User talk:Jimbo Wales

RfC: does WP want to expand its userbase?

The show trials continue over at WP:AE too.  :/ By the way, I was wrong about removing gamergate from the -erg section of the Greek and Latin prefixes page. (urgent that I 'fess up, sorry.) It appears that I had forgotten about ants. Google has too. The previous discussion seems to me untoward on this page.

Which leads me to what I wanted to ask those who stalk this page. ("scoundrels" I've read us called in a text that does sort of "gaslight" such people, which is itself woven into the CoP (cult-o-personality) question asked earlier I suppose since I read it on WP).

The population of the world has more than tripled in your life Jimbo. Facebook is going to soon be available via drone even in the most remote or ill-served parts of Africa. Our interface doesn't play that well on smartish-phones I imagine. Do we want to expand our userbase, or is that politically dangerous (losing soft power, etc.)?

ps. Apache Ant. SashiRolls (talk) 20:22, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

This looks like a meltdown. --Bob K31416 (talk) 20:49, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I suppose it does. ^^ What do you think then, do we want more editors? SashiRolls (talk) 21:02, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

There's actually a good point in there. With the expanding use of smart phones and tablets worldwide and the corresponding decrease in use of traditional computers, and keeping in mind how garbage the mobile Wikipedia experience is, what is the plan to enhance the mobile editing experience? I know several prolific editors mainly edit solely on mobile devices, but I wager this is done in the somewhat clunky desktop view. It would be really nice to have some smart and easy tools right in the interface. Mr Ernie (talk) 23:03, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I think we are conflating at least three different things here.

Yes much of the growth in internet traffic is via smartphones, Our interface apparently works OK on such devices if all you want is to read. So in terms of the mission, making the sum of all knowledge available to all humanity great progress has been made, we are close to 500 million visitors a month and that is close to 10% of that part of the human population that is capable of using Wikipedia - kudos to the WMF's mobile team for that (there is some hyperbole about our mission being to serve all humankind, but in reality there will always be those who are far too young and unless we get a cure for alzheimers another group who are no longer capable of using it).

Our editing community has been broadly stable for several years. It stopped growing in tandem with increasing readership circa a decade ago, and while there are many partial explanations about this, one of the three main ones is that we are basically read only for the smartphone generation and little better for tablet users. No one knows whether this is a temporary situation and we will be rescued by better hardware, better editing software, AI editors or a generation of smartphone users hitting adulthood; or a semipermanent situation where for decades to come we will be dependent on PC users to actually write content. In the meantime this certainly doesn't help our geographic skews.

Not everyone is ready to contribute neutrally and some people's idea of civility is other people's idea of a Derek and Clive sketch. There is a theory that much like a village pub the best way to maximise the community is to have a firm but fair landlady who bars the trouble makers who need to be barred for as long as they need to be barred. There is another theory that creativity thrives on bile and conflict. I haven't looked at the current cases but generally I ascribe to the former theory, if we want to expand our editorship we need to make the site "nicer". ϢereSpielChequers 23:34, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Loving the reference to Derek & Clive :-) The problem editors are mainly active on articles around American politics, I think. There are two classes of people who might edit those articles: people who want to work together to create neutral content, and partisans. The partisans all think their views are neutral, and anyone holding different views is nekulturny, a liar, evil and must be driven away for the good of the "integrity" of Wikipedia. This is complicated by the fact that Wikipedia typically skews slightly liberal due to its roots in and long time links to the free-as-in-speech software community. Bluntly, Wikipedia will never be a comfortable place for the alt-right, because their bullshit will be challenged. It will also never be a comfortable place for the far left, for the same reason, but in my experience at the moment the alt-right are the ones most zealous in pushing their ideology (hence, for example, setting up an entire fork of Wikipedia just so they can have an article saying GamerGate was about ethics in videogame journalism). Redux: we are going to end up topic banning a number of alt-right supporters and a smaller number of Bernie-bots. Guy (Help!) 23:56, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I certainly agree that WP needs to be nicer, but I think the more fundamental problem we have is that Wikipedia is inherently deceptive to newcomers editing in controversial areas (which is a HUGE proportion of newcomers). The bait and switch we seem to offer is: "anyone can edit" (bait) "unless, as is almost certainly the case, you don't understand the many labyrinthine policies, procedures, and requirements surrounding these topics" (switch). One natural solution to this is to insist, and possibly require, that editors who want to edit in these areas read through the relevant policies first so they can be careful not to violate them. Everymorning (talk) 00:35, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Re "read through the relevant policies first so they can be careful not to violate them" – I have the impression that the majority of experienced editors are unable to understand the policy pages or don't care to take the time to learn them well enough to apply them properly. --Bob K31416 (talk) 10:01, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes I find the WMF messaging to be disconnected from the reality of editing. The encyclopedia is mature in many spots and is actually hard to edit in them and folks in WMF communications don't seem to understand that.

I work mostly on articles about health and it is hard to edit those topics. You have to learn what a reliable source is, and get access to those reliable sources (which is not easy) and then read a bunch in order to master complicated material and then summarize it well, giving appropriate WEIGHT etc. etc. etc. It is hard.

In addition things have been particularly difficult with student editing this semester. Same kinds of issues but made worse as students feel compelled to make their edits "stick" so they can be graded and they often just get annoyed by the community as they are in a "this is my homework why are you getting in my way" bubble.

There is a disconnect between the reality of editing and the messaging and it leads to disappointment/frustration for some new editors and some difficulties for established editors.

All that said, of course we want to the editing community to grow. It isn't easy to figure out how to do that well. Jytdog (talk) 02:55, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, "anyone can edit" does not promise that one will be good at it, nor that one will enjoy it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 09:55, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

As a teacher I'm also intrigued by the user's experience of "anyone can edit" which is that "anyone could have edited". I've never asked my students to edit Wikipedia as an assignment, though we have edited a local wiki. I don't want to think about the battlegrounds at AE, where more than checkers get spilt wrong. Is it just post-election meltdown? Who knows? Things are stormy from Paris (Sciences Po) to Singapore, and none of that is on AE, but a whole host of folks are in the pillory over there, getting rocks thrown at us. Sometimes they miss. Sometimes they don't, and we can sit down and have a pint. Raspbery Pi can run mediawiki, no? Thanks for responding and mentioning templates (actually, you said "better editing software" and "AI", so I started thinking of the template work I need to do on my wiki :)User:WereSpielChequers, I agree with User:Jytdog, my students shouldn't be writing Wikipedia (at least not without having drafted carefully locally, which for lots of local reasons won't be happening soon. ^^) Thanks for all the coherent responses to a poorly worded RfC. :) SashiRolls (talk) 21:47, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I've had several conversations in recent years with people who had edits rejected. The most useful first question I now ask is what were your sources? If people aren't ready to cite sources then their potential roles in the English language Wikipedia are much more limited than they once were. But they do include User:WereSpielChequers/image adding. My second question is what was the topic, and I then explain that everything that can be contentious in real life will be contentious on wiki. But that still leaves over 5 million articles that you can work on. ϢereSpielChequers 21:58, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I disagree with @Jytdog:'s idea that the encyclopedia is mature. It's not. Look up any given scientific concept, and the article will almost always be woefully incomplete, and probably is really not teaching the idea very well. Oh, to be sure, we have tons of interesting stuff, stuff I wouldn't have thought of, but there are so many dimensions to every topic that there are always more. And though it's easy to fill in one or another, it is certainly hard to cover them all - but that doesn't mean "editing is hard" in a way that should discourage new editors. Wnt (talk) 19:49, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Wnt I most emphatically did not say the encyclopedia is mature. I said it is mature in spots. It is also empty in spots and has piles of stinky garbage in spots and has just kind of meh spots. Some topics have been well worked-over, and it is destructive both to new editors and the encyclopedia for new editors not to be given fair warning of that. And WP:CIR is a reality especially in some subject areas. Jytdog (talk) 01:54, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, the number of spots where it's immature give an indication that new editors should have many easy tasks available. And I think they're far more likely to blunder into a war zone or an AE minefield than a genuinely complete article. Then again, I admit my opinion is that an article can only seem complete if one has an insufficient imagination, curiosity, or understanding of the topic. :) Wnt (talk) 01:51, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

• I've long thought that the "Encyclopedia Anyone Can Edit" line is a mistake — or at least a slogan long past its expiration date. No, anyone can NOT edit Wikipedia. To do so requires at least some modicum of subject expertise, some degree of skill in manipulating the (fairly easy) markup language that we use, some willingness to absorb and understand and adhere to the essential elements of site doctrine (thinking particularly of NPOV, which is as important to Wikipedia as The Force is to the Star Wars franchise). That doesn't even touch the requirement of decent grammar and the ability to write at least semi-coherent prose, the necessity of access to free time (which not everyone has) and reputable source material (which not everyone has) and on and on and on. Quite frankly, it is a minor miracle that there are 10,000 or 20,000 people across all projects willing to pull at the oars to make the ship move forward.

What does it all mean? One thing for sure: core volunteers are a valuable and finite resource. Newbies are not made in classrooms or at one day Super Spectacular Edit-a-Thons, they are won one at a time. It takes a mother an hour or two to give birth to a nerd or a geek and a lifetime to raise them. Establishing the lowest possible barriers so that any Joe or Sally can begin editing as an IP isn't the way to get where we need to go, nor should we be overly concerned about the churn of newcoming and outgoing editors anxious to put a few lines of factual or non-factual graffiti in to Donald Trump or any other piece about some hot issue of the day. Those aren't are longterm, true Wikipedians. Never were. They must be found and developed one at a time, elsewhere, and once won over to the project they must be cultivated and preserved with such things as The Wikipedia Library and microgrants to obtain essential source materials or with new, effective tools to make maintenance work easier. Carrite (talk) 16:36, 10 December 2016 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 03:17, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

The issue of new editors hitting frustrating obstacles here, and our slogan "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", reminds me of this quote from Ratatouille:

• "Gusteau: What do I always say? Anyone can cook!
• Remy: Well, yeah, anyone *can*, that doesn't mean that anyone *should*." [1] Everymorning (talk) 00:12, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Also relevant, I think, is that "anyone lived in a pretty how town" or so sez the e.e. cummings cabal ps: isn't Rémy pretty drunk when he says that? pps (you'd have to check prior to the last revert, now... ^^). Also ht:Prezidan & ht:Jovenel Moïse and ht:Elèksyon san frod , se koubouyon san piman (an election without fraud is like a court-bouillon without hot peppers) being the top result for "Elèksyon" would suggest that Wikipedia hasn't quite caught on yet in Haiti. SashiRolls (talk) 00:25, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I think that for newbies, the slogan "that anyone can edit " is fine, something like "be bold". And in most cases the slogan can be, "that anyone can edit and improve". There's more to gain by encouraging new editors than not. Also, new editors tend to be cooperative and usually defer to experienced editors. If you want to look for problem editors, you'll find them more amongst the experienced ones. --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:27, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Systematic problems at US-Russia articles

My first post to this talk, after editing here for over five years.

A new article, Russian influence on the 2016 United States presidential election, is one of a number that addresses recent, apparent conflicts between the United States and Russia. The article begins,

"The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has concluded Russia influenced the United States 2016 election to help elect Donald Trump as President of the United States."

It is sourced to articles from the Washington Post and NPR [2][3], both of which state that anonymous U.S. officials have told the media that the CIA concluded as much. Here is the Washington Post quote, which is typical of media statements on this issue more broadly:

"The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter."

Again, these statements are attributed, anonymously, to U.S. officials who say they are familiar with the intelligence and can speak authoritatively, if not officially, on the CIA's behalf. In our article, there are no officials, attribution, anonymity: we write the CIA has concluded XYZ as a fact.

I've edited on a number of articles that involve recent deaths and BLP issues, that this kind of editing, where attributed statements become fact, doesn't fly in that editing crowd. In U.S.-Russia articles however, despite hard work any many good contributions from editors on all sides, it is far more common. This is especially problematic for anyone with even a modicum of historical knowledge about intelligence agencies: officials may speak on their behalf, they may produce reports, etc., but what an agency has actually concluded on a given incident may remain unknown even decades after it has occurred (if any comprehensive conclusion is reached). I think the stakes are high: the U.S. and Russia are two major nuclear armed powers, and we have a responsibility to write our articles on U.S-Russia issues with neutrality and caution. We need to get it right.

I'm making a post here because I think this deserves community discussion. I'm pinging a number of people: Mandruss and TheRedPenOfDoom who have often corrected me at BLP articles, TheTimesAreAChanging, The Four Deuces and Kingsindian who I've seen provide plenty of commentary on historical articles here, and Ocaasi and SlimVirgin, who have disagreed in the past, but who I think care about careful editing. If any of you think others might have insight, I would very much appreciate your asking them. -Darouet (talk) 19:59, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

In my opinion, this is not a good venue to have a content discussion. Our policies seem pretty clear on how we treat information from reliable sources. As to the anonymous sources used by reliable sources for assertions of fact, I refer you to Watergate scandal.- MrX 20:52, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks MrX for your comment. I think this is larger than a content question, though content is what suffers in the end if we don't research and write these articles with the utmost caution. I'm bringing this here because I think it's been an issue for years, and I see it getting worse every month. -Darouet (talk) 23:29, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree that articles should distinguish between facts and opinions and should be clear on whose opinions they are expressing and whether those opinions have been expressed publicly or are being filtered through anonymous sources. And when opinions are mentioned, we need to explain the degree of their acceptance. I think though the problem is wider than Darouet says. During the recent U.S. presidential election campaign, there has been a group of experienced editors who have been active among all the articles who have in my opinion injected a pro-Clinton bias into them to the detriment of all her opponents. Many of these editors have histories of involvement in controversies on GMOs, Eastern European issues, libertarian-related articles and the 2012 election. They even insisted on using a 2009 picture of her, which of course makes her look younger than she actually is. A group run by David Brock called "Correct the Record" has coordinated people to influence discussions at a number of websites, and I think it would be a good idea to see whether it has happened here. TFD (talk) 22:03, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

There's also been no shortage of very aggressive pro-Trump editors. In other words, there are editors on both sides promoting their views just like most other controversial topics. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:12, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

@Shock Brigade Harvester Boris: I've seen editors who are presumably coming from all perspectives edit productively (pro/anti-Clinton/Trump/US/Russia), and others edit disruptively. Ideally, everyone leaves their opinions behind and edits neutrally. But this is not working at US-Russia articles, and is the point of my post: many articles are overwhelmed by edits and editors that fail to distinguish between accusation, allegation, innuendo, and fact - and are even hostile to these distinctions. For me, who has zero allegiance to the geopolitical interests or political legitimacy of either the U.S. or Russian governments, it is practically impossible to edit on these articles unless I want to adopt a partisan approach. This hurts Wikipedia, and does a disservice to our readers. -Darouet (talk) 23:39, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

As expected, there were pro-Trump editors. But they did not show any evidence of sophistication or coordination and were mostly new editors who managed to get themselves blocked or banned. Although they provided disruption, they were not effective in influencing the articles. TFD (talk) 22:33, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm not aware that we have a policy or guideline that turns a fact ("officials concluded...") into an opinion because the reliable source relied on information from anonymous sources. The Washington Post and The New York Times did not offer their opinion; they reported facts about what government officials have concluded. Whether the government officials' conclusions are actually true are outside of the scope of our role as encyclopedia editors.- MrX 23:30, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

That "also" is much appreciated, Shock. :) I suppose it's frowned upon to post pictures on Jimbo's talk page, but I must say I made SageRad (or was it another sage?) cross trying to add a photo of artwork representing Putin from the Abode of Chaos on any of the "oh no, the Russians are coming!" pages. I don't think it's been deleted from the PropOrNot page in the end... but it did get booted from Fake news website, which, of course, has been another "lively" page. ^^ If you've never seen the Demeure du Chaos, Mr. Wales, I hope you'll take the time next time you're in SE France. SashiRolls (talk) 01:57, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

• I note that you had already started a discussion on this topic on the article Talk page [4]. I think you made a mistake by opening up the same discussion here. You should go back there and respond to Neutrality's message, which I thought was well put. If you wanted more opinions, I think you should have posted only a short neutral request here for more editors to participate over there. Per WP:APPNOTE, "Notifications must be polite, neutrally worded with a neutral title, clear in presentation, and brief..." --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:20, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
  • It is entirely appropriate to take talk page discussions to other fora in order to obtain a wider input. TFD (talk) 22:57, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
  • @Bob K31416: I think my note was polite, clear and brief. However I think this issue needs a larger conversation beyond Russian influence on the 2016 United States presidential election, one you should also participate in. That's why I brought it here. -Darouet (talk) 23:39, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

For a recent example of an appropriate notification here per WP:APPNOTE, see User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 215#RfC about cartoon of Supreme Court Justice Thomas. --Bob K31416 (talk) 01:04, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

• Deep Throat was anonymous. Any further questions? Guy (Help!) 00:32, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't see the bearing of your comment on this discussion Guy. The Watergate scandal revealed that the US government itself illegally tried to influence an American election, "and attempts to cover it up, led deeply into the upper reaches of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and the White House." Darouet (talk) 01:37, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Let me try to set out something that I think will be very close to something that everyone can agree upon. In many cases the provenance of some information is relevant to the readers understanding of the degree of trust that should be placed in that information. It is almost always good writing for Wikipedia to add things like "According to the New York Times, citing anonymous sources at the CIA..."--Jimbo Wales (talk) 04:52, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. I agree that in almost all cases, and especially in contentious political articles, rigorously attributing and sourcing information can only help readers. I have learned things when other editors critiqued my writing by demanding attribution, and wish this were more common practice, above all at the U.S.-Russia articles I've referenced. -Darouet (talk) 07:12, 12 December 2016 (UTC)