User talk:Jimbo Wales

The Atlantic magazine on paid editing at WP

A well-done long read on the paid editing situation is HERE. Carrite (talk) 15:12, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

It is long, and it is good. Special kudos to James Heilman.--S Philbrick(Talk) 02:47, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. This is the kind of thing we should be concerned about, not fake controversies ginned up by trolls and griefers to agitate the gullible and easily panicked. Prioryman (talk) 11:40, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Well perhaps if you had not been shamelessly shilling on behalf of your cronies at WMUK with clear COI-issues the Gibraltarpedia issue would not have been such a thing. But your above comment still shows you fail to understand why people had a problem with it, so I dont know why your brought it up except to troll yourself. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:32, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

It is indeed a good article. Skip the 1st set of bullet points if you’re read it. I’d love to hear @Doc James:’s reaction. I only have one quibble with the article.

• A specific well-documented example is given where undisclosed paid editors (UPEs) inserted misleading info about their employer’s product and a related medical procedure. This apparently ineffective procedure costs Medicare $1 billion each year. Doc James kept the article on track despite the paid editing and a high pressure campaign against him.

• UPE editing has been discouraged since at least 2006. The ToU were changed at the request of volunteer editors and the results have been good, but undisclosed paid editing is lucrative and continues with UPEs stating that they refuse to follow our rules.

• UPEs distract editors from more important work, make the community less friendly, and make Wikipedia less credible.

• There is some disagreement on how widespread it is, but one UPE says it is rampant.

So far the article looks like it is saying something like “UPEs are an unmitigated disaster for Wikipedia” but in a couple of paragraphs near the end it looks like the author tries to add a false balance. It’s the tired, old argument that everybody has a bias, so why are UPEs any different?

I’d like to address this question.

• Business use of UPEs is a systematic bias that always goes in one direction: Products are always safe, good quality, revolutionary, or even better. Scandals never happen. Businesses keep the environment clean, pay their taxes, and support the community.
  • While most of this might apply to most businesses most of the time, having a constant drumbeat of UPEs putting in this material fundamentally distorts our coverage of business, including the business of medicine.
  • Business people have many means to get out their messages, that most other people don’t have. They can pay for advertisements in media that accept paid advertisements; they can issue press releases and talk with journalists; they can talk with their representatives in government and to regulators and work with industry associations. All they really need to do to get into Wikipedia is to convince a reliable source to print their claims in such a way that 1 or 2 volunteers consider it important enough to put it into an article.
  • UPEs just don’t quit - they try to take ownership of an article, they will argue forever. You just can’t have a good faith discussion with somebody who is paid to have a particular point of view.

• Government use of UPEs is an even worse systematic bias: All governments, no matter where they are, try their absolute best to serve the people - and succeed! Their political opponents are misguided at best.

So UPEs change Wikipedia from a trusted source of information with some random biases, to being a corporate shill and a political propagandist favoring those in power.

That’s why we need to strictly enforce our rules on paid and COI editing.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:41, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I think the piece did a really good job. With respect to the specific case in question, having "representatives" from an 28 billion USD company email 300 of your collegues to enform them how misguided you are is disconcerting.

• How big is the issue of undisclosed paid editing? We do not know.
• Is it a risk to the reputation of Wikipedia? Yes definitely.
• Can we do more to try to address it? Once again I would say yes and I believe we should.

Some see the issue of unpaid advocacy as just as bad. However just because other problems exist does not mean we should ignore all problems. The issue of unpaid advocacy is harder to deal with I agree. However, it may occur in both directions well paid advocacy typically only occurs in one.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:02, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I oppose all paid editing. It creates a disparity of motive between the paid editor and the volunteers who make up most of the Wikipedia community, and it creates a burden on volunteers to check content for neutrality and subtle bias when somebody else is receiving compensation for putting the bias in. Everything about paid editing is anthema to the principles of Wikipedia. Guy (Help!) 19:08, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Excellent article. Peter Damian (talk) 18:35, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

• It was a very good article and I agree with Doc James and Smallbones. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 19:52, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

• I also agree with Doc James and Smallbones. --Rubbish computer 23:49, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

WP traffic from Google declining

From Business Insider: "The amount of traffic that Google sends to Wikipedia has declined by more than 250 million visits per month, according to SimilarWeb, the traffic measurement company." Apparently Google is adding links to its own content to search results pages, rather than links to WP articles. [1] Everymorning (talk) 14:12, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Google is specifically using a "micro-Wikipedia" <g> for searches - many folks just want date of birth, death, and a celebrity overview - rather than the generally hard-to-read (see articles on "readability of Wikipedia"), massive articles (the vast majority of future users will use mobiles or tablets) which all-too-often dominate Wikipedia. I commented a long time ago about this inevitable phenomenon, but no one noticed <+g>. Expect Google-driven traffic to go down substantially more in future. Collect (talk) 14:52, 14 August 2015 (UTC) (the article you cite: The problem is that a few months ago that click might have gone to Wikipedia. And in fact the info in the Google box is drawn from Wikipedia. So on the one hand, this is good for Wikipedia (its info is featured prominently and the box does give Wikipedia a link). But on the other, Wikipedia thrives on clicks and this box is designed to save you from actually clicking through if you only need the bare bones info." which is basically what I said above as well <g>. Collect (talk) 14:54, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

My understanding is that the Foundation is looking into this report with preliminary indications that it is wrong. The headline in particular is almost certainly wrong: "Wikipedia suddenly lost a massive amount of traffic from Google". We know there is a longterm issue with decreasing traffic from Google but this article makes it seem like something new and "sudden" and "massive" has happened. It is also false that "Wikipedia thrives on clicks", as least as compared to ad-revenue driven sites. The relationship between "clicks" and the things we care about: community health and encyclopedia quality is not nothing, but it's not as direct as some think.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:58, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

There is a direct correlation between people that read the actual wikipedia article, and click our actual edit-button for the first time. Wikipedia does thrive on clicks, in that sense. There is also a significant risk that google might just decide to fork wikipedia content, into their own project, a la Google Knol (2008-2012) v2.0 to be specific, and stop linking to wikipedia entirely (when they can). In this sort of scenario, the difficult-to-read state of many wikipedia articles is an advantage of sorts... it encourages people to click edit, and fix the problems. They cannot do so, if they never leave the GOOG. Please note, I'm not advocating we make our articles even messier, as a means of making it even *more* tempting for the readership to pitch in and help edit. I am advocating we see the siphoning of our click-traffic as a direct and potentially fatal threat. We are still a long way from the google-backed fork, as far as I know, but we are experiencing a bad long-term trend in new-editor-retention, and simultaneously a bad long-term trend in click-through from the #1 search engine, a one-time-and-potential-future competitor for serving up encyclopedic content. Wikipedia doesn't need the money-revenues from clicks, that is true, but we do need the editor-influx, I submit. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 16:37, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

• This is probably an excellent time for me to point out that there is no provable connection between the growth of the Google "Knowledge Box" and the related decline of direct hits on the WP site on the one hand and the size of the core editing community on the other. The numbers for June are UP IN THE USUAL PLACE and they show the count of Very Active Editors (100+ edits in June) to be up once again over the weak figures of 2014. Indeed, the count of Very Active Editors at WP in June 2015 (3,241) not only erased the June 2014 decline, but also topped June 2013 (3,202), June 2012 (3,217), and very nearly met June 2011 (3,278). So: no panicking, this is no demonstrable connection between overall site traffic and size of the core volunteer community. Carrite (talk) 17:08, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Theorizing why this is so: very casual users of WP are not the source of long-term volunteers; the latter come to the encyclopedia on their own, not via proximity generated by random Google hits. I've heard it said that "Wikipedians are born, not made." Given the terrible track record of edit-a-thons and university class projects in creating lasting Wikipedians, this ironic line may well be somewhat true. Carrite (talk) 17:20, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Further theorizing, I note there is a JimboTalk section just above, about the rise of paid editing, disclosed and undisclosed. (The Atlantic also says that wikipedia is no longer merely a place that regular people get information, but the place regular people get information. Which is good news as far as it goes.) I agree with you that most true wikipedians are "born not made" aka have to be genetically predisposed to liking it here... but I would suggest that, per my own anecdotal experience and stuff like the Atlantic article, that there are some faux wikipedians that are "paid not made" aka they are able to successfully make a lot of edits not because they have the mental predisposition of a born-not-made editor, but because they have financial incentive to learn the wiki-ropes. If we get into a dualing-encyclopedia match with Google, guess which of those offerings is going to be a more profitable environment for paid editors, disclosed or undisclosed? To be clear, I think that "faux" editors with COI have a useful place here on wikipedia, but I strongly suspect that the recent reversal of years of steady decline in editorship is not because there are magically more genetically-predisposed-wikipedians being born into the world (and certainly not because the wiki-rules have been recently simplified nor the wiki-culture recently nice-ified!), but rather, the new uptick is merely a symptom of the not-very-magical fairly-recent-but-growing appearance of a large number of financially-incentivized-wikipedians. Do we have any data on that distinction, i.e. what percentage of the recent uptick is due to cold hard cash? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 18:12, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

My own take is that the population of core Wikipedians is stable and has been more or less stable for coming on 5 years, after the "fad" of 2005-2007 died down. Of course, WMF is way too busy with whatever to actually figure out who its 10,000 or so core volunteers across all projects are, so we are all just guessing rather than working off hard data. I doubt that the paid hands are racking up 100 edits a month (I should probably quiz A Prominent Paid Editor about the count for an average paid job). Carrite (talk) 05:33, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

............and so I asked A Prominent Paid Editor the following: "Would it be, generally speaking, fair to assume that a typical paid editor would not be getting to 100 edits per month? These are usually like 15 edits by a SPA, correct? I'll enlighten the masses with your response unless you tell me not to do this." To this Mr. or Ms. Prominent Paid Editor replied: "Those are fair assumptions for the paid editors who use one or two accounts per project/client. Maybe more like 20 for me." — So, there are doubtlessly a handful of known multiple-paid-editing-jobs accounts that contribute to the monthly Very Active Editor count (insiders could probably almost recite them by name), but the under-the-radar Paid PR types use throwaway accounts that aren't gonna get to 100. In short, the Professional Paid component of the Very Active Editor count is probably small. Carrite (talk) 15:44, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Clicks are useful, because they allow us to measure stuff. That's pretty much it. If people were hitting local caches of Wikipedia, then we would get many fewer clicks (and need less hardware/bandwidth). But the goal of providing them the information would be met, and probably faster.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:39, 15 August 2015 (UTC).

It's important to remember that Google has started using Wikipedia both to identify news stories and trends by locale, and improve the accuracy of Page Rank search result ordering. And anyone who uses Google Search can't help but notice that for most of the search terms which are directly associated with an article, snippets from the first sentences appear twice and have for about a year. That alone could explain the drop in click-throughs. However Wikipedia is included as a search term less often than it used to be, but still much more often than popular news sources. EllenCT (talk) 01:55, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Cracked.com article on Wikipedia

From cracked.com: Wikipedia Hates Women: 4 Dark Sides of The Site We All Use. (Article author self-identifies as User:Morwen)[2] --Guy Macon (talk) 18:47, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the "deployed member of the military" mentioned in the article, see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Husnock. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:11, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Makes a fair point about agenda editors, including the "traditional counties" loons. The issue of trans people is a festering sore. I don't know when the queer-bashers started getting any traciton here, they used to get short shrift back in the day and should still. Guy (Help!) 21:55, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

An impressive and moving account of what Wikipedia has become. I've yet to see any plausible solution to this mess, or any will to find one; without it, I expect swift and firm measures from both the US government and the EU. MarkBernstein (talk) 23:06, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

What can the US government and EU do? There are plausible solutions, and the Foundation have been championing a few of them, but there are a lot of active measures which could be taken but aren't. EllenCT (talk) 00:39, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

This harassment is terrible to hear about. --Rubbish computer 23:45, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

I do think that anyone leading off an article with the 9% women editors figure, which is not only years out of date, but was demonstrated to be wrong shortly after it was published, seriously damages their credibility as a retailer of fact. Regardless of how many Star Trek reference works they own. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:03, 16 August 2015 (UTC).

What is the current correct figure? 13%? I'm not sure it's a substantial difference in the context. EllenCT (talk) 00:39, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

We're probably somewhere in the general ballpark of 80:20 these days. WMF is years late in spending some of its money to study the question. Carrite (talk) 05:39, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

They repeatedly study the question carefully, but they sit on the answers for more than half a year, when they even release them at all. EllenCT (talk) 14:25, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I think that Wikipedia has some serious problems related to women, but while it may have been to make a point, I find the title Wikipedia hates women to be an exaggeration, and quite insulting. Some people genuinely hate women, unfortunately, but this cannot be applied to Wikipedia as a whole. --Rubbish computer 00:22, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I suggest the people who genuinely hate women stopped getting "short shrift" as User:JzG put it above, about the same time as the queer-bashers. EllenCT (talk) 00:39, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

@EllenCT: I hope this hasn't occurred: this is terrible if it has. I can't say either way about how editors who harass others are treated, as I don't really know. Rubbish computer 01:22, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be great if Jimbo started taking a stand for reform? One can hope. EllenCT (talk) 01:25, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

@EllenCT: I hope he does after reading this, in some way at least. --Rubbish computer 01:30, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

"started"? I have a longstanding view that we need to get serious about this and that a fair number of toxic personalities need to be shown the door immediately. If anyone wants my personal list, I can give it. The thing to understand is that I do not have, and do not want, the direct Henry the Eighth power to declare "off with their heads". But I will fight all the way to the top (and can guarantee success at that level, if there is community backing) at the Foundation to enforce strong community demand for positive change. If I were confident that I had the backing of the community and the Foundation, I'd personally get rid of a fair number of misogynists. In the meantime, I strongly support efforts to build consensus.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:38, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Why so coy? Publish your list and let's see where you rank in the top-ten "toxic personalities". If you're afraid to do so publicly for whatever reason then please feel free to email it to me. Eric Corbett 17:55, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Discussion on WP:HARASS hasn't been closed yet... but I'm thinking the only way things will change is through WMF intervention. Too much entrenchment, entitlement, and outright disbelief that anything is wrong. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 02:42, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I tend to agree but I remain hopeful.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 03:08, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

What good is banning people who just come back as sockpuppets? One thing you could do that would really help female editors and women everywhere, Jimbo, is to renounce the misogyny and supply side trickle down economics that you brought in with your Objectivist fanboys. Rand's popularity was enabled by Art Okun's terrible mistake which is now completely discredited. How about a video of you telling the camera, "Ayn Rand was right about the importance of reason, purpose, and self-esteem. Ayn Rand was wrong about relying on amphetamines, she was wrong about supply side trickle down economics, and she was wrong about the virtue of masculine assumption of female consent." Courage, Jimbo! EllenCT (talk) 14:43, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

"I do not have, and do not want, the direct Henry the Eighth power to declare "off with their heads""

-- I don't know the particulars in what kind of 'power' you do or do not have, and I agree that one person with that type of power can be a bad/dangerous thing. But it's the only position on this site I would ever want. What needs to be done should be done via WMF. Shrugging your collective shoulders(boys will be boys¯\_(ツ)_/¯) and allowing the same things to repeat over and over is in essence saying "Wikipedia hates women". Dave Dial (talk) 03:51, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Agree. If the discussion at HARASS fails, the only recourse would be WMF. If they do not act, it's clear how they feel about the issue then. Their lack of action thus far shows indifference at least, though worse motives could be inferred. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 04:01, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• I found the Cracked piece to be a particularly lame rehash with one ridiculous sensationalistic headline that was swapped out for another. If you want food for thought, check out the mini-essay on the user page of our own Yngvadottir, which includes the following:

Part of entrenched bias of course is the underrepresentation of women and "women's topics" in the encyclopedia. Here, our insistence on reliable sources exacerbates the problem already presented by historical (and continuing) gender bias - there are online projects to document the lives and achievements of unsung women that in some cases don't pass our litmus test, and the sources for things like Barbie dolls, traditional knitting and quilting patterns, and so on are often unimpressive even when in print. I wrote up a toy manufacturer (founded by a woman and using local women for labor) that I had seen news articles on in the late 1970s, but what had been put online was patchy.

However, on the woman issue, the WMF's approach does more harm than good. their research on the percentage of female editors is fatally flawed, and they have used those bogus numbers to negate the existence of those of us who are female editors, to condescend, and to divide the community. Seeing pop-up ads inviting people to apply for grants to fix the problem that I don't exist alienates me. Being told in a blog post by the past head of the WMF that half a dozen of her friends know better than me about what turns off women from editing Wikipedia—about the fact the lady assumes I don't exist—alienates me. (Most of these turn-offs don't matter to me at all, by the way.) The constant advertising of editathons on women's issues, for women, is divisive. The demonizing of editors who dare to question the statistics while being male-identified is divisive and counterproductive ... as well as condescending. I left the Gender Gap Task Force alone because hey, each to her own, but it does not speak for me and the WMF's promotion of this political effort and lionization of those women who spend their time yacking there instead of actually writing the encyclopedia chaps my butt.

On point. Carrite (talk) 05:46, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

The issue here is a I've seen a number of established editors do this sort of behaviour, and unfortunately, no admin wants to deal with the typical "but they are a good editor" backlash while blocking them, and if the WMF takes this on, this will make them even more unpopular in some people's eyes. Personally, I think we need a few more admins willing to make and defend these sort of blocks, or even take these cases to ARBCOM more regularly, otherwise WMF involvement would be the only realistic solution (Which I would happy support in any way I could) Mdann52 (talk) 06:33, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

In her recent RfA, User:Liz saw significant opposition because she had expressed the opinion that "the role of administrators is undermined if there is the impression that there are different standards for behavior based on an editor's contributions and the view that some editors are unblockable". One editor commented that many voters opposed her nomination "because Liz dared make the statement that content creators should not be given carte blanche exemptions from the rules. Everyone knows this". After reading the comments posted in that RfA, I agree. Not only is there a significant faction on Wikipedia that thinks that heavy content creators should be exempt from most rules, but they oppose any admin candidate who doesn't agree, and tend to only support admin candidates who have created multiple GAs or FAs. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:23, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

It's always the people most outspoken on the gender gap and misogyny on wikipedia though who actually contribute the least content on here. Those of us who really care about systematic bias against women in articles actually get on with doing something about it instead of moaning about it. And those of us who are the apparent worse offenders of bias against women get on with promoting women to FA, which is more than I can say for Mr Wales.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:00, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

"Always" is a universal quantifier. Why did you decide to use it? I've created plenty of content in some of the most frequently read articles on the site, and I have a very deep skepticism of people who use universal quantifiers as ambigious hyperbole while bragging about articles they took to FA which get a dozen hits a day. EllenCT (talk) 16:44, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Typical "no real scotsman" argument paired with the Randian "content creators" stuff. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 16:57, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• Article is WP:LAME. Discussion about it is WP:LAME. Who the heck reads "cracked"? NickCT (talk) 10:06, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

150 people per day read the Cracked.com article. That's more than 10% of the people who read the CNN article. EllenCT (talk) 14:29, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Agree with Dr. Blofeld. Don't talk about it, or write an article which seems very self-congratulatory, almost embarrassingly so, but if there aren't enough women FAs, do something about it, like we are. As for Jimbo above, and his little list, words fail.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:27, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I feel compelled to agree with Blofeld and Yngvadottir too - as an out woman (albeit as a wikignome who no longer has time to do much of that, even) I hope I can say that. There's a lot of stuff which just feels patronising and if people could find a way through the genuine 'women's participation' issues that wasn't so condescending it would help. LouiseS1979 ^(pigeonhole) 11:30, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

What amazes me is that Jimbo and foundation seem to think that the odd utterance of the "c word" or "twat" (directed at a male at that) or whatever is more responsible for women leaving wikipedia than the general hostile attitude towards content producers displayed by new page patrollers for instance. Every day we lose dozens of notable articles, and those produced by female editors too because these people don't bother to check externally to see if they can be improved. They plaster tags over articles and they get deleted, and people despair and think "wikipedia is a waste of time" so leave. The way adminship functions at times on here is also hostile towards potential content contributors and people are put off by it, They don't want to be drilled warnings when they're trying the best to learn the ropes on here. So I find it astounding that the gender gap problems with the site are blamed purely on editors perceived as misogynistic and that Jimbo seems to think that if he banned them all suddenly everything would be smelling of roses. The problems are far more deep rooted in the system on here, and it's something that the foundation seem oblivious to and unwilling to bring about improvements. While most of us would prefer that editors avoid calling each other cunts or twats, again it's pointless saying "If I had the power I would" when it's clear that you don't and no matter how much you moan about it it's not going to change the situation.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:06, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

BTW If you really did a survey of all of the women to date who have tried to edit wikipedia and gave up, or those who might potentially edit wikipedia I'm pretty sure "an editor called xxx the c word" would be a reason far down the list. The real reasons why most women leave wikipedia and give up are no different to why most men leave. And those are the deep rooted site problems and natural hostility and lack of good faith on here. I'm pretty sure if anybody here started an account with a female name or a male name it would make little difference to how their work might be treated on the new pages. And for the record, most of the women I know who have left wikipedia is not because somebody swore at somebody but because of that hostility, a POV pusher on an article, ANI silliness or harassment, and by harassment I mean really psychological harassment, not sweary personal attacks and the odd gender joke, stuff which really get to people and go unpunished. The last two or three women I know who left wikipedia or took leave on disgust was because of the misconduct of an admin abusing his position actually. Those are the real reasons why most people leave, men or women.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:32, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, as long as the argument turns to "who really cares" about systemic bias, than at least the discussion goes somewhere - in the end, although not a winnable argument, it may lead to good results. Covering topics or having "editors avoid calling each other cunts or twats" is a false dichotomy, is it not? Surely, both are possible, and "what most of us would prefer". Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:25, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

The main issue isn't getting more women bios as FA. It's how editors are treated and the atmosphere of harassment and sexism on Wikipedia. Editors are what make Wikipedia, not FAs. Fix that, more women will edit and other manifestations of the gender gap such as FAs will close with it. Of course we have the typical offenders here opining how saying "cunt" shouldn't be a big deal though. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 17:01, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm going to be bold here but to my knowledge the female editors I know on here don't experience any serious harassment or sexism on here because they're female. If they do they've never complained to me about it. You'll regularly hear complaints about cowboy admins, infobox pushers, POV pushers and civility warriors but I never hear "He victimises me because I'm female". The times I've seen female editors complaining of harassment, it's been from other females, not males. I find female editors are usually more agreeable to work with in article collaboration anyway, and I'm not the only one who thinks that. It really does seem to be something claimed by the gender gap lot, the types like yourself who feel vulnerable in society anyway and perceive everything negative on wikipedia to because of their gender or sexuality. We do need more featured articles on women and in general, but if we are to attract women to the project the main issue is the general hostility towards everybody on here who creates new content or edits core articles, not sexist remarks against women. Sorry, but I've really not encountered that sort of thing myself, all I've heard about it is associated with the gender gap project. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:32, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Self-selection into your editing circle would probably be the biggest reason for that... also confirmation bias. But you also are making a fundamental attribution bias in thinking it's due to personal factors that people at the GGTF are upset. FWIW, anti-harassment policies that prohibit things like calling editors "cunts" has been shown to increase productivity and morale.[3] EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 18:43, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

My perception of the situation is that there's more a hatred of male editors at the gender gap project based on feminist ideologies than vice versa. I think you have a tendency to view negative situations as a male vs female thing rather than a general website problem in agreement anyway. Beyond Eric occasionally calling somebody a cunt, where is the evidence of this mass harassment against editors purely because they're women?♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:57, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

This "cunt" thing really does need to be put into perspective. I think in my eight years here I've only ever called two editors cunts, and both of them, one of whom was Jimbo Wales, I have good reason to believe are male. The word may make hearts palpitate in American feminist circles, but it doesn't have the same bite elsewhere in the English-speaking world, especially when applied to males, as it almost always is. In fact I'd not be in the slightest surprised to see it reclaimed in the not-too distant future. Eric Corbett 19:20, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Then, there is this article here, WP:THREATENING2MEN: Misogynist Infopolitics and the Hegemony of the Asshole Consensus on English Wikipedia by Bryce Peake from Issue #7 of Ada:A Journal of New Media and Technology. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:59, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• Just so this doesn't get buried, I note here that I have asked Jimbo above for a copy of his personal list. Eric Corbett 18:26, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• Coming out of retirement and a life of joyous relaxation to endorse Eric's comment. You say: "a fair number of toxic personalities need to be shown the door immediately. If anyone wants my personal list, I can give it." I do want it; so please can I have it. Giano (talk) 18:44, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't mean to be off topic but under point 2 of the 4 the article states "... the number of Wikipedia editors shrank by over a third" - with a source- "with most of those that left being women". I haven't read through the source it cites but I have never heard of the proportion of female editors on Wikipedia actually shrinking over time. I am not exactly an expert on this, so forgive me if I'm wrong. Is this statement an observation by Morwen? --Rubbish computer 20:29, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

This female/male editors issue should be treated as irrelevant, by English Wikipedia. We're all Wikipedians, leave it at that. GoodDay (talk) 20:30, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

PLOS ONE article about Wikipedia POV-pushing in the sciences

Just caught this press release from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies on Eurekalert. Here's the article on PLOS ONE. Despite the tone, I don't actually see much there - basically, they measured some article edit rates and wrote a just-so story, with an illustrative anecdote. They suggest (based on other sources) two measures to counter bias ("automatically identify and flag pages with significant controversy [24] and quantify user reputation [18]") - the latter idea sounds particularly hard to believe, and given that it's locked behind a Springer paywall I get the sense the authors of that paper weren't really serious about Wikipedians having a look at it. Still, thought I might shoot this over and see if anyone can pick out something useful. Wnt (talk) 09:50, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• Yeah, I saw that earlier. It seems their concerns about accuracy of scientific articles potentially deteriorating is largely theoretical because it is "difficult for experts to monitor accuracy and contribute time-consuming corrections". Everymorning (talk) 13:07, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

"Articles on controversial subjects get edited more" is all this article, and their research, says. Do they actually get paid to write this rubbish? --Rubbish computer 15:56, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Articles on controversial subjects are also going to be vandalized more, which will add to the total number of edits, as will reverting such vandalism. As scientific views change and science progresses, articles such as global warming are required to be changed to reflect this. --Rubbish computer 15:59, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

An example for the vandalism point: global warming is indefinitely semi-protected. --Rubbish computer 16:01, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

It is a poor article. I wrote it up here: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2015/08/15/content-volatility-of-scientific-topics-in-wikipedia-plowshare-prates-anag/. Boris, who does actually do science, commented It's amazing that they got a peer reviewed publication out of something so utterly trivial with no attempt at in-depth analysis or insight William M. Connolley (talk) 17:45, 16 August 2015 (UTC)