User talk:Iridescent

An administrator "assuming good faith" with an editor with whom they have disagreed.

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Notability of engravers, painters....

Since you seem to have an expertise on the locus of paintings et al, can you please let me know about whether a biography at British Museum like this, this et al or mentions over Royal Academy like this automatically guarantees the passage of our notability guidelines? Thanks,~ Winged Blades^Godric 08:57, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Note to TPWs; this relates (I assume) to this walled garden. See the recent talkpage history of its creator for an idea of some background here.

Certainly not; those are just generic bibliographical entries (and the Barenger one explicitly states "information provided via email", to boot). If you have specific examples in mind, Johnbod is probably better qualified than me to speak as to the notability of individuals. (As a rough rule of thumb, when it comes to figures in the 19th-century arts in England the easiest way to gauge viability in Wikipedia terms is to drop the name into Google Books. Because they have most of the arts/culture periodicals of the period digitized, if nothing substantive comes up it's usually a fairly safe indication that nobody cared enough at the time to write about them.)

In the three specific cases you link, Charles Pye arguably scrapes notability in Wikipedia terms because he's mentioned in the ODNB, albeit only as a footnote to the entry on his far more successful brother. Samuel Barenger doesn't seem to have left any trace other than the occasional one-line entry on lists of engravers, and almost certainly is non-notable. Frederick Rudolph Hay probably scrapes notability in Wikipedia terms as he was one of the founders of the Artists' Benevolent Fund, and seems to have been very successful in his business, but he would be a nightmare to source; engravers, typesetters, bookbinders etc were never documented anywhere near as well as the painters, authors etc themselves. ‑ Iridescent 09:17, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, none are listed on the Union List of Artist Names (bizarrely at AFD btw), which is pretty conclusive evidence of notability for historical artists. John Pye is there. So probably not notable (as artists). But refs like these can be used on the list at Draft:Britannia Depicta, which seems harmless. Since people have gone through the dreaded Bryan's Dictionary in the past, I think early 19th-century British printmakers is one area where we already have pretty much the right articles, & all we need (but nearly all just sourced from Bryan). Johnbod (talk) 13:53, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Mind you, all are listed in the Benezit Dictionary of British Graphic Artists and Illustrators, Volume 1, an offshoot of the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, which (the parent) is strong evidence for notability. Not sure of the status of the offshoot. User:Ewulp? All seem to be purely reproductive engravers, mostly of topographical prints like Britannia Depicta. Johnbod (talk) 17:18, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Even if one considers a Benezit entry to be proof of notability (questionable; we don't even consider an ODNB entry as automatic notability, and the ODNB is far more selective), most engravers other than the high-profile ones who bought the rights to renowned artists would fail the "500 word test", of "if not enough information exists that it would ever be possible to write 500 words on any given topic, it almost certainly should be an entry on a broader list rather than a permanent microstub". This may not be Wikipedia policy, but it's certainly good practice (and, as the cricket project is finding out, The Wikipedia Community is starting to lose patience with vast swathes of microstubs). At some point someone probably ought to trim the worst of the weeds at Category:English engravers, much of which appears to be verbatim cut-and-pastes from assorted 19th-century directories. ‑ Iridescent 18:20, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Even though Britain hardly features in the history of the Old Master print, what with the once highly-collected 18th-century mezzotinters, the caricaturists, the stamp-designers, the book illustrators, not to mention lots of painters who dabbled in etching etc ("engraver" of course here means "printmaker") ... and so on, I expect most deserve articles, but better ones. I'd imagine the notability of Britannia Depicta actually depends on the road-map element rather than the extra pictures added in the 19th century. The early editions certainly don't come cheap, even in an Oxfam shop! Johnbod (talk) 21:15, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

About the Benezit Dictionary of British Graphic Artists and Illustrators ... I don't know the status of that one either, and would want to round up at least two additional RSs. Ewulp (talk) 01:44, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks to the t/p owner and everybody else who participated in the thread, for their help as to the relative betterment of my understanding of the issues of notability.

@Iridescent:-You were absolutely correct as to the locus of my question.~ Winged Blades^Godric 10:58, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Re: Possible Wikipedia-integrated publication

Note: replying here to an email from User:Evolution and evolvability inviting me to submit a Wikipedia article through external, academic peer review for publication in the WikiJournal of Humanities, to save anyone else who has received this invitation from having to type up the same reply. As a general note to E&E, sending Wikipedia-related correspondence by private email rather than on talkpage posts, unless there's a specific reason it can't be discussed publicly, is irritating to the recipient (who ends up getting Wikipedia-related notifications when they're 'off duty'), diametrically opposed to Wikipedia's culture (as you're implying that you're only interested in that person's opinion and not of anyone else who may want to comment) and about the quickest way there is to get a reputation as a troublemaker short of openly vandalizing and disrupting.

I don't really feel such an approach would be appropriate for Wikipedia articles. The primary principle of Wikipedia is that it's constantly evolving, and the existence of "approved versions" of articles would drastically change the internal dynamic. Aside from anything else, it would lead to interminable arguments over whether the public-facing page should be the most recent (and thus most up to date) version or the approved (but potentially dated) version. While obviously en-wikipedia is unique owing to its scale, to the best of my knowledge every publicly-editable wiki project (whether WMF or not) that's attempted to implement flagged revisions has collapsed soon afterwards; even the hyper-watered-down Pending Changes creates a huge maintenance backlog on any page where it's used.

I also don't feel peer review really works with the wiki model. In the arts and humanities, it's an obvious non-starter; academic peer review in the "is this article accurate?" sense doesn't really exist in the humanities, and when journals do operate a peer review model it's on the basis of "is this paper worthy of discussion?", not of accuracy. A formal peer review in the sense you describe for an article in arts and humanities would essentially be "does this article agree with the personal prejudices and theories of whoever you happened to select to do the peer review?". In these cases, Wikipedia's model of open and continuing peer review makes considerably more sense than formal peer review in the academic sense. In the hard sciences it would be workable in the ultra-short-term, but unworkable over a timescale of more than a year or so; the only scientific articles where facts are likely to be in dispute are those dealing with recent discoveries or innovations, and those by definition are the ones where the articles will change rapidly and consequently peer review would be meaningless. (I'm aware that User:Anthonyhcole has been trying to do something of this nature for medical articles, but if that does work it will be because WP:MED watch the articles in their remit like hawks—e.g. the reason it will work will be the crowdsourcing aspect, not the invited individual expert's input.)

Having the project hosted on Wikiversity doesn't exactly fill me with confidence either; I understand why you've done it, to allow people to insert their own opinions and OR without falling foul of the rules governing every other WMF site, but Wikiversity is a joke of a site whose primary function is to serve as en-wiki's penal colony now Commons and Simple English Wikipedia are losing patience with being the fallback sites for en-wiki's banned users, and any association with it will be meaningless to anyone who isn't familiar with the WMF, but have you automatically pegged as cranks by those who are.

That said, Wikipedia articles are all free to re-use under CC By-SA 3.0 and GFDL. If you genuinely feel such an effort is worthwhile, nobody's stopping you from using whatever Wikipedia articles you like, provided you attribute them appropriately. ‑ Iridescent 16:46, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

(adding) Now I've seen you have a self-appointed Editorial Board, you've lost me for good. A self-appointed elite declaring themselves the arbiters of what is and isn't allowed is about as far from what Wikipedia is about as one could get. ‑ Iridescent 16:52, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

I guess Sarah M. Vital is in charge of the vital articles. EEng 21:04, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

​I'm more intrigued by what a "coordinator of Wikipedia initiatives at the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University" could possibly do. ‑ Iridescent 23:02, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Usual Wikipedian in residence stuff I expect. I imagine the editorial board were not so much "self-appointed" as approached on bended knees by the WikiJournal User Group. Johnbod (talk) 09:27, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

So we're spending donor funds on embedding a WiR within a cult that teaches that God is an alien from the planet Kolob; wonderful. Maybe we can sign up Applied Scholastics next. Regarding the editorial board, since clicking on the highlighted usernames (e.g., where one would expect on any WMF project—or any wiki-based project for that matter—to go to find out more about any given editor) is in most cases taking me to a form inviting me to hand over my personal details to Microsoft if I want to see the information in question, I'm not particularly inclined to investigate whether these are legitimate respected academics or just a bunch of random Wikipedians. As EEng points out, there's nothing stopping any of these people creating accounts and following the processes every other editor already manages to follow if they want to point out errors or omissions in any of our articles. ‑ Iridescent 10:03, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

So we're spending donor funds on embedding a WiR within a cult that teaches that God is an alien from the planet Kolob; wonderful. That's extremely offensive and I suggest you strike that. Natureium (talk) 17:16, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Which part are you suggesting I strike, exactly? BYU is 100% owned and controlled by the LDS. "A cult in which there's some dispute over whether Kolob is God's home planet, the star around which God's home planet orbits, or the solar system nearest to the Throne of God which is a celestial body in its own right" would technically be more accurate but wouldn't scan so well. "According to the traditional, literal Mormon interpretation of the Book of Abraham, Kolob is an actual star or planet in this universe that is, or is near, the physical throne of God. According to [Joseph] Smith, this star was discovered by Methuselah and Abraham by looking through the Urim and Thummim, a set of seer stones bound into a pair of spectacles." if you want it in Wikipedia's own NPOV voice. (Thanks to the combination of Kolob Records and Battlestar Galactica, Mormon cosmology is one of the few goofy LDS beliefs which is widely known outside the bubble, at least among those old enough to remember the 1970s.) ‑ Iridescent 11:43, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I very much doubt any WMF donor funds are being spent on the co-ordinating- no doubt one could find out. Ah, yes "I am the Coordinator of Wikipedia Initiatives at the Harold B. Lee Library. I am employed by Brigham Young University to improve Wikipedia" - from her user page, linked from the edit bd page. Most of the links I tried went to faculty pages (but not the art historian - easily googled). Johnbod (talk) 10:09, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

I have had a lot of problems with BYU-employed and -sponsored people in the past here, pushing the LDS POV. It often seemed unduly promotional but I've got enough problems handling the effects of Hinduism without getting involved too deeply with Mormonism also. - Sitush (talk) 11:52, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

FWIW, Rachel is actually one of the better WiRs/education people we have, and I've been plenty critical of that part of the Wikimedia movement (I find the idea that people who have not once edited should be made exempt from all local policies simply because they have some external affiliation bizarre to say the least.) I'm not familiar with the religious POV bit (similar to Sitush, I have enough problem cleaning up Catholic articles that were created in the early days of the project), but personally I'd rather have someone who is actually engaged with the on-wiki community and is trying to help than someone who [Insert national Wikimedia Chapter here] has hired to yell at me about how I don't get their job. TonyBallioni (talk) 12:07, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your comments! Maintaining a neutral POV is definitely one of my concerns. I consciously try to find sources for Mormon history that are independent of the LDS church, but I'm aware that sometimes I or my sources are just plain biased or overly detailed. Nominating articles for DYK and GA helps me get another perspective on my writing. Some of the pages I work on are unrelated to Mormonism. I'm so grateful for Wikipedia's collaborative process. Please feel free to contact me if you have specific concerns. In regard to the WikiJournal of Humanities, a peer-reviewed publication can attract contributions from academics, who could potentially be excellent Wikipedia contributors. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 16:05, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

A couple of comments, since I had an article (radiocarbon dating) in the recently published WikiJournal of Science. The sequence was that I wrote the article for Wikipedia first and took it through FAC, then submitted it to WikiJSci and got a very useful academic peer review. At least a couple of the reviewers are prominent in the field, and really helped to improve the article. I’d tried to get some academic review a year or two ago before WikiJSci existed but had had much less success. Just the other day I took the revised text from the paper in WikiJSci and pasted it back in over the article, with a note to that effect on the talk page. To me this seems like a win-win. The article is now much improved, but I’ve no expectation it will stay a copy of the paper — no doubt it will continue to be improved. The paper can be improved too, if anyone wants to, but I see much less value in that. Wikipedia has a better article, and WikiJSci has helped it become that way. I knew nothing about Wikiversity before I was invited to submit the article, and very little now; I gather they do other things than publish the WikiJournals but I haven’t looked to see what that might be. Is there some problem with this model that I’m not seeing? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:13, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Radiocarbon dating is a natural science topic where "is this accurate" is a much more clear-cut matter than humanities. There is also a practical point - made by Iridescent a while ago, if memory serves - that unfinished articles signal to potential editors that one does not need to be an expert to contribute to Wikipedia. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:35, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

• Why don't your experts come to Wikipedia and participate in the normal process? At some point they can pick a permalink they like and "publish" that. EEng 21:09, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Because the "normal process" is "experts are scum"? --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:28, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

That attitude does exist to some extent, but that is the end result of a number of problems, the main 3 being: 1) Academic 'experts' wanting to work on wikipedia how they work in academia, and being unwilling to change. 2) Academics wanting to push their pet theory which hasnt been accepted by the general consensus but is obviously right, 3) Academics attitude often come across as arrogant, mainly due to an expectation on their part that their opinion should be valued more. Since no editor is required to show deference due to their position (unlike their usual venues for discussion), the lack of it being automatically given eventually results in conflict. These 3 ultimately mean that academic experts get treated on a similar level as other editors (which they dont like) or more harshly compared to normal editors depending on their behaviour (which they really dont like). There is a marked difference compared to experts from trade, industry or other 'working' specialists, in that they acclimatise to the wikipedia environment much better. Probably as a result of having to work in a more antagonistic environment on a daily basis, they have more experience in dealing with conflict. But ultimately the key is in the word 'anti-elitism'. The average academic 'expert' considers themselves the elite (rightly or not). In a project that is based around collaboration and everyone being equal, there really is no place for someone who considers themselves above others. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:43, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

This matches the inside-Wikipedia view pretty well, and I'm sure there is some truth to it, but it feels like there's a little bit of "blaming normal humans for being normal humans" here. I think we probably agree on what you said pretty closely, except about which attitude "exists to some extent" and which attitude is more prevalent. After some time away from the place, it's pretty jarring to me (a non-academic) when I poke my nose in, how unwelcoming the place feels to people who don't love fighting with other people. It doesn't feel like conflict in the service of improving an encyclopedia, it feel like conflict for the sake of conflict. Collaboration exists, but I don't think it's the most likely condition.

Of course, part of the problem is that when I periodically check in to see what's been going on, I often look in on WP:ANI. I should probably stop doing that. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:56, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

@Floquenbeam: But in the humanities, and especially in the arts, "the war of all against all" is the academic model. There's no empirical way to measure whether the late-19th-century increased use of bright colors in European painting was primarily (a) a reaction against an increasingly gray external environment owing to industrial smog, (b) the increasing influence of Asian culture which traditionally used a brighter color palette, (c) the gradual abandonment of traditional religious iconography giving artists more freedom to depart from traditional schemes, or (d) just an artefact of an improved chemical industry meaning artists no longer needed to mess about with mumia, crushed beetles and ground rocks to make bright paints. Thus, "academic consensus" on the matter doesn't consist of theory, experiment and verification; it consists of academics all pushing their point of view and seeing who can shout the loudest. Consequently, if I ever got around to finishing Victorian painting any academic peer review wouldn't be checking whether the article is accurate; all it would do it test whether the article conformed to whichever hypothesis the chosen reviewer happened to subscribe to. The same issue exists, albeit to a lesser extent, in the hard sciences as well. The example given above of Radiocarbon dating is atypical, because that's a field where little is disputed, but get the same physicist to review Causal dynamical triangulation, String theory and Loop quantum gravity and they'll explode in disgust, since no physicist will accept the evidence for more than one of the three, but Wikipedia neutrally describes all three models without passing judgement on which is correct.

It's worth remembering that one of the reasons academics have so much trouble fitting in on Wikipedia is that when there's doubt regarding something, Wikipedia gives all the schools of thought and doesn't pass judgement on which is correct. This is diametrically opposed to the way academia works, in which one is expected to research to a conclusion, defend it against all comers, and either see off all challengers or conclude that your opponents are correct and embrace the new paradigm as the One True Path. If you want a concrete example of this, as I write a highly respected academic (and inventor of the optical mouse) is going absolutely batshit crazy on Talk:Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine because Wikipedia won't accept his theory that the computer in question isn't called that, even though there's a large sign attached to it saying "Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine" and both the museum where it's on display and the institution that built it call it that. I've always maintained that Wikipedia's outreach programs to universities are misguided because of the fundamental opposition between the way academia operates and the way Wikipedia operates, and that if the WMF really want to spend money reaching out externally they'd do much better trying to recruit the people who write children's books and the people who write museum labels, as it's the ability to summarize material for people with little prior knowledge of the topic, not the ability to defend a point logically, that Wikipedia needs. (The ideal Wikipedia editor would be the authors of Cliff's Notes and the For Dummies books.)

Plus, aside from anything else there's the very obvious point that 99%+ of Wikipedia's articles don't fall into traditional academic disciplines. Who would be the appropriate authority to conduct a peer review on Pig-faced women, Tukwila International Boulevard station or Taylor Swift? ‑ Iridescent 23:02, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Kanye obvs. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:39, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

I don’t see the relevance of some of the points made above. For example, there are plenty of academics who work on Wikipedia; I’ve met several and know of others, and there must be many more I don’t know of. They presumably edit for the same reasons we all do. Asking “why don’t the experts come here and edit normally, and they can pick a permalink to publish” mixes up two processes; straightforward editing, which they often do participate in, and academic review, for which the question is, why should they? Well, if you were an academic, would you respond to a request for academic review from a random Wikipedia editor? I would, if I knew the editor’s work and knew my time would not be wasted. But that’s not going to be the case for most academic peer reviews. Making the forum a peer reviewed journal means that it’s something that an academic can put on their resume, and the evidence so far is that they are indeed willing to contribute. But that doesn’t have anything to do with Wikipedia directly; WikiJSci is just another journal, up to that point. However, the publishing terms mean that the article can be used to update Wikipedia, which means that material submitted there is available to be pasted into Wikipedia if we want it. That’s our choice as editors as it is with any other free source.

Personally I think that the model fits with encyclopedic review articles such as radiocarbon dating, and ice drilling, which I plan to submit next. I also hope to find a collaborator for history of ice drilling, which is missing secondary sources for a big chunk of key events. If I can get that published in WikiJSci I will be able to put the article in Wikipedia, which was my original goal. Somewhere in an essay here someone says “if you have original research or synthesis, get it published first, then we can use it”. For history of ice drilling, at least, I would like to follow that advice.

As for the editorial board and the overall process not fitting the Wikipedia model: quite right, it doesn’t. I don’t see why that matters to us as editors, though. Wikiversity and WikiJSci can do what they want, and then editors here can do what they want with the results. If WikiJSci is determined not to be a reliable source then that’s another issue of course, but there seems no reason to assert it is not reliable.

Finally, yes, it might be harder to follow the model for humanities articles, though again encyclopedic review articles such as History of US science fiction and fantasy magazines to 1950, which I took to FAC, seem perfectly good candidates. But that can be assessed case by case. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:28, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

• The whole "experts are scum" chant is bullshit. Only in death's points (1,2,3) are bang on. I'm a recognized expert on a highly specialized academic topic, and with patience I've worked with other editors – varying from other real researchers to a few fools worthy of a Galilean dialogue – to produce a first-class article on the subject, even if I do say so myself. And it's definitely a better article for the participation of the fools. EEng 23:42, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

• Clearly I'm not as adept at wringing value out of Randy from Boise. At Talk:Manhattan Project I keep getting requests from people who not only haven't read the article, they haven't even read the FAQ. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:17, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, I didn't say the fools' participation was worth it from a cost-benefit perspective, but when life hands you lemons you make lemonade. The participation of the not-fools was definitely worth it (IMHO), and unfortunately there's no process for keeping the not-fools and sending the fools on their way. EEng 01:04, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Even the fools can add value in Wikipedia terms. We write from the perspective of experts (or at minimum, from the perspective of people who've read a few books about the topic) and most of the people commenting on talkpages are by definition people who know enough about the topic to be expressing an opinion—but the readers are Giano's hypothetical intelligent fourteen year olds with no prior knowledge of the topic. Sometimes it can be valuable to see what the readers aren't understanding even though it seems perfectly clear to us, or even just to see what isn't engaging the readers.

On the broader point, I agree that the "experts are scum" mantra doesn't have much basis in fact. It's a meme propagated by the old Wikipedia Review, egged on by a couple of disaffected former employees, and based on the experiences of a handful of academics who were shown the door for persistently refusing to follow the rules. Wikipedia has many problems, but "clamps down on people who try to insert their original research or push a particular POV" isn't one of them. If anything, Wikipedia goes too far the other way when it comes to trying to accommodate blatantly problematic characters on the grounds that they have specialist knowledge to bring (how many times did we unblock Ottava?); the entire sprawling bureaucratic melange of individual-specific restrictions only exists because Wikipedia bends over backwards to find ways to accommodate problem editors when it's thought they have something useful to add. ‑ Iridescent 07:20, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree with this point. It is true that academics working in the humanities will, in their usual 'line of work', have to construct narratives and argue to a conclusion often to participate non-neutrally in a scholarly debate. But it is also true that a good academic has to be self-aware enough to acknowledge that debate and broader academic significance; many academics will not just author books or articles, they'll also contribute to encyclopedias, textbooks or literature reviews which typically take a much more neutral stance and are often aimed at non-experts looking for an overview of academic debates around the subject. While there may be some academics who cannot comprehend the neutrality issue (and it says something about a person's character when they try to use their job to claim superiority over others in a volunteer encyclopedia), I think our core policies are fairly straightforward: our articles are meant to be a neutral summary of reliable secondary sources which provide our summaries with verifiability and confer notability on them. I'd be surprised if most academics could not get their head around that or see the ultimate point of these policies.

I actually think the reason so few academics edit here is that the academy doesn't encourage it. In the UK at least, academics are supposed to generate 'research outputs' which are now assessed for the Research Excellence Framework; the 'quality' of research is used to allocate funding, so academics are incentivised to publish frequently, on internationally significant topics and in the best journal they can muster (and journals are becoming the norm over books for this reason). Most of these journals in the humanities are not open access, and there is little movement that way (which is odd for a profession often considered 'left-wing'). Most academics wouldn't want to jeopardise the opportunity to write an article, encyclopedia entry or review because they posted their best work on Wikipedia. And that assumes they even have enough time; I won't pretend academics are hard-done-by compared to many people, but especially at the junior end, fixed contracts, poor pay, long teaching hours and the aforementioned pressure to research in a non-open-access way all conspire to mean that for most academics, even if they wanted to join in, Wikipedia is not a priority outlet for their time, effort and intelligence, especially when considering the conflict mentality of this place discussed above and public and professional concerns about Wikipedia's reliability. It's a real shame and contributes in part to the many, often overlapping, systemic biases we have here. But I don't see it changing anytime soon. Anyway, my 'two cents' as the Americans say. Cheers, --Noswall59 (talk) 09:07, 13 June 2018 (UTC).

Hello Iridescent (and the others in this thread), sorry about being a bit late to this discussion. Firstly, I didn't mean anything untoward by emailing you. I've mostly been emailing non-Wikipedians, so I was continuing to use the same email templates where possible so as to not be treating Wikipedians differently. It might just be me, but I get talk page messages and emails about Wikipedia in about a 1:3 ratio, so perhaps I've a skewed view as to how common it is! Either way, I'm happy to explain why I think that WikiJournals are in line with Wikipedia's ethos (and the abundant guidelines codifying that ethos). Thank you for yourt thoughts - I'm genuinely interested in your opinions and feedback, since the journals genuinely want to improve Wikipedia. I'll address some of the points below.

Approved versions: After peer reviewer comments are addressed, the journal article is integrated into Wikipedia so that it is not a particularly forked version. It is treated as an approved version in the same way that there is an approved version of Featured articles. The Wikipedia page continues to evolve after the journal-organised peer review just as any GAs and FAs do. The public facing version in Wikipedia should 100% be the most recent and up to date version. The stable version of record can be used for citation. I absolutely oppose any special protectionism of Wikipedia pages (also embedded in the journals' ethical statement).

The value of peer review in this scenario: Obviously, I come from a sciences background so can't comment hugely on the humanities. If the community feels that a peer review has been mishandled (all reviewer comments are are publicly recorded), the Wikipedia article can still be updated. If nothing else, it is a way of getting input and recommendations from beyond the established Wikipedian community which, though large, is still limited.

Medical review: I'm a big fan of the work that Anthonyhcole did getting the BMJ to help organise peer review of Parkinsons disease (organisation page). One constraint on that is that, the reviewer comments took a long time to implement (to my limited knowledge), and BMJ halted its collaboration for subsequent articles. Peer reviews by Open Medicine, PLOS, Gene, RNA Biology and WikiJournals WikiJMed and WikiJSci have proceeded more smoothly and I think that, in part, that is because of the external dual-publication (examples). Perhaps it will turn out that the norms of the humanities differ so greatly that WikiJHum fails due to personal prejudices, but that remains to be seen. I do not expect that content will be of lower overall quality than that contributed by e.g. editathons, GLAM collaborations, AfC, new editors, or even many experienced editors.

Editorial board: The editorial board bylaws are based on those of the WikiProject Med Foundation, again with public votes that are open to anyone that wishes to cast an opinion. Having a specific editorial board is standard practice for journals, and necessary to also comply with recommendations of COPE, OASPA and to be indexed by services like DOAJ, Scopus, PubMed and Web of Science. I hope that editors don't feel that they were approached on bended knees. The aim has so far been to get a mixture of expertise across Wikipedians, scholars, open-access advocates, librarians, teachers and other professionals to encompass a range of perspectives and experience and so far they seem to have been keen on the format.

Wikiversity's reputation: This is certainly a limitation. The original WikiJournal (WikiJMed) was set up within Wikiversity as the most logical location at the time. Indeed, the journals have an application to be a sister project. Nevertheless, the external peer review is intended to address the risk of fringe theory or crackpot-ism. Any content integrated into Wikipedia can be challenged and updated by the community just as any other content. Indeed, it my hope that WikiJournals will generate a reputation for careful peer review that can counter the common (though markedly decreasing) view of academics that only fools contribute to Wikipedia.

Original research: Although the journal articles can contain research/perspectives/opinion/conclusions, those sections are not integrated into Wikipedia (example). We encourage authors to favour secondary sources where possible, comply with relevant Wikipedia guidelines for any content to be integrated into Wikipedia. I am less pessimistic about academics abilities to take a step back and provide an NPOV when asked to. Often manuscripts, books and treties are specifically intending to propose a hypothesis, however I think that when requested, many academics can write a balanced overview of a topic (for example, there is a section in this article on disputed roles where uncertainly still exists). Any pet theories would have to pass review by external experts and material copied over to Wikipedia will be just as editable as any other material.

Why don't experts come to Wikipedia: Much has been written about this. For the part of WikiJournals, there is no wish to supplant or compete against normal Wikipedia systems. The journals will always be an adjunct; an alternative route in for new information, and a way to review the accuracy of existing information. Although anyone can edit Wikipedia, many don't. Reasons for academics/researchers/scholars/doctors include that the format is unfamiliar and that contributions are citable or indexed. The journals provide a format that can be a bridge for any experts that want to work how they work in academia and are unwilling to change. Having editors able to advise contributors with no Wikipedia experience can be valuable to new users who can otherwise end up bitten by AfC. Producing a citablble version can be an incentive to contribute (just as much as barnstars, FA badges, cash prizes, or the GA cup). It is both an academic output, as well as a quantifiable unit of outreach that can be used to justify the time spent on it as opposed to other competing academic duties.

I've tried to be succinct (you can judge how successful I've been!). I'm happy to discuss further, I should be able to provide references for some of the statements above, but I'm trying not to spam! T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 13:12, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi, T.Shafee(Evo&Evo). For the record, I suspended the BMJ collaboration - for a number of reasons but mainly because it's not worth proceeding unless two elements are in place - the simple diff (that may be technically possible soon) and permission from the community for a prominent link. (I think I can take this current Village Pump discussion as permission to prominently link.) The last time I spoke with BMJ, six weeks ago, they seemed receptive to further collaboration and I'll propose that once I can offer the reader a simple diff.

@Anthonyhcole: Great news! The visual editor diff viewer has come a long way, so I hope that it does the trick. Will it focus on the initial set listed at Wikipedia:BMJ/Expert review? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 23:36, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

WikiJournal as an RS???

Above, Mike says, Somewhere in an essay here someone says “if you have original research or synthesis, get it published first, then we can use it”. For history of ice drilling, at least, I would like to follow that advice. Mike, that advice relates to publication by a reliable publisher. WikiJournal isn't a reliable publisher. I outline why that is so in the above-linked VP discussion, so I won't repeat myself here. T.Shafee, do you share Mike's view that one can publish original research or synthesis in WikiJournal and then use that article to support claims in Wikipedia? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:48, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I believe I speak for everyone here assembled when I say that the answer to that is not just "No" but "Hell, no!" EEng 18:17, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

That might be the majority view, but it's not universal. I used the WikiSciJ article on radiocarbon dating as a citation in this edit, and left a note on the talk page to that effect, for transparency. The citation was to support a phrase added to the article during peer review -- the reviewer was A.J. Timothy Jull, a prominent expert in the field. I didn't add a separate citation to the WikiSciJ version to support it -- it didn't seem necessary -- but I wanted to include that phrase in the article, and the WikiSciJ version seemed the appropriate citation.

I asked about it at WT:FAC; see here for the reponses. I believe the question has come up at WP:RSN or perhaps WP:VPP, though I can't now find the discussion. It's clearly not as high-quality a source as a well-established journal, but the peer reviewers, for the article I'm citing at least, included respected scholars in the field, and I don't see how it would fail the definition of an RS. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library)

Please link the RSN discussion and any other discussions you know of bearing on this. EEng 20:05, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I can't find the one I'm thinking of, and don't recall where it was. If I remember correctly, it wasn't well enough attended to stand as a community consensus on the question; and I don't even remember whether it came to a consensus. If you start a discussion at RSN, let me know. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:44, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm embarking on some travel so I'll let others comment here. To be blunt, the idea is preposterous. The two respondents at the discussion you linked said (in essence) "It's an RS if it qualifies as an RS" (in the case of a modestly experienced editor) and "Definitely yes" (in the case of an editor with essentially no experience). EEng 21:00, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I think that it's not as simple as dismissing WikiJourals as RS. They're certainly not yet MEDRS (requires PubMed indexing; discussion link). However I do not think that just because material also appears in Wikipedia that it invalidates subsequent external peer review. For example Dengue Fever has been cited 33 times. Approximate bayesian computation has been cited >200 times. I think it would be hard to distinguish between the peer review done for Approximate bayesian computation and the peer review done for Radiocarbon dating. The main difference in this case is established reputation, hence their inadmissibility for MEDRS. However I can't see anything in the letter of RS that precludes them, and I think that they are inkeeping with the spirit of RS. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 00:27, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

No one' saying "just because material also appears in Wikipedia that it invalidates subsequent external peer review". I'm saying that WikiJournals doesn't have anything like the "external peer review" or other editorial oversight we rely on for RS. I don't understand what your citation counts have to do with anything. EEng 07:06, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Ah, I'd thought that one of the criticisms was wp:citogenesis. I think that the external peer review is actually quite comparable to other journals. By editorial oversight, is the worry that the editors are insufficiently knowledgeable to organise peer review, or is there a different aspect you mean? A more reasonable criticise for WP:RS would be that WikiJournals are not yet PubMed or Scopus indexed (which would provide an independent audit of editorial processes). I think it's also worth clarifying whether the case is that a WikiJournal is currently not WP:RS, or` whether it could never be WP:RS. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 07:43, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

The editorial boards appear to be random volunteers. I just published a paper in [Prestigious and Highly Selective Journal] after six rounds of revision and proofing and I sure wish I'd known I could have just submitted it to a volunteer group knowing nothing of the subject to see if it seemed OK to them. What's a radiologist doing editing a humanities "journal" anyway? EEng 08:12, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

EEng, seeing you are referring to my role for the humanities journal; I created WikiJournal of Medicine, the first journal, whose system has been adapted to apply for the humanities journal as well. I've clarified that my relevant expertise for my board membership in the humanities journal lies in wiki organization rather than my radiology work. Now, regarding your doubts about the boards, what system for forming editorial boards do you regard as acceptable? Taking "reliable" journals as example, what makes their editorial boards less "random" than WikiJournal? Mikael Häggström (talk) 04:02, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, it certainly wouldn't be this process [1][2], in which apparently anyone who wants becomes an editor. But hey, let's get down to brass tacks. WP:SOURCES requires that sources have "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". When WikiJournals has built such a reputation, we can talk more. EEng 04:52, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Ealdgyth, what's your opinion? You've spent more time thinking about what makes a reliable source than most editors. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:20, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Given the two links given by EEng about how new members of the editorial board are selected, I'd have to say that no, I would not consider this a reliable source. Generally, academic peer review is centered around specialization ... and I'm not seeing that here. There is no focus on the journal, except for being part of the wiki movement, which is not enough to make it reliable. There is also no history of being cited and used by other academics or similar. I'm all for breaking the academic journalism stranglehold but ... so far I'm not seeing how this could possibly come close to being a RS, much less an RS suitable for FAC. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:26, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

To quote the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, we should "assess research on its own merits rather than on the basis of the journal in which the research is published". Whether WikiJournal or any other journal is an RS is not a particularly meaningful question: at best, a journal's reputation only gives a weak hint about the reliability of a given article. In particular, for a journal that practises open peer review (with reviews and sometimes reviewers' identities made public), there is no excuse for relying solely on the journal's reputation. (Disclosure: I am involved in WikiJSci.) Sylvain Ribault (talk) 20:10, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Whether WikiJournal or any other journal is an RS is not a particularly meaningful question – here at Wikipedia, it's not only a meaningful question, it's the only question. EEng 21:59, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Just a quick note on the editorial board composition (mostly relevant to Ealdgyth's comment above): The editorial board are not the ones doing the peer review, they merely are in charge of inviting suitably qualified peer reviewers. e.g. for v:WikiJournal_of_Science/Radiocarbon_dating, the three external peer reviewers were specialists in the subject. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 23:38, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

In most journals (at least the ones that I publish in), the editorial board also are experts. They have to be able to recognize suitable (and unsuitable) reviewers, know the field well enough to arbitrate split decisions between reviews, and so on. All of these duties require a high level of expertise in the journal's topic. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 16:00, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

the ones that I publish in – That would be http://www.farmmachineryjournal.co.uk/? EEng 16:42, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

…where the editorial board know the field well enough. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 19:05, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Wow, I must be slipping. I overlooked that completely. EEng 19:08, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Enough with the corny jokes, OK? Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 21:30, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

We're separating the wheat from the chaff. EEng 21:47, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

How is Wiki*Journal independent? (Or, how is a particular article in such a journal independent?) Does it have a reputation [for fact-checking]? I don't think we can answer either question in the affirmative--certainly not the latter at this time, and probably not the former for any number of subjects touching on the topic on which an article was written (because the author of an article in the journal ostensibly, and likely significantly, contributed to the article on Wikipedia). --Izno (talk) 11:55, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

I can see why the links EEng posted are a concern, and I follow Ealdgyth's line of thought. I don't think I've seen this particular argument used before to dismiss a source as not reliable. The usual assessment in source reviews at FAC and elsewhere is: is editorial control exerted over the contents? Are the authors people known to have expertise in the field? And for journal articles: is there credible peer review? The article on radiocarbon, for example, meets the first and last of those two criteria; I'm not someone "known to have expertise in the field", so it fails that criterion, but the expert peer review, I would think, makes the article reliable, if not the author. That is, if I wrote a blog post about radiocarbon dating, it would not be a reliable source despite the existence of this article, but if Tim Jull wrote one, it would be citable (within the limits of what blogs can be used to cite).

To be specific, I added the bolded text in this sentence to the radiocarbon dating article, cited to WikiJSci: Soil contains organic material, but because of the likelihood of contamination by humic acid of more recent origin, and the fact that the organic components can be of different ages, it is very difficult to get satisfactory radiocarbon dates. You can see the comment by Jull that led to this in the peer review, at point 12 under "Second peer review", here. To me that phrase is reliable because Jull supported it, not because it's published in WikiJSci. Should I cut that citation and that phrase? Or is that a reliable source for that phrase? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:27, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Meta-aside about Wikijournals and en-wiki culture

On the reliability (or not) I've commented at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Reliability of WikiJournal of Science, since it's a more sensible place to have the discussion than here. On the more general point of relations between Wikipedia and WikiJournals, it's worth looking at the history of Wikipedia to understand just why so many people are so sceptical. (Apologies in advance for those who already know this, but I'm seeing a lot of unfamiliar names here who may not be aware of all the background. Wikipedia has changed so much, so quickly, that the existential crises of the 2000s are now semi-mythical to many editors.)

The concept of "scrape the best Wikipedia articles, submit them to external peer review, and then re-insert the reviewed articles" isn't a new idea; it's been tried in the past by Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger and Danny Wool, and all three crashed and burned, but not without creating a good deal of conflict and bad blood in the meantime. Inasmuch as English Wikipedia has a creation myth regarding how a bolt-on accessory to a porn site became the world's fifth most visited website, it's a story of opposition to the top-down approach; the people who supported the vet-and-review approach in general went off to Citizendium, and the ones who became Wikipedia's main writers and admins remained, and consequently shaped the project during the 2005–07 growth spurt. (It's worth mentioning inter alia that Nupedia wasn't some kind of lost paradise—their much vaunted peer reviewed articles were in general complete garbage. New Zealand, Irish Traditional Music and Genotype and Phenotype are typical examples of articles after they'd been through all Nupedia's vetting, peer-review and copy-editing processes.) Additionally, during those formative years, we had high-profile (one very high profile) cases of people claiming to be experts and bringing the site into disrepute when their credentials were found lacking, and we had too many examples to count of admins who felt the admin bit gave them some kind of super-user status and tried to throw their weight around.

Thus, the principles of "be sceptical of anyone who claims to be an expert", "go with what printed sources say not with what people say no matter how much of an expert they are" (commonly, if inaccurately, summarised as "verifiability not truth"), "while a particular user may earn respect or disrespect through their actions, no user should be considered more or less important than any other user by way of which permissions or jobs they hold", and "how much you know about the subject doesn't matter provided you know enough to give due weight to sources and attribute them correctly" are all—for better or worse—baked into English Wikipedia's DNA. It's a self-reinforcing set of values since people who don't subscribe to them to at least some extent, and try to play the "do you know who I am?" card (either in terms of "I'm the world's leading expert in Foo-ography, you should rewrite the article to reflect my views" or "lots of the checkboxes on my Special:UserRights page are ticked, you should do what I say") tend either to develop a reputation as troublemakers, or find the environment unpleasant and leave of their own accord.

This doesn't necessarily mean those are good values to have—Wikipedia has serious difficulties reconciling "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs", "everybody should be considered as of equal ability in the absence of evidence to the contrary" and "competence is required", and in reconciling "no conflicts of interest" with "anonymity should be respected"—but they're unlikely to change, and as a result English Wikipedia—to a far greater extent than the other-language Wikipedias and the other WMF projects—has a collective knee-jerk antipathy to anything resembling editorial boards. (Specifically at the WikiJournal people: if you're unfamiliar with the ACPD and Esperanza debacles I'd recommend reading Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Advisory Council on Project Development and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Esperanza to get a feeling for how anything resembling editorial boards or management committees is likely to be received by the broader en-wiki community.) ‑ Iridescent 11:44, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Also at this point pinging @SlimVirgin, Tony1, Newyorkbrad, and Alison:, all of whom were there through the events in question but all of whom will presumably have very different perspectives to mine.

Thanks for the ping but I don't have much to add here. The Esperanza debates were taking place right around the time I became active and I wasn't part of them. I never had a strong feeling about Esperanza one way or the other, and the main thing I remember thinking at the time of the last debate was that "miscellany for deletion" seemed like a fairly odd place to be having the discussion.

I was on the ArbCom at the time of the "Advisory Council" announcement but was not one of the arbitrators who pushed the initiative. I didn't oppose it either; it struck me at the time as a well-intentioned effort, and I certainly didn't anticipate, let alone agree with, the level of outrage it generated. (For example, it certainly wasn't meant to reflect "ArbCom's expansion ... into the Wikipedia Politburo," as someone familiar to the readers of this page put it at the time.) When the idea proved unpopular, it was dropped, and in nine years no one's come up with a better one, so make of that what you will. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:24, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I really should re-read the emails from back then at some point. To refresh my memory and maybe to vainly try and set the record straight as to the intentions, as a lot of what has been said subsequently has been by people with strong views on the subject. The actual public starting point is here. It did kind of snowball after that. I don't remember why I abstained. I agree with NYB's point that no one's come up with a better idea. Bit like the main page (re)design discussions, really, or RFA reform... I suppose it does beg the question: what have been the most radical proposals ever proposed for en-Wikipedia (or even the entire WMF), both those that failed and those that went ahead? I suppose the answer to that would be a potted history of Wikipedia. That will take a while. Carcharoth (talk) 17:03, 18 June 2018 (UTC) Actually, re-reading those discussions is a bit depressing. Too many people are no longer with us. Three in just a few minutes of reading. Carcharoth (talk) 17:06, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

@Carcharoth: While that's the first public appearance under the ACPD name, it had a long gestation—Kirill's original proposal (then calling it "The Wikipedia Assembly") was here. Unless it's been deleted in a pre-emptive body-burying exercise, there's a lengthy discussion on Arbwiki prior to the announcement of ACPD, in which its supporters debate the pros and cons of who deserved to be raptured into the ruling council and who would remain a mere mortal, which makes entertaining reading with the benefit of hindsight. (IIRC—and I may not RC after all these years—someone nominated me and someone else blackballed me, but I can't remember who or why.).
@NYB, the RFC was mostly sound-and-fury and the real action was at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard/Archive 5#Advisory Council on Project Development convened and Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Advisory Council on Project Development. I'd say ArbCom's expansion ... into the Wikipedia Politburo, is pretty much exactly what Kirill intended ACPD to be, protests to the contrary once the committee realised how unpopular the land-grab was notwithstanding; how else does one interpret ideas that the Committee might choose to pursue (Kirill), a way that will help the Community find better ways to develop solution to broad issues (FloNight), or a body of experienced users helping to generate ideas, consider the ideas of others, and fast-track proposals on crucial issues (Carcharoth)? (As you presumably know, I don't necessarily see a Wikipedia Politburo as a bad thing—I've long argued that at the very least we need a formal RFC Closing Committee with the authority to make binding rulings, to replace the current "closures reflect the opinions of whoever happens to be active at the time the 30 days expires" model, but don't try to pretend that the arbcom circa 2010 wasn't actively considering how a transition from Arbcom to Govcom could be managed.) ‑ Iridescent 16:57, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Digging around a bit... I had forgotten how many failed proposals there are around. Some people can just get on with things (living in 'the present'). Some get drawn to the past and, well, spend time there and maybe (rarely) find things of use. Maybe you had to have been there at the time. Carcharoth (talk) 22:30, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Esperanza died not long after I became active. It had a heavily bureaucratic feel to it from reading the talk pages. The ACPD had a lot more personal issues going on that I really don't want to put into print that contributed to its demise (I have to go read it again sometime when I have free time...which is seldom...) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:53, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

I've been around since 2006, so in theory I should remember both Esperanza and the Advisory Council, but in fact I only vaguely remember the former and had never heard of the latter. Perhaps if I had paid more attention then I would be more sceptical about the WikiJournals now, but as it is I see them a little differently to the way you characterize them. The peer review radiocarbon dating went through, which included at least two reviewers who are well-known figures in the field, led to multiple improvements. The Wikipedia article now reflects those improvements, all cited to an RS, with no need to cite the WikiJournal directly. I haven't looked at the relationship between each WSJ article and its corresponding WP article, but I hope something similar is going on with them. If that's the normal experience the WikiJournals should be a real benefit to us. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:31, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret scheduled for TFA

This is to let you know that the Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret article has been scheduled as today's featured article for July 9, 2018. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 9, 2018, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1100 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:31, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Precious

Five years!

Thank you for the steady flow of articles, some with enormous titles, and thoughtful conversations here! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:03, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

@Jimfbleak No specific objections other than the usual "fuck, not me again, someone else can do the reverting this time". You might want to delay this one for a while, since if you run it in July then following Candaules and Destroying Angel that will make three TFAs on paintings by the same relatively unknown artist in a period of less than six months.

As with most of these cluttered 19th-century history paintings, if you do run it it would make sense to blow the image up as large as reasonably possible, even if it means slashing the blurb text; at the standard TFA size (see right) it just looks like a plate of shrimp as it's impossible for readers even to discern that the three figures are people, let alone what they're doing, or that this is on the—very unusual for the time—subject of a woman in full military kit fighting and defeating a man. ‑ Iridescent 11:53, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

About half of the unrun picture pages are your Etty articles, but I take your point. I think I'll run this one, which I like for the reasons you've stated, and because Dank has already edited the blurb, and then make sure I don't run another for a while. That said, do you want to do have a go at the image— I think only you and David Levene understand the coding? Perhaps it could be top-cropped as well to concentrate on the figures? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 12:16, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Not a problem, Iri and Jim ... I agree that we want to cut back the blurb text if the image is larger. - Dank (push to talk) 12:34, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I'll sort out the image, but it might be a couple of days. I assume there's no rush. ‑ Iridescent 14:20, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

✓ Done blurb text slashed to absolute bare bones in order to make the image as visible as possible (something that should be par-for-the-course for arts and architecture articles, since in 99% of these cases it's the image and not the text that readers will use to decide if this is a topic about which they want to learn more). ‑ Iridescent 16:04, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for "a somewhat peculiar 19th century history painting. Probably intended as a moral test for male viewers to view a scene of sex, violence and vulnerability without feeling lust, at least one academic considers BRFA as marking the turning point in art history at which nudity ceased to be symbolic of innocence and instead became symbolic of domination and coercion. BRFA is a very odd-looking work to the modern eye, but that's because The Faerie Queene has fallen out of favour in recent years—at the time, Spenser was as popular as Shakespeare in the English-speaking world, and audiences could reasonably be assumed to understand the references without explanation." - There's also a painting pictured in the DYK section, DYK? (which I suggested, to mention one more lover, not only those who made it to husband). --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:34, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

​That painting is singularly unflattering; she looks like Kermit the Frog in a jock wig. (I wouldn't want to be the one relying on This artwork is in the public domain because it was first published in the United States before 1923 in court if Kokoscha's heirs ever challenge it. "Creation" and "publication" are definitely not the same thing when it comes to copyright law—and it was created in Austria, not the United States, in any case—and the artist only died in 1980.) ‑ Iridescent 14:14, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Good points. I took it as written, without hinterfragen. I prefer her ibox image, anyway. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:27, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Discussion at User:Kudpung/What do admins do?

 You are invited to join the discussion at User:Kudpung/What do admins do?. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:26, 19 June 2018 (UTC)Template:Z48

While I have no problem with taking part in surveys etc, I'm not really comfortable putting my name to anything that's going to be included in the Signpost. While it used to serve a useful function in documenting Wikipedia's internal debates and serving as a neutral discussion venue, IMO in its post-Tony incarnation the Signpost is a thoroughly unpleasant project, comprising an unhealthy mess of sub-Wikipedia Review sneering and backbiting on the one hand, painfully unfunny and often actively & needlessly offensive attempts at comedy on the other hand, and the in-crowd of friends of the management slapping each other on the back and congratulating each other about how clever they are on the third hand. It's not something with which I really want to be associated. Besides, I do very little admin work these days; I tend only to dust off the admin bits when a neutral admin-of-last-resort is needed to perform difficult closes (or closes of debates involving Wikipedia's more colorful personalities) which nobody else wants to touch. ‑ Iridescent 16:15, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Fun

Because most of this looks awfully serious [3]. I’m certain you already know this, but whatever. Kafka Liz (talk) 11:41, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Half Man Half Biscuit are a national treasure, and their ability to satirise all manner of popular culture is just brilliant. I particularly like "Vatican Broadside". Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:26, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

​​What he said. You (both) might want to check out Simon Love as well, who in recent years is establishing himself as the natural heir to HMHB and the TV Personalities. ‑ Iridescent 16:16, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Help

I am being ATTACKED - WP:STALKING and WP:HARASSMENT by this person - User:Hullaballoo Wolfowitz for many months, he apparrently hates me and the visual arts. Please get this guy off my back. Thank you...Modernist (talk) 15:35, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Please note that a short time ago Modernist was warned by User:NeilN about using invective like this to characterize ongoing content disputes [4], a warning Modernist has repeatedly disregarded. This comes out of a longrunning content dispute regarding the use of nonfree images of visual art, where Modernist is among those who strongly reject NFCC policy (see, for example, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Visual arts#Under attack, and the related deletion discussions at Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2018 June 18 (where many of the disputed uses that Modernist advocated for have already been removed). The underlying issue is whether certain articles on the visual arts are exempt from (or subject to much more relaxed application of) basic WP:NFCC, WP:V, and WP:RS policies. With his side not prevailing in the dispute, he is again personalizing the issues rather than substantively addressing serious policy concerns. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006. (talk) 16:03, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

There is a good deal more to it than this: HW has been removing large amounts of text from various articles, and making provocative talk comments. Johnbod (talk) 16:15, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Poor Modernist has been stalked and baited (and indeed "under attack") with increasing intensity for the best part of three weeks over fair use image of modern artworks being used

1. on the articles about the artist themselves, or the article on the museum that holds the work (apparently having a separate article on an artwork means there is no scope to include an image of it in the article on the artist themselves or the museum: that is, improving our content on artworks damages our content on artists or museums)
2. as examples of periods or styles in articles on art history (even when the rather simple and binding parts of the fair use policy - already stricter than law would allow - are complied with, so-called "violation" of a secondary layer of byzantine non-binding guidance with alarming initials seemingly strikes out almost everything; because, you know, a notable work by a leading artist such as Picasso or Rauschenberg or Bacon etc can be replaced by some daub by a third rank artist without any loss; in much the same way as we delete album covers and screen captures from soap operas without a second thought, right?)

So Modernist has cried out, and been blocked for his pains. How the blocking, or the removal of the images, or indeed the snarky commentary or tendentious edit warring, improves our enyclopedia is not so clear, but no doubt being an admin helps one to see such ineffable facts more clearly :-/ 213.205.251.58 (talk) 18:06, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

• Oh god, this shit is here too. Modernist knows perfectly well how wikipedia's Non-free content criteria works. They have known for at least 8 years. They do not care about the NFCC policy, a policy with legal considerations. What Modernist wants to do is upload whatever visual arts they like, without worrying about copyright, or wikipedia's stated goals of being a free content encyclopedia. Unfortunately this is against policy and something they have continued to fail to abide by. Had they actually read WP:Harrassment they would have seen the bit that says that looking through an editor's contributions is not stalking when it is to correct violations of policy. Modernist has continuously been violating policy. They dont have to like the policy, but it is not a policy that can be hand-waved away. Like it or not, the current policy means that many modern visual arts cannot be reproduced at will all over ENWP. Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:44, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Oh good grief. Modernist, you're not being ATTACKED - WP:STALKING and WP:HARASSMENT by this person, you're seeing someone enforce policy as currently written; if you don't like the policy then persuade WMF Legal to change the policy, don't bitch and whine about the people doing a thankless job trying to enforce it. Since changing the policy would fundamentally alter the nature of Wikipedia—for which reusability is a key principle—I don't hold out much hope, but you can always try. ‑ Iridescent 15:50, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Sex act picture

Hey mate. You sure it's a good idea to have a stick figure sex at this page? it's a bit of a surprise when coming here. The picture keeps changing now, so maybe it was an error? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.172.226.60 (talk) 03:28, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

This is my personal talk page, not a public-facing or project page. Given that the main topics of discussion on this page are (1) changing attitudes to the depiction of and symbolism of nudity in the visual arts and (2) the volume of images available on WMF projects and the ways in which they're used and catalogued, I find it unlikely anyone who would be offended by any of the images in the rotation—none of which are remotely graphic in terms of either sex or violence—would be likely to have anything to say for which this would be the appropriate page to be saying it. I find it especially unlikely that an anonymous coward logging out to engage in virtue-signalling posturing (hint for future reference, Evolution and evolvability, if you're going to engage in IP socking you might want to use an IP that doesn't belong to your current employer) would be likely to have anything to say for which this would be the appropriate page to be saying it. ‑ Iridescent 16:04, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 9, 2018

Forgive my naivety, but is there a good reason for the "Expand" link you've added in Special:Diff/846738767? It seems to do the same thing as clicking on the image, and breaks a few things like Wikipedia:Today's featured article. TheDragonFire (talk) 05:13, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

It's convention when the TFA or DYK image is cropped and thus doesn't show the full image, to make it clear that the thumbnail isn't showing the whole thing. David Levy might remember where the original decision was made, although it's probably lost in the mists of time. ‑ Iridescent 14:04, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, I don't recall where it was discussed, but you've accurately described the reasoning.

TheDragonFire: What's broken at Wikipedia:Today's featured article? I haven't observed any problems there or elsewhere. —David Levy 23:48, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

@David Levy, if you open Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 2018 and set your browser font size small and the browser window very wide, then the combination of the intentionally oversized image and the shorter-than-usual blurb text makes the "expand" button overlap the header of the subsequent section; I imagine Wikipedia:Today's featured article (which uses similar formatting) had the same issue. Since the only public-facing area in which the TFA is displayed is the Main Page which uses a columnar format, and consequently one would need to be using a monitor the width of a movie screen for the situation to arise in which the TFA blurb text didn't reach the bottom of the TFA image, I don't consider it an issue that needs addressing. (If it ever did become an issue, all that would be necessary is to add a {{clear}} template at the end of the TFA blurb.) ‑ Iridescent 08:43, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

File:London Necropolis bombing.jpg listed for discussion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:London Necropolis bombing.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:55, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Whither Wikispeak

Somebody seems to have got the wrong end of the stick with Wikipedia:WikiSpeak and done a bunch of copyedits. The trouble is, in doing so, they've taken large swathes of humour out of the article and made it rather less cutting than it should be. (It's possible to get hit by lightning seven times, but is far too sensible an analogy, whereas nobody would ever stick a picture of Jimmy Savile el fragrante in Great Ormond Street and is just bonkers.) Does anyone else agree, and if so, shall I roll back? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:01, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

This one agrees with the proposed reversion (though not, of course, using WP:Rollback, which would result in your being cast into dimensions of eternal torment). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:01, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

I can't really comment on the person who made the "improvements" in question without breaching the civility policy, especially in light of the previous reactions caused by my comments regarding legacy admins from the early days of Wikipedia who are completely out of touch with current custom and practice but make a minimal number of edits every so often in order to stubbornly hang on to the admin bit and the super-user status they think comes with it, and then occasionally resurface insisting that everybody else do things their way because they're So Damn Important. Just going to put this and this here. ‑ Iridescent 19:49, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

You were correct in that particular instance. In a recent encounter, they not only refused a request for page protection on the grounds that the content under dispute was "really stupid", but then proceeded to join in and exacerbate the edit-war further. Brilliant! —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 10:07, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

I have a Cassandra-like ability to be ignored at the time but proved right after the fact, although in that case it wasn't difficult - I remember his alter ego being a total dick for years on Wikipedia Review. (In vague defense, the way railroads use measurements does look really weird to outsiders; because so many of the world's systems were designed in 19th-century Newcastle and Manchester, to this day the world's rail networks tend to use the measurements of 1850s northern England. Even a place as proudly metric as France still uses a rail gauge of 4'8 1⁄2".) I look forward to the weary inevitability of the admin I recently said was about to flare out, and got a lot of stick from a crowd of people including you for thus saying, flaring out. ‑ Iridescent 11:45, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

I didn't give you stick, I merely disagreed  :) I know the terms are usually synonymous around here, but that was an exception (proving the rule?)...incidentally, I don't think your prediction was necessarily wrong, just that a length of rope after the passing of time would be pretty harmless—particularly in the knowledge that at least one high-profile admin with a Level-10 in atrophying Wikicareers will be watching them like a hawk. —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 14:02, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

​If you're playing along at home, in the last 48 hours alone the admin in question has indefinitely semi-protected a page which has had a total of 37 edits in the entire year, locked down a page for four months on the grounds of vandalism despite the fact that all the vandalism was coming from a single IP, and protected two pages to "prevent the addition of poorly sourced or unsourced content"] (I'd love to see what Wikipedia would look like if we applied that everywhere). ‑ Iridescent 17:05, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Ha! I'm sorry I didn't notice—I've been a bit busy  :) whiiiich I admit is rather more productive than locking down pages that no-one ever goes to. —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 17:17, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

And people wonder why I get pissy over overuse of RFPP and AIV and oppose any further unbundling for self-appointed vandal fighters. As a semi-related aside to some of your musings above, this also exists. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:28, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Actually TonyBallioni, I must apologise for giving you incorrect information; neither the AFD for Imperial election of 1376 nor the AFD for Norwich Market are the most ridiculous AFD nomination; that would be WP:Articles for deletion/Larry Sanger. ‑ Iridescent 21:03, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

I’m absolutely shocked by the nominator of that one... I think perhaps the thing that puts Imperial Election oh 1376 in the top 3 for me (other than the fact that a brain dead squirrel could tell you that the election of one of the most significant political forces in Europe is inherently notable) is that after it had reached solid SNOW territory the nominator added another election to delete. I suppose this makes the current AfD at most the 4th most ridiculous. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:46, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

The AfD that most annoyed me was probably Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Square root of 5. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:17, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, but that was Dicklyon, and anyone who stopped to worry every time Dicklyon came out with some wacky proposal and then dug in his heels over it wouldn't have time for anything else; his M.O. is to pick as many fights as possible in the hope that people will give him his way out of sheer exhaustion regardless of how perverse a position it is. (See Talk:Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine for a particularly ripe recent example; the institution that built it calls it "Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine" and the museum where it's currently displayed calls it "Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine", but he insists that it was never called MSSEM and is fighting a dogged guerilla war against anyone who suggests otherwise.) I suspect in his case it's as much a case of nobody wanting to be the admin who blocked the guy who invented the mouse as anything else; one of the many drawbacks of so many of the admins being from the 2005–07 intake is that we all remember the hassle the admin who blocked that Nobel Prize guy received. ‑ Iridescent 23:11, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

(talk page watcher)-Whilst I agree that the first two protections were quite bad (esp. the second), I'm a bit curious as to how you would deal with this?I tried to source (and thus, check the validity of the alteration(s) by the IPs) but did not make any progress.

For a quasi-equivalent example, in the domain of Indian castes, where I often invest my efforts, I believe that I have reasons to go absolutely crazy, shall some admin refuse to protect a page penetrated by all sorts of un-sourced glorifying stuff (which doesn't precisely fit vandalism and might be true) under the pretext of your last line.The situation might be insanely volatile over there but I guess nobody's has got a liking to remove un-sourced stuff, from any article, multiple times.

On a more generalized note, I think persistent addition of un-sourced info by multiple IPs/non-auto-confirmed users over a broad span of time shall be enough to manifest in a semi-protection. Where do you stand, as to the broader locus of protection w.r.t un-sourced-content-insertion? ∯WBG^converse 13:43, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Except that apart from BLP's merely being 'un-sourced' is not actually a reason to summarily prevent inclusion of material. WP:UNSOURCED is very clear that it *may* be removed, but isnt necessary in all cases, and there are objections when done so. WP:BLP has far stricter standards for obvious reasons. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:48, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Umm, so how do we deal with the maintenance of an article where positive contributions from IPs are solely un-sourced-information-insertion, which can be potentially branded as misleading and hence, vandalism, only after spending enough time on the issue? In all those cases, citing un-sourced is a perfect reason to remove content and sustain that editorial state, unless some sources are presented. Obviously, we can maintain a relaxed demeanor and tax the RC patroller(s) (their over-reaching activities is another story.....) or the area-maintainer(s) to remove them; after-all there's no DEADLINE but that's taking AGF and the principles of anybody-can-edit-anything too far.∯WBG^converse 16:56, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Well from experience what happens is the IP gets reverted then someone gets a not-particularly-bright admin to semi-prot the article... Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:14, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

I understand your general point here and agree with it, but in this case I don't think the admin in question has done anything that looks like they're pulling above their station, certainly when not compared to a now-blocked ex admin named after a popular breakfast beverage. I can't pinpoint at anything that cries out "admin abuse", and if anything it just highlights how inflated the RfA standards have become. Or am I missing something obvious? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:59, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Ex admin named after a popular breakfast beverage - User:Johnnie Walker? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:11, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

How about saving the former version under a better name, - Wikispeak being awful enough? Or link at the top to a former version with a comment, such as "If you really want to know ..."? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:57, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

The Dawn of Love (painting)

This is to let you know that I've scheduled The Dawn of Love (painting) to appear on the main page as today's featured article on 8 August 2018. If you need to make tweaks to the blurb, it is at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 8, 2018. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:19, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

@WP:TFA coordinators is that really a good idea? Per my comment in the #Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret scheduled for TFA thread above, that will make four TFAs on individual paintings by the same fairly obscure artist since January. It's beginning to be noticed by the readers; yes, we have a backlog of these, but my withdrawal from FAC means it's a backlog that's unlikely to grow for the foreseeable future. ‑ Iridescent 2 14:35, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

We're a bit stretched for topics that aren't the usual topics. I had scheduled a folklore and a British estate as TFA but got a hell of a pushback through email so had to shuffle things...I'm already cranky and tired and feeling just a bit harried about the whole thing. Find me a replacement (after I finish the tedious scheduling paperwork) that doesn't upset the balance of topics and I'll be happy to reschedule. (We'll leave aside the dog diarrhea problem this morning and my massive headache... but I need to schedule because questions are being raised about leaving it too long). Ealdgyth - Talk 14:43, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

@Dank I've expanded the image to the same size used for Britomart last month (no need for the "Expand" link this time as there's no cropping), and slashed the blurb to 800 characters to compensate. FWIW, in my opinion this should probably be written into your instructions as recommended practice for all visual arts articles (and other articles like coins and botany where the detail of the image is of more significance to readers than the blurb text).

Per my comment above while this isn't something I'm going to fight over, I still think this is a bad idea—this means Wikipedia will have run a TFA on a William Etty painting in January, April, July and August this year. Yes, coins and hurricanes also run at this rate, but we have a lot more articles on coins and hurricanes—Wikipedia only has 13 articles on Etty paintings, and one of those is never going to be more than a stub and certainly never FA. I take Ealdgyth's point that the schedulers feel obliged to periodically run something from WP:FANMP#Art, architecture, and archaeology, but at some point fairly soon that well is going to run dry. With myself, Eric, Victoriaearle, Cassianto and Giano driven out of FAC, Ceoil, Kafka Liz and SchroCat halfway to the exit and Ottava, Geogre and TFMWNCB unlikely ever to return, unless you find someone soon to plug the gap then Johnbod isn't going to be able to keep arts and literature populated single-handed and both will go the way of WP:FANMP#Engineering and technology. ‑ Iridescent 21:43, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Sure, I figured you would trim the blurb. It looks good. I don't handle scheduling at all these days. I have no objection to big botany or coin images, but I've never seen that suggestion before. - Dank (push to talk) 22:39, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Wehwalt, Casliber, you're The Coin Guy and The Plant Guy—do you have any thoughts on making a double-size image and a 2⁄3-size blurb standard practice for topics where "what does it look like?" is likely to be the primary consideration to readers? Cas, you may recall that what originally got me thinking about the way TFA images appear to readers was the [[Bird]] TFAR in which the proposed image wasn't recognizable as a bird at 100px width. With the spread of smartphones and a consequent rise in the proportion of viewers seeing the TFA image as a centimeter-wide square, the issue is more pertinent than it was a decade ago; I could make a decent case for "big picture, small blurb" being the default position for all TFAs.

While I can't say for sure whether it's caused by the increased image size attracting viewer attention or whether viewers find 1830s history painting inherently interesting—I'd like to think the latter but I suspect it's the former—it's worth pointing out that on their day all the paintings that have run with an oversized image and reduced blurb—even the relatively uninteresting Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret—got pageview levels more associated with A-list celebrities and major sporting events. By my calculation three of the seven most-viewed TFAs of 2018 have been works by this one obscure and unfashionable artist. ‑ Iridescent 16:31, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Maybe that artist isn't as unfashionable as you think... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:46, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

No, he's very definitely unfashionable, as is every 19th-century English artist other than the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Turner; outside the last redoubts of the English School in York, Manchester and Lady Lever—and a few specialists working on the history of the symbolism of nudity in religious art—I doubt even most gallery curators know of him other than as a footnote. You can pick up an Etty original for about $500 for a drawing or $2000 for a painting which is chicken-feed in terms of the art market. ‑ Iridescent 17:08, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

How often does TFA ever get a dose of voluptuousness... —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 17:13, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

More often than you'd think. ‑ Iridescent 17:27, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

I'd be up for a larger image and smaller blurb for a painting yes. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:46, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for a lovely article about "a horrible painting, which when initially exhibited in 1828 was described as "an unpardonable sin against taste", and critical opinion has not become noticeably more forgiving in the intervening 188 years. It's arguably the second most significant artwork in Dorset (I'm nominating this as part of the push to improve coverage of the West Country), but that says more about the state of Dorset's museums than anything else."! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:40, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

DGG on IHTS

I just went to fix something as you were closing the IHTS section. I didn't realize DGG added his comments about IHTS directly to the section Lourdes created to summarize people's comments, which I soon after hatted (because summary sections...). I was surprised that IHTS took issue with this until I understood what he meant. I don't think it would've changed anything, but my apologies to DGG and IHTS (not pinging because I suspect he'd rather I not). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:25, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

​I read through the whole thing, including the hatted section. DGG's comments are valid as a snapshot of his view of the discussion as it was at that point, but especially when one takes into account the commenters in the three days after that, in my opinion consensus was overwhelming. (Do a ctrl-f for "this has gone on long enough" to get to the comments added after DGG's summary; of those later commenters we have four "support indef block", three "support site ban" and a single non-policy based oppose on the basis that "this is not turning out the way I want".)

Blind headcounting is rightly discouraged, but equally if one's going to close a discussion against majority opinion it needs to be demonstrable that those of the minority opinion have the stronger arguments. Of those who weren't supporting at least one of (a) full site ban. (b) indefinite block or (c) a block for a lengthy period, we have:

1. Such a block should not be done lightly, and if it is to be imposed, it should be done by ARBCOM—an obviously spurious argument based on a total misunderstanding of how Wikipedia operates;
2. Oppose indefinite ban at this time … If he can temper his rank incivility and just step away whenever he feels himself getting wound up, he could return to being a great contributor after some (likely inevitable) time off—a legitimate argument if there were any indication that a short-term block would trigger some kind of soul-searching and a return to form, but given the previous history of short-term blocks that have failed to have an impact the onus is on those arguing for this outcome to justify why they feel things will change over a fixed period and why this would be preferable to the "onus is on the blocked party to demonstrate that it won't happen again" element of an indefblock;
3. I am about to lose an important collaborator, and it's annoying—an argument that I completely disregarded, as it does nothing to address the concerns those arguing for a block were raising. Nobody works on Wikipedia in a vacuum, and every block of anyone other than a pure vandal will lose someone a collaborator;
4. I oppose an indefinite block—DGG's comment, with no elaboration or indication of policy-based reason for so opposing, and as such not something any closer can reasonably take into account.

None of these, with the arguable exception of #2, are policy based; most of those arguing for either an indefinite-not-infinite block or a permanent site ban did give a detailed justification as to why they were so arguing. It's not the closer's place to supervote and as such the only things I could have done as a closer were (1) close as indefinite block with a clear avenue open for appeal; (2) interpret consensus as being for an outright community ban on the grounds that almost all commenting were either supporting a siteban or a lengthy block; (3) leave the discussion open for another week, which would almost certainly have had a considerably worse outcome for IHTS as it was fairly obvious the "enough is enough" argument was gaining momentum, or (4) punt it across to Arbcom who would likely have thrown the book at IHTS, reaching the same result but with considerably more unpleasantness.

I'd say my close is the best result IHTS could reasonably have hoped for, given that it still leaves an avenue open for immediate return; all he needs to do is convince an admin that it won't happen again. I'm not generally a fan of "you're blocked until you abase yourself", but since the thread demonstrated that multiple people were having multiple issues with this editor, IMO "we appreciate your positive contributions but consensus is that we don't want you back until you can assure us that the negatives no longer outweigh the positives" is the only fair reading of the consensus of that thread. ‑ Iridescent 17:41, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for all of this. I'm not challenging the close, to be clear. There's no way to close it any way other than indef or, at minimum, a fixed-length long-term block. So I don't disagree with your reading. I just wanted to acknowledge somewhere that I made a mistake in not realizing DGG's comments were in the hatted section until it was too late. Not that it would've changed anything. I would've put the apology on IHTS's page below your message, but I didn't want it to be taken as rubbing salt in a wound. I figured my hatting would, if anything, help his case (although I didn't hat it to help or hinder). Unfortunately business regardless. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:54, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

just for the record, my reason was that the situation did not rise to the level of disruption that would justify indefinite. This is based partly on my personal view that indefinite is being used much too often. In my opinion it should be reserved for those doing vandalism , not just for uncooperative behavior from a sometimes productive editor. (and my votes on arb com have been in accordance with that view) . It may not be the consensus, but the sort of evaluation necessary for these decisions is more a matter of opinion than of science. DGG ( talk ) 21:51, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

If I were judge, jury and executioner, I'd have probably declined to block at all and instead tried to craft some kind of "any uninvolved admin can ban IHTS from commenting further on any given thread" topic ban. But I'm not judge, jury and executioner, and the consensus was overwhelming here—the only decision to make as closer in this case was "there's obviously a consensus to block, is the consensus to block for a lengthy set period, to block indefinitely in the sense of until IHTS promises to stop doing it, or to block outright and throw away the key?". If Wikipedia ran on supervotes rather than consensus we could do away with discussion altogether. ‑ Iridescent 22:32, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

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IHTS

Per this, can you explain under what authority you are able to add the provision "any admin is free to overturn this block" to a community sanctioned block/ban? Thanks. Nihlus 15:13, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

You're aware that I'm the one who placed the block in the first place? See two threads up for a detailed explanation of that close; my reading is that while there was clear consensus for some kind of block, there was no consensus for it to be unappealable (and given that an unappealable block would be contrary to Wikipedia custom and practice, such a thing would need explicit community consensus). I don't know where you've got "community sanctioned ban" from, as while there were certainly people advocating one I don't see any possible way to read the consensus at the original discussion as being for a ban. Regarding can you explain under what authority you are able to add the provision "any admin is free to overturn this block", this is where the semantic difference between a block and a ban is significant; in the absence of a community consensus for a ban any uninvolved admin can accept a block appeal; the "any admin is free…" language is to make it clear that any admin conducting a block review or accepting an appeal can skip the administrators should avoid unblocking users without first attempting to contact the blocking administrator to discuss the matter step of the appeal process if they deem it appropriate. If you feel my close was inappropriate, Arbcom is thataways.

As I made clear to IHTS at the time, while I explicitly didn't put a "minimum time to serve" on the block, I strongly recommended he not immediately appeal for exactly the reasons we're now seeing; a block appeal that doesn't address the concerns of those who supported the block can be interpreted as deliberate time-wasting if it's made too soon after the event. ‑ Iridescent 15:46, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Please read WP:NEVERUNBLOCK (emphasis mine): When the block is implementing a community sanction which has not been successfully appealed. The community may choose to allow a block to be reviewed in the normal way, by consulting with the closing/blocking administrator, rather than requiring a formal appeal to the community. If there is consensus to allow this it shall be noted in the closing statement and block log. Reading through the discussion by the community, I see no mention of the block being able to be reviewed by a single administrator. Nihlus 15:57, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Just putting this here because IHTS removed it from his talk page (something which I explicitly said was ok with me). No response required. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:02, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Responding to ping, though I don't think I have any more involvement in this than others (e.g. Guy Macon, who opened the ANI thread, but whom I'm not pinging only because I know IHTS asked him not to post here).

Obviously I cannot see the appeal as I am not an admin. I will just say that I have a hard time thinking that anyone could look at that ANI thread, which is so clearly predicated on already having gone through many short blocks over a long period of time, and find it appropriate to unblock after a week. I still feel like a long-term fixed-length block would've been the best option, as a clear escalation before something without an end, and also something that doesn't require IHTS to go through a messy noticeboard appeal (which, at least in my limited experience in seeing similar cases, probably does not have a great chance of succeeding). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:23, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Oh dear!

[5]. Don't you dare laugh. Johnbod (talk) 19:17, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

<insert picard facepalm.gif> Only in death does duty end (talk) 23:39, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't get it...? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 06:57, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Belated reply

This is a belated reply to this post from Ceoil. Although he's removed it, I think it warrants reply; I won't restore his post without his say-so in case there's a reason he doesn't want it live-and-searchable.

My attitude towards FAC/TFA hasn't greatly shifted since this thread a decade ago. I think that all too often, the FAC process prioritizes "complies with the rules" above "useful" and "informative". As you know, a considerable part of getting something through FAC is being able to dig one's heels in on when to apply IAR; this mentality penalizes those who don't have either an inside baseball knowledge of the regular reviewers, or enough of a wiki-reputation to be taken seriously; consequently, it just reinforces the perception that FAC is a small clique of insiders patting each other on the back.

I agree entirely about main page requirements. If I had my way, if we had to keep "today's featured article" it would be disconnected entirely from the FAC process, and the only criteria for inclusion on the main page would be "is it reasonably complete?" and "does it contain any major errors?".

On Tony, I think we differ; while he did many great things, I think that, especially towards the end of his time at FAC, he became far too fond of nitpicking for nitpicking's sake, regardless of whether strict MOS compliance improved the article or not. Again, this reinforced the clique-y nature of FAC, as it divided editors into regulars who had the confidence to face down his complaints when they felt justified in doing so, and newcomers who got intimidated into complying with whatever arbitrary rule Tony was trying to enforce that week. There are more thoughts on the matter, from myself and others, here.

On general malaise, add the recent war on drafts as another think keeping me away from FAC. (Paging SarahSV for balance as she takes the opposite view to me.) As I said to you the other day, I don't see how it's of any benefit to the reader to have the edit history clogged with 200–300 edits by me correcting my own spelling mistakes instead of a single clean edit. Likewise, when writing something from scratch I tend to sketch out a basic article outline and then fill it out one-source-at-a-time; on something like Victorian paintings or railway stations that's not an issue, but for something contentious on which sources are likely to disagree, working in mainspace would mean intentionally making a non-NPOV article temporarily live to the readers during that period in which the article includes the views of Professor A, but I haven't yet got around to incorporating the views of Professors B, C and D. Working in sandboxes also allows me to write reminders to myself about missing sources, to play around with images to see what works best at various screen resolutions and browser settings, to dump assorted snippets at the end to be moved into place once I've worked out where they should go, and to have a {{lorem ipsum}} lead section until I have a feel for how long the article is going to turn out and consequently how detailed the lead would be, all of which would be impossible in mainspace. (If you want an concrete example, I've undeleted the sandbox versions of Etty's bio prior to my deciding it was complete enough for further work to take place in mainspace. No iteration of this draft, other than a few at the very end when I was just sanding down rough edges, would have been appropriate in article space. Working in sandboxes also has the added benefit that, because nobody except me is reading it, it's not necessary to use edit summaries; while they only take a couple of seconds, when you're talking hundreds of edits per article, that adds up.) ‑ Iridescent 07:11, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Huh. I write articles in the same manner as you - although I do keep the draft history around by moving or history merging as keeping track of changes can be useful to nend citation errors and to leave a record. JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 09:15, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

On whether to history merge or cut-and-paste, there's no right answer. Cut and paste makes for a single overwhelming diff, and if more than one editor had been involved in the draft it also causes issues with attribution. (There's also a—trivial—issue in that in 70 years when copyrights start to expire, the apparent go-live date will differ by a few days from the actual go-live date.) My feeling is that it's still preferable to history merge. History-merging 200+ edits into an article's history overwhelms it and makes it more difficult to search for other people's edits. It also causes issues if one editor is making minor edits to the live article while another is expanding it in a sandbox; if Eb spends a month rewriting an article, and during that period Flo makes a handful of minor fixes to spacing or punctuation on the original, then once the histories are merged it will appear to anyone viewing the article history that Flo is an inveterate edit warrior who keeps removing Eb's edits without discussion, whilst Eb is a problem editor who keeps insisting on adding and expanding his preferred version without asking Flo why she keeps removing it. (Make a bunch of minor edits over a period of days to a block of lorem ipsum text in your own userspace, then histmerge it with Wikipedia:Sandbox, and you'll see what I mean—to anyone who doesn't inspect the log in detail—and who does inspect the log in detail?—it will look like you and Cyberbot are having a full-scale editwar. ‑ Iridescent 17:14, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

I have the same thought as that actually. However, the articles I rewrite usually don't get many edits and I usually don't keep any of the old (and usually poor) content save for external links, navboxes and categories as I find writing from scratch easier. So I guess that the aforementioned issues aren't much of a problem in my cases. OTOH, it means that I don't have a clear path on how to improve Coropuna and Uturuncu to FAC status... JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 20:49, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

If I'm doing a root-and-branch rewrite, I tend to disregard the previous article entirely while I'm writing it, and then go through the previous article afterwards inserting those bits of it that are worth saving in the appropriate places. Even the lowest-traffic articles tend to get regular passes by bots and AWB-powered human-bot hybrids making pointless or near-pointless minor edits, although since the defenestration of Magiolatidis the latter is less of a nuisance than it used to be.

For the volcanoes, I'd suggest creating a blank skeleton of just the headers (I'd suggest Location / Geology / significance to pre-Colombian cultures / European discovery / Notable eruptions / Present day including what farming if anything is done on the slopes, and whether it attracts tourism). All those are things that need to be mentioned even if only in the negative, and working to a script like that acts as a reminder not to leave anything out. When it comes to size, eruptions etc throw in some comparisons to volcanoes like Etna or Kilauea which readers have a fighting chance of having heard of, to give an idea of scale. Having all the sections in the same order in every article makes it easier for readers working through the articles as a series, as well, although it does have an unfortunate tendency to create a cookie-cutter appearance. ‑ Iridescent 21:04, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

On VA

In a throw-away comment at ANI, you referred to the vital articles project as "ridiculous". Why? That pains me that you or anybody would say that. I've spent a lot of time working on that. pbp 00:49, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

If you want to be involved in something that has a long-term future and that the rest of the Wikipedia community will take seriously, WP:VITAL is probably not the place to be. It's a content-fork from the actual (and itself questionable) vital article list at meta:List of articles every Wikipedia should have and on duplication grounds alone probably should never have existed in the first place. In terms of function, WP:VITAL was forked from the Meta list to serve a purpose that no longer exists; along with the "article importance" scales, it were created back when the WMF planned a CD-ROM release of Wikipedia for distribution to schools in the developing world, and consequently needed a mechanism to establish what would be included in the limited space on the CD. The scheme was overtaken by events, as the spread of ultracheap smartphones, the mass availability of internet access in even the poorest countries, and the obsolescence of the CD as a medium rendered it obsolete (that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so is nowadays far more likely to have access to the internet than to a CD-ROM reader); the last release of the CD was in 2008, and it's vanishingly unlikely ever to be released again.

I make no apologies for using the term "ridiculous" to describe the mess into which WP:VITAL has metastasized. As a "list of core topics", it might have potential value for those holdouts who consider the notion of "core topics" important (a dwindling group but they do exist). The list as it stands has little if any relation to an actual list of core topics, and just reflects the personal preferences of the handful of people who WP:OWN the list (if you seriously consider Tim Cahill, Newport, Chuck Palahniuk, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Westmorland or Geoffrey Boycott as among Wikipedia's most important articles, I really don't know what to say although it would be amusing to hear you try).

While I know there are some people who consider the idea of "core topic" significant (paging Casliber), in my opinion the concept of a "vital article" indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is notoriously shitty when it comes to coverage of "big" topics, and is rarely if ever the best port of call for someone researching something well known; where it shines is covering those topics the Britannicas of the world don't reach. (If Wikipedia and its mirrors were to vanish tomorrow, someone researching the history of Johann Sebastian Bach or Moscow wouldn't be inconvenienced in the slightest; someone researching Silverchair or Thistle, Utah would be.)

There's also an inherent fallacy in trying to determine what's "vital", as it's purely subjective to the reader; you can claim (as the WP:VITAL clique do) that our shitty and little-read articles on The arts and Culture are two of the 10 most important articles on Wikipedia, but to a reader interested in the logistics of moving visitors around theme parks Disneyland Railroad is considerably more important. We're not the Book of the Month club or setting a syllabus here; who are you (plural) to tell me that the articles you consider important are empirically more "vital" than the articles I consider important?

Incidentally, I'm noting that among the 20 people who've appointed themselves as the soi-disant arbiters of "subjects for which Wikipedia should have corresponding featured-class articles", a grand total of two have ever actually written a featured-class article as opposed to telling those people who actually do write the FAs what they should be writing about (and one of those two hasn't edited since 2014) ‑ Iridescent 17:14, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Wikipedia is notoriously sh¡tty when it comes to coverage of "big" topics I have wondered why high profile articles such as Donald Trump (e.g.) aren't decent articles, given the amount of daily readership. Being a giant editor-effort sink that it is, to me that particular article passes the criteria, and as for Point 5, it could just be locked and opened up every few weeks to add what material has been recieved consensus for.^Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 18:00, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

It's do-able—Obama and McCain have both been TFAs for a decade including through Obama's presidency and McCain's presidential runs—but it's not easy. The whole "anyone can edit" thing means that topics like high-profile politicians and celebrities, which a lot of good-faith newcomers try to help out on without understanding Wikipedia's rules, tend to degenerate very quickly unless they're rigorously stewarded, which in turn prompts accusations of article ownership from anyone upset that their addition of [insert name here]'s membership of the Illuminati was reverted. As most editors would rather be doing something other than explain for the thousandth time why we're not going to change Obama's birthplace to Kenya, it's not really surprising that volunteers to steward these high-traffic articles are few and far between. ‑ Iridescent 18:21, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

(adding) Regarding your edit summary, as you know if you watch this page I'm no fan of TFA, but what do you see as particularly problematic about the current batch? It appears more slanted towards pop culture than is usual, but none of them look particularly unreasonable to me; things like South Park episodes and WWE promotions look odd at first glance, but these are multi-billion-dollar industries; there are probably more people with an interest in cartoons, wrestling, videogames etc than in any living painter or sculptor by multiple orders of magnitude. ‑ Iridescent 18:29, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps it needs more fifteenth-century English nobilty in it  :) although of course that wouldn't really address WP:BIAS, just make it older... —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 18:34, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

You have Æthelbald of Mercia and John de Gray in there—how many medieval English nobility articles do you think we have to spare? We don't want a repeat of what happened with the British Rail articles, where the delegates scheduled so many they literally wiped out the stock and as a consequence unless David Cane starts nominating at FAC again, there may never be another. ‑ Iridescent 18:54, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

WP:BIAS against anything post-John then. What you think this is, the Dark Ages?! :p —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 08:53, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Looks like David's ears were burning. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:51, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Part of the idea of VA was presumably to make big topic articles less shitty, which I certainly endorse (as does Casliber I'm sure). But Level 5 is clearly a step too far, and very possibly Level 4 too. Level 1 and 2 subjects tend to be just too big - User:Eric Corbett loved to mention House, though I prefer Cooking, both I think once Level 2 but now replaced by Home and Food; this is the pit Arts and Culture fall into. I think Levels 2 (100) and especially 3 (1000) have a certain utility, although they are not worth spending much time discussing. Johnbod (talk) 18:26, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

I also wonder about the inclusion criteria for VITAL. Most of the articles mentioned here do get fewer page views than Hurricane Maria going back to January. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:38, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

@JJE, when I said the list just reflects the personal preferences of the handful of people who WP:OWN the list, that wasn't hyperbole; that literally is the inclusion criterion. If you head over to Wikipedia talk:Vital articles, you can see the "I think this is interesting → so do I → so do I → added" process in action. It makes DYK look like a model of integrity. ‑ Iridescent 18:48, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Agree there is a high degree of....subjectivity...in some choices of VA. My only thinking with promoting core articles (as in the Core Contest) was as a carrot to improve some broader articles. Saw some good collabs...so was ok with that. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:46, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

• The issue with articles on big topics or topics of major significance is that they are very difficult to write on. To use an example from the content area I’m most familiar with here Pope is no doubt a really shitty article filled with POV and broad statements (from zealots of both sorts) containing vague references, in need of both more and less citations at the same time, and likely all but impossible to get to FA because of the nature of the office and simply how much has been written about it. Compare this to Papal conclave, March 1605, one of the least significant political events in history, but one where it’s possible to write a halfway decent article. As an amateur who has a fair amount of historical research skills/access to a research university library as an alumnus, I can write on that small event. It’s much harder to write on the broad concept. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:58, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
  • if you seriously consider Tim Cahill, Newport, Chuck Palahniuk, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Westmorland or Geoffrey Boycott as among Wikipedia's most important articles, I really don't know what to say although it would be amusing to hear you try. When VA level 5 was created, users discuss about other name than "vital articles [6]. Vital article at level 5=/= very the most important topic on English Wikipedia. Anyway I belive that stabilisation of L5 is possible. What do you think about ininvlobve wikiproject to get rate above relevant lists? What do you think about invlove SuggestBot to correct articles from the list?Dawid2009 (talk) 19:10, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
    • I think you're missing my point; whether you call it "Level 5", "Important articles" or whatever, there's no way that (for example) a second rate journeyman footballer for a succession of low-ranking teams who never won a single meaningful trophy in his entire career, a sparsely-populated county that only existed for 86 years and was abolished decades ago, or a dingy suburb of Cardiff which constitutes the 36th-largest city in Britain would be on it. You can try getting SuggestBot to prioritize whatever you can persuade the bot op to prioritize (providing you restrict it to people who've already signed up for SuggestBot notifications; if you start spamming people who haven't subscribed I'll block the bot on the spot), but don't expect it to have any effect; while I've no doubt that someone will pop up to tell me otherwise, I'm not aware of anyone who's ever made a significant edit to an article owing to a SuggestBot suggestion. If you (plural) make this list a userspace list of "articles I personally think are important" I'd have no issue with it, but putting it in Wikipedia space and pretending that it has any kind of significance is something I'd strongly contest, as it gives the appearance of community recognition for what's in fact the personal whims of a small handful of people as to what constitutes "significant". ‑ Iridescent 20:39, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
      • Ahem. Newport is not a suburb of Cardiff. Although within 20 years they will effectively be a conurbation due to the land-use policies currently being pushed through. Its also not particularly dingy any more due to the decline in heavy industry. It does have its poor areas, but even compared to 10 years ago there has been a marked improvement - certainly in the greater city area. You may be confusing it with Swansea ;) Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:42, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

• It's 18 minutes by train and 21 minutes by car centre-to-centre, it's part of the Cardiff-Newport Metropolitan Area, and if the Cardiff Metro ever gets built it will not only be on it, it won't even be near the end of the line. It's a suburb of Cardiff. I'm sure there are nice parts on the other side of the river around Caerleon, but in my experience "dingy" is most definitely accurate (and, since the closure of Le Pub, the only reason for anyone other than residents and rugby fans to go there has gone). Maybe "dingy and absolutely packed with tramps" would technically be more accurate. It does have one of the oddest of all Britain's local museums, though, particularly the upper "weird shit we've been bequeathed and are obliged to display" floor. ‑ Iridescent 21:58, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

• Ooo hark at you with your fancy 18 minute GWR trains. 30 mins by Arriva. If it turns up... I would still say its not a suburb - the time between them is largely irrelevant given the distinct countryside between, Newport being a city in its own right, and that Newport is not a residential annex of Cardiff - having its own industrial, commercial and residential zones. That and the discrete post-code (NP vs CF). You could credibly argue Neath/Port Toilet is a suburb of Swansea like that, or any of the closer valleys towns are however. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:38, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

• I'll try to get to this topic of TFA and FA and VA tomorrow... this day and yesterday have been beyond shitty for me (sick mare who colicked yesterday - she's recovering but it's eating a huge pile of time to monitor, plus last night a good friend was very very sick and in pain and we had to force her to call the paramedics and now it looks like she's terminal with cancer, heart problems, and a chest infection - I have the medical power of attorny for her so I have to deal with the hospital and docs... ugh) Ealdgyth - Talk 19:15, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Sorry to hear that, and if you're busy don't feel at all obliged to get involved; IRL takes priority, and this is only very marginally at most about TFA scheduling. (although having said that, paging @WP:TFA coordinators @FAC coordinators: @The Rambling Man, Howcheng, and Guy Macon:, all of whom ought to be aware of any discussion with potential repercussions for the main page. TRM and PBP, this is not an invite to turn my talk page into Wiki Thunderdome.) ‑ Iridescent 20:48, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
    • I'm well aware of this, thanks. I won't be commenting here, I think most of my thoughts have been adequately covered, and this topic appears to have absolutely no impact on the main page, not even incidental, for the foreseeable future. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:01, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
      • (Stamps feet)[7] But I waaaanaa turn your talk page into Wiki Thunderdome!! Waaaah!!!

      https://kotaku.com/thunderdome-is-a-game-where-you-play-as-a-flying-chains-1755920084

      https://www.discogs.com/Various-Thunderdome-III-The-Nightmare-Is-Back/master/4704

      --Guy Macon (talk) 02:14, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

• I participate in VA largely because I would like a CD-size (700MB) version of Wikipedia to be available. (the lists are also sometimes useful for the Special:RecentChangesLinked/Wikipedia:Vital_articles functionality). Regarding the specific articles mentioned (all part of a list that does NOT yet have any form of editorial control or consensus, just the hope that volunteer contributions will be a net positive):

• Tim Cahill is an association football player from Australia. There's a contingent on the talk page that feels very strongly in favor of "representation" in the sense that, as football is a prominent sport and Australia a prominent country, there should be some footballer from Australia on the list. In practice, various Aussie-rules footballers or rugby players may be sufficient at this level.
• Newport seems like an unremarkable suburb of Cardiff, which is listed.
• Chuck Palahniuk is a fairly-prominent modern author (Fight Club is more famous as a film based on his novel). I would estimate there should be roughly 100 active authors of fiction on the list. I try to avoid arguments about BLPs, particularly in the arts.
• Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I - trivia. I'll remove it once the current discussion is over, or propose removal if we end up with such a process. Nazi plunder probably is vital at this level.
• Westmorland - many of the Historic counties of England are notable. If this one only existed for 70 years, it may not be.
• Geoffrey Boycott - I would defend Charles Boycott, but don't know enough about cricket to comment here. Surely some cricketers other than Don Bradman and Sachin Tendulkar are notable at this level.

Finally: the suggestion that WP:VA should be a consideration for how articles are processed at WP:ITNC should be rejected completely. power~enwiki (π, ν) 22:15, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Well, you are doing nothing to dispel the rumour that the lists depend solely on the whims of a few self-selected editors! Chuck Palahniuk is only one of the 50,000 at Level 5, and for some reason has had 150k views over his usual 1k per day in the last 10 days. I don't see what is trivia about Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I - it was once the world's most expensive painting, & gets 1K views pd. But you are preaching to the choir about Klimt on this page. I can't see that it is tagged as Vital btw. Tim Cahill has also been getting very high views recently. The important point surely is not that he is Australian but that he plays in India? But really, does it matter in the slightest who is at VA Level 5? Who sees, who cares? Johnbod (talk) 02:10, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Pahlaniuk has a book out and has been doing a round of TV shows to promote it, hence the spike in views; I personally can't stand Klimt but if we have to have a vital articles list wouldn't object to his bio being on it, but wouldn't consider any of his works other than The Kiss to qualify; Cahill comes from a country with no football tradition and plays in a country with no football tradition, and is very much a case of "tallest mountain in Kansas" (if we're going by pageviews, if Cahill is 'vital' on account of page views than that makes Walsall and Watford clogger Troy Deeney a core topic).

Regarding But really, does it matter in the slightest who is at VA Level 5? Who sees, who cares?, the issue (and what triggered the dispute between PBP and TRM that ultimately led to this thread) is that some people have started claiming that being on the VA list should be a determining factor for whether something is featured on the main page or not, so what is and isn't added to the list potentially will have a direct impact on the experience of readers. You presumably remember how much of a hassle it was to get rid of the 'points system' mentality at WP:TFAR; I can't imagine many people want it to reappear in an even more virulent form at WP:ITNC. The same arguments from when we got rid of "high importance visual arts articles" et al also apply here; the VA scale is creating arbitrary divisions based on personal whims, which serve little if any useful purpose and are potentially divisive as people argue over why their own pet topic is or isn't included. (Looking at the "painter" section of the VA list, they quite literally seem to have selected the entries randomly—William Etty as 'vital', anyone? John Constable less important to readers of English Wikipedia than Ilya Repin?—and the less said about this mess the better.) ‑ Iridescent 08:22, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Well that attempt to assert MP priority didn't get very far. Any more and VA5 at least will find itself getting abolished, I shouldn't wonder. Johnbod (talk) 12:03, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

I could argue the Constable one (admittedly out of being TDA rather than personally believing it). There should certainly be no instance where Constable is given less 'importance' in English art than Repin. But it is English-language wikipedia, not English Wikipedia. Its expected to have worldwide information, not only stuff that is important to western English-dominant cultures. Even if we limit ourselves to Landscapes, there are probably artists worldwide of equal importance to Constable/Turner (but I'm British, so I aint about to go searching for them) that would merit an equal or greater 'importance'. And this is the problem with VA - its entirely subjective depending on who is doing it, what criteria they personally choose, and who can argue the loudest and longest. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:57, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

My main issue with the VA project is that they substitute their own opinions for stats. There ARE works out there that try to categorize/rank/etc people/historical topics/artworks/literature/etc by scale... while we wouldn't want to base the VA lists solely on such things - they do not seem to be even consulted. An example - Time Magazine's various "Man/Woman/Person/Topic of the Year" ... while not perfect, it will give you some idea of what was considered important. Nobel prize winning folks AND the subjects they researched (for scientists) should be considered. Similar for other awards and the like. Wikiprojects should be consulted also - they will often be able to help avoid mistakes like Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Horse racing#WikiProject Vital Articles where someone decided that all 13 US Triple Crown winners were of equal value and added them even though some of them had little influence (Sir Barton and Assault, for example) or recentism (both Justify and American Pharaoh are way too recent to even begin to think they are as "vital" as Secretariat or War Admiral). And yes, I do think that page views should factor in a bit - we are after all writing the encyclopedia for readers. While I don't think we should base any VA project off of User:West.andrew.g/Popular pages, if a page is consistently getting Michael Jackson-level yearly page views, that probably tells us something. And I don't see that anyone in the VA project is really trying to bring any sort of sources to their discussions. It operates in a vacuum and seems to have little input from outside its little walled garden. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:19, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

TFA

Breaking this out a bit - I pay no attention to VA status when scheduling for TFA. The main things I look for are trying to not overload the month with too many of one type of article (bearing in mind that we have insane numbers of numismatics and military history articles) and date connections. Generally, the first thing I do is schedule any requests (they can be made at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests - hint hint) and then pull anything with a date connection (found Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/pending and Wikipedia:Featured articles that haven't been on the Main Page/Date connection). After that, I try to find at least one woman's article if possible ... just a personal thing. After that, I try to find a few articles that were promoted a while ago and then random pick of things that aren't already overrepresented if possible. Given a good date connection, I'm quite likely to schedule two articles on the same general topic (Given the date connections, I had no issue with running Debussy on 22 August and Vaughn Williams on 26 August for example). Some of the problems with seeing the same topics at TFA is that there are topics that are massively overrepresented. The solution to that is... to write FAs. (I promise that I really didn't plan to schedule a fungus on Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 14, 2018, it just worked out that way. Ben Affleck on the day that Justice League released, however, was intentional.) Whether an article is on a "serious encyclopedic topic" or on "pop culture" has no bearing on what I schedule - I have no bias for or against pop culture. I do recognize what Iri said above about South Park/WWE/etc being BIG names to many of our readers - unfortunately, I don't think Wikipedia:Today's featured article/Most viewed has been updated in a while. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:00, 5 September 2018 (UTC)