User talk:Jimbo Wales

Osmosis: Wikipedia medical articles hijacked by paid editors working for private foundation

TL;DR summary: Wikipedia -- from wiki meaning quick, and encyclopaedia, meaning not YouTube. As an editor, I should be able to edit the article and quickly change it. As a reader, I should be able to verify facts against reliable sources. I cannot do this if a paid editor uploads and embeds an entire article in video format. It becomes WP:OWNED by a private organisation. -- Colin°^Talk 18:02, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I am very concerned that Wikipedia medical articles now embed videos created by Osmosis. These videos are uploaded by an editor user:OsmoeIt who declares to be paid by the foundation to create and upload them to Wikipedia. Osmosis appears to be funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is a private philanthropy foundation created by a founder of the American medical firm Johnson & Johnson.

Wikipedia is, I believe, fundamentally a project collaboratively edited by volunteers. While it may link to other websites containing medical information created by third parties, I hope the Wikipedia content itself is fundamentally user created and open to being collaboratively edited. For audio-visual material we have a history of accepting content that is not created by volunteers, provided it is freely licensed. However, this content is mostly images or short video clips which can easily be substituted for another by any editor.

Here, though we have lengthy videos that often comprehensively replace the article content in their scope. Take Epilepsy. Here we do not just have a short video of a person having a seizure, but a nine minute video documentary covering the entire article topic. There are several issues with that:

• The content cannot be edited. [While theoretically, someone can take the CC BY SA video and make a derivative work, it is not realistic to do that as the narrator would be different and it would be very hard to achieve the same visual style].
• The content begins and ends with publicity for a third party.
• The content is unsourced and therefore does not meet our editing policies.
• Some content is outdated, and it is not possible to fix. For example the video uses the outdated term "complex partial seizure"
• The video does not fit with our style guide for medical articles, referring to "patients" rather than "people with epilepsy".
• The video contains American English slang terms such as "spaced out" which would not appear in professional writing and may be unfamiliar to our international audience.
• Wikipedia is primarily an encyclopaedia, not a YouTube channel, nor a documentary. Videos should supplement the article text, providing information in ways that cannot be done by reading alone. Instead here, we have whole article topics in video format.

Here is what happens when an editor challenges the material in one of these videos in Dementia with Lewy bodies:

• Video removed and discussion started on talk: "With no mention of two of four core symptoms, this video is outdated" -- User:SandyGeorgia
• video restored without discussion or gaining consensus "Sure. Will request they update it." -- User:Doc James
• video restored again "I have restored the video. They say they are willing to update it." -- User:Doc James.

Another example to Coeliac disease

• Doc James adds the video to Coeliac disease, which is a featured article. -- User:Doc James
• Video removed by BallenaBlanca and discussion started on talk Talk:Coeliac disease/Archive 5#Coeliac disease video "I do not agree with the inclusion of this video...I repeat, these "old ideas" are “very dangerous” and the reason which most celiacs remain unrecognized, undiagnosed and untreated. So I removed this video" -- User:BallenaBlanca
• Video restored without discussion or gaining consensus "lets see if they are willing to update the video based on the concerns you have raised" -- User:Doc James
• Video again removed by BallenaBlanca and discussion continues on talk.
• User:OsmoseIt says "The target audience of our videos is for medical students" and "We'll implement your feedback in our next revision of the video."
• video restored again by Doc James "It is still useful content" -- User:Doc James
• Video moved out of the lede by BallenaBlanca "This video is the same version, it was not improved. I do not agree its inclusion in the page as it is; if we let it, at least should not be in the lede, I think it has to be left in Pathophysiology section until it is updated." -- User:BallenaBlanca

So we now have content created by a private organisation that cannot be removed by any editor with concerns about its content. Instead the video is forcibly, and without discussion or consensus, restored to the article by edit warring, with just a promise that this third-party will at some point update it.

There are nearly 300 of these videos added to many of the major medical article topics. In addition to the Canadian User:OsmoseIt, another editor User:Tannermarshall is involved, of which we know nothing. But the biggest player here is Canadian User:Doc James. I can find no discussion at WP:MED where Osmosis is discussed as a possible project the community might approve of. Yet the material is added with edit summary "Videos have been released under a CC BY SA license and uploaded as part of a partnership between Osmosis.org and meta:Wiki Project Med Foundation. I can find no mention of Osmosis at meta:Wiki Project Med Foundation. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Osmosis page was created by Doc James "We are working with Osmosis to create medical videos under a CC BY SA license." That project page contains almost no discussion -- these videos are not in fact being reviewed by the project or community prior to being added to articles by Doc James. I must conclude that the "we" is Doc James, and not WP:MED nor the Wikipedia community.

While the project to create and add these videos may appear well intentioned, this is not IMO, what Wikipedia is. Would we accept it if our history articles embedded documentaries from the History Channel? Or our current affairs articles contain vidoes by Fox News? A CC BY SA licence, and an educational purpose is not sufficient reason to embed content from private third parties. Wikipedia is being privatised and collaborative editing denied. -- Colin°^Talk 10:34, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

If they were well done, presented the consensus of scholarly opinion, and made available free, why wouldn't we? I checked the dispute on coeliac. I'm at a loss to understand what "danger" BallenaBlanca is talking about. The video is a reasonable description of coeliac as I understand it, as a late diagnosed patient. Obviously BallenaBlanca has a different view, but this is completely mainstream, and one thing that is dangerous is rejecting mainstream content in Wikipedia medical articles because we have a different view. I don't know if BallenaBlanca is medically qualified (Doc James is). Guy (Help!) 12:09, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

If you like it, User:JzG, then sure, link to it as an external link. Doc James is not an expert on Coeliac disease, and since when did we start dismissing editors because they don't publicise their qualifications or are lay. As a lay editor with a Featured Article (Ketogenic diet) I find that rather offensive. But let's imagine you are a medical authority on Coeliac disease. So, exactly how, on this collaboratively-edited encyclopaedia, are you going to edit any mistakes you find, or if you wish to update this in a year's time with the latest consensus advice? And which part of WP:V allows us to replace-in-video-format article content but not apply any sourcing policies? -- Colin°^Talk 12:23, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Actually, User:JzG, User:BallenaBlanca's talk page states "I am a Doctor in Medicine. Gastroenterology Specialist." So not only are your comments on their medical status inappropriate on an encyclopaedia which, last time I checked, didn't require a "MD" after the user's name to be able to edit, but they are also wrong. If we believe the statements made by both these individuals on their qualifications, then Doc James is totally out of his depth, as usual. But fundamentally Wikipedia discussions are not settled on the qualifications (or lack) of editors, but on the sources used to justify article text. In this case, we neither have article text nor sources. It is the anti-Wikipedia. -- Colin°^Talk 13:14, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Park your hysteria, please. I said I didn't know if BB is medically qualified. That is televant simply because medical articles are a magnet for lay activists. As I said, I see nothing dangerous about this content. It seems mainstream to me. Guy (Help!) 13:35, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

User:JzG, you are dealing with this as though it is a content dispute. Concentrating on whether one particular video is mostly OK isn't the point. -- Colin°^Talk 13:58, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

No, I am looking at one of the examples you cited, which is a subject that is important to me (as an adult-diagnosed coeliac), and not seeing any problem. Free content that fairly represents a mainstream view of the subject, does not appear to be a problem to me. Guy (Help!) 17:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Inserting any video or other media content into an article is a question of whether there is consensus for inserting it or not on the article discussion page, not of the professional qualifications or prior endeavors of the editors. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 13:06, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

This page never fails to provide regular doses of hilarity. I am in stitches (ha!) at the sight of an amateur encyclopedia author criticizing the lack of medical expertise of an actual doctor. Gamaliel (talk) 21:20, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Gamaliel: I know it seems strange, but the problems are based on and evidenced with citations to the most recent, highest quality reliable sources-- focused on content. Problem being the videos don't have to (and don't) meet WP:MEDRS (or even WP:RS). Presumably, when you need a specialist, you go to one rather than a GP, because no one has time to keep up with every medical specialty and all of the publications. Nor should they try to! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:58, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@JzG: did you read the talk page discussion at Talk:Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB)? Here it is again. They do not present, in that case, the minimum of consensus of scholarly opinion. On the two of two I have checked, they have real errors. There is remarkably clear medical consensus on DLB, that was well established before the video was inserted, and which they apparently were unaware of. (Neither was Doc James, based on the effort it took to get him to understand the issue with REM sleep behavior disorder in that article, its lead, and its infobox.)

There was one installed at FA Tourette syndrome until a few days ago; it is now at tic disorders, but still has issues even in that article. After years of carefully keeping the POV wording, "suffers from" out of the TS articles, there it is, along with an inaccurate description of tics. The medical consensus DSM-5 criteria for TS most clearly states that not all people with TS "suffer" -- there is no significant distress or impairment requirement. Similar to DLB, Doc James is defending these videos without in-depth knowledge of the topic.

So, in three cases demonstrated here now, editors who have in-depth knowledge of the sources on a specific topic are trying to explain to people who don't have in-depth knowledge of those topics why these videos don't belong in our articles. Wikipedia editors have to engage in a dispute (that apparently involves edit warring) to remove an inaccurate video from an external source, indeed, a source that has products for sale and no about us information on their website to establish their reliability. This is COI paid editing with every video providing a website link to their shops with products for sale. I am more troubled that there seems to be no en.Wikipedia discussion about these videos, and yet they are being systematically installed on medical articles by one editor. Not seeing the hysteria from Colin that you mention. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:05, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• Take a look at WP:MEDRS. You will see that, "well done, presented the consensus of scholarly opinion, and made available free" is nothing like as restrictive as MEDRS is. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:16, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

• Some years ago, Jimmy Wales was pleased to announce that the medical fraternity wanted to become more active on Wikipedia. They would import good, reliable, encyclopedic information. What have we ended up with ? A torrent of subliminal advertising ! I agree with JW on most things but this paid for activity has got to stop.Aspro (talk) 12:16, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• I'm disappointed that this issue was not raised on WT:MED before being brought here. Looie496 (talk) 13:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Looie496, there isn't actually a medical aspect to this issue. It is fundamental to what Wikipedia is. But it would be been nice if WP:MED had even discussed these videos on wiki or with the wider community. -- Colin°^Talk 14:01, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
    • I am seeing it more broadly as a COI issue, in which Doc James is involved with furthering paid editing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
      • What you are seeing is the equivalent of Doc James supporting a WiR, as he does for many Wikipedians in Residences and educational efforts. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:03, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Imagine you have worked on an article and taken it to Featured Article status like Tourette syndrome (another example article where Doc James edit warrs over the video). Every sentence is professional-level prose. Every fact sourced. The topic is comprehensively covered in text. Then someone plants a block of text in your lead with a big box round it. The block is titled "Content created by Osmosis". The bold Comic Sans font paragraph covers much of the article topic, but is written for medical students. It gets a few things wrong and out-of-date along the way. It ends with Facebook and Twitter links to Osmosis. Well, you'd be upset and want to either remove or edit it. But when you press the Edit button you get told your edit is denied. Instead you get a web form where you may submit change requests to Osmosis. After describing the problem in the box, you are thanked for your help in improving Osmosis and promised your comments will be taken into consideration for the next version of the video. Whenever that might be.

Wikipedia -- from wiki meaning quick, and encyclopaedia, meaning not YouTube. I should be able to edit the article and quickly change it. I cannot do this If someone embeds an entire article in video format, it can become WP:OWNED by a private organisation. -- Colin°^Talk 13:58, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Per Colin's comment above, it does seem that having a block of embedded content that – practically speaking – can't be modified by anyone except the original uploader is difficult to reconcile with the wiki ethos.

Placing a block of content in the middle of a Wikipedia article that credits an external agency at the beginning and end of the video, and rolls credits naming several contributors at the end, also violates the spirit of WP:WATERMARK and MOS:CREDITS. It highlights that this material isn't really Wikipedia article content, it's just an interstitial ad. (Having watched the video on Lewy body dementia just now, it might as well have ended with Ask your doctor if donepezil is right for you!)

At best, the content in these videos is simply a recapitulation of content that should already be present in the articles. This is functionally a way to circumvent the guidance of WP:ELNO—by uploading their privileged, (practically) unmodifiable content to Commons, they are able to paste their preferred video articles straight into the body of Wikipedia pages. If the videos were hosted externally, we wouldn't link to them at all, as they "...[do] not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article. In other words, the site should not merely repeat information that is already or should be in the article. Links for future improvement of the page can be placed on the article's talk page."

As an aside, Osmosis' use of a round logo with muted blue-green-red color palette is sufficiently reminiscent of the Wikimedia Foundation logo that I actually went to check whether there was an official link between the organizations. While I expect that they're sufficiently distinct for trademark law purposes, I found the design choice to be uncomfortably suggestive, especially as it appears at the beginning and end of each video. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:09, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

On the issue of donepezil, I am slowly working through the DLB article (which was awful), and have not yet gotten to the Management section (or Causes, Pathology, and a few others-- the article was horribly outdated). When I have finished updating the page (need at least another week), I will take issue with other things in that video. Yes, I agree this is an ELNO problem; I don't want to see us furthering the interests of this org, even in External links. And I agree that we need to address videos at WP:V. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:24, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree with the OP. It is good to include these as external links (similarly to how The Periodic Table of Videos is included at Osmium), but presenting them as they currently appear at Epilepsy isn't acceptable. It promotes "Osmosis" and is in a location where "wiki" content that anybody can edit is expected. power~enwiki (π, ν) 15:36, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• User:Colin nice job climbing the Reichstag. Like most who do that, your post misrepresents the situation. You write that there has been no discussion. This is not true - they were discussed here -- Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Archive_76#Videos -- and several other times as well as this search shows. Your behavior here is reprehensible. Jytdog (talk) 16:15, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Jytdog, would you believe me if I said that I did not see that discussion in my search results? Perhaps not. Anyway, that discussion involved very few editors not already linked to Osmosis. Such as User:Soupvector who claims he "helped their founders with Osmosis during its early days". The other discussions are quite superficial. -- Colin°^Talk 18:00, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
    • I believe that you came at this emotionally and half-cocked, and the result was a thoroughly incompetent posting. Jytdog (talk) 18:15, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• Jyt, while your tone is unhelpful, that initial discussion is. The problems with these videos were expressed early on by multiple medical editors, and installed on "consensus" of a minority. Why did the project go forward? Also, a reminder about local consensus; this is not only a medical article issue-- it is one that should concern anyone who cares about COI in paid editing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:22, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• PS, that red link raised flags, so I went to check if I needed to file an SPI. No, but the first edit summary is of interest to this discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:27, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Your attack on Doc James above is horrible, and noted. Jytdog (talk) 17:26, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Very interesting to see the Doc James contributions here. When newbie User:Chrisbospher added the words "for profit" to clarify Osmosis's position as a company, he was reverted and taken to ANI. Doc James claimed "The group doing medical videos at Khan has split off and formed an organization called Osmosis" User:OsmoseIt writes on Commons "We are not a spin-off of Khan Academy. Could you point me to where you saw that we were? If that's written anywhere then that is indeed a mistake and I'll fix it, but to my knowledge we've never claimed to be a KA spin-off." So, we have false and misleading information being corrected and improved by a newbie who is then sent for punishment at ANI. The user is dismissed as "someone with an axe to grind" and "only here for one purpose—to have the extremely useful medical videos deleted" and "The claims of "free advertising/marketing tool" are obviously over-the-top". Well perhaps Jytdog if you could stop worshiping the WP:MED deity for a moment, you might think that perhaps uneditable content owned by a private for-profit corporation on all our medical articles, may well simply be freemium teasers for their subscription material. -- Colin°^Talk 18:00, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

You want to go yet further making wild claims and alienating everybody, knock yourself out. Almost everything you have written here is half-wrong and tilted. I will not be responding to you further, as you appear to be too hysterical to reason with. Jytdog (talk) 18:12, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Does this help clarify your stance? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:37, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Is it news to you that I work on paid editing and COI issues a lot? My thoughts on those issues are very clear. They are also not black and white. There is always context and the context-less framing that both you and Colin have put on this is sloppy at best and just ugly at worst. Jytdog (talk) 20:33, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

At Talk:Breastfeeding#Inaccuracies_in_video four months ago, I brought up problems with accuracy, sourcing (i.e. no sourcing), editability (i.e. not community-editable), and excessive advertising in the Osmosis video for the Breastfeeding article.

To focus on one of the inaccuracies, the video claims that "Breast milk contains all the nutrients a baby needs for its first year." The overwhelming consensus among health organizations is that this is not the case, and solids should be gradually introduced starting at around six months. Introducing solid foods too late (which is tempting for parents because solids are a hassle) leads to poor growth, anemia, and feeding problems. [1].

So here we have content in a Wikipedia article that contradicts medical consensus, would foreseeably harm small children, and is not reliably sourced by WP:MEDRS standards. What would you do about that content? (Note: Gandydancer removed the video earlier today, so this is a hypothetical question unless she is reverted.) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:22, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

We now have five or six (?) examples already of videos that don't reflect easily known medical consensus, with several examples now of edit warring to retain them. This is paid COI editing at its worst. How do we go about removing all of them? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:43, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Sure SandyGeorgia, Doc James is corporate shill. There are issues with the videos but you are so busy slathering on resentful garbage that the actual issues cannot be discussed. What a sloppy campaigner you have become. Jytdog (talk) 19:41, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree with SandyGeorgia, Colin et al. Yes, the section title is over the top, and yes, that made that it took me longer to make up my mind.

Bit worried about Jytdog personalising the dispute to such a degree.

Re. SandyGeorgia on how to address this most efficiently: WP:COIN? List there, in a new section, editors involved with the organisation that produces these videos, and the articles where these videos were (initially) placed by such editors. Don't know whether consensus would be straightforward on that noticeboard, but doesn't seem impossible. A further step could be that henceforth such videos can not be placed in Wikipedia articles without prior talk page consensus (and certainly not placed by editors with a COI w.r.t. the organisation that produces them). Seems fine to keep these videos at commons though, reachable with a click on the commons link under "in other projects" in the left margin. --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:55, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Francis thanks for your comments. I don't think such videos should be embedded in Wikipedia at all, no matter who wrote them or paid for them. It really doesn't fit our model for article development or policies for sourcing and editing content. Wrt the section title, there are 300 of these videos covering many of the major topics in medical articles. Today's YouTube generation are likely to watch the video and not read the article. So I think "hijacked by paid editors working for private foundation" is quite accurate. -- Colin°^Talk 20:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) User:Francis Schonken my thoughts on the video issue are here at WT:MED. This is not some big crisis. What is going on here, is just Colin and SandyGeorgia grinding axes.

This whole thread was kicked off by Colin who is very, very invested in the epilepsy article and it is the video there that kicked off his having a cow over this.

if you read carefully through this you will see both SandyGeorgia and Colin actually targeting Doc James and work he has been doing through the WPMED Foundation to make content available in the developing world - which includes concentrating on the leads of articles about health, getting them translated, and including video content in the lead, which are then all packaged onto cheap hard drives connected to wifi beacons and shipped all over the place.

both colin and sandygeorgia are grinding axes that have little to do with the issue at hand - which again, is not a crisis. Jytdog (talk) 20:28, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Could you convey what you have to say without personalising? As written, drenched in ad hominem, it has zero impact on how I came to think about this issue. This also has nothing to do with Doc James and his work. Commons is far more international than English-language Wikipedia, so if left the choice I'd choose commons as a vehicle for these videos, not a Wikipedia in a particular language. --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:57, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

This whole discussion is only typical reichstag-climbing. I posted my careful thoughts on the issue in the link I provided you above, again here. This "discussion" is invalid from the section-header onwards and should go no where. It is just an effort to mobilize drastic action by skewing the issues and leaving out key aspects. I am posting here only to call out the bullshit. Jytdog (talk) 21:02, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes I read that. Screams "Commons!" to me, not "Wikipedia!". --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:09, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. As I wrote there I look at the video thing with askance and I do not have the know-how to participate in editing them (like I don't have the know-how to edit templates in lua, for example). It is also not clear to me if having videos that are recapitulating the textual WP:LEAD(this is actually what they are) intended to serve as an AV equivalent of the LEAD, is a good thing or a bad thing , but there is no room for an actual discussion of that, the way this discussion has been framed and prosecuted by its protagonists. Jytdog (talk) 21:27, 26 March 2018 (UTC) (redact Jytdog (talk) 22:13, 26 March 2018 (UTC))

A kind of Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia 2.0 then (for a limited set of articles, only involving the lead section, but with imagery). Still rather something I would link to (at Commons) instead of using them as a sort of second lead image. I've looked at one now: with the publicity at the start and at the end they should be removed from Wikipedia on sight, with a stern warning (if not more) to those who ever thought it a good idea to place them with these characteristics in an article lead section. If used as a thumbnail image (which I think they should never) the caption should be clearer on what one is clicking in to ("video explaining..." doesn't cut it for me). --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:46, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Jytdog:, I am curious why you say these videos are "recapitulating the textual lead", because that is not the case in any instance I have looked at. If that were the case, it wouldn't be necessary to sit through the whole thing(s) to uncover all errors. Do you have an example where this was the case, and do you know if that changed? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:01, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

My sense is that this is the intention -- to serve as an AV version of the lead. I did not mean "take the words written in the lead and videoize them". I meant "provide the AV equivalent of the LEAD". This is kind of an interesting idea to me. Whether the execution of the collaboration is done well or poorly, and whether there is too much benefit for the collaboration partner, are all things that can be discussed, and do not need reichstag climbing in order to discuss. There were other things I wanted to do on content, but instead i have been dealing with this drama/bullshit. There is no crisis. This can be worked through calmly. Jytdog (talk) 22:13, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I get a very different sense from the ones I have seen-- the one now parked at tic disorder is trying to combine various articles (TS, tic and tic disorder). I think. OK, so could we now start discussing real content issues, and real issues that drain editor time and prevent us from working on content ? I guess I am not going to finish treatment at DLB today after all :( Which was my goal, since I pick up five more reviews tomorrow at the clinic. I have as much time at DLB into dealing with issues similar to this in the lead, as I have editing. I hope you might consider that getting WP:MED to focus on content as we very clearly once did is ... relentlessly discouraging. For the person who "founded" MEDRS, and worked a very long time to get it through, I hope you understand Colin's position. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:22, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Could you please cut the "Reichstag" and "drama" and whatnot which you keep repeating? As unhelpful as the "hijacked" in the section title. Thanks. --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:26, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

What I will do is stop commenting here. There is a discussion going on at WT:MED and one is enough for me. I think I have beat my particular horse quite to death here, as you noted. Jytdog (talk) 22:37, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Jyt, could you please calm down the rhetoric? Doc James is not a paid editor; the Osmosis guy is. But Doc James is open to the claim that he is acting on their behalf by edit warring this content in (prior to this discussion, I was unaware that was happening on so many articles). As to sloppy-- this is a huge distraction. I am trying to write an article. Could we keep our priorities, and the discussion, focused on how these videos impact content (and the editors who try to improve it)? There is a clear example at Talk:DLB. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:00, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken, I am wondering if an RFC to get them all removed at Commons might be a better option. But I know nothing of how Commons works, and am more interested right now in trying to finish working on one of the articles where this came up :) It is really hard to focus on dozens of secondary reviews with this issue overshadowing. Thanks for the suggestion, though. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:05, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Wouldn't worry about commons: as said, if asked the question, I'd probably keep them there. --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:12, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree, they are valid content for Commons, but not Wikipedia. Some editors, I think, have focused too much on "ooh free educational medical videos" and totaly forgotten what Wikipedia actual is. -- Colin°^Talk 20:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Meta-discussion, not fun to read

You and Colin are the ones climbing the reichstag and flaming everything. I am calling you out on that sloppy garbage. Both of you. What resentful people you are. Neither of you do anything here for months and months and then you show up screaming bloody murder about all the work that other people are doing. If you want to improve content then do it. Neither of you have come anywhere even close to addressing why these videos were being added. What you have written here is sloppy, lazy, resentful garbage. I do not respect any one of those things. Jimmy's page is the last refuge of scoundrels and campaigners in WP. We see this every day. That is what you've become. Jytdog (talk) 20:16, 26 March 2018 (UTC) I will ask you again to tone down the personal aspects you are bringing to this discussion, remind you that quite a few editors besides Colin and me have raised the same concern (see discussion at WT:MED), and ... gah ... you got me, I have been such a slouch at editing lately! Jyt, one tries to improve content,and is derailed by this sort of thing; it's most discouraging. Perhaps you aren't aware of just how we lost Colin (without whom, we would not have WP:MEDRS today). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:36, 26 March 2018 (UTC) Your call for "civility" is entirely fake, when what you and Colin are doing with this pseudo-crisis reichstag-climbing is just personal ax-grinding. There is no crisis and neither of you have dealt with any nuance in the discussion of these issues. What you are doing here is bullshit - speech intended to persuade without regard for truth, which I am calling you out on, and clearly so. Jytdog (talk) 20:47, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Break 2

• One thing in all of this is certain — this is not going to be settled by arguing on Jimbo Talk. If the videos are such an issue then a couple of editors who familiar with the issue, say @SandyGeorgia and Doc James:, should put together a site wide RfC on whether to include these in articles. Placing these in many articles is a question for the community. Even before we get to the issues of accuracy there is the question of giving Osmosis privileged positioning for their content when there is no evidence of a formal relationship with Wikipedia. At the very least the Osmosis banner needs to be edited out but, I assume that can be done by anyone with a video editor. Jbh ^Talk 20:20, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Jbhunley, in my experience, Wikipedia and Commons are often too quick to make a proposal and then get people voting. That tends to polarise comments and focus too much on any flaws with one solution. The discussion was only opened today and it covers multiple areas of policy: COI, paid editing, proxy editing, sourcing of videos, appropriateness of long videos covering entire article topics, inability to edit videos in a wiki manner, edit warring, bullying. Perhaps there are several possible RFC's. I think they need to be proposed by someone capable of neutrality and discussion prior to making any community proposal. Someone experienced with creating policy and getting consensus. I don't think Doc James is at all appropriate for that job. Nor do I wish it. -- Colin°^Talk 20:42, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
    • @Colin: Hmmm... I can see that. I was thinking of being able to get buy in from both camps but you are probably right that things are already too polarized. The reason I think getting a community wide RfC up is it, hopefully, get a resolution process started before the dispute spreads. I can see the problem with kicking off a poorly considered one in the heat of the moment too.
      I would suggest first addressing where these videos conflict with site-wide policies like RS and V. There is also the question of giving Osmosis a privileged position at Wikipedia. As it stands there are two root issues 1) the Osmosis banner in the video is spammy and, since there are so many articles with the videos, appears to be a Wikipedia endorsement of Osmosis. 2) the videos provide narrative information which is impossible to verify which may contradict information in the article. I would think that these would have failed MEDRS out of the gate and I am extremely concerned that some of our to medical editors seem not to apply the same rigor to the information in these videos as they do to what is in the article. The people most at risk from bad information in the article are the same group who would be turning to these videos to get medical information. Jbh ^Talk 20:59, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
      • • Jbhunley, just for the record, for anyone unfamiliar with who I am, since I don't edit here much any more, I created WP:MEDRS in 2006 and pushed it to an official guideline. So, yes, to see WP:MED support medical content that is entirely unsourced, never mind poorly sourced, is most grieving to me. -- Colin°^Talk 21:17, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
      • @Jbhunley:, thanks for measured responses. I don't see concern for the dispute spreading, but a neutrally framed RFC is needed. Most of the medical editors who have weighed in on this discussion here and at WT:MED are quite experienced editors, and I don't see any risk that many of us are going to go around deleting the videos without consensus (previous edit-warring aside, which will hopefully cease). Since multiple issues have been raised on various pages about all of the various policies and guidelines and aspects of Wikipedia editing that are in play here (I am thinking also of ELNO, MOS:IMAGES, MEDRS, V, RS, WP:WIAFA, and others) an RFC should be drafted, but first with careful discussion of all of the pieces in play. I do not know how much I can participate; I have a medical situation in my family, and edit as I am able to get sources while I am at the hospital. Things change by the day. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:15, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
        • Being neither a medical editor, nor a writer of RfCs, I think that the issue could be addressed with a two-part RfC question:
          • Should long form videos, included in articles and purporting to cover the topic or part of the topic of the article, be subject to Wikipedia's content policies and guidelines.
            • If not all policies and guidelines should they be required to meet sourcing guidelines like WP:RS, WP:MEDRS and WP:ORGIND?

To me the answer is a no-brainer. Anything which purports to represent a topic on Wikipedia must meet our content policies and guidelines. Once that is established it becomes the responsibility to whomever wants to produce such a video to come up with a format. As far as the Osmosis videos go I would suggest that if they are ultimately allowed that the producers be asked to upload versions without the Osmosis branding. If they decline then either a separate RfC on the applicability to ELNO to these videos or simply encourage editors to go through all of the videos and remove the Osmosis branding. They are, after all, freely licensed and if a great hew and cry were raised the arguement that they were spam becomes very strong. Jbh ^Talk 22:05, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• As a not-anonymous physician-professor who volunteers here with the intent of contributing in concert with others, and having been a pretty severe critic of Osmosis, I really don't appreciate what I perceive to be Colin's veiled aspersions cast above about a COI I might have with Osmosis (at the time they were students they did not tell me of their commercialization plans, and I can assure you that I did not receive a dime or equity). More than others at the time, I was quite critical of the idea of posting these videos - for many of the reasons stated above (proprietary, promotional, un-editable); I sunk hours into editing the Google Docs they posted (after unsuccessfully arguing that the scripts should be in Talk/sandbox space); ultimately, I did think that the ones generated collaboratively were a net positive but likely to become stale. I stuck to content in my area of medical/scientific expertise. I am not sure anyone did more (critical) editing of scripts than I did - but at some point I lost interest because I felt that I was going it alone, and I really did not feel that it was a collaborative effort (and I'm busy). I don't find the tone of the discussion above collegial, FWIW, which may be relevant to those who wonder why it's hard to recruit/retain academic editors. — soupvector (talk) 21:01, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
  • soupvector, thanks for clarifying your position. I don't think my words "that discussion involved very few editors not already linked to Osmosis. Such as User:Soupvector who claims he 'helped their founders with Osmosis during its early days'" were "veiled aspersions cast" as you were open about your link, which is all I stated. The discussion did not bring many fresh eyes from WP:MED and certainly did not involve the wider community deciding that getting a private organisation to redo wikipedia articles as videos embedded in the lead was a good idea. -- Colin°^Talk 21:09, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
    • Thanks for clarifying. The phrase "redo wikipedia articles as videos" seems overstated - these videos did not replace content, simply sat alongside. I think the format is not a good fit for WP for the reasons many have given, but "redo" seems intentionally provocative/territorial. There are many learning styles, and at their best these videos seem like a net positive; I would certainly prefer content of this quality that can be edited collaboratively and that is entirely non-promotional. — soupvector (talk) 21:29, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
      • soupvector, I am struggling to find an alternative than "redo" for content that covers exactly the same topic scope, but in a different format (video). It isn't even all visual in the video, with loads of text in webm. Yes, a major issue is that video documentaries cannot be collaboratively edited in a wiki fashion. Even if the technology existed, one would almost certainly need a computer generated narration, because humans do not all sound alike or talk alike. Can you imagine if a reader had to listen to all the editors of an article read the word's they had contributed. -- Colin°^Talk 21:48, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
• I appreciate this discussion and, FWIW, offer my uninvolved perspective. I am not a medical professional at any level, just an amateur encyclopedia author and avid reader. I do not see hysteria in Colin's presentation. I do see capitulation in aspersion based rebuttals like "climbing the Reichstag", "thoroughly incompetent posting", and the incipient regurgitation of the hysterical label. Nothing says "my argument is weak" more clearly than these fallacies of relevance. Aesthetically, the video's presentation is poor and they are a considerable distraction as a lead element. Especially if you enlarge your text, as I do, to compensate failing vision (the media's frame quickly becomes hugely disproportionate, and its lack of a meaningful caption defies even its own unclear purpose. I resent the island mentality that this issue is the provenance of WikiProject Medicine. The silver lining I see in this grey cloud is that Osmosis may have single handedly ended the infobox war, but the ante and stakes have also been raised. The ensuing cause, however, will not be called lame.--John Cline (talk) 06:28, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Inhouse

Is there no funding for us to make theses vids? Don't think we would need to ask for much cash.....some cash for hosting software so Wikipedia editors could collaborate on making videos of this nature. Having a third party doing this no matter who they are looks bias on our part.--Moxy (talk) 18:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Moxy, while we have enormous content problems in biomedical and health articles, I am seeing it is increasingly difficult for editors on Wikipedia to actually work on improving content, as they are distracted by issues like this (and several others) that are taking over medical articles. I am sorry to see so much editing time taken by these videos, which should be an easy delete based on all of our policies and guidelines. I would be more sorry to see even a bigger drain placed on our content by editors instead working on videos that create a difficult WP:V and WP:MEDRS issue. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:22, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I would think It would bring in a new set of editors (those interested in regurgitating content in video format) vs our content editors....I for one don't have an interest in making vids....but millions out there who have zero interest in writing may take up this torch. --Moxy (talk) 18:27, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I see the problem as those editors who seem to "have zero interest in writing ... [have already taken] up this torch". Distractions like this one take valuable editor time away from actually working on our Wikipedia content. Efforts at WP:MED are increasingly off-en.wikipedia focused. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:40, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

So let's bring it back home...take control...get the Graphics lab involved etc.. Let's propose solutions over walls of text about the problem. We have thousands of editors that do noting but mess around with non-content stuff. Let's put out a call to action.--Moxy (talk) 18:52, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

The problem here is we already have too many people involved who are not topic experts, not up-to-snuff on recent high-quality reviews required for sourcing medical articles, so medical misinformation is being spread. I would be happy to have no further distraction to attempts to improve written content. Writing medical articles is hard; what these video problems all have in common is that people are making and spreading them without thorough knowledge of the topics or sources. Let's not encourage more of same! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:06, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes we should all go away and let you and Colin do everything. Everyone else is clearly a biased idiot or paid shill. Jytdog (talk 19:41, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Moxy, while creating the content by volunteers would remove some of the issues, it still remains a fundamental problem that this content is not editable and yet is extensive enough to cover whole article topics, rather than illustrate a single point with visual. I have raised concerns about the lack of sourcing for any of these videos at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability. It seems to me that once one goes beyond illustrating a fact or two, the leeway that we give to images wrt WP:V becomes a problem. Wikipedia is a project where editors collaborate to produce articles. And one where anyone can edit easily and quickly. By offering the article in video format, a single user can subvert our policies and editing model, and demand an all-or-nothing approach to its inclusion. While such videos may be acceptable to Commons, they aren't appropriate for Wikipedia. Perhaps there is room for another free-content project where videographers collaborate to produce educational videos, but that isn't Wikipedia, and the output seems more appropriate for YouTube than a hyperlinked fundamentally text-based encyclopaedia. -- Colin°^Talk 20:10, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Avoid using images to convey text? "Moving images" should probably follow the rule (or one similar to it) too, I suppose. --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:21, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps we should have Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Don't replace the entire article topic with a video :-) -- Colin°^Talk 20:29, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

This is BS. Not one article has been replaced by video.

Speaking about distracting medical editors. Gah we have user Colin bringing unfounded statements to half a dozen places.

That user has made at most a couple of dozen edits to Wikipedia articles in the last two years! With two, yes that is correct two edits having been to a medical articles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:27, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

You might think about that, Doc. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:36, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Rather than spreading conversation out across more places I have provided a more detailed response here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:59, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

I just wanted to let everyone know that I've read all this with great interest and I am reflecting on it. For me, the allegations about COI and "a torrent of subliminal advertising" require a lot more evidence, as I don't really see it. A charitable foundation creating educational videos under a free license is a good thing. On the other hand, I do think there are interesting (and hard) questions about what happens if such a video has errors or ambiguities or could in any way be improved, since it's quite hard for editors to actually do that with a video. (Text is wonderfully fluid, video is much more frozen in form.)

There is also a valid question about the style of the videos, which is super casual. The first line of the 'pneumonia' video goes like this: "Alright, so checkout this dude,..." Not really an ideal match for Wikipedia's style.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:49, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

subliminal advertising" is the art of not making it obvious. I dare guess that you are more more able than most editors to see through to the gist. But having a background in sales and advertising, I suggest your read a 'very old book' : by Edward Bernays. He wrote our bible and was a marketing genius. For instance, he persuaded women the that could be seen smoking cigarettes in public in a time during the 1930's when it was not approved (to promotes sales) and regretted later in life that he doubled the the lung cancer rates. Read the book and then tell me me if medical orthodox marketing knowledge is not doing the same in 2018. I was formally in a world where we earned our salaries by pulling the wool over other peoples eyes. You are in the position where you can get easy access to consult and chin-wag with professors of medicine who have no affiliations to any 'for profit organizations'. WP values proof but after speaking to those that know, you might have some other thoughts about the policing (by a few very active editors) of proof , evidence, and reliability as it applies to WP- if you know what I mean. Aspro (talk) 15:51, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Wrt "A charitable foundation creating educational videos under a free license is a good thing." such material belongs on Commons. Also I don't see the distinction between a private charitable foundation and a private commercial organisation. Both may have goals that do not align with ours. For example, these videos are originally designed to train American medical students, and that is their goal and interest. That does not align with our goal of educating the general readership and an international audience. There is a conflict of interest there, never mind any possible bias or censorship that the foundation may impose on its authors. Wikipedia is only collaboratively edited at the level of text, and is only verifiable via in-text citations, and can only meet its CC obligations for documenting authorship and modification history via textual means. Commons, where these videos are hosted, is not a collaboratively edited project. They just don't fit Wikipedia. There may be a place for them elsewhere in the WMF family. WikiVideo? WikiTube? -- Colin°^Talk 09:19, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Enforce the usual watermark policy

We are Wikipedia, which means we are thieves and proud of it, because we serve the People. If we take an old PD book from Google, we edit out their watermark, just because we don't like it. Obviously these leading and trailing logos, taking actual eyeball time, are something we *really* don't like, so the videos should be trimmed by any editor to remove that spammy and unwanted content. Wnt (talk) 14:40, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Yup it is fairly easy to do. The beginning of the video from Osmosis was removed here to take this out. And we have updated that Wikipedia page to include the version without it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:47, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

I am blocked for life on Swedish Wikipedia, but not on English or any other Wikipedia.

The reason is that I made an attempt at tackling a highly sensitive political issue - that Jewish slaughter (shehitah) is banned in Sweden. The reason is that the Nazis (National Socialist German government of the 1930's) pressured the Swedes to do this. At the time, the Swedish government was a coalition between the Social Democrats and the Agrarian party - a forerunner to today's Center party. Sweden is alone together with Norway and Denmark in having political power vested in peasant farmers. and these parties - in Sweden and Norway were pretty racist having as a policy to refinde the blood of the Swedish/Norwegian people (folk) and the minister responsible in Sweden for pushing the legisltion through was the Minister of Justice who was from the agrarian party.

A prime mover for the legislation who spoke a number of times on the matter was Otto Wallén, who said at one stage in the Swedish Riksdag - "I am not ashamed to call myself an antisemite.

Swedish wiki entry on Otto Wallén The exact quote is:

Jag erkänner gärna, herr talman, utan att blygas att jag idag är antisemit /.../ Den asiatiska folkstammen passar icke i sällskap med vår hyggliga svenska folkstam

I readily admit, Mr Speaker, without embarrassment that I am today an antisemite ... The asiatic tribe does not suit the company of our fine upstanding Swedish tribe.

However, the immediate problem is that the article on Skäktning is wrong and i cannot correct it.

The very first sentence is:

Skäktning är en slaktmetod föreskriven inom judendom (kosherslakten) och islam (halalslakten). I båda fallen avlivas djuret genom att halspulsådrorna skärs av med kniv.[1] Skäktning is a slaughtering method within Judaism (kosher slaughter) and Isam (Halal slaughter). In both cases the animal is killed by the arteries being cut with a knife.

Well this is not the case. there are two major arteries and two major veins that supply and drain blood from the brain - they are the carotid arteries and jugular veins.

RPSM (talk) 14:37, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

In both the Jewish and Muslim slaughter methods that are different in many respects, all four blood vessels (two arteries and two veins) are cut simultaneously with a long, sharp knife. the text is therefore misleading.

I need to publicize that the Swedish wikipedia is misleading on this point and unreliable.

The traditional European method is to use a short pointed dagger called a sticking knife, and often only one jugular vein is cut.

Cutting one, two, three or all four of the major blood vessels results in death occurring and different rates - slowest with only one blood vessel cut and quickest when all four are cut.

This is why when an animal is stunned unsuccessfully that the long Jewish knife is used to put it out of its misery as quickly as possible.

I got this information from the South African Meat Company when their handbook for supervisors was on line.

My editin on English Wikipedia has mostly been on an article for

I have an Idea for you Jimbo!

Since the wiki format allows users to create highly customizable user pages and the fact that Wikipedia feels more like a social network of sorts than an encyclopedia (especially with talk pages and stuff) I think you could create a social network using the wiki format called Socialwiki, the free social network! Great Idea huh? Ninsative (talk) 19:59, 26 March 2018 (UTC) Ninsative (talk) 19:59, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Plus, you could add friends and stuff ^_^ Ninsative (talk) 20:00, 26 March 2018 (UTC) Ninsative (talk) 20:00, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• The short response is: no. Slightly longer: Talk pages serve the purpose of resolving disputes and leaving notices, not back and forth chit chat between friends. Wikipedia space tends to serve as a more central space for wider discussions, but these are intended to serve the purpose of facilitating the improvement of the encyclopedia. They key word here is "intended"... it's an abysmal familiar in many ways. Of course, humans being social creatures, editors have others with whom they are friendly and leave the occasional message, but Wikipedia is not a social platform. Besides, that market is more than saturated with twitter/facebook/myspace and hundreds of less popular alternatives which are all already free and are designed for that purpose. Mr rnddude (talk) 05:40, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

People can say pretty much whatever they like on their user talk pages, but most of the time it should have some link to Wikipedia articles. It would be sad if a person's user talk page consisted of "Hi, I'm having breakfast right now" and similar banalities.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:10, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

17 years of editing!

Hey, Jimbo Wales. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! Chris Troutman (talk) 15:40, 27 March 2018 (UTC)