User talk:Jimbo Wales

(Manual archive list)

Disruptive editing revisited

I just wanted to highlight and respond to a comment that has already been archived:

1. I think the WMF can do little directly. It would be pretty difficult for them to get directly involved in banning uncivil users, and hard for them to do a good job of it. One reason for this is that extreme cases are quite easy and the community does a good job of bans. The difficult cases are people who go around causing disruption and abusing people but who have some kind of support network and produce good content. In these cases, community opinion often ends up divided. It would be hard for the Foundation to know what to do.

2. The Foundation could help us by doing more studies on what causes people to leave the community. I think what is often lacking is the empirical evidence needed to convince some fence-sitters how much damage some people are doing. If you write 3 featured articles but chase away through your incivility 10 potentially great editors who would have written 30 featured articles, then you are a net loss to the project. I think that's often the case with some of these characters, but we have no way at the moment to empirically demonstrate it.

3. The English Wikipedia community can beef up policies in various ways to make it clearer that "producing good content" does not give one a free pass to abuse, insult, or harass others through uncivil behavior.

4. I recommend that people who care about this issue work hard to think about how we might improve our ArbCom processes so that more cases can be handled and in a quicker fashion. Barring that, I would say being careful to elect "civility hawks" to the ArbCom would be useful. When a user who has a long history of uncivil interactions with others comes before ArbCom, it should often be a simple open and shut case. For a variety of reasons (including that policy isn't strong enough in some areas so ArbCom can feel constrained) that sometimes doesn't happen, and this has follow-on repercussions with behavior across the site as uncivil people feel safe to carry on.--Jimbo Wales 10:19, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

• The WMF could do plenty if they wanted to. If they can create a superprotect to enforce software choices, they can enforce their terms of service. Taking a lesson from American history, what happened when Al Capone's bootlegging empire was protected by local neighborhood politicians? The federal government stepped in, and found some problems with his federal tax returns. And what happened in the sixties, when individual states failed to protect individuals from discrimination and safeguard their voting rights? Yup, the federal government stepped in again; the result was the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

• Instead of focusing on what makes people leave (think WP:DIVA essay for how that is likely to end), the foundation might focus on how to create new relationships with institutions--museums, universities, student groups. I had a conversation with someone over breakfast the other day, and in the course of asking why they didn't edit Wikipedia, found out they were prohibited from doing so by their university department. They did have edit-a-thons, but the material was submitted to the department head, and put on Wikipedia by one person, in order not to expose any faculty members or the institution to any potentially embarrassing and career-damaging actions. Not a bad idea--can you imagine a salary review that looked like an RFA? Wikipedia is going through a gentrification process. The new professionals are moving in, and the smelly old street corner lurkers will be marginalized. But are the streets safe yet? Everyone wants safe streets.

• The policies we have already are not being enforced, more policies will just produce more of the same.

• There is no point in asking more of ArbCom. They are elected and must respond to the will of the community. But more care can be taken in framing questions. For example, the civility RFAR that was recently declined was spun as being about "swearing". Too late people realized it was about more--the real issue was bigotry and the use of race- and culture-group based slurs. I tried to start a discussion about it on one of the arbitrator's talk pages, but every time I tried to post, I was either reverted or found myself in endless edit conflicts. This is the new tactic against gentrification--suppression of discussion.

• One thing that traffic courts do that Arbcom doesn't do is try to educate people. What if someone who violated the civility policy was required to go to the equivalent of traffic school before they could edit again. There are plenty of HR-type anti-harassment training programs for new employees out there--how hard would it be to modify one for WP?

• Another case in point was the latest round of C-gate on ANI today. There is a group of individuals who have publicly stated their opposition to the gender group, roughly the same group that usually shows up whenever the c-bomb rears its head. But instead of avoiding the gender group, they have chosen to participate in the group, with the result being ongoing disruption that eventually ended up at ANI. The more experienced users are probably ahead of me at this point, but the end result was that as long as the anti-gender people were trying to get the gender group of people thrown to the wolves, the discussion was allowed to proceed. But as soon as the discussion turned to page bans for the anti-gender users, the thread was abruptly closed, twice, by the same admin. [1] Ironically, the final word in the thread, before it closed, was "All this commotion would've been avoided, if all editors had chosen to hide ther RL genders from Wikipedia." There you have it. Wikipedia is not ready for female editors. The streets are not safe. —Neotarf (talk) 05:16, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Like I said before, you should take this case to ArbCom. It's something that's surely within their remit. Repeatedly posting long memoranda here isn't going to solve it (anymore than ANI did). JMP EAX (talk) 23:07, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree. There are a small number of editors who feel that there are egregious and damaging violations at various gender-related pages. A well-formed request should be posted at Arbcom and we can move forward on these important issues. SPECIFICO talk 23:30, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't agree that talk is pointless. The biggest problem I have with the premature closure of the ANI discussion is that it did not allow community consensus process to play out.

What would be the point in bringing this to ArbCom? They always throw the issue back to the community, as they did at the recently have already declined "Civility" case request. In a closing statement there, the OP belatedly recognized that the case should have been framed in terms of "offensive" speech, since "offensive speech is at the more objectionable end of the incivil spectrum" and is easier to define, although in all fairness, in a recent clarification request, the Arbcom has started to come closer to addressing this issue. —Neotarf (talk) 17:02, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

My argument for the requester closing it or ArbCom declining it: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Carolmooredc. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 22:22, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Arbitration

I have opened an arbitration request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Gender Gap Task Force Issues. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:52, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Take care what you post here. I have now been named as a party to this case, and I have no idea who named me or why. A message from a clerk on my talk page tells me it was an anonymous arbitrator. Does anyone else feel a chill? —Neotarf (talk) 02:23, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I suspect the anonymous arbitrator as it were, read the talk page of the project and found your commentary enlightening and/or problematic. Yes I feel a chill in my part of this planet, as Autumn is in the air. You need not fear the arbitration, as it is most certainly going to be declined.Two kinds of pork (talk) 03:59, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

The arbitrator has now responded on my talk page, but I still have no idea what is being said about me on the secret arbitrator mailing list. —Neotarf (talk) 13:12, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Notice of discussion re: edit-summary incivility

I have started a discussion on the "No personal attacks" policy page. Since this is an issue of civility, the subject of much debate here and elsewhere on the project, watchers of this page are invited to weigh in. Proposed addition to "Avoiding personal attacks". Lightbreather (talk) 00:15, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Not sure how ClueBot III works, but it archived this after one day,[2] and considering how much civility is being discussed in this and other forums recently/now, I'd like the notice to stay at least a week. That seems reasonable. Thanks. Lightbreather (talk) 18:56, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I have it set to aggressively archive threads where no one is commenting. This is normally the right thing but for a notice of a discussion elsewhere it obviously fails. I don't know a good solution but anyone is welcome to add this back regularly for the week requested.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:26, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I figured it was something like that, but I wanted to explain why I restored the notice. Thanks. Lightbreather (talk) 00:05, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Gender gap task force and RfA proposal

I have made a proposal that I would think would help close the gender gap in WP's administrative corps. I think this is necessary because, speaking from observation and personal experience, WP's RfA process has a lot of serious issues. Cla68 (talk) 06:18, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Now renamed Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#Proposal_from_Cla68_regarding_women_candidates. Closed and premature. But actions to bring in more women or proposals for things to increase numbers that will be more widely accepted certainly are needed. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 12:37, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

The proposal was not closed as "premature." It was rejected because the discussion found it to be offensive and infeasible. SPECIFICO talk 14:47, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

If you are going to comment on almost everything I write, at least get it right. I wrote "Closed and premature." How's this: "Someone closed it AND I and/or others found it premature to propose it when it wasn't even discussed on the talk page, modified or reject there." In short, it was not a Gender Gap task force proposal, as the original subject line suggested, and it was just one individual's proposal, just to be clear so we don't have to hear a 100 accusations it was. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 19:16, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

It could never be a GGTF proposal. Everyone here is responsible for their own edits. The GGTF cannot propose anything and is as toothless as any other project in that respect. The best that the GGTF can do is discuss initiatives. - Sitush (talk) 23:42, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• Although actions to address our gendergap - including our administrative gendergap - are sorely needed, especially when taken in the context of the rest of cla's actions this is such obvious trolling that someone should block Cla for a day or two for disruption/WP:POINT. I'd do it myself, but I'm sure people would bring up WP:INVOLVED. Kevin Gorman (talk) 19:26, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Kevin, to threaten someone for proposing an affirmative action-type remedy is an extremely ironic reflection of the actual hostility that women (and men) face in the real world when the patriarchy threatens them for trying to fix real-life gender-related issues. I appreciate that you said that, because now we have an example of the outright hostility towards women and women's issues that is entrenched in WP's administration. Cla68 (talk) 23:33, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
    • Kevin Gorman an example of outright hostility towards women and women's issues? Now I've heard it all. I wasn't sure before that Cla68 was trolling, but with that comment it's entirely clear. I won't block anybody for trolling on this page, though. If Jimbo doesn't want to encourage it, he can close the thread. Bishonen | talk 23:48, 10 September 2014 (UTC).
      • Many people aren't aware of their ingrained biases or prejudices until confronted with an actual affirmative action-type proposal that affects something important to them, in this case WP's administrative corps. It's a result of unrecognized, socialized privilege and entitlement. Affirmative action exists for a reason, and people's reactions to such proposals reveals quite a bit about them. If they say, "I disagree", that's one thing. But, when they say, "Burn the witch!", as Kevin is saying here, then that is something else altogether. Cla68 (talk) 23:59, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
        • I think those reactions have centered around your obvious insincerity, rather than the merits of the proposal itself. MastCell ^Talk 00:22, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
          • As Mast said, the issue at stake is your obvious mocking insincerity rather than the proposal itself. I'd never suggest blocking someone for the proposal itself. Describing my actions as an example of the outright hostility towards women that is entrenched in Wikipedia's administration is even more solid evidence that you are trolling if anyon doubted it before. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:40, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
            • Kevin, you could have said, "I don't agree that an affirmative action measure will work here". Instead, you indicated, "It's a ludicrous idea and I wish I could ban the jackass who proposed it." It's the level of hostility in your reaction that is revealing. Cla68 (talk) 00:47, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
              • Your argument is rather undercut by how much you exaggerated what I actually said. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:49, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
          • If you can tell the sincerity of an anonymous account holder on WP or anywhere else on the Internet, then you're a lot more perceptive than I am. You have to judge by a person's actions here since their tone and demeanor are usually invisible. I voted for the proposal and will be the first one to vote for it if it is again proposed. And, I was disappointed that you didn't vote in support of it. Cla68 (talk) 00:36, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

It would have worked. Editors running for Admin would all have self-identified themselves as female regardless of their real sex, so the gender gap would have vanished. Count Iblis (talk) 19:45, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Now, now, we all learned from the Private Manning Case that "you are what you say you are, and that's that." Seriously, that's the majority view of the nature of gender at WP... Carrite (talk) 22:32, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I think this was a good idea (after all, I remember proposing such "affirmative action" myself within the past few months) but 15% is a very steep preference. Maybe 5% would have had a chance, but you might have had to start at 2 or 3 percent. I think that "you are what you say you are" very much does apply here - if an admin is willing to walk the walk and deal with a certain risk of bizarre behavior that some women report here, that will make the admin a more experienced and aware candidate regardless of sex or gender.

All that said, the same consideration that can be obtained by a rule could be obtained by a little more awareness of RfA by Gender Gap participants with no formal difference in admission criteria. Wnt (talk) 02:51, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

While Cla68's proposal and way of announcing it may have had some problems, and he may have over-reacted to criticism aboe, I think it was a serious proposal. Unlike this new joke proposal and series of jokes GG Task Force has to suffer through now. Hold Wales & WMF accountable. Now Kevin can really let loose if he likes! Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 03:54, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

That Cla68 is concerned about misogyny I find surprising--from the comments he has made off wiki I would have guessed the opposite. Likewise with the individuals who were previously interested in editing pornography articles and who are now engaging with the Gender Gap project--I can't seem to follow why they are unarchiving threads that were previously archived by the women as off-topic or disruptive. Question for Cla68 about his proposal: can you give an example of a woman's RFA that was unsuccessful, but would have been successful under your proposal? It would help to have a real life example of what you think the problem is. —Neotarf (talk) 05:19, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Webreflinks

For those of you who don't know, webreflinks is a tool that automatically fixes up all citations within an article. All you have to do is past the title in a box and click Enter, and when the program completes, copy the output to the article. Simple as.

Since this tool has been blocked, or whatever happened to it, I have seen the level of citations decrease rapidly everywhere on Wikipedia. We desperately need either this tool or another one that does a similar thing.

P.S. Oh and once we do we need to make sure all newbies know what it is and how to use it. I'm working at WP:AFC atm and I can't take the horribly formatted references anymore.--Coin945 (talk) 12:45, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Zhaofeng Li has made a replacement at User:Zhaofeng Li/Reflinks. Try it! KonveyorBelt 16:46, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Yayyy! :) There are two problems with it though. The big one is that if you have two references of the exact same type, the tool doesn't condense them into 1. Secondly, each time you use the tool on an article, you have to return to the previous link to do another, which is frustrating. @Zhaofeng Li:--Coin945 (talk) 17:20, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I posted much the same thing on his talk. There is a toolbox script you could use to use reflinks directly on an article without going to the toolserver page. KonveyorBelt 17:24, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I've been using it to fix up some articles, and have noticed it has issues with things like newspapers. Notice here at least two different links have the same Milwaukee Sentinel citation.--Coin945 (talk) 17:26, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

September 3rd traffic spike

Jimbo, if you check the article traffic stats for just about any article in the English Wikipedia, it appears that September 3rd there was approximately an 80% to 100% spike in page views. The spike only persisted for that one day. Do you (or any of your loyal JimboTalk followers) have any idea if this spike was real, or was it just a quirk of the measurement tool? - 2001:558:1400:10:8165:67BB:738F:E52B (talk) 13:11, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Pardon my ignorance, but where can this data be viewed? Tarc (talk) 13:29, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Click on "View history" tab. Then in External tools (about the third line of text down), to the right, click "Page view statistics". The tool is notoriously buggy, but we seem to depend on it as our best source of information about Wikipedia page views. - 2001:558:1400:10:8165:67BB:738F:E52B (talk) 14:06, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

It has to be a bug. The view stats for the main page show the spike - but they also apparently show no views at all for August 28th. [3]. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:16, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Very interesting. I hit the random article button and came up with an article that showed a spike that went Sept. 2 - 71; Sept. 3 - 174; Sept. 4. - 62. The Sept. 3 number was an anomaly. I suppose another possible explanation might be some sort of concentrated Denial Of Service attack on that date. That article also shows zero hits on Aug. 28. Carrite (talk) 14:27, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Back to school panic? DuncanHill (talk) 14:34, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Over at the WP:TOP25 we noted a few days ago that the grok.se stats had stopped at September 3 and were halted for a few days; maybe its possible when they got it going again there was glitch for that days views (or a double counting).--Milowent • ^hasspoken 15:07, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Per others, it seems unlikely to be valid, but I'm not really the best person to ask. However, if it is site-wide there's pretty much no external factor that could cause that. (For example, if Google suddenly started ranking us more highly? But we are already in the top three for almost everything so it's unlikely that Google could send more traffic uniformly across the entire site!)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:35, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

3rd September was the first full day back at school for a very large percentage of English schools, and I wouldn't be surprised if other countries were the same. Black Kite (talk) 19:55, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikiviewstats shows no spike at September 3, all OK. BTW, do use meta:User:Hedonil/XTools, it's a fantastic tool! --Atlasowa (talk) 22:06, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Controversial current events

Articles about controversial current events seem to attract editors with a bias. I have the impression that Wikipedia's influence on public opinion for these subjects is negligible compared to the influence of the news media, so that the only thing a biased editor could accomplish is to influence readers that Wikipedia is biased. --Bob K31416 (talk) 02:47, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

How is Internet Slowdown Day different from SOPA?

Hi Jimbo. You earned a lot of respect, IMHO, when you brought up the WP:SOPA issue and galvanized the community to take a stand. I am curious why didn't you feel necessary to do the same thing with the Internet Slowdown Day action? Also, do you know why WMF has taken no interest in this (during SOPA they issued several press statements and such...). Thanks, --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:51, 11 September 2014 (UTC)