User talk:Jimbo Wales

2nd recent article in Entrepreneur magazine promoting paid editing

Last month we discussed the Amy Osmond Cook piece in Entrepreneur, What I Learned When a Wikipedia Troll Deleted My Page". This month, there is another piece promoting paid editing, "Entrepreneurs Are Paying Wikipedia Editors to Create Profile Pages", which we have been discussing at WT:COI here.

Three things.

a) Jimbo, as the more or less official face of Wikipedia to the world, will you please consider talking to the publishers of that magazine?

b) The other thing is that the reporter apparently reached out to a WMF communications person, Samantha Lien. I don't know what Samantha communicated, or how that conversation went, or how well it was reported, but what got into the article was OK but not great. It was this -- people are “'strongly discouraged from editing articles directly about themselves or [about] a subject they’re closely affiliated with,' says Samantha Lien, a Wikimedia Foundation communications manager. 'This is known as editing with a conflict of interest,' she says, and it’s something Wikipedia’s volunteer editors spend a lot of time policing for."

In my view WMF communications people should have a clear and simple message about advocacy editing, including COI and paid editing, that puts it in a context. ~Something~ like:

1. Wikipedia's crazy and beautiful mission is to provide the public with articles that provide accepted knowledge, for free, through a volunteer community of editors. It has succeeded beyond what anybody could have imagined
2. This makes it a target for all kinds of abuse - people wanting to "get the word out" about any number of causes, companies, products, etc. Even universities do it. These people are like industrial polluters who pour waste into rivers. Parts of Wikipedia are like Lake Eerie when it was so polluted that it caught fire. Parts of Wikipedia are very clean and solid.
3. For people who want to get content into WP but don't know how, there are ways to explore whether a topic is appropriate for WP. There is a help desk (WP:Help desk) where they can ask for help, and there are paid editors who at least say that they follow WP's policies and guidelines. (see their statement). There are also paid editors who hide what they do and are like people today who sneak around and dump waste in our national forests.
4. Please don't pollute Wikipedia or support people who do. Volunteers spend a tremendous amount of time cleaning up pollution trying to maintain WP as a useful resource for people who want to learn, and this cleanup takes their time away from building good content.

Something like that. This is perhaps something that the board could discuss with the ED who could then get the communications people on board with the message, so there is a clear and consistent line?

c) Finally, I embedded this in what I wrote above, but I am starting to arrive at a view that we should start pointing to the fact that there are paid editors who at least say that they consistently follow the policies and guidelines. In the absence of information about where people can go for help, the undisclosed paid editing ecosystem just thrives. WMF and the editing community can perhaps starve it by pointing people elsewhere. I am not saying endorse them, but I am saying point to paid editors who follow the Statement. Complicated I know, but the world of paid editors is not going away. Jytdog (talk) 02:18, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Please also see this proposal.... Jytdog (talk) 02:29, 8 July 2017 (UTC) (did it myself, per below Jytdog (talk) 03:47, 8 July 2017 (UTC))

Jimbo doesn't need to step in everytime someone writes a blog post about paid editing. Comms is doing just fine. Sometimes, you present a simple, clear message to reporters and they don't recount it the way you would prefer, or just plain get it wrong. Gamaliel (talk) 02:57, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

As I said, I don't know what happened in the interview. What we can do is make sure that WMF communications understands the reality of advocacy editing in WP and is able to put it in context. I had already emailed Samantha to learn about what happened but she is travelling now. Btw I emailed the executive editor of Entrepreneur myself, as I was worried that they are setting up a regular theme and I don't know what jimbo may or may not do. They (happliy) replied right away and said the two articles were just a coincidence. Jytdog (talk) 03:47, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of articles on Wikipedia paid editing view the practice negatively. At l;east that's my recollection. It might be useful to keep a record of all those articles someplace, as they appear. Coretheapple (talk) 16:40, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

In an ideal world anyone tempted to pay for article creation would be forced to read Wikipedia:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing. Unfortunately that is not possible. But we can promote the observations therein to the press, in hopes that people will pick up on the clue. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:08, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Good point. I certainly agree that proactive p.r. would be a very good idea, rather than the WMF merely responding to press inquiries. Jimbo or some other WMF person should write articles and opeds decrying these paid editing mills and opposing paid editing. Coretheapple (talk) 17:50, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

The idea is that an appeal to high-minded principles like "the integrity of Wikipedia" may fall on deaf ears, whereas an appeal to self interest (i.e., your article can turn around and bite you) often is more effective. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 20:39, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

The problem is that self-interest only works in instances in which the subject is marginal and makes a fuss about getting in. If the subject is notable, then it does make sense to either create an article oneself or pay one to do so. There is no inherent disadvantage to hiring paid editors. Paid articles are not flagged for the reader. Still, you're right in principle and Jimbo or whomever can and should make that argument. It's hard for me as a volunteer to get worked up on this subject if the founder - who has a personal stake in the integrity of the project - is not sufficiently moved to speak out often against it,Coretheapple (talk) 13:36, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

• to risk beating a dead horse, i really think we should start being clear that there are paid editors who follow policies and guidelines, and those who don't, and encourage people to avoid those who don't. Jytdog (talk) 02:48, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I know from direct interactions that there are promotional editors who follow the terms of use and write acceptable articles. I also know that these are a very small minority of paid editors, and that not all the editors who claim to follow the guideliens actually do soI would strongly object to the WMF or anyone giving the message that paid editing is acceptable, because it is sure to be misinterpreted. DGG ( talk ) 09:05, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

User:DGG. There is a fine line between encouraging paid editing, and pointing to people who at least say that they follow PAID, and what I am saying is the latter. We need to move past the discussion about "acceptable" or not - it happens and there is no way that we can stop it, with WP structured as it is. (The conversation about "acceptable" or "bad" is like the alcohol prohibition movement in the US - banning alcohol just promoted the activities of gangsters, right?) One reason I am encouraging formation of a guild or project is to have members of the guild/project police each other and throw out people who don't actually follow PAID. We of course will continue to do what we do, no matter what. Jytdog (talk) 14:32, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

• While I respect our current consensus, and even clean up some blatant COI spam for which due to its inherent notability I can't argue for deletion, I can't stress enough how much we should not tolerate anyone making money out of the free work our volunteers provide to develop and maintain our legitimate content. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:48, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

we do tolerate it, just barely. That is because we cannot ban it, nor could we police a ban. I spend a lot of my time educating paid or otherwise conflicted editors how they can be good members of the community by honoring PAID and COI and the rest of the policies and guidelines, letter and spirit. We do get useful content from such people via their proposed articles and content. We also get way too much awful content added directly to articles by paid or otherwise conflicted editors who don't follow PAID/COI. It is not going away, and we should educate people about the difference between "white hat" and "black hat" paid editors. Jytdog (talk) 14:37, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@Kudpung: re: "we should not tolerate anyone making money out of the free work our volunteers provide" – Content on most Wikimedia Foundation websites is licensed for redistribution under v3.0 of the Attribution and Share-alike Creative Commons licenses. This content is sourced from contributing volunteers and from resources with few or no copyright restrictions, such as copyleft material and works in the public domain. CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported License says that anyone is free to share & remix for any purpose, even commercially. Google and others are making money out of the free work our volunteers provide, and there's nothing we can do about it. We release those rights to them every time we click Save changes. wbm1058 (talk) 16:09, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

That's correct as far as it goes. Anybody can use our content for any reason, commercial or otherwise. But there is a huge difference between making money from using our content and making money by producing our content (e.g. by inserting hidden ads). Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:08, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Nobody here disagrees with that. That is not the point of discussion. What I'm asking here, is whether we should start distinguishing between editors who say they follow PAID, and those who most definitely do not. In a way that is meaningful and public. This is about doing something different. Jytdog (talk)

The discussions have been based upon a false categorization which is There are either paid editors or unpaid editors. That's like saying there are either employed people or unemployed people, when, in fact, a state of employment is usually quite fluid instead of stagnant. The only real solution to this problem is if every editor refuses to be stuck in either the paid or the unpaid category and, instead, embraces the reality that any and all editors, given the current situation, may be a paid or an unpaid editor any time they feel like it. Then, the policies and rules will be applied equally and no one should really care whether anyone is paid on a particular day at a particular time or not, and the whole issue becomes moot, as it is already in a round about way. Realityornot (talk) 03:18, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

mmm I cannot agree with that. COI matters and needs to be managed. Having a COI really does change what people do; this is just human nature. Jytdog (talk) 04:46, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, I understand, it just seemed like there was no real solution or anything else to try, but now Count Iblis has come up with an idea, directly below, which at least at first blush, looks like it might be effective in an active and deterrent way. Realityornot (talk) 15:13, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

We just need to weed out corrupt editors here and that can be done using sting operations. We can create an undercover Wiki-police force who'll pretend to be business owners who want to get favorable wiki-articles written about their businesses. The existence of this operation will be public knowledge, this will serve as a deterrent to not engage with improper paid editing as you won't know if the person you're dealing with is or isn't an undercover agent. Count Iblis (talk) 08:45, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

My views here are well-known already so I don't have a lot to add. My sense of it is that there is a growing consensus to take a few stronger steps to deal with the issue. The paid shills will scream, of course, but that is of little concern to us. I do think that there is one thing that I could do here, at least for Entrepreneur Magazine, and that is to submit to them a piece explaining why the advice in previous columns is very bad. The problem here is that Entrepreneur is really the perfect place for bad advice to cause us problems - it's a magazine that appeals to ambitious small companies who want to grow and who therefore probably aren't (yet) ready for a Wikipedia article, but who would love to have one.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:31, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Count Iblis's proposal seems worthy of serious consideration, I believe. Realityornot (talk) 15:13, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

My proposal is a strategy for managing the market overall, by doing what we can internally to promote self regulation by "white hat" paid editors, and communicating to the world at large that there are black hat paid editors who should be avoided and white hat paid editors who (at least say) they follow policy and are community members in good standing. The Count's proposal is a tactic to play whack-a-mole. fwiw it would be probably involve committing fraud (it is one thing for cops to run a "sting" and a different thing for people to con each other), and I doubt that WMF or the editing community per se would formally do it. Jytdog (talk) 15:43, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Removed edit by the usual banned editor per WP:BANREVERT. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:56, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Not a fan. This doesn't pass the ethics smell test to me. If not fraud – which implies certain legal criteria and civil or criminal wrongdoing – it's at least probably against the job boards' own Terms of Service. E.g. Fiverr's ToS states "Sellers must fulfill their orders" and buyer's identity, if discovered, "shall not be used for any purpose whatsoever". Don't think it's a good idea to promote ToS violations at other sites to help enforce our own. Further, if it is in fact fraud, then it is also a WMF ToS violation to elicit it here. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:16, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

The Fivrr ToS looks like it is totally incompatible with our ToU where the buyer's identity must be disclosed. In that case nobody who uses Fivrr can do paid editing on Wikipedia. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:21, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• Count Iblis's proposal above is original and interesting — it might be a way to differentiate between good actors (those who indicate intent to follow NPOV and verifiability) from bad actors (those who just seek to bill a few hours of work for whatever purpose. There is a difference. Ultimately, however, no such sting operation would have teeth because it is such a simple matter to edit around blocks. Until we have some sort of meaningful registration policy and a requirement of sign-in-to-edit, all this concern about paid editing is akin to a dog chasing his tail. Ain't gonna catch it and it ain't going away... Carrite (talk) 16:00, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
  • This could be also be considered outside this specific context of improper paid editing. In many disputes that sometimes lead to ArbCom cases, we need to judge what the intention of an editor was when he/she edited in a problematic way. This is not always clear and often one gets discussions that escalate the underlying dispute with different editors choosing different sides. The less hard evidence there is to prove that an editor is really guilty, the more such disputes tend to escalate. In some of these cases one can then consider intervening using sting-like actions when complaints are made anonymously to ArbCom, e.g. about harassment on other sites. Count Iblis (talk) 01:37, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

I think black and white lines should be drawn. No paid editors, period. Being paid to create/edit articles for small companies that subscribe to Entrepreneur magazine is bad enough, but we also have a situation where large biotech and pharmaceutical companies are paying WP editors for both reputation management and paying to demonize their competition. The line will be crossed if it isn't a hard one. LesVegas (talk) 17:15, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Jimmy, Thank you very much. Yes, you should write a response to Entrepreneur. Of course you can't do this personally for every publication that advises folks to break our rules, but even one letter would be greatly appreciated. Individual Wikipedians could organize to do this type of thing on a regular basis, but there is some opposition to this from the usual sources. I guess the major question is where and in what form could Wikipedians organize to do this. There are about 5 places we could send similar letters right now. Ultimately, the WMF is best positioned to send such letters. I think they are responding better than they were a few months ago, but a real proactive approach is needed.

Opposition to paid editors inserting hidden ads into articles is certainly growing - not so much in terms of the percentage of editors, since that's always been very high - but in terms of intensity. The abuse by paid editors is also growing and repeating itself as well.

I'll call the repetition Paid recidivism, e.g.

• The Orange Moody extortion scheme is back. We may not have even slowed OM down two years ago. He's still sending the same emails - exactly the same emails - to his victims. I've reported this to the WMF and made sure (with Jytdog) that arb com has received the evidence.
• Bell Pottinger is back - this time in an extremely vicious attack in South Africa against President Jacob Zuma's critics. As far as I can tell Bell Pot didn't technically edit an article, they just wrote all the text, and then told an employee of a Zuma related company to put it into an article, complete with instructions on editing. IMHO just a cynical ruse to avoid our rules. See [1].

So we've still got a lot to do. Fine tuning a few knobs is not going to do it however. I agree with Jytdog that an overall strategy is needed. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:36, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Guild of paid editors notion

• note also posted at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Guild_or_WikiProject_of_paid_editors

I have been thinking about language, and I don't much like the "white hat" and "black hat" language. I think maybe "paid editors in good standing" and "other paid editors" (meaning ones who have been banned or don't follow policy). Not as catchy but "paid editor in good standing" at least doesn't make us represent something that we cannot know is true. But if someone is following PAID some, and has not been indeffed, they are a "paid editor in good standing". We can say that.

I want to ask - at a high and initial level, does anybody here oppose the formation of something like a "guild of paid editors" by paid editors, to do the self regulation thing? There is some interest in doing that at the Talk page of the "Statement" and if this balloon is not getting terminally shot down here, I want to go to work doing what I can to help them plan and form it, and then at some point bringing it to a more community-wide forum to get validation of the model before it would actually launch.... So just checking for "blockers" (to use the dev terminology) at this very initial starting point. Obviously the details will matter. Jytdog (talk) 22:20, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm not going to shoot this down. I'm not totally against it. It could work as part of a larger strategy. But I'm very, very leery of establishing an "approved list" of paid editors. Part of the larger strategy might involve the WMF signing a simple agreement with any paid editor who applies. It could require proper identification of the company with contacts, etc. and a complete list of all paid editing jobs they've done in the last 3 years. Requirements of disclosure on Wiki, following all community rules. An agreement to pay damages in certain cases, with jurisdiction of SF, California courts. In return, the paid editors would get a registration number with the requirement that they place it on all Wiki related correspondence and webpages with text like "We have agreed to follow all Wikipedia rules regarding paid editing. The WMF does not approve or certify paid editing firms. Complaints about our services should be forwarded to the WMF citing this registration number." together with a trademarked symbol.

Presumably, customers would not deal with firms without a registration number, if the WMF got the word out. A minimum quality could be maintained, with penalties for firms that don't follow the rules.

I'm not sure that it would work, but I've seen similar systems work, e.g. for review courses for professional certifications.

The key to any system to work would be accountability (names and contact info), feedback from customers, and review from the community and the WMF. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:47, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Am glad you are not opposed! That is meaningful. But please don't mistake what I am proposing for an "approved list". I very much don't want to go there; the reason why I am proposing a self regulation thing is exactly to avoid the kind of heavy infrastructure and obligations you are proposing as well as any actual involvement of the WMF in making it go.

For people to remain in, they would need to follow WP policy and guidelines; nothing more. We will always be able to indef people who violate policy, that would never go away, but the guild members would police themselves, driven by self-interest, as bad apples would taint all of them. If the guild wanted to issue something like a registration or seal, it could do that. Whether that would matter would depend on how well this worked. Jytdog (talk) 00:53, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

I am very opposed, particularly with this terminology. In my view, there is no such thing as a "paid editor in good standing". It's a bad practice of which we should remain highly intolerant at every level. If you are a paid advocate or marketing consulting you should not edit any Wikipedia entry where you have a conflict of interest, period, ever. These people are bad actors who should be banned and shamed publicly.

I would be less opposed if we thought about some formal recognition for a "Guild of Talk Page Advocates" - people who get paid to come and talk to the community about suggested changes. We should make it very clear and easy for people to contact us and get help, in order to reduce the incentives.

I would even support the WMF hiring 20 active Wikipedians to work on helping companies and people deal with BLP issues, with an absolute ban on paying for the service. Undermine the market for these scumbags.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:25, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

As long as somebody collects the info and it would be reviewable by (some) Wikipedians, and a place for customers to register complaints. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:23, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Very good points above from Smallbones and Jimbo. I like the talk page advocates idea but am opposed to the WMF paying money to editors to help companies and people deal with BLP issues. I think there are far better uses that can be funded with that money, and that the "talk page advocates" should be conversant with site policies. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 18:43, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo, I would be happy to talk, if you like. But what you are saying here is exactly what we need to leave behind; again see the example of prohibition in the US. And your language of "scumbag" is ... unfortunate and kind of sloppy. There are paid editors who follow PAID, and who are clueful. There are, well, scummy paid editors, and the goal here is to choke off their market by educating the public, and that means having something to point to that is not "black hat". Jytdog (talk) 19:39, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• I kind of like the "Guild of Paid Editors" idea. The basic premise we have to accept is that volunteer Wikipedians write about what they want, they write about what interests them. While there are doubtlessly a few people fascinated by the doings of contemporary business, demand for those sort of articles by the subjects (who seek validation or representation on one of the internets most ubiquitous information sources) far outstrips editorial supply. There will be paid editing, it is going to happen — the question is whether the damage of self-serving article creation can be effectively mitigated. It is possible to create and maintain articles in accord with NPOV and Verifiability standards, but there is absolutely no question that it is something that must be closely monitored. Driving things underground by playing whak-a-mole with transient paid editing accounts isn't the solution; we need to find a way to normalize (and thereby watch and regulate) the activity; to insure that those who play by the rules in good faith won't be targeted and repressed, so that we can concentrate upon those who don't play by the rules, cleaning up their messes and getting the perpetrators out of town. I see the notion of a "Guild of Paid Editors" as a step in the right direction. Carrite (talk) 04:24, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

I'll go along with that. Provided we introduce a Wikipedia Guild of Maintenance Workers and pay our New Page Reviewers, OTRS agent, Vandalism Patrollers, and Copy Editors $500 per hour for their work. Oh, yes, jolly good ideas! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:36, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

I realize that you're engaging in hyperbole, but do you really think paid editors make "$500 an hour"? The common rate is more like $10 to 20/hr. and if one doesn't care too much about the caliber of the output, there are gobs and gobs of people in the developing world willing to work for more like $5/hr. or even less. That disparity aside, WMF is LOADED with cash, they literally can not waste it fast enough, so paying a certain number of people to do unpleasant-but-necessary maintenance or creation work wouldn't be out of the question. I'm not saying I am FOR that, mind you, only that it's not far-fetched and worth pondering. Carrite (talk) 18:07, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• I am inclined to oppose the idea of organizing paid editors by way of in house assets; from a WikiProject to a categorization scheme. I am, nevertheless: reasonable, and willing to be convinced otherwise. The burden, however, rests with those who would enjoy such a privilege tough, as yet, I've not seen a request that gave with its asking, a compelling rationale which, I believe, is, necessarily, a requisite first step. It certainly has not been given here; nor even broached, in my opinion.--John Cline (talk) 11:13, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

User:John Cline it is unclear what "privilege" you see here; I tried to make it clear that there would be no editing privileges associated with this. This would formalize what is already going on with the "Statement" linked above. Btw, the statement was nominated for MfD in the spring, and that was overwhelmingly shot down (MFD is here. The community is not opposed to the Statement and associated activities existing. This would just formalize it further and hopefully make it more functional. Jytdog (talk) 20:05, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• just fyi for folks here, so far all the comments the village pump are negative. :( Jytdog (talk) 21:56, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Proposal for WMF to pay editors

• The only compelling rationale that I know of is that our coverage of small businesses and larger but non-famous businesses is relatively limited. I have been thinking lately that a plausible way forward on that would be for the WMF to directly pay Wikipedians to work in those areas. Companies should not financially contribute to this effort at all. The idea is to destroy the market value of these services as a better way to control it than the whack-a-mole, without introducing the horrible idea that it can somehow be OK for people with a conflict of interest to write Wikipedia entries.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:35, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

If the WMF is going to pay Wikipedians to work on any area, then surely there are loads of areas that are more deserving... Why not simply noindex all articles about companies? That would instantly destroy any (perceived) monetary value. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 13:28, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, let's think this through. What areas would be more deserving, and why? Most areas already have good coverage. I'm sure there are areas which are all three of these things: neglected by volunteers, not the object of pressures from marketers, and also of great interest to readers. I would argue that if there are areas which are neglected by volunteers and of great interest to readers, we could likely get them done with more community organization. What I'm really interested here is in completely destroying the fallacious argument that we have to accept paid shilling because our coverage of companies is not as good as it could be. That path feels to me like attempting to cure an infected finger by stabbing ourselves in the heart. And I think the issue of the purity of motivation (to share knowledge, rather than to market a company) is the heart and soul of Wikipedia.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:44, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Personally I focus on one specific niche, typofixing. Typofixing is quite boring, and not as "sexy" as for example vandalfighting is. We have loads of software to fight vandalism, but there is almost no software to find and fix typos. I had to write some myself, and the WMF refused to fund it. The software allows me to fix over 2000 typos in less than 24 hours. I am not claiming to know much about all the other areas, but I imagine that there are people in a similar situation to mine. An RfC asking: "If the WMF hires some Wikipedians to work on some areas, which areas should that be?" seems to be a good idea, and I don't think "articles about companies" would be high up that list. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 14:00, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Not quite sure what you are suggesting here. What do you think would be high up that list?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:02, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Let's have the RfC and find out. I hope stuff to counter our systemic bias. Paying people to write about female scientists from third world countries sounds like a good idea to me, but maybe I am too idealistic. We are doing fine with our coverage of "white" males from rich countries (people like you and I); maybe we can use money to encourage people to write about subjects other than that. I assume you are familiar with WP:BOGOF, we are already sponsoring paid articles about companies. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 14:08, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

I think it's premature for an RfC. I really like your example: female scientists from third world countries.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:28, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, it is a good idea to think and talk about this for a while. Of course funding topic area A does not mean we cannot fund topic area B; we can do both. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 21:52, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• If WMF wants to pay editors, that would be great. It is a separate issue from influencing the market external to WP where people or companies who want articles connect with freelancers and PR companies. As long as this remains "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit", there are going to be paid editors. And the world is teeming, and the demand is always going to outstrip a curated supply. But this proposal could maybe put a small dent in the demand. Jytdog (talk) 20:02, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• I'm not opposed to this, but if this happens, I think the annual fundraising banner needs to allow people to specify whether they are donating to fund editors, or to fund the operations of the WMF and hosting expenses. Power~enwiki (talk) 21:54, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

I am opposed to the WMF paying editors to create articles on businesses. If anything the WMF should be paying editors to clean-up all the ad filled articles on businesses that we have now. One question that would have to be clearly answered before paying to create business articles is "what type of businesses do we want to be covered in articles?" Let me propose a very simple to define group for the US. All actively traded stocks, that is the Wilshire 5000 component stocks. Due to mergers, companies going private, and other changes in the market there are only 3,618 stocks in the "5000" index. My educated guess is that these companies account for well over half of the US non-farm, non-government economy (whether measured by employment, sales, corporate profits, exports or any other reasonable measure). Add in well-known private companies like Cargill, or Koch Petroleum and maybe you can get to 5,000 businesses that we should definitely be covering. Extrapolating worldwide, we might need 20,000 - 25,000 total articles for a similar coverage of business. We already have something close to 50,000, though admittedly not all the ones we want are included now.

The problem with going much beyond 25,000 companies is that the rest of the companies are relatively tiny. Add another 100,000 companies and our coverage in terms of employment, sales, etc. might only increase by another 5%. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:00, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

If price = 0, how much will be demanded?

My point, of course, is that increasing the number of companies we can cover is a fool's game. Right now we don't really have any limit, so we're all over the place with very tiny companies - like a coffee truck in NYC, or a one store donut shop (with jalapeños) near Dallas, an online lingerie seamstress near Oxford (1 "employee" - the owner), lots of very new companies that just want free ads, some tech startups that may have had one round of financing. All sorts of companies that can fake 3 local newspaper articles, but no news source would ever notice when they go bankrupt or otherwise disappear. With that kind of open invitation we can get millions of companies wanting ads - and hiring 20 or 200 or 2000 editors is not going to keep up with the demand. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:34, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• One can also consider a system where points are awarded to editors based on their contributions, contributing in assigned target areas that need improvement will earn you more points. These points can then be redeemed for money or for other purposes. Editors who want to see certain articles improved can themselves award points from their own account. Editors can then donate points collectively to a WikiProject (a chosen participant in that WikiProject then gets the points), these points will then be used to improve certain articles that the WikiProject participants have flagged for improvement. Editors who are found to have misbehaved will lose any points earned by their problematic edits. Bots won't earn points. An example of a point based system is StackExchange. Here you get points based on answers to questions, but the points are not worth any money. But this already motivates people to write good contributions. People who ask questions can award extra bonus points that will be subtracted from their account. Count Iblis (talk) 01:24, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• I like this idea. Right now our rewards for most editors are all intrinsic but this might work in concert. We should consider what kind of compensation would be compatible with the spirit of a volunteer-driven community. It might be stronger if the community got a vote on who is eligible – to prevent malicious gaming, and to promote preservation of community values. I'll discuss at the Wiknic today and see what other folks think. What I'd just discussed with another person was a similar idea, like a tangible but token gift from WMF to the "editor of the month" or something like. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:49, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• I want to pick up on what User:Kudpung wrote about in the subsection above. Probably the single biggest thing that the WMF could do to help, would be to finally give the NPP people the software tools that they have been asking for for years, instead of unilaterally not doing what the a strong RfC called for. This has to do with dealing with adequately patrolling the torrent of new pages that come in, which is serious labor (the hard work of maintaining WP, which the WMF never talks about). Paying people to work NPP might be useful but I don't want to speak for the volunteers who do that work. Jytdog (talk) 02:49, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

The worst thing was getting gratuitous emails from the WMF telling me to lay off. And just look at the absurd claims of 'secrecy' below. If I got a 2p point for every hour I've spent on NPP issues, I'd be able to afford to go to Montreal and talk to the people that matter. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:13, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• I agree with Smallbones that paying editors to create articles on small business is not a good idea. I think it's a terrible idea. Let's assume arguendo that small businesses are a neglected subject. I don't believe they are, but let's assume that. If so, why single out them for attention? Are there no other subjects that are worthy of such support - assuming that paying editors for any kind of article creation is a good idea? I would suggest that, if indeed the subject matter is neglected, it is that small businesses tend not to be sufficiently notable. This is the same reason why so many are a subject of paid editing that why up being speedily deleted. If a business is interesting enough to draw attention in reliable sources, surely our millions of unpaid volunteers will eventually get around to it. The same goes for physicians, musicians, mountain ranges, streets, veterinary medications, varieties of wallpaper, brands of wax paper, etc. etc. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 12:06, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• One other thing to consider. Notability is not temporary. That being the case, what about small businesses that no longer exist but obtained reliable sourcing when they did? If we are to pay editors to write about "living" businesses, aren't we engaged in recentism? Many defunct historical businesses are very interesting. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 12:18, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• I don't really like the idea of WMF paying editors, because it is a slippery slope. The thing that made WP beautiful was its primitive volunteerism and community can-do attitude — and if you ask me the worst thing that has happened is the multimillions of dollars flowing into San Francisco and the cancerous growth of a professional bureaucracy, which sees itself as apart from and superior to the volunteer core. Turning the volunteer core into paid staff would be the final step in this degeneration, and from there the alluring world of paid advertising is but one short step. THAT SAID, there is a clear supply-and-demand problem with Business articles, and the market-based solution (paid editing) in its current form has clear problems in terms of the quality of the output — which frequently violates NPOV, for starters, and leads to a proliferation of garbage pages about seriously unworthy business entities. I wonder if the old "reward board" model might work. A company could post its offer ON WIKI, and those responding would have to do so transparently — their work could be easily checked. That strikes me as a better solution than the off-wiki freelance marketplace. Carrite (talk) 18:21, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
• I am also opposed to paying editors. We have some research looking at the effect of pay on involvement. Specifically there is evidence looked at institutions paying people to donated blood versus requesting voluntary donations. The conclusion was "markets in blood ‘repres[s] the expression of altruism"[2] What I would love to see is the Community Tech Team double or tripled in size. Volunteers could become a lot more productive with some simple tech tools. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:37, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

WP:ACTRIAL

The discussion on this topic has been occurring in a low trafficked page regarding the implementation of ACTRIAL. The WMF, apparently, has agreed to go along with it for a short trial to gain statistical insight. Their reasoning is a six year old consensus on the matter. When it was brought up whether or not a new RfC should be done to reconfirm that consensus it was shot down as unnecessary. Due to the immense change in Wikipedia policy that would result in this trial I felt it was necessary to post this notice to a much more seen board. The fact that this is being done in relative secret, away from the knowledge of most people, is astonishing and should bother any Wikipedian who values community input on such wide reaching actions. Therefore, the notice on this highly trafficked page. Please see a retooled Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed article creation trial for further details. --Majora (talk) 19:26, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Everybody interested should certainly go to that page and comment. As I understand it, the proposal is for a short trial that would prevent non-autoconfirmed editors from creating an article. I don't think that could be characterized as an "immense change in Wikipedia policy." Autoconfirmed means:

"Although the precise requirements for autoconfirmed status vary according to circumstances, most English Wikipedia user accounts that are more than four days old and have made at least 10 edits (including deleted ones) are considered autoconfirmed."

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:57, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

The switch from "account needed" to "specific right needed" to create articles is certainly a massive change to longstanding Wikipedia policy that has been in place for many many years. Only once before has this happened, when the restriction from "anyone" to "account needed" was done. The exact requirements for autoconfirmed and the length of the trial are rather irrelevant in regards to that. --Majora (talk) 21:08, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Even if the switch from "account needed" to "specific right needed" is a massive change (I don't think it is), a temporary test of that change is not. Deli nk (talk) 21:11, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Requiring new users to make a few edits before creating a published article on one of most popular website in the world is really not a major change in policy. We rightfully restrict editing templates, uploading images, editing high profile articles, posting links, and so on. Given that 80% of articles created by new users (several thousand each month) are so bad that they have to be deleted, implementing ACTRIAL should be viewed as part of a positive evolution in how we build and maintain a legitimate encyclopedia.- MrX 12:36, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• This was not done in secret: it has been discussed openly and loudly by all involved. As Smallbones has pointed out everyone is invited to weigh in on the conversation. Kudpung, who is the loudest supporter of it has been keen to direct anyone to the appropriate talk pages, as have I. If you look at the task list at WT:ACTRIAL, you will see that informing the wider community of the change is one of the things that needs to be worked on before implementation. This isn't something we're trying to sneak in the dark.
  An RfC was shot down as unnecessary because the main reason to hold one would have been to seek community endorsement for implementing the firm 2011 consensus without the support of the Wikimedia Foundation. I was in fact one of the people opposing flipping the switch while the WMF was opposed without an RfC. The Wikimedia Foundation agreed to run this as a trial and assist in the implementation. It was the opinion of everyone who had been following the conversation up to that point that implementing the 2011 consensus with the help of the foundation did not require a new RfC. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:21, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

• Yes, this was so secret that we (the community) had to repeatably discuss it with more than one WMF employee. If Majora was ill-informed about AfC, they are welcome to both read and comment when we discuss topics like these. This is a topic that editors like Kudpung have been dealing with for longer than Majora has been an editor. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:32, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

  Relative secret. Gosh it is like people purposefully skip over words to try to make their side stronger. Relative. As in, done on a low trafficked page as opposed to someplace like the village pump that has many times the number of people watching it. It wasn't on T:CENT either. The conversations with the WMF are totally and completely irrelevant as the WMF isn't the enwiki community. I didn't know about this "approved" trial until I stumbled across the page and you better be damn well sure that a lot of other interested editors also didn't know. Hence, my post on a well trafficked page. I don't get why you are making this out to be a bad thing that I notified people. --Majora (talk) 22:48, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

  I'm going to have to agree with Majora, I consider myself pretty well informed about whats going on, on wiki and this is the first I've heard of it. Why wasn't this advertised via T::CENT or a watch-list notice? The only reason I'm seeing this now is I watch this page. This could have been handled a lot better with more community input via village pump or some other high trafficked page. This is all based off of a 2011 RFCC's consensus, just to give some perspective look at how much RFA has changed in the last 6 years. --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 22:58, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

  In fact the issue did come up at Village pump in February this year, with links to the NPP page where subsequent discussions have proceeded: Noyster (talk), 08:03, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) Because it appeared that there was an accusation of impropriety or that we were hiding something: nothing is being hidden. WT:NPR is more active than some of the village pumps some days and has activity from a wide range of community members. Those of us who have actively been working on this have been quite open in bringing it up, because part of the problem is that many people already think that this is the policy. As I said, if you look at WT:ACTRIAL you will see that informing the members of the community that will be most affected is part of what we need to accomplish before it is rolled out. I'm fine with this being posted here: I was planning on posting it to the village pumps when we had updated the page more myself. I stand by the sentiment that an RfC isn't needed: this concept has been discussed consistently for the last 6 years and has been a major sticking point in the relationship between the WMF and the volunteer community. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:04, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Before being so verbal, I suggest Majora AGF and do their own Wiki-forensics and find out what it's actually all about. There has been so much completely open discussion on it recently all over en.Wiki that it will probably take up to three hours to read through it all. Anyone who is seriously concerned, rather than shooting from the hip with indignation, should be able to devote that much time. Either that, or they should help out with the very maintenance tasks that would have avoided this fact finding mission from even being needed. They will then probably understand why the Foundation wants this trial before it will stop blatantly refusing to upgrade the WikiMedia extension which has been the main cause of it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:34, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• The proposal has been on Centralized discussion, for example: 11 July 2011 Discussion about the trial duration for requiring autoconfirmed status in order to create articles.
  The real "being done in relative secret" problem is that the vast majority of editors have no idea how much garbage is added to Wikipedia every day, and how hard the new page patrollers have to work. The secret is that the growing pile of no-hope pages degrades Wikipedia as the longer it takes to remove junk, the more entitled the authors of such junk feel. Requiring auto-confirmed status is a kindness for new editors because the requirements for a successful article can be explained gently before the prospective new editor invests their energy. It is no longer satisfactory to hope that someone else will eventually clean up all the spam, hoaxes, trolling and garage-band stuff. Johnuniq (talk) 02:52, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
• It seems like you haven't read much about ACTRIAL.And "six year old consensus"? There are tons of policies here which were agreed upon 10 or even 15 years ago, and I don't see any complaints about, say, IAR or NPOV on my watchlist accusing editors of bad faith and using large words rather than addressing the actual consensus and raising fresh concerns about it. Esquivalience (talk) 03:12, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
• The most ignorant and B.S. comments arrive from those with the least experience on the lines.And the 6th law at WP:CGTW is so damn true!Also as Johnuniq has commented--the reason why you folks are abound in the relative ignorance is that you are so cut-off from WP:NPR and precisely possess nil idea about the system and the problems faced by new page patrollers.And if you glance through WT:ACTRIAL you will see that informing the members of the community, before it's execution, is one of our top priorities.Winged Blades ^Godric 04:59, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oh, yes, Cameron11598, RfA most certainly has indeed changed in the last 6 years. I'll give you that. Down from 52 to 15 successful candidates a year. Also all because the community at large can't be bothered to do anything about it despite Jimbo's 2011 'RfA is a horrible and broken process.' We gave up on our massive WP:RFA2011 project because of the bad faith and trolling that was thrown at us from all sides by people who insisted there was nothing wrong with the process. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:36, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
• I concur with Majora. Certainly, a local proposal of such a nature at Wikipedia:The future of NPP and AfC is likely to receive little opposition, and perhaps even overwhelming support if the list(s) comprised largely of individuals who agree that such measures are necessary were notified. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 08:47, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
• @Majora: I have no idea why you thought posting here would be an improvement. At some point you must have realised that 80% of the posts here are by the same old faces puffing hot air about the same old things, while the other 20% post because they are under the slightly phenomenal misapprehension that Wales has any influence at all in this community, and that a post here will actually get things done :) unless of course, that's your intended target demographic, in which case the quality of any further debate on ACTRIAL has likely just sunk a few percentage points. Happy editing! — fortunavelut luna 09:17, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
• Implementing ACTRIAL will not impede any existing community member in any way. Nothing is being done in secret, but why should any existing user even care - unless they are involved in WP:NPP or WP:AfD or WP:AfC or an Admin would does a lot of deletion work? Anyone who volunteers in these areas knows all to well the unrelenting firehose of spam, copyvio, and nonsensical garbage that we deal with. ACTRIAL will place a small, easily overcome, barrier for brand new users to create brand new pages. The statistics show that over 80% of brand new pages by brand new users are total crap and get deleted. We know that even a little bit of experience on Wikipedia before creating a brand new page dramatically improves the quality of new page creations. After 10 edits and four days the success rate of new pages is about 80% - the inverse of non-autoconfirmed users. I hope that the spammers and idiots will find ACTRIAL too much trouble, but I'm very confident that serious contributors will continue to get their feet wet editing existing pages first before trying to create a brand new topic. Legacypac (talk) 12:02, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
• I was going to write a paragraph only to find that Legacypac has already posted just what I was going to say. The whole community will be notified about ACTRIAL when various details are worked out. Existing editors who do not work at NPP or AFC will be completely unaffected, and those that do will most likely find their workload dramatically reduced. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:39, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
• This is a general comment, not intended as a reply to anybody. I am going to be very precise.

• The discussion(s) about ACTRIAL were never intended to be secret, or discreet. Even though in 2011, there was an RfC. That is pretty open. There were several discussions after that from time to time, at appropriate places/talkpages.
• Even though I have very weak support for "AC-TRIAL", it is just a trial (duh). It is going to have a run for a limited time. After getting statistics, it will be decided whether to convert it in a permanent policy or not. I dont see any long term harm, or disruption from this trial run.
• I always believed, and still do, if a large number of editors (with NPR flag) perform the task of reviweing the new pages regularly; then the situation for ACTRIAL will never arise.
  • Currently there are less than 450 editors with NPR flag, with most of the work being done only by aound 10% of the editors.
    • I have been trying to increase the NPR flagholders by a few different means. A long time ago, i posted a request here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Request/Help_Wikipedia_by_reviewing_new_articles! Which is still not responded to. I had even specially told three WMF employees after posting the request (diffs available). Yet, there has been no response at all.

All I am trying to say here is: lets go with the "trial", if editors still think the trial shouldnt be a permanent thing, then instead of shooting it down; the "guys above" should come up with a solution. I believe, in current circumstances recruting more worthy editors as NPR is the best shot. I have tried to explain it in User:Usernamekiran/Strategies for NPR, but I could never finish that essay. —usernamekiran(talk) 12:59, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• Will someone with superpowers pull the trigger and implement the thing? I agree it could have been more public: the NPP talk page is trafficked by 30-40 editors, which is not a whole lot. Also, saying, "This has been at CENT, back in 2011" is useless, because how many of us here were active on Wikipedia 6 years ago? I don't believe ACTRIAL is trodding on anyone's rights unjustly, I also don't believe it will solve the world hunger and peace the way some expect it to. But I have no problem with a short implementation just to see. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 13:34, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

The 2011 posting is significant because it was a massive RfC with over 500 participants. In the following years it has been discussed so frequently and in so many places with so many people that you'd likely have over 1000 currently active editors involved. Any RfC involving ACTRIAL will likely be one of the largest if not the largest RfC Wikipedia has ever seen as Kudpung has pointed out before. There will be one: after the trial is complete. To do one before to reaffirm the clear wishes of the community since 2011 would be to commit to holding two massive RfCs which would suck up the community's time, when no one who has been involved in the conversations, including those who oppose the change, really doubt what the outcome of the RfC would be. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:23, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

• I'd not heard of ACTRIAL until after I got involved earlier this year in helping with New Page Patrol after I learned there were over 22,000 unpatrolled pages created since Dec 2016 that needed attention. Why would I? - I don't frequent these hallowed halls of mighty discussion. But when I understood its purpose and the nature of the ACTRIAL trial, it made complete sense. Why this thing has rumbled on and not been tested is incomprehensible. It's clear to me that those who did propose the trial have always been keen to raise its profile and get some action. Nothing could be further from the truth to suggest anything was being done in secret or even 'relative secret' - except perhaps that those in a position to take this forward were not listening to the continued calls warning of how serious the situation was becoming. Must get back to the remaining 17,000 pages, now. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 15:12, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
• I am a reluctant supporter of ACTRIAL, because other approaches to reducing advertising on WP have not succeeded, and there is an hypothetical basis for this approach, and so we need to test it. so we need to at least test this approach. My own prediction about the result, based on the known data, is that it will reduce the number of new articles about 5 to 10% at most, still leaving at least 80% of the spam--and probably proportionately increase the work at AfC, which is even worse, because fewer people look at it. But the way to determine the actual result is with a test, not with arguments. Anything else is opinion, and the variety of opinions here about the effect it will have implies that most of them must be wrong. We need to actually see. (And the proposed method would have a technique for bypassing it for editathons, which is one of my major practical community activities.) DGG ( talk ) 16:21, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support, as I imagine most would who volunteer at NPP and AfC which have graduated from being a daunting task to overwhelming because of WP's unsustainable rate of development. The time involved cleaning up and sorting through all the unsourced/not properly sourced articles and marketing promotion is known to cause burn-out; thereby bleeding over into editor retention issues. Add to that, the relentless pressure of COI, SPAs and advocacies who present relentless arguments and look for ways to bypass the process. The whole thing reminds me of A Coon Huntin' Story by Jerry Clower @5:47 when he says..."Well just shoot up in here amongst us, one of us gotta have some relief." ^{Atsme📞📧} 18:20, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

nd opposed ACTRIAL at the original RfC. because of its difficulty it would cause well-intentioned new users, and I still think that's a valid concern.

User:Majora - I would be interested in what you think ought to be done differently, either in how this experiment ought to be publicized better, or, more importantly, in how you think the experiment ought to be conducted differently, or in what harm you think will be done. Are you saying that, by shutting out new editors who come to contribute one article to the encyclopedia, we will lose a resource? I am familiar with (and mostly disagree with) that argument, but I would like to hear whether it has been balanced against minimizing the load of crud from new editors. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:06, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

I haven't been following this page for a year or so, because it is mostly a free-vent zone for editors who want a last right to complain, and I probably will not follow it in the near future. I see that it still is a free-vent zone. However, those who read it have the same right to ask questions of the venters as the venters do to post to it. Also, if User:Jimbo Wales decides that ACTRIAL really would harm the encyclopedia, then at least he will likely provide an argument that we haven't heard before. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:06, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: My only goal was to advertise the situation. Period. Full stop. My goal was not to vent. But to inform. Jimbo's talk page is one of the most watched places in the entire encyclopedia. Other places, such as AN would have also fit but would have been inappropriate as it wasn't directly tied into administrative duties. The responses in this section show that that goal was achieved (although the vitriol shown to me by some was totally unnecessary).

My personal feelings about ACTRIAL are that it is an easily gameable system (the level of autoconfirmed is laughable when you think about it) that will simply result in those wanting to put crap into the encyclopedia being able to do so while shutting out those that actually want to contribute constructively. If this is what the community wants, so be it. I am and always will be a supporter of the community and the consensus they provide. But consensus can change and there are numerous people here that were not when the original ACTRIAL RfC was done. People say that the community is still behind ACTRIAL but we really don't know that as the community has changed substantially. Again, if this is what the community wants I'm for it, even if I disagree with the overall premise.

For those of you in this thread that went down the "but they don't know what it's like!" route, you can't be any more mistaken. I have done NPR before. Before it was locked away behind a user right. I know what it is like and I understand your frustration. As for actual alternatives. Tools, Robert, tools. Tools that can be used to quickly and effectively sort and find bad topics for removal. I mention the use of peacock terms yesterday on IRC and how they could, conceivably, be used to sort new articles into those that need to be looked at. The idea was ran with and a tool has already been created (https://www.ltakb.org/wordwatch/). It is semi-functional but it shows how these types of things can be used as opposed to further restrictions on creation. --Majora (talk) 17:59, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Tools, Majora, tools? This belated bringing to an actionable pitch of important measures to protect Wikipedia's integrity and principles is the result of 6 years of the Foundation's blatant and persistent refusal to to maintain and fully develop its own very tools that would have made this trial and its possible consequences probably unnecessary. Fortunately, under pressure of our complaining about the staggering and sudden increase in the NPP backlog since June last year, they have now acquiesced and admitted that the trial is not only necessary, but essential.

There is this popular misunderstanding, taken out of all context by its detractors, that Actrial is only about introducing a minor restriction to the creation of new pages. That's only one part of it, the other two thirds of it are about properly informing new uses and providing the genuine ones among them with some help rather than slamming a CSD door in their faces - do some reading please.

You do realise of course, that whether it was implemented or not, the consensus to roll out the experiment no more needs re-debating than any other policy or software that ever reached a consensus. Or are you and Godsy going to insist that we re-debate BLPPROD, PROD, AfD, and all the CSD criteria and Wikipedia policies? Probably not, but without AC-TRIAL results enabling us to find solutions for the future, Wikipedia will degenerate into a slum of spam, adverts, hoaxes, attack pages and general vandalism, and it's happening already. It rather surprises me coming from you, a scientist who deals with research and facts, and such a valiant and vociferous defender of the very copyright rules part of our experiment will enable us to find ways to protect. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:44, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Comments on New Editors

Yes, this is a heavily watched page. It is, in my opinion, a page where a lot of empty comments are posted and watched. When I was watching this page, I never saw any action result from a posting to this page. Thank you, User:Majora, for clarifying that you posted without any specific objective.

The banner at the top of this page includes: It is ‘’not’’ a place to publicize arbitrary on-wiki disputes.

I will offer a few comments here that I have offered elsewhere about new editors. It is well known that new editors, more specifically editors, one of whose first edits is a new article, come here to contribute positively to the encyclopedia. That is well known and is an article of faith that is not subject to practical question. At the same time, they don’t understand what is expected for a new article, and many of their articles are either tagged for speedy deletion or proposed for deletion, and that is very often their last (as well as first) experience with Wikipedia. That is, we lose them almost as soon as they offer their services. So, if they really have come to contribute positively to the encyclopedia (and it is a matter of faith that they have), something needs to be done to keep these new editors. We need a corps of meeters and greeters to welcome these editors enthusiastically into Wikipedia and keep them, rather than just losing them. It isn’t reasonable to expect the current New Page Patrol editors, whose job is to keep crud out of the encyclopedia, also to perform the function of engaging and instructing the large number of enthusiastic clueless potential new editors whom we are losing as to how to contribute the quality articles that they have come to contribute.

In my own observation (which may be incorrect, because it apparently differs from what is known as a matter of faith), new editors, or, more specifically, contributors of new articles, fall into three overlapping classes. The first is those who come to contribute to the encyclopedia. I and some other experienced editors think that they would be able to help out better with some of the five million articles that we already have rather than by adding one article that we do not yet have, but that is a side point. The second is new editors who are simply clueless. Some of them don’t write a sentence. Some of them have a topic that isn’t encyclopedic. Some of them also belong to the first class. The third class is new editors who come for a self-serving reason, to publicize themselves or their company, or their cause which will right a great wrong. The second and third classes overlap, in that some editors can’t write a coherent paragraph about their company.

I will make my own perverse individual comment about the policy of Do Not Bite the New Editors. While this behavioral guideline (technically not a policy, only a guideline, but in practice a dogma, a religious principle at least as basic as the pillars) is an excellent concept, as it is applied and interpreted, it does more harm than good. It does good, of course, in encouraging experienced editors to be courteous and welcoming to new editors in the complex environment of Wikipedia. Unfortunately, it also has two negative effects. First, it is one of the first rules with which new editors become familiar, and, as a result, combative new editors, such as social justice warriors, use it as a cudgel to resist well-meaning advice to try to be collaborative, because they will say that they are being bitten, when they are being cautioned. Second, it leads experienced editors to overlook the unpleasant truth that occasionally new editors, especially new paid editors, but also combative editors, need to be bitten.

What specific concerns does User:Majora have about ACTRIAL as an experiment, other than a desire to discuss it publicly in a place where discussion is watched and has little practical effect? Robert McClenon (talk) 20:06, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm not naive, Robert McClenon. I knew full well what I was getting myself into when I posted here. I knew that the backlash would be swift and come from many. But I did it anyways. Not because I was looking for a discussion here. Quite the contrary actually. That is why my very last line in the original post was a direction to WP:ACTRIAL. This was, again, merely an informative "announcement" if you will. An announcement that I knew would get push back, that I knew would elicit pronouncements that I was a "serial opposer", that that I "didn't" understand, but which I also knew would reach a great deal of people. That is why I also posted it at WP:VPP.

What specific concerns do I have? That other measures have not been tried. That there are still tools to be created, tested, and implemented that could avoid this. That ACTRIAL should be an absolute last resort. I don't think we are there yet but I have no problem accepting it if that is the community's wish. That is my concern. My fear is that people have gotten so trapped in the "ACTRIAL is the only option" mindset that we are not thinking of alternatives. That we are doing something extreme without exhausting other options first. --Majora (talk) 21:27, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Majora, you're talking about ACTRIAL like it is a permenant thing and not a temporary research experiment. After it is run there will be a follow-up RfC after everybody has a chance to look through the statistics. If the wiki starts to burn down, which I highly doubt, we can stop it in the middle if there is a consensus to do so. Like I said above, no one really doubts that an RfC to hold the trial would pass and that the community has supported this consistently over time, and after this post and the post at VPP, I still don't see that there is any demand by the community for a relitigation of the need for a trial. I am glad that more voices are coming to the conversation and I hope we'll get more help at WP:ACTRIAL in figuring out what needs to be done in advance and what should be tested during it. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:58, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

You make a fair point. Trials are meant to be temporary but Wikipedian historians would say that that has not always been the case. The restrictions put in place after the Seigenthaler incident in 2005 were also supposed to be "temporary".[3][4] Now, please don't anyone jump to conclusions that I am against account creation to create articles. I'm not. Just stating a fact that previous "temporary" changes have not exactly been as temporary as they were initially made out to be. --Majora (talk) 22:38, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Majora has seen this, but I've added drafts of announcments at WP:ACTRIAL. I'd encourage everyone who is interested to look and comment. I'll also repeat here what I said there: I have no intent of sneaking this in as permanent, and want an RfC afterwards because I think the trial will likely show us other things that need to change.

Kudpung and Scottywong, have also pointed this out to people who want it to be permanent immediately. Kudpung and I have probably been the loudest voices of late on this, and Scottywong was on the original team that was working for implementation. I'll commit here and on as many places as needed that we are implementing a trial, and that I will work with anyone to create an RfC that will run one month after the scheduled trial date is over. What I don't want is a massive 1000+ person RfC that will take a lot of energy from the community before the trial when I think there isn't a demand for it, and when that energy could better be spent after the trial working out kinks and seeing what the best way forward is. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:08, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Tools, Tools, Tools

Perhaps I am asking useless questions, but the mention of tools makes me ask what tools are being proposed. User:Majora writes: “Tools, Robert, tools. Tools that can be used to quickly and effectively sort and find bad topics for removal.” Please be specific. I’m a computer scientist. I can read a spec. Please provide a concept of a tool that will identify crud quickly. Please don’t just say, after years of discussion, that you or the WMF need more time to brainstorm perfect artificial intelligence to screen out crud. Please give me some idea of how artificial intelligence will identify crud without false positives. In my opinion, even a few false positives, identifying valid stub articles or valid full-length articles as crud will do more harm than an experiment in restricting access by new editors for four days and ten edits. You mention “peacock terms”, but much of the crud that I tag for CSD isn’t even coherent enough to contain recognizable peacock terms. If you have a specific idea, please mention it.

By the way, I agree with User:Majora that ACTRIAL, once implemented, almost certainly will become permanent, but I don’t understand why it is considered to be an “absolute last resort” to be tried only when all else has failed. It looks to me like a much simpler and more plausible experiment than asking for more time to imagine tools, but maybe there is something that I don’t understand.

What tools? Please don’t just say “Tools” as a sort of mantra without saying how the tools would identify crud without false positives. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:08, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

We have already proven that bots can determine with high accuracy if an edit is vandalism or not and take appropriate action. That alone is proof of concept for the greater use of bots to flag certain things. The peacock terms tool that was quickly thrown together is an example of things that could be used to help reduce the burden on reviewers. The greater number of terms the greater a chance that it is pure spam. There are patterns to the crap. You just have to look for them.

To be frank, I don't believe that restricting article creation will actually do much good. As mentioned previously, people who want to put crap into Wikipedia will easily get around the restriction. Autoconfirmed is a low bar for those that want to introduce nonsense. Since I don't believe that any good would come from this, the only thing left is the repercussions. The restriction on actual good faith editors. Since people will continue to come up with crap, we shouldn't stop looking for those tools anyways. I've already resigned to the fact that article creation restrictions are probably coming and going to be permanent. Again, I'm not naive. I've already come up with an example, Robert. A specific idea that has already been created (although semi-functional and needing refinement). I'm continuing to brainstorm but I shouldn't be the only one doing so. --Majora (talk) 23:25, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Robert, if you want something in a spec-like form check this out, especially topic #11 "automated sock identification" and #11b "scoring" which I wrote. I think this is doable enough that there are aspects of it in Aaron Halfaker's ORES work (not claiming credit, just saying there are similarities). Also #32 "checkuser oracle" which is kind of a dream now but I'd appreciate professional feedback on the idea. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:18, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

I am all for using ORES for sorting and identify problems in new articles. I won't even pretend to to even begin to understand the underlying architecture of how ORES works and how far it can go. I just know that its use on Special:RecentChanges is telling of its potential power. --Majora (talk) 01:24, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Somebody should ping Halfak (WMF) on this. Yes, we need tools that will help automate how humans sort between the garbage that gets submitted and the real encyclopedic gold. Bri's suggestions at 11b should certainly give the WMF AI folks a good start on what we need when it comes to paid editing garbage. I'll also point out that business article scoring is likely very different than general article scoring like ORES. Business garbage articles usually have lots of text and lots of refs. It's the quality of refs that count, but that might be fairly easy to score - think WSJ and Financial Times vs. Press Release. There are some key give-aways. Lists of awards that nobody ever heard of before, product lists. Highlighting the CEO/Founder who is the greatest guy in the world. Age and size of the company, but the bad articles always seem to leave out all the numbers I'd like to see. Little things like sales, number of employees, number of stores/outlets. But the big thing is adspeak. Most American are trained from birth to recognize when somebody is trying to sell you something. Adspeak is the most recognizable thing in the world, except when you are speaking it. It dominates all garbage business articles - the marketing/PR folks writing the article just can't help it. My guess is that AI can spot adspeak a mile away. A tool like that wold be invaluable. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:32, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support trial. Thanks for the heads up. While I know of ACTRIAL I did not realize that a trial of it was moving forwards. Exciting news. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:20, 17 July 2017 (UTC)