepare a proposal, but I hope someone else will be inspired to do so. Cheers! CorporateM (Talk) 17:52, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
CorporateM, I happen to believe that you have a very good handle on this subject (paid editing) in some respects. I've actually quoted you on my user page (might not be there anymore, but I have). But it worries me sometimes that your objective is to make paid editing respectable. While individual paid editors may be fine individuals in their own right, I have a problem with paid editors becoming involved in what is essentially governance. Mind you, my point of view on this is in the distinct minority. Coretheapple (talk) 17:57, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly disagree with Coretheapple here. A good idea is a good idea, whoever it comes from. As long as CorporateM is being transparent (and he is) and as long as any ultimate proposal is thoroughly discussed by a wide range of editors, that he started the process or even that some of his suggested text is ultimately used is not a problem of any kind, in my view. But if Coretheapple thinks that a complete fresh start is needed, why not prepare a draft of his own and put it on an appropriate page for further discussion? CorporateM, would you have any objections if I used some of your text as a startling point for a draft on this subject, assuming no one else does one before I have time?? I know that under the CC license I don't need to ask, technically, as long as I attribute properly, but I would prefer to. DES(talk)18:01, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hrm. As you say, I have no authority to stop you, but I agree with Core that it is generally a bad idea. At some point an anti-COI extremist or a POV pusher unhappy that the guideline prevents them from adding non-neutral content will create a false narrative about my involvement and gullible passer-byers will believe it. It's just a recipe for disaster. But I think you have been inspired, which was my only objective.
Core, I don't know if I would really like to see COI participation legitimized. I think for a time I did, but I have grown increasingly skeptical over time (hypocritical I know). CorporateM (Talk) 18:25, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, then perhaps you could take the lead and cease representing companies here? Re "anti-COI extremist": I think you're dealing with a species as rare as the dodo bird. Wikipedia is probably the most backward major disseminator of information on concerning COI issues. Coretheapple (talk) 18:37, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This whole thing is related to why we do need to allow some corporate editing, and why we already allow some BLP editing by subjects: Often the party with the conflict of interest is the only party motivated to fix anything. If Wikipedia had had a sane policy of this sort created by non-shills, then there wouldn't have been any need for a shill to start one. But just like there's often no interest in fixing bad articles about corporations, and sometimes no interest in fixing bad BLPs, there was no interest in coming up with a workable extant organizations policy either. 208.65.89.141 (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Question
Jimbo, a few days ago I asked you a question about the arbcom transparency, and he agreed with me that "everyone should have the chance, in public, to face their accusers and rebut claims". I have never had that chance, in public, to face my accusers and rebut claims. I have never had that chance in private either. When I email to the arbcom I get responses something like that: "The Arbitration Committee believes that the action taking regarding you on English Wikipedia was correct, and will not discuss the matter at all with you. Any further e-mails relating to this subject will be ignored." with no single evidence attached to clarify the reason of the arbcom belief. When I try to get my chance to rebut the accusers claim on Wiki, my posts are being ignored, getting reverted, and dynamic IPs I am using getting blocked for month. So could you please advise me how should I proceed to be able to rebut false accusations against me. I am user:mbz1. I have never harassed anybody. I have never kicked a person who was down. Thanks.24.6.40.118 (talk) 16:59, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
First thing to do is to stop editing for six months while banned, to at least have some hope of taking advantage of WP:STANDARDOFFER. I was under the impression, per your past communications, that you just want to walk away with dignity. The first step towards that is... walk away.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:05, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Jimbo, thanks for your comment, but my question is not answered. I asked you what should I do to be able to rebut the false accusation publicly, as you yourself stated everybody should get that chance to do. Besides
Yes, I am not going to edit Wikipedia, but I'd like you to understand that it is not my dignity that is at stake here, it is the dignity of the Wikipedia community (or rather a few dozens of users who call themselves "the Wikipedia community" ), and the dignity of the arbcom because no person should be treated as I have been treated. It might look that what I am doing I am doing only for myself, and it is a unique situation. It is not. I know many users in a similar situation. I was able to help this editor, and at least one other person who found themselves in a similar situation.
And now if for one reason or another the arbcom cannot present the valid evidences of an alleged harassment why should I wait for 6 months to get unblocked? “Blocks are used to prevent damage or disruption to Wikipedia, not to punish users” + I state I am not going to edit Wikipedia + Wikipedia:Assume good faith = unblock, right? 24.6.40.118 (talk) 18:40, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion has not reversed treatment but people understand: For years, we have tried to discuss "fairness" and "due process" in rulings here, but it has not caused a major shift in judgments. Fortunately, many people read this page, and have sympathy for "wrongful convictions" and that seems to be the best rebuttal possible where a user is understood to be wrongly accused. We have hoped to elect new ArbCom members who could shepherd improvements to the wp:AN procedures, or overturn peculiar style rules in the wp:MOS guidelines, but there are groups of entrenched people who have endless hours to thwart improvements, or delete new procedures, as if they never leave the keyboard or never see a weekend. I have concluded that WP must have term limits for admins, such as perhaps 5 years, and even term limits for users, except they might return as other usernames. Perhaps a mandatory 3-year break for 5-year admins would avoid the "lifer-admin" syndrome where we have seen the same people making most of the major tired decisions, year after year. Many people will tend to shift into other hobbies after a few years, and we often see contributions of typical users which tend to decline in months/years when people shift attention to other activities, but lifer fanaticism can lead to a "systemic bias" of subconscious (or overt) wp:OWNership of pages/rules, and so term limits, or per-article edit-limits should be imposed, on everyone not just some with topic-bans, to allow other people to make more decisions. The banned users are the pioneers of the term limits. However, already it is reassuring to post a few messages here, and notice how the people have listened, and then walk away knowing your messages were understood and have been vindicated in the minds of thoughtful people. As Plato said (in The Republic), "Those having torches will pass them on to others" and some will see the light, even as they travel past. -Wikid7707:11, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
VisualEditor newsletter for January 2014
Did you know?
To add templates, go to the "Insert" menu and choose the "Transclusion" (puzzle piece) item. Enter the name of the template and click "Add template". If TemplateData exists for the template, then a list of possible parameters will appear. If not, you can add parameters yourself by typing the parameter name under "Add parameter". For unnamed parameters, use numbers ("1" for the first unnamed parameter).
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked mostly minor features and fixing bugs. A few significant bugs include working around a bug in CSSJanus that was wrongly flipping images used in some templates in right-to-left (RTL) environments (bug 50910) a major bug that meant inserting any template or other transclusion failed (bug 59002), a major but quickly resolved problem due to an unannounced change in MediaWiki core, which caused VisualEditor to crash on trying to save (bug 59867). This last bugs did not appear on any Wikipedia. Additionally, significant work has been done in the background to make VisualEditor work as an independent editing system.
As of today, VisualEditor is now available as an opt-out feature to all users at 149 active Wikipedias.
The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has a very basic set of characters. The character inserter is especially important for languages that use Latin and Cyrillic alphabets with unusual characters or frequent diacritics. Your feedback on the character inserter is requested. In addition to feedback from any interested editor, the developers would particularly like to hear from anyone who speaks any of the 50+ languages listed under Phase 5 at mw:VisualEditor/Rollouts, including Breton, Mongolian, Icelandic, Welsh, Afrikaans, Macedonian, and Azerbaijani.
meta:Office hours on IRC have been heavily attended recently. The next one will be held this coming Wednesday, 22 January at 23:00 UTC.
You can now edit some of the page settings in the "options" dialog – __NOTOC__ and __FORCETOC__ as selection (forced on, forced off, or default setting; bugs 56866 and 56867) and __NOEDITSECTION__ as a checkbox (bug 57166).
The automated browser tests were adjusted to speed them up and bind more correctly to list items in lists, and updated to a newer version of their ruby dependencies. You can monitor the automated browser tests' results (triggered every twelve hours) live on the server.
Looking ahead: The character formatting menu on the toolbar will get a drop-down indicator next Thursday. The reference and media items will be the first two listed in the Insert menu. The help menu will get a page listing the keyboard shortcuts. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including support for alignment (left, right, and center) and better control over image size (including default and upright sizes). The developers are also working on support for editing redirects and image galleries.
Completed evidence gathering on alleged irregularities on Croatian Wikipedia
Hi Jimbo! FYI, the process of evidence gathering on alleged irregularities on Croatian Wikipedia is finished. While there may be more info trickling in over time, the process is effectively over and whatever is there is ready to be evaluated. I've notified meta:SN, please forward the info wherever else you deem appropriate, or leave a note at the talk page if you have any questions or suggestions.
Also it would be great to get a sense of how long you think it may take for WMF to take a look at this info & offer some guidance.
I listened to an amazing hour-long radio program analysis of Wikipedia's effect on the world, on CBC Radio Onel last Tuesday evening. It's called "The Great Book of Knowledge, Part 1", with Philip Coulter speaking to moderator Paul Kennedy in the program Ideas. It is posted for listening on the show's web site at http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/. Part 2 will be aired January 22. This is significant coverage; CBC Radio has about 4.3 million listeners per week (according to Wikipedia!). —Anne Delong (talk) 12:10, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Like Exactly what I was going to add, including mentioning that we could have a very, very compelling set of DYKs on the subject. First Light (talk) 03:17, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
